AR Headset

Xiaomi Unveils Wireless AR Glasses Prototype, Powered by Same Chipset as Meta Quest Pro

February 27, 2023 From roadtovr

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi today showed off a prototype AR headset at Mobile World Congress (MWC) that wirelessly connects to the user’s smartphone, making for what the company calls its “first wireless AR glasses to utilize distributed computing.”

Called Xiaomi Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition, the device is built upon the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chipset as Meta’s recently released Quest Pro VR standalone.

While specs are still thin on the ground, the company did offer some info on headline features. For now, Xiaomi is couching it as a “concept technology achievement,” so it may be a while until we see a full spec sheet.

Packing two microOLED displays, the company is boasting “retina-level” resolution, saying its AR glasses pack in 58 pixels per degree (PPD). For reference, Meta Quest Pro has a PPD of 22, while enterprise headset Varjo XR-3 cites a PPD of 70.

The company hasn’t announced the headset’s field of view (FOV), however it says its free-form light-guiding prisms “minimizes light loss and produces clear and bright images with a to-eye brightness of up to 1200nit.”

Electrochromic lenses are also said to adapt the final image to different lighting conditions, even including a full ‘blackout mode’ that ostensibly allows it to work as a VR headset as well.

As for input, Xiaomi Wireless AR Glass includes onboard hand-tracking in addition to smartphone-based touch controls. Xiaomi says its optical hand-tracking is designed to let users to do things like select and open apps, swipe through pages, and exit apps.

As a prototype, there’s no pricing or availability on the table, however Xiaomi says the lightweight glasses (at 126g) will be available in a titanium-colored design with support for three sizes of nosepieces. An attachable glasses clip will also be available for near-sighted users.

In an exclusive hands-on, XDA Developers surmised it felt near production-ready, however one of the issues noted during a seemingly bump-free demo was battery life; the headset had to be charged in the middle of the 30-minute demo. Xiaomi apparently is incorporating a self-developed silicon-oxygen anode battery that is supposedly smaller than a typical lithium-ion battery. While there’s an onboard Snapdragon XR 2 Gen 1 chipset, XDA Developers also notes it doesn’t offer any storage, making a compatible smartphone requisite to playing AR content.

This isn’t the company’s first stab at XR tech; last summer Xiaomi showed off a pair of consumer smartglasses, called Mijia Glasses Camera, that featured a single heads-up display. Xiaomi’s Wireless AR Glass is however much closer in function to the concept it teased in late 2021, albeit with chunkier free-form light-guiding prisms than the more advanced-looking waveguides teased two years ago.

Xiaomi is actively working closely with chipmaker Qualcomm to ensure compatibility with Snapdragon Spaces-ready smartphones, which include Xiaomi 13 and OnePlus 11 5G. Possible other future contributions from Lenovo and Motorola, which have also announced their intentions to support Snapdragon Spaces.

Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Spaces in late 2021, a software tool kit which focuses on performance and low power devices which allows developers to create head-worn AR experiences from the ground-up, or add head-worn AR to existing smartphone apps.

Qualcomm Partners with 7 Major Telecoms to Advance Smartphone-tethered AR Glasses

February 27, 2023 From roadtovr

Qualcomm announced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) today it’s partnering with seven global telecommunication companies in preparation for the next generation of AR glasses which are set to work directly with the user’s smartphone.

Partners include CMCC, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI Corporation, NTT QONOQ, T-Mobile, Telefonica, and Vodafone, which are said to currently be working with Qualcomm on new XR devices, experiences, and developer initiatives, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform.

Qualcomm and Japan’s KDDI Corporation also announced a multi-year collaboration which it says will focus on the expansion of XR use cases and creation of a developer program in Japan.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm says OEMs are designing “a new wave of devices for operators and beyond” such as the newly unveiled Xiaomi Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition, OPPO’s new Mixed Reality device and OnePlus 11 5G smartphone.

At least in Xiaomi’s case, its Wireless AR Glass headset streams data from compatible smartphones. Effectively offloading computation to the smartphone, the company’s 126g headset boasts a wireless latency of as low as 3ms between the smartphone device to the glasses, and a wireless connection with full link latency as low as 50ms which is comparable to wired solution.

