News

Apple Design Lead Heads to Meta, Hopefully to Fix Longstanding Quest UX Issues

December 5, 2025 From roadtovr

Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface design, Alan Dye, is leaving the company to lead a new studio within Meta’s Reality Labs division. The move appears to be aimed at raising the bar on the user experience of Meta’s glasses and headsets.

The News

According to his LinkedIn profile, Alan Dye spent nearly 20 years as Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design. He was a driving force behind the company’s UI and UX direction, including Apple’s most recent ‘Liquid Glass’ interface overhaul and the VisionOS interface that’s the foundation of Vision Pro.

Now Dye is heading to Meta to lead a “new creative studio within Reality Labs,” according to an announcement by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“The new studio [led by Dye] will bring together design, fashion, and technology to define the next generation of our products and experiences. Our idea is to treat intelligence as a new design material and imagine what becomes possible when it is abundant, capable, and human-centered,” Zuckerberg said. “We plan to elevate design within Meta, and pull together a talented group with a combination of craft, creative vision, systems thinking, and deep experience building iconic products that bridge hardware and software.”

The new studio within Reality Labs will also include Billy Sorrentino, another high level Apple designer; Joshua To, who has led interface design at Reality Labs; Meta’s industrial design team, led by Pete Bristol; and art teams led by Jason Rubin, a longtime Meta executive that has been with the company since its 2014 acquisition of Oculus.

“We’re entering a new era where AI glasses and other devices will change how we connect with technology and each other. The potential is enormous, but what matters most is making these experiences feel natural and truly centered around people. With this new studio, we’re focused on making every interaction thoughtful, intuitive, and built to serve people,” said Zuckerberg.

My Take

I’ve been ranting about the fundamental issues of the Quest user experience and interface (UX & UI) for literally years at this point. Meta has largely hit it out of the park with its hardware design, but the software side of things has lagged far behind what we would expect from one of the world’s leading software companies. A post on X from less than a month ago sums up my thoughts:

It’s crazy to see Meta take one step forward with its Quest UI and two steps back, over and over again for years.

They keep piling on new features with seemingly no top-down vision for how the interface should work or feel. The Quest interface is as scattered, confusing, and unpolished as ever.

The new Navigator is an improvement for simply accessing app icons, but it feels like it’s using a completely different paradigm than the rest of the window / panel management interface. Not to mention that the system interface speaks a vastly different language than the Horizon interface.

I have completely lost faith that Meta will ever get a handle on this after watching the interface meander in random directions year after year, punctuated by “refreshes” that look promising but end up being forgotten about 6 months later.

It seems Meta is trying to course-correct before things get further out of hand. If pulling in one of the world’s most experienced individuals at creating cohesive UX & UI at scale is what it takes, then I’m glad to see it happening.

Apple has set a high bar for how easy a headset should be to use. I use both Vision Pro and Quest on a regular basis, and moving between them is a night-and-day difference in usability and polish. And as I’ve said before, the high cost of Vision Pro has little to do with why its interface works so much better; the high level design decisions—which would work similarly well on any headset—are a much more significant factor.

Back when Meta was still called Facebook, the company had a famous motto: “Move fast and break things.” Although the company no longer champions this motto, it seems like it has had a hard time leaving it behind. The scattered, unpolished, and constantly shifting nature of the Quest interface could hardly embody the motto more clearly.

“Move fast and break things” might have worked great in the world of web development, but when it comes to creating a completely new interface paradigm for the brand new medium of VR, it hasn’t worked so well.

Of course, Dye’s onboarding and the new studio within Reality Labs isn’t only about Quest. In fact, it might not even be mostly about Quest. If I’ve learned anything about Zuckerberg over the years, it’s that he’s a very long-term thinker and does what he can to move his company where it needs to go to be in the right place 5 or 10 years down the road.

And in 5 to 10 years, Zuckerberg hopes Meta will be dominant, not just with immersive headsets, but AI smart glasses (and likely unreleased devices) too. This new team will likely not be focused on fixing the current state of the Quest interface, but instead trying to define a cohesive UX & UI for the company’s entire ecosystem of devices.

