Meta Shows Holograms With Legs. A First For VR. The Bar Was Not High.

At Meta Connect 2026, Meta announced new hardware including Meta VR Glasses and audio-only glasses, plus updates to Muse software. They also demonstrated full-body holograms in VR, which Meta claims is a first for the platform. Some products are available now while others are labeled coming soon.

This illustrates what I call the hardware-software co-evolution problem. Consumer VR has spent years stuck on partial avatars because rendering full bodies in real time is computationally expensive. Meta solving this, even partially, signals that wearable compute is finally catching up to the ambition. The principle is straightforward: hardware constraints gate UX breakthroughs, not the other way around.

Meta, as covered by Lifehacker Tech Editor Jake Peterson, who has nearly a decade of experience reporting on consumer technology including AI and smart devices.