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Meta’s Next-gen Smart Glasses Reportedly Set to Include a Display & Wrist-worn XR Controller

From roadtovr

Meta is reportedly working on a version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses which will include a single display for viewing photos and apps. Now, according to a new Bloomberg report from Mark Gurman, the company is aiming to introduce it sometime later this year alongside its wrist-worn XR controller for hand-gesture input.

As per a previous Bloomberg report from January, the device is allegedly codenamed ‘Hypernova’. Citing Meta employees, the device could cost between $1,000 and $1,400, although the final price likely still hasn’t been decided.

The price increase over the company’s $300 Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, which don’t include displays of any sort, is reportedly driven by the inclusion of a single display visible in the lower-right quadrant of the right lens.

Unlike augmented reality glasses, which correctly place digital images in the user’s field-of-view, the device as described would be closer to Google Glass in function. Find out more about the differences between Smart Glasses and AR Glasses in our full explainer.

Bloomberg’s latest report now maintains Hypernova will include dedicated apps for taking pictures, viewing photos and accessing maps. This also includes notifications from phone apps, such as Messenger and WhatsApp, the report maintains.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, Image courtesy Meta, EssilorLuxottica

It’s said Hypenova will rely “heavily on the Meta View phone app,” and may not include its own on-board app store despite running a customized version of Android—suggesting it’s more akin to a smartphone peripheral and not a standalone platform as such.

It is however said to include many of the same features of Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, such as capturing images and video, accessing AI via built-in microphones and pairing with a phone for calls and music playback.

Additionally, it’s said Hypernova is getting a spec bump in the camera department. The latest version of Meta Ray-Ban comes with a 12-megapixel camera, similar to an iPhone 11 (2019) in quality. Instead, Hypernova is hoping to “rival the iPhone 13 from 2021,” according to people familiar with the matter.

Like the company’s display-less Ray-Ban Glasses, the report maintains users can control Hypernova using capacitive touch controls located on the temples, allowing to scroll through media.

Wrist-worn XR Controller seen with Orion | Image courtesy Meta

It seems however Meta is looking to finally productize its wrist-worn XR controller, which uses electromyography (EMG) sensors to detect things such pinching and hand rotation for UI selection. Hypernova is said to come bundled in the box with the wrist-worn controller, which we’ve also seen in action with the company’s internal Orion AR glasses.

Bloomberg maintains a second-gen ‘Hypernova 2’ is already in the works, which is said to include a binocular heads-up display system (again, smart glasses, not AR) with people familiar with the matter maintaining it’s currently planned for release in 2027.

Granted, anything could happen. Meta regularly shelves products late in development, such as its allegedly canceled variant the device without a camera—a move targeting lower costs and increased user privacy.

Still, Hypernova likely won’t be the next smart glasses device Meta releases. The report maintains Meta is finalizing ‘Supernova 2’, which function like Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, but houses inside a sportier Oakley design.

All of this is leading up to the release of Meta’s first true AR glasses. The company revealed its internal developer kit Orion in late 2024; Meta CTO and Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth has said an AR device based on their work with Orion could come before 2030, priced “at least in the space of phone, laptop territory.”

Infinite Reality Acquires Napster for $200M to Create Social Music Platform & Virtual Concerts

From roadtovr

Napster. Now there’s a name you haven’t heard in a few years… or more likely decades. Now, immersive web company Infinite Reality announced it’s acquired the brand for $207 million.

Having just closed a $3 billion investment in January, Immersive Reality says the Napster music streaming service will soon include a “social music platform” that will include branded 3D virtual spaces for virtual concerts and listening parties.

Additionally, the company says Napster will also sell both physical and virtual merchandise, exclusive digital content, and event tickets.

“By acquiring Napster, we’re paving a path to a brighter future for artists, fans, and the music industry at large,” said John Acunto, Infinite Reality co-Founder and CEO. “This strategic move aligns with Infinite Reality’s vision to lead an internet industry shift from a flat 2D clickable web to a 3D conversational one – giving all creators modern tools to better engage, monetize, and measure their audiences.”

CEO Jon Vlassopulos, formerly of Roblox, will continue leading Napster, noting he envisions a next-generation platform where fans can interact with artists in 3D virtual spaces, making music consumption more social and immersive.

Founded in 2019, Infinite Reality’s flagship product is iR Studio, an engine for building immersive websites, replete with social virtual environments and avatars. iR Studio sites support WebXR by default, meaning any XR headset that supports WebXR can access it directly through a web browser.