With Alan Dye heading to Meta, there’s a good chance that he will bring with him decades of Apple design processes that have worked well for the company over many years. But I have a feeling it will be a significant challenge for him to change “move fast and break things” to “move slow and polish things” within Meta.

Alibaba Launches Smart Glasses to Rival Meta Ray-Ban Display

December 2, 2025 From roadtovr

Alibaba released a pair of display-clad smart glasses, ostensibly looking to go toe-to-toe with Meta Ray-Ban Display, which launched in the US for $800 back in September.

The News

China’s Alibaba, one the world’s largest retailers and e-commerce companies, just released its first smart glasses, called Quark AI Glasses, which run the company’s own Qwen AI model.

Seemingly China-only devices for now, Alibaba is now offering Quark AI in two fundamental versions across Chinese online and brick-and-mortar retailers:

Quark AI Glasses S1: starting at ¥3,799 (~$540 USD), includes dual monochrome green displays
Quark AI Glasses G1: starting at ¥1,899 (~$270 USD), no displays, sharing core technology of ‘S1’ model

Quark AI Glasses S1 is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 chipset and a low-power co-processor which drive dual monochrome green micro-OLED displays, boasting a brightness of up to 4,000 nits, according to South China Morning Post.

It also features a five-microphone array with bone conduction, 3K video recording which can be automatically upscaled to 4K, as well as low-light enhancement tech said to bring mobile phone-level imaging to smart glasses. Additionally, Quark AI Glasses S1 include hot-swappable batteries, which plug into the glasses’ stem piece.

You can see the English dubbed version of the Chinese language announcement below:

My Take

At least when it comes to on-paper specs, Quark AI Glasses S1 aren’t exactly a 1:1 rival with Meta Ray-Ban Display, even though both technically include display(s), onboard AI, and the ability to take photos and video.

While Meta Ray-Ban Display only feature a single full-color display, Quark S1’s dual displays only offer monochrome green output, which limits the sort of information that can be seen.

Meta Ray-Ban Display & Neural Band | Photo by Road to VR

Quark S1 also doesn’t come with an input device, like Meta Ray-Ban’s Neural Band, limiting it to only voice and touch input. That means Quark S1 user won’t be scrolling social media, pinching and zooming content, or other nifty UI manipulation.

Still, that might be just enough—at least one of the world’s largest e-commerce, cloud infrastructure, and FinTech companies thinks so. Also not worth overlooking is Quark S1’s unique benefit of being tightly integrated into the Qwen AI ecosystem, as well as the Chinese payment infrastructure for fast and easy QR code-based payments with Alipay; that last one is something most Chinese smart glasses are trying to hook into, like Xiaomi’s own Ray-Ban Meta competitors.

Although the company’s Qwen AI model is available globally, I find it pretty unlikely that Alibaba will ever bring its first-gen models of Quark AI Glasses S1/G1 outside of its usual sphere of influence, or meaningfully intersect with Meta’s supported regions.

FluxPose VR Tracker Raises $2M on Kickstarter, Promising Compact 6DOF Body Tracking

December 1, 2025 From roadtovr

FluxPose is a 6DOF tracking solution for full-body tracking that seems to be picking up speed on Kickstarter, having now garnered over $2 million in crowdfunding since its initial launch on November 29th.

The News

FluxPose is a full-body tracking system that’s said to deliver occlusion-free positional tracking without the need of externally mounted base stations or sensors. It does this by way of a wearable beacon, which generates magnetic fields, the team explains on the FluxPose Kickstarter campaign.

“It’s completely occlusion-free, incredibly compact, drift-free, and the trackers last up to 24 hours on a single charge, offering high-end performance in the smallest, lightest form factor possible,” the Logrono, Spain-based team says.

And because the beacon is worn on your body, and automatically synchronizes the tracking space with VR headsets without any additional software, it essentially means the tracking volume moves with you as you move (or more likely, dance) in VR.

Weighing in at 85 grams, the trackers are also impressively compact: a Dorito for scale.

At the time of this writing, the cheapest support tier is the ‘Lite Kit’ for €339 (~$394 USD), which comes with three tracking points (straps sold separately). At the higher end is the ‘Pro Kit’ for €689 (~$800 USD), which includes eight tracking points. Notably, those prices do not include taxes or import tariffs.