US Congress Halts Orders of Microsoft AR Combat Goggles Amid Reports of Headaches & Eyestrain

January 13, 2023 From roadtovr

In 2021, Microsoft won a United States Army defense contract worth up to $22 billion which would support the development of an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), a tactical AR headset for soldiers based on HoloLens 2. Now Congress has rejected the Army’s request for $400 million to buy as many as 6,900 more of the AR combat goggles this year, a Bloomberg report maintains.

The rejection cites rocky tests conducted last year. Testing was done over a three-week period ending June 18th, where the Army assessed Microsoft’s IVAS with a cadre of 70 Army infantry soldiers, who were tasked with using the device during three 72-hour combat scenarios.

Complaints included “mission-affecting physical impairments,” with more than 80 percent of soldiers experiencing headaches, eyestrain and nausea after less than three hours using the goggles.

None of this comes as a giant surprise though, as Microsoft was reportedly bracing for negative field tests back in early 2022 due to alleged quality problems.

Softening the blow somewhat, lawmakers have earmarked $40 million to develop a new IVAS model, Army spokesman David Patterson said in an email obtained by Bloomberg.

This comes only a few weeks after the Army awarded a $125 million “task order” for the development of a new model, dubbed version 1.2, which is said to include software improvements for better reliability and reduced power demand.

The 1.2 version task order is said to provide “improvements based on completed test events” which aim at a developing a “lower profile Heads-Up Display with distributed counterweight for improved user interface and comfort.”

In the meantime, the Army will be using its first batch of 5,000 goggles for training—only a small fraction of the max 121,000 devices, spares and support services stipulated in the $22 billion deal.

Report: Apple’s MR Headset Said to Include 120-Degree FOV, Waist-mounted Battery & Tons of Biometric Trackers

January 4, 2023 From roadtovr

Apple’s long-awaited mixed reality headset is still deep under wraps, although a recent report from The Information has shed what appears to be new light on some of the features coming to the fruit company’s first AR/VR headset.

There’s a lot of new information here, and of course, we can’t substantiate it even if we tried. We’ve restructured the main takeaways, courtesy of MacRumors, into a sort of fantasy spec sheet:

Reported Apple MR Specs

Resolution: Dual Micro OLED displays at 4K resolution (per eye)
FOV: 120-degrees, similar to Valve Index
Chipset: Two 5nm chips. Includes a main SoC (CPU, GPU, and memory) and a dedicated image signal processor (ISP). Chips communicate via a custom streaming codec to combat latency.
Battery: Waist-mounted battery, connected via MagSafe-like power cable to the headset’s headband. Two-hour max battery life, although hotswappable for longer sessions.
Passthrough: ISP chip contains custom high-bandwidth memory made by SK Hynix, providing low latency color passthrough
Audio: H2 chip, providing ultra-low latency connection with the second-generation AirPods Pro and future AirPods models. No 3.5mm and possible no support for non-AirPod BT headphones.
Controller: Apple is said to favor hand-tracking and voice recognition to control the headset, but it has tested a “wand” and a “finger thimble” as alternative control input methods.
Prescription Lenses: Magnetically attachable custom prescription lenses for glasses-wearers.
IPD Adjustment: Automatic, motorized adjustment to match the wearer’s interpupillary distance.
Eye Tracking: At least one camera per-eye for things like avatar presence and foveated rendering
Face & Body Tracking: More than a dozen cameras and sensors capture both facial expressions and body movements, including the user’s legs.
Room Tracking: Both short- and long-range LiDAR scanners to map surfaces and distances in three dimensions.
App Compatibility: Said to have the ability to run existing iOS apps in 2D.

Then there are some design rumors, which don’t fit so well into our fantasy spec sheet. The Information says it has reconfirmed these previously reported rumors.

Design Rumors

Outer Shell: Aluminum, glass, and carbon fiber to reduce its size and weight. Cameras are largely concealed for aesthetic reasons.
Presence Displays: Outward-facing display can show user’s facial expressions and also presumably eye movements. Said to be an always-on display similar in latency and power draw of Apple Watch or iPhone 14 Pro.
Dedicated Passthrough Switch: Digital Crown-like dial on its right side to switch between VR and passthrough.
Headstrap: Various available, including consumer-focused headstrap similar in material to Apple Watch sport bands with built-in speakers. Unspecified, but different headstrap targeted at developers.

