Back when tech events were still taking place, mixed reality (MR) glasses manufacturer Nreal took its latest model – the Neal Light – to CES 2020, showcasing a lightweight device in a stylish form factor. While manufacturing around the world has stuttered due to the ongoing pandemic Neal has announced the opening of its own in-house optical production facility to support its growth.
Based in the Wuxi National High-Tech District (WND) of Wuxi, China, the factory will produce Nreal’s optical displays and is the first of a two-phase approach. The new 64,500 square feet facility will allow Nreal to scale up production capacity to one million display units by the end of the year. This should then allow the company to lower costs and offer an even more consumer-friendly pricepoint for future MR glasses.
The second phase will see Nreal move to a new R&D centre and expand its production floor to 215,000 square feet. The facility will house up to 600 employees to help develop the next-generation of optical technologies.
“Our display and image quality is a point of pride for Nreal and one of the more prominent features praised by developers and users of Nreal Light today,” said Bing Xiao, cofounder of Nreal and Chief Optical Scientist in a statement. “Today is a key milestone for us because opening a new optics factory in a city like Wuxi, China enables us to flexibly scale our production capacity and personally oversee the production of this key component. This means that we’re not only able to meet the compounding demand for the highest quality displays when we ship Nreal Light, but we’re also even considering expanding the demand to prospective partners interested in this technology.”
Nreal is also keenly investing in the 5G space having previously announced several partnerships with companies like KDDI and Deutsche Telekom. And just last week Nreal launched a customized version of Nreal Light in conjunction with China Unicom as they begin an initiative called the ‘N Plan.’ This is a nationwide search by China Unicom looking for MR developers to submit and build applications exclusive to Nreal Light.
The Nreal Light developer kit is available to pre-order now for $1,199.00 USD while the consumer version is slated to go on sale this year, priced at $499. For further updates on the Nreal Light, keep reading VRFocus.
Nreal is teasing an enterprise-focused standalone AR headset for launch in Q4 2020, a variant of its Nreal Light AR glasses.
The company released a darkened concept image of the headset, which we’ve brightened here:
This would be Nreal’s second product. Their first, Nreal Light , is pair of AR glasses intended for consumers. Nreal planned to ship the Light in 2019, but delayed until spring 2020. However, production was recently halted due to the novel coronavirus. Nreal seems to expect to be able to produce hardware at scale later this year though, it seems.
The Nreal Light glasses are tethered to either a high end recent Android phone or an Nreal compute pack. But Nreal’s new all-in-one would integrate the chip into the headset, preferred by professionals and enterprise because it’s easier to deploy and maintain one device per user than two.
From the looks of the sketches on the marketing materials, the chip and battery are likely in the backplate on the rear of the user’s head.
Nreal expanding to enterprise mirrors the path of Magic Leap One, which also started with consumers. For Magic Leap, this followed a report from The Informationclaiming the company sold just 6,000 units in the first six months, in contrast to its target of 100,000 per year — itself a revision from the CEO’s expectation of 1 million.
AR headsets haven’t appealed to consumers yet, due to the high price and relative infancy of the still-bulky technology. We’re still years away from the realization of all day lightweight AR glasses many dream of. We’ll see if Nreal is able prove an early adopter market with Light when it is finally able to manufacture at scale.
This is the opposite of Microsoft’s strategy. Its HoloLens found adoption by enterprise and militaries. Large companies and governments can afford the sticker price, and AR can be useful for training, collaboration, and visualization.
Nreal clearly wants in on this market, given the company has already built much of the technology needed by developing consumer glasses. Whether it can build the same software ecosystem and platform is yet to be seen, but support for regular Android apps should make this task easier.
Nreal hasn’t released a price yet, but told VentureBeat it will be higher than the $1200 Light + compute pack, but “competitive”. Magic Leap One is priced at $3000 and HoloLens 2 is priced at $3500.
New Half-Life: Alyx footage, new hand-tracking tech, new VRecap – let’s go!
Did you check out the new Half-Life: Alyx footage released this week? We got a good look at gameplay, including enemies, weapons, and incredible physics from opening doors to interactions with nearly every object in sight. The thing that got me the most was the many injections to your hands for health.
