nreal announces nreal light, ready-to-wear mixed reality smart glasses

Founded in January 2017, nreal breaks ground with a radical consumer-focused design that favors comfort without sacrificing the display quality. While competing products herald a heavy goggle or helmet form factor, capable of being worn for no more than one hour, nreal light weighs just 85 grams – only slightly heavier than a pair of sunglasses, and can be worn for hours at a time.

Despite its compact form factor, nreal light breaks ground in achieving highly accurate and realistic interactions between digital avatars and the real world, powered by its Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm, and only two onboard cameras.

nreal light’s display boasts an industry-leading 52º Field of View (FoV), 1080p resolution for vivid 3D graphics, and low latency, which combined with spatial sound, voice interactions and haptic-feedback controllers, offers an immersive mixed reality experience. The rich visual experiences are driven by a companion computing pack which is built on the foundation of cutting-edge technology, the Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Platform.

“Our advanced heterogeneous compute platform, Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Platform, coupled with nreal’s sleek form factor yet high-performance glass truly demonstrate that the future of XR is near,” said Hugo Swart, head of XR at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “XR is the next mobile computing platform and these types of integrated, light, capable solutions that are designed to seamlessly blend immersive experiences with the real world, drive the ecosystem forward and enable many new enterprise applications to emerge while bringing us closer to consumer adoption.”

At the same time, nreal light comes bundled with modern conveniences, including interchangeable prescription lenses, and multiple colors, but also cross-platform compatibility. A universal USB-C port not only supports nreal light’s proprietary companion computing pack, but it can also plug and play content from most USB-C compatible devices including laptops and desktops.

“nreal aims at developing next-generation augmented user experience, by blending the virtual content with the real world through mixed reality glasses. Not only can we provide a truly immersive experience, but we can also make it accessible by everyone, easily, and in a very comfortable fashion”, said Chi Xu, founder and CEO of nreal. “We’re excited to introduce nreal light, truly radical new mixed reality glasses that are designed to be comfortable and light and offer a fully immersive mixed reality experience. This is just a beginning.”

nreal light Product Features

• Lightweight Form Factor – The featherweight of its class, nreal light weighs in at just 85 grams, only slightly heavier than sunglasses and comfortable enough to be worn for hours
• Sleek Design – Ready-to-wear and meticulously designed, nreal light resembles sunglasses
• Vivid Optical Display – nreal light’s high-resolution proprietary display at 1080p with 52º FoV brings a wide-screen view that showcases vivid graphics
• Environmental Understanding – Designed with groundbreaking efficiency, nreal light uses just two cameras and sensors, which combined with SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) algorithms track the environment to make virtual objects interact seamlessly with the real world, with minimal computing power wastage
• Cross Platform Compatibility – nreal’s external computing pack is powered by the Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Platform, but also cross-platform compatible with most USB-C devices including laptops and desktops
• Integrated Spatial Sound and Voice Control – For a fully immersive experience, visuals are augmented by 360° spatial sound through dual speakers, while dual microphones offer control of your virtual environment through voice inputs
• Wireless Controller – With up to three degrees of freedom, nreal’s controllers offer haptic feedback with a responsiveness that’s intuitive to navigate a mixed reality

nreal Fundraising

nreal also announces $15 million in total fundraising including its Series A from Shunwei Capital, China Growth Capital (CGC), APlus, Siasun and iQIYI.

“We were greatly excited when we saw the mixed reality glasses developed by nreal, which strike the right balance between convenient size and user experience, and have strong market potential, which is why we decided to partner with nreal for future content offerings,” said Zhang Hang, Senior Director at iQIYI. “The evolution of mixed reality glasses not only allows audiences to have greater freedom of watching and interaction, but also enables content creators to produce more sensory experiences. iQIYI believes that with the popularization of mixed reality hardware, original contents and experiences adapted to MR devices will appear as well. We are optimistic to the ‘fourth screen’ and looking forward to shaping the future entertainment experience with more partners such as nreal.”

To learn more about nreal light, visit http://nreal.ai

About nreal

Founded in January 2017, by Chi Xu and Bing Xiao, nreal is a developer of ready-to-wear mixed reality glasses. Its flagship product, nreal light, is the first lightweight and comfortable mixed reality glasses, sporting an industry-leading vivid display combined with SLAM-based environmental understanding AI algorithms for an immersive experience. nreal has raised $15 million in Series A funding from investors including Shunwei Capital, China Growth Capital (CGC), APlus, Siasun and iQIYI.