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Brilliant Labs to Launch Next-gen Smart Glasses on July 31st

July 25, 2025 From roadtovr

Brilliant Labs announced it’s getting ready to launch its next generation of smart glasses at the end of the month, making it the company’s third device since it was founded in 2019.

In 2023, Brilliant Labs released Monocle, a developer kit which included a single heads-up display that was meant to be clipped onto existing eyewear.

A year later, the company released Frame, which evolved Monocle’s monoscopic display and housed it in a glasses-like form factor, including a single camera sensor—making for an impressively slim and light package weighing in at less than 40g.

Frame was “designed to be your AI driven personal assistant,” the company says, emphasizing its access to AI models like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Whisper, so you gets answers to questions about what you’re currently looking at, experience live translation from either speech or text, and search the Internet in real-time.

Now, Brilliant Labs says its next device is coming on July 31st. Information is thin on the ground, however company co-founder and CEO Bobak Tavangar is taking part in a launch day Q&A via the augmented reality subreddit.

There, we also got a side glimpse of the device in question, which appears to have ditched the round, old school spectacle vibe for a more modern frame shape. Whatever the case, we’re sure to learn more come July 31st. We’ll be keeping an eye on the augmented reality subreddit and the company’s website then.

Meanwhile, the smart glasses segment is heating up. Meta and EssilorLuxottica announced its next-gen Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses last month; shortly afterwards Chinese tech giant Xiaomi announced its was releasing its own AI Glasses. On the horizon is Google’s Android XR-based smart glasses, built in collaboration with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster.

Although Brilliant Labs is currently one of the few actually offering a pair of smart glasses with a built-in display, it won’t be that way for long. Google says it’s going to offer a model of its Android XR smart glasses with some sort of display. Leaks also maintain Meta’s next pair of smart glasses may also include a display and a wrist-worn controller for input.

Sharp Unveils Prototype VR Controller, Combining Haptic Gloves & Standard Buttons

July 22, 2025 From roadtovr

Sharp announced it’s releasing a prototype VR haptic controller in Japan, which aims to reproduce the sense of touch in VR while serving a familiar button layout.

Japan-based Sharp says its VR haptic controllers can let users sense texture thanks to “multi-segmented tactile elements” placed on the device’s fingertips. Various vibration patterns on the surface are meant to convey different textures, such as smooth, rough, etc., the company says.

“Although the haptics are not at a level that reproduces the real thing, by changing the parameters we have been able to achieve a variety of tactile sensations,” Sharp says on the project’s Japan-facing website. “Rather than leaving it in-house until the developers are satisfied with it, we plan to work with our users to improve the quality of the content.”

Sharp says the device, which will arrive in a left and right pair, “does not allow for delicate finger tracking like glove types.” It also lacks force feedback, or any sort of temperature feedback.

The prototype is supposed to also function like a standard controller, including sticks and buttons, the company says. One thing that isn’t clear though is how the gloves will be tracked, which Sharp says could include mounts for “high market share” tracking standards.

Sharp says the device is currently undergoing demonstration experiments, so it’s not clear whether it will eventually be commercialized; we haven’t seen anything beyond renders at this time. The company is aiming to put early iterations of the device in the hands of the paying public though, at least in Japan.

The company recently closed pre-registrations through its Japan-facing website, pricing units at ¥100,000 (~$680). “Please note that development or release may be canceled,” the company warns.

Granted, Sharp has more experience in XR than you might think. As the leading OEM supplier of high-end VR displays, at one time Sharp was the top display supplier for Meta Quest 2. In late 2024, Sharp and Japan’s largest telecom NTT Docomo also launched a pair of AR glasses, called MiRZA.

Meta Researchers Reveal Compact Ultra-wide Field-of-View VR & MR Headsets

July 18, 2025 From roadtovr

Ahead of an upcoming technical conference, researchers from Meat’s Reality Labs Research group published details on their work toward creating ultra-wide field-of-view VR & MR headsets that use novel optics to maintain a compact goggles-style form-factor.

Published in advance of the ACM SIGGRAPH 2025 Emerging Technologies conference, the research article details two headsets, each achieving a horizontal field-of-view of 180 degrees (which is a huge jump over Meta’s existing headsets, like Quest 3, which is around 100 degrees).

