An Austin-based startup greatest identified for its VR and blended actuality workspace software program for different firms’ headsets now has {hardware} of its personal. The Immersed Visor seems to sit down someplace between a Imaginative and prescient Professional Lite and Xreal Plus: a light-weight head-worn machine that creates a high-resolution spatial computing surroundings on a budget (nicely, comparatively talking).
Teased to loss of life for months, Immersed founder Renji Bijoy lastly unveiled the Visor at an Austin occasion on Thursday. The machine, 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 strong 100-degree discipline of view. It helps 6DoF monitoring (that means it responds to movement on completely different axes, not simply easy head rotations), and it gives hand and eye monitoring and help for over 5 screens in a digital or blended actuality surroundings.
Within the presentation, Bijoy revealed that the Immersed Visor solely weighs 186g, barely lower than an iPhone 16 Professional. It’s 64 p.c lighter than the Meta Quest 3 (515g) and round 70 p.c 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 idea, assist it succeed the place opponents struggled. A part of that comes from (in borrowing a trick from Apple) a wired battery pack you stash in your pocket.
However in contrast to these units, the Immersed Visor doesn’t embrace an app retailer or onboard experiences like video games. As a substitute, it’s tailor-made for work: hyperlink it to your Home windows, macOS or Linux laptop (wirelessly or wired), and get stuff carried out on its immersive array of digital screens. Its 6DoF monitoring means you may get up, lean or twist, and the digital screens will stay planted the place you set them, fairly than awkwardly following you thru house.
Like the corporate’s workspace app for Meta Quest and Imaginative and prescient Professional, you may function both in a passthrough view of your house or a wholly digital one. (It contains nice digital environments like a mountaintop ski resort by a comfortable hearth.) You can even work with others in a shared house.
The machine 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 machine begins at $1,050 to purchase outright. However you will get it for $400 upfront when you 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. If you’d like a tool that begins transport subsequent month — i.e., the “Founder’s Edition” — that worth will increase to $1,350 outright or $700 plus the month-to-month subscription charge (similar costs because the later-shipping model).
In idea, 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 the next 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 retailers (together with Engadget) have shared hands-on demos of the machine. As this 12 months’s wave of absurdly hyped AI devices reminded us, massive guarantees imply nothing if you find yourself with a $1,000 paperweight.
You’ll be able to watch the presentation under and, if it tickles your fancy, pre-order from Immersed’s web site.