Facebook has hinted it’s looking into creating a middle ground platform for games that can’t quite make it onto the Oculus Store. It looks like it could be a good deal for developers to take advantage of if they’re not initially elegible to get on Quest, and it makes us wonder if we’re going to start seeing Early Access titles on the Oculus Store.
And finally, Nreal only just announced its new hand-tracking support for the Nreal Lite today. We tried out the XR headset back at CES, which you can read about right here.
This week’s competition gives you a chance to win one of our five Eleven Table Tennis VR codes! Enter via the Gleam below – best of luck!
Alright, that’s it from us! Make sure to check out our Twitter and Facebook over the weekend for additional VR content if you haven’t had enough this week. Ciao!
Nreal Light AR glasses will get controller-free hand tracking in a near-future software update, thanks to a partnership with Qualcomm-backed Clay AIR.
Nreal Light
Nreal is a China-based company founded in 2017 with the goal of delivering lightweight consumer AR glasses before the major tech companies. Their first product is called Nreal Light. Instead of having on-board processing, the Nreal Light glasses are tethered to either a high end recent Android phone or an Nreal compute pack.
Specifically, the company claims the glasses will work with any Android phone which uses the Snapdragon 855 processor. That should include the Samsung Galaxy S10, Google Pixel 4, OnePlus 7, Galaxy Note 10, and more.
Nreal opened preorders back in November for a “developer kit” which includes the glasses and compute pack, for around $1200. The glasses alone are expected to be priced around $500 to consumers.
Nreal’s controller-free hand tracking is powered by California-based optical hand tracking company Clay AIR, which is backed by Qualcomm.
Developers can use the SDK to display the user’s hands as full hands, separate fingers, a bounding box, cursor or customized skins. The SDK will report when the user makes gestures such as pinch, point, grab, swipe and zoom.
This should make for a significantly improved user experience over Nreal’s previous default input method: your smartphone used as a 3DoF rotational laser pointer (similar to an Oculus Go controller). You can still opt for 6DoF controllers via Finch if you want, for an extra $200.
Nreal is not the first AR headset to get hand tracking. It’s a feature present in both Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 and the Magic Leap One. But it is the first to do so without a depth sensor, just like Oculus Quest was the first VR device to do this. Real time hand tracking without hardware-level depth information is significantly more difficult to do, requiring state of the art machine learning algorithms.
AR like Nreal is trying to build is extremely hard to do well. Outside-the-home AR faces a larger set of problems to overcome as compared with inside-the-house VR. A range of lighting conditions and an ever-changing world present significant hurdles for both AR displays and tracking, and our last few demos of Nreal were not without issue.
The fact that this hand tracking is provided by a third party (Clay AIR) also raises the possibility that other manufacturers, including potential future Oculus Quest competitors, could integrate this same technology.
During CES 2020 last month VRFocus saw the potential of augmented reality (AR) collaboration demoing Spatial’s software solution. Today, the company has revealed a new effort in partnership with several companies including AR headset manufacturer Nreal to accelerate mass-market adoption of 5G-optimized AR collaboration tools.
5G looks set to become the technology of 2020 as compatible devices begin to flood the market. Hence why more and more companies are seeking to employ 5G across a range of use cases, AR collaboration being one of them.
Spatial and Nreal have teamed up with Qualcomm Technologies, LG Uplus, KDDI, and Deutsche Telekom to help make this a reality as soon as possible. Each company will work together to share technical requirements and best practices, with Spatial’s device-agnostic collaboration software, coupled with Nreal’s latest headset ‘Nreal Light’ offering the first 5G combination. Spatial also plans to make its platform available on consumer 5G devices later this year.
“Consumers will be able to work or interact with anyone, anywhere as if sitting next to each other,” said Co-Founder and CEO Anand Agarawala in a statement. “Spatial is already in use and being actively explored by a significant portion of the Fortune 1000. A large part of that interest is driven by improved access to hardware and, as 5G networks and mass-market headsets like Nreal Light become commonplace, we’re throwing jet fuel into that fire. This combination of hardware, chipset, and carrier giants is a perfect storm for AR just like what drove the mobile revolution in the early 2000s with smartphones, high-speed mobile data, and app stores.”