While the company hasn’t said as much, we’d expect Immersive Reality to leverage iR Studio in future Napster virtual concerts, which would ostensibly include support for Quest and PC VR headsets.

This isn’t the first time the Napster brand has changed hands since its 2002 bankruptcy, which was due to its platform allowing for unlicensed P2P sharing of music, attracting the ire of rock band Metallica. Over the years, the company has been acquired by a laundry list of companies that hoped to leverage the brand’s wide appeal, most recently turning the one-time music sharing platform into a subscriber-based music streaming platform.

Interestingly, Immersive Reality also isn’t the first XR-focused company to purchase Napster either. In August 2020, London-based virtual concert company MelodyVR acquired Napster for $70 million, which hoped to bring immersive video concerts to VR headset users. Prior to the Immersive Reality acquisition, Napster’s most recent owner was blockchain company Algorand, which hoped to decentralize music.

Smartphone Giant Vivo Announces ‘Vision’ MR Headset, Copying Apple’s Name & Design

From roadtovr

Another Vision Pro knock-off is coming to town, and this time it even has the ‘Vision’ name.

While not a household name, China’s Vivo is known for its sensible, mid-range smartphones, regularly ranking it in the top five smartphone creators by market share.

Now, at the Boao Forum for Asia in China’s Hainan Province today, the company showed off its first entry into the XR segment: Vivo Vision.

In a press statement, Vivo says the move comes as a broader push to pursue both robotics and XR devices, referring to Vivo Vision as “a significant milestone in vivo’s exploration of mixed reality technology.”

Image courtesy GSM Arena

While Vivo Vision is expected to be officially unveiled in mid-2025, specifics are still thin on the ground, with notable question marks surrounding the MR headsets specs, operating system, release date, global availability, price—pretty much everything besides the device’s externals.

A display model was present at Vivo’s booth at Boao Forum for Asia however, revealing the company is taking more than a few design cues from Apple Vision Pro, including its unique headstrap design, digital crown button, and magnetically-tethered external battery.

Notably, Vivo’s fleet of smartphones run modified versions of Android, with Funtouch OS used as its global-facing OS, and Origin OS used for those shipped in China.

As Vivo’s first XR device, it’s possible the company may attempt the same feat with Google’s upcoming Android XR OS, which is being launched with Samsung’s upcoming mixed reality, ‘Project Moohan’, which is said to release sometime this year, although that’s pure speculation for now.

This marks a growing trend of look-alike Vision Pros arriving from Chinese manufacturers, with the first notable arriving from Play for Dream; its MR headset not only stole the show at CES 2025 earlier this year, but also garnered high praise from former Quest engineer Amanda Watson, who called it “absolutely the best all around HMD demo I saw on the floor today.”

Bigscreen Beyond 2 Sold the Equivalent of 6 Months of Beyond 1 Sales in First 24 Hours

From roadtovr

Bigscreen Beyond 2 orders flooded in last Thursday at a surprising pace. Now, the PC VR headset maker notes that its next slim and light headset outsold the original in 24 hours by an impressive margin, making its first day or sales equivalent to six months of what it did with Beyond 1.

We’ve already heard some impressive stats following Bigscreen’s launch for Beyond 2 orders. In 25 minutes, Beyond 2 outsold the first day of Beyond 1 sales. In the first hour, they doubled Beyond 1 launch day sales. Within 10 hours of launching orders, Beyond 2 sold more than the first four months of Beyond 1 sales.

In an X post on Friday, Bigscreen founder and CEO Darshan Shankar revealed the most impressive sales stat yet:

“In the first 24 hours, Beyond 2 has sold 10 TIMES as many Beyond 1s sold on its launch day 2 years ago. In the first 24 hours, Beyond 2 has sold as much as Beyond 1 did in its first 6 months of sales. That’s exceptional.”

Shankar says the company did this with zero ad spend, noting “[w]e didn’t pay influencers to pump our product. We didn’t pay an agency for an expensive video. No advertising.”

The company did however send a few early Beyond 2 units to reviewers, which Shankar says was “[l]ike 10 units,” which, among others, included Tested, Thrillseeker, MRTV and VR Flight Sim Guy.

In case you missed the news—you check out the specs, price and launch schedule here—Beyond 2 comes in two flavors, one with eye-tracking (Beyond 2e) and one without (Beyond 2), priced at $1,019 and $1,219 respectively.

