Xreal's new AR glasses are aimed at the Apple Vision Pro
theverge.com
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They also have a device that let you cast to the glasses wirelessly so I can go for a walk and have a little YouTube video in the bottom right corner of my field of view (think of those old picture in picture TVs)
Essentially it's like having a large 1080 P monitor in front of you, and then two on either side at an angle.
I do find it annoying how isolating the glasses are. It’s hard to look around and daydream
AR is _very_ hard for a number of reasons:
1) the screens are really difficult to get right: too bright and you have no battery/burn your face, too dim and you've got really effective sunglasses
2) if you don't have local dimming (ie being able to take away light rather than emit it) then everything looks shit
3) input is super hard. No keboard, no mice, no touch screen. Sure you have hand tracking, but without third party sensors, you have to have your hands in view to track them. This means gorrila arms or just plain fucking frustration.
4) without a second CPU/GPU battery box, you have no compute power. Glasses only have about enough space for 2 watt hours of battery.
5) good 6dof tracking is compute expensive without custom silicon.
I think we are getting there...
The thing he's talking about is already three years too late, doesn't have the display it needs, and are _fucking_ expensive[1] moreover the software is horrendously unstable.
[1] https://mixed-news.com/en/meta-ar-glasses-orion-made-in-usa-...
https://thenextweb.com/news/metaverse-no-legs-meta-microsoft...
Admittedly, Meta finally did ship the legs in 2023, but they sucked.
https://kotaku.com/meta-horizon-worlds-mark-zuckerberg-avata...
>In October last year, Zuckerberg showed off the newly improved avatars and also previewed that they would all have working legs. A release date of sometime in 2023 was promised, and then a few days later we learned that the whole video featuring the legs was fake and featured mo-capped animations.
however pixels is kinda misleading unit of resolution as it depends how far away you are from the display, and how wide the display is.
for example a 1k square with a field of view of 3 degrees would have a better "resolution" than a 4k square over 75 degrees. You also now have to contend with focus as well,
That is significant for a headset designed to be used for work.
My backup use was to hook them to my iPhone & use them to watch netflix / appletv, etc, on a plane. However, that doesn't work as they don't support hdcp. So the only thing I can watch is non-DRMed video that I record myself. Sigh.
I use them with my iPad all the time to watch video.
I'm guessing you might be using the lightning-to-usb-c adapter.
I plug my headset directly into the USB-C port without issue.
My arguments against:
1. Lightweight - yes, but no. Comparing overall weight to like VR headsets - yes, it is freakin light. The significant difference however is that weight of VR headset is way way better distributed and this s*t sits right on 2 small spots on your nose. It is simply painful after 40min to an hour of use
2. 1080p - movies only, edges of screen blurred, I really don't recommend it for any sort of work (the reason I bought these glasses in a first place). When you move your head text gets blurry and sometimes unreadable
3. There is no "one size for all" in this area. Wearing these glasses is inconvenient and painful to my ears as well. And read a lot of comments about that in the internet, so not alone here
4. There is no IPD regulation which to me causes further issues with observing image close to the edges
5. 699$ - I'm gonna start to laugh hard / cry - not worth it, 43inch 4K screen cost 200$, wow effect not worth the money, not worth for working.
But you can't walk around with or carry that 43inch 4K screen in the plane.
But it does look like a cool, maybe even useful, gadget nonetheless.
These look really cool and I’m tempted, but a 56 degree FOV and no built in PC-class computer mean this is not a Vision Pro compete.
> Xreal pitches the Air 2 Ultra as a full-fledged “spatial computing” device similar to its earlier Light mixed reality device, which also featured 6DOF tracking.
Idk probably it’ll just be games though…
If you’re looking to replace furniture in your house and you can overlay a new sofa over your current one using AR glasses to compare the size and how the color fits with the rest of your things, wouldn’t that be great?
Imagine you’re assembling a toy or furniture and AR glasses can guide you through which piece to connect where.
There are so so many new possibilities as AR/VR matures.
1. Regarding the TV, I would much prefer having a big screen TV, around which I could interact with a group of people, than having us all wear glasses in the same room to watch a movie.
2. Regarding the multi-monitor use case, I know some people have said they already use VR goggles for that, and maybe the tech will eventually get there but I'd never want to do that for long periods - the strain on my eyes and head would be horrible.
3. Regarding AR for new furniture, there are already cellphone camera apps that do this (Amazon already does this with some furniture products). I think doing this with AR goggles instead of a phone camera would be worse in nearly every way.
4. Similarly, there are already AR guides that do this with your phone camera.
If anything, your points 3 and 4 really highlight to me why I think AR goggles are generally a bad idea. I agree that AR is useful in those small examples, but for those relatively short "let me just see how this would look against this physical thing" use cases, being able to quickly pull out my phone (which I already have) and put it back again when I'm done completely obliterates the need for a second dedicated piece of hardware.
The only places goggles/glasses really make sense is where people will be wearing them for extended periods, and my argument is that in most cases people will not want to wear them for long periods.
1. Imagine most of your field of view is filled with the view of a basketball game from courtside seats, a front row of a concert or boxing match, or even a movie. Imagine a movie where a train is coming from the side and you can just turn your head to follow it coming in. People value immersive experiences. That’s why we pay for IMAX tickets and surround sound Atmos speakers. I’d also say the vast majority of time you’re not watching tv with a group of people. In situations where you are, I agree VR makes less sense.
