While mobile AR has often been criticized for feeling like passive 3D stickers that just loop an animation, the Quest has proven how immersive MR can be. But it has been trapped in a single room. A new update from EasyAR breaks that living-room boundary, bringing building-scale mixed reality and exploration games to the Quest 3 and 3S. Entire shopping malls, museums, and multi-floor buildings can now become persistent, playable environments where interactive characters, quests, and 3D navigation stay anchored to exact real-world spots, hide behind real walls, and react dynamically as you walk around.

Alongside mapping the wider building, the update brings EasyAR Sense image tracking to Quest. Rather than just acting as a one-time picture trigger, it actively tracks physical objects in real-time. When you pick up an exhibition card, brochure, or product box and tilt, rotate, or move it around in your hands, the 3D model stays rigidly locked and tilts right along with it in passthrough.

For developers building in Unity, these features are available through a new Meta XR extension for the EasyAR Sense Unity Plugin. Instead of relying solely on local motion tracking or plane detection—which struggle to stay aligned across large venues—you can capture a space using panoramic cameras, LiDAR/E57 laser scans, or smartphones and let EasyAR Mega’s automated cloud mapping generate a Mega Block containing both the visual positioning map and a 1:1 3D reference and environment occlusion mesh. At runtime, EasyAR Mega matches the Quest camera feed against this prebuilt spatial map to establish a stable global coordinate system, while Unity and the Meta XR SDK handle all your scene physics, colliders, hand/controller interaction logic, and localized EasyAR Sense image target triggers. Alongside Quest 3/3S support, this patch fixes a bug where input extensions broke when DeviceOriginType was set to OriginType.External, and resolves an issue where the AR Session failed to start if Mega cloud services were disabled in the project configuration.

https://www.easyar.com/mega/

Hardware makers generally want thin waveguides around 0.5mm to keep smart glasses light and compact, but making the glass this thin actually reduces the maximum image resolution to 28ppd at typical bounce angles.

To reach 60ppd (the benchmark for sharp human vision) across lower bounce angles, a waveguide of at least 1mm is necessary, which doubles the thickness and adds unwanted weight and bulk to the frame. However, this resolution limit only affects narrow-linewidth laser light sources, whereas microLED displays are completely unaffected and can use ultra-thin waveguides without losing sharpness.

This difference comes down to how light from different projectors travels inside the glass. In waveguide-based smart glasses, each pixel of the virtual image enters the lens at a slightly different angle and bounces between the inner surfaces toward the eye. Because standard single-mode lasers emit pure light within a tiny color range under 0.1nm, the bouncing light waves overlap and cancel each other out at most angles. Only specific bounce angles survive the trip through a thin waveguide, meaning the glass blocks the angles in between and lowers the overall resolution across the FOV. In contrast, microLED emits a much wider color range above 10nm, which allows many overlapping bounce angles to survive and naturally fills in all the missing gaps.

The optical data shows that the exact resolution limit depends on how steeply the light bounces inside the waveguide. That 28ppd (2.13 arcmin) ceiling in a 0.5mm waveguide happens at a typical 40° bounce angle, where reaching the full 60ppd (1 arcmin) requires a 1.07mm lens. Increasing the glass thickness to 0.75mm still falls short of 60ppd for bounce angles under 50°, and any bounce angle below 42° requires glass thicker than 1mm. While manufacturers can force the missing laser angles through a thin waveguide by making the glass thickness slightly uneven by more than 100nm, doing so causes the bouncing light to spread out and blurs the image anyway.

Source: Angular resolution limit of augmented reality waveguides from guided mode theory

https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09527

the marketing slogan on the poster promises smarter glasses

and adds the RGB hint at the end.

the event will take place on october 27.

Confirmatory Assignment agreement signed between Sony and Meta in December 2025

According to a report by ZDNet Korea, Sony transferred 419 XR headset patents to Meta. This move follows a December 2025 agreement to scale back Sony's internal hardware operations.