While it’s packing in the same dual 1-inch 2,560 × 2,560 micro-OLED displays as the original Beyond, the biggest improvement overall is the headset’s larger field-of-view (FOV) and better clarity thanks to the inclusion of a new pancake lens design. This bumps Beyond 2 to a 116-degree diagonal FOV over the original’s 102-degree diagonal FOV, and also includes an adjustable IPD mechanism in a lighter 107g design.

Although the first batches were quoted to ship in April (Beyond 2) and May (Beyond 2e), at the time of this writing new orders of Beyond 2 and Beyond 2e are quoted to ship in June.

Samsung Reportedly Planning to Release XR Glasses This Year

From roadtovr

We’ve been waiting to hear about Samsung’s entrance into XR for a few years now, with the company’s still unnamed mixed reality headset ‘Project Moohan’ set to debut sometime this year running Google’s Android XR operating system. Now, a report from ETNews (Korean) maintains the South Korean tech giant may also have a pair of XR glasses up its sleeves.

Citing industry sources, the report alleges Samsung is developing XR glasses (noted as ‘smart glasses’ in the report—more on that below) with the goal of releasing them by the end of the year.

Samsung is reportedly now finalizing functions and specs of the device, which is said to be codenamed ‘Haen’ (‘coast’ or ‘seashore’ in Korean).

“With Apple’s Vision Pro already on the market, Samsung’s focus will be on providing a more advanced user experience,” an industry insider told ETNews.

Notably, the report doesn’t specify precisely what sort of device Haen is, which is why we’re simply calling them ‘XR glasses’ for now.

Samsung Project Moohan | Image courtesy Google

The report refers to the device as a pair of ‘smart glasses’ (machine translated from Korean), however this is sometimes used interchangeably to refer to two types of devices—AR glasses like Meta Orion, which blend digital images with the user’s physical surroundings, and smart glasses, which typically have a more simplistic heads-up display, like the now retired Google Glass. You can find out more about the differences between smart glasses and AR glasses here.

Since the report doesn’t specify Haen’s specific functions, we’ve referred to them as XR glasses for now.

While reports should generally be taken with a grain of salt, ETNews was the outlet that broke the news that LG was shaking up its XR product division, confirming that talks with Meta were going in a seemingly unplanned direction. Meta had tapped LG in February 2024 to partner on XR software and hardware, which at the time was rumored to include LG manufacturing a Vision Pro competitor for Meta. LG has since confirmed it’s closing its XR product division, instead focusing on long-term R&D.

Still, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard Samsung was getting ready to enter the XR glasses market. In 2021, Microsoft leaker ‘WalkingCat’ posted two leaked videos showing off futuristic AR concept devices from the company. Samsung has also filed a number of trademarks over the years, with its most recent ‘Galaxy Glasses’ patent filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Then, a report from South Korea’s Yonhap News last year alleged Samsung would unveil a pair of XR glasses at the the company’s Unpacked product event in January, which unfortunately didn’t materialize. Small recompense: Samsung did show off a slide featuring XR glasses as a part of its future roadmap.

Image courtesy Samsung

The device mentioned in the Yonhap News report was said to include a payment function, gesture recognition, and facial recognition, noting that it was expected to launch around Q3 2025. Still, no mention of displays, or specific functions that would delineate it as smart glasses of AR glasses as such.

Whatever the case, Samsung seems to be gearing up to make the best use of its partnership with Google to integrate Android XR into its next big entry into the segment, Project Moohan.

Until now, we’ve gotten a hands-on with Moohan, and even seen a “near-final” version of the hardware back at Unpacked 2025 in January, although its launch date and actual name is still under wraps.

Provided Samsung wants to make a splash, it could reveal the device at a number of venues: Google’s upcoming I/O conference in May, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in October/November, or even a hypothetical special event dedicated to both Moohan and possibly its XR glasses efforts.

LG Closes XR Product Division, Shifts Focus to R&D

From roadtovr

LG was previously tapped to partner with Meta to advance its XR efforts, however after high-level talks fell through, LG has now confirmed it’s closed its XR product division, instead focusing on long-term research and development.

According to South Korean news outlet The Bell (via UploadVR), LG is tuning down its XR efforts, which included the disbandment of the organization responsible for XR products late last year.

LG confirmed the news with The Bell in a Korean language statement, machine translated from Korean:

“Although the development organization under the HE Business Division has disappeared, research and development (R&D) is being conducted within the CTO division,” LG told The Bell. “We decided to delay the commercialization plan and focus on R&D.”