The first headset is a pure VR headset which the researchers say uses “high-curvature reflective polarizers” to achieve the wide field of view in a compact form-factor.

The other is an MR headset, which uses the same underlying optics and head-mount but also incorporates four passthrough cameras to provide an ultra-wide passthrough field-of-view to match the headset’s field-of-view. The cameras total 80MP of resolution at 60 FPS.

The researchers compared the field-of-view of their experimental headsets to that of the current Quest 3. In the case of the MR headset, you can clearly see the advantages of the wider field-of-view: the user can easily see someone who is in a chair right next to them, and also has peripheral awareness of a snack in their lap.

Both experimental headsets appear to use something similar to the outside-in ‘Constellation’ tracking system that Meta used on its first consumer headset, the Oculus Rift CV1. We’ve seen Constellation pop up on a number of Reality Labs Research headsets over the years, likely because it’s easier to use for rapid iteration compared to inside-out tracking systems.

The researchers point out that similarly wide field-of-view headsets already exist the consumer market (for instance, those from Pimax), but the field-of-view often comes at the cost of significant bulk.

A Pimax headset, known for its wide field-of-view. | Photo by Road to VR

The Reality Labs researchers claim that these experimental headsets have a “form-factor comparable to current consumer devices.”

“Together, our prototype headsets establish a new state-of-the-art in immersive virtual and mixed reality experiences, pointing to the user benefits of wider FOVs for entertainment and telepresence applications,” the researchers claim.

For those hoping these experimental headsets point to a future Quest headset with an ultra-wide field-of-view… it’s worth noting that Meta does lots of R&D and has shown off many research prototypes over the years featuring technologies that have yet to make it to market.

For instance, back in 2018, Meta (at the time still called Facebook) showed a research prototype headset with varifocal displays. Nearly 7 years later, the company still hasn’t shipped a headset with varifocal technology.

As the company itself will tell you, it all comes down to tradeoffs; Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth explained as recently as late 2024 why he thinks pursuing a wider field-of-view in consumer VR headsets brings too many downsides in terms of price, weight, battery life, etc. But there’s always the chance that this latest research causes him to change his mind.

Pico Reportedly Developing Slim & Light Mixed Reality ‘Goggles’ to Rival Next-Gen Meta Headset

July 18, 2025 From roadtovr

Pico, the XR headset maker owned by TikTok parent ByteDance, is reportedly developing a mixed reality device aimed at rivaling Meta’s next-generation XR headset.

According to a report from The Information, Pico is currently working on a pair of mixed reality “goggles” codenamed ‘Swan’, which are said to be thin and lightweight—reportedly weighing around just 100 grams.

Citing three people with direct knowledge of the project, The Information reports that the device features a hybrid design that offloads processing to a tethered compute puck. This approach allows the glasses portion of the device to be significantly thinner and lighter than current-generation XR headsets like the Quest 3 or Pico 4 Ultra.

Swan is also said to rely primarily on eye and hand tracking for input, moving away from physical controllers. Furthermore, the report notes that Pico is developing “specialized chips for the device that will process data from its sensors to minimize the lag or latency between what a user sees in AR [sic] and their physical movements.”

Swan is said to be conceptually similar to Meta’s reportedly upcoming mixed reality device codenamed ‘Phoenix’, which also includes a compute puck and a glasses-like form factor. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Meta’s headset could launch in either 2026 (WSJ’s estimate) or 2027 (as cited by The Information) and may cost under $1,000.

The codename itself is still a matter of speculation: The Information refers to Meta’s headset as ‘Phoenix’, while the WSJ uses ‘Loma’, and online sources have also mentioned ‘Puffin’.

That said, there is currently no information on what Swan will cost or where it will ship. In the past, Pico’s consumer headsets have typically been priced slightly above Meta’s equivalents and have been available primarily in East and Southeast Asia and Europe—but not in North America.

Varjo is Pulling Support for All of Its Older XR Headsets Next Year

July 18, 2025 From roadtovr

Varjo announced that starting next year, it’s no longer supporting its fleet of third generation XR headsets, which includes XR-3, VR-3, and Varjo Aero.

As first spotted by XT Today, Varjo says it’s now “focusing our manufacturing efforts on the XR-4 Series headsets,” which released in late 2023.

