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Meta finally finds success in AR, VR three years after changing name


Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses, as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S. September 25, 2024. 

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

When Facebook changed its name to Meta in October 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the occasion to show the world his vision of a digital future of work and recreation accessible through a virtual reality headset. The company soon opened its play universe called Horizon Worlds, featuring floating personalized avatars.

As the rebranding to Meta approaches its third anniversary, none of that stuff has gone mainstream. 

But the company appears to have found its footing in virtual and augmented reality through a different medium.

After achieving surprise early success in the smart glasses market through a partnership with Ray-Ban, Meta is ginning up excitement for the prototype of a much more advanced pair of glasses called Orion, a project nearly a decade in the making. Zuckerberg’s reveal of Orion late last month has triggered a level of enthusiasm that’s unfamiliar in the metaverse.

The triumphant demo, at Meta’s annual Connect event, was a relief to many employees and represented an internal shift in sentiment toward Zuckerberg’s costly hardware ambitions, according to people close to the company who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press on the matter. 

At the start of the demo, Zuckerberg pulled the device out of a locked metal briefcase. He showed off the gadget — a pair of black, thick-framed AR glasses — to the live audience before placing it on his face. Orion comes with a wireless puck that allows it to run holographic virtual images on top of what users see in real life. It also relies on a wristband that picks up on a user’s neural signals to let them control the device. 

The demo was seamless. The crowd oohed and aahed. Rave product reviews followed from the few who got to test it. CNBC’s Julia Boorstin described a call she had with her producer, saying, “It was like I was FaceTiming with him but he was in my glasses.” The Verge’s Alex Heath played Zuckerberg in a game of Pong and wrote that he “noticed little to no lag in the game.”

“The right way to look at Orion is as a time machine,” Zuckerberg said at Connect. “These glasses exist, they are awesome and they are a glimpse of a future that I think is going to be pretty exciting.”

Meta's Orion AR glasses prototype: CNBC reviews

Following the Orion showcase, Meta is preparing to strengthen its relationship with software developers as it works toward building a consumer version of the device, and to pushing its current generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to more consumers for the 2024 holiday shopping season. 

The company is also looking at ways to bring the technology developed for the Orion wristband to its other consumer devices, notably the Quest VR headsets and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

For Meta, the uptick in…



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