Previous reports from May 2024 suggested the LG/Meta deal was already on thin ice, as insiders alleged the South Korean tech giant wasn’t full steam ahead, but rather “controlling its pace”. Then, in June 2024, LG announced was shaking up its XR product division, which was unusual for the company.

The news comes nearly one year after Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited LG’s South Korea headquarters, where the two companies agreed to jointly develop XR products.

Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), William Cho (LG), and Park Hyoung-sei (LG)

At the time, LG said hoped to bring its own content/service capabilities to Meta’s platform, which would suggest LG was mostly interested in a lucrative content deal. While unconfirmed, it was however rumored as early as 2023 that Meta was contracting LG to manufacture a competitor to Vision Pro.

LG has been a minor player in XR, having only productized a single XR headset, its 2016 smartphone-tethered LG 360 VR headset for immersive media viewing, which due to poor reception never saw a follow-up.

Then, in 2017, the company announced it was working on a PC VR headset for SteamVR, however the project was quietly abandoned.

McDonald’s Japan Launches Official ‘VRChat’ World, Tapping Into Japan’s Massive VTuber Trend

From roadtovr

When you think of corporate brand engagement in VR, Meta is typically the prime suspect. In the past, they’ve brokered exclusive deals with Wendy’s for a Horizon Worlds social experience, and KFC for its finger-lickin’ weird escape room. Now, McDonald’s Japan has opened its own little slice of brand engagement heaven in VRChat, underlining just how big the social VR platform has become in Japan.

Available from now until June 17th, the official McDonald’s Japan world isn’t particularly massive, only featuring a single room where you can munch on virtual fries and take photos at few of the virtual photo spots, which include a super-size fry container to climb into, virtual cardboard cutouts of various McDonald’s mascots, and floating promotional text with flying fries everywhere.

On the surface, it’s essentially the same sort of promotional brand experience you see pop up in Japan from time to time, albeit completely in VR. Under the hood though, it’s leveraging some of the most recent developments in getting Japan’s Gen-Z to the golden arches, mashing up Japanese virtual streamers (aka VTubers) and the country’s love for VRChat.

The world was built around McDonald’s most recent marketing campaigns in Japan, celebrating the release of its annual ‘Tirori Mix’ animated music video collaboration. First released in 2022, Tirori Mix mashes up vocals from beloved J-pop idols with an animated short that remixes the “Tirori” chime played in McDonald’s Japan restaurants when an order is ready. This year’s collab included Ado, YOASOBI, and Hoshimachi Suisei, which you can catch here.

But why VRChat and not Horizon Worlds? VRChat hasn’t released specific user stats, however Japanese users make up the top visitors to the the company’s website, according to Similarweb, accounting for over 33% of users. And there’s a good reason why.

Image courtesy Similarweb

Any random visit to VRChat can confirm just how big it is in Japan; it’s chock-full of Japanese language worlds—everything from recreations of the historic streets of Kyoto to more demure spots for community meetups—although one of the most important factors is VRChat’s support for user-generated avatars.

While anyone can create a unique avatar in a standard 3D modeling software like Blender and upload it to VRChat, or otherwise buy one, being able to have a persistent avatar across multiple platforms has increased the platform’s cross-promotion among Japan’s anime-garbed VTubers.

And VTubing is big business in Japan. Massive talent agencies like Hololive, Nijisanji and VShojo have essentially co-opted Japan’s long-engrained idol culture by recruiting, training, and managing this new subset of idols, which don full-articulated VR avatars.

Notably, Hoshimachi Suisei, who is featured in Tirori Mix 2025, is a one of the biggest Japanese language VTuber, who is not only the most popular Music VTuber in Japan at 2 million+ subscribers on YouTybe, but has also performed live concerts, appeared on TV, and even ranked on the Japanese music charts.

Image courtesy Hoshimachi Suisei

Meanwhile, Meta is fighting to gain consistent engagement in Horizon Worlds, which notably limits avatar customization and operates within a more closed ecosystem. To boot, in a bid to gain more traction among users, the company recently announced it was launching a $50 million creator fund to incentivize the creation of new and improved content in Horizon Worlds.

And while Meta may be after its own Gorilla Tag-style hit on Horizon Worlds in the short term, until it opens up avatar customization to include more than its standard avatars and pick-and-mix of accessories, it will have a hard time tapping into that sort of cross-promotional gold Japan’s VTubers have been so successful at driving.