“The 5G networks will bring out the change in the way people communicate. The 3G networks enabled voice call to video call. The 4G networks make that video call popular to the public. The 5G networks will promise the communication in virtual reality with virtual 3D avatar which makes a video call even more realistic,” said Daewon Song, the head of LG Uplus Future Device Unit. “That is why LG Uplus is working with Spatial for telepresence solution, to prove the validity and potential of Spatial’s Telepresence on Nreal AR glasses.
Spatial’s platform is already available on headsets like Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap 1 in a limited capacity as customers need to signup to unlock the application. The Nreal Light developer kit is available to pre-order now for $1,199.00, weighing in at 88g whilst sporting a 1080P display with a 52° field of view (FoV). As further details of the project are released, VRFocus will let you know.
Nreal, the creators of the Nreal Light AR glasses, today announced that shipments of its developer kit will be affected by the recent developments in Asia surrounding the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
The company, which is split between San Francisco and Hangzhou, China, says in a tweet that production of the Nreal Light developer kit has been halted. Delays are said to affect the most recent batch of backers. There’s no indication of when production will start back up; uncertainty in the region has so far become a unfortunate norm.
Hangzhou, along with many other major cities in China, is in the precarious situation where some factories have been provisionally cleared to return to work as the Spring Festival comes to a close, however stringent city-wide lockdowns still stymie the flow of workers and resources.
Nreal Light launched pre-orders for its $1,200 developer kit late last year. The AR headset, which is driven by a tethered compute unit running a Snapdragon 845 mobile chipset, is touted for its more slim-line appearance and large (for AR headsets) 52 degree field of view.
The Coronavirus, a novel respiratory virus, began in China with the first reported case on December 31st, 2019. Since then the virus has seen more than 28,000 confirmed cases and 565 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. While the Coronavirus has spread to 24 other countries to date, 99% of cases have been confined to China.
Meanwhile, Nreal is still planning on attending MWC 2020, which has recently been marred with controversy as large companies such as Amazon, Ericsson, LG, and Sony have pulled out citing the obvious public health risk of promoting the largest telecom trade fairs during the epidemic. Event organizers GSMA has added a number of health and safety measures to this year’s MWC, such as a ban on travelers from Hubei province, increased cleansing of public areas, and encouraging among attendees a ‘no-handshake’ policy.
Nreal isn’t the only company in the AR/VR sector to have felt the effects. Facebook has issued a similar statement regarding the availability of Oculus Quest, the standalone VR headset which has been notably in high demand since well before the holiday season.
CES is a strange conference. Across endless aisle after endless aisle a mixture of companies looking for suppliers, distributors, press or investment present wares in hope of making the year ahead one of major success for their business. The conference always presents a roadmap for the future of technology and it has been that way since the ’60s. Seeing the actual pathway ahead, though, is difficult to find through the manufactured hype and “best of” awards.
So I understand the comments we see from folks who want to know what was “good” at the conference who might be confused by vastly differing reports and reactions. Is the reporter able to describe what actually happened in their demo, or is their vocabulary lacking in describing if something went wrong? Do they gloss over issues? Are they sold the promise of the technology if bugs are worked out in a couple more years?
With this in mind, and the joy I know is already delivered so rapidly by Valve Index at home and Oculus Quest in a carrying case in my hotel room, I found myself largely unimpressed by almost all the AR on display at CES and much of the VR too.
“There is no doubt Oculus Quest has shown what the right mainstream consumer device is and while there was nothing immediately that will give the Quest a run for it’s money, I did try the new Qualcomm reference design and some other tech that suggests next year there should be many more all-in-ones that should get consumers and enterprise excited for the near future of VR,” AR and VR investor Tipatat Chennavasin explained in a direct message.
There were still hints of the future at CES 2020, but I need to address the difficulty and cost involved in polishing these technologies to the point of actual usefulness for businesses or mass appeal to consumers. That’s what this post is about.
So read on to understand what’s truly going on in VR and AR.
VR: Advances In Field Of View, Controller Tracking, And Headset Size
VR headsets at CES 2020 demonstrated advances on several fronts. None of these were entirely new, or entirely perfect, but all point to possibilities for the future.
