In the past, the biggest AR/VR event of the year has been known alternately as Oculus Connect and then Facebook Connect. But whatever the name, Meta’s fall event its primary showcase for the company’s latest and greatest achievements in the virtual reality and mixed reality space. Much like last year, we can likely predict the biggest news coming out of Meta Connect 2024 with just two acronyms: AI and AR.
Like every other big tech firm this year, Meta will be desperate to demonstrate how it plans to stay relevant in a future powered by AI. And now that we’re seven months beyond the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro, which arrived alongside a short-lived spike in interest in augmented reality (AR), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is likely eager to show off his own plans to make AR a reality.
While Zuckerberg isn’t as hot on the metaverse as he was when he renamed his company, the union of AI and AR is one way he can still make the dream of persistent virtual worlds come true. It might look less like Ready Player One, but if AR glasses actually take off, they could still let Meta control another piece of our digital world. And to help get them there, delivering an updated inexpensive VR headset couldn’t hurt.
With all of that in mind, here are a few things we expect to see at Meta Connect 2024, which kicks off virtually tomorrow — September 25 — and runs for two days. The show starts with a 1PM ET livestream, which is expected to run about an hour.
Orion AR glasses
After reportedly killing a pricey next-generation mixed reality headset, which was meant to compete with the Apple Vision Pro, Meta is instead focusing on a pair of augmented reality glasses, codenamed Orion, as its next innovation. As seen in the background of one Mark Zuckerberg photo (above), and later somewhat confirmed by him, Orion resembles a pair of chunky hipster frames.
Unlike the Quest 3, which fully consumes your vision and uses cameras to show you a low-quality view of the world, Orion could let you see the real world like a normal pair of glasses. But, like Magic Leap and Microsoft’s HoloLens before it, Meta’s glasses could layer holographic imagery on top of your reality. The key difference, of course, is that it appears to be far less cumbersome than those devices.
“The glasses are, I think, going to be a big deal,” Zuckerberg said in an interview on the Blueprint Podcast (via RoadtoVR). “We’re almost ready to start showing the prototype version of the full holographic glasses. We’re not going to be selling it broadly; we’re focused on building the full consumer version rather than selling the prototype.”
Back at Meta Connect 2022, Zuckerberg showed off how the company was thinking of AR glasses, together with an intriguing wrist-based controller:
“It’s probably our most exciting prototype that we’ve had to date,” Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told The Verge last year. “I might get myself in trouble for saying this: I think it might be the most advanced piece of technology on the planet in its domain. In the domain of consumer electronics, it might be the most advanced thing that we’ve ever produced as a species.”
According to a leaked Meta roadmap, the company plans to release a new pair of Ray-Ban smart glasses next year which would add a small built-in screen alongside its existing camera, speaker and microphone. That would be followed by Meta’s first pair of consumer AR glasses in 2027. It makes sense that we’ll see some sort of concept device this year. Much like Apple’s Vision Pro was effectively that company’s version of an AR/VR concept car to introduce developers to its notion of “spatial computing,” Meta will need to give developers a way to use its platform so they can build their own AR experiences. Competitor Snap just debuted its fifth-generation AR Spectacles, and this version is oriented at developers (with a $99/month subscription fee).
A cheaper Quest 3 variant
Instead of an upgraded headset, all signs point to Meta releasing a stripped-down version of the Quest 3 called the Quest 3S, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Recent leaked images from Meta’s own Quest Link application has confirmed the headset’s existence. According to Gurman, the company is aiming to make it much cheaper than the current version, reportedly considering price points of $300 or $400, while still delivering an experience close to the Quest 3.
The latest leak suggests it’ll start at just $299. A Reddit user shared a clip of an Amazon ad reportedly shown on Peacock that features the Quest 3S, complete with a price and storage (h/t UploadVR). Per the ad, the 128GB Quest 3S will cost $299, but there may be other storage options as well. It could potentially replace the Quest 2, which remains in the product line priced at $299 long after its 2020 release.
So why would Meta do this? There’s a huge performance gap between the Quest 3 and Quest 2, which makes life difficult for developers. With a cheaper device that’s similar to the Quest 3, potentially using the same processor, it would be easier to build games that can scale across two price points. According to Bloomberg’s Gurman, Meta has also considered releasing some models of the new headset without any bundled controllers, which would push the price down even further.
More AI, of course
Expect Meta to show off even more ways it’s taking advantage of AI across its Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban smart glasses. The company rolled out multi-modal AI search capabilities on those glasses in January, which allowed you to ask the Meta AI about objects or landmarks you were looking at, or for a quick translation. Based on our testing, though, those features were surprisingly half-baked.
Meta will likely discuss ways it’s improving those existing features by implementing its Llama 3.1 large language model (LLM), which it’s positioning as an open source competitor to Google and OpenAI’s LLMs. In particular, the company notes that Llama 3.1 offers dramatically improved translation, math and general knowledge capabilities. There’s certainly room for Meta to introduce new AI capabilities powered by Llama 3.1 in the Ray-Ban smart glasses, but given their limited processing power and battery life, we’ll probably have to wait for an updated model before we see anything truly groundbreaking.
Karissa Bell contributed to this report.