Despite Years of Reports to the Contrary, PC VR Just Won’t Die—In fact, It’s Growing

From roadtovr

The XR landscape has changed significantly over the last five years with the flourishing of standalone headsets and new entrants like Apple and (soon) Google. Despite all of that, the PC VR platform has continued a slow but steady growth.

So much has happened in VR in last five years that if you had told me back in early 2020, I’m not sure I would have believed you.

After all, you’d have to say that Facebook is no longer called Facebook. And that the company went on to dissolve the ‘Oculus’ brand, which had long been the most recognizable name in the industry for enthusiasts and even outsiders. And you’d have to tell me that despite that, Facebook Meta still managed to turn its standalone Quest headset into the leading VR platform.

Not only that, you’d have to convince me that Apple would dive head-first into the market with its own headset… and it would cost $3,500! Oh and that Google would follow quickly behind with a complete Android XR operating system underpinning a flagship headset made by Samsung.

Not to mention Microsoft discontinuing its Windows MR platform and giving up on HoloLens (ok actually, that one I might have believed).

Despite all of this, the OG VR platform—PC VR—is still kicking, and has in fact continued to grow.

Monthly-connected Headsets on Steam Over the Last Five Years

Each month Valve collects info from Steam users to determine some baseline statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by the platform’s population, and to see how things are changing over time, including the use of VR headsets.

The data shared in the survey represents the number of headsets connected to Steam over a given month, so we call the resulting figure ‘monthly-connected headsets’ for clarity; it’s the closest official figure there is to ‘monthly active VR users’ on Steam, with the caveat that it only tells us how many VR headsets were connected, not how many were actually used.

While Valve’s data is a useful way see which headsets are most popular on Steam, the trend of monthly-connected headsets is obfuscated because the data is given exclusively as percentages relative to Steam’s population—which itself is an unstated and constantly fluctuating figure.

If you looked only at the percent of VR users on Steam, you’d think the category must be shrinking.

But this isn’t the whole story. You need to take into account that the Steam population itself has grow a lot over the last five years. In fact, the Steam population has nearly doubled in that time.

To demystify the data Road to VR maintains a model—based on the historical survey data along with official data points directly from Valve and Steam—which aims to account for Steam’s changing population and estimate the actual count (not just the percent)—of headsets being used on Steam.

In this way we can see that the raw number of VR headsets in use on Steam has actually been slowly but steadily growing over time.

So the reality is that while Steam itself is growing faster proportionally than SteamVR users, the total number of VR users has been steadily climbing. Put another way: even though the percent of the Steam population using VR headsets is decreasing, from a developer standpoint, the number of potential VR customers has been growing.

This surely wouldn’t be the case if Valve hadn’t set up SteamVR from the outset as an open platform which any headset maker can opt into. There’s at least 24 different headsets in use on the platform each month, making SteamVR by far the largest and most diverse PC VR ecosystem.

PC VR no doubt also has Meta to thank for its continued growth after all these years and changes to the landscape. The wide availability and low cost of Quest headsets has brought many new people into the VR fold, and some of them wind up using the headset for PC VR too. Meta headsets account for a whopping 70% of monthly-connected headsets on Steam today.

What will the next five years hold for PC VR? We’ll see you in 2030 to find out!

Google Reportedly Set to Acquire Eye-tracking Startup to Bolster Android XR Hardware Efforts

From roadtovr

Google is reportedly set to acquire Canada-based eye-tracking startup AdHawk Microsystems Inc., something that would strengthen the company’s ongoing foray into XR headsets and glasses.

As reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Google is allegedly acquiring AdHawk for $115 million, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The deal is said to include $15 million in future payments based on the eye-tracking company reaching performance targets. While the acquisition is purportedly slated to conclude this week, a deal still hasn’t been signed, leaving some room for doubt. Furthermore, should the deal go through, the report maintains AdHawk’s staff will join Google’s Android XR team.

This isn’t the first time AdHawk has flirted with an acquisition by a key XR player. In 2022, Bloomberg reported the company was in the final stages of an acquisition by Meta.

Notably, AdHawk is best known for its innovations in eye-tracking, which replaces traditional cameras with micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), which is said to result in faster processing and reduced power consumption—two things highly prized by AR and smart glasses creators today.

Image courtesy AdHawk Microsystems Inc.

Its flagship product, the MindLink glasses, is a research-focused device that is meant to connect eye movements with neurological and ocular health, human behavior, and state of mind, the company says on its website. Additionally, the company offers its camera-free eye-tracking modules for researchers working with VR devices, such as Meta Quest.

