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Does anyone know if these glasses, or any other glasses, can be tried in-person and used on desktop? I'm legally blind, but have just enough vision to use a screen without a screen reader. The problem is I have to be about 6 inches from a 27 inch screen. I'm tall, and I'm almost bent in half to do it. It's been hell on my back and neck. I've only really made it work because I've modified so many things to get around it (i.e. customising Windows, Firefox, and so on).

The part that makes it so tough is monitor arms come in standard sizes and are nowhere near long enough or extend far enough for me to sit comfortably. My dad modified my desk for me years ago to mount a monitor arm on wooden blocks, but it means I can't move the monitor much.

Being able to wear glasses and ditch the monitor entirely would be a game changer for me. I know next to nothing about AR though, being as I assumed, perhaps wrongly, it isn't something that would work for me.

Edit: Thank you for the replies. It means a lot. I've got some options to explore here now thanks to you.

I have a colleague at work who also has to get within 6" of the screen.

2 years ago I switched to a 55" 8k TV as my primary monitor.

While everyone was giving me the usual crap about it, this guy, when I showed him what it would look like with 400% Zoom, he went and bought one for himself at home.

He thanks me every few weeks, but still didn't dare to set one up in the office.

(ps I have mine standing on a normal height-adjustable table, so you wouldn't have to hunch at all)

This is an interesting suggestion. Like with most suggestions here, I have no idea if it would work or not, so I'm making a list of things to try.

One thing that would concern me a bit with this though is how I'd use my neck. To give an example, when sitting in front of my screen now, if I want to see the browser tabs at the top of my screen, then I have to tilt my head backwards to see them. But if I need to see the taskbar, I have to tilt my head down. It doesn't sound like much, but doing that all day rather than just moving your eyes instead adds to overall fatigue.

With your suggestion, I can't picture if that would still be required or not. Thanks for sharing the idea. I'll look into it.

I don't know if this will help you visualize it or not, but here's a photo of someone using a TV as a monitor on a desk

https://i.imgur.com/mjcqjfZ.jpeg

I use my 4K TV as a monitor (though from ~8ft away) and for me Windows' scaling (found under Display in Control Panel) allow me to easily read text from so far away

Maybe it could help you

The issue with the "keyboard in front of huge monitor" type of arrangement for people who need to get their face really, really close to the monitor is they have to lean far in and hunch over the keyboard, putting their arms in an uncomfortable position. Speaking from my own experience, this causes RSI problems fairly quickly. And the keyboard can't be moved farther back to allow the person's arms to be in a more natural position because the base of the TV or monitor blocks the way.

A monitor arm of the right length and height lets you sit so that the monitor is close to your face, floating at or beyond the front edge of the table, and the keyboard is physically behind the monitor, letting your arms be in a more natural position for typing.

This actually does help, thanks. It's given me a clearer idea of the scale of what it might look like to sit in front of it. From that picture, you can probably imagine what I mean about the neck movements.

The benefit of a big TV should be that you can move it farther out than the 6" you mentioned (and that the person is roughly sitting at), increase text size, but need fewer neck movements to take it all in — provided you can focus at bigger distances.

You are essentially keeping the same angular size, and by moving an 85" TV to 19" from your eyes, you get text to be sized just like your 27" at 6" (3 x 27" = 81").

Won't help with your neck issues though, since you'll have exactly the same issues.

What’s going on with that guy’s left hand? Is this some kind of fake computer-generated image?

This image has been around loooong before AI images.

It looks like he is mid-typing like he just slammed the enter key. Seen my grandpa make the exact same move.

His hand is flat, slightly tipped up, hovering over the keyboard.

If one needs to use 55" 8K TV at 400% zoom, I suggest getting a 55" 4K TV and keeping it at 200% zoom — it's much cheaper and easier to drive with any iGPU.

There are also 55" monitors, but they'll likely be more expensive but behave much better.

I think where display setups will become really interesting is when we start seeing more integration with complex optical systems, without requiring that to be strapped to your face.

I'm aware of Brelyon as one example that's starting to spill into the consumer space. Repurposing the optical exploits that enable AR/VR in a desktop format IMO is going to be a key path to supporting novel approaches to display systems that will be actually desirable to use, and also adaptable to differing physiology.

Dude thanks for at least helping! And while he might not be comfortable enough to use it at work at least you were able to help set him up in his personal life. I had a colleague with a rare form of macular degeneration and this stuff is a game changer for him.

Precisely. The ideas here may not seem like much to some, but I am genuinely in awe of how much people are trying to help me solve this. I've had people contact me via the email in my profile offering help too. And I meant what I said in my original comment: fixing this would significantly improve my quality-of-life. That makes it difficult to convey how grateful I am for the suggestions.

Glasses like these put the screen at a focal distance further than a monitor, closer to TV distance. Optics wise it’s basically the same as VR, if a VR headset is easier to try.

If your corrected vision needs stuff 6” away, don’t expect AR or VR to be a solution with current optics

The pair I have (original xReal Air) include a glass insert that can be ground to your prescription. It's a thin piece of glass, I don't know exactly what kind of prescription can be put onto them, but it might be helpful.

That is usually for very low prescriptions. Judging by the photos, I don't think you can use those blanks for much more than -2.

some AR glasses come with built in correction up to -5.00. Beyond that, they recommend correction lens insert, so it can work for more. The built-in correction does not do astigmatism, that will require prescription insert too.

I'm around -6 and was able to get an insert for my VR headset. There are third parties who partner with eyeglass lens manufacturers to make them for most headsets.

possibly this is rather a template to cut a.preacription lens to the right size, just like glasses come with templates for the prescription lenses. the prescription lenses are shipped in a large round shape, and then cut to match the template.

This is what I've been worried about. I have lens implants so I already have a fixed focus as well. The combination of the two would likely be a problem.

In a VR headset the virtual screen distance is set by the distance of the microdisplay from the lens in the headset.

It's not crazy to think you could move the microdisplay position and get a virtual display at 6". There might be other optical consequences (aberrations, change in viewable area) but in principle it can work.

The microdisplays are usually fixed in place (and sometimes the display and optics are a single package), so it would likely be a bespoke solution.

I'd be open to trying something like this. It might be the kind of simple solution that would work for me.

a few AR glasses come with adjustable knobs for nearsighted people. So, not all of them are fixed distance.

You can get a free trial of an Apple Vision Pro at an Apple Store.

Even if you have absolutely no intention of ever buying one it would give you a free and easy way to find out if a headset type device would work well with your vision or just be totally incompatible.

Some ar glasses support adjustable focus, and others support custom prescription lenses.

I just returned the Virtue Pro. I got custom lenses too. The edge/corners were still blurry. With custom lenses I would have preferred fixed focal.

It sounds like we have a similar situation. I've been wondering if these kinds of glasses would work for me but it just seems like such a hassle to order a pair to try just to end up returning them if they don't work. I wish they were sold in a store that I could just walk into and try them for a minute.

FWIW, I use a monitor arm that's mounted on the front left side of my desk (my dad also modified my desk so this would work) so I can pull it as close as I need. It does mean I can't push it back to a normal monitor distance but I'm the only one using my PC so that's not a problem. Oddly enough, I recently got cataract surgery so now I have a lens that makes me focus further away, but now text is too small to read at that distance so I have to use readers to focus closer and use the arm.. seems a little silly but it mostly works out.

  >  I wish they were sold in a store that I could just walk into and try them for a minute.

Being a lanky kinda guy I could never find clothes in my sizes in store but it was still quite helpful to see the difference between certain materials and would often lead to buying a more expensive version than another. Without the stores, it just seems to make a market of lemons[0], and I think that's kinda apt given general consumer frustration. You can't rely on reviews and you can't rely on images or even product descriptions...

How the fuck am I supposed to know what I'm buying?