Apple supplier Pegatron is said to have already assembled “thousands of prototype units of the headset” over the course of 2022 at its Shanghai-based facility.

According to four people with knowledge of the matter, The Information reports that Apple could price its MR headset around $3,000 or more depending on its configuration.

The report maintains the headset was initially supposed to launch in 2022, although by now it’s clear it’s obviously been delayed. A previous Bloomberg report alleged this was due to “overheating, cameras and software” having been stumbling blocks along the way to launch.

Qualcomm Reveals Snapdragon AR2 Processor for Glasses-sized AR Devices

November 16, 2022 From roadtovr

Qualcomm today announced Snapdragon AR2, its “purpose-built headworn augmented reality platform.” Differentiating from the company’s existing Snapdragon XR2 chips, Qualcomm says the AR2 architecture is better suited for creating AR glasses with low power consumption and compact form factors.

Today during Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit event, the company revealed the Snapdragon AR2 platform which consists of a trio of chips which the company says will help make truly glasses-sized AR devices possible.

Qualcomm was early to the standalone VR space and has been dominant with its Snapdragon XR2 chips which have found their way into many of the leading standalone headsets on the market, and are now in more than 60 devices total, the company says.

Aiming to take a similar bite out of the forthcoming AR glasses segment, Qualcomm has created a new Snapdragon AR2 platform with a distributed processing design. The platform consists of three chips:

AR processor (for sensor perception and video output)
AR co-processor (for sensor fusion and dedicated computer vision tasks)
Wi-Fi 7 chip (for communication to a host processing device)

By creating a more distributed workload across a main processor and a co-processor, Qualcomm claims AR2 is up to 50% more power efficient while offering 2.5 times better AI performance, and a more compact form-factor, compared to the single-chip Snapdragon XR2 solution.

Not only will the AR processor and co-processor help share a workload, Qualcomm also sees AR2 devices using the speedy Wi-Fi 7 chip to communicate with a host device like a smartphone or wireless compute puck that will do the heavy lifting like application processing and rendering. Qualcomm claims the Wi-Fi 7 chip (FastConnect 7800) can achieve 5.8 Gbps bandwidth with just 2ms of latency.

Using this three-chip framework for distributed processing, Qualcomm claims it will be possible to build compact AR glasses that consume less than one watt of power.

The AR2 platform supports up to nine concurrent cameras for a bevy of head-tracking, environment-sensing, and user-tracking tasks.

“We built Snapdragon AR2 to address the unique challenges of headworn AR and provide industry leading processing, AI and connectivity that can fit inside a stylish form factor,” said Hugo Swart, vice president of XR product management at Qualcomm. “With the technical and physical requirements for VR/MR and AR diverging, Snapdragon AR2 represents another metaverse-defining platform in our XR portfolio to help our OEM partners revolutionize AR glasses.”

There’s no word yet on when the first AR2 devices will hit the market, but Qualcomm lists a handful of partners actively working with the platform: Lenovo, LG, Niantic, Nreal, Oppo, Pico, Qonoq, Rokid, Sharp, TCL, Vuzix, and Xiaomi.

Quest Pro Revealed with Snapdragon XR2+, Face-tracking, & More; Ships October 25th for $1,500

October 11, 2022 From roadtovr

Today during Meta Connect the company finally revealed its high-end Quest Pro headset (formerly called Project Cambria). Priced at $1,500, the headset packs a new Snapdragon XR2+ processor along with a bevy of sensors for tracking the user’s expressions and the world around them for improved passthrough AR capabilities. Alongside new and improved controllers, the company also revealed the full Quest Pro specs, pre-order date, and release date.