The Finland-based company notes in a support FAQ that its companion software, Varjo Base, will receive software updates and bug fixes until the January 1st, 2026 cutoff date.

After its final update, the company says that owners of XR-3, VR-3, and Aero can still use older versions of the software, but this also includes the end of customer support, technical and developer assistance for those devices.

Released in 2021, Varjo’s third-gen headsets marked the company’s departure from solely focusing on enterprise headsets. While both its XR-3 and VR-3 were squarely targeted at businesses with cash to spare—priced at $5,495 and $3,195 respectively—which included an obligatory annual subscription fee, Aero was the company’s first to actively appeal to prosumers.

Released in late 2021, Aero was priced at $2,000, which included subscription-free compatibility with SteamVR via Varjo Base (i.e. you can’t just plug it in like Valve Index, Bigscreen Beyond 2, etc).

Although Aero was by far one of the most expensive prosumer PC VR headsets on offer at the time, it wasn’t for naught. In our deep dive review of Aero, Road to VR’s Ben Lang praised the headset’s “stunning clarity,” noting it was poised to be “a dream headset for VR simmers who aren’t afraid to trade cash for immersion.”

Notably, Varjo has been sold out of all third-gen headsets for at least over a year now, with the company additionally confirming production has been discontinued for these devices.

This leaves the Varjo’s main focus on its XR-4 Series headsets, which were released in late 2023, marking a return to its enterprise-only roots. Its fourth-gen series includes the standard XR‑4 ($5,990), XR‑4 Focal Edition ($9,990), and its military-compliant XR‑4 Secure Edition, which comes in three variants (~$18,00 – $32,000).

While previously launched without subscription-based access to Varjo Base, the company announced in March that some previously free software features would be paywalled behind a ‘Varjo Base Pro’ license, which includes more advanced mixed reality capabilities, expanded tracking support, programmatic controls, and multi-app functionality.

Bigscreen Reveals ‘VRChat Edition’ of Beyond 2e PC VR Headset, Releasing in September

July 17, 2025 From roadtovr

Bigscreen unveiled a new ‘VRChat Edition’ of its slim and light Beyond 2e PC VR headset, which the company says is specifically designed for die-hard users of VR’s most popular social platform.

Bigscreen began shipping the first production units of Beyond 2 late last month, which includes both the standard Beyond 2 and its eye-tracking enabled variant, Beyond 2e.

Now, the company announced it’s also launching an exclusive VRChat Edition of the Beyond 2e, slated to start shipping out sometime in September 2025.

As far as specs go, the VRChat Edition is virtually the same as the standard Beyond 2e, including it eye-tracking sensors, 2,560 × 2,560 micro-OLED displays, and 116° diagonal FOV, thanks to the inclusion of new pancake lenses—all of it weighing in at 107g.

Now available for pre-order for $1,269—just $50 more than the standard Beyond 2e—the upcoming VRChat Edition does however promise a few differences, notably including a translucent Atomic Purple shell and hand-drawn packaging artwork.

Note: you’ll need a VR-ready PC to run any of Bigscreen’s headsets, including the new Beyond 2e VRChat Edition, as well as SteamVR base stations, controllers, and optional trackers for body tracking in VRChat. Find out here if your PC is VR-ready.

Purchase also includes exclusive VRChat digital items, including VRChat stickers and badges for profiles. Bigscreen says more features are planned for the VRChat Edition in the future, which includes including “some rare giveaway drops.”

While orders are slated to start shipping in September, current preorder holders can actually request an upgrade to the VRChat Edition by contacting support (support@bigscreenvr.com).

In the meantime, you can check out a deep dive with Bigscreen founder and CEO Darshan Shankar and VRChat Head of Community Tupper in an hour-long discussion that touches on everything from the improvements in Bigscreen’s latest headset, to why eye-tracking is important in VRChat.

Beyond Military, Meta is Eyeing an XR Expansion into the Medical Field

July 14, 2025 From roadtovr

It was announced recently that Meta is partnering with military tech company Anduril to bring XR technology to the battlefield. New job listings indicate the company is also looking to expand its XR tech into the medical field.