My hypothesis is that some bean counters saw that sales were plummeting in stores and concluded that they should then close them. Having the inability to recognize that the purpose of the store had changed, despite them likely using the stores in the new fashion themselves. Hard to make effective decisions if the only viewpoint you have is that of a spreadsheet...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Several other factors probably pushing the bean counters:

  * Real estate in high-traffic areas, especially in malls (do those still exist?) can be extremely expensive.
  * With retail stores, shoplifting is the business's problem, after the switch to ecommerce, a lot of theft is shifted to being the customer's problem (porch pirates)
  * Customer service staff in the store are likely more expensive than outsourcing call centers and now AI is well on the way to cutting out most of those jobs.

I think Apple does a really good job at blending their physical stores and their online business into a very seamless experience. Not many companies can operate at that level of excellence. Although I have many complaints about Apple's business practices, however, their retail stores and customer service experience are not among them.

I'm quite aware that stores cost money. I'm not sure why you'd think I didn't.

I agree that Apple is doing it right and is kinda what I'm talking about. They do focus on the experience even though I'm sure most sales translate to online sales. They do understand that the physical presence generates many of these sales. It's not trivial to measure like direct sales but it is measurable.

I'll admit Apple has an advantage that it isn't a franchise (pretty sure?). But that doesn't mean the other companies couldn't adapt to the new environment. But clearly a lot of them failed due to this. The experience still matters to customers but if they don't have many choices they still gotta do what they gotta do

One thing I've noticed is that some stores are, as you ponder, indeed franchises.

In some franchises, store owners get a vote on change. They also have no inventive or desire to be a mere showcase for purchases happening elsewhere, such as online.

Combine this with a sometimes contracted inability for the company to "compete" with franchises, and you get some very weird behaviour.

And the of course, as people and politics are involved, you may see non-optimal, status quo results from votes.

It's only really been 15 years, since retailers have really seen a notable dive in store sales, and the last 5 years being the most harsh.

Meatspace speed is slow. Most of the world's behaviour is ossified compared to people on HN.

In other words, the Internet is fairly new. I think eventuality we'll see some stabilization here, over the next 10 years.

An example...

Used to be, before opening trade with China, that most cultery was made in the US. There were in fact 4 or 5 main manufacturers of cutlery.

Once the cheap stuff came in, this all collapsed. All of them shut or went bankrupt.

Yet out of the ashes one emerged, and I think a second now. The market was in such turmoil, sales collapsed so fast, that they all weakened at once.

But at least one can exist.

My point is, we're in this period of chaos now. It'll sort out I think.

Apple makes gobsmack amount of profit from both devices and gambling apps(they don't do games) that easily cover costs of demo units. It'll be harder if you only sell only one type of fancy low-volume gadget at $499.

1) Why does Apple make "gobsmack amount(s) of profit"? Perhaps there's a strategy that leads to this. I believe the memes version is "Says 'because they're rich'; refuses to elaborate; leaves"

2) My example was clothing. I certainly think this makes sense as a setting in such an environment. Let you look and try. Directly sell most common sizes, transfer to online purchase for others. You can even have employees measure customers to get the right fits! Now you could even do the virtual tryons. This is very different than racks of clothes.

3) I think you forgot about stores like Sharper Image, Electronics Boutique, or Brookstone. Customers frequently would go into these stores to just see all the random gadgets and stuff. I can certainly remember going into Brookstone dozens of times yet not actually buying anything. Thing is, what these stores were good at was advertising products. But they were terrible at selling them because you could always find the same things somewhere else for cheaper, like Sears.

Like I've said, the value of many of the physical stores was not just in direct sales. That was a fine metric in the old days, but things changed and so did many other things. My original comment was a claim that a myopic view was applied, hyper focusing on the limited direct sales metric. But coke doesn't advertise to make you aware of coke nor do car companies advertise to make you aware of cars. They do things differently because their size and markets are different.

My point of a lemon market is that with the loss of ability to physically scrutinize products, you cannot tell the difference between a lemon or a peach. What I didn't say, is that this incentivizes more dark patterns like making returns difficult. Part of Amazon's quick adoption was free returns, making the downside of buying a lemon low, only costing you time. But the idea of tricking you into buying something, especially with a subscription, and making you live with the purchase sounds more like the strategy of an infomercial penis pill scam, not a blue chip business.

This isn't "if you run into assholes all day" situation, but I think it should be more widely recognized that Apple is slowly regressing into a casino franchise. They sell slot machines that also support phone and media consumption, and keep fraction of sales made on slot machines.

I don't deny that about Apple[0], but that seems irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873275

Best Buy is actually pretty good these days. If you have a Micro Center in your area, they're even better. Both will price match Amazon.

> ...it was well understood that people were still visiting stores so that they can inspect items before purchase.

You have all the pieces but you're not putting them together.

Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist - rent, rates, staffing, etc. - and that's why they can't compete on price with online stores, which can just be giant warehouses with shipping. The online arms of some physical stores can benefit from the same economies as totally online businesses, leading to cheaper prices online even for companies with a physical presence.

How can a physical shop make any money if they are just treated as a gallery for browsing before the buyer heads to Amazon to get the item 10% cheaper? It's not bean counting, it's basic economics.

How the fuck are you supposed to know what you're buying, indeed - patronise physical businesses because you recognise the value in their existence, and understand that that's worth paying an additional premium for.

  > Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist

Because you said this:

> I've constantly wondered why this doesn't really exist.

and if you understand that real stores are more expensive to run than online stores, then the rest seems obvious?

Places like that did exist in the past - they were the places we had to go to buy things. Online prices are lower so people bought online instead and drove most of them out of business.

Perhaps I'm missing something?

[flagged]

> You are missing that I've talked about how there's more business value than direct sales.

Could you please provide enough detail here in your example, that we can discuss and quantify what that value is, so we can compare it with the cost of running the store?

Let's say we have an "all the XR glasses" store that lets visitors try on different XR glasses and see what fits, and the visitors then later buy them from Amazon because the glasses are cheaper there.

p.s.: on multiple posts, you've taken non-personal comments extremely personally (e.g. stuff like 'how dare you say something I already know [because I am smart], thus assuming I don't know it and am dumb'), and attacking others as well, almost as if the topic is you, and not your comment. Just to head that off at the pass: I'm interested in discussing what you said, not in discussing myself or you. You're a smart person. Let's focus on substance.

I believe I have provided an explanation that is easy to understand. Here is the original statement

  >>>>>> Malls offered a lot more business value than just facilitating direct purchases. They do a lot to build brands, loyalty, and advertise to customers.

If you wish for a thorough analysis then my answer is "This is Hacker News". Such an expectation is excessive and out of scope of the platform.

I am happy to have my statements rebutted and critiqued but not by accusation of failing to account for widely understood and basic conditions. If you believe I am improperly evaluating the costs of these, then that is another matter and I am happy to have those discussions. Even if these are the conjecture of two rational and reasonably informed people without direct and detailed analysis. If you wish to seek out research and do detailed analysis I not only will not stop you, I'd encourage you. This would be a great way to counter my comment and have a high likelihood of changing my belief/understanding of the environment.

  > p.s.: on multiple posts,

Frankly, because not operating under this belief generates fighting, degrades conversations, and derails conversations. As others might more succinctly say "this isn't Reddit." I am only trying to be explicit in stating why such retorts are low quality.

It appears that frequently people do not realize the assumptions that their responses makes.

  > I already know [because I am smart]

The push-back is not "because I am smart" but rather "because I am not incredibly ignorant."

I do not want to conflate the two. They are significantly different. The reason "I already know" is conditioned on my intelligence being above that of a child. This is what generates the insult and the more aggressive follow-up after they doubled down. It is not conditioned on being above average, nor being in the "smart" category.

Let's look at the original response

  >>>>> Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist

Mind you, my original comment also demonstrates awareness that these physical stores have operational costs. My critique makes no sense otherwise, as there would be no reason to even close these stores if they were free to operate. So this contributes to the reason danparsonson's response is inappropriate and insulting. It is in bad faith (the faith being I'm not malicious nor unreasonable).

