One of the biggest challenges in advancing standalone XR headsets lies in making them lighter while boosting their performance. Although Meta has introduced its Orion AR glasses prototype featuring a wireless compute unit, Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO, believes this approach isn’t the perfect solution for standalone VR gaming.
Bosworth, who leads the Reality Labs XR team at Meta, often takes to Instagram for Q&A sessions, where he discusses a mix of topics, both professional and personal. In his most recent session, he tackled the topic of wireless compute units and outlined why they might not be suitable for Meta’s standalone VR headsets.
“We’ve explored this multiple times,” Bosworth said. “Wireless compute pucks just don’t resolve the issue. If your headset is wireless, it still requires a battery, which adds weight. While there’s potential for better performance due to additional thermal space, bandwidth becomes a limiting factor since you’re relying on radio,” he explained.
Beyond the technical challenges, Meta’s main goal is to make technology accessible to the consumer, as seen with the Quest 3S starting at just $300 for the 128GB model. Bosworth elaborated: “You’ve significantly raised costs. Even if your main processing power is in a wireless compute puck, you still need substantial silicon onboard to power the displays, handle local corrections, and manage data streams. The math doesn’t add up. It doesn’t save much weight and ultimately increases cost and complexity.”
In contrast, Meta’s Orion prototype does incorporate a wireless compute unit. However, Orion won’t become a commercial product due to its high expense—around $10,000 per unit because of the challenging-to-manufacture silicon carbide lenses. In specific scenarios, like providing AR glasses with less intensive graphics, wireless pucks might make sense.
Looking ahead, Bosworth mentioned that Meta’s first AR glasses for consumers won’t be available at the Quest price point. He previously stated in September that such a device won’t be cheap but aims to place them in a similar price range to phones and laptops, making them accessible to a wider audience.
