It takes ten years to sharpen a sword, that's what they're talking about. $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ Embarking on the experience of virtual reality (VR). Ten years ago, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, made a move into VR through a $2 billion acquisition of the startup company Oculus, only seeming to solidify its position in the VR and AR fields last month with the release of the first prototype of smart glasses with augmented display (AR) called Orion.

At the Connect annual developers conference at the end of last month, Meta showcased the Orion, touted as the most advanced AR glasses to date. It is equipped with silicon carbide lenses and Micro LED micro LED display, with an impressive 70-degree field of view. The frame has seven embedded cameras and features SLAM spatial positioning, making it a true AR glasses. It supports eye movement, head movement, voice, and gesture as the four major interaction modes.

Journalists from The Verge had an on-the-spot 3D virtual ping pong match using Orion and Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stating that the "game had almost no latency."

At the time, Meta revealed that the cost of each pair of Orion reaches as high as $0.01 million, with only about 1000 pairs produced at the current stage and not officially available for sale to the public. According to CNBC's report this Thursday, the excitement sparked by Orion in the metaverse field is unprecedented. Insiders revealed that the successful demonstration of Orion at the Connect conference relieved many of Meta's employees, indicating an internal shift in Meta's perception of Zuckerberg's development of high-cost hardware. Zuckerberg has always been the driving force behind Meta's progress in the AR and VR fields, making the final decision to launch Orion.

According to CNBC, Orion, which is currently still in the high-priced prototype stage, is the result of an eight-year project developed by Meta. Meta has set a target to make it available to the general consumers in two years.

Reports cited individuals familiar with Meta's development roadmap, stating that as early as 2016 when the company was still known as Facebook, Meta began developing Orion under the leadership of Michael Abrash, who was the Chief Scientist of Oculus at the time and is currently the Chief Scientist of Reality Labs. In 2018, the project transitioned from the research and development phase to the product phase, after testing various functional versions of Orion glasses for over two years, with the prototype design completed in March this year. Meta is committed to eventually creating a consumer-grade version of Orion, with the entire goal possibly being achieved within two years.

Considering that Meta took eight years to reveal the prototype of Orion, the plan to launch a consumer-grade product in two years seems overly ambitious. The report mentioned that after successfully demonstrating Orion, Meta's recent efforts are focused on: Meta plans to start attracting software developers next year in an attempt to inspire them to develop Orion apps, so that Meta can understand what might resonate with consumers.

Meta is set to launch the fourth generation of the Llama series AI models and is also coordinating its efforts to penetrate the developer community. By releasing a more powerful version of Llama, Meta hopes that developers will be able to integrate the software into their future AR applications, assisting in tasks such as object recognition in the real world and more accurate responses to voice commands.

Meta is also targeting the end of this year's holiday shopping season to strengthen its existing consumer-grade VR products.

At last year's Connect conference at the end of September, Meta and Ray-Ban's parent company EssilorLuxottica jointly announced the second-generation smart glasses, Ray-Ban Meta. These glasses became popular on TikTok during last year's holiday shopping season, exceeding the sales expectations of the two companies. According to IDC estimates, in the first three quarters since its release, the sales of the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta have exceeded 0.73 million pairs.

Last month, Meta agreed with EssilorLuxottica to extend their collaboration, planning to release a larger volume third-generation glasses before the holiday season arrives. Insiders said that the new generation of glasses will have a small display screen on one of the lenses.

Editor/Somer