I think you should also look back to how I responded much differently to 20after4. I did equally push back at their first point which is equally egregious. But I move on and engage with the rest. Their comment has additional substance and isn't entirely contingent upon excessive naivety, whereas that is all there is to danparsonson's (their third line completely ignores my entire thesis of physical locations providing value other than direct sales and is itself making the same error I am criticizing: hyper-fixation on measuring operational value through direct sales). So they get different responses.

  > Let's focus on substance.

> I believe I have provided an explanation that is easy to understand.

If that were so, you would not have had multiple people ask you for clarification or specifics.

> Malls offered a lot more business value than just facilitating direct purchases. They do a lot to build brands, loyalty, and advertise to customers

Thanks, I think what you are missing is that it appears, based on the evidence, that the "more business value" examples you cite are often not enough to keep stores open, hence all the store closings.

This was obvious to multiple people, so the assumption on the part of multiple people was that you had some theory or model or analysis or evidence to add which would say otherwise. It appears that is not the case. Indeed, you were given the opportunity to demonstrate by example, but did not take it.

p.s.: In seeking a better conversation, I've omitted the part of your response dealing with you or me as a primary topic.

  > If that were so, you would not have had multiple people ask you for clarification or specifics.

  >  examples you cite are often not enough to keep stores open, hence all the store closings.

  > This was obvious to multiple people,

Responding this way also is inappropriate to my comment too. My comment would lead to the claim that stores closed because they failed to adapt to a changing environment. This would consequentially lead to exactly identical settings.

If you want evidence for why you might want to believe this, look at Sears. A store that famously had a mail based catalogue. Their failure to adapt to internet markets is widely discussed as from a hindsight perspective it seems crazy that they didn't dominate. They were literally doing an "online store" before the internet existed. You can also look to Blockbuster, which is also famously written about.

The point is that what's obvious post hoc isn't obvious in situ. Sears made a great blunder underestimating the popularity of online stores and continuing operating as normal (not adapting). Given that one of the leaders in the market made such an "obvious" blunder, I don't think we can rule out that others didn't similarly miscalculate.

If you think this is not the case, cool! Argue that! But you should justify it. Say why I'm dumb. Evidence it. But I'm not going to accept your claim if it is premised on people being oracles. They aren't now, we have evidence that they weren't then, so I don't have reason to believe that happened. It also doesn't align well with the order in which businesses failed nor align with explaining why certain ones are still around. You miss that my claim has such an explanation. But you need to actually think about what I said...

I welcome you calling me an idiot. But if you're going to do it, put some serious effort into it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

You are reiterating that you do not have any evidence or factual reasoning indicating that your theory is correct. Your questioning of what multiple people have told you is interesting, but until you bring an alternative theory which is convincing to those people, it is ultimately irrelevant, because it is your theory being defended here.

> If you think this is not the case, cool! Argue that!

This is literally your role here. You are disputing what multiple people have told you. If you think that the 'other value' is enough to keep stores open, then argue that (with numbers, obviously: this is HN, not reddit). If you think that stores aren't adapting, and that's why they're failing, and if they do X they would succeeded, then argue that, and describe X (with numbers, obviously: this is HN, not reddit).

We all know that a store provides more value than a warehouse. But is said extra value able to economically sustain properly-managed stores? The evidence (store closings) points to "mostly no". Your theory says "yes", (and perhaps that the store closings are actually a result of not doing X). Your theory is thus explicitly numbers-based. So how do you expect anyone to argue against the numbers in your theory when you haven't provided any?

As it stands now, your hypothesis is on equal footing, in terms of evidence, with "they didn't pray to the right god enough", and equally unconvincing. This is HN, not reddit: let's hear the specifics, not make random unconvincing claims and insist that proving or disproving them is someone else's job.

I'll get you started on your job of convincing someone other than yourself that your theory holds water, by providing an example with which you can proceed: Let's say we have an "all the XR glasses" store that lets visitors try on different XR glasses and see what fits, and the visitors then later buy them from Amazon because the glasses are cheaper there.

Ok, now your turn: go. How do they stay alive? If you can come up with something feasible and convincing, I might even start this store and give you a cut! :)

First, a couple of things to clear up.

If I came across as insulting you or anyone else, then I'm sorry - that was not my intention. I'm trying to express my confusion because I think we're talking across each other somehow, and I don't understand how.

Secondly, and related to that - when I said 'Perhaps I'm missing something?', that was intended as a genuine invitation to you to fill me in on what obvious/non-obvious thing I'm missing. Maybe I am in fact being stupid! It happens regularly. I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to open the door to further discourse.

So with that out of the way - what am I missing? The problem seems straightforward to me, and I will try to lay out my thinking clearly here, not to imply that you don't understand any of this, but rather to make it easier for you to find and fill in the gap for me:

- physical shop buys trinket for $10, costs are estimated at $5, physical shop sells trinket for $16, making $1 profit

- online shop buys trinket for $10, costs are estimated at $3, online shop sells trinket for $14, making $1 profit

Result: physical shop goes out of business because (insert large percentage here) of customers see trinket in physical shop, decide they want it, then find it cheaper online and order it there; physical shop doesn't sell enough things in aggregate to cover its large fixed costs, and can no longer sustain the business. Even small savings are very valuable to a lot of people, as demonstrated, for example, by all the websites specialising in price comparison, and the behaviour of people during the sales season.

So from your replies you clearly think that's overly simplistic, but I don't understand why, and I'm asking for clarification in the spirit of discussion, if you're willing to entertain that.

I think the key difference is in this: "...there's more business value than direct sales..." but if you mean that enough people place enough value in try-before-you-buy to make it worth running a physical shop, then I would say that the massive decline in high-street stores in the last 10-15 years says otherwise. Side note that another problem shops face is choosing what stock to hold; a physical store almost never beats online stores for variety of inventory, which was another nail in the coffin so to speak.

So that's my hot take; by all means shoot me down - I don't mind if I've missed something obvious and if so I'd love to learn from the experience.

And if you were having a bad day yesterday for other reasons, then I hope today is going better for you.

[dead]

XREAL is on Amazon, and their return policy is pretty good.

Not an answer to your question, but re: monitor arms.. mine can be pulled out far enough it would touch my face. It mounts into a grommet drilled into my desk. I assume there's other reasons this isn't workable for you, but if it's for lack of finding a suitable arm, let me know and I'll find a link for you.

My other recommendation would be to consider a standing desk. Even if you prefer to use it sitting, you can tweak the desktop height to your liking and help mitigate the posture issue.

Another option: you can buy a $40 monitor arm (they're all pretty good in my experience) on Amazon and mount it in the front of the desk to the left or right side and then swing it into position in the middle anywhere, even feet in front of the desk.

That's kind of you to offer, and I'd appreciate that if you wouldn't mind. I have seen some that are a bit longer, but the height is too low for them to be of use.

Happy to (hopefully) help. I have the Fully Jarvis monitor arm[0]. But it looks like you can find substantially more options here[1] from Uplift, some of which might have better range.

Back to the Jarvis, though: see how the photos of it show the arm in a typical "bent knee" shape? You can totally use it with both halves of the arm pointed in the same direction. I just did a quick measurement on mine and each of the arms is about 25 cm long, and they're fixed at a ~45° angle. So if you center its mount on your desk, you should be able to bring the monitor around[2] 35 cm closer to your face and still retain a lot of height adjustment (~34 to ~50, as measured from your desktop to the center of the display).

If you go this route (and your desk doesn't have an existing grommet hole you can use), they sell a drill bit to bore one in the right diameter.

[0]: https://store.hermanmiller.com/office-furniture-desk-accesso...

[1]: https://www.upliftdesk.com/desk-accessories/monitor-arms/

[2]: cos(45°)*50cm

If you don't mind having a "personalized" desk, arms that are meant to / able to go through the grommet often just have two (large) bolts. You could pretty easily drill through the middle of a desk and mount it at any distance.

I have the dual version of this, which they don't seem to sell any more: https://www.upliftdesk.com/crestview-single-monitor-arm-by-u... but if you look at the "all components" image, you can see the steel plates and bolts that I use to attach mine - the bolts aren't part of the bent black thing, they work with that or either of the shiny steel plates. Those both fit within a grommet hole (the large circular holes in desks) with bit of free movement to adjust it, and the bottom of the "stand" is completely flat so it could very easily go anywhere - you put the plate under the desk, stick the bolts through it + through the desk hole, and they go into threaded holes on the underside of the stand.