Smaller Headset Designs
Several companies at CES demonstrated pancake lenses which dramatically reduce the physical size of VR headsets. These also generally featured a reduced field of view compared with current designs.
The one I found most interesting was Panasonic’s “VR Eyeglasses” which combined an incredibly light design with an innovative lens separation adjustment. Read my story about the Panasonic glasses.
While Pico showed a similar conceptual design alongside their Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye I didn’t see any physical adjustment for lens separation on their glasses design. So the Pico glasses design made me extremely uncomfortable in a matter of seconds. The distance between my pupils is wider than many and I usually need that adjustment (which is found on both Index and Quest) to have a comfortable experience in a VR headset.
Huawei’s slim VR Glass design was also demonstrated by Nolo combined with their front-facing 6DoF tracking system as an add-on. BoxVR worked reasonably well in this configuration, but the $500 VR Glass plus Nolo kit only tracked my hands while facing forward. Under no circumstances would I be interested in a VR headset in 2020 or beyond that doesn’t let me turn around.
Combining pancake lenses with microdisplays is nothing new of course — eMagin showed this off in 2015 before even the release of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Since then, microdisplay suppliers have claimed that headsets using this kind of display system are just around the corner. But now we’re finally starting to see major consumer electronics companies explore this idea, which may mean it is now closer than ever to being in an actual product.
Expanded Field of View
Some VR headsets at CES 2020, like the nearly $8000 Xtal and all the Pimax systems, featured an expanded field of view compared with headsets like Oculus Quest and Valve Index.
Xtal demonstrated an impressive $50,000 motion simulator with their headset integrated into a flight helmet with its wide field of view and 4K per eye resolution offering incredible sights flying in an F-18 over Dubai. While enjoyable, I noted some distortions at the edges of the lenses.
The Pimax Demo
Pimax frequently makes promises then delays delivering on them again and again. We’ve also heard numerous reports of problems with their hardware ranging from minor to major.
While my colleagues found Pimax demos at previous events, my first Pimax Demo was at CES 2020 and the first time I put a Pimax 8KX on my head I tried Boneworks.
The first thing I noted is that content popped in at the edges of the display a second or two after the rest of the scene. When I mentioned it, the demo (said to be running from an RTX 2080 TI) was switched to parallel processing and that solved the problem, but within about five minutes the right eye started blinking to black every few seconds.
I asked for another 8KX to try with Boneworks and this one didn’t have the problems I saw before. Its wide field of view invited me to look around a little more and the high resolution of the panels were certainly nice, but I found myself also constantly distracted by the significant distortions and bending of the scene at the edges of the lenses — more significant than the distortions I saw with Xtal. My right hand also lost tracking with 8KX, but that’s not entirely unusual for SteamVR Tracking in convention settings.
We’ve heard some people with Pimax headsets artificially reduce the field of view of the system through software adjustment to avoid these distortions while still enjoying a relatively expanded field of view. My colleague Tatjana returned to the Pimax booth later in the CES week to try both the 8KX and Artisan. Aristan is Pimax’ newest headset which ends up priced comparable to Valve Index when you include controllers and base stations. She played Boneworks and Fruit Ninja and found herself sick to her stomach afterward. I, too, left the Pimax booth a bit woozy.
There are Pimax defenders out there and those who will find the expanded field of view a good fit for their strong stomachs and top of the line graphics cards. Indeed, I got sick repeatedly over my 12-hour play through of the Boneworks campaign with Valve Index, but didn’t get uncomfortable as quickly as I did with that Pimax demo at CES.
Surely a wider field of view is something we want in future VR headsets but I remain unconvinced we’ll see it at an affordable price other than from a major platform like Facebook, Valve, Sony, Google, or Apple with large teams developing both optics and eye tracking technologies which could make these devices more comfortable.
Overall, the repeated delays for Pimax products and less than stellar impressions at CES 2020 means that we will keep using words like “claim” to describe plans for products pitched by this company.
Alternative Tracking Systems With Pico
The Pico Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye, priced at $700 and $900 respectively, featured occlusion-resistant electromagnetic tracking. In the Neo 2, for example, I played Angry Birds and was able to pull back the slingshot while keeping my head turned away from the controllers. This is something I can’t do in an Oculus Quest. The Neo 2 also balances weight to the back better than Quest’s front-heavy design.
