Meta’s investments in VR and AR over the years have led to, let’s say, mixed results (remember the metaverse?). Recent months have been dominated by headlines about the company’s Ray-Ban Meta Glasses being used to take videos of people in public without consent, all while a number of VR game development studios close down. Still, the company hopes to change people’s minds by introducing the “next generation of virtual reality” via a new piece of hardware, the Meta VR Glasses.

On first glance, the device appears notably reminiscent of the Apple Vision Pro, all the way down to its requirement to carry a separate tethered battery pack, or puck, for power. That tethered battery has allowed Meta to notably slim down the device to resemble a pair of sunglasses, and the company claims it’ll only weigh 100 grams on the face. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Reality Elite chip and has 12GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a microSD card to expand that storage.

It will run some VR games playable with just your hands (roughly 75 at launch, including a number of new titles announced at the event like a port of the fifth Ace Attorney game to virtual reality, alongside Xbox Cloud Gaming via a controller), but Meta is notably positioning the Meta VR Glasses as primarily a multimedia device. The glasses are also capable of playing IMAX-resolution or 3D movies (via services like Disney+, which promises to support the app from launch), as well as immersive sports.

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