It's going to be interesting to see this compete with the Meta VR glasses. They are essentially identical for productivity except the Aura has physical light pass through while the VR glasses use external cameras to provide pass through. The Meta VR glasses will have better resolution I think, but then the Aura has access to the whole Android ecosystem - so that means real implementations of Microsoft Word etc.
But the real choice is the unfortunate one of who is least likely to abandon the whole thing when it doesn't take off and leave you with an un/poorly supported device. Both companies have terrible track records on this.
Resolution matters a lot for productivity, and Meta's displays have more than twice the number of pixels. Image quality for the display will be much better on the Meta VR glasses because of the lack of interference from outside light. See-through displays sound good in theory but require too many compromises IMO. There's no such thing as "black" on a see-through display, only "transparent". Definitely try before you buy.
I feel like Meta's track record of VR device support has been decent enough. Quest Pro still gets updates even though it was discontinued almost two years ago. When they ended support for Oculus Go they released an update that unlocked the device and granted root access. I'm sure you can find some complaints on Reddit but looking at what they've actually done I think it looks pretty good.
> The Meta VR glasses will have better resolution I think, but then the Aura has access to the whole Android ecosystem - so that means real implementations of Microsoft Word etc.
Those aren't mutually exclusive though. Horizon OS is based on AOSP, and the more applications cross over into big screens on Android, the more Horizon gains the ability to leverage them too. Whether they actually show up in Facebook's store is a separate question, but I also have no idea how common the use of SideQuest is, just that the store is somewhat of an artificial limitation. (Google Play, on the other hand...)
> But the real choice is the unfortunate one of who is least likely to abandon the whole thing when it doesn't take off and leave you with an un/poorly supported device. Both companies have terrible track records on this.
Agreed. I would never buy a device like this from Facebook, and while glasses as a display are super useful, I don't necessarily see the need for a dedicated compute device for them when this experience could just as easily be powered by a phone. (I could maybe see replacing a phone with this, but more for particular minimalist crowds and not as a mass-market sell.)
I actually don't see any reason why I would use this instead of my Xreal Air (released like 3 years ago) + Samsung Dex. The phone is a perfect "compute puck" for wired AR glasses and Google even makes them, so why the heck are they selling separate compute pucks with these glasses and making them unaffordable?? Just make some pixel glasses that run android xr on the pixel phone instead
Hmm, fair point, I suppose I just don't use the hand tracking stuff very often since it's just not very productive (I use portable mouse & keyboard even on my Samsung headset that supports hand tracking).
But even given that the glasses have to support hand tracking and 6DOF, I think they can probably build the sensors into the glasses but compute them with the phone. Or maybe calculating hand tracking would drain the battery of a Pixel too fast or something. Not sure.
I think it’s more that you need really good latency guarantees for 6DOF to not feel terrible - it’ll be pretty hard to get that from a multitasking phone
If you're interested in running full Linux Desktop apps instead of Android apps, Simula is getting closer to releasing VR/AR compatible compute packs with laptop competitive specs: https://simulavr.com/blog/compute-pack-progress/
I'm not interested in VR/AR stuff, but I'm still waiting for dumb lightweight wireless glasses that would be able to replace my four monitor setup on PC.
>Continuous AI dependence of a large fraction of society is coming fast. It needs a name. Cyborgism? Umbilicals?
"Quick, everyone! There has been an event in the time line that causes derision between the masses, let's assign derogatory phrases to blindly label individuals on each side -- we'll call them slurs -- according to the corresponding biases before any kind of human oneness or organization can take place, otherwise we risk human relations improving!"
or, another route : every single step need not be 'us or them'.
The opposite of creating new labels to amplify such dangerous expressions of opinion would be to reduce and simplify vocabulary into a kind of newspeak in order to unworsen such thoughtcrime.
These combined with constant access to LLMs are basically the power glasses or specs from the book Accelerando by Charles Stross that the main character becomes so dependent on he becomes severely disoriented when they are stolen.
This is cool. Its part of an ideal version of my home setup. But god the marketing feels so off, its like its made by people who have never used a monitor or done work on a computer. The marketing makes it out to be a phone screen for your face which is such a sad vision for genuinely cool technology. Also horrible demonstration of AI do these people even use AI?
The part where he asked AI to organise his windows was almost as painful as the part where he was in a generic chase sequence of a Ubisoft slop game and asked whats the best way to catch the assassin.
Not really sure how it's any less dystopian than blinking at a screen 2 feet away on your desk, as people have been doing for decades?
To be honest, it feels a lot less dystopian to me. Frees up your body so you can easily alternate between sitting and standing, and move between environments or inside/outside a lot easier.
Like, it's technology adapting itself to our bodies, instead of trying to adapt our bodies to technology by hunching over and developing neck strain and bad backs.
This was part of a dystopian National Lampoon recording 50 years ago. It ended on a note about how even when the person closed his eyes, it didn't end.
It went something like "…there's a red light blinking in the darkness. You have a message."
If you just want a "dumb" pair of wired display glasses, they have a $300 version (xbx a01+) that has no brick, no Android and no AI, it operates as a plain DP Alt Mode USB-C connection. They're like a modern version of the old Sony HMZ-T3, but with the size/weight/style of normal sunglasses.