While neither Google nor AdHawk have commented on report, Google is ramping up its XR division to compete with the likes of Meta and Apple.

In December, Google announced Android XR, marking a decisive shift for the company’s XR efforts, as the company is bringing a ‘full fat’ version of Android to headsets for the first time, which not only includes XR-specific apps but also the full slate of Android content. Android XR is ostensibly set to debut on Samsung’s Project Moohan mixed reality headset, which still has no release date or price.

Then, in January, Google announced the acquisition of a number of HTC’s XR engineers, a deal amounting to $250 million. At the time, Google said HTC veterans would “accelerate the development of the Android XR platform across the headsets and glasses ecosystem.”

In addition to supporting its Android XR software efforts, the acquisition of a novel eye-tracking startup would also prove valuable in the company’s internal XR hardware efforts, which has been nothing short of fragmented over the years.

Google has summarily cancelled a number of XR projects in the past, including its Daydream VR platform in 2019, Google Glass for Enterprise in 2023, and its Iris AR glasses project in 2024.

Pimax Shares Development Updates on Dream Air and Crystal Super Headsets

From roadtovr

Pimax has two PC VR headsets in development: the ultralight Dream Air and the wide field-of-view Crystal Super. The company recently offered an update on the development progress of both headsets, including an update on the shipping timeline of Crystal Super.

Pimax Dream Air Update

Image courtesy Pimax

Pimax Dream Air is the company’s first effort to build an ultralight PC VR headset. First announced in December with a price of $1,900, the headset is undergoing various tweaks as the company completes the prototyping phase and moves toward an expected May release date.

In its latest update on Dream Air, Pimax says it has added speaker pods to the sides of the headset for improved audio.

Image courtesy Pimax

The headset’s tether is also changing from a single cable that runs along the left side of the headset to a split cable that will run along both sides and then combine into one cable behind the user’s head. Pimax says this change will help with the balance of the headset.

Image courtesy Pimax

Pimax is also moving the Dream Air’s USB-C accessory slot to the bottom of the headset to make it more accessible for clip-on accessories like trackers. And the newest iteration of the headset’s design now includes vents for active cooling, as the compact headset and displays will have plenty of heat to dissipate.

The company also says it has an early prototype of the headset’s pancake lenses, and specifies that they have a concave front surface that helps expand the headset’s field-of-view. Between that and slightly canting the lenses and displays, Pimax says it expects the final field of view to be 105° horizontally rather than the originally announced 102°.

Image courtesy Pimax

Field-of-view isn’t the only thing that could increase, however. The company says it’s still choosing between two candidate displays. Both are micro-OLED with identical resolution. But one of the panels (from Sony) has “better optical qualities,” according to the company, but also a higher price tag. If the final version ends up using the Sony panel, Pimax says it could increase the cost of the headset “a tiny bit.”

While it’s nice to see the field-of-view go up, potentially changing already-announced specs and prices with little more than two months before the headset is supposed to ship seems to reinforce longstanding criticism that the company often gets ahead of itself in planning and execution.

Speaking of the headset’s purported May release date, Pimax indicates in this latest update that it expects to have a “proper working demo unit [of Dream Air]” in April, one month before the headset is expected to ship. And in May, the company says it’ll have a “public event” to showcase the headset.

The video concludes with the company saying, “we are fine-tuning the final parts and at the same time also minimizing the risk for delays. The Dream Air is on the way and we’ll be showing it publicly soon.”

Pimax Crystal Super Update

Pimax Crystal Super | Image courtesy Pimax

Crystal Super is the company’s latest large form-factor PC VR headset which aims for a wide field-of-view (130° horizontal) and high resolution (3,840 × 3,840).

Crystal Super was originally announced in April, 2024, with an expected release date of Q4 2024. In the recent update, the company shares its latest projections for the headset’s release date: the end of March for the 50 PPD version and mid-April for the 57 PPD version.

Pimax says that early versions of the Crystal Super are in the hands of ‘beta testers’ who have been providing feedback. Based on that feedback, the company is seemingly regressing the Super’s headstrap design to something closer to its prior headsets: a simple over-the-head strap (instead of a horizontal strap with ratcheting adjustment) and a larger facepad for better weight distribution.

Image courtesy Pimax

The company also addressed newly imposed tariffs that the US has placed on products from China. Pimax says it will eat the cost of the tariffs for any orders placed before they were announced (February 4th). However, the company suggests that the tariffs will increase the cost of its headsets in the future.