The patent portfolio includes 180 filings in the United States. Of those, 43 were already reassigned between June and September 2026. The remaining 239 patents are registered across Japan, China, South Korea, and Europe.

ZDNet believes this shows that Sony is stepping away from making its own XR devices, and that Meta will use the patents to develop smart glasses. However, I cannot say for certain if these patents cover anything beyond VR and MR headsets. At least based on ZDNet Korea's excerpt of the patent list (see image in comments). Also, keep in mind that I recently invited Sony's Chief XR Strategist for a keynote presentation, and he was very enthusiastic about the future of AR glasses.

The Chinese tech company Shenzhen Qingcheng, the developer behind the HeyCyan app, is being investigated by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)—Australia’s national privacy watchdog. The formal probe focuses specifically on how the HeyCyan companion app handles personal information, including how it records data, where it stores user footage and audio, and who controls third-party access.

The OAIC stepped in after Australian Attorney-General Michelle Rowland requested a priority review of camera-equipped smart glasses. When the privacy watchdog reached out with preliminary inquiries, Shenzhen Qingcheng failed to respond, prompting the Commissioner to launch a formal investigation with compulsory information-gathering powers.

Following the announcement, Kmart quietly removed listings for its $89 Anko-branded camera glasses from its website, though its audio-only models remain available. The Privacy Commissioner has also formally urged other retailers stocking HeyCyan-compatible devices, including Amazon and Big W Marketplace, to reconsider selling them until these privacy and surveillance concerns are fully addressed.

The HeyCyan app primarily serves as a "white-label" or generic companion app for various budget-friendly AI and camera smart glasses manufactured in China. Rather than being tied to one specific major tech brand, it is used by dozens of rebranded or unbranded devices.

Penn State researchers have developed a MEMS micromirror for augmented reality headsets that simultaneously steers light and shifts focal depth at microsecond speeds. Built around a 1mm mirror, this component replaces the multiple optical elements traditionally required for 3D beam control, reducing headset weight while eliminating the fixed-focus panel limitations that cause visual fatigue.

The unit uses thin layers of aluminum nitride, a piezoelectric material that flexes under applied voltage to physically tilt and reshape the mirror surface. This mechanism delivers true 3D spatial control of the beam in real time, demonstrating a 63mm focal shift in millionths of a second.

Engineers fabricate the mirrors using established semiconductor manufacturing processes, ensuring compatibility with standard microelectronics and compact optical architectures. Future development focuses on minimizing asymmetrical distortions and increasing scanning speeds for next-generation smart glasses.

Source: PennState

Paper: High speed biaxial piezoelectric MEMS micromirror with varifocal tunability

Vivo had a big event today in India where they announced new phones and demoed the Mixed Reality HMD - the Vivo Vision Discovery Edition. This seems to be the same headset they announced a year ago in China. Back then I talked to Vivo marketing and they organized a demo for me, which was super nice.

The headset felt very comfortable and the only real flaw was the edge clarity of the pancake lenses. I assumed that they didn't use the 3M curved films rather than it being a simple software problem. But it seemed to be solvable if they kept working on it. The software and the few apps that were available during my 1+ hour demo were in a pretty good state already.

Ultimately, I decided not to go through the process of editing the video from my demo because my sources told me that Vivo will not launch this product in the near future. But here we go, a year later they still show it off at a launch event in a major market for them.

Do you think they will keep iterating? I think, it's possible because they were also preparing the launch of smart glasses back then and stopped the launch of their already developed glasses as well. It was rumored that they felt it lacked differentiation. A few months ago, they started a project for the glasses. Maybe the same is true for Mixed Reality?

What do you want to know?!

EssilorLuxottica has unveiled Nuance Audio Plus, the second-generation version of its FDA-cleared hearing glasses designed for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss. The update keeps the open-ear design that hides hearing tech inside standard eyeglass frames while addressing major limitations from the first generation.

