TL;DR: you now need to pay a $20/month “meta premium” subscription to use a 100% offline feature that runs on your own malware-ridden smartglasses.
If you don’t subscribe, you can use the feature that is already included in the hardware that you already paid for 3 hours each month
The now-paywalled feature boosts the voice of the speaker in front of you, something that even low-end ANC earphones are doing now. 5 minutes of free usage per day is basically nothing.



Real time translation of speech or text, AR such as a guide overlay or wikipedia info box when looking at art, name tags and relationship data on people you interact with, especially if you are face blind or got like 20 different people in a treatment and support team
Yeah, the art example and real time translation are already done with your phone. Having that in your face doesn’t sound appealing or necessary.
For the face blind I can understand and be sympathetic, but for me I wouldn’t want to have cameras on people constantly, or keep a database of people’s information that could be leaked/lost.
Managing a phone while using a wheelchair or other mobility assistance is not the easiest, so the HUD version would be an improvement. AR glasses or HUD glasses are imho some of the most promising hardware for accessability we got now so I really hope they (the glasses) will find a niche outside tech bro or stalking spaces
Yeah that’s a good reason. How do you interact with them them though? Cause if it is hands or voice commands I don’t think I see much benefit over having a phone mounted(things are already expensive and only getting more so).
If it is eye tracking for people who have issues interacting with a phone in other ways then, that would certainly be a huge leap forward for accessibility.
That’s going to be a tough battle. The tech bro douchebags have a pretty tight grip on it at the moment.
Most of the uses for a HUD-IRL do not require personal ownership of the device. Like, the Louvre rented 3DSs to visitors for AR and guided visits for years. Guides and pop up info are appropriate on industrial settings, for personal hobbies it is overkill. Now, name tags and relationship data on people you interact with? weird and creepy. You mean like, for use by healthcare professionals? maybe, still no need to personally own one, and there are gigantic ethical issues to solve by having cameras constantly on during people’s most vulnerable moments. For disability support, IDK, it might have uses, but it is still weird creepy and invasive, due to constant camera on and facial recognition active. You would have to trust 100% on the tech company behind it, and Meta is not exactly the most trustworthy corporation, by far.