ORION: Vaporware for Meta Shareholders

UPDATES at the bottom of the page

At Connect 2024, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Orion (previously codenamed Project Nazare), the augmented-reality smart glasses that have captivated those who don’t have a clue about this technology.

The whole act was a PR move like the ones Zuckerberg got us used to and based on his track record, it will certainly have the same outcome.

Remember all those amazing-on-paper HMD prototypes and proof-of-concept VR headsets from 2018, 2020, and 2022? Have you seen any Meta Quest products on the market with the?electronic varifocal lenses of Mirror Lake? Or one that solves the VAC (vergence-accommodation conflict) by mechanically moving the displays like Half Dome? Is any Meta Quest as thin and light as the Holocake 2?

Showing prototypes that are impractical to build at scale for mass consumption is just misdirection for shareholders (and generalist tech reporters), especially for those who call the operating loss of Meta's Reality Labs unit, which in 2020 lost over $6 billion, $10 billion in 2021, $13 billion in 2022, and $16 billion in 2023.

Orion: A Smokescreen

Orion uses the Snapdragon AR2 Platform, which utilizes a distributed processing architecture that spreads processing between the glasses and a host (such as a smartphone, tablet, or laptop) using Wi-Fi (7 preferably). The Snapdragon AR2 Platform also distributes processing within the glasses using an AR processor and co-processor that handles latency-sensitive tasks like the R1 in the Apple Vision Pro. That’s why, as you can see in the official photo, there’s that big pill-like puck accompanying the glasses:

So here you have the first fact that makes Orion impractical. Aside from its $10K bill of materials, its distributed computing architecture would require someone to carry in their pockets both Orion’s wireless compute pack and their choice of smartphone (unlike Apple and Samsung + Google who already have their iPhones or Android smartphones in YOUR pocket).

So, if Meta goes with a distributed computing model, the dependency on other companies’ smartphones will remain as current, while opting for full self-contained standalone smart glasses will push them away from the below-100-gram regular glasses goal or result in very short battery life. And please already forget about that 70-degree field of view that has been achieved by combining several μLED light sources per eye box that again in practical terms is economically prohibitive as much as a battery eater.

In addition to the facts above, there are more major obstacles.

If you want to know what a hardware manufacturer is hiding from you, just look for the specifications they’re not mentioning:

As you can see in the picture above, while Meta mentions Orion’s field of view, they don’t mention resolution. The reason is that the ultrahigh refraction index of silicon carbide requires a massive resolution per eye for the onboard projectors to cover that 70-degree FOV with an image quality that doesn’t look like your grandfather tube TV. Since Meta is using μLED technology, the resolution must be close to standard definition. Although for see-through augmented reality you don’t need a resolution as high as that required for passthrough, such a high field of view requires way more pixels than that of HoloLens 2 (lower than 720p per eye) and Magic Leap (1440 x 1760 per eye).

In short, Orion is just a cool prototype that is impossible to mass produce for wide adoption and you can bet Apple and Samsung already have similar prototypes in their labs. But unlike Meta, the current kings of mobile computing don’t need to show Lustrum products to calm shareholders.

Don’t expect anything like Orion any time soon or before 2030…if Apple and Samsung let Meta ever do it.

UPDATE #1:

Several industry sources I cannot name due to their positions at world-class companies contacted me after publishing this article, confirming some of my statements and correcting some of them with inside information. Below is a list of topics addressed by professionals who worked in both generations of Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap.

Resolution:

Since Meta revealed they’re using μLED, such technology only achieves 640x480 resolution and is monochromatic, resulting in a very low PPD close to 10 PPD. If the FOV remains 70 degrees, then they need at least 2K resolution to go up north of 30 PPD. From that image you included in your article, it looks like they’re using separate red, green, and blue panels and have 3 coupling gratings corresponding to that three single-color light engine array.

Silicon Carbide waveguides:

Although there’s that reference that each device costs $10K to make, each of those Silicon Carbide waveguides is probably around $10K already.?Yahoo! Finance revealed that former engineers with knowledge of the Orion project disclosed that the initial goal of Meta was to build approximately 1,000 units, which quickly turned into only a few hundred. Out of those, these engineers estimate fewer than twenty Orion units turn on and show a quality image — taking the average cost of only the working prototypes into the "hundreds of thousands" of dollars without including astronomical R&D.

SOC:

Considering the Snapdragon AR2 platform was mostly made for Meta but several of its employees, with Boz at the helm, stated multiple times in different interviews that they use a custom wireless protocol and even custom wireless silicon it seems they're using a different chipset. One employee even mentioned having written a Vulkan driver for Orion, so it seems they’re using another SOC or if they’re using the AR2, they’re using it differently, but the latter doesn’t make sense.

Impractical:

Great tech demo but not practical because this technical approach - at least from an optics perspective - makes no sense for a product. Their claims that Orion will eventually become a product is just pure marketing BS and the fact that Zuckerberg and Boz say Orion displays holograms is proof of that.

UPDATE #2:

Axel Wong has written a detailed analysis of the waveguides, light engines, PPD, processing, and future of Orion. Norman Mueller has translated it into English and you can find it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/augmentedreality/comments/1frdjt2/meta_orion_ar_glasses_the_first_deep_dive_into/