Some monitor arms are only meant to clamp onto the edge of a desk, and you won't be able to do this - I'd probably avoid those in this case tbh.

(I've probably failed to adequately describe it - I can take pictures or draw something out if you'd like. It's not complicated, it's just... there are not many similar things that I can point to as a comparison that most people have at hand)

I have an uplift arm and while I'm not at my desk right now, it's height adjustable and I can get it pretty close to my face (without sacrificing the height adjustment) - I have both the range and the crestview (Upgraded when I got a bigger monitor).

I'm not the person you replied to, but if you get a monitor arm made for an ultra-wide monitor, it will be longer and taller than most.

I use this one myself: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00B21TLQU

It can go far taller than I need it to, and the length of the arm itself should be enough that, positioned well, I imagine you could get it situated however you wanted.

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions. I should've asked about this ages ago.

Hope it helps! Good luck.

This is a really good idea. And the "Measurements" image does a good job showing the exact ranges of motion it has. Looks like it can bring the display 16" (~40cm) towards you.

You might also look at arms that use a vertical post with a horizontal arm coming off of it, rather than the gas spring height adjustment. They can come in a variety of heights, I think mainly because the systems are designed to allow multiple rows of screens (like a big 3x2 grid).

Off the top of my head, I know I've seen this for Knoll Sapper, which the PDF brochure (linked below) says has posts up to 32" high. Not sure if the 17" horizontal extension is enough for you, though you could also drill a hole in a desk and mount the post further forward instead of clamping on the back. Or heck, clamp it on the side or front.

See page 7 here: https://www.knoll.com/document/1352941326370/Copy%20of%20Sap...

I have very high myopia (over -10) and share your concerns. I really wish these things were designed to cater to people for whom alternate display tech would actually simplify our lives.

So far I haven't seen anything that can deal with more than -8, and getting a custom prescription is usually prohibitively expensive. I can wear contacts to offset things somewhat, but they just cause added eyestrain.

Disclaimer: the following is bad medical advice, do not follow.

VR/AR/MR headsets aren't precisely focused at infinity, it's usually 10ft or so. They also have lower resolution than human eyes(~60 px/deg or 1MOA) while at it. This combined means you don't need full correction, I personally use -3 for both eyes, and it seem to work for me in VR.

YMMV.

I think custom prescriptions for the xreal air 1 are around $80: https://vroptician.com/prescription-lens-inserts/nreal-air

Which I could see that being a deal breaker, but maybe it's lower than you thought

With import tax to the EU, yeah, it's a deal breaker. Even from the UK. Also, that site only has lenses for the first gen, and above -10 there's a surcharge of EUR 70.

I pay more for eyeglasses than for a Quest 3, so... I don't want to double that.

There is no import tax for the UK. I paid £60 in total for my lenses from official partner HONSVR. There are cheaper options on AliExpress.

No, but there is from the UK to the EU, thanks to Brexit.

HONSVR is a Chinese company shipping from China. If they are attracting Brexit charges they are doing something wrong. I guess it might be different for XREAL if they use UK warehouses.

I had soemthing like -9.50, but had LASIK, and now I can't focus on anything less than eight or so inches away. I have never tried AR glasses or a VR headset, would they work?

They should work, because they are at infinity in your eyes' perspective.

I know what you mean. I can't help but wonder what it would take to make a pair of these. The hardware requirements for low-vision users would be lower, as we wouldn't need things like ultra high definition displays.

It's not too difficult to actually assemble - you just need some displays, a display driver, and the optics - but getting optics fabricated to meet your requirements might be challenging.

It is too difficult to assemble precisely for that reason.

The assembly is easy: the part sourcing less so ;-)

Virtue One's prescription insert is $100.

Just to chime in with another alternative - if you're open to using Linux, you might want to look into Viewport Panning with X11 [0].

It allows you to setup a larger virtual desktop that you can then pan around. Instead of moving your head around, you could instead just shift the viewport. Might be more convenient than a larger screen and/or monitor arms assuming you also setup zoom/display scaling.

By default, you pan by moving the mouse to an edge, but iirc you can setup key bindings and/or gestures.

[0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution#Panning_viewport

Great replies here already. Just piggybacking on the monitor arms: I have mounted mine to the wall. If this is an option for you, you can mount them at a good height on the wall and extend it to bring the screen closer.

Something you can consider are "dentist office screen mounts". They're what they seem like, arms like you'd see at a dentist office/hospital that swings around an entire room, to hold a light or screen. See this example Amazon listing for one that mounts to a wall with a 5foot swing area: https://www.amazon.com/DW630-1218-Long-Articulated-Adjustabl...

Ive mounted monitor arms to the front of the desk, rather than the back, and extended them out toward me for a somewhat similar situation. Bluetooth keyboard goes in my lap, thumb ball mouse goes on my arm rest. I can extend the monitor about 2.5 feet toward my face in this way. Hope it helps

I have a co-worker who is similar, needs to be about 3-4 inches from the screen. He had his monitor die, a 15" LCD, and the guys in IT 'did him a favor" and upgraded him to a 27" screen. He lasted all of an hour. Told IT it'll never work and they were confused until the saw and understood his use case.

I thought about these glasses, too, when I tore and detached my retina. With the surgery they drained me eye and my focal distance was initially maybe 1cm, and as my eye refilled the focal distance grew. At the time I wondered if sometime like Google Glass would work for me. I feel like there could be a lot of applications for these if they'll work with such short focal lengths.

What if you built a wheeled carriage to go over your desk?

Something made of precisely cut 2x4 lumber or 2040 frames, assembled like a whiteboard frame but have just a single beam where the board would be. Then the pole of monitor arm can be bolted onto the beam to hang upside down.

Once assembled, the whole thing can be rolled in and up to the front edge of the desk, right up to your face. If someone else needs to use your computer, the carriage can probably be moved back towards the wall.

The reason why display arms extend only so far is because a long cantilevered weight love to wreck the base. The desk top is going to break if it's too far out. So stretching the arm is probably no go.

Or you can get this thing called an "office chair". The overpaid tech bros here prefer names like Aeron, Embody, and Mirra. Some execs swear by their Eames too.

GP needs to have display right up his face. Chairs don't solve that problem.

> " ...I have to be about 6 inches from a 27 inch screen. I'm tall, and I'm almost bent in half to do it ... The part that makes it so tough is monitor arms come in standard sizes and are nowhere near long enough or extend far enough for me to sit comfortably ... "

Google for "long reach" monitor arms; some models have a reach of 30 to 40+ inches. They're not exactly cheap since they come from ergonomics vendors but they allow you to bring a large monitor as close to your face as you like and, depending on the model, clamp to a table like a standard monitor arm. I've had various models of them for a couple of decades now.

I have a pair of these Xreal (formerly Nreal) glasses, and I find text too unclear from the plastic optics, too full of halo/fringe (think: cheap VR headset, like trying to work on a Quest 2), and the OLED's pixel arrangement too odd for any serious work use. It's just about good enough for light gaming and movie consumption, but even gaming is a strain for me. They also make me sleepy! They do accept some prescription lenses inserted in front of the viewports, and include a blank you can have cut, but I haven't used them. I have good close-up vision with some mild, untreated astigmatism.

You can use them just as a monitor/without AR - some require a special USB-C to DP cable if you don't have native USB-C video out (or Thunderbolt), but they are a bit blurry compared to normal screens for me. I'm not sure how well they'd work for you.

The other problem is they aren't quite up against your eyes the way VR headsets are. They project a screen that appears to be quite far away. I imagine you could lower the resolution though, and it might look closer.

Thanks for this. I definitely would lower the resolution if I could as I do the same thing with my screen. The only complication with that might be that in addition I also use: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_10_dpi_fix....

Newer models, like the One and One Pro, allow you to set the distance. I think the minimum is 1.5m.