VR headset mounts provided through the Kickstarter are said to include Quest 2/3/3S/Pro, Pico 4/4 Ultra, Samsung Galaxy XR, HTC Vive Pro/Pro 2/Focus/XR Elite, Bigscreen Beyond 1/2, Valve Index, and Steam Frame. Backers will have the chance to select the exact headset model on a survey after the Kickstarter ends, and again a few months before delivery.

You can find out more over on the FluxPose Kickstarter, which we’ll be following for the campaign’s remaining 58 days, ending on January 28th, 2026. The earliest delivery is expected in August 2026 for early bird supporters, and October 2026 for late comers to the Kickstarter.

My Take

Magnetically-tracked peripherals aren’t anything new in VR; I’ve seen a number of solutions come and go, with the emphasis mostly on go: Razer Hydra, Sixense Stem, Atraxa, Magic Leap 1 controllers—these implementations seem to be good enough in optimal conditions, but not rock solid across the board.

In short, magnetic trackers position themselves in 3D space by measuring the intensity of the magnetic field in various directions, which (as mentioned above) is generated by a beacon. When the trackers’ measurement point is rotated, the distribution of the magnetic field changes across its various axes, allowing for it to be positionally tracked.

And while those magnetically-tracked peripherals listed above don’t suffer from optical occlusion, they can be affected by external magnetic fields, ferromagnetic materials in the tracking volume, and conductive materials near the emitter or sensor. These things typically reduce tracking quality, making them less reliably accurate than optical (Quest 3) or laser-positioned systems (SteamVR base stations).

Granted, I haven’t tried FluxPose yet, although I don’t think those drawbacks are nearly as important in fully-body tracking than they might be in actual motion controllers, which require much higher accuracy. A few millimeter’s discrepancy in your foot’s position really doesn’t matter as much as it might if you were reaching out and trying to grab something with a magnetically-tracked controller.

Provided Road to VR doesn’t get to go hands-on in the coming months, I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for videos and articles as we move closer to the campaign’s close next month.

Pico Reportedly Releasing Vision Pro Competitor in 2026 with Self-developed Chip

November 26, 2025 From roadtovr

Zhenyuan Yang, Vice President of Technology at Pico parent company ByteDance, reportedly revealed plans for Pico’s next XR headset, which is said to sport a self-developed display chip and 4,000 PPI microOLED display.

The News

According to Chinese news outlet Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily (via Nweon), Yang was speaking at ByteDance’s annual scholarship award ceremony when he mentioned specific plans to release a new Pico XR headset in 2026.

The self-developed chip was started in 2022, Yang reportedly revealed on stage, noting the chip is now in mass production. The chip is said to overcome real-time processing bottlenecks in high-resolution, high-frame-rate mixed reality video, with it capable of reducing system latency to about 12 ms while maintaining high-precision image quality.

It’s also said to improve performance in SLAM, motion compensation, and inverse-distortion workloads, which demand high compute efficiency on low-power devices, Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reports.

Supposedly slated to launch in 2026, the headset will pair this chip with a custom microOLED display which is said to approach 4,000 PPI—slightly higher than that of Apple Vision Pro’s 3,386 PPI.

According to the report, Pico’s microOLED display reaches an average 40 PPD (over 45 at center), and addresses brightness limitations by incorporating microlens (MLA) technology and optical compensation for uniform color and luminance. Additionally, Pico is also developing its own data-capture systems to train advanced eye-tracking, gesture-tracking, and spatial-understanding models.

Yang emphasized that since 2023, ByteDance has shifted Pico’s strategy away from aggressive content and marketing spending toward long-term technological investment, increasing XR R&D rather than retreating from the market.

“In 2023, we decided to reduce our investment in content and marketing, and instead focus more firmly on our technology strategy,” Yang said (machine translated from Chinese). “This was because the hardware experience of our products was not yet mature enough to support large-scale market applications. This adjustment led to some misunderstandings at the time, with many people saying that ByteDance was no longer pursuing this direction. In fact, quite the opposite.”

This follows an initial report from The Information this summer, which alleged Pico was developing a pair of slim and light MR “goggles,” reportedly codenamed ‘Swan’, which are said to weigh just 100 grams.