Key Quest Pro Coverage:

Quest Pro Hands-on – The Dawn of the Mixed Reality Headset Era

Quest Pro Technical Analysis – What’s Promising & What’s Not

Touch Pro Controllers Revealed – Also Compatible with Quest 2

Quest Pro was just announced and is already available for pre-order starting today in 22 countries. Priced at $1,500 and with a release date of October 25th, Quest Pro is fully compatible with Quest 2 content while bringing improvements that will enhance passthrough AR functionality and social interactions thanks to face-tracking capabilities. Let’s take a look at the on-paper specs:

Quest Pro Specs
Resolution	1800 × 1920 (3.5MP) per-eye, LCD (2x)
Refresh Rate	72Hz, 90Hz
Lenses	Pancake non-Fresnel
Field-of-view (claimed)	106ºH × 96ºV
Optical Adjustments	Continuous IPD, contiguous eye-relief
IPD Adjustment Range	55–75mm
Processor	Snapdragon XR2+
RAM	12GB
Storage	256GB
Connectors	USB-C
Weight	722g
Battery Life	1–2 hours
Headset Tracking	Inside-out (no external beacons)
Controller Tracking	Inside-out (headset line-of-sight not needed)
Expression Tracking	Yes (eyes, face)
On-board cameras	5x external, 5x internal
Input	Touch Pro controllers (rechargeable), hand-tracking, voice
Audio	In-headstrap speakers, dual 3.5mm aux output
Microphone	Yes
Pass-through view	Yes (color)
MSRP	$1,500

Compact Optics & Form-factor

From a resolution and field-of-view standpoint, Quest Pro is actually quite similar to Quest 2, boasting an almost identical resolution of 1800 × 1920 (3.5MP) per-eye, but with a much more compact optical pipeline thanks to the use of ‘pancake’ lenses which moves the headset more toward a ‘goggle’-like form-factor than the old box-on-the-face of its predecessor. At 722g, Quest Pro is heavier than Quest 2, but may actually be more comfortable thanks to a rear-mounted battery for balance and a rigid headstrap.

And while the resolution isn’t higher, Meta claims Quest Pro has better clarity thanks to the headset’s new optics: a 25% improvement in sharpness at the center of the field-of-view, and a 50% improvement across the periphery (meaning larger ‘sweet-spot’ of clarity). As of now we’re not sure if those claims are merely about the lenses, or if they include the display as well, though we’ve reached out to Meta for clarity (pun intended).

Meta also claims Quest Pro includes a 500-element local dimming backlight which enables improved contrast up to 75% compared to Quest 2, while also allowing for a 1.3 times larger range of color.

New Controllers & Capabilities

Quest Pro’s controllers, which Meta is calling Touch Pro, are similar in shape but majorly upgraded under the hood. Gone are the tracking rings, which are instead replaced by three cameras which allow the controller to perform its own inside-out tracking. Not only does this make the Touch Pro controllers more compact, it also means they don’t need line-of-sight to the headset in order to maintain their position.

What’s more, the Touch Pro controllers feature improved haptics and new capabilities. The thumb rest of the controller has been angled and now includes a pressure sensor which allows for a natural pinch-like gesture. The controllers come with stylus tips which can be attached to the bottom, allowing you to flip the controller over to use like a bulbous white-board marker. The stylus even has a pressure sensor to determine how hard or soft you’re pushing against a surface.

Despite the new capabilities, the Touch Pro controllers maintain the same button and trigger layout as the Quest 2 controllers for full backwards compatibility with Quest 2 content. Touch Pro controllers are also the first from Meta that are rechargeable.

Though they are included with Quest Pro, the Touch Pro controllers are compatible with Quest 2 and can be purchased as an accessory for $300 starting later this year.

Better Sensing, Inside and Out

Quest Pro doesn’t just bring improved form-factor and controllers, the headset is also equipped with a bevy of sensors for better integrating the real world into the user’s experience, and better integrating the user into the virtual world.

Quest Pro packs five external sensors for passthrough AR capabilities, offering a higher resolution color view with improved depth-detection, making the headset better at understanding the geometry of the room around the user, and allowing it to more convincingly merge the virtual and real world.

The headset also includes five internal sensors for tracking the user’s eyes and face. In addition to using eye-tracking as input (potentially for things like foveated rendering), the sensors track much more information about the user’s face, allowing for significantly more expressive avatars than what’s possible on Quest 2.