A PC is actually the best way to use xreal imo. The android experience is clunky... But I'm old and use mouse and keyboard for everything

Regarding monitor arms, what if you put a regular monitor straight in your face and use a split keyboard (like Ergodox) on the sides?

I dont know if I missed someone else saying it but have you tried the Apple Vision?

The screens are a few inches from your eyes.

I also wonder how AR glasses work with myopia. Could they potentialy worsen it? Need to dig out some research.

a) You can always get them, try them, and return them in the given period if you don't like them. That's what I did with these same glasses and I didn't get any crap about it

b) There are monitor arms that extend quite far, and are easy to install. I use this one: https://a.co/d/fV5llce. Granted I don't keep it 6" away from my face and my desk is a bit too big for that, but I could get it really close if I wanted and my desk was smaller.

There are fairly long arms which any vesa mount monitor can be attached to. This is no option for you?

The specific company I would point to is Ergotron. In the worst case you can just daisy-chain extra arm extensions as long as it's within the total weight limit, and I'm 100% confident after using the same monitor arms for years that the result would be reasonably stable.

There used to be also some Amazon Basics branded ones that are also produced by Ergotron (or the same factory that produces Ergotron - not sure). They were 100% compatible, and looked/functioned the same for quarter of the price.

Pardon my ignorance, but why not you just wear glasses?

if you are based in the USA, most stores have 30 day return policies. perhaps order them, try at home, and return if you they arent a fit for your situation

I'm in the UK, but the same idea applies, you're right. I'm just hoping there is a way to do it in-person as I might need to try quite a few types to get something that works.

My wife uses Klarna to order multiple items, pay with Klarna (delayed payment) and then only pay for what is not sent back. Usually you have few weeks? to try the items, even though it's usually clothes stores that allow Klarna payment.

Since you're in Europe, Klarna might work there.

Basically all XR devices put the focal plane at between 0.5 and 1m away. It’s a very very complicated reason why, but this is unlikely to change for a very long time.

Huh? I've always seen numbers larger than that

Xreal claims

> To mitigate this, the industry usually maintains the VID at over 1 meter; for instance, Apple's Vision Pro employs a distance of 1.1m, Meta Quest 3 sits at 1.25m, and Hololens boasts 2m.

https://us.shop.xreal.com/blogs/buying-guide/prescription-le...

Though strangely they don't give a number their for their own devices.

The article claims the focal plane on the xreal glasses is 10 feet (roughly 3m).

Why? I mean, can't you dial it in and out if you weren't folding the path and really needed that feature?

Can you point to something to learn more about this?

The article says his one is 10 feet (3m).

  There's roughly 4 different approaches to Linux on Android:
    • virtual machine emulating x86_64
    • Termux
    • arm64 binaries running in chroot
    • proot..  Same idea as chroot, but doesn't use forbidden system calls 

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43973395 & https://www.androidauthority.com/android-linux-terminal-purp...

> The main purpose of this Linux terminal feature is to bring more apps (Linux apps/tools/games) into Android, but NOT to bring yet another desktop environment.. Ideally, when in the desktop window mode, Linux apps shall be rendered on windows just like with other native Android apps.. GPU acceleration is something we are preparing for the next release.

Hopefully Android 2025 Linux VMs will lead to iOS 19 VMs at WWDC, since Apple wants to sell smart glasses to compete with Meta glasses.

Maybe you mean Android 16? I checked Android 15 w/ LineageOS and do not see the option there.

edit: apparently this only just released on LineageOS 22.2. Also your hardware needs to support pKVM as you mentioned, which means only recent devices (only Pixels currently?).

Just tried to install that on my pixel 9, and the option is there (Linux development) and the Terminal app is there, but it seems to freeze on launch, when it asks for permission to get Location. Bummer I was looking forward to this!

This worked for me: Go to the app info, set the permissions and run it again.

Works! Thanks for spending the time replying :-)

Technically Pixel 6 has the pKVM feature too (I have the terminal app from the feature drop when it was added). We're just missing DP alt mode introduced from Pixel 8 onwards

I use NOMone; works really well. Runs everything I need including vscode/cursor, node and anything else I need without any fiddling, it just all works. Obviously the new linux vm is likely nicer, but this works really well so far.

0] https://desktop.nomone.com/

This seems pretty nice, but fair warning to anyone planning on checking this out, it's actually just a trial version, and the full version is $8. Not too expensive, but doesn't feel great to me that this information is completely omitted until you download and run the app.

You can check for quite a long time and then pay a one off $8. Not ideal as I like opensource, but seems quite a lot of work went into it and it's a smooth experience.

I have nothing to do with them, I am happy with something that just works for all I need it for without having to take all kinds of expert steps. It Just Works. Maybe some massive companies can learn from this; the list is large.

Thanks for the pointer, seems to be using VNC, https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/18psg3p/linux_o...

It says it doesn't use VNC while others do:

     While current solutions depend on VNC to display the Linux interface, we got rid of VNC altogether along with the problems it causes.

It's doing VNC-alike "graphics remoting", but with less isolation/security in the name of efficiency/performance:

> We thought this is too inefficient. So we decided to combine both into a single application, to eliminate most of the interprocess communication, and avoid having the Linux server run in the background, and thus suffering from power optimizations. We still have a framebuffer, but we do the scrapping and updating directly. We have reduced all the hassle to mere memcpy and texture update operations. This turned out to be huge! In the future, we hope to reduce this overhead even further by rendering directly to the texture, and this saving the need to scrape and copy memory.

When the next release of Android Linux Terminal ships vGPU with virtio, it will provide better graphics performance than VNC, while retaining strong security isolation between Debian guest VM and host Android.

Not clear it is much less secure. It could be using subprocesses and shared memory since they say they are just writing a buffer. I think you can't get that with cross app communication, only subprocess in Android, right?

Thank you internet stranger. I like having termux running on my phone, just in case. I will definitely try this out.

The termux app is still way better when it comes to being an actual terminal emulator, however the stock app should get a lot better with android 16

Nice! Does it support virtual desktops ("Workspaces" on Ubuntu)?

Any idea where to find the source? Wondering how it's set up.

pKVM is upstream in mainline Linux.

AOSP, https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/V...

GrapheneOS, https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_modules_Virt... & https://x.com/tuxpizza/status/1900431745146888488

does it do virgl?

I've not seen any public docs on AVF/pKVM accelerated graphics, but a recent Collabora article on Linux graphics virt pointed to vDRM as a long term direction, https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2025/01/15/the-...

Box64 is yet another option

I have these same AR glasses and I really like them. The one downside is that they don't seem to handle heat too well--they'll crash if I run them in full sunlight for more than a few minutes. Also, they are not really AR--they are just a floating screen, and supposedly there is motion-tracking hardware, but no software. That's OK; a big floating screen that is fixed to my head is actually good.

In full sunlight I think this requires opacity. I lost the plastic cover for the lenses and I hacked up some cardboard thing.

These glasses have a really cool 3D side-by-side mode. The button activation is awkward, but it effectively turns this into a 3840x1280 screen. I couldn't really find much desktop support for this, but there are a few YouTube videos that are 16x9 SBS and they look really really cool. Unfortunately in this mode the desktop is then super-wide and spread across two eyes, so it's almost impossible to use a regular laptop with them. A 3D OS desktop would be killer on these!

I didn't try to go full mobile with a phone.

The cord is somewhat annoying, but I think I prefer it over a big stupid battery and some wireless protocol.

One wrinkle is that the interface is USB-C. The glasses need power, and though you can/could power them over HDMI, they don't support that. You need the device to support HDMI over USB-C and recognize the glasses as a display. The manufacturer offers a completely hilarious battery-powered HDMI-to-USB-C adapter. I have no idea why there is no powered solution; maybe there is.

> I have these same AR glasses and I really like them. The one downside is that they don't seem to handle heat too well--they'll crash if I run them in full sunlight for more than a few minutes.

Yup, I found laying my head on the left side where the cord comes it also causes them to overheat quick. My solution is to always lay on the right hand side of them and I actually put some stick on heatsinks on the left "leg" body that also really helps keep them more comfortably cool.

