A few months ago, Meta held one of the most disastrous launch events in recent memory, at which it unveiled the Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses. Despite the wave of technical issues that flat-out ruined many of the live demos on stage, Meta still won the day, because its new AR glasses were actually really cool. A more advanced follow-up to the surprisingly popular Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses ($329 at Amazon), the new glasses have a monocular display (meaning there’s one screen in one of the lenses), a Neural Band wrist strap that lets you control what you see by performing air gestures, and, most importantly, a price: $799. While expensive, this kept Meta at the forefront of the burgeoning XR revolution by making it the first major tech player to have a retail-ready set of smart glasses that seem to bring us the future Google Glass promised us over 10 years ago.
Unfortunately for Meta, there are three major problems with the new Ray-Bans. First, and most obviously, they are made by Meta, a company that few people like or trust enough to wear its face computer and feed it deeply personal data. Second, it is a Meta-only platform, with app availability limited for the time being to the company’s own products — WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. Third, the AI smarts of the glasses also come from Meta, and not from the true AI players right now, namely OpenAI and Google.
Well, Google invited me to San Jose last week to try out its new glasses running Android XR, the operating system that first debuted with the Samsung Galaxy XR ($1799.99 at Samsung) in October. Although what I saw are just prototypes for real products coming later, they could potentially solve all three of Meta’s problems — immediately putting Google into a terrific position to be the real star of the upcoming XR revolution.
Which Android XR glasses do you want most? 14 votes Audio-only glasses 7 % Monocular (one display) glasses 29 % Binocular (two displays) glasses 57 % I have no interest in XR glasses 7 %
Android XR glasses: 3 different prototypes and approaches Google showed me three different sets of glasses, two of which it asked me not to photograph. Let’s start with the one it is willing to show off: Project Aura.
Project Aura
Google / XREAL
Project Aura is a collaborative effort between Google and a company called XREAL, a well-known Chinese company in XR fan circles that has been making various types of smart glasses since 2017. However, none of its products have ever been runaway hits or made much of a dent outside of the tech early adopter market.
Project Aura is poised to essentially be a lighter, more portable version of the Galaxy XR. It’s the same core concept: You put a headset on your face that’s tethered to a “puck” you keep in your pocket or clip to your belt. However, instead of a fully immersive VR-style headset, Project Aura resembles traditional glasses (although definitely not the kind you would wear while out and about).
Project Aura is, remarkably, almost a 1:1 recreation of the Galaxy XR. It's just in the form of glasses instead of a headset.
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