An Austin-based startup greatest identified for its VR and combined actuality workspace software program for different firms’ headsets now has {hardware} of its personal. The Immersed Visor seems to take a seat someplace between a Imaginative and prescient Professional Lite and Xreal Plus: a light-weight head-worn system that creates a high-resolution spatial computing atmosphere on a budget (nicely, comparatively talking).
Teased to dying for months, Immersed founder Renji Bijoy lastly unveiled the Visor at an Austin occasion on Thursday. The system, a bit greater than glasses however a lot lower than a full headset, offers every eye the equal of a 4K OLED display. It has a stable 100-degree area of view. It helps 6DoF monitoring (that means it responds to movement on totally different axes, not simply easy head rotations), and it presents hand and eye monitoring and assist for over 5 screens in a digital or combined actuality atmosphere.
Within the presentation, Bijoy revealed that the Immersed Visor solely weighs 186g, barely lower than an iPhone 16 Professional. It’s 64 % lighter than the Meta Quest 3 (515g) and round 70 % lighter than the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional (600 to 650g). Weight and ergonomics have been drawbacks for a lot of early adopters of VR and mixed-reality tech. (That features some clients of the $3,500 Imaginative and prescient Professional.) So, trimming the Visor’s weight to about the identical as a high-end smartphone might, in principle, assist it succeed the place rivals struggled. A part of that comes from (in borrowing a trick from Apple) a wired battery pack you stash in your pocket.
However not like these units, the Immersed Visor doesn’t embody an app retailer or onboard experiences like video games. As an alternative, it’s tailor-made for work: hyperlink it to your Home windows, macOS or Linux laptop (wirelessly or wired), and get stuff performed on its immersive array of digital screens. Its 6DoF monitoring means you’ll be able to rise up, lean or twist, and the digital screens will stay planted the place you set them, slightly than awkwardly following you thru area.
Like the corporate’s workspace app for Meta Quest and Imaginative and prescient Professional, you’ll be able to function both in a passthrough view of your area or a completely digital one. (It contains nice digital environments like a mountaintop ski resort by a comfy hearth.) You can even work with others in a shared area.
The system runs on the Qualcomm XR2+ Gen 2 chip, which debuted at CES 2024. The chip helps as much as 4.3K per-eye decision and might deal with content material as much as 90fps.
Immersed has chosen an unconventional pricing scheme. The system begins at $1,050 to purchase outright. However you may get it for $400 upfront for those who conform to a subscription mannequin: $40 month-to-month for twenty-four months or $60 month-to-month for a 12-month time period. Oh, and that mannequin doesn’t ship till “six months after” October, that means April 2025. In order for you a tool that begins delivery subsequent month — i.e., the “Founder’s Edition” — that value will increase to $1,350 outright or $700 plus the month-to-month subscription price (similar costs because the later-shipping model).
In principle, the Immersed Visor might hit a candy spot for a lot of spatial computing-curious of us who need one thing cheaper than the Imaginative and prescient Professional, with a better decision than the Meta Quest 3 and that’s (maybe) much less like a beta product than Xreal’s AR glasses. Whether or not it succeeds on these factors, nicely, we received’t have a clue till we get some hands-on time. So far as I can see, no main media shops (together with Engadget) have shared hands-on demos of the system. As this 12 months’s wave of absurdly hyped AI devices reminded us, huge guarantees imply nothing if you find yourself with a $1,000 paperweight.
You may watch the presentation beneath and, if it tickles your fancy, pre-order from Immersed’s web site.
