Quest 3S and Orion AR Glasses 'Stole' the Show At Meta's 2024 Developer Conference
3min read On Wednesday, Meta held its 2024 annual developer conference, and from the content of the event, it is clear that Meta's focus this year is on head-mounted devices.
During last night's event, Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent a lot of time introducing the new generation of virtual reality (VR) headset, Quest 3S, and the augmented reality (AR) glasses Orion to the outside world: As the latest VR headset device launched by Meta's Reality Labs department, Quest 3S has been given great significance by Meta as the starting point for users' VR experience, and its functionality has also been significantly upgraded compared to the previous generation Quest 3.
Meta said that the VR "passthrough" feature has been improved in Quest 3S. When users enable this feature, the camera on the headset will capture the surrounding real-time environment and transmit the image to the VR environment, allowing users to see the real-world scene in the virtual world. In addition, Meta has added a new physical button on the device to enable users to quickly turn on or off the passthrough mode when needed.
In addition, the Qualcomm second-generation Snapdragon XR2+ chip and the updated Meta Horizon OS operating system equipped with Quest 3S are also believed to make it have stronger multi-tasking and application running capabilities. Meta stated at the conference that compared to entertainment devices, the positioning of Quest 3S is actually closer to a multitasking computer because Quest 3S can complete all kinds of tasks that a computer can do, and it is already a complete solution.
It is worth noting that the price of Quest 3S will only be $299 - not only lower than the $499 starting price of Quest 3 last year but also a world of difference from the $3499 price of Apple's Vision Pro. In addition, there have been reports that Meta plans to introduce this device into the Chinese market through cooperation with Tencent and will be officially launched in the fourth quarter of this year.
Another device displayed by Meta on Wednesday is its latest augmented reality smart glasses: Orion glasses are made of magnesium alloy and powered by custom silicon designed by Meta. Users will be able to interact with the glasses through hand tracking, voice, and wrist-based neural interfaces. However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the meeting that the existing Orion is still in the prototype stage and has room for debugging and upgrading. Therefore, when introducing these AR glasses, Meta did not directly demonstrate their functions but played a video showing people's surprised reactions when trying this device. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang exclaimed in the video: This is a big deal.
Zuckerberg said that before releasing it to consumers, Meta plans to make it smaller, more fashionable, and lower cost.
With Orion, we are getting closer to achieving the dream of Reality Labs to create the next major computing platform that delivers a deep sense of presence, like you were right there with another person, said the Meta CEO at the conference: For now, I think the right way to look at Orion is as a time machine. These glasses exist, they are awesome and they are a glimpse of a future that I think is going to be pretty exciting.
From the market, this sense of excitement seems to have been passed on to the hearts of investors as well: during the conference, Meta's stock price once rose by nearly 1.5%, although the increase narrowed, the stock price of Meta on that day still came to the position of $568.31, setting a historical high.
Some market analysts believe that AR glasses represented by Orion are expected to be the best solution for the landing of terminal-side AI and will become a new type of consumer electronic hardware product with a level of 1 billion units. Looking forward to the future, with the official debut of Meta Orion and the inflection point of product positioning and hardware technology, the AR glasses industry may be on the eve of change.
In addition to new virtual technology devices, Meta also announced new Meta AI functions for its Ray-Ban smart glasses. For example, Ray-Ban Meta glasses will be able to detect when users view signs in Spanish and translate them into the user's ear when requested, which is a new improvement. The camera can scan QR codes and also extract information such as book titles from the photos it takes.
Zuckerberg also introduced improvements to its Meta AI chatbot, allowing people to interact with it using voice instead of just written prompts. The new features of Meta AI will be launched among users of WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.