The Neo 2 Eye demonstrated Tobii’s eye tracking for the first time I’ve seen in a standalone design. Also for the first time I’ve seen, the headset tracked my eye movements without calibration. Typically, Tobii asks each wearer to point their eyes at a few dots at different corners of the scene to calibrate, and I was told that option is still available. The eye tracking without calibration seemed to work alright — I was able to target enemies in a scene by just pointing my eyes at them — but when I pointed my eyes downward it seemed to lose tracking.
I’d need more time with the $700 Neo 2 to say more, but I found it to be the only Pico device I’ve ever tried I might actually be interested in using. However, Neo 2 is only sold to businesses.
AR: Tracking Lacking, Power Problems And Severe Field Of View Limits For Years To Come
During the course of CES my colleague David Heaney described simply something that’s hard to grasp about the market for AR head-worn gadgets: Recognizing occlusion in your environment is to AR what 6DoF tracking is to VR.
This is to say that if an AR headset with see-through optics inserting digital content into your real-world environment cannot reliably understand when a person or object blocks simulated content from your view, the illusion meant to be provided by the hardware is broken. The same is true of VR headsets that do not track the position of your head. For example, if you wear an Oculus Go VR headset and decide to lean forward or stand up, the illusion of VR that you were enjoying is instantly broken.
Discomfort or confusion often follows in either case of severely limited VR or AR, and this represents a death sentence for the hardware. Failing to provide 6DoF tracking, or recognize occlusion, is so uncomfortable, I believe some headset wearers are discouraged from wearing the hardware ever again. Of course, some can learn to work around this limit.
There are fans of Oculus Go who understand its limitation and use the device as a low-cost personal media viewer. Nreal AR glasses, for example, provide a relatively large field of view for a similar genre of content. Still, without a complete and constantly improving understanding of the environment around the wearer, AR glasses like the $500 Nreal (and there were a lot of copycats at CES) are likely to consistently fail this test. Without passing this test walking out in the real world, the appeal of these kinds of AR hardware platforms is minimal to developers, to businesses, and to consumers.
“I would agree that for AR glasses to be truly useful and game changing, they would need not only solid 6DOF tracking (which none of the slim AR glasses I tried had), object occlusion, and object permanence but also really intuitive and reliable 6DOF input which was not also shown,” Chennavasin wrote. “I appreciate the effort being done by all the companies but it still looks like consumer AR is still years away.”
This roadblock for AR relates to two others — power consumption and field of view. Most AR glasses fail to deliver anything close to the amount of digital content to your eyes seen through most VR headset designs. This means that even in HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap 1 — two dedicated AR headsets — you need to move far away from the digital content to get a full view of it and truly enjoy the sense of immersion it brings. Again, some can get used to this limitation but the bulky size and high price of these AR systems ($2,300 for ML1 and $3,500 for HoloLens 2) also prevents them from appealing to consumers.
Lastly, building the most detailed map of your environment typically means on-board cameras need to keep scanning the room to keep the map updated. Using those cameras drains power. One of the key reasons the first generation of phone-powered VR headsets were retired so quickly is because those headsets drained power from a device you needed to last the day for other tasks. So do phone-powered AR systems like Nreal have a shot if they drain phone battery power just like the already-defunct Gear VR, and are used for the same types of content as the $200 Oculus Go starting at more then double the price?
“I agree that power is a (possibly the) key constraint for HMDs. It’s one reason why active depth cameras are not the best solution for occlusion, and we are seeing 6D’s approach of using low power RGB sensors, combined with efficient Neural Net co-processors providing solutions to occlusion,” explained Matt Miesnieks, the CEO of spatial recognition company 6D.ai, in a direct message. “The first low cost AR headsets do need refinement, but we have some visibility into roadmaps, and as that refinement is primarily driven by software, we will see improvements very rapidly.”
With Nreal in particular I saw software that needed significant refinement, both in tracking and stability, to become more usable.
Short Term Potential Advances In AR And VR
CES 2020 confirmed to me what we’ve already seen elsewhere.
