Meta unveils cheaper Quest 3S, Orion AR glasses prototype, new Ray-Ban glasses | Infinium-tech

Today, Meta unveiled the result of several years of research and development – ​​its first AR glasses called Orion. Additionally, the company is launching a cheaper version of the Quest 3 VR glasses. There’s also a new pair of Ray-Ban glasses. It sounds amazing, but the Orion is just a prototype and won’t be sold to consumers, so let’s start with the new Quest.

meta quest 3s

The Meta Quest 3S is a more affordable version of the Quest 3. Actually, it is a mix between Quest 2 and 3 to keep the price low. If you prefer the older, more capable models, you’ll be happy to hear that prices are dropping (more on that in a bit).

Pricing for the 3S starts at $300, but it uses the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as the regular Quest 3, along with the same 8GB of RAM. And it has the same color passthrough that was a major upgrade from the Quest 2 (it uses a 4 MP camera to bring the real world to AR experiences). So, what were cut to save costs?

meta quest 3s

Instead of dual LCDs, the 3S uses a single LCD with slightly lower resolution per eye (1,832 x 1,920px vs. 2,064 x 2,208px). The new LCD still offers fast 90Hz and 120Hz refresh rates, however, it lacks 72Hz and 80Hz options (these come in handy when using PCVR, for example, as dropping the refresh rate involves increasing the render resolution. Gets help).

Perhaps more importantly, the Quest 3’s thin pancake lens was replaced with the Quest 2’s older Fresnel lens. This reduces the field of view to 96° horizontal and 90° vertical, compared to 110° and 96°.

The 3S weighs essentially the same (514 grams instead of 515 grams) but its battery life is slightly better at 2 hours and 30 minutes (vs. 2 hours 12 minutes). This is despite having a smaller battery (4,324mAh vs 5,060mAh).

The Meta Quest 3S has two memory capacities, 128GB and 256GB. You will find the prices below. Meanwhile, the price of the 512GB Quest 3 has been reduced, so that’s also an option if you want a better display experience.

meta orion

“Orion has the largest field of view among the smallest AR glasses to date” is the elevator pitch for these glasses. Note that although they look like Ray-Ban Stories, these are proper AR glasses with a pair of holographic displays and 3D mapping that can put virtual objects into the real world.

Meta Orion glasses are suitable for indoor and outdoor use. The company says they’re lightweight and have “large” holographic displays, but haven’t provided further details.

Holographic displays are transparent – ​​you can see through them and people around you can see your eyes. There is no need for any external display trickery which a certain Cupertino-based company had to resort to.

However, these displays are also capable of drawing color graphics. This could be as simple as a virtual display hovering in the air or as complex as tapping into contextual meta AI to recognize objects and tag them with additional information. In a demo, Meta showed foods on a counter, the glasses recognized them, tagged them and offered a possible recipe to make with them.

Meta says that to make Orion compact and stylish, it had to pack the components as tightly as possible, down to a fraction of a millimeter. And although these are the most advanced AR glasses to date, they still need polish. “Rather than rush to put it on the back burner, we decided to focus on internal development first, meaning we can continue to build faster and push the boundaries of the technology, allowing us to create even better This will help in faster delivery of consumer products.” Writes meta.

Starting today, META employees and select external visitors will have access to the Orion prototype. This will help the team learn and improve when creating a consumer product that will ship “in the near future.”

Before that happens, Meta wants to improve display quality, miniaturize the hardware even further and figure out how to mass-produce them so the finished product is affordable for consumers.

ray-ban meta

A new version of the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses has also been launched today. Unlike Orion, these have a head-mounted camera and AI assistant.

Meta AI has become smarter now and you only need to call it once with “Hey Meta”, you don’t need to say it for every question. Glasses can also help you remember things – for example, they can remember where you parked your car. You can also use voice prompts to set reminders or send voice messages to WhatsApp and Messenger users.

New Ray-Ban Meta

Meta has partnered with Be My Eyes, a free app that connects sighted volunteers who want to help people who are blind or have low vision. The glasses will stream a POV video and a volunteer can help guide the user.

Meta has partnered with Audible and iHeart to give you even more things to listen to while using the glasses. Additionally, it has also improved the existing integration with Spotify and Amazon Music.

If you want something more specific, Meta is launching the Shiny Transparent Wayfarer Frame. Additionally, it comes with Luxottica’s new UltraTransition GEN S lenses, which adapt to different lighting conditions.

Ray-Ban Meta Shiny Transparent Edition • UltraTransition Lens

Pricing for the new Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer glasses starts at $300 and goes up to $430 for the shiny Transparent version with UltraTransition lenses.

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