Nreal Launches Steam Beta on its AR Glasses

Two Nreal augmented reality (AR) glasses will soon be able to stream games from Steam.

Nreal recently announced it is launching a Steam beta on two of its AR glasses in late June, coinciding with a hackathon event the company will hold to attract AR developers, per The Verge.

Nreal is a Chinese AR company known for its "superior display technology and product design," per the company's official website. It is the only AR company to have launched a consumer-ready product.

Nreal AR Glasses Steam Beta Details

Nreal mentioned in its announcement it would be launching a Steam beta on its Light and Air AR glasses, which would let users stream games from a PC to a virtual equivalent of a 200-inch HD screen.

The beta is expected to be finicky, with Nreal admitting that it requires "a bit of setup effort and is not optimized for all Steam games." Nreal is the first company to bring PC games to AR glasses to date, never mind Steam games, so having the beta set up will need significant amounts of effort, per Digital Trends.

Nreal did mention that the Steam beta is compatible with DiRT Rally and the entire Halo series.

Additionally, the option of streaming Steam games from a computer to Nreal's virtual big screen will join the option to stream Xbox Cloud Gaming titles and a variety of streaming video apps through the company's Nebula platform.

Nreal's AR Glasses

Nreal's Light AR glasses, which became available in the US in 2021, are AR glasses with OLED 3840x1080 pixel display with sRGB 105% color gamut, 8-bit depth, and a perceived brightness of 280 nits. It also has 2 open-ear speakers, a dual-microphone array, and omnidirectional MEMS microphones, per Nreal's official website.

The glasses are designed to be plugged into a Samsung or OnePlus Android phone. They are not as heavily equipped when compared to AR glasses from companies like Magic Leap and Microsoft, but it is more affordable. It also has support for advanced features like AR anchoring, 6DoF head tracking, plane detection as well as image and hand tracking.

Meanwhile, Nreal's Air AR glasses have a 3840x1080 pixel OLED display with sRGB 108% color gamut, 8-bit depth, and up to 400 nits of perceived brightness. It also has the same audio specifications as the Light, but it also has Bass boost, virtual rendering, Echo and noise cancellation, beamforming, and speech enhancement. However, the Air is lighter but more limited than the Light as it is designed for streaming video, and unlike the Light, the Air only had 3DoF head tracking.

However, there is a limited amount of content that takes advantage of the glasses' features and Nreal Nebula platform, with streaming apps like Netflix not being supported on the platform.

To work around the problem, people would have to use a mirroring system to watch the videos they want to stream.