2. Fair point if the tech doesn’t improve.
3 and 4. The phone is a 3x5 rectangle that’s increasing in screen size every year. I don’t see how someone wouldn’t prefer AR that lets people move around in the real world to view something from every angle without holding a small viewfinder in front of them.
Navigation to a building or within it would be much better with good AR. If I’m meeting other parents at my kids school for some event, I can’t keep track of all their names and their kids names. Overlay that information above their head using AR (assuming they share it).
There are tons of other use cases I can think of. I’d say people will wear AR/VR glasses for long periods as long as they provide significant value and are comfortable. I already wear prescription glasses. If you told me the numerous AR use cases I have in mind could be included in them 10 years from now, I’d be all in.
1. I would much rather the opposite. Were these to be widespread like phones, id far prefer a virtual communual display all can see that when not in usage does not dictate the needs and layout of my living room the other 99% of the time not to mention the space it eats in my home. (In this case Im imagining that like the vision pro, I have pretty much full world visibility to still freely engage with those around me.)
2. This sould seem to vary upon the individual. I have no such issues today, but I know others that do, though no more than the amount of people who claim fatigue and eye strain from LCD.
3. Id rather have it be in my natural field of vision and leave my hands free. Having your hands free alone would be the complete opposite of "worse in nearly every way." for many practical applications of VR.
4. See above.
The thing is though, I already wear glasses. So give it another decade or two and give me something thats almost the same size but with significantly more capabilities? Sign me up. If you aint already that way inclined, then sure, I could see the potential objections to wearing something all the time.
To me the "haha, it will never catch on and remain a niche form factor" thinking is the optimistic take. If they stay a rarely-used, sophisticated toy I think that's just fine. If they actually become the Next Big Thing, we'd all lose.
The sad part is that I think they do have a lot to offer to e.g. the immobile, and I understand looking forward to the technology becoming better if you are in that demo.
Very active social bubbles, yet the high minds of just a few decades ago fretted society would collapse and they’d be helpless since they’re so reliant on externalization of their real needs.
Can’t help but conclude this is less about fear of the state of the aggregate and more like personal existential dread if everyone is lost in goggles they won’t want to wipe your but in your care home years.
1) wearing in bed, with the lights off while my wife sleeps, to use my MacBook Pro as if I was at a desk with multiple big monitors in front of me
2) on an airplane, usually in the extra 6” of legroom BS seats, where I’d like to either do the same computing with multiple large fake monitors, or to watch a show or movie on something better than an iPad sized screen.
Anyone do either or both of these things? How does the AR work with a short depth of field (like the back of the seat of an airplane right in front of me”)?
Are these worth it? I love the form factor and concept
Years ago, with their original dev kit, they had a set of glasses that offered an SDK with video access, spatial anchors, all kinds of stuff. I don't know why they just didn't continue selling that.
A star trek hologram style AI assistant, visible through the AR glasses and powered by an LLM.
It could probably be done with Quest 3 passthru, but that would be impractical to wear around everywhere.
But I'm looking forward to the reviews.
> $699
No they're not.
This glasses case is a very good example. Apple is building a super duper expensive ego-driven project no one will ever buy at this price.
The Western world is trying hard to deliver something colossal and giant and sometimes even remarkable. It is driven by ego-centric: "I'm so smart, my product needs to be the best of the best, and I'll be talking to my grandkids about this product". With something like iPhone, it works.
The China-style approach is the classical bottom-up approach. I'll build something I can sell today. I'm not afraid to go with sub par product if people will buy it. I will mobilize my group because otherwise, we will not survive. I will sell it a lot. I will iterate a lot. As a result, I will make lots of money and become famous. The outcome is the same, but look at that. China has so many companies now in any area where it competes. And that combines with the government pushing from the top very long term 10 years+ initiatives. Solar, EVs, nuclear, Air industry, and Education in general.
This pattern is so deep in the culture. You can even see it with the military. And it's evident that the root cause of the problem is the lack of a healthy environment for manufacturing.
Just look at trade wars between China and the West. Microchips aside, what is the subject of war? The US ban pork exports in response to Huawei. Europe is trading French alcohol export quotas for EV imports.
This is extremely sad. The impact of the Western world's de-industrialization is huge. The current war in Ukraine emphasizes the Western incapability to produce almost anything in volume. Or with any quality. The few items still good due to 20-30 investments are just a delusion of previous capabilities.
China historically just copies successful products and largely ignores IP, not coming up with anything novel. They are changing that pattern following the path America did to seize control from the UK (& arguably faster too). If anything, this suggests it would be more beneficial for us to have IP durations match typical market cycles for products rather than be blanket 15 years.
> The current war in Ukraine emphasizes the Western incapability to produce almost anything in volume
That's a different problem than manufacturing of consumer products. Apple ships nearly 1B phones each year. Yes, it's assembled in China but most of the components are manufactured elsewhere & they're standing up assembly plants elsewhere (e.g. India).
Might have to do with hitting China where it hurts - food imports might have a more pronounced impact
Version 1 of anything good is created in the US and then everyone else copies and revises.
You call it ego-centric, it’s not. It’s just not a cheap low effort knock off.
And you call the OP's take a "weird take"? He brings up interesting points, whereas yours is just inaccurate.