AND thVRsday
In it weekly columnAndroid Central Senior Content Producer Nick Sutrich explores VR, from new hardware to new games, upcoming technologies and more.
The past two years have seen significant advances in smart glasses. Whether you’re looking at “wearable TV” or a pair of glasses with built-in artificial intelligence, getting smart glasses has never made more sense. And as they continue to grow in popularity, they only get better.
Viture specializes in the “wearable TV” smart glasses segment and recently launched its first pair of glasses with indoor location tracking. It also offers the best smart glasses the ecosystem you can find today; only includes Smart glasses that work with Switch 2wearable spatial necklace and several supervisors.
I spoke with Viture’s Head of Optics, Dr Deqing Kong, about the company’s latest releases and learned about more exciting products in store for the future. These represent the next generation of quality and eye comfort, and it won’t be long before they are ready to buy.
A road map to perfection
My biggest issue with smart glasses today isn’t the quality or functionality of the display; it’s comfort. Smart glasses like the Viture Beast offer built-in spatial tracking and a significantly smaller and lighter design than glasses. VR headsetbut the micro-OLED displays at the heart of the optical engine aren’t always the most comfortable for long viewing.
For me, it’s because I’m sensitive to low-frequency PWM dimming. Almost all smart glasses that use PWM dimming use 120Hz or 240Hz, while the latest two generations of RayNeo offer 3840Hz (not a typo) PWM dimming. According to Dr. Kong, this difference is due to two factors: screen quality and manufacturer specifications.
RayNeo uses micro-OLED displays from SeeYa, a smaller firm from China, while Viture and Xreal use Sony micro-OLEDs. Viture used SeeYa SY049 panels for the Viture One, but Dr. Kong told me that Sony panels offer greater color saturation and pixel density, so Viture switched to Sony for future product releases.
SeeYa panels have historically been more comfortable for me, in part because they use different darkening techniques and Dr. According to Kong, Viture One’s optics have a narrower FoV and higher pixel density. All of the flagship Viture and Xreal models released last year have a wider FoV of over 52 degrees, which lowers the glasses’ pixel density, but Viture’s next pair of glasses will more than make up for it.
Dr. Kong tells me that Viture’s upcoming smart glasses, due out later this year, will have a large FoV with a resolution of 2560 x 1600, which is a marked improvement from Viture’s latest release sporting a resolution of 1920 x 1200. Next year, we should expect a further increase in resolution, which may coincide with an increase in FoV.
Additionally, they will feature PWM dimming up to 3840Hz, ensuring that people like me will find them comfortable no matter how much they wear them. This solves two big problems at once, and while there are many other hurdles to overcome to make smart glasses “perfect,” these important steps will ensure that everyone finds a niche as products evolve.
Pushing the boundaries of wearable technology
Every smart display glasses (wearable TVs) you can buy today uses micro-OLED displays, regardless of which company makes the display or glasses. While micro-OLEDs offer some of the same great benefits of OLED TVs and smartphones, they have to work a little differently due to the inherent nature of how lenses work in a wearable device.
So while the latest Sony ECX348 micro-OLEDs can produce an eye-popping 5,000 nits of brightness, that amount of light is reduced by 1/5, meaning your eyes get about 1,000 nits – when it hits your eyes due to the birdbath optics of the glasses. In VR headsets, this number is even lower, and even if the headsets like it Galaxy XR and apple The Vision Pro uses similar 5,000 nit panels, whose pancake optics reduce brightness to below 200 nits when light reaches your eyes.
For a VR headset, this low brightness level isn’t a big deal, as most headsets block outside light, but since smart glasses don’t obscure your vision, they have to work differently in this regard. Like glasses Viture Beast and Xreal 1S use dimmable electrochromic film, which you can adjust in the glasses settings, adding tint to the front of the glasses to reduce light interference on the screen.
Although electrochromic film is very effective at reducing forward glare, these glasses still need to eliminate peripheral light leaks at high brightness levels. Dr. Kong tells me that the next Viture glasses will have displays with 8,000 nits of peak brightness, which, if the math remains the same, means they’ll deliver 1,600 nits of effective brightness to your eyes.
Dr. Kong noted that VITURE’s display roadmap goes far beyond the next generation of glasses and gains more with resolution, brightness and special silicon on the horizon.
At the same time, we will also see an improvement in color reproduction and capabilities. Current micro-OLEDs use 8-bit SDR color output, and glasses like it RayNeo Air 4 Pro It’s the first company to debut with HDR10 support and 10-bit color, using RayNeo’s HDR10 implementation. temporary hesitation — Software flicker technique that simulates HDR.
VITURE’s stance is to wait for true panel-level HDR rather than shipping a software solution. Any flickering like this can cause headaches and discomfort for some people, so companies should offer ways to disable these methods for affected users.
These advanced micro-OLED panels will also have RGB self-emission, meaning they will work just like the OLED screen on your TV or smartphone. Current smart glasses and micro-OLEDs built into VR have white light pixels with RGB filters on top. Self-emitting color pixels will provide improved color gamut and energy efficiency.
I don’t know which of the next two generations of glasses will support a wider color gamut, but Dr. Kong tells me that Viture glasses are coming. will be It supports 10-bit HDR output and 100% DCI color. Some of these improvements are related to the co-processor in the glasses, and Viture is working on a new, custom chip that is scheduled to debut in 2027.
This new chip will also support AI-powered super-resolution, a boost to AI in phones Like the Galaxy S25 Ultrahowever, the quality improvement is likely to be more pronounced due to the perceived size of the virtual screen in the Viture glasses.
Finally, Viture told me it is working on a few other pain points for its users. Local color options, “professional-level color management”, anti-aliasing and anti-chromatic aberration are all ready for future Viture glasses. That last part is especially music to my ears, as many glasses with larger FoVs suffer from chromatic aberration at the edges of the lens.
All of this points to an incredibly exciting future for smart display glasses, especially those aimed at delivering high-end image quality. The Viture Beast was a big step up for the company’s glasses, adding local location tracking and several other important features. The company’s next steps are trying to implement these improvements and combine them with the Luma line to create something even more impressive.
And if you absolutely can’t wait, stay tuned Chief Day (starting June 23) to check out some smart glasses sales. These types of products are always on sale for Prime Day (and similar sales events), making it the perfect time to pick up a pair.