My Take

More competition is great, although US-based audiences hoping for a new Vision Pro competitor from Pico may be left waiting.

The company’s headsets are typically only available in China, East and Southeast Asia and Europe—but not in North America, and not for the lack of trying either. An additional stumbling block: Pico headsets have typically been priced above Meta’s equivalents, which has limited appeal in Meta-supported regions.

Still, ByteDance, the parent company behind TikTok and Chinese equivalent platform Douyin, has actually overtaken Meta in revenue, putting the parent company in a better position than ever to bolster its XR platform as a premium offering globally.

New Apple Immersive Content Coming Soon to Vision Pro From Real Madrid and Red Bull

November 25, 2025 From roadtovr

Apple announced the next slate of immersive content is on its way to Vision Pro, this time bringing an immersive documentary from Real Madrid and some extreme sports from Red Bull.

First reported by GQ Spain and later confirmed by Apple, next year Apple and Spanish football club Real Madrid are teaming up on a new immersive documentary, coming exclusively to Vision Pro.

The documentary, which hasn’t been named yet, is filmed with over 30 Blackmagic immersive cameras during the 2025-26 Champions League, which pitted Real Madrid against Italian football club Juventus.

Apple says the immersive documentary “brings viewers inside the world’s most decorated club, capturing moments from practice to the pitch with a level of access that fans have never experienced before.”

Also coming to Vision Pro is the first installment of World of Red Bull in December, which Apple announced a few months ago.

World of Redbull is a new series of immersive experiences that will start with ‘Backcountry Skiing’, featuring the world’s top freeskiers taking on the wilderness of Revelstoke, British Columbia. That’s scheduled to land on Vison Pro on December 4th.

The next episode, called ‘Big-Wave Surfing’, is slated to let viewers follow elite surfers off the remote coast of Teahupoʻo, Tahiti, which is scheduled to arrive sometime next year.

Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) Smart Glasses Get 20% Price Drop Ahead of Black Friday

November 21, 2025 From roadtovr

Meta is tossing out a limited time 20% discount off all Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) smart glasses, which you can nab from now until December 1st.

The News

Released in 2023 starting at $300, Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) are capable smart glasses in their own right, including video/photo capture, onboard AI assistant, and the ability to play music and take calls.

The second gen version released earlier this year, starting at $380, bringing with it better battery life, higher-quality video capture, and improved audio/mics. You can check the spec sheet below for a 1:1 comparison.

Still, at $240, Meta’s latest deal makes Gen 1 the cheapest it’s ever been, with the 20% discount available across all Gen 1 lens and style combos.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, Image courtesy Meta, EssilorLuxottica

You can get the deal from now until December 1st direct through Meta, which includes expedited shipping, as well as partner retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Ray-Ban Stores, and Target in the US.

Many supported regions are getting the deal too, which you’ll find in local pricing across Europe, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, and the UK.

Meta is also tossing out 20% off prescription lenses when you purchase Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1 and 2) and/or Oakley Meta HSTN glasses, which will only be available through Meta from now until December 1st.

Ray-Ban Meta: Gen 1 vs Gen 2 Specs

	Gen 1	Gen 2
Camera	12 MP ultra-wide	12 MP ultra-wide (improved sensor)
Photo Resolution	3,024 × 4,032	3,024 × 4,032
Video Resolution	1,440 × 1,920 @ 30 fps	Up to 3K @ 30 fps (includes livestreaming ability)
Storage	32 GB	32 GB
Microphones	5-mic array	5-mic array
Speakers	Open-ear speakers	Improved open-ear speakers (louder, better bass)
Processor	Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1	Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1
Battery Life (Glasses)	~4 hours	~8 hours
Battery Life (Case)	~32 hours	~48 hours
Charging Speed	Not clearly stated	~50% charge in ~20 minutes
Water Resistance	IPX4	IPX4
Frame Styles	Wayfarer, Headliner, Skyler	Wayfarer, Headliner, Skyler, Oakley HSTN, Oakley Vanguard
AI Features	Basic Meta AI	Enhanced Meta AI, new capture modes

My Take

While Meta is clearly using the big Black Friday sales rush to flush old stock, I honestly hoped for a much larger barn burner, although it’s pretty clear why we’re not seeing the any super deep discounts.