Also weird quirk with them and USB-C I've found.

If you plug them in to a macbook it's 50/50 if they work or just turn on the tint. If that happens, rotating the USB-C plug causes them to work.

Surprisingly: USB-C cables do have an orientation. It comes up a lot with these kinds of female-to-female USB-C cable extenders: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTT1FJL6 (I have not used this one, it's just an example)

>Important Note: Ensure your USB-C cables support video transmission when using this coupler for video pass-through. If the connection doesn’t work initially, try reversing the orientation of the cable’s plug to ensure proper functionality, as USB-C protocols depend on connector orientation.

AFAICT not all cables are like this, but quite a few are, and broadly it appears that it's the sockets that are reversible and are simply hiding this - cables often just use one side. So when you bridge two cables like this, you need to make sure those (unmarked) sides line up.

So I suspect one side of your connection is either damaged or cheap (and didn't fully meet the reversible spec to save money).

(but only suspect, I haven't found a way to fully validate this)

> it's the sockets that are reversible and are simply hiding this - cables often just use one side. So when you bridge two cables like this, you need to make sure those (unmarked) sides line up.

Thanks for explaining the unexplainable! Also seen with couplers and gender-changers for connecting USB-c cables.

WHAT

Thanks

You got them post-rebrand. If you shop by the old name "nReal" then you can find the non powered HDMI adapter. Also, the app is called nebula, but the motion control is just annoying and not worth it. I like mine, they work great, but the FOV is tiny, and all of the chirping about AR from influencers/media just doesn't help how underwhelming they are if you go in with those expectations rather than just a HMD.

https://www.amazon.com/Formerly-Connects-Lightning-Compatibl...

On a somewhat related note, I feel any specialized device development should come hand-in-hand with a great developer experience with a well-designed simulator experience.

I was an original Google Glass developer (2013) and not allowing development via a simulator was one of their biggest mistakes ever. You had to continuously test squinting into the actual hardware. After about 25min it would overheat and you were forced into a cooldown period of about 30min. You couldnt easily put together tests or parallelize testing mundane parts of the app off-device. I ended up with the worst headaches after three months and we pivoted our business to something else soon after.

I mean if you couldn't stand using the device long enough to test it (not that you should have to - i agree on that), maybe the problem was that the device simply wasn't in anyone kind of ready state to be shipped as a revolutionary new way of interfacing with computers. Like christ, it would overheat after 25 minutes?

Being one of the 3rd party developers to create apps for a nascent platform is a great position for your business to be in. It just so happened that Google Glass didn't work out. But imagine being an early developer for Android or iOS.

>> I mean if you couldn't stand using the device long enough to test it (not that you should have to - i agree on that), maybe the problem was that the device simply wasn't in anyone kind of ready state to be shipped as a revolutionary new way of interfacing with computers. Like christ, it would overheat after 25 minutes?

Well the usage for these types of devices (e.g., Apple Watch, Google Glass) is meant to be notifications driven and event driven. So the unit was sufficient for regular Production usage (though not great for all-day use.) However, development is basically a constant stream of tests, etc -- so the development experience is continuous and thus much more taxing than the Production user experience.

I don't use AR glasses, and I don't code on my phone, but I do like to use it for writing without having to carry a backpack.

The keyboard I use and really like is the iClever BK05:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018K5EJCQ

It is backlit and has a standard full size PC layout, including function keys and an "inverted T" cursor key section. The key feel is nearly as good as my ThinkPad. And it comes with a nice little stand to support your phone at a typical laptop screen angle.

It comes with a soft pouch that holds the keyboard, the phone stand, and the manual. Folded up, it fits easily in the cargo pocket of my pants.

Like the keyboard described in the article, it is not suitable for use on your lap because it doesn't lock open. That doesn't matter for me, because I need a place to put my phone anyway.

If you read the reviews, note that the "top rated critical review" has a glaring mistake:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1RVWODQ8SCS2X?ie...

The reviewer says that the keyboard has no support at the left and right edges, so those outer sections don't lay flat and tap against the table as you type.

Wrong! This reviewer didn't notice the two little black tabs that you need to flip out so the keyboard lays flat and well supported. This is also described in the short manual.

I bought this keyboard years ago and enjoyed using it for about a week. Then 3-5 keys stopped working entirely and nothing I did would fix them. Recall having a tough time getting a refund on Amazon.

Guess it's good to hear I must have had a dud.

I remember more than a decade ago I used this [0] keyboard on my HP Jornada Palm Pilot. Surprised to see it's still being sold. Folds up into a nice case.

[0] https://eshop-cy.com/en/product/targus-pa820u-stowaway-porta...

I couldn’t find anywhere selling Stowaway keyboard. It was discontinued for a long time.

I have one of the Bluetooth models that got for Palm which still works.

I'm jealous. That's awesome.

Very cool experiment and the piece is written really well, manages to communicate a ton of relevant information without being overly verbose. One side note though - whats the deal with working in the park/on the bench etc, is the author really able to be productive in an outside environment? I dont think I could ever work like that, either with or without the AR glasses.

That's a great compliment; thank you.

As far as being outside, I imagine it's very dependent on personality. I often get restless and distracted working from home, and being outside or in a public space will help me feel a lot calmer and more focused. There's also a certain amount of intentionton it takes to "go to a specific place to do a specific thing" that helps me mentally.

It's not something I'm doing every day, but when the weather is beautiful and I'm feeling stuck behind a desk it's so nice to be able to work outside.

Do people ever think you are staring at them? You still have to point your face somewhere, just with a laptop screen it’s more likely obvious.

First thing I thought. If I go to a coffee shop or the park, it's because I want to enjoy that place, not do the same work I could do (better) at my desk. That's an aside, though, the OP's setup is really cool and intriguing.

On the flip side I find it extremely easy to get bored and lazy at home but when I work at a coffee shop the bustle makes me feel more energetic and focused. I work on picnic tables in the park when the weather permits.

The exact same thing jumped out at me, for the opposite reason. I have unlimited data + tethering, so I can use my laptop with fast internet anywhere. That's the big breakthrough for me, not the glasses+phone combo.

Working in a park is amazing. You are still enjoying the ambience/vibe, but yeah, you're also writing a blog post or whatever. For me, that doesn't distract from the park or the productivity. They both enhance each other.

Same with a coffee shop -- this is why coffee shops have wifi passwords, because many people in there are on the internet, soaking up the ambience/vibe.

I do the same, but I find looking at my laptop to be quite distracting; I mentally "lock in" to my laptop, which defeats the purpose, and also ends up being ergonomically challenging much of the time.

I'd like to use AR glasses for this, as it means I can look straight ahead and take in more of the atmosphere, while still keeping good posture.

I work in Quest 3 regularly and in a "normal" weather I like to work outside (in a safe environment aka backyard). It's just nice to have fresh air. But once I decided to work and sunbath on the balcony of the hotel in the Swiss Alps in a sunny spring day. It was lovely until sweating made the work really uncomfortable (but yet practically possible). :)

What is wrong with getting some sun and fresh air?

Can you explain why you don't think you would be productive outside?

Well I guess for a lot of people it would be self-explanatory, but if I go outside to a park, or to a coffee-shop, or whatever - I go there to enjoy myself, not work. Apart from that, I would not really have the ergonomic benefits of my controlled working environment, not to mention bugs, people walking by, random noise or whatever it is.

I suspect that's a personal bias. If you go to most any cafe (at least in the US) there will be a half dozen people there typing away at their laptops. This is even more common with the rise of remote work where people will (for better or worse) commandeer cafes as their personal office.

Well of course its a personal bias - I never claimed no one else could work like that, just myself ;) I am aware of all the folks typing it out in the coffee-shops. Just that I could never be productive in that setting. Answer some e-mails - perhaps, but not really do any (meaningful) programming work as such.

