A new leak tonight revealed Meta’s next roadmap for VR/MR headsets and AR glasses, with 2025 being a big year.
Meta smart glasses
According The edge, Meta’s Reality Labs division held an internal presentation on Tuesday detailing upcoming hardware. On the smart glasses front, this fall will see the second generation Ray-Ban Storieswhich are sunglasses with camera and microphone.
In 2025 (previously one year earlier), the third-generation smart glasses will feature a “viewfinder” screen to display incoming messages, translate text in real time, and scan QR codes. Control will be via a “neural interface” strip which, according to The Verge, “allows the wearer to control the glasses through hand movements, such as sliding their fingers over an imaginary D-pad.”
Eventually, he said the band will let the wearer use a virtual keyboard and type the same words per minute that cell phones allow.
This neural interface technology of CTRL-Laboratories (brain-computer interface technology) will also be available on a connected watch that can be associated with the glasses. Last year, Meta canceled a watch with a removable frame and a camera that almost looked like GoPro in nature.
Glasses with AR capabilities that can “project high-quality avatar holograms onto the real world” are coming 2027 with a second generation smartwatch.
In the short term, a Quest 3 more expensive than the current one $399 model is coming this year. It will be twice as thin, “at least twice as powerful” and will have front cameras. It will deliver mixed reality experiences through walk-through capabilities and 41 new apps/games.
Next year could see a more affordable helmet called Ventura, while an advanced “La Jolla” helmet will arrive after that.
Looking at the scenery, Google is said to be working on a mixed reality headset, dubbed “Project Irisfor 2024. However, the most immediate development is the partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm. The latter will provide the chip for a Samsung XR device (the form factor is currently unknown) which will be powered by an optimized version of Android.
Meanwhile, Google’s AR work has been split between Android and hardware divisions in an arrangement that mimics the development of the Pixel phone and watch.
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