At last year's Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg focused less on the company's line of Quest VR headsets and more on the "Orion" prototype see-through augmented reality glasses , which he said could launch in some form or another "in the next few years." At the Meta Connect keynote Wednesday evening, though, Zuckerberg announced that the company's Meta Ray-Ban Display AR glasses would be available starting at $799 as soon as Sept. 30.

To be sure, Meta's first commercial smartglasses with a built-in display are a far cry from the Orion prototype Zuckerberg showed off last year. The actual "display" part of the Ray-Ban Display is a paltry 600×600 resolution square that updates at just 30 Hz and takes up a tiny 20 degree portion of only the right eyepiece. Compared to the 70 degree field-of-view and head-tracked stereoscopic 3D "hologram" effect shown on the Orion lenses, that's a little disappointing.

Still, Zuckerberg was able to call the 42 pixels per degree (PPD) you get on the Ray-Ban Display's display "very high resolution," in a sense (the Meta Quest 3 tops out at around 25 PPD across its much larger display). And hands-on reports suggest the bright 5,000 nit display is viewable even in bright outdoor scenarios, thanks in part to Transitions lenses that automatically darken to block outside light.

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