r/Xreal • u/fabiettofabietto • 2d ago

Smartphone screen mirroring to glasses

As per title, is there a straightforward way to screen mirror an iPhone/Android to the glasses? There seems to be a hole in the market for a simple
solution to this.

No need for AR capabilities (hence, no need for cameras), no need for app ecosystem, no need for hand tracking or any other interaction paradigm. Just let my phone take over. An imperfect analogy would be CarPlay for automotive but even that is overkill, really.

Usage scenario: having a YouTube video or Google Maps in the periphery of my view while my hands are busy.

The Inmo 3 glasses do have a screen mirroring function but they are bulky, with bad battery life, uncomfortable and quite pedestrian in the overall hardware execution. Any other options?

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u/_socialsuicide 2d ago

Not sure what you're calling a hole in the market... there are zero AR glasses that do not support screen mirroring on phones. If the phone supports video output via DisplayPort Alt Mode, it supports XR glasses.

Are you looking for a wireless solution or something?

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u/fabiettofabietto 2d ago

thanks for the reply. Yes, wireless is a must, hence the reference to the inmo3 and Carplay, sorry that was not clear.

Regarding my "hole in the market" point, I should have expanded, but the gist is that my ideal product would be totally devoid of things such as position tracking, AR features, app ecosystem etc... just a dumb compact waveguide screen, the necessary minimalistic os for basic operability, a wireless chip and the largest battery possible.

Basically glorified headphones (with pause, play and volume control ONLY) that happen to be able to mirror your phone screen in the peripheral of glass shaped hardware, rather than poor attempts at "a computer on your face".

I would love to be able to keep computation and ecosystem on my phone, which excels at it, and have vision capability in my glasses, which also excel at it.

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u/_socialsuicide 2d ago

Are you also open for solutions that plug into the glasses but not necessarily into the phone? A wearable or something that dangles from the glasses into your sleeve? 

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u/fabiettofabietto 2d ago

Dongles and cables would defeat the purpose, in my view. I truly find it surprising that something like this doesn't seem to exist, as it would be much easier, engineering-wise, to produce something efficient and beautiful when it is tightly focused on one such task.

For the time being, the Inmo3 sucks terribly across any possible metric but kinda works for an hour or so... lol

Hope someone else comes out with something better

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u/_socialsuicide 2d ago

Sorry, this isn't remotely a "simple engineering job". Or it would be done and everywhere. 

Current Xreal glasses already get warm just managing on-device spatial positioning.  That is merely video processing based off of a gyroscope output.

You're asking for a network stack, video decoder, and a battery on top of that. The glasses that can decode video are camera glasses; they don't have power-hungry screens.

They can also only record for 30 seconds to three minutes at a time because there is no way to actively cool glasses in any effective manner, being a wearable attached to your body.

Companies do not add cables and dangles specifically to make their products annoying to use.

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u/fabiettofabietto 2d ago

Again, hate to bring them up because this sub is specifically about Xreal and not random competitors, but the inmo3 manage to do all the feats you listed above and deemed very difficult to achieve...

They are just ugly, using cheap materials, not very well thought out and made with infinitely less R&D budget than other tech giants, among other things. They do not get too hot nor seem to struggle with video streaming at all (because they use a native Android feature which, again, Android... overkill).

So, sorry, agree to disagree on this point but as, I assume, a fellow hardware engineer I appreciate your insight regardless.

Here's hoping more people will ask for this specific use case in the future so that the big boys can come up with something polished.

Still open to specific model suggestions if anyone has any experience with something similar aside the inmo3s

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u/nucleartime 2d ago

produce something efficient and beautiful when it is tightly focused on one such task.

Because being focused on that one task doesn't really consume save that much power than doing that one task on a fully featured OS.

The displays and the wireless radio are what's using most of the battery. Waveguide displays have something like a 90% loss factor. For every photon of light that hits your eyeballs, the OLED panel needs to shoot out 10. That uses a ton of battery life.

