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Comment by manuelabeledo | Hacker News Reader

I'm probably not part of the target audience of this - I don't enjoy VR and I honestly feel like proper XR is still years beyond our reach.

But I will say that, as someone who travels quite a bit, I would love to just have some nice, high resolution glasses, that would emulate my monitor setup back home with minimal drawbacks. That alone would make me quite happy.

The Apple headset would be probably overkill for this, I know. Regardless, it surprises me that there are very few vendors aiming at delivering such a straightforward feature.

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This is about the only XR use case I’m remotely interested in, but I think it would require infeasibly high res displays.

Using my own unremarkable setup as an example, 2560x1440 is about as low as you’d want to go for a single 27” screen, for a comfortable level of sharpness and amount of content on-screen. If that’s taking up say 40% of your FOV, that’s 6400x3600 per eye (for the simplified example of a 16:9 display overlaid across your entire FOV). That feels a ways off still, especially for a portable device.

I know some of Meta’s offerings (current? Future? I’ve been bad at keeping up with this stuff due to general apathy) are offering a virtual desktop, I wonder how readable/useable it is. Maybe I’m wrong about this stuff.

There are multiple SAAS startups offering this feature but affordable hardware isn’t there yet going this route. A Varjo Aero is capable, but it’s $2000 for just the headset and it needs a PC that likely runs $4000 and up. For other headsets, text just isn’t readable.

The closest product so far is from NReal, founded by a former Magic Leap engineer.

I really like the idea of using XR for sports training, like in snowboarding goggles or cycling classes. Almost all road cyclists use some sort of stem mounted computer for GPS and/or fitness tracking, and it would be amazing if someone made a descrete HUD that allowed you access that info without having to look down while you're riding.

Or for maps/vehicle information for motorcycles. Blind spot monitoring? Overlaid turn-by-turn directions? Etc

I think the Bigscreen Beyond is the best you'll get for that application this year: https://www.bigscreenvr.com/

Probably not yet high resolution enough for it to make sense, but higher than most alternatives, and the comfort and portability should be good.

> I would love to just have some nice, high resolution glasses, that would emulate my monitor setup back home with minimal drawbacks.

Boy do I have the product for you!

https://www.nreal.ai/air/

Exists, in the real world, shipping from Amazon, many reviews on YouTube.

> Regardless, it surprises me that there are very few vendors aiming at delivering such a straightforward feature.

A "straightforward" feature that requires packing cpu, gpu, ram, battery and screen into form factor of glasses.

What you mention is pretty much every single AR/VR product out there.

I’m looking forward to these having enough pixels to work as a carry on monitor.

> What you mention is pretty much every single AR/VR product out there.

Of course it's not. The "lightweight ones" have a cord connecting them to the actual device. The others are bulky and work for a few hours at most. You can't cheat physics.

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