Forem: AR/VR News

vivo Vision mixed reality headset shown off, testers praise its comfortable design

AR/VR News — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 14:00:14 +0000

vivo Vision mixed reality headset shown off, testers praise its comfortable design - GSMArena.com news

The MR headset was demonstrated publicly at the Boao Forum for Asia, but it is also being tested internally by vivo employees.

gsmarena.com

Vivo just gave us a sneak peek at its Vision mixed-reality headset at the Boao Forum, and early testers are digging how light and comfy it feels—think AirPods Max territory (around 386 g) rather than the hefty Apple Vision Pro’s 600-plus grams. A discreet cable tethers it to an external battery pack, keeping head weight down, while multiple front-facing cameras handle smooth hand-tracking controls.

No official launch date yet, but Vivo says it’s being road-tested internally and should drop by year-end. For now, all we’ve got are photos, video clips, and tantalizing “coming soon” teasers from both product managers and CCTV host Zhu Guangquan.

Snap Spectacles 5 - Optical Analysis of the AR HMD

AR/VR News — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:59:41 +0000

Snap Spectacles at CES, AR/VR/MR, & AWE 2025, Consumer Product in 2026 – KGOnTech

kguttag.com

Snap’s Spectacles 5 (S5) is a chunky developer kit demoed at CES, SPIE AR/VR/MR and AWE in 2025—think big LCOS light engines tucked into oversized temples, 2-D diffractive WaveOptics waveguides rotated for a bit better color uniformity, four cameras plus IMU for 6DOF tracking and late-stage reprojection at 360 Hz to tame field-sequential color breakup. It’s not a holiday must-have but a peek at the tech Snap’s opening up to devs as they gear up for a sleeker consumer AR headset in 2026.

Behind the scenes, Snap has quietly stitched together the entire optical chain by scooping up WaveOptics (2021) for waveguides and Compound Photonics (2022) for LCOS/MicroLED engines—partly to keep rivals like Meta from snapping them up. The result? Snap now owns everything from microdisplays to optics, setting the stage for a fully in-house AR glasses launch next year.

Meta's prototype headsets show off the future of mixed reality

AR/VR News — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:59:14 +0000

Meta’s prototype headsets show off the future of mixed reality | The Verge

The future of VR could be much more realistic — or offer a wider FOV.

theverge.com

Meta’s Reality Labs is teasing what VR could look like with two wild research headsets debuting at SIGGRAPH 2025. The star of the show, dubbed “Tiramisu,” cranks realism up to 11: it boasts roughly 3× the contrast of Quest 3, 90 pixels per degree (that’s 3.6× Quest 3’s angular resolution) and up to 1,400 nits of brightness. The trade-off? It’s bulky, heavy and still limited in field of view.

On the flip side, the “Boba 3” (and its Boba 3 VR sibling) goes ultrawide with a 180°×120° view—closer to human eyesight—and packs a 4K×4K display per eye. These prototypes use mass-production displays and Quest 3-style lenses, so they feel like hints at tomorrow’s headsets, even if Meta warns they might never reach store shelves.

Meta's prototype headsets show off the future of mixed reality

AR/VR News — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 13:51:11 +0000

Meta’s prototype headsets show off the future of mixed reality | The Verge

The future of VR could be much more realistic — or offer a wider FOV.

theverge.com

Meta’s research arm is gearing up to wow SIGGRAPH 2025 with some wild mixed-reality prototypes. The “Tiramisu” headset cranks up realism with roughly 3× the contrast, 3.6× the angular resolution (90 PPD) and 14× the brightness (1,400 nits) of a Quest 3—trading off size, weight and a narrower FOV for visuals that might just pass a “visual Turing test.”

On the flip side, the Boba 3 and Boba 3 VR models chase human-eye immersion with an enormous 180°×120° field of view and 4K×4K per-eye displays (up from 3K×3K in Boba 2). While these are purely lab demos that may never hit stores, they offer a thrilling glimpse at the next era of ultra-wide, hyper-real VR.

