Xreal's Project Aura Will Support Google's Android XR Via Tethered Puck

Xreal just announced Project Aura, new glasses that will support Android XR via a tethered compute puck.

Android XR is Google's new operating system designed to both compete with Meta's Horizon OS and power smart glasses. Announced during Google I/O just now, Project Aura is the second revealed Android XR device, after Samsung's headset, and the first to use a transparent display system, known as optical see-through AR.

Xreal is staying tight-lipped on specific details of Project Aura, sharing only the above image of the design while confirming that it will support Android XR via a tethered compute puck with a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip.

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UploadVRDavid Heaney

The design shown for Project Aura resembles the existing 3DoF Xreal One display glasses but with a camera on each temple, pointed slightly downwards, and another camera in the center of the lenses facing forwards. Those side cameras are likely for 6DoF positional tracking and hand tracking, while the central camera is likely for taking photos and videos, as well as for multimodal with Google's Gemini AI.

Note that while Xreal devices are designed to look like sunglasses, they sit much further out from your eyes than real glasses, and thus are a markedly different device category than the AR glasses in development at Meta and Apple. Those future AR glasses use a display technology called waveguides to sit as close to your eyes as regular glasses, while Xreal uses a far cheaper but also far bulkier approach called birdbath optics. They also block out most light, so can't be used as regular indoor glasses at all.

Xreal says it will reveal more details about Project Aura at Augmented World Expo (AWE) in June, and UploadVR's Don Hopper will be there to try it out.

UPDATE: Xreal confirmed to CNET that the mystery tethered device would be a new compute puck, and this article has been updated to reflect that.