Powered Up Processor

Given all the new and processing happening on Quest Pro, it’s a good thing the headset also sees both a processor and RAM upgrade. Quest Pro uses the newly revealed Snapdragon XR2+, an upgraded version of the processor that’s in Quest 2 but with better cooling, allowing for 50% more processing power. The headset also doubles the RAM over Quest 2 from 6GB to 12GB. As of now it isn’t clear how much of this increase in performance will be available to developers vs. how much will be retained for system functions like tracking.

More Features, Less Battery

Though Quest Pro includes a heap of enhancements over Quest 2, it comes with a cost… and not just in price. Meta says users can expect 1–2 hours of Quest Pro battery life. Luckily the headset includes a charging dock for both the headset and controllers, hopefully ensuring it’s ready to go whenever you are. Meta says the headset can charge to full from the dock in about 2 hours.

Complement Not Replacement, Says Meta

Meta says Quest Pro represents the company’s first entry in a line of “high-end” headsets, while Quest 2 and its progeny will continue to co-exist as an entry-level option.

Quest Pro is fully compatible with Quest 2 content, and while the headset is designed with an emphasis on passthrough AR (with an open peripheral view to keep users more grounded in their environment), the headset also includes magnetically attachable peripheral blinders to dial up the immersion for VR. A separate ‘full light blocker’, which blocks out even more of the surrounding view is available as a separate accessory.

– – — – –

Quest Pro is priced at $1,500 and pre-orders are available today, with headsets poised to ship starting on October 25th.

Magic Leap 2 Starting Price Positioned Slightly Less Than HoloLens 2, Release Date Set for September

July 12, 2022 From roadtovr

Magic Leap today announced pricing and release date details for the company’s latest AR headset, Magic Leap 2.

Magic Leap 2 Release Date and Price

Magic Leap 2 is finally set to officially launch on September 30th, 2022. The company says the headset will come in three versions priced for different groups:

Magic Leap 2 Base (for “professionals and developers”)

$3,300
One year warranty

Magic Leap 2 Developer Pro

$4,100
One year warranty
Access to developer tools, sample products, enterprise-grade features, and “monthly early releases for development and test purposes”

Magic Leap 2 Enterprise

$5,000
Two year warranty
Two years of access to enterprise features and updates
Manageable via enterprise UEM/MDM solutions

The headset’s starting price makes it clear that Magic Leap is positioning its latest headset as an alternative to Microsoft’s HoloLens 2; the $3,300 base price of Magic Leap 2 undercuts Microsoft’s offering by $200.

On September 30th Magic Leap 2 will release first in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. The company expects the headset to launch in Japan and Singapore by the end of the year.

Magic Leap 2 Specs

Alongside the announcement of the headset’s price and release date, the company also shared an official list of Magic Leap 2 specs:

Field-of-view	70 degrees
Resolution	1,440 x 1,760
Refresh Rate	120Hz
Brightness	20 to 2,000 nits
Colors	16.8 million
Weight	260g
Camera	12.6MP autofocus RGB camera 4k at 30fps or 1,920 x 1,080 at 60fps video
Storage	256GB
Volume-of-view	37cm to infinity
CPU	AMD 7nm Quad-core Zen2 X86 core (8 threads) 14 core CVIP engine Up to 3.92 GHz max with 512kB L2 per core 4MB total L3 cache
GPU	AMD GFX10.2: 1SE 1SA 4 WGP (8 CUs) 2RB+ 1MB L2 Cache 964 MHz / Max 1.8 GHz
Audio	Built-in stereo speakers
Sensors	3x wide FoV World Cameras Depth Camera RGB Camera Ambient Light Sensor 4x Eye-tracking Cameras 4x IMU 3-axis Accelerometer and Gyroscope 2x 3-axis Magnetometer 2x Altimeter
Battery	3.5hrs continuous use 7hrs sleep mode
Security	WPA3 AMD Platform Security Processor TMR Security fencing between x86 and CVIP

Interested in Magic Leap 2? Check out our recent hands-on with the device.

Magic Leap is Selling Its First AR Headset for Just $550

May 24, 2022 From roadtovr

It looks like Magic Leap is holding a barn burner of a sale on its first AR headset, Magic Leap 1, as the one-time $2,300 device can now be had for $550.

As first reported by GMW3, Magic Leap appears to be flushing excess stock of the 2018-era AR headset via the Amazon-owned online retailer Woot.

