Renji Bijoy, co-founder of Immersed, and I convened at a Palo Alto Starbucks mere minutes after the Meta announcement, eager to gain a second glimpse into the Visor headset, a cutting-edge innovation in progress.
While the demo outperformed its initial benchmark, as noted in David Heaney’s account, it’s fair to say this achievement was hardly remarkable.
At Bijoy’s demo, the rendering struggled to keep up with my head movements, struggling to render a scene as I turned sharply to the left. In virtual reality, I found myself gazing at a digital desktop that was difficult to decipher due to its low resolution.
“When I inquired about the demo’s performance, Bijoy responded that hopefully, future iterations will feature foveated rendering at 90Hz, allowing issues to heat up less quickly instead of processing 25 million pixels at 60Hz.”
During the demo, Bijoy mentioned that the headset was simply seeking relaxation; afterwards, following my removal of the visor, he gently stroked the entrance shell while I posed several inquiries about it.
Based on last night’s name, it appears we’ll proceed at a pace slower than I initially anticipated, Bijoy shared with me. “As a result, you’ll likely want to present preliminary models to a select group by early November at the latest.”
“We’re optimistic that our usual version of headsets will reach mass manufacturing by this summer, which would bring me great joy,” Bijoy said. “We must collaborate with our partners to deliver a functional product to market ahead of our intended timeline.”
When asked about the expected number of headsets to ship in November, Bijoy responded that he could likely aim for “around 50 to 100 units.” He noted that they had previously considered a plastic shell for the battery but were now contemplating using steel cooling instead.
Within Visor’s desktop environment, I initiated passthrough mode while utilizing the “nose-pointed reticle”. Following the headset’s cooldown period, noticeable improvements emerged in terms of efficiency, particularly for passthrough functionality and rendering capabilities. However, the integrated digital camera suffered from a relatively low resolution, which unfortunately impacted the overall quality of passthrough visualizations compared to rival devices such as the Quest 3 and Vision Professional.
“We don’t expect to employ this concept stack in the long term,” Bijoy said.
They are reportedly attempting to transition their entire infrastructure to Android XR and its associated technology stack. When Bijoy asked me to refer to the working system by a specific name, despite Google’s lack of designation, I obliged. Following his instruction, I labeled it as a potential successor to the Qualcomm tools he mentioned were being used during my demonstration.
I noticed one useful or semi-functional innovation compared to the “barely functional” solution implemented by David just a week prior. Prior to releasing their new product, Bijoy takes advance orders for up to nine months in advance, having only a limited selection of prototypes ready for an initial group of test users.
Once I suggested the product might still have a long way to go, Bijoy responded, “perhaps.” He mentioned the possibility of hosting “a second roadshow” with features like eye monitoring that would need to be implemented by then. We’ll certainly keep you updated on these latest eyes-on impressions as soon as we have them.
Following two demos, we cannot recommend pre-ordering the Visor due to the unresolved hardware and software issues that emerged after Meta’s acquisition. With the promise of seamless visuals, ultra-high definition, and lightning-fast responsiveness, Visor’s core selling point is the ability to render a desktop environment within its virtual platform – an offering Immersed aims to refine further through collaboration with a select group of early adopters by year’s end.
Despite the inherent challenge of developing a {hardware} platform on limited resources, Immersed’s timeline bears similarities to other efforts, such as Lynx, which missed its window for building a competitive product against industry leaders like Meta and Apple?
Despite this, Bijoy’s approach still caters to the underdog mentality, implying that unidentified catalysts will aid the company’s financial performance as it strives to deliver.