Yes, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining. I'm not sure if I could work in public like this but I am interested to find out.

i go outside to get sun.

grab a set on a ledge somewhere and think. that works for work, if the thinking is about work.

major benefit is that none of the people walking by are going to try disrupt what thing youre working on to be different work

I feel like we are due for a revolution in computer interface design that will free us from our desks. I want to be able to do work while walking on the bike trail or sitting in a lounge chair by the pool. All the core concepts of GUI design - "mouse", "window", "file", "folder", "desktop" - were developed in a previous era with far tighter constraints on what could be done. Now we have voice understanding, wearable computers, AR / VR, LLMs, cellular internet, etc. Even though the tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, the underlying UI concepts haven't changed much.

Desks were invented hundreds of years ago (at least) and are ergonomically ideal for doing prolonged work. It's not related to computing in any way. I don't see them going away any time soon.

They are not ideal, they cause all sorts of lower back/neck & circulation issues, even with a tuned ergonomic setup.

But it's true that it is the best we got, sort of the cringy but effective treadmill desk.

Does spending 8-10 hours on your feet every day fare better? I think the solution there is mixing it up

Your back/neck/circulation issues have more to do with ergonomics of your chair and prolonged sitting, not about the concept of a desk. If you take a break after 2 hours when it starts to feel really uncomfortable instead of 30 minutes, whichever future posture you take is not going to give you fewer problems. Well, maybe fewer neck problems, but you'll have hand/foot problems instead.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently. There is a lot you can do to work through programming problems away from your computer if you have enough of it in your head. Unfortunately, it seems harder and harder to keep the project in my head the more I rely on autocomplete, linters or other IDE features. These bring my process of reprogramming out of my head and into a more constant conversation with the editor. Autocomplete disincentivizes me from remembering the interface of my dependencies. On personal projects it’s much easier, since I have usually written all the code myself, and I have been using basic vim with no plugins at home.

>I want to be able to do work while walking on the bike trail or sitting in a lounge chair by the pool

I think this is only a bandaid to the problem that we're still spending so awfully much time at work, despite massive improvements in worker productivity. I _don't_ want to be working on the bike trail or while lounging or by the pool, I want be in places that are not work

The division of "operating system" labor across devices and network is an open technical, business and political challenge. Many would-be gatekeepers competing for control, even as prior gatekeepers are being slowly regulated out of their monopoly roles.

Oh that's a cool coincidence, I was just watching a video of someone coding a game without a laptop. In their case it's a VR game on a VR headset (based on Android), using Godot.

It's not really related I know but it's neat how all those not-strictly-computers are getting more useful!

Edit: forgot the video link! It's https://youtu.be/4ZAzi-4Ko3g?feature=shared

> I really didn't want to root the phone, but nothing else did what I needed

Shame that rooting is such a pain, and risks bricking the device. (Apparently Google's introduction of an anti-rollback bootloader this month has caused a few people's devices to get bricked when they tried to root.)

Seriously. Why is using your own pocket computer so hostile to user intent these days?

Because the world is full of malicious entities who want to exploit people and most people do not need root.

That's right, but why make rooting almost Impossible? Why they are fighting rooting at all? They could make rooting easier, for example in the hidden developer menu.

By malicious entities, do you mean the phone manufacturers, third-parties, or both?

Probably malware makers? Some phone manufacturers use that argument to explain why they prevent users from becoming root.

I still read it as phone manufacturers on my first pass!

The hardware is owned by the user but the OS is essentially owned by Google or Apple. The user is a tenant or a cow to be milked.

The main goals is preventing a spread of "google play" alternatives with paid apps.

Anti-rollback is a security feature. I'm sorry you find yourself limited by Google - coming from the GrapheneOS user this is the only reasonable secure hardware platform of all the Android landscape.

I hope rooting will be easier for all the interested.

What about running the userland app?

I have been eyeing off this setup for ages but I'm stopped by the fact that the glasses only project 1080p displays. They seem to have been stuck at that resolution for years and I'm not sure if it's a technical limitation or something else. I just know I wouldn't use a 1080p screen in real life except in an emergency so I'm super sceptical that I'd be happy with the glasses.

Very curious why these have stalled out at 1080p. They don't have to go much higher, give me 2560x1600 and I will be very happy.

The phone market is stuck at 1080p bc the screens are small. When the wearable market is large enough, someone will develop glasses with higher resolution.

This confuses me, many phones have 4k screens, the Apple Watch has a 330ppi which is much higher than the 5k 27” display Mac display. So basically you can almost certainly source a high enough pixel density to support 2k on AR lenses.

These displays in the glasses are significantly smaller than even your Apple Watch though (0.58" or so I believe). Essentially the displays they're using are the same ones found in DSLR viewfinders. There should be higher resolution options, but I suspect the resolution limiter is the optics not the pixel size (just a suspicion).

Man, I tried this too but eventually went back to a laptop. Though maybe that wouldn't have been the case if I was able to use chroot. Still, for me, a laptop is quite nice for being able to just whip it out and start doing stuff immediately. With phone + glasses + external keyboard, I have to pull out several things and plug in the glasses.

But proot being slightly too slow is a real bummer. I was able to get a lot of stuff working natively on Termux, but every once in awhile you hit a wall and it's sad.

proot is just good enough to make you want to try it, but not good enough to keep using it. chroot was far better and if that's what was holding you back I'd recommending trying chroot.

I can relate to the clunk of having 3 different pieces to the setup, but I found myself using just the phone + keyboard pretty often for quick things. And since the desktop environment seems to sit in the background just fine, it wasn't much more than just turning on the phone and opening the keyboard. So in that sense it wasn't much different than a laptop.

I see - actually in my case I'm on Samsung, and Dex takes several seconds to boot. I like the desktop but It sounds like chroot + Termux:X11 would be way faster in every way.. I just really wish there was a Termux:Wayland - my favorite desktop doesn't seem to have an equivalent in X11 (niri, though maybe I need to look harder)

Wow, I had little idea the readily available tech is this far

> Termux, which is an Android app that provides a mix of terminal emulator, lightweight Linux userland, and set of packages that are able to run in that environment.

Tim Cook, I know what you know (and fear losing Mac sales to iPad and iPad sales to iPhone, so you want them nerfed), but this would make me upgrade my 2018 iPad Pro. I’d love to be able to leave my expensive macbook home for the vacation, and still be able to do some emergency hotfix on a tablet with keyboard (ideally connected to eg. hotel TV).

I know this isn't what you're asking for - I wasn't either - but I found a used surface pro (arm or x86) is better for this use case than I imagined. They're so cheap used on eBay or FB marketplace that I think it's worth trying if you're already willing to buy a new iPad anyway.

I have two now - the SPX - they're ~$200 used, with LTE and 16GB of ram, and a SP8 - i5/16gb of ram ~$350 used from FB marketplace. The SP8 runs Fedora 40 and it's light enough that I just keep it in my backpack whether I'll need it that day or not.

> Tim Cook, I know what you know (and fear losing Mac sales to iPad and iPad sales to iPhone, so you want them nerfed), but this would make me upgrade my 2018 iPad Pro.

Can check out side-loading UTM using AltStore or a local dev account.

https://docs.getutm.app/installation/ios/

You do lose JIT support in newer iOS though.

Aren't there SSH clients for iOS? That should work for an emergency hotfix.

iSH sort of works as well as BlinkSSH for remote clients.

I use Blink extensively, as well as RDP connections to Linux hosts (which can support hardware acceleration and low-bandwidth links very well)

The Xreal glasses are going to be the near-term winner for AR/VR form factor. A “personal screen” you can carry around with you and use to look at whatever is on your phone in a much larger, private format.

This just adds more value more simply than the new ecosystems most AR/VR glasses are trying to establish.

Vendor wins by unbundling display from custom OS/hardware/ecosystem, allowing customers to choose.

I think the next version of Android is supposed to include a terminal that can run Linux.

I don't know the specifics but it would be better than having to root the phone and use chroot.

It's sad that a phone running java on top of Linux isn't able to run Linux app without big downside like termux and proot. Hopefully it changes.

