Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, March 1 (Xinhua)-- The Verge has obtained a roadmap for Meta's augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) hardware for the next four years. The company plans to release its first pair of smart glasses with a display screen in 2025, as well as a neural interface smartwatch designed to control these glasses. Meanwhile, the company's first full-fledged pair of AR glasses is scheduled to be launched in 2027, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted that it would eventually be as widely used as a mobile phone.

When it comes to VR, Meta's flagship product, the Quest 3, launched later this year is half as heavy as the previous generation, but at least twice as powerful as the Quest 2, which costs slightly more than $400 (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 2776 yuan). Like the recently released Quest Pro, mixed reality will be a huge selling point for Quest 3, where the real world can be viewed through the front camera, and 41 new apps and games will escort the launch of Quest 3.

In addition, Meta plans to launch a cheaper Touxian codenamed Ventura in 2024, and Meta did not say whether the second generation of Meta Quest Pro will come soon. After Ventura, Meta plans to launch a state-of-the-art head display codenamed La Jolla, bringing a lifelike VR avatar.

In addition to the Quest series, Meta has thousands of employees building future AR glasses and wrist devices to control them. The key difference from VR is that the company intends to make AR glasses eventually worn throughout the day as an alternative to smartphones. Zuckerberg called them the "Holy Grail" and will "redefine our relationship with technology" by the end of the century.

At the roadmap launch on Tuesday, Alex Himel, Meta's vice president of AR, outlined a series of device development plans by 2027, the first of which will be the second generation of smart glasses with cameras from Meta and Luxottica, which will be launched this fall.

In 2025, Meta will launch third-generation smart glasses, which will be equipped with a display called "viewfinder" to view received text messages, scan QR codes and translate in real time. The glasses will be equipped with a "neural interface" belt that allows the wearer to control the glasses through hand movements.

Although Meta has cancelled plans for a smartwatch with a removable display and camera, the company is still developing another smartwatch to match its 2025 glasses. The smartwatch has a "neural interface" and the watch can be used as an input device.

Meta's first real AR glasses, which have been developed internally for eight years, code-named Orion, are more technologically advanced and expensive, aimed at projecting high-quality holographic avatars into the real world. According to Himel, there will be an "internal launch" for employees to test the glasses in 2024, which will not be released to the public until 2027, when Meta will launch what Himel calls "Innovation" series of AR glasses, as well as "Scale" series of lower-positioning smart glasses and second-generation neural smartwatches.

Himel believes that nearly 2 billion pairs of ordinary glasses and hundreds of millions of smartwatches will be sold each year, and Meta is planning to rely on its existing advertising business model to make money from these future devices. Himel says that because they can sell optional add-ons such as virtual goods, cloud backups and AR ads, they can earn higher average revenue per user than they do today on social media.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.