Meta is of course best known for in the XR space for its consumer VR and MR headsets like the Rift and Quest, but the company also thinks its XR tech has a bigger role to play. While Meta has dabbled in the education and enterprise spaces with its headsets for years, the company is now starting to think seriously about the medical field.

New job listings from Reality Labs (Meta’s XR division) show the company wants to fill roles relating to regulatory approval for XR medical products.

“We’re seeking a regulatory affairs specialist to join our medical devices compliance team. You will get to work on wearables and Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) applications for the US and worldwide approvals,” reads the listing for ‘Medical Devices, Regulatory Specialist‘. “You will work on cutting-edge wearable technologies, including augmented reality glasses, wrist wearables, and other innovative devices.”

“Collaborate proactively and establish strategic relationships with external stakeholders (Notified Bodies, FDA, Competent Authorities and other regulatory bodies) to ensure that requirements are known early during strategy development, enabling rapid market access to Meta Reality Labs products,” reads the listing for ‘Medical Devices Regulatory Affairs Strategy Specialist‘.

It’s unclear exactly which products or services Meta is hoping to bring into the medical space. However, augmented reality glasses like the company’s Orion prototype seem like a natural fit. While there are certainly established medical uses for VR and MR headsets, AR glasses have an advantage in real-world awareness and fidelity thanks to see-through lenses rather than passthrough; this is important for social reasons (doctors being able to look their patients in the eye) and fidelity (a surgeon having an unfiltered view of an operation).

Beyond wearable devices, Meta is also likely to explore the use of conversational artificial intelligence as an aid to medical workers, and it’s wrist-worn input devices as a means of hands-free input.

Considering the often extensive regulatory hurdles in the medical landscape, it could be years yet before we see exactly what Meta plans to bring to market in this field.

CREAL Secures $8.9M Funding to Miniaturize Light Field Display for AR Glasses

July 11, 2025 From roadtovr

Switzerland-based light field display startup CREAL announced its closed a $8.9 million equity funding round, which the company says will accelerate the miniaturization of its light field module for AR glasses.

The equity funding round was led by ZEISS, the Germany-based optical systems and optoelectronics company, with participation from new and existing investors, including members of the UBS private investor network.

This brings the company’s overall funding to $32 million, with previous investors including Swisscom Ventures, Verve Ventures, and DAA Capital Partners.

In a press statement, Creal says funds will accelerate its mission to deliver “natural, comfortable, and healthy visual digital experiences by advancing its proprietary light field display.”

Integrated into AR glasses, light field displays can recreate the way light naturally enters our eyes, enabling more realistic depth perception and reducing eye strain by allowing proper focus cues at different distances. You can learn more about light fields in our explainer below:

Light fields are significant to AR and VR because they’re a genuine representation of how light exists in the real world, and how we perceive it. Unfortunately they’re difficult to capture or generate, and arguably even harder to display.

Every AR and VR headset on the market today uses some tricks to try to make our eyes interpret what we’re seeing as if it’s actually there in front of us. Most headsets are using basic stereoscopy and that’s about it—the 3D effect gives a sense of depth to what’s otherwise a scene projected onto a flat plane at a fixed focal length.

Such headsets support vergence (the movement of both eyes to fuse two images into one image with depth), but not accommodation (the dynamic focus of each individual eye). That means that while your eyes are constantly changing their vergence, the accommodation is stuck in one place. Normally these two eye functions work unconsciously in sync, hence the so-called ‘vergence-accommodation conflict’ when they don’t.

Some headsets include ‘varifocal’ approaches, dynamically shifting the focal length based on where you’re looking (with eye-tracking), such as Magic Leap One as well as older Meta prototype VR headsets—supporting a larger number of focal lengths. Even so, these varifocal approaches still have some inherent issues that arise because they aren’t actually displaying light fields.

“As AI reshapes how we work and create, AR is poised to become the killer interface to this new era,” says Tomas Sluka, CEO and co-founder of Creal. “But if we’re going to wear AR glasses all day, they must imperatively be healthy, comfortable, and natural to use. That’s why we’re focused on delivering AR glasses that uniquely project digital imagery with real-world depth — fully supporting the natural focusing mechanism of the human eye. This is one of the key foundations for immersive spatial computing.”

