Meta’s big Connect showcase is slated for Wednesday, September 25. We expect to hear more about Meta’s new AR/VR headsets and glasses, which could be your new gateway into so-called “spatial computing” without spending thousands of dollars on an Apple Vision Pro.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s favored Horizon Labs division has regularly burned through billions of dollars developing upcoming mixed reality hardware. The blank check Meta offered its VR developers is reportedly being rolled back, though that doesn’t mean we won’t see interesting headsets and wearables at its next dev conference. Connect will be full of new AI enhancements and their connection to Meta’s hardware slate. The big question is whether we’ll see any third party headsets sporting Horizon OS make a debut as well.
What’s Next for Meta’s AR/VR Hardware Slate?
The big reveal may be a true pair of AR glasses, as Zuckerberg hinted at in a post on Threads earlier this year. We have a few leaked images for the codenamed “Orion” smart glasses, though we suspect, based on reports from The Information, that the glasses will have a projector on the right-hand lens. They may also be rather heavy for a typical pair of sunglasses, or at least heftier than the current and surprisingly popular Meta Ray-Bans.
On September 17, Ray-Bans owner EssilorLuxottica declared they would continue their partnership shipping branded smart glasses. The timing may indicate Meta plans to share an update on its Ray-Bans, though recent reports indicated Google was also courting the global eyewear company. Either way, Meta will probably be keen to talk up its AI chatbot integrations into Ray-Bans and Orion.
The other big hardware announcement will likely be a Meta Quest 3S. The “lite” headset briefly appeared in the Quest Store before being taken offline. Zuckerberg’s company reportedly canned its planned Meta Quest Pro 2, a sequel to the first Meta Quest Pro that didn’t catch on nearly as well as the Quest 3. This 3S headset may be a few hundred bucks cheaper than the $500 Quest 3. The tradeoff is Meta could potentially limit its passthrough capabilities.
Though there haven’t been any rumors to point to, we’d be curious to see if any of the planned 3rd-party headsets make a debut at Connect 2024. Earlier this year, Meta opened up its Android-based Horizon OS for separate OEMs to headsets. According to Zuckerberg, Asus and Lenovo are supposedly crafting their own headsets. Meta is hedging on a more open ecosystem to draw more people into VR. Compare that to Apple’s walled garden with its Vision headsets. The newcomer to the “spatial” market is reportedly planning to release a cheaper headset by 2026.
What About AI at Meta Connect 2024?
Meta’s social media projects continue to take heat for their consistent role in the fraught U.S. election. We won’t have to listen through the company’s next steps for Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Threads since Meta’s true hopes rest on hardware and AI. We’ll likely hear a fair bit about some of Meta’s ongoing AI projects, such as the next stage of its Llama large language model. The company’s AI image generator was lambasted for struggling to depict Asian men with white women, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see more about the company’s image, video, and text models.
The engineers at Menlo Park have already debuted several AI software suites, such as the AI Studio for creating customized AI chatbots without needing to learn to code. The idea behind this is for influencers to create chatbots to talk to fans for them. It’s a surreal and dystopic vision of social media, to be sure.
How to Stream Meta Connect 2024
Meta Connect will air Sept. 25 and 26 from the stage at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Meta will (hopefully) reveal exact timing for the event by next week. You can watch it via Facebook or, if you’re all-in on Meta’s vision, through the Horizon Worlds app on a Meta Quest headset.