The listing (find it here) is for a brand new Magic Leap 1, including the headset’s hip-worn compute unit and single controller. The sale is happening from now until June 1st, and features a three-unit limit per customer. Amazon US Prime members qualify for free shipping, which ought to arrive to those of you in the lower 48 in early June.

If you’re tempted, there’s a few things you should know before hitting the ‘buy now’ button. Users should be warned that since Magic Leap pivoted to service only enterprise users, that its Magic Leap World online app store isn’t likely to see any new apps outside of the handful that were released between 2018-2020.

Still, there are a mix of apps such as Spotify or room-scale shooter Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders which might be better suited as tech demos, giving prospective augmented reality devs a sense of what you might create for a bona fide AR headset, ostensibly in preparation for what devices may come—we’re looking at Apple, Google, and Meta in the near future for mixed reality headsets capable of both VR and passthrough AR.

Launched in 2018, Magic Leap straddled an uneasy rift between enterprise and prosumers with ML 1 (known then as ‘ML One’). Reception by consumers for its $2,300 AR headset was lukewarm, and messaging didn’t seem focused enough to give either developers or consumers hope that a more accessible bit of ML hardware was yet to come. Then in mid 2020, company founder and CEO Rony Abovitz stepped down, giving way to former Microsoft exec Peggy Johnson to take the reigns, who has thus far positioned the company to solely target enterprise with its latest Magic Leap 2 headset.

Here’s the full spec sheet below:

CPU & GPU

NVIDIA® Parker SOC
CPU: 2 Denver 2.0 64-bit cores + 4 ARM Cortex A57 64-bit cores (2 A57’s and 1 Denver accessible to applications)
GPU: NVIDIA Pascal™, 256 CUDA cores
Graphic APIs: OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.1+AEP

RAM: 8 GB

Storage Capacity: 128 GB (actual available storage capacity 95 GB)

Power
Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Up to 3.5 hours continuous use. Battery life can vary based on use cases. Power level will be sustained when connected to an AC outlet. 45-watt USB-C Power Delivery (PD) charger

Audio Input
Voice (speech to text) + real world audio (ambient)

Audio Output
Onboard speakers and 3.5mm jack with audio spatialization processing

Connectivity
Bluetooth 4.2, WiFi 802.11ac/b/g/n, USB-C

Haptics: LRA Haptic Device

Tracking: 6DoF (position and orientation)

Touchpad: Touch sensitive

LEDs: 12-LED (RGB) ring with diffuser

Power: Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Up to 7.5 hours continuous use. 15-watt USB-C charger

Other Inputs
8-bit resolution Trigger Button
Digital Bumper Button
Digital Home Button

Qualcomm’s Latest AR Glasses Reference Design Drops the Tether, Keeps the Compute

May 21, 2022 From roadtovr

Qualcomm has revealed its latest AR glasses reference design, which it offers up to other companies as a blueprint for building their own AR devices. The reference design, which gives us a strong hint at the specs and capabilities of upcoming products, continues to lean on a smartphone to do the heavy compute, but this time is based on a wireless design.

Qualcomm’s prior AR glasses reference design was based on the Snapdragon XR1 chip and called for a wired connection between a smartphone and the glasses, allowing the system to split rendering tasks between the two devices.

Now the company’s latest design, based on Snapdragon XR2, takes the wire out of the equation. But instead of going fully standalone, the new reference design continues to rely on the smartphone to handle most of the heavy rendering, but now does so over a wireless connection between the devices.

In addition to Snapdragon XR2, the AR glasses include Qualcomm’s FastConnect 6900 chip which equips it with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. The company says the chip is designed for “ultra-low latency,” and manages less than 3ms of latency between the headset and the smartphone. The company has also announced XR-specific software for controlling its FastConnect 6900, allowing device makers to tune the wireless traffic between the devices to prioritize the most time-critical data in order to reduce instances of lag or jitter due to wireless interference.

Though a connected smartphone seems like the most obvious use-case, Qualcomm also says the glasses could just as well be paired to a Windows PC or “processing puck.”