I like mine, they are more usable as a work monitor than I thought they would be (I'm used to blurry VR sets but these are sharp except for the extreme edges). The FOV is not quite as wide as the new XR ones but I'm ok with that... I don't use them for any immersive effect.
even the $650 One Pros have most of the QoL features here, like the hardware IPR adjustments and an optional 6DoF camera
the only things that make the Aura tempting are the 70deg FoV (which like you say isn't a feature everyone wants or needs) and the 1000 lumen brightness. neither justifies burning extra money on the useless puck, even if Google is subsidizing it.
if the Aura was available at $700-$800 puckless they'd be a genuine upgrade over the One Pro.
I have tried the follow mode on my x01 but unfortunately it seems to add a slight (but annoying nonetheless) blur to the image... thankfully the normal mode does not bother me as much.
I've noticed that in the corners of my 1s in follow mode where it doesn't bother me. Lucky, because mine would probably gather dust if follow didn't work well.
I have the XREAL One Pro. It is polarized which makes it always dimmer, especially indoors, and they sort of PWM from the polarized state to a 99% black out with a button interface. When it's really bright outside and you have the display on, you can see barely where your next step is and not much else.
Their AURAs are probably the same in this specific capability, it looks like the same thing I have in my hands, apart from the extra cameras and a different set of buttons.
The projection lenses look the same too, which means there's no periphery at all. That makes the sort of "screens hovering around you" in the advertising not all that representative of the experience. You see what's in front of you and might barely contain the one screen that you're looking at.
But the real choice is the unfortunate one of who is least likely to abandon the whole thing when it doesn't take off and leave you with an un/poorly supported device. Both companies have terrible track records on this.
I feel like Meta's track record of VR device support has been decent enough. Quest Pro still gets updates even though it was discontinued almost two years ago. When they ended support for Oculus Go they released an update that unlocked the device and granted root access. I'm sure you can find some complaints on Reddit but looking at what they've actually done I think it looks pretty good.
Those aren't mutually exclusive though. Horizon OS is based on AOSP, and the more applications cross over into big screens on Android, the more Horizon gains the ability to leverage them too. Whether they actually show up in Facebook's store is a separate question, but I also have no idea how common the use of SideQuest is, just that the store is somewhat of an artificial limitation. (Google Play, on the other hand...)
> But the real choice is the unfortunate one of who is least likely to abandon the whole thing when it doesn't take off and leave you with an un/poorly supported device. Both companies have terrible track records on this.
Agreed. I would never buy a device like this from Facebook, and while glasses as a display are super useful, I don't necessarily see the need for a dedicated compute device for them when this experience could just as easily be powered by a phone. (I could maybe see replacing a phone with this, but more for particular minimalist crowds and not as a mass-market sell.)
But even given that the glasses have to support hand tracking and 6DOF, I think they can probably build the sensors into the glasses but compute them with the phone. Or maybe calculating hand tracking would drain the battery of a Pixel too fast or something. Not sure.
Passthrough is lame compared to real AR
I bought some vr glasses a few years back but ended up returning them as there was no way you could code with them.
They weren't xreal, but a similar competitor, can't recall the name.
Have a meta quest 3 but want to replace the chrome browser on and generally meta as well.
Continuous AI dependence of a large fraction of society is coming fast. It needs a name. Cyborgism? Umbilicals?
We'll also need to coin some names for the symbiotes to call the resistors. Neoamish? Analogues?
The economic power difference between the two groups may justify calling them the Eloi and the Morlocks.
"Quick, everyone! There has been an event in the time line that causes derision between the masses, let's assign derogatory phrases to blindly label individuals on each side -- we'll call them slurs -- according to the corresponding biases before any kind of human oneness or organization can take place, otherwise we risk human relations improving!"
or, another route : every single step need not be 'us or them'.
... on another hand, 'gargoyle' is kind of cool.
How about "human beings?"
The part where he asked AI to organise his windows was almost as painful as the part where he was in a generic chase sequence of a Ubisoft slop game and asked whats the best way to catch the assassin.
To be honest, it feels a lot less dystopian to me. Frees up your body so you can easily alternate between sitting and standing, and move between environments or inside/outside a lot easier.
Like, it's technology adapting itself to our bodies, instead of trying to adapt our bodies to technology by hunching over and developing neck strain and bad backs.
It went something like "…there's a red light blinking in the darkness. You have a message."
or at least i might wake up since im the one typing this.
and im arriving at alpha centauri.
all the progress and human evolution, timelines etc with exponential acceleration in the last act.
all to do with the effects of space time travel. the brain needs to remain active even in stasis.
thats the wake up signal.
I like mine, they are more usable as a work monitor than I thought they would be (I'm used to blurry VR sets but these are sharp except for the extreme edges). The FOV is not quite as wide as the new XR ones but I'm ok with that... I don't use them for any immersive effect.
the only things that make the Aura tempting are the 70deg FoV (which like you say isn't a feature everyone wants or needs) and the 1000 lumen brightness. neither justifies burning extra money on the useless puck, even if Google is subsidizing it.
if the Aura was available at $700-$800 puckless they'd be a genuine upgrade over the One Pro.
Their AURAs are probably the same in this specific capability, it looks like the same thing I have in my hands, apart from the extra cameras and a different set of buttons.
The projection lenses look the same too, which means there's no periphery at all. That makes the sort of "screens hovering around you" in the advertising not all that representative of the experience. You see what's in front of you and might barely contain the one screen that you're looking at.