What’s New

• Hands-Free Phone Calls: You can now take calls directly through the glasses via open-ear temple speakers. The hardware is MFi (Made for iPhone) certified and works with iOS 16+.
• Better Speech Clarity & Natural Voice: The amplification engine features upgraded beamforming to isolate voices in noisy rooms, paired with new "own-voice perception" tuning to prevent your own voice from sounding boomy or echoing in your head.
• On-Frame Buttons & Remote: Instead of relying solely on your phone, the frames now feature physical buttons on the temples for fast volume and mode adjustments. A standalone pocket remote is also available.
• Battery Life Bump: Continuous runtime is rated at up to 10 hours on a single charge (up from 8 hours), recharging via an included magnetic charging pad and USB-C cable.
• More Styles and Adjustability: Alongside the existing Square 53 and Panthos 48 shapes, a new Upturn 52 cat-eye silhouette joins the lineup in five colors (Shiny Black, Shiny Burgundy, Deep Blue, Amber, Olive Green) with adjustable nose pad options.

The most critical spec in open-ear hearing glasses isn't Bluetooth range or speaker wattage—it's acoustic latency.

Because your ear canal remains completely open, sound travels straight from a person’s mouth into your ear at the speed of sound. If the microphones and DSP amplify that voice and beam it through the speakers even 10 to 15 milliseconds late, the direct sound and amplified sound collide out of sync. This creates severe comb filtering—a hollow, robotic "talking in a barrel" echo that makes speech harder to understand rather than easier.

To prevent this, Nuance's custom digital signal processor runs an ultra-low-latency directional pipeline under 8 milliseconds. At that speed, the amplified audio hits your eardrum in near-perfect phase with ambient room sound, keeping conversations crisp, natural, and lip-synced.

Price & Availability: The recommended retail price starts at $829 USD for standard, non-prescription lenses. Custom prescription optical lenses and photochromic Transitions lenses are available at an added cost. Launched in the United States through eye care professionals, LensCrafters locations, and online optical retailers, with broader rollouts expanding across Europe and international optical networks.

Amazon delivery driver wearing Amazon's display smart glasses (shared on Reddit recently).

Reports confirm that Amazon has officially started a wider testing phase, training more drivers across the US on their smart glasses.

If these tests go well, Amazon is planning a massive rollout. Reports already point to a target of 100,000 pairs, with the potential to scale across Amazon's entire delivery network — which employs roughly 390,000 drivers in the U.S. alone.

Amazon wants to get rid of the handheld delivery phone. The glasses show walking directions, scan barcodes automatically, and snap the delivery photo at the door hands-free.

Still, new reports (including from Bloomberg) point out general issues:

• Front-door privacy: Homeowners may not be happy with delivery drivers walking onto their property with a camera on their face, recording porches, yards, and front windows without permission.
• Driver pressure: Drivers are already tracked closely by AI cameras inside their vans. Many worry the glasses will just be used to watch every step they take outside the van and push them to move even faster.

At the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm demonstrated a major step forward for smartglasses: running a 2-billion-parameter multimodal AI model entirely on smartglasses powered by the Snapdragon AR1 and AR1+ platforms, with support for more chips coming down the road.

Because everything is processed directly on the glasses, interactions stay completely private without relying on an internet connection.

The on-stage demo showed a practical accessibility use case where a visually impaired user asks the glasses what color an apple is, and the on-device AI identifies both the color and the likely variety of the apple. Qualcomm also highlighted on-device real-time translation as another use case made possible by these lightweight models.

The technical breakthrough making this possible is PrismML's 1-bit Bonsai model. Smartglasses operate under strict limits for battery life, heat, and memory. By compressing the model down to 1-bit weights optimized specifically for Qualcomm's Hexagon NPU, the model takes up nearly four times less memory (shrinking from about 1.66 GB to just 0.43 GB) while generating responses more than twice as fast. This delivers responsive, private multimodal intelligence within the lightweight form factor of everyday glasses.