> It's sad that a phone running java on top of Linux isn't able to run Linux app

It can. It just can't run something expecting glibc, X11, Wayland, or any of the other large number of userspace libraries that Android doesn't have.

But a pure Linux app works no problem. Just shell in and run it, easy.

Android has a terminal in the newer beta versions, indeed - a proper one

it was sorta possible before too, but now, it can start up programs with a window etc (and of course someone ran doom on it)

I have Android 15 (regular release) and it's there. Feels snappy I didn't use it to run desktop environment though.

Well it's great news, I'm excited to try it !

Does it include package management? Can you run Python for example?

Yes, this is Debian, apt is present and working. I was able to install & use mtr for example.

However for python I got "no install candidate". Probably doable after adding necessary package repos

With Python you should be `uv run`ning stuff nowadays anyway.

Yes, it has full access to Debian repos.

Awesome! Regarding the keyboard I would recommend going towards the mechanical path. Browse https://kbd.news/ for some inspiration. I built a 36 keys for myself that is portable and very capable. You can even map keys to control the mouse and much more. Definitely going to keep an eye on the advancements of AR glasses from now on.

Wow, there's some very nice builds there. I so far I hadn't seen anything that seemed genuinely pocket-able but there are a few there that look like they might work. I'd still really love something that can lock flat and be used on a lap, but that feels doable.

I love kbd.news and was recently struck by the novelty of the Tackle keyboard[0]. Seems rather extreme but my first thought was it could be a great complement to AR glasses. The design could be improved with improved with some tenting, because those keys at the edges will be easy to accidentally trigger when reaching for other keys towards the center.

[0] https://kbd.news/Tackle-keyboard-2549.html

Anyone - I need this! or something similar as a wearable keyboard. Please help me.

I rigged together a torso/chest mounted keyboard system using rugged keyboard and laptop chest harness modified. It actually kinda works but this Tackle keyboard would work really well for my use case, which overlaps significantly with this post.

I use Viture XR glasses, similar to the Xreals in the post. And I have a rugged laptop in a backpack with LTE modem and external antenna. Then what I do is go hiking in woods and periodically stop and open a Ta-Da chair, which I use as a walking stick or carry on my back, then put on the XR glasses which connected to laptop just using the Viture HDMI adapter, open the keyboard harness, and start working, all terminal based work.

The worst worst part of this crazy setup is the keyboard system. It’s awkward and kinda scares other people as it looks like maybe I have a tactical military vest on. opening it up and getting oriented is like 90% of the hassle.

Please someone help me get this Tackle keyboard. I don’t have the physical engineering skills needed, I’m a software guy. DM me on reddit with same username as HN. I will PAY decent money to anyone who can deliver me a working version of this Tackle keyboard.

I also own and tried tap strap and it’s not viable. Keys needed. LLMs combined with Voice to Text is promising and something on software side I’m looking into actively, but I don’t think no keyboard is a productivity retaining option anytime soon.

I do at least 10K steps daily when I have this system working and my goal is to get to 15K steps and drop weight. My preferred environment is outdoors away from desks and tables and civilization.

Are you Stephen Wolfram?

https://quantifiedself.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/585958...

Unfortunately not but … but yes if you see me outside in my setup it bears resemblance.

The laptop harness closes so the keyboard is strapped to my chest while walking and there isn’t any screen as I use the Viture glasses as the monitor when I stop and work while sitting.

I could make people SO uncomfortable if I worked as a receptionist with this strapped on and threw in some very subtle signs of enjoying it. Reminds me of the south park nipple twisting guy. Very cool keyboard for VR and AR though. Can't really think of anything better if you wanted to type something quick in the middle of a physical VR game.

If working in cafes without annoying people is a requirement, mechanical probably isn't so good.

You can get switches that aren't any louder than typing on a laptop, these days "clicky" is just sub-category. The low profile 'choc' switches from Kailh are probably a good option to try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHAK1kJtMVQ - have a listen. Some of them are inaudible under a mic, but really you need to buy a grab bag and play around at home to see what works.

I got this keyboard : https://www.keebart.com/products/3w6 that uses mechanical low profile silent choc switches (Twilight Ambients Silent) and they are quieter than most non-mechanical keyboards. Eg. my Logitech Ergo k860, which uses rubber domes, is louder. Only quieter keyboard I can think of is my MacBook Air but even that can get louder with intensive typing because of a different sound profile - depends on how hard you bottom out - for my typing style chocs are a bit louder.

Realistically nobody would even hear you typing on this unless you're in a quiet room, and there's a ton of mods you can do to get it quieter.

Anyway if you are into solving niche keyboard use cases definitely look into the custom build scene, it's surprisingly easy to build high quality custom solutions, and even easier to find someone to build it for you for few hundred $.

That one looks pretty nifty.

I bought a Keychron mechanical keyboard with its quietest switches and was a bit burnt by the experience - way louder than anything I want to use. But yeah, I believe you that the technology has improved.

Thanks for the info!

You can get quiet mechanical switches that are comparable to laptop keyboard switches in terms of noise. There's a bit of art to the selection, but there are definitely options.

Google is now shipping a full Debian Linux VM on pixels, apparently this is a part of the plan to introduce a desktop computing mode on Android. https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3...

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/13/android_15_linux_debi...

What I always wonder about with these Headsets is how can this not damage your eyes, focusing them at such short distance for prolonged periods. Anybody with experience in using such a device would like to comment on this?

It's not "at such a short distance" compared to how people use laptops, or even desktops. The focal distance on these headsets is all >1m (the author quotes 10 feet for the glasses they are using in particular).

IIRC: Like Google Glass and VR headsets, they use some optical tricks to focus at infinity.

So to your eyes you're focusing at an object 2-3+ meters away rather than 2-3 cm in reality.

So this is probably a silly question but… can’t you fool your eyes into focusing at any distance you want if you’ve got a stereo screen at a fixed distance (ie a headset)?

Isn’t this just a function of the parallax when rendering both screens?

Focus is distinct from convergence - convergence is how much you have to cross your eyes to look at something, but focus is where muscles squish and stretch your eyeballs to change the distance of your retinas from your pupils. Just like a camera, if your eye is not focused at the real distance to subject, it will look blurry because your pupil is not a perfect pinhole, but has area (so a single eye is already seeing the same object from slightly different angles, on either side of the pupil).

Usually your brain learns a strong correspondence between focus and convergence, but this can be unlearned quite easily, and indeed must be in order to view e.g. VR, 3D films, Magic Eye pictures, etc... - all of which encode 3D information through convergence, while requiring your eyes to focus on a fixed plane.

No, and VR’s inability to match focal distance with parallax causes the vergence-accommodation conflict.

This is a real problem, but it's fine for most VR use cases as you're usually looking at content that's rendered at a distance greater than the focal plane. The problems start to occur when you look at nearby content - that is, content less than 2m away - as it ends up being extremely uncomfortable for your eyes.

There are solutions being developed for this, but they have not been successfully miniaturised and/or cost-reduced for productisation. It's unclear how far away it is at this time, but Reality Labs has several generations of solutions that physically change the distance between the lenses and the displays, and alternate solutions like lightfields capable of simultaneously displaying content at different focal planes are being investigated.

> I unfortunately had to upgrade my phone, because to drive the glasses you need to have DisplayPort Alt mode. My very cheap, very crappy old phone did not.

I also run a low spec android phone, and I tried the same brand of glasses with it. My workaround was a screencast to HDMI adapter, paired with an HDMI to to DP over USB-C. Both are cheap.

Occasionally the screencast flakes out. But when the network is working well it's pretty good.

is your HDMI to DP adapter active (powered)? what brand?

https://a.co/d/hJ99gxr

This is what my Amazon purchase history linked to, but I think the one I got in September looked very similar but without a logo on it.

How do glasses like this work for someone who wears eyeglasses for myopia and astigmatism, and doesn't like contacts?

As long as your prescription isn't to extreme the VITURE Pro XR exists and is similar. I tried it and it worked surprisingly well but returned it because the headtracking didn't work on Linux and I didn't like the static view.

You can buy inserts for an additional $80 from official partner HONSVR