Tilt Five’s forthcoming consumer AR system uses a novel retro reflective method delivered as a game board that tunes for both a relatively wide field of view and the specific case of tabletop games. These aren’t glasses you’ll take out into the real world and since you are localized to the game board, occlusion isn’t as much of a concern. Tilt Five cost $879 during its recent Kickstarter for a three-pack of glasses and there are extensions to the board to expand it vertically to provide more height to the augmentation effect. Altogether, Tilt Five represents one of the most promising short-term AR projects we’ve seen. I contacted Tilt Five CEO Jeri Ellsworth and she suggested there may even be a way to charge companion phones, with a a pass through hub, while also powering the glasses.
“We have a huge advantage by containing our system.,” Ellsworth wrote in a message. “We also limit the compute on the device…by doing re-projection and in headset tracking which saves power.”
Shipping a hardware crowdfunding product isn’t easy, so there’s a lot to prove for Tilt Five, but after CES 2020 I’m still left thinking Ellsworth’s company remains the most interesting AR project approaching the consumer market in the near-term.
When it comes to VR, we know the future of the medium features wireless, higher field of view, more tracking of body features in a wider range of conditions and smaller, more well-balanced headsets. But taking all the best pieces of CES 2020 VR systems — Pico’s better balance, Xtal’s wide field of view, Panasonic’s slim design — and then polishing these features, adding on more and supplying them with content is an entirely different level of challenge than preparing an interesting demo.
I’m talking about spending billions of dollars and there are only a few companies positioned to make that sort of investment in the next couple years.
At CES 2020 Nreal is claiming that its upcoming AR glasses can pin your phone’s regular Android apps in your physical environment.
Nreal is a China-based company founded in 2017 with the goal of delivering lightweight consumer AR glasses before the major tech companies. Their first product is called Nreal Light. Instead of having on-board processing, the Nreal Light glasses are tethered to either a high end recent Android phone or an Nreal compute pack.
Specifically, the company claims the glasses will work with any Android phone which uses the Snapdragon 855 processor. That should include the Samsung Galaxy S10, Google Pixel 4, OnePlus 7, Galaxy Note 10, and more.
Nreal opened preorders back in November for a “developer kit” which includes the glasses and compute pack, for around $1200. The glasses alone are expected to be priced around $500 to consumers.
Nreal planned to ship the Nreal Light in 2019, but delayed until 2020. They now intend to ship the Nreal Light to consumers in the spring of 2020.
Nebula: Your Apps In Real Space
The company’s big announcement at CES 2020 is Nebula: a software system which it claims lets users pin and use their regular Android apps in real space.
Nreal describes Nebula as supporting “all their favorite mobile apps”. If true, this would allow for use cases such as watching Netflix in bed on a floating virtual screen.
The company claims that the software will remember what apps you’ve placed in a room when you re-enter it so they’ll be in the same position you left them. Multiple apps are said to be supported at once, so you could theoretically create an “infinite workspace” which could give you the effect of having many monitors.
A visualization provided by Nreal of its Nebula system.
For users who opt to use Nreal’s compute pack instead of their phone, such as those who use an iPhone, it is unclear how this feature will work. Such a compute box would likely not have access to Google Play — the platform has a strict device certification process which does not include AR glasses yet. It may be that Nreal is planning to have its own store of 2D Android apps, we’ve reached out to clarify.
A supported tethered smartphone can be used to interact with apps as a rotational laser pointer, similar to the Oculus Go‘s controller. Based on our experience with 3DoF controllers on 6DoF headsets, this would likely be an awkward experience.
If you want full 6DoF positional controllers, Nreal claims support for the upcoming FinchShift controllers, expected to retail for around $200.
AR Is Still Primitive
While Nreal Light and the Nebula system sound great in theory, it is important to note that AR glasses are still in the very early stages.
AR glasses are a massive technological undertaking with enormous leaps in miniaturization and input needed to achieve true consumer appeal. Facebook, for example, has thousands of people working on VR and AR to make those breakthroughs and its top researcher still says compelling AR hardware is perhaps half a decade away. Nreal’s field of view, like all current AR glasses, is only 52°- around half of a typical virtual reality headset. This means that you only see the digital objects and apps within a small rectangle of your view rather than all over the glass.
