Ever since the ill-fated demise of Google Glass in 2015, there’s been a part of me itching to know how augmented reality (AR) glasses tech has advanced — and every now and then, I get a taste. For the last several years, I’ve watched as display technology has shrunken down to fit right within a pair of glasses, and I’ve gone hands-on with a handful of different types of head-mounted displays.
Whether you want to call them AR or XR glasses, these wearable displays offer stunning possibilities. But I’ve found there’s one big impediment that consistently stands in the way of me properly enjoying these devices, and it could hold back huge swaths of the population: the nose.
Right now, the many commercially available AR/XR glasses have a lot in common. My own experiences with popular models, including the Viture Pro, Xreal Air 2 Pro, and RayNeo Air 2, have been pretty cool, with their absolutely tiny displays and special prism optics that make it appear as if a huge display is floating right in front of you.
Mark Knapp / IDG
Some of these headsets let you lock an image in place, so that they function more like AR/XR glasses, situating the display as though it’s right there in real, physical space. Others simply lock the image to the middle of your view. The behaviors are different from device to device — for example, one has electronically dimming lenses while another has snap-on lens covers — the heart of the experience is similar across units.
Which is to say, even in their current state, AR/XR glasses are pretty darn exciting. Many have OLED displays with fast refresh rates. And the fact that a display can be situated front and center no matter which way you’re facing could be a boon for ergonomics. (That was one of the more exciting use cases for me when I first tried out a pair.) Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips further stoked the flames when he brought
Mark Knapp / IDG
Sure, not many AR/XR glasses are successfully weaving together what they display with visuals of the real world beyond the glasses yet. We still don’t have a true augmented reality experience. But companies like Meta (with Orion) and Google (with Astra) are openly working on such devices, and the potential for the technology is still sky-high.
And that only makes me more worried about my nose. See, with every single pair of AR/XR glasses I’ve tried, my nose has always gotten in the way of effective usage. It’s a real problem because your ability to see the built-in displays depends on where your eyes sit relative to the optics, and the shape of your nose changes how the glasses sit on your face.
Mark Knapp / IDG
To solve this, most of the glasses I’ve tested offer earpieces with adjustable tilt and nose pads of various heights. The Viture Pro even features adjustable dials to compensate for myopia. In spite of all this, my not-quite-comically-big-but-still-large nose ensures that the optics end up just a bit too far or too tilted for me to see them properly.
Because of that, a large portion of the bottom or corners of the display often end up cropped from my field of view. That might be fine for casually watching a movie or something, but it rules out serious productivity or gaming. Content near the edges of my vision also ends up rather distorted, making it harder to see details or read text. It’s bad enough on current hardware, but if future AR/XR glasses use that peripheral area for information that doesn’t obstruct your view front-and-center, I’d be left out in the cold.
Mark Knapp / IDG
And I suspect I’m not alone. The height of your ears, the spacing of your eyes, the size of your nose — it can all play into the view you get with a pair of AR/XR glasses. All of these factors influence whether these devices are brilliant, a headache, or completely useless.
It’s possible that newer, upcoming technologies could make AR/XR glasses more of a one-size-fits-all solution. For now, we aren’t close. All of the glasses I’ve tested so far use birdbath optics, but there are other options being developed. Some glasses use high-tech waveguides, like the new RayNeo X2, but those are exceedingly few. Meanwhile, the new Xreal One Pro still uses birdbath optics but has shrunken them down, and there are multiple versions for different inter-pupillary distances (the space between your pupils).
Mark Knapp / IDG
I hope these and future advancements will make a significant difference, but I’m tempering my expectations and reserving my judgement until I they’re sitting comfortably and clearly on my nose. As is, AR/XR glasses will never reach mainstream adoption until this is solved.
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