Digilens, said Sag, is “both a waveguide supplier and a headset maker, and seems to have gained a lot of momentum recently with many of Microsoft’s past partners, and I believe is best positioned from a hardware and software perspective to help past HoloLens 2 customers. Not only that, but at AWE 2024 this year, Digilens was the first to demonstrate Google’s Gemini running on any AR headset.”
While other companies like RealWear and ThirdEye do exist, he said, “they are less powerful platforms and may deliver a different kind of experience than HoloLens wearers are expecting. RealWear is assisted reality using a monocular LCD, and ThirdEye uses waveguides with see-through AR, but it only features an XR1 chipset that will likely need remote rendering for improved graphics.”
Enterprise AR use case shows real promise
Scott Bickley, research practice lead at Info-Tech Research Group, described the move by Microsoft as “ unfortunate, because the augmented reality use case for enterprise purposes in the industrial space held real promise. In my opinion, the R&D justification was built atop much broader and deeper virtual reality use cases that were never grounded in ‘reality’ to begin with.”