A specific shortcoming of Nreal is we believe it does not support occlusion. Occlusion refers to when a digital object is placed behind a real world object. If a system doesn’t support occlusion, the digital object will be rendered on top of the object, breaking the illusion. Both HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap One support it.
When we went hands-on with Nreal at MWC 2019 we were somewhat impressed with the size of the gear and sharpness of the image, but only tested it in very limited controlled conditions. We should get an updated demo at CES 2020 so check back for updates.
Don’t forget to check out our CES 2020 Coverage Hub right herefor all of the latest announcements for VR and AR tech from the show!
Nreal made quite the splash at CES earlier this year, showing off its Nreal Light AR headset which made some clear strides to look less like a futuristic helmet and more like a regular pair of sunglasses you might actually wear in public. Starting today, both the $1,200 Developer Kit and the $2,000 Enterprise Edition are officially available for pre-order.
The headset portion of Nreal Light is itself remarkably light, weighing in at only 88g, which is in part due to the fact that it has offloaded its computing to a dedicated Android mini-computer running a Snapdragon 845 chipset. Like HoloLens or Magic Leap One, it has 6DOF inside-out tracking, but also boasts a relatively wide 52-degree (diagonal) field of view, which is thanks to a ‘birdbath’ optical design which projects imagery from dual 1080p microdisplays; both HoloLens and Magic Leap One use waveguides for their near-eye displays.
There’s also going to be a $500 consumer version, which will arrive sometime in early 2020 without the so-called Computing Unit, instead tethering via USB-C to a user’s phone.
As for the dev kits available for pre-order today, the only material difference between both versions is the Enterprise Edition includes a one-year service plan. Nreal doesn’t really mention what that entails exactly, but if it’s anything like we’ve seen in the VR sector, it will likely provide dedicated customer support for businesses.
Nreal is also offering a Light Prescription Lens Set for $500 that contains 15 pairs of lenses with what the company calls a “wide range of diopters for nearsighted users.”
Shipping is said to begin in a month from now, delivering on a rolling basis depending on which batch you managed to nab.
Although we’ve had an opportunity to try Nreal Light quickly at trade shows, we haven’t had a chance to go deep enough for a full hands-on piece. If you’re looking for some great coverage of the AR headset, look no further than Tested’s video hands-on to learn more.
Check out the specs and box contents below:
Nreal Light Specs
Weight: 88g
Connectivity: USB-C compatible
Optics: Combined Lightguide / 52 degree diagonal field of view
Last week we reported that high-profile augmented reality company Magic Leap had filed a lawsuit against Chinese competitor, Nreal. The company claimed that Nreal founder and former Magic Leap software engineer Chi Xu had “wrongfully used and disclosed to Nreal and its collaborators the confidential and proprietary information to which he obtained access as a former Magic Leap employee.”
Today, Nreal denied the accusation.
Nreal’s Statement
“We have heard about the recent media reports regarding Nreal and Magic Leap,” an Nreal spokesperson said in a statement to UploadVR. “Nreal believes that these rumors and accusations are false and anticompetitive in nature. Without additional information we’re not able to provide further comment.”
Nreal is currently working on a pair of AR sunglasses called Nreal Light. They project virtual images into the real world. Users can interact with them using a three degrees of freedom (3DOF) motion controller. Similar to Magic Leap One, the headset is powered by an external power hub. Unlike Magic Leap’s AR headset, though, it can also be powered by smartphones with a Snapdragon 855 chipset or better. We’ve been quite impressed by the device in our limited experience with it.
“Nreal Light was developed with the vision that we would be able to make mixed reality technology accessible to everyone, in a familiar sunglass form factor,” the company’s statement continues. “Along the way, through hard work we discovered breakthroughs and finally managed to unveil Nreal Light at CES 2019. We’ve appreciated the excitement around how Nreal has reinvigorated the AR/MR industry and have continued to work hard to develop innovative consumer-friendly solutions, including allowing our Nreal Light to be powered by smartphones. And we remain committed to allowing all people to see the world in a whole new Light.”
The kit is expected to ship this year. We’ll bring you updates on this lawsuit when we have them.
