Xreal is targeting the Apple Vision Pro with their latest AR glasses
The $699 Air 2 Ultra is the latest edition of AR firm Xreal’s Air goggles. Vision Pro and Quest 3 headgear are the rivals of Apple’s Air 2 Ultra goggles. These will be available for presale by developers shortly, and deliveries are expected to begin in March. These models are more packed with features than the $399 Air 2 model announced by Xreal, formerly Nreal, at the conclusion of the previous fiscal year. It has full 6DOF positional tracking and is designed in Xreal’s characteristic sunglasses-style design type. This renders them perfect for viewing TV and enjoying flat-screen videogames on a projection screen, as well as operating immersive AR applications—exactly what Xreal wants programmers to do with these.
Like its earlier Light MR gadget, featuring 6DOF tracking as well, Xreal positions the Air 2 Ultra as a full-featured spatial computation tool.
The Air 2 Ultra displays a floating picture right in the middle of viewers’ gazes much like the earlier Air models. However, the two 3D sensors on each side of the eyewear are capable of imaging the area around the user and provide unique functions like hand tracking. That means instead of just showing a standard game, application, or video stream like the Air 2, developers may create programmes that combine real and virtual space.
Compared to the 46-degree Air 2, the 52-degree field of vision offered by the Air 2 Ultra is more impressive. Each eye’s 1080p screen on both gadgets has a luminosity of 500 nits and a refresh rate as high as 120Hz. But the Ultra spectacles are somewhat heavier than the standard Air 2 glasses—weighing 80 grams compared to 72 grams. Similar to the Air 2, they may be connected to a variety of gadgets, such as Windows and macOS PCs, Samsung Android smartphones, and the iPhone 15. They work with subscribers of Xreal’s Nebula AR environment on Windows, Android, and macOS.
For now, the Air 2 Ultra is mainly targeted at developers, but anybody who is interested may purchase it via Xreal’s website, with delivery available to the US, UK, China, Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. (Currently, customers in the US, Europe, and Asia may purchase the Air 2.) It was introduced soon after Xreal said that 350,000 pairs of AR glasses had been supplied by the company to date and that additional nations will be receiving Air 2 in 2024.
It made reasonable to remove the earlier Light glasses’ mixed reality features in order to save weight and costs since they were quite basic. However, by reintroducing 6DOF tracking, Xreal is able to more directly take on Apple and Meta, two of its most well-known US rivals. According to rumours, Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro will be on sale in February. With it, developers will be able to build spatially immersive experiences that work in tandem with flat-screen projections. The $499 Quest 3 from Meta, which made its debut in October of last year, mixes mixed reality applications such as digital tabletop games with fully functional virtual reality. Both headsets use passthrough MR, which superimposes digital components over a video feed, as an alternative to Xreal’s direct projections. However, Apple is probably working on comparable projection-based augmented reality glasses to Meta’s, which are aimed towards being more like the Air 2 Ultra.