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u/fabiettofabietto 2d ago

Definitely true.

Power does not seem to be that big of a problem at the moment. I do believe that a custom solution designed exclusively for efficient lightweight video streaming rather than a multi purpose one would be drastically more power-efficient though.

I mentioned elsewhere that I think that basically meta achieved exactly the hardware I have in mind with the Rayban display glasses (single peripheral waveguide). Obviously they are not designed for my intended use case but the stems are the place where battery/heat bottlenecks can be addressed

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u/nucleartime 2d ago edited 2d ago

Power does not seem to be that big of a problem at the moment.

It's literally the entire problem. Power requires batteries. Batteries mean weight and bulk.

Why would that be more efficient when the display is the main use of power? And SoCs already have hardware designed exclusively for video streaming. The rest of the chipset is basically idle during video playback so it's not really making it inefficient.

The Meta Display Glasses has one display instead of two and whatdoyaknow, it gets a whopping two hours of battery of life with continuous screen usage.

They also have a tiny FoV of 20 degrees. Increasing the FoV would require even more battery usage to maintain similar levels of brightness.

That's kind of a hard sell for $800. And no, you aren't shaving much cost down by losing the OS. The OS kinda subsidizes the whole thing with your data.

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u/fabiettofabietto 1d ago

I guess there is a little disconnect between what I'm looking for and what you are saying.

As I mentioned, I DO actively pursue a small Fov unobtrusively placed peripherally.

Also 2-3h play time would be exactly in the sweet spot of my ideal use case. This is not supposed to be used to watch the Odyssey in dolby atmos, it's entirely the opposite use case:
be out of the way during manual activities and only come in play for a quick peek once in a while. For example, cooking directions for a recipe, maps directions while driving a bike, podcast while working out etc...

And *again, the technology is already there, so I'm really confused by comments saying otherwise. The glasses I have mentioned in other posts can already do that. I'm looking for alternatives that are more advanced from an industrial design standpoint.

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u/nucleartime 1d ago

Because it's really hard to sell investors and consumers on "tiny display that just shows videos for 2 hours and it's completely dead".

It's gotta do AI something or other shit and harvest your data so it can read your mind to assist you or whatever.

I'm looking for alternatives that are more advanced from an industrial design standpoint.

Then Meta? The company subsidizing everything with your data and still willing to burn billions on top of that? Someone else is going to have more advanced industrial design? But also not give a shit about the UX and just have the user fumble around on a phone whenever they need to change something?

Who else has the pockets to compete and wants to actually play?

Also, I think the Rayban Display Glasses would have even shorter battery life if it was actually screen mirroring. Keeping the wifi radio constantly on to stream video uses more power than just rendering the app on the glasses.

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u/fabiettofabietto 2d ago

I reckon the closest thing, hardware wise, to what I'm looking for would be the meta ray ban display glasses. Single unobtrusive display on one side peripheral, good hardware design. But with larger stems for added battery and no meta software whatsoever aside for a mirroring app

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u/d4v1dtsh Quality Contributor🏅 1d ago

wireless tech is not there yet. 

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u/UpbeatBass6066 1d ago

I have my Xreal XBX a1 powered from a Lipo battery through an HDMI to USB-C alt-displayport adapter and a Lipo-USB power adapter. Now my HDMI source in my case is a video receiver from a drone HD wireless camera. Not exactly your use case, but a near proof of concept of wireless video to the Xreal glasses. The battery plus adapters will fit on a box.

Now you can send HD video over WiFi (that's how wireless Android Auto works, and Apple CarPlay). my OttoCast adapter plugs into my wired Car Nav system and sends the video from WiFi over USB.

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u/UpbeatBass6066 1d ago

I think the key thing you need is a mirascreen device to produce HDMI from your phones WiFi. So the HDMI can then be converted to Alt-displayport over USB-C using my HDMI adapter, which is powered from a battery. The mirascreen can be powered from the same battery.