PrismML announcement

INMO has officially started preparing for an IPO after closing its Series C funding, which reached nearly 1 billion RMB (about $140 million).

Their current hardware lineup covers three distinct products. The INMO Air 3 is a standalone pair of glasses that runs standard Android apps directly on the device. The INMO GO3 is a lightweight pair of display smart glasses focused on tasks like live translation, teleprompting, and audio. The Magic AI Glasses J, co-designed with singer Jackson Wang, has no screen or display at all; it is strictly a camera and audio device similar to the Ray-Ban Meta.

For future generations, INMO is focusing on new software systems and partnerships. They are developing their own "Spatial AIOS" for upcoming devices to handle true spatial computing, scene understanding, and multi-screen setups. They also announced a partnership with Ant Group to use their LingAOS on future GO series glasses, which will let users interact with AI agents and access Alipay services like digital payments, food delivery or unlocking shared bikes. INMO is also working on a project with Huawei Cloud for tourism.

Several other Chinese AR companies are also preparing to go public:

• XREAL has already submitted its IPO prospectus in Hong Kong.
• Rokid completed its joint-stock restructuring, usually the final preparatory step in China before filing.
• RayNeo is preparing its own IPO after raising more than 1 billion RMB (about $140 million).
• VITURE is rumored to be planning an IPO in the United States after raising over $200 million.

What stood out to me recently was INMO's physical retail presence. Walking around Shenzhen, I saw the INMO GO3 on display in several regular eyewear shops, placed directly on shelves next to standard prescription glasses.

But is this retail presence in China enough? Many users complained about the quality of the INMO Air 3. Yesterday we saw a report about a recall of these glasses in the US and Canada. And the software for GO3 seems to be lacking as well.

Meta just gave us the Muse Charm: a keychain-sized pebble that talks directly to the cloud. With a tiny screen, a corner fingerprint sensor, and a voice-first soul, it lives online on its own. Tap it, and your personal AI avatar pops up to chat, coordinate your day, and take action—without you ever digging out a phone or fighting past lock-screen clutter.

Meanwhile, a similar gadget is already out in the wild: the OPPO Bubble. Right now, it's a magnetic puck you snap onto your phone to frame rear-camera selfies, trigger the shutter from across the room, or just loop cute animated avatars when it’s clipped to your bag or pants as you can see on the left side in the image above. In many ways, the Muse Charm feels like a futuristic version of the Bubble—while at the same time lacking that very down-to-earth use case of being a simple viewfinder for the rear cameras of a phone.

Now connect the dots to Augmented Reality

Display glasses are intensely private. The optics sit in front of your eyes alone—nobody else in the room sees what you see—hopefully. A simple external display solves the isolation problem. It acts as a public-facing anchor for shared media—whether it’s a freshly snapped selfie, your virtual companion, or a music video. It lets you share effortlessly without the awkward friction of passing around an unlocked phone full of private apps and messages.

We’re already seeing the audio version of this play out. INMO built a clip-on speaker for its glasses so live translations can actually be heard by the person standing across from you. But the Muse Charm isn't just a mute screen; it has two-way audio, too. Swapping a bare clip-on speaker for a charm gives you the voice bridge and an outward-facing screen to anchor visual context for the people around you.

For Meta and the Muse Charm, teaming up with an established phone brand looks like a clear win-win. Meta gets instant OS-level privileges and deep app hooks, while the phone brand gets a popular AI assistant tuned for Western users, backed by Meta’s massive cloud infrastructure. But the Charm might be something much more disruptive. It could quietly phase out traditional apps altogether—becoming the pocket cellular hub and external monitor for your glasses, while a screenless wristband handles subtle, discreet finger gestures.

The question is: Will Meta use a phone partnership as a comfortable stepping stone, or leap straight into this post-smartphone wonderland?

LE62 with a custom Seeya panel? Slightly smaller than the 1.03 inch one?