'Autofocus' specs promise sharp vision, near or far

AR/VR News — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:57:38 +0000

bbc.com

Autofocus glasses from Finnish start-up IXI look like regular specs but hide liquid-crystal lenses and an eye-tracker that shifts your prescription on the fly. Early prototypes were a bit hazy around the edges, but new versions promise smooth near-to-far focus, a two-day battery life and a design that doesn't scream “cyborg.” CEO Niko Eiden teases a launch later this year (and maybe a four-figure price tag) once they nail fit and consumer appeal.

They’re part of a booming eyewear-tech scene—from Adlens’ manual fluid-filled dials to honeycomb-ring lenses that slow children’s myopia. Optometrists see big convenience upside but worry about performance in safety-critical tasks like driving or surgery. Beyond autofocus, researchers are even chasing lenses that could not only halt but slightly reverse short-sightedness.

Exclusive: Even Realities waveguide supplier Greatar secures another hundred-million-yuan-level financing

AR/VR News — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:21:55 +0000

eu.36kr.com

Zhige Technology, a Tsinghua-incubated optics startup, has just landed its second consecutive “hundreds of millions” yuan financing this year, led by Yinrun Capital with follow-on support from Fangguang Capital and others. The cash infusion will turbocharge its production capacity, R&D iteration and team growth as it ramps up supply of diffractive optical waveguides for AR/AI glasses.

Since spinning out in 2019, Zhige’s IDM-style outfit has built China’s first fully automated waveguide lens line—cranking out 100K units monthly and shipping 20K—and racked up patents on “rainbow-free” designs, gradient gratings and ultra-high transmittance (up to 99%+). With globe-spanning demand for smart glasses set to hit nearly 13 million units in 2025, Zhige aims to make AR eyewear as comfy and clear as your everyday specs.

New Nanodevice can enable Holographic XR Headsets: “we can do everything – holography, beam steering, 3D displays – anything”

AR/VR News — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:21:20 +0000

news.stanford.edu

TL;DR

Stanford engineers have built a tiny acousto-optical device that uses surface acoustic waves—basically ultrasonic ripples—to squeeze light down into nanogaps between gold nanoparticles and a gold mirror. A springy, nanometer-thin polymer layer toggles those gaps by a few atoms, wildly shifting the color and brightness of each nanoparticle “star.”

Because it’s so small, it’s super fast (think billions of vibrations per second) and way more practical than bulky, millimeter-scale acousto-optical gear. Imagine ultrathin video screens, lightweight holographic VR headsets, ultra-fast optical links—or even light-driven neural networks—all powered by these sound-sculpted beams.

Brilliant Labs launches Halo: AI smartglasses that last all day

AR/VR News — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:20:29 +0000

Brilliant Labs launches Halo: AI smartglasses that last all day - The Ghost Howls

Discover the Brilliant Labs Halo smartglasses with AI innovations, 14-hour battery life, and a competitive price.

skarredghost.com

Brilliant Labs just dropped its third wearable: the Halo smartglasses. They pack a full-color micro-OLED monocular display, bone-conduction audio, camera/mic sensors, and an ultra-low-power AI chip—yet still weigh just ~40 g and last up to 14 hours on a charge. Like its predecessors (Monocle and Frames), Halo is fully open-source and programmable via Lua on Zephyr, with customizable lenses and a wallet-friendly price tag.

Halo’s built-in AI assistant, Noa, offers real-time, multimodal convo powered by “Narrative” memory so it recalls past interactions, plus privacy protections that irreversibly embed your audio/visual input. You can even tell Noa to mute the mic or sleep the glasses hands-free. And with experimental “Vibe Mode,” you can voice-trigger the AI to whip up custom apps in seconds—even if you’ve never coded.

Karl Guttag: Google XR Glasses Using Google's Raxium MicroLEDs While Waveguide Lab Sold to Vuzix

AR/VR News — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 14:50:50 +0000

Google XR Glasses Using Google’s Raxium MicroLEDs While Waveguide Lab Sold to Vuzix – KGOnTech

kguttag.com

Google’s XR glasses prototype isn’t actually running on Avegant’s LCOS engines as first thought, but on a Raxium monolithic full-color MicroLED display that Google designed in-house. While it looks flashy in demos (even showing up in a TED Talk), Raxium’s MicroLED yields are reportedly under 1%, making these glasses pure R&D fodder rather than a consumer product. Meanwhile, Google sold off its waveguide R&D facility to Vuzix, contrasting with Meta, which still pours massive in-house (and some outsourced) resources into waveguides and LCOS for its Hypernova glasses.

