My oh my the ground has shifted quite a bit since AWE 2025. The eighty billion dollar gorilla in the room, Meta, has famously “pivoted” to AI and thus slashed its Reality Labs division. Meta was pushing hard on their version of the Metaverse (wrong headed from the start) and the hardware to get you into it. It’s all AI all the time over there and, oh yeah, they have their glasses leaning heavily on, one more time, AI.
Valve announced the Steam Frame which is coming soon but hampered by increasingly expensive components because AI (okay, last time).
Apple has pulled back on plans for an update to its face computer and, as rumor has it, is focused on glasses of some sort.
Niantic shutdown 8thwall to put all of their energy into their VPS (visual positioning system) and had no presence at AWE 2026 after taking over most of the concourse in 2025.
That sounds like all bad news but the XR world keeps moving forward. The energy from content creators and the push for open standards is real. Having been burned yet again by platform shutdown (Horizons, Rec Room, etc) builders are opting for platforms they control or, at the very least, provide an obvious escape with most of their work in tact. As some of the heavyweights pull back there may be more opportunity for small and interesting projects to gain traction. Not all of the big players have walked away but the XR world is ripe for experimentation as there is no clear leader in the space.
Real products based on last year’s promises
There were three big hardware releases announced this year building on the promises of 2025.
Snap showed off Specs, the consumer version of the dev kit they distributed last year. Like all computer glasses they are chonky but allegedly wearable, comfortable, and stylish.
Snap is all in on AR and these glasses are AR first building on content that Snap has cultivated within its Lens platform. Most of the content available for the glasses (shipping this fall) will come from Lens creators who have, hopefully, been building with the dev kit for the last year. The hardware lands with a hefty price tag ($2k!) but I think Snap’s biggest hurdle is the ecosystem.
Android XR wasn’t announced at AWE, Google unveiled it at the end of 2024 and it wasn’t officially launched until October of 2025 but AWE 2025 saw a handful of devices teased, promising to run the platform. Here we are in 2026 and there are actual products ready to try!
Google’s plan is to have one OS that runs across multiple hardware platforms (covering all of the R’s). This year I had a chance to try Android XR on two different devices. More on that in a bit.
Xreal gave us a mere glimpse of project Aura last year showing some glossy renderings but the hardware was real and wearable this year! Aura runs Android XR on a Snapdragon SOC and Qualcomm provided multiple demo stations of Aura in their booth as the glasses use Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon Reality Elite.
It’s the Ecosystem
There’s a push to make some sort of head worn display The Next Big Thingtm. Big tech has decided that glasses are the next smart phone and there are a lot of players trying to make it happen. The unfortunate reality is that we have two dominant mobile ecosystems and if your device is to become indispensable, like our phones, it’s going to need to be a first party in those ecosystems. One of those is a notoriously walled garden and the other is maintained by Google who has the well deserved reputation of changing its mind every few years. Microsoft gave up on phones AND XR hardware and Snap’s Specs might be really great AR devices but they have an uphill battle in an increasingly crowded market and no one lives only in Snap.
Surprises!
Having tried a few different display glasses last year I was expecting some incremental upgrades this year. When I tried the Xreal Aura glasses on I was immediately impressed. Aura are wired to a compute puck about the size of an average smart phone, maybe a little thicker. All of the hard work is done on the puck so the glasses can be lighter and more comfortable. These are meant for specific work or play, not necessarily to be worn about town, though I suppose you could. When I put them on the image looked great (70 degrees FOV) and the chromatic dimming (via a button on the arm of the glasses) was very effective. The biggest surprise was the hand tracking. I wasn’t expecting the tracking to feel so natural and thus my interaction with the Android XR interface and demos was super smooth. I particularly enjoyed the Gemini music demo where I could draw strings in the air and then pluck them to play notes as Gemini composed a tune from my interactions.
Another surprise required a bit more of a commitment. Abbot and Samsung worked with Rock Paper Reality to create a mixed reality experience to help calm and distract patients, blood donors, and anyone else who may get anxious in medical environments.
Vitalant setup a blood donation center on the floor of the expo and as you began your donation you were given a Samsung Galaxy XR headset that dropped you into either a game like experience or a zen garden experience.
I was able to try both and they each worked via head tracking so you kept your hands and arms at your side. No accidentally expelling the needle while swatting imaginary bugs!
I don’t typically get anxious around needles but I was engaged enough in the game that I forgot to keep squeezing the stress ball every 5 seconds (it helps keep the blood flowing).
Since both experiences were mixed reality I could still see the real world and was never surprised when anyone approached to check on my progress.
The Enterprise Still Leads
Walking the floor and observing the crowd it was clear that enterprise is still the biggest user of XR. Training, collaboration, and internal development appear to be the most obvious use cases and this is where companies spend their money if they’re spending it at all in this realm. That’s not likely to change soon.
No Clear XR Leader
Meta pivoted. Trust in Google is low. Snap’s efforts are a wait and see. Hardware development is expensive and there’s no clear path to critical mass. Outside of enterprise applications there is no obvious need for much of the current tech.
What does XR have going for it right now? The avid users and developers. The people who have been through multiple VR winters. The creators who have built truly incredible experiences in games, theater, immersive film, spatial documentary, open standards allowing XR experiences in nothing more than a web browser. XR can be transportative in ways that other medium cannot and there is a lot happening in this world while big tech wanders off to chase an AI dream that may not pan out the way they expect.
I’m still excited for the possibilities of XR in all its forms.
This coming year is going to feel a bit like 2016 did for VR. We’re on the cusp of some interesting hardware hitting the market at attainable prices. The big, big players are making moves…Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook are all in varying stages of their AR strategies.
The hardware is clunky, uncomfortable, and heavy. The experiences are neat but less than amazing. It’s ok, it’s early days. There are definite use cases for AR as it exists right now. Head mounted displays are great for industrial design, construction and manufacturing. Environments where having information available while keeping your hands free. The hardware is rugged and includes safety features necessary for those sectors.