Had an opportunity to try Orion.
TL;DR: the hardware is early, Meta are bold, and Apple are probably wise to keep any powder in this area dry.
The Orion hardware is actually quite beautiful, in a geeky if not fashionable way. The glasses are dense, with sensors and buttons and plugs everywhere, yet smooth, refined-feeling, and surprisingly lightweight. I think these "chunky glasses" are actually more cohesive as a design than, say, Google Glass – which tried to be stylish and svelte, but failed in the pudgy areas it couldn't cover up. Orion, at least, is consistently big-boned throughout. The compute puck is smooth, possibly soft-touch, about the weight of a phone, and has a bunch of (currently unused) cameras on two of its sides.
Windowing and hand controls work quite a bit like the latest Quest update. There's a central bar with a launcher. New panels appear there and existing panels push aside to occupy one of three window slots. The wrist strap works mostly as advertised and shows promise, though I feel its discrete cursor-like controls could better gel with the freeform hand controls. There are a small number of apps. The browser, for one, is responsive and usable, feeling much like the one on Quest. It seemed to prefer rendering in dark mode (white text on black). Scrolling is consistent, and though not 60Hz smooth it‘s doing far upwards of 30. World tracking is solid, things stayed where I placed them and didn't jump around.
Then we have the displays. There’s no doubt that Orion's image quality leaps past Hololens and bounds beyond Magic Leap. The lenses are nicely translucent and do not distort passthrough – I could easily imagine wearing these while reading a book or working on a computer display. FOV appears to extend across the entire span of the lenses, which are a healthy size. Text is clear but soft-edged; it shimmers and exhibits an odd but mild kind of chromatic aberration. Stereoscopy is quite good. The starship tunnel-shooter demo felt nice, like a real hologram hovering in front of me. But like Hololens and Leap these are still additive projections; the colors are not saturated, the imagery is dim. As currently formulated Orion would seem to work best with the lights low or off because, of course, everything is translucent. Using it outside under sunny skies would be, I imagine, a complete no-op.
That fact that the puck and glasses are wirelessly tethered is rad. That's a real piece of innovation on Meta's part. But compared to the quality of passthrough MR that Vision Pro or Quest 3 can perform... well, currently it’s no contest. I wonder whether we're about to witness a race for which can improve faster: passthrough camera feed quality or waveguide display quality? Apple might have the right idea with that front-facing display after all.
TL;DR: the hardware is early, Meta are bold, and Apple are probably wise to keep any powder in this area dry.
The Orion hardware is actually quite beautiful, in a geeky if not fashionable way. The glasses are dense, with sensors and buttons and plugs everywhere, yet smooth, refined-feeling, and surprisingly lightweight. I think these "chunky glasses" are actually more cohesive as a design than, say, Google Glass – which tried to be stylish and svelte, but failed in the pudgy areas it couldn't cover up. Orion, at least, is consistently big-boned throughout. The compute puck is smooth, possibly soft-touch, about the weight of a phone, and has a bunch of (currently unused) cameras on two of its sides.
Windowing and hand controls work quite a bit like the latest Quest update. There's a central bar with a launcher. New panels appear there and existing panels push aside to occupy one of three window slots. The wrist strap works mostly as advertised and shows promise, though I feel its discrete cursor-like controls could better gel with the freeform hand controls. There are a small number of apps. The browser, for one, is responsive and usable, feeling much like the one on Quest. It seemed to prefer rendering in dark mode (white text on black). Scrolling is consistent, and though not 60Hz smooth it‘s doing far upwards of 30. World tracking is solid, things stayed where I placed them and didn't jump around.
Then we have the displays. There’s no doubt that Orion's image quality leaps past Hololens and bounds beyond Magic Leap. The lenses are nicely translucent and do not distort passthrough – I could easily imagine wearing these while reading a book or working on a computer display. FOV appears to extend across the entire span of the lenses, which are a healthy size. Text is clear but soft-edged; it shimmers and exhibits an odd but mild kind of chromatic aberration. Stereoscopy is quite good. The starship tunnel-shooter demo felt nice, like a real hologram hovering in front of me. But like Hololens and Leap these are still additive projections; the colors are not saturated, the imagery is dim. As currently formulated Orion would seem to work best with the lights low or off because, of course, everything is translucent. Using it outside under sunny skies would be, I imagine, a complete no-op.
That fact that the puck and glasses are wirelessly tethered is rad. That's a real piece of innovation on Meta's part. But compared to the quality of passthrough MR that Vision Pro or Quest 3 can perform... well, currently it’s no contest. I wonder whether we're about to witness a race for which can improve faster: passthrough camera feed quality or waveguide display quality? Apple might have the right idea with that front-facing display after all.
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