Beyond the extra wireless tech, the company says the latest design is 40% thinner than its previous reference design. The latest version has a 1,920 × 1,080 (2MP) per-eye resolution at 90Hz. The microdisplays include a ‘no-motion-blur’ feature—which sounds like a low persistence mode designed to prevent blurring of the image during head movement. A pair of monochrome cameras are used for 6DOF tracking and an RGB camera for video or photo capture. The company didn’t mention the device’s field-of-view, so it’s unlikely to be any larger than the prior reference design at 45° diagonal.

Like its many prior reference designs, Qualcomm isn’t actually going to make and sell the AR glasses. Instead, it offers up the design and underlying technology for other companies to use as a blueprint to build their own devices (hopefully using Qualcomm’s chips!). Companies that build on Qualcomm’s blueprint usually introduce their own industrial design and custom software offering; some even customize the hardware itself, like using different displays or optics.

That makes this AR glasses reference design a pretty good snapshot of the current state of AR glasses that can be mass produced, and a glimpse of what some companies will be offering in the near future.

Qualcomm says its latest AR glasses reference design is “available for select partners,” as of today, and plans to make it more widely available “in the coming months.”

Reality Labs Chief Scientist Outlines a New Compute Architecture for True AR Glasses

May 2, 2022 From roadtovr

Speaking at the IEDM conference late last year, Meta Reality Labs’ Chief Scientist Michael Abrash laid out the company’s analysis of how contemporary compute architectures will need to evolve to make possible the AR glasses of our sci-fi conceptualizations.

While there’s some AR ‘glasses’ on the market today, none of them are truly the size of a normal pair of glasses (even a bulky pair). The best AR headsets available today—the likes of HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap 2—are still closer to goggles than glasses and are too heavy to be worn all day (not to mention the looks you’d get from the crowd).

If we’re going to build AR glasses that are truly glasses-sized, with all-day battery life and the features needed for compelling AR experiences, it’s going to take require a “range of radical improvements—and in some cases paradigm shifts—in both hardware […] and software,” says Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist at Reality Labs, Meta’s XR organization.

That is to say: Meta doesn’t believe that its current technology—or anyone’s for that matter—is capable of delivering those sci-fi glasses that every AR concept video envisions.

But, the company thinks it knows where things need to head in order for that to happen.

Abrash, speaking at the IEDM 2021 conference late last year, laid out the case for a new compute architecture that could meet the needs of truly glasses-sized AR devices.

Follow the Power

The core reason to rethink how computing should be handled on these devices comes from a need to drastically reduce power consumption to meet battery life and heat requirements.

“How can we improve the power efficiency [of mobile computing devices] radically by a factor of 100 or even 1,000?” he asks. “That will require a deep system-level rethinking of the full stack, with end-to-end co-design of hardware and software. And the place to start that rethinking is by looking at where power is going today.”

To that end, Abrash laid out a graph comparing the power consumption of low-level computing operations.

As the chart highlights, the most energy intensive computing operations are in data transfer. And that doesn’t mean just wireless data transfer, but even transferring data from one chip inside the device to another. What’s more, the chart uses a logarithmic scale; according to the chart, transferring data to RAM uses 12,000 times the power of the base unit (which in this case is adding two numbers together).

Bringing it all together, the circular graphs on the right show that techniques essential to AR—SLAM and hand-tracking—use most of their power simply moving data to and from RAM.

“Clearly, for low power applications [such as in lightweight AR glasses], it is critical to reduce the amount of data transfer as much as possible,” says Abrash.

To make that happen, he says a new compute architecture will be required which—rather than shuffling large quantities of data between centralized computing hubs—more broadly distributes the computing operations across the system in order to minimize wasteful data transfer.

Compute Where You Least Expect It

A starting point for a distributed computing architecture, Abrash says, could begin with the many cameras that AR glasses need for sensing the world around the user. This would involve doing some preliminary computation on the camera sensor itself before sending only the most vital data across power hungry data transfer lanes.

To make that possible Abrash says it’ll take co-designed hardware and software, such that the hardware is designed with a specific algorithm in mind that is essentially hardwired into the camera sensor itself—allowing some operations to be taken care of before any data even leaves the sensor.

“The combination of requirements for lowest power, best requirements, and smallest possible form-factor, make XR sensors the new frontier in the image sensor industry,” Abrash says.