Meta plans to show off years of work on new augmented-reality glasses during its developer conference this year.
The company's first version of what's considered "true" AR glasses, an internal project referred to as Orion, is poised to be revealed this fall, most likely during Meta's annual Connect conference for third-party developers. The AR team is also being pushed to have the high-tech glasses demoed during Connect, so there's internal pressure to ensure a high level of performance, according to two people familiar with the plans, whose identities Business Insider has confirmed but who asked to remain anonymous so they could speak freely.
One of the people said that while the AR glasses wouldn't be for sale to the public after the reveal, a handful of employees had already been experimenting with advanced prototypes. A demo of the new product could generate industry excitement around Meta's expensive work in high-tech wearables.
The AR glasses are a separate product from Meta's better-known Ray-Ban smart glasses and Quest headsets. The Orion project has been in the works for several years under Meta's Reality Labs division, which handles AR and virtual-reality work at the company, along with artificial intelligence and all metaverse-related projects.
Reality Labs is the purview of Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, although projects within it are of keen interest to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who maintains close oversight of Reality Labs' work. He posted a photo to Threads earlier this month showing several versions of Meta glasses on his desk. A source said certain prototypes of the unreleased AR glasses were visible in the photo, which shows at least two glasses frames that are much thicker than the available Meta smart glasses.
A Meta spokesman declined to comment.
AR glasses overall are a major part of Meta's plans as a wearables and hardware business. The Verge reported that Meta planned to release a version of the new AR glasses to early adopters some time in 2027 as part of a multi-year road map for wearables. So far, Meta's AR glasses are costly to produce, much less sell at retail.
Bosworth teased in a December interview with The Verge that the full AR glasses were something he expected people "will get a chance to play with in 2024." He didn't say there would be a demo at Connect. Bosworth also described the AR glasses as having been built on a "prohibitively expensive technology path," and the result thus far was a consumer electronic that "might be the most advanced thing that we've ever produced as a species."
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