Creal says the fresh funding round will help the Écublens, Switzerland-based company continue R&D on its AR light field module, which the company aims to integrate into lightweight, fashionable AR glasses—first for enterprise, and later for consumers.

This also includes ongoing support of a licensing agreement with Zeiss, kicked off in late 2024, to bring its light field-based vision care platform to Zeiss, which it will be used in Zeiss’ next-gen diagnostic and treatment devices.

Meta Reportedly Invests $3.5 Billion in EssilorLuxottica, Further Strengthening Smart Glasses Partnership

July 10, 2025 From roadtovr

It was rumored last year that Meta was seeking a minority stake in French-Italian eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, not only the largest eyewear manufacturer in the world, but also Meta’s partner behind its growing line of smart glasses. Now, a new report suggests the deal has gone through.

Citing people familiar with the matter, a Bloomberg report maintains Meta has acquired just under 3% of EssilorLuxottica, which is suspected to be worth €3 billion (~$3.5 million).

Meta is reportedly considering additional investment in the eyewear maker over time, which could bring its overall stake to around 5%, the people said, who asked to not be named due to ongoing deliberations.

In June 2024, a Wall Street Journal report maintained Meta was considering a stake of about 5% in the eyewear group, although at the time talks were reportedly still in early phases.

Then, three months later, Meta announced it was expanding its smart glasses partnership with EssilorLuxottica into 2030. At the time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described its long-term roadmap as giving the companies “the opportunity to turn glasses into the next major technology platform, and make it fashionable in the process.”

This comes as the companies prepare to release their latest smart glasses collaboration: Oakley Meta HSTN. Meta and EssilorLuxottica are releasing a limited edition version of device on July 11th, priced at $499, with multiple lens and frame colorways slated to go on sale later this summer.

Oakley Meta HSTN comes with a modest feature bump over the companies’ second-gen Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which launched in 2023. In addition to serving up music, photo and video capture, and AI chats, Oakley Meta HSNT also promises better battery life and higher resolution video capture over the current Ray-Ban Meta generation, offering up to “3K video” from the device’s ultra-wide 12MP camera and a typical battery life of eight hours between recharges via the supplied charging case.

Meanwhile, other tech giants are preparing their own entries into the segment. Google revealed back in May that it was partnering with eyewear makers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to bring its first Android XR smart glasses to market. Recent industry reports allege Google is also looking to invest $100 million in the South Korea-based Gentle Monster.

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi recently released its Xiaomi AI Glasses, which match many of Oakley Meta HSNT’s biggest features, but also add a few of their own—notably an increased continuous recording cap of 45 minutes and even the option to select electrochromic lenses for variable lens-shading. For now, Xiaomi AI Glasses are only available in China.

Both Samsung and Apple are reportedly looking to launch their own smart glasses at some point in the future too. Separate reports maintain Samsung could release a device this year, and Apple as soon as 2026.

‘Zoom’ App Comes to Quest, Letting You Join Work Meetings as Your Avatar

July 9, 2025 From roadtovr

Meta announced it’s now added an official Zoom app to the Horizon Store, letting you host and join online meetings as your Quest avatar.

This isn’t the first time Quest users could jump into a Zoom call in VR. In 2021, the company integrated Zoom into Horizon Workrooms, its all-in-one immersive collaboration app. That was more focused on face-to-face VR meetings though, which could also allow you to include webcam participants into a single immersive space.

Now, users just looking for Zoom and nothing else can download the standalone app for free, which Meta calls a “seamless extension of the Zoom Workplace app you’ve already been using on your mobile or desktop.”

The new Zoom app lets you participate in meetings as your Horizon Worlds avatar, although not within an immersive environment like Horizon Workrooms. Zoom for Quest essentially projects a 2D video of your avatar to anyone, be it a fellow VR user or a person using a standard webcam.

The question remains whether you’d actually want to join meetings using your Meta avatar. While greatly improved over the years, they’re still just as cartoony as ever—especially in comparison to Apple’s latest Persona avatars coming to Vision OS 26. Notably, Vision Pro has had its own Persona-capable Zoom app since the headset’s initial February 2024 launch.

That said, it’s difficult to argue with free. To start using Zoom on Quest, simply download the Zoom Workplace app from the Horizon Store, and login with the same profile you use on mobile or desktop to get chatting.

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