BURSTAt last year's Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg focused less on the company's line of Quest VR headsets and more on the "Orion" prototype see-through augmented reality glasses, which he said could launch in some form or another "in the next few years." At the Meta Connect keynote Wednesday evening, though, Zuckerberg announced that the company's Meta Ray-Ban Display AR glasses would be available starting at $799 as soon as Sept. 30.
To be sure, Meta's first commercial smartglasses with a built-in display are a far cry from the Orion prototype Zuckerberg showed off last year. The actual "display" part of the Ray-Ban Display is a paltry 600×600 resolution square that updates at just 30 Hz and takes up a tiny 20 degree portion of only the right eyepiece. Compared to the 70 degree field-of-view and head-tracked stereoscopic 3D "hologram" effect shown on the Orion lenses, that's a little disappointing.
Still, Zuckerberg was able to call the 42 pixels per degree (PPD) you get on the Ray-Ban Display's display "very high resolution," in a sense (the Meta Quest 3 tops out at around 25 PPD across its much larger display). And hands-on reports suggest the bright 5,000 nit display is viewable even in bright outdoor scenarios, thanks in part to Transitions lenses that automatically darken to block outside light.