nreal Announces Highly Anticipated Consumer Availability of nreal light for $499 USD
The nreal light’s consumer edition gets its debut, selling for just $499 and will be shipped later this year, while a developer edition also launches today for $1,199
The nreal, developer of ready-to-wear mixed reality glasses, today announces the availability of nreal light, the first truly consumer-grade smartglasses, for the price of $499 USD.
Living up to its namesake, nreal light introduces a radically simple, yet wearable sunglass-like design that’s familiar, yet also doesn’t hold back with a brilliant and immersive 1080p display. Whether you’re flipping through the day’s tasks and calendar during your commute to the office, or completely enveloped in a new world battling aliens from the comfort of your home, nreal light offers unparalleled flexibility to stream your favorite content on-the-go for hours on end.
nreal light Consumer Kit Availability
The $499 package, called the “nreal light Consumer Kit,” will ship later this year with one nreal light glasses, which can be connected by a USB-C cable directly to compatible ‘XR optimized’ devices powered by the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 855 Mobile Platform. The 855 Mobile Platform supports immersive content on-the-go.
“nreal light provides a light-weight XR Viewer that allows consumers to take advantage of 5G including high bandwidth and low latency to deliver immersive experiences virtually anywhere,” said Hugo Swart, head of XR, Qualcomm Technologies, “We worked closely with nreal to ensure Snapdragon smartphone compatibility and ecosystem integration to transform the way people connect and consume entertainment, and to further advance XR to make it the next generation of mobile computing.”
And following its mission to make mixed reality accessible to more consumers, nreal announces its partnership with Black Shark, enabling nreal light to be tethered to the world first-technology gaming smartphone, Black Shark 2.
“Paired with nreal light, the Black Shark 2 will be able to deliver the highest performance mobile gaming experience. nreal light will completely immerse our users in a fully interactive gaming environment that places you right in the heat of the moment,” said David Li, Global VP at Black Shark. “We are excited to work with nreal to usher in a new era of the mobile gaming experience.”
“We’re excited to finally make nreal light available to consumers, which at just $499 has dramatically lowered the barrier to adoption and introduces a new opportunity for mixed reality devices that are finally within the reach of an average consumer,” said Chi Xu, CEO and Founder of nreal.
Finally, nreal light wearers will be able to stream latency-free mixed reality content through 5G networks, enabling users to watch their favorite TV shows and mobile games, all the while outside and nowhere near their home’s Wi-Fi. Powering this future of 5G-enabled buffer-free content in partnership with nreal, are world-leading carriers, listed alphabetically, including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, EE, KDDI, KT, LG Uplus, Softbank Corp. and Swisscom.
Product Updates
Since first being unveiled at CES 2019, nreal light also introduces new improvements to its form factor that offers an even more comfortable, style and compatibility with more 5G devices.
Improved Fit – nreal light now sits more securely on your face by reducing the front-heavy pressure on the nose, for a more secure fit
Foldable Temples – nreal light will ship to developers with foldable temples, making it convenient for storage and easy access, while conforming to the sunglass form factor
Multiple Colors – nreal light will offer different colors, to be announced upon the processing of the orders
nreal light Developer Kit Availability
Starting today, the developer package called the “nreal light Developer Kit,” including the nreal light glasses, a 3DoF controller and nreal’s proprietary computing pack, will be available to developers for $1,199 USD. Developers can apply on https://nreal.ai/developer for an opportunity to purchase the nreal light Developer Kit.
Applicants will be prompted to fill in their information including previous development projects or project ideas for nreal light. Developers will be selected on a rolling basis for the opportunity to purchase the nreal light Developer Kit, which will begin shipping in September 2019.
nreal light SDK
To inspire the development of content for nreal light, an accompanying SDK will be made available for developers to migrate existing or create new applications that can be run on nreal light. For example, NextVR is showcasing its multi-view International Champions Cup soccer experience, adapted using the SDK at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) today.
“NextVR is fully committed to the 5G XR wearables ecosystem. We are excited to showcase how users will be able to see and interact with our content in 6 degrees of freedom on 5G XR wearables through our first multi-view demo on the nreal light SDK.” said David Cole, NextVR CEO. “ nreal light will allow users to enjoy immersive content and also interact with the real world according to context. When users focus their attention exclusively on the NextVR content, it will fill their visual field and fully immerse them. This is a real force of change for the industry and both nreal and we are excited to be at the forefront of this transformation.”
By leveraging the nreal light SDK, developers will gain access to a few key tools to make their consumer-friendly applications a “mixed” reality including support from the most popular development environments including Android Native and Unity.
- Spatial Computing – nreal light offers 6 DoF (Degrees of Freedom) tracking to make a 3D virtual object appear as if it’s a part of the real world. The accompanying SDK enhances apps by tapping into nreal light’s capability of understanding real world environments through the detection of feature points and planes.
- Multimodel Interactions – Controller-based interactions enable users to manipulate the superimposed digital environment or objects
- Real-time Rendering – nreal light leverages the SDK’s ability to optimize apps for low latency, while still offering a heightened visual experience
The nreal SDK will be available August 2019, with a beta version to be made available earlier.
