Changing how standalone XR headsets balance weight and performance is crucial in their development. While Meta recently revealed the Orion AR glasses prototype using a wireless compute unit, Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of Meta, doesn’t see this as the ultimate solution for standalone VR gaming.
Bosworth, who heads the XR team at Reality Labs, took some time during one of his regular Instagram Q&A sessions earlier this week to discuss various topics, mixing both professional insights and personal musings.
In this recent chat, he dove into the potential of wireless compute units and explained why they might not be ideal for Meta’s standalone VR headsets.
“We’ve explored this quite a few times. Wireless compute pucks don’t really tackle the issue,” Bosworth clarifies. “Even if you’re going wireless, a battery in the headset still adds weight, which is significant. While you might gain some thermal efficiency, thus possibly boosting performance, you’re still grappling with bandwidth constraints due to the radio,” he adds.
Setting technical aspects aside, Meta remains focused on crafting products that are consumer-friendly, like the new Quest 3S available for a competitive starting price of $300 for its 128GB version. Bosworth further states:
“The costs skyrocket, because even if your main processing elements are housed in the wireless compute puck, the headset still requires substantial silicon to power the displays, manage necessary local corrections, and handle data streaming. Ultimately, it just doesn’t add up mathematically. It doesn’t cut much weight and significantly raises cost and complexity.”
In contrast, Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype does employ a wireless compute unit. However, owing to Orion’s staggering $10,000 cost per unit, driven by hard-to-manufacture silicon carbide lenses, it’s not slated for mass production. Yet, in certain scenarios, like rendering less detailed graphics on AR glasses, wireless pucks might be viable.
Bosworth has also noted that the company’s first consumer AR glasses won’t fit within the Quest’s price range when they eventually become available. He mentioned back in September that while these devices won’t be inexpensive, Meta seeks to position them in the “phone or laptop” pricing realm, making them somewhat accessible.