Digging into Raxium’s origins reveals it started more as a light-field startup—co-founded by Stanford’s Gordon Wetzstein—than a pure MicroLED maker, which explains Google’s interest in their optics chops. But native full-color MicroLEDs face massive manufacturing hurdles (three different crystal growth processes, tiny flip-chip assembly, cross-company fab coordination), so any future product will likely lean back on LCOS or simpler MicroLED tricks (green only, multi-chip RGB, etc.) until yields improve.

Gixel comes out of stealth with a new type of AR optical engine

AR/VR News — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:26:39 +0000

Gixel comes out of stealth with a new type of AR optical engine - The Ghost Howls

Learn about Gixel, a startup developing a groundbreaking optical engine for smartglasses, along with their latest funding round.

skarredghost.com

TL;DR

German startup Gixel just emerged from stealth with a fresh take on AR optics that swaps waveguides for liquid‐filled lenses studded with tiny, opto-electrically steered micromirrors. Paired with a micro-OLED projector and eye-tracking, those mirrors dynamically bounce virtual pixels into your eyes while staying crystal-clear when you’re just looking at the real world. They’ve snagged €5 million from big names like Brendan Iribe and Ted Schilowitz to refine the tech and prep for a larger Series A next year.

Gixel claims this design delivers smartphone-level visuals, super transparency, low power draw, variable focal planes and a scalable field of view—all in a sleek, curved package. The big hurdles? Seamlessly merging countless mirror reflections into one cohesive image, keeping the mirrors fast, reliable and durable with zero latency, and figuring out mass manufacturing and repair in case a mirror goes rogue. Early single-mirror demos at AWE impressed with bright, crisp virtual flowers, so here’s hoping they nail the tricky stuff at scale.

ALIBABA will announce its first AI Glasses this week: There's a version with display, and a version without

AR/VR News — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:26:11 +0000

eu.36kr.com

Alibaba is about to drop its first in-house AI glasses, diving headfirst into the “Battle of a Hundred Glasses.” Expect the usual lineup of voice assistant, music, calls, real-time translation and meeting minutes, plus deep hooks into Amap, Alipay and Taobao. Under the hood you’ve got a dual-chip Snapdragon AR1 + BES2800 design, two flavors (AI only or AI+AR with a display) and core smarts powered by Tongyi Qianwen alongside Quark’s vertical models for learning and health.

This launch caps Alibaba’s big AI-to-C shuffle—merging Tmall Genie hardware with the Quark AI team under VP Wu Jia and led by veteran Song Gang—and stakes its claim in a crowded, early-stage AR/AI glasses market. With belt-and-braces integration across navigation, payments, shopping and travel reminders, Alibaba hopes to break past the current battery, comfort and app-island bottlenecks and finally bring smart specs to the masses alongside rivals like Xiaomi, Meta, Baidu and ByteDance.

Karl Guttag: Google XR Glasses Using Google's Raxium MicroLEDs While Waveguide Lab Sold to Vuzix

AR/VR News — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:25:46 +0000

Google XR Glasses Using Google’s Raxium MicroLEDs While Waveguide Lab Sold to Vuzix – KGOnTech

kguttag.com

TL;DR

Turns out Google’s slick new XR glasses aren’t packing Avegant LCOS engines but Raxium’s monolithic full-color MicroLEDs—an R&D demo with yields rumored under 1%, so don’t expect a consumer product anytime soon. Google even spun off its waveguide lab to Vuzix, keeping MicroLED work in-house, while Meta’s Hypernova stuck with Lumus waveguides and LCOS for its first product, despite toying with MicroLEDs and lasers in its labs.

Raxium itself was more light-field optics than MicroLED powerhouse, co-founded by Stanford’s Gordon Wetzstein and a former Magic Leap photonics lead. Patent deep-dives show their roots in direct-view light-field displays, not ready-for-prime-time microdisplays. In short: interesting tech flex, but more lab snack than retail meal.