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It’s not that Orion can’t do the things Zuckerberg claimed during his buzz-worthy keynote.
The demo was exciting and reminded me a bit of whatMagic Leapshowed off almost a decade ago.
Unfortunately, the reality of the hardware never lived up to the hype.
The images were desaturated, and the field of view narrow.
It required physical connectivity to a pack, and looked more like goggles than glasses.
The companyis still aroundbut now focuses on enterprise customers (a final destination for almost all mixed-reality headsets).
Meta Orion is not Magic Leap.
What’s clear from all of them is that this is real.
The AR glasses function more or less as Zuckerberg promised.
No more glancing up at a special area where the AR experience will live.
If you wear glasses every day as I do, eyesight correction must span your entire field of view.
AR won’t be immersive unless it similarly can appear wherever I cast my eyes.
Orion could be like wearing regular glasses, but with a hidden superpower.
That glee you saw on the faces of those who experienced Orion firsthand might never be your glee.
The “neural interface” is a bit of a push.
That’s not neural technology as I understand it.
Still, I like the idea of combining that control with eye tracking.
That could be pretty intuitive.
Of course, the $3,499Apple Vision Proreads hand gestures without a wristband.
At least it’s wireless.
Except it never will.
According tothe Verge’s hands-on report, this version of Meta Orion will never see the light of day.
The company is already working on thinner and lighter versions.
And while that sounds good, there is one very significant caveat.
That adjustment will change the Orion experience from transformative to unsatisfying, if not gimmicky.
That glee you saw on the faces of those who experienced Orion firsthand might never be your glee.
Maybe I’m wrong, but think about how Zuckerberg announced these frames.
