Hands on with the Nreal Air’s augmented reality glasses

One of the coolest stops I made while at GDC was at a booth for a company called Nreal.  They were promising augmented reality that would fit inside of a pair of normal sized sunglasses.  Dubbed Nreal Air, these smart glasses purported to be the “new way to play” all of our favorite games, movies, and media.  Bold claims indeed.  I’ve seen augmented reality of all kinds at trade shows (and even a few at GDC) that couldn’t manage this claim, often requiring software that didn’t integrate, battery life that made them unusable, or worse of all, shining light directly in your eyes.  I was skeptical, but after just a few minutes, I was a believer.

The Nreal Air glasses are, as I said, effectively a set of sunglasses.  They look like sunglasses, and when the micro-OLEDs are turned off, they even operate as a pair of sunglasses.  After ensuring that the nosepiece fit my face appropriately, I put them on and plugged them into the nearby Steamdeck.  Immediately I see Street Fighter V projected like a TV was being cast into the distance.  Colors popped the way they should, and frankly it was so much clearer than I anticipated that I was immediately thinking of all the ways this could be used.  Monitor manufacturers, VR companies, and various vendors have been trying to crack the code on how to make a lightweight and powerful set of glasses that provide utility to the user for decades at this point.  Google Glasses were supposed to be this magic panacea, but they’ve shut down for the second time.  Maybe they saw what Nreal was doing and knew what they were doing couldn’t compete?  I don’t know for sure, but when I say these are game changers, I can’t overstate it.

The clarity and color of the Nreal Air comes from the micro OLED displays that are houses in the front of the glasses.  These OLEDs pass their image downwards where a set of glass bounces that image forwards at a specific focal length, giving it the appearance of a screen floating in midair in front of you.  It’s the same technique used in Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride – a trick called phantasmagoria, or “Pepper’s Ghost”, where what you are seeing is a reflection of the screen, not the screen itself.  These project a 1080p image for both eyes (3840×1080 total), and push 400 nits of brightness.  The field of view is only 46 degrees, but given the focal length, that’s expected.

When you aren’t needing to move around with the glasses on, or don’t need to be all that aware of your surroundings (e.g. on a plane), there is an included black shroud that you can put over the front of the glasses.  They block off the pass thru nature of the glasses, but also help with color saturation as you have a black backstop of sorts.  I tried this briefly and it does make a difference, though I suspect most of the time I’d be leaving these at home.

What surprised me the most was the fact that Street Fighter was completely responsive and lag free.  Every jump, hit, kick, throw, happened precisely as it would on a large screen, only I now had screens I could take with me.

Switching to an Android phone, I was able to mirror content from the screen to the phone.  They even had a game that allowed you to interact with a squirrel guarding a treasure chest to complete that Augmented Reality promise.  While I’m not sure when or if AR will ever catch on, the fact that the Nreal Air already supports it is impressive.

Talking with another convention-goer he showed me his personal pair of Nreal glasses.  He’d been using them around San Francisco, having pushed a Google Map’s turn-by-turn directions into his right peripheral vision.  As such, he could walk around the streets looking like a normal dude (with the cord from the back of the right arm of the glasses concealed in his jacket anyway) wearing sunglasses, but also while receiving directions on how to get around without the need to constantly look at his phone like a tourist.

I was excited to see where this tech could go.  How would it perform on other handhelds?  What other games would also work on such a unique display?  How about game consoles like the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5?  How would this handle PC gaming?  How about for productivity?  I know the device can create a 201″ screen projection for Virtual Desktop situations, but how comfortable would that be?  The fact that I was asking questions about how I’d use these instead of questions about if I would use them spoke volumes.  As such, we’ve requested a pair to bring into the studio to see just how far this technology really goes.  Based on what I saw at GDC – this very well could be the future…

Ron Burke is the Editor in Chief for Gaming Trend. Currently living in Fort Worth, Texas, Ron is an old-school gamer who enjoys CRPGs, action/adventure, platformers, music games, and has recently gotten into tabletop gaming. Ron is also a fourth degree black belt, with a Master's rank in Matsumura Seito Shōrin-ryū, Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do, Universal Tang Soo Do Alliance, and International Tang Soo Do Federation. He also holds ranks in several other styles in his search to be a well-rounded fighter. Ron has been married to Gaming Trend Editor, Laura Burke, for 21 years. They have three dogs - Pazuzu (Irish Terrier), Atë, and Calliope (both Australian Kelpie/Pit Bull mixes).