XR shows promise, but here’s what needs to be improved

At the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii this week, Qualcomm unveiled a number of innovations the company is enabling. The star of the show continues to be the Snapdragon X Elite computer processor and the brand new Snapdragon 8 Elite phone processor. But alongside these announcements, Qualcomm is making progress in a new area that not many people are talking about – XR platforms. Snapdragon already operates a few different XR platforms, including the Meta Ray Bans and the just released Meta Quest 3S.

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But I got to take a look at – and through – another XR platform that shows promise. Snap (Snapchat, not Snapdragon) brought a few pairs of its new Spectacles to the conference for the press to try out. They give a good impression of where things are now, where they are going and what is possible overall. Here’s what I learned about XR in my 45-minute demo.

Since this is a relatively new area, you can expect there to be some challenges. You can decide for yourself which of these huge loopholes might prevent you from canceling your credit card. In my personal order of preference, these disadvantages are: They cost $99 per month on a 12-month subscription service, are aimed only at developers, last just 45 minutes on a single charge, and, to be perfectly honest, look a little weird. Many of you closed the site and moved on after reading this, but for those who didn’t, let’s dig a little deeper.

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The Spectacles are intended for developers who want to develop apps for space. Since I don’t have any developer knowledge, I can’t really talk about languages, models, and compiling – which I think are all things developers need to know about – but it’s not hard to join Snap’s developer program. However, the price is still prohibitive for all but the most demanding development environments. You probably won’t get your child a set for their 18th birthday, but if you want one – and you’re looking for an overweight 48-year-old with long hair – I’m available.

The biggest problem might be the fact that they just look silly. I imagine the wearable will look like what people in the 1950s imagined glasses would look like in 2024. It’s clunky and has a strange shape. They have cameras built into them that are quite noticeable, and the frames are extremely thick – these aren’t Meta Ray-Bans, although they’re definitely smaller than the Meta Quest 3 VR headset we tested last year. This is mainly because the hardware is much more sophisticated than Meta’s glasses. These are primarily designed for audio feedback such as playing music or asking and answering questions. Snap has higher ambitions.

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This is a true XR experience with hand tracking, intuitive interfaces and dual Snapdragon processors powering the entire experience. In addition to the speakers and AI engine that powers the Ray-Bans, Snap has also added two transparent displays to the hardware. The displays only have a 46-degree field of view, which is pretty narrow, but the cool thing is that it felt natural and the images displayed looked pretty good. You set up the glasses by using your phone’s camera to measure the distance between your eyes, and you’re done. I usually have to wear reading glasses to see anything closer than 6 feet away from me, but I had no problem with anything the glasses produced.

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During the demo, I first had to learn the interface by holding up the palm of my left hand. Controls appear there that you can tap, and it feels similar to the Humane AI Pin. This menu persists in every app you launch, giving you a nice, consistent interface when you need it – a common aspect of how augmented reality works. I played a few different games, including one called Nature Spray, where I could easily shoot flowers and plants from my hand onto the floor, table, and even the ceiling. The cool thing is that the Spectacles knew whether I was spraying a horizontal or vertical surface and responded accordingly.

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Another game I played with a fellow journalist was a collaborative 3D drawing game where you can draw in the air with one (or more) others. The drawings are locked so you can move them and add details as needed. I’ve never had the mind to allow me to draw this way, but I really like how easy it is – although the interface for selecting tools and color palettes wasn’t as intuitive as I’d like would have.

From an educational perspective, there was “Solar System,” which does exactly what it sounds like: show you a working model of the solar system. It’s not to scale because if it were, Mercury and Jupiter would be miles apart, but it simulates the movement of the planets and moons and makes it possible to walk around the area.

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Overall, I think the future of XR is still very uncertain, but I like the moves that Snap Spectacles are taking. Instead of a bulbous headset that you strap to your face, the Spectacles have a friendlier – and more socially acceptable – form factor (similar to the RayNeo Air 2 smart glasses we tested last year). They’re still huge and have a lot to overcome before they become a viable consumer product, but they’re definitely a step in the right direction.

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I still don’t know that spatial computing is the future. I like to imagine that, but I also get nervous when I think about the sheer amount of data such devices require and can access. Am I willing to walk through a mall and see advertisements in the air in front of me? Absolutely not.

But for some limited applications that, for some reason, keep falling back on games, there is real potential – and the educational opportunities here are clear. However, to make them a viable consumer product, they need to be a tenth of the price and probably about 50% smaller while maintaining the same battery life and other features. We’re not there yet, but now that I’ve tried these, I like the direction we’re going.

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