Back in 2021 I needed some stereo cameras for an AR experience I was building for the 2020 World’s Fair Expo (yes, it took place in 2021 but was called 2020). We looked into RealSense, and right around when we did there was some news that Intel had either laid off the RealSense team or stopped manufacturing new cameras. Whatever it was, it made us look elsewhere, as it does not seem like Intel is serious about developing/maintaining this product line.

We ended up going with the ZED 2i from Stereolabs (https://www.stereolabs.com/products/zed-2). They work pretty well, my only issue was that their skeletal tracking doesn’t work well if you mount them vertically (which is probably a big ask, the other features do work in vertical orientation though, which was good).

Stereolabs was pretty active on the software side of things, pushing updates pretty regularly. They’d usually fix a bug within a sprint or two. The hardware is pretty simple, and I find it unsurprising that they’re still selling the ZED 2i at the same price as 4 years ago. It gets the job done, and most of the advancement in the past few years has probably come from throwing more sophisticated AI at the existing stereo video feed.