The Light AR glasses by Nreal have set up a design and performance paradigm which other organisations are trying hard to catch up to. While there is a lot of excitement about Nreal’s Light augmented reality (AR) glasses, the company continues to entice developers to support inexpensive, Android-based wearables. Recently, Nreal announced two significant upgrades to its Light software development kit – (1) WebXR support and (2) multi-user environments – along with a few deals that are likely to draw in new developers.
A Massive Price Difference
Unlike Magic Leap and Microsoft, which created enterprise AR headsets of $2,300 to $3,500 using own computing platforms, Nreal developed lightweight $500 glasses which uses Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, 855, or 865 smartphones for wireless network connectivity, storage and processing. Presently, Light can be found as an $1,119 Development Kit, which Spatial, the XR collaborative workspace developer, and multiple cellular carriers have wholeheartedly embraced. All these have been made possible by the headset’s capability to enable next-generation entertainment, remote assistance and remote work. The company plans to release an all-in-one enterprise model in the final quarter of this year. This will certainly be a challenge Microsoft is going to face.
Developer Discount
Light Development Kit users can access the multiplayer mode. This feature allows the wearer to interact with multiple other headset wearers inside a shared mixed reality (MR) space. Business persons can share digital meeting rooms and collaborative workspaces with this feature. Developers will be able to create multi-person competitive or cooperative games. In order to have its multiplayer mode tested, Nreal offers a two headset bundle and a $500 magnetic prescription lens set at a total of $2,559. This bundle comes at a 14% discount against their separate purchase prices.
Special Access to Nreal Tower and Slack Channel
On 28th May, partners Nreal and Hubraum will initiate a global MR program partnership to discover, boost and launch new mixed reality apps for Nreal Light. Their focus is on entertainment and productivity apps, and they plan to either feature or include the apps during the consumer launch of Light. Also, the developers who are interested in developing Nreal-compatible apps will get special access to Nreal Tower, a tower defence style game, and a Slack channel to co-create the game with the Nreal team. A complete version of the game will eventually become available along with the Light Consumer Kit.
High-Quality Content without the Big Names
According to Nreal, it is incorporating WebXR support to the Light platform and also enabling web applications to show content properly via the stereoscopic 3D glasses. Developers are effectively allowed by the WebXR apps to provide their mixed reality content over the internet in a format that does not need Microsoft, Apple, Google, or any other organisation to serve as a gatekeeper. Using the Nebula 3D launcher which Nreal built for Android phones, these apps can be accessed, after an SDK update that is expected to arrive later this year.
