Crowdfunded Viture One XR Glasses Promise Portable Gaming, Streaming

News
By
Published

Wireless neckband add-on makes this the perfect 'Steam Neck'

Viture materials for the One XR glasses
(Image credit: Viture)

As you settle back on the 5:40 pm train waiting to get home, there's a single thought on your mind: beating Elden Ring's Malenia, Blade of Miquella boss. You've been keeping her move set in the back of your mind all day — details stewing amongst work emails and calls as you recall the telltale signs of her attacks and contemplate the timing needed for a perfect dodge. 

There's just one issue: By the time you get home, you'll only have about thirty minutes left to try and vorpal Malenia out of existence before life and responsibilities put you back in your place. "There must be a better way to use my hour-and-a-half commute", you think. But you don't want to force yourself to game on a 7-inch Steam Deck — you want the all-encompassing experience of a 120-inch TV, where you can shut out the world and actually focus on "floating like a butterfly" against Malenia's onslaught. 

Latest Videos FromTom's Hardware
Francisco Pires
Francisco Pires
Freelance News Writer

Francisco Pires is a freelance news writer for Tom's Hardware with a soft side for quantum computing.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • -Fran-
    This is actually a cool concept for sure. I'd love to see the final product and give it a test. This is definitely a great way to have decent-ish quality monitors on the go.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    The concept is quite interesting, if yet again not suited to people wearing glasses I wager.

    However, I'm a bit on the fence about the price point. Only $20, 000? For a project like this? That is super low, which, looking at kickstarter, makes me immediately suspicious. There are more than enough scammers on that site, sadly.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    We're back to the days of PMDs (Personal Media Displays) that pretend to be VR HMDs, just like before the Rift DK1. No tracking, tiny FoV, latency bad enough not to even list. Functionally, this is very similar to the 2012 ST1080 (a small FoV 1080p PMD).
    This particular device looks very, very similar to the TCL NxtWear Air, so probably both come from the same OEM.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    edzieba said:
    We're back to the days of PMDs (Personal Media Displays) that pretend to be VR HMDs, just like before the Rift DK1. No tracking, tiny FoV, latency bad enough not to even list. Functionally, this is very similar to the 2012 ST1080 (a small FoV 1080p PMD).
    This particular device looks very, very similar to the TCL NxtWear Air, so probably both come from the same OEM.
    Yeah, that was my first thought. This doesn't seem to offer any of the best parts of virtual reality or augmented reality, but is little more than a screen fixed in front of your face. Unlike VR, there's no head-tracking, and unlike AR, there's no interaction between what's on-screen and the outside environment. It's a lot like a modernized version of devices from companies like Vuzix being sold back around 2005. And even they launched a VR version with dodgy tracking back in 2007...
    https://www.techpowerup.com/40081/vuzix-iwear-vr920-worlds-first-fully-immersive-virtual-reality-video-eyewear
    It's surprising how many people still jump on mediocre kickstarting campaigns with no guarantee of actually receiving a product rather than just waiting until the product is available and seeing whether its something even worth considering. If these guys only claim to have required $20,000 (the cost of fewer than 40 of these units) to bring the product to market, then they didn't actually need crowdfunding to make it happen, and it's simply being used as a marketing tool.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    cryoburner said:
    If these guys only claim to have required $20,000 (the cost of fewer than 40 of these units) to bring the product to market, then they didn't actually need crowdfunding to make it happen, and it's simply being used as a marketing tool.
    Among all the issues with this kickstarter campaign, that specifically is not a problem: it's basically a pre-order campaign with a minimum required unit presale before production (because you generally know in advance how many units you'd need to sell at a given RRP in order to break-even on manufacturing setup costs, which can be considerable and may even be more than R&D costs), but with a third party added in to ensure consumers are not out of pocket if that MOQ is not met - a 'traditional' campaign where the company takes pre-orders directly can silently fail if the MOQ is not met (or even published), but by that time the company already has your money.
    Companies can still sandbag their minimum kickstarter amount and set it far too low to guarantee production a marginal 'success' though, which is why you often see campaigns that meet their target, but cancel before actually completing (because their target was too low and they hoped inertia would carry them over the actual target), or worse companies that try and bull onwards after the campaign falls short in the hope outside investment will supply the shortfall - or even that the kickstarter success will act as proof of demand to attract investment - and fail before being able to deliver when they run out of cash. All of those issues also apply to 'real' kickstarters that seek R&D funding as well as manufacturing setup funding, so is not a unique issue to manufacturing setup kickstarters.
    But as the whole point of kickstarter is to bet on a campaign success with no guarantees of any return, if you are not willing to gamble the cash you are backing with, you should not in any way ever consider backing any kickstarter ever. It is a pure wager, not an 'investment', an 'order', or anything similar.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    I don't know why it's so important to give these so much functionality. Just a good pair of panels for good decent screen and that's it, no?

    Regards.
    Reply