As occult corporate calculus goes, Meta and EssilorLuxottica probably don’t want to make Gen 1 too attractive to people who might otherwise just spring for the more expensive Gen 2. This makes me think that 20% off is about as low as Meta will go this year around, although I’ll be keeping my eye on post-Black Friday sales to confirm.

Still, there are some caveats potential buyers should be aware of: neither are better at capturing video than your smartphone, and they don’t play music better than even mediocre wireless ear buds. You also have to use Meta AI, which is… okay, making it more of a fun toy (or Christmas gift) than a must-have addition to your smartphone.

Former Magic Leap Engineers Launch No-code AR Creation Platform, Aiming to Be ‘Canva of AR’

November 7, 2025 From roadtovr

Trace, a startup founded by former Magic Leap engineers, today announced the launch of a new augmented reality creation platform the company hopes will become the “Canva of AR”.

The News

Trace says it’s targeting everyone from global brands to independent creators wanting to build location-based immersive AR content, according to a recent press statement.

Notably, the platform doesn’t require coding or advanced design expertise, allowing users to design, drop, and share interactive AR experiences across mobile devices, headsets, and AR glasses.

To boot, Trace says it’s launching the platform at a pivotal moment; Adobe has officially discontinued its Aero AR platform, and Meta’s Spark AR platform was retired in January 2025. To seize the moment, Trace is offering three free months of its premium plan to Aero and Spark users who migrate to its platform.

“Even as XR devices become more capable, the creator ecosystem is still really limited,” said Martin Smith, Trace’s CTO and co-founder. “Empowering creators to build and share their vision is such an important part of the picture, whether they’re an educator, an artist, or a Fortune 500 brand. Trace runs anywhere, scales instantly, and supports the fidelity AR deserves.”

Founded in 2021, Trace has already worked with a host of early enterprise adopters, including ESPN, T-Mobile, Qualcomm, Telefónica, Lenovo, and Deutsche Telekom, who have used Trace for marketing, visualization, employee training, and trade show installations at Mobile World Congress and the Hip Hop 50 Summit.

Trace’s creation platform is available to download for free on iPhone and iPad through the App Store, with an optional premium subscription available starting at $20 per month. Creations can currently be viewed through the Trace Viewer app available for free on the App Store and Google Play, and users can import their existing 3D assets in the Web Studio, available at studio.trace3d.app.

My Take

There’s a reason Meta and Adobe haven’t put a massive amount of effort into their respective AR creation platforms lately: all-day AR glasses are still relatively far away, as the usual cadre of XR headset and glasses creators are only now stepping into smart glasses ahead of what could be a multi-year leadup to all-day AR glasses of the future.

Still, enterprise-level AR activations on mobile and mixed reality headsets, like Apple Vision Pro and Quest 3, can turn more than a few heads, making a quick and easy no-code solution ideal for companies and independent creators looking for a selective reach.

Quest 3 (left) and Apple Vision Pro (right) | Based on images courtesy Meta, Apple

I would consider Trace’s strategy of offering former Adobe Aero AR and Meta Spark AR a pretty shrewd move to get some market share out of the gate too, which is increasingly important since it’s the company’s sole occupation—and not a side project like it was for Adobe and Meta.

The more challenging test will be to see how Trace grows in that interminable leadup to wide-spread AR glasses though, and how it weathers the competition sure to come from platform holders looking to offer similarly easy-to-use AR creations suites of the future.

While the platform’s wide target and ease of use are big pluses, I can see it more squarely fitting in the enterprise space than something regular consumers might latch onto—which is probably the ideal fit for a company founded by Magic Leap alumni, who have undoubtedly learned a sharp lesson first hand. Magic Leap’s early flirtations with prosumers in 2018 with the launch of Magic Leap One eventually forced the company to pivot to enterprise two years later.

Cambridge & Meta Study Raises the Bar for ‘Retinal Resolution’ in XR

November 5, 2025 From roadtovr

It’s been a long-held assumption that the human eye is capable of detecting a maximum of 60 pixels per degree (PPD), which is commonly called ‘retinal’ resolution. Any more than that, and you’d be wasting pixels. Now, a recent University of Cambridge and Meta Reality Labs study published in Nature maintains the upper threshold is actually much higher than previously thought.

