Chinese augmented reality enterprise Nreal is launching a Steam beta on its Nreal light and Nreal Air AR glasses, letting customers stream video games from a computer to a digital large display screen. The organization says its beta will go stay at the end of June, coinciding loosely with a June 27th hackathon designed to draw AR developers with $100,000 in cash prizes. The flow may want to increase Nreal’s software ecosystem and offer greater to do in a couple of relatively accurate — but still limited — early AR glasses.
Nreal suggests the Steam beta can be finicky, admitting in a press release that it “requires a bit of setup effort and is not optimized for all Steam games.” It’s going to be part of the option to move Xbox Cloud Gaming titles through Nreal’s Nebula platform in addition to a variety of streaming video apps. Nreal touts the beta as well suited with dirt Rally and the Halo collection. It promises users will see their video games on the equivalent of a 200-inch HD display.
Nreal’s mild glasses, which rolled out first in Asia earlier than launching inside the US the last year, are designed to be plugged into a Samsung or OnePlus Android cellphone. They’re much less full-featured than high-give-up business-centered headsets from businesses like Magic Leap and Microsoft, however, they’re also some distance more low-cost at $599 and support notably superior features like AR anchoring and hand tracking.
But, there’s also a limited amount of content material that takes advantage of those capabilities, and within the US especially, the Nebula platform launched without a guide for popular streaming apps like Netflix — requiring customers to observe movies with the much less handy Android app mirroring gadget.
Nreal’s AR Jam development contest will incentivize growing apps in areas like health and artwork in addition to changing current apps into AR. Similar to the cash prizes for the event, it says it intends to create a longer-term fund for incubating AR improvement.
AR glasses are an increasing place of focus for main agencies like Meta and Apple, and while Nreal become an early entrant to the market, it may be facing an increasingly crowded field. But each agency remains identifying what to do with AR glasses — and capabilities like Steam streaming ought to help test the waters.
