Standing on a crate inside Walt Disney Studios Stage 1 is Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy. He's talking with a crowd of people wearing the same ordinary-looking sunglasses that I am. He's larger than life, speaking with full-body movements and natural gestures.
Then I take off the glasses, and I can see that Rocket was on a screen, not an animatronic figure standing on the physical crate. When Rocket stops moving, out from behind a curtain -- Wizard of Oz-style -- steps an actor who's been doing all the movements and voice work on Rocket's behalf.
I could wear these glasses all day and never know there's anything out of the ordinary about them. They're regular sunglasses when you're outdoors, before transforming into XR glasses when you look at a special screen.
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The LED screen technology and glasses come from Liminal Space, a startup selected as part of the 2025 Disney Accelerator Program. Starting out by providing AR experiences at music concerts, Liminal Space creates display systems with microLED chip technology. This produces holographic 3D displays used for everything from stadiums and arenas to smaller spaces like attractions and galleries.
During a Demo Day event at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank in November, Liminal Space co-founder and CEO Nathan Huber explains on-screen that he wanted to improve on how virtual reality is a "solo, isolating experience" because you're wearing a hulking headset alone, and all you can see is the display. You can't share it with the people around you.
"We can give you that same level of immersion and awe [as VR], but you can now see your friends and family ... and do it all for one to 10,000 people at the same time," Huber says in the Demo Day video, describing a world where things are "augmented by digital enhancements all around you."
Liminal Space's sunglasses are a little closer to augmented reality (AR) than they are to VR, as well as a huge step up from old-school 3D glasses that are currently used in theme parks.
Whereas VR -- like Apple's Vision Pro and Meta's Quest 3 -- requires a headset and drops you into a fully virtual world, AR overlays the real world with graphics. Smart glasses, like Meta's Ray-Bans (which Disneyland has already been experimenting with), use AR to overlay information over the real world, as well as providing camera-recording functions and phone connectivity.
As theme parks compete with one another to provide their guests with the most immersive atmosphere possible, Disney's backing of Liminal Space shows it's interested in adding more hyperrealistic screens to its parks.
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