> You think they're talking to you, but they're actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead.

So, the average Zoom call in 2025?

This is reversed. If cops were wearing them, for a reasonable price, it would mean everyone else was already wearing them, for a reasonable price.

volume is what makes things like this reasonably priced.

They will keep getting smaller and more powerful. It won't be long until they look close enough to normal sunglasses.

As for opting out? I think the only chance you have is to have zero online presence, especially with pictures. Of course, many are forced into this by their careers.

It doesn’t seem to stop people being okay with <42 hour smart watch charges, so I’m not so convinced this will be the limiting factor unless you need the prescription version of these (which rules them out for me, I’m happy with my dumb-glasses that I’ve never had to plug in to anything)

As someone who's been avidly following and sampling VR/AR since the 90s, in recent years I've changed my opinion. While I'm not as confident as you seem to be, I do now think it probably never goes into widespread all-day consumer use. Although, I do believe certain gaming, entertainment and workplace use cases will become much more common.

They could still be useful as a dumb display without voice or gesture. Imagine being in an airplane and wanting to use your laptop. You'll be hunched over with terrible posture. With a pair of AR glasses that support displayport alt mode, you could plug in your glasses and sit with proper posture, your screen displayed in front of you as a virtual 40" display, while you touch type on your laptop sitting on the food tray. Perhaps you're in bed and want to watch a movie. You could pop on the glasses, plug in your phone, and enjoy while while fully reclined, achieving the most comfortable least effort movie viewing experience. Maybe you're traveling and staying in hotels where you want to get some work done. Programming on tiny laptop screens sucks if you're opening more than 2 files at a time, but what if you could just pop on your glasses, plug them into your laptop, and program on a virtual 40" display?

My understanding is the current tech is not sharp enough for serious productivity, is too heavy for extended wear, and has a short life due to overdriving tiny OLEDs, so I'm not ready to purchase one yet. But some day those problems will be solved and I'm absolutely going to jump on that.

Yes it is highly economically inefficient.

People seem to underestimate how wonderful it to be able to touch and tap an interface and how minimal effort is exerted.

I want an HUD mini-map that displays directions for navigation. That solves an actual problem for me (having no sense of direction).

oh i think we will see voice becoming a much more popular interface in the very near future, now that it’s actually getting very good

I'm not so sure there is no problem to be solved. Being able to see the world around me annotated visually has massive potential - I for one would love the Google Translate camera feature that lets you translate text seen by the camera in real time and overlay the translated text on the document but built into a pair of normal looking glasses, freeing my hands etc.

While I accept some will take issue with calling it an "AR device", the current Meta RayBans have sold very well with major YoY growth and I only expect them to get more popular as they get more capable and add more "AR"-esque features in future versions. I see them already as a first step on road to real AR products much, much more than I do the Quest line.

Thirded

Periodic reminder to flag submissions that are off-topic, and comments that break the guidelines. HN is mostly moderated by users - dang and tomhow don't do as much moderation as you might think.

> The Meta Ray-Bans have been extremely successful for a completely new consumer device form factor.

Do you have any sources on them being a successful product by any measurable standard? I honestly wasn't aware that they were even being sold, and I'm sure I don't know anyone that owns a pair. I'm not exactly their target market, but I think at least some in my social circle are.

Thanks for posting, your comment was informative and didn't contain hate and boring tropes.

2 million sold in three years is hardly ‘extremely successful’.

Why do they call the smart glasses when they just send everything to the smart phone? Nothing is done on device.

Facebook is trying so very hard to be Innovative Online Industries.

The "old man yelling at the sky" part of me can only hope the side effects of something like this gaining traction might be that physical-world advertisements fade away.

Karl Guttag has published far more information than you ever wanted to know about Lumus in the past, e.g. https://kguttag.com/2021/05/24/exclusive-lumus-maximus-2k-x-...

The "About" link on the upper left of the site's homepage goes here: https://kguttag.com/about-karl-guttag/

But I found his blog a couple years ago and have been reading it ever since. Karl follows VR/AR display tech obsessively, goes to all the shows/conferences and talks with all the companies - then does highly technical, in-depth write-ups of what's new and notable - which often includes his unvarnished opinions. His blog is read by basically everyone in the industry, so all the companies give him briefings and demos despite the fact he'll call it like he sees it. Which is why he's pretty much my go to source when any new VR/AR display tech gets announced.

Even more valuable to me, he'll mention when companies are lagging or falling short of expectations and he'll even speculate about where things could (or should) go. His blog is basically like having a buddy who's an expert industry insider who'll tell you what he really thinks over a beer - which is pretty invaluable if you're someone who's interested and technical but doesn't follow this space that closely. That doesn't mean Karl's opinion is always correct but it is certainly well-informed and usually supported with technical data - although he did say this post was just a quick note that a video was leaked. He'll probably have a real post after it's announced and a deep dive once he gets his hands on one.

Interesting fact: Karl's career was as a chip architect. He designed key parts of the the Texas Instruments 9918 - the first general purpose video display processor which was used in dozens of 80s computers and game systems including Sega Master System (and coined the term "sprite"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS9918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_%28computer_graphics%29 https://kguttag.com/2025/07/01/tms9918-the-first-sprite-chip... So yeah, he's just "some random retired guy with a blog" but a guy with 150 patents and dozens of published technical papers. But being some random retired guy with a blog, he makes little effort to be accessible to first-time visitors or do design, marketing, etc. You just have to read-in and when you do, you pretty quickly figure out this guy knows his stuff.