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.
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.
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
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.
>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.
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.
> 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.)
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. 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 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.
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/
Oh wow, I didn't look at the price of the Xreal Aura, assuming it was something in the range of 399 to 599. Yeah, if it's the same price as the Steam Frame there's absolutely no contest.
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.
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.
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[ 235 ms ] story [ 1071 ms ] threadI 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.
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.
Continuous AI dependence of a large fraction of society is coming fast. It needs a name. Cyborgism? Umbilici?
How about "human beings?"
"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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Have a meta quest 3 but want to replace the chrome browser on and generally meta as well.
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.
the only jank in standalone is android's handling of physical keyboards.
the software side is WayVR which a wayland compositor (?) that can handle windows, or can also handle monitors (and virtual ones) at least with KDE