The News

As the University of Cambridge’s news site explains, the research team measured participants’ ability to detect specific display features across a variety of scenarios: both in color and greyscale, looking at images straight on (aka ‘foveal vision’), through their peripheral vision, and from both close up and farther away.

The team used a novel sliding-display device (seen below) to precisely measure the visual resolution limits of the human eye, which seem to overturn the widely accepted benchmark of 60 PPD commonly considered as ‘retinal resolution’.

Image courtesy University of Cambridge, Meta

Essentially, PPD measures how many display pixels fall within one degree of a viewer’s visual field; it’s sometimes seen on XR headset spec sheets to better communicate exactly what the combination of field of view (FOV) and display resolution actually means to users in terms of visual sharpness.

According to the researchers, foveal vision can actually perceive much more than 60 PPD—more like up to 94 PPD for black-and-white patterns, 89 PPD for red-green, and 53 PPD for yellow-violet. Notably, the study had a few outliers in the participant group, with some individuals capable of perceiving as high as 120 PPD—double the upper bound for the previously assumed retinal resolution limit.

The study also holds implications for foveated rendering, which is used with eye-tracking to reduce rendering quality in an XR headset user’s peripheral vision. Traditionally optimized for black and white vision, the study maintains foveated rendering could further reduce bandwidth and computation by lowering resolution further for specific color channels.

So, for XR hardware engineers, the team’s findings point to a new target for true retinal resolution. For a more in-depth look, you can read the full paper in Nature.

My Take

While you’ll be hard pressed to find accurate info on each headset’s PPD—some manufacturers believe in touting pixels per inch (PPI), while others focus on raw resolution numbers—not many come close to reaching 60 PPD, let alone the revised retinal resolution suggested above.

According to data obtained from XR spec comparison site VRCompare, consumer headsets like Quest 3, Pico 4, and Bigscreen Beyond 2 tend to have a peak PPD of around 22-25, which describes the most pixel-dense area at dead center.

Meta ‘Butterscotch’ varifocal prototype (left), ‘Flamera’ passthrough prototype (right) | Image courtesy Meta

Prosumer and enterprise headsets fare slightly better, but only just. Estimating from available data, Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR boast a peak PPD of between 32-36.

Headsets like Shiftall MeganeX Superlight “8K” and Pimax Dream Air have around 35-40 peak PPD. On the top end of the range is Varjo, which claims its XR-4 ($8,000) enterprise headset can achieve 51 peak PPD through an aspheric lens.

Then, there are prototypes like Meta’s ‘Butterscotch’ varifocal headset, which the company showed off in 2023, which is said to sport 56 PPD (not confirmed if average or peak).

Still, there’s a lot more to factor in to reaching ‘perfect’ visuals beyond PPD, peak or otherwise. Optical artifacts, refresh rate, subpixel layout, binocular overlap, and eye box size can all sour even the best displays. What is sure though: there is still plenty of room to grow in the spec sheet department before any manufacturer can confidently call their displays retinal.

‘MultiBrush’ Studio Secures $4.5M Grant to Promote Positive VR Experiences for Elders

November 4, 2025 From roadtovr

Rendever, the company behind Tilt Brush-based multiplayer Quest app MultiBrush (2022), has secured nearly $4.5 million in grant funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which the company says it will use to bring its elder-focused VR experiences to the home care market.

The studio says in an announcement the latest funding includes $3.8 million for the Thrive At Home Program and an additional grant to build a caregiver support network in VR.

“These funds will pave the way for Rendever to bring their technology to the large majority of individuals and caregivers who are aging in place and lacking in structural social support,” the studio says.

Rendever is currently partnered with the University of California in Santa Barbara, research organization RAND, and home care service Right at Home.

The company says these organization will help it conduct studies to evaluate the effectiveness of VR technology in building relationships across living environments. The aim is to reduce social isolation, improve mental health, and enhance overall well-being in elders. Additionally, Rendever maintains studies gauging the impact of caregiving tools, including its recent Dementia & Empathy training program, will continue as a result.

“Our Phase II trial has shown the power of VR to effectively build and enhance family relationships across distances – even across country lines. The future of aging depends on technology that effectively reshapes how we experience these core parts of the human experience as we get older,” said Kyle Rand, Rendever CEO. “We know there’s nothing more holistically impactful than our social health. Over the next three years, we’ll work across the industry to build the next generation of community infrastructure that delivers real happiness and forges new relationships, all while driving meaningful health outcomes.”

While Rendever currently offers VR-assisted therapy for both senior living and healthcare facilities, the company is currently assembling a beta pilot in certain geographic regions in the US to test its forthcoming in-home offering.

Additionally, the company announced it’s adding Sarah Thomas to its Board of Directors, an expert on aging and venture partner in the AgeTech industry.

Sharp is Crowdfunding a Slim & Light PC VR Headset in Japan That Feels Positively Retro

November 3, 2025 From roadtovr

Sharp announced it’s launching a crowdfunding campaign for a slim and light PC VR headset in Japan, called Xrostella VR1.

The News

Sharp first showed off a PC VR headset prototype at CES 2023, which was supposedly meant to ship sometime in 2024. It’s been nearly three years since we last heard about the headset, however during a recent Metaverse Expo in Japan, Sharp unveiled a newer version of the device, as demoed by Gizmodo Japan.

Now, Sharp says it’s slated to sell the device in Japan via crowdfunding platform Green Funding starting sometime in November, which it’s now dubbing ‘Xrostella VR1’.

Sharp Xxostella VR1 Prototype | Image courtesy Gizmodo Japan

Xrostella VR1 connects to either a Windows 11 PC or a limited number of smartphones via a wired connection. The company has confirmed compatibility with Sharp’s AQUOS sense10, with more models soon to be revealed.

Weighing in at just 198g and sporting what Sharp calls in a Japanese language press statement a “glasses-like design,” the headset includes dual 2,160 × 2,160 per eye LCD displays clocked up to 90Hz.

It also makes use of “thin, light-efficient pancake lens,” providing a 90 degree field of view (FOV), and cameras for both inside-out 6DOF tracking and color passthrough.

Included controllers appear to be a standard ‘Touch’-style affair that shipped with Quest 2 in 2020, replete with tracking rings, which comes in stark contrast to the company’s recent controller prototype, which combines standard button input with a unique haptic glove.

Additionally, Xrostella VR1 features a mechanism for adjusting the interpupillary distance (IPD) and diopter from 0D to -9.0D, which will allow nearsighted users to wear without needing glasses.

Pricing has yet to be confirmed, however Gizmodo Japan speculates it could be “more expensive than the Meta Quest 3,” which is priced at ¥81,400 (~$530 USD).

My Take

If you saw the specs and did a double take, you’re not alone. While having independent diopter adjustments is cool, it’s a shame Sharp is going so weak in the display department, as it essentially delivers a resolution only slightly higher than Quest 3.

And while the form factor is interesting on paper, I have my doubts that ~198g will weigh lightly on the bridge of your nose without having some sort of strap you can crank down, or otherwise better distribute weight for longer sessions—making its ‘glasses’ form factor more akin to headset with rigid, non-configurable straps. It all smacks of an aging headset design, recalling devices like HTC Vive Flow (2021), which feels remarkably heavy on the face, even at 189g.

Granted, marketing images don’t show the buckled strap system seen below, so there’s no telling what it will ship with. But the fact the company was demoing with the strap tells me everything I need to know about just how front-heavy it will be.

Still, it may not be as ‘DOA’ as you might think despite the thin and light PC VR segment growing to include a bevy of devices: Bigscreen Beyond 2 ($1,020), Pimax’s Dream Air SE ($900 – $1,200) coming December, and fellow Japanese brand Shiftall, which is releasing its latest MeganeX PC VR headset in December too for $1,900. It could be significantly cheaper if it were closer to Quest 3 in price, which would be really interesting to watch.

That said, Sharp’s VR headset is likely going to be a Japan-only device, which means the company will probably be leaning hard on the fact that it’s being produced and serviced domestically—regardless of price.

While mostly known for televisions and home applainces in the West, Sharp actually holds a significant slice of the smartphone market share in Japan. Despite foreign brands like Samsung and Google making recent headway in the country, Sharp remains a trusted name that Japanese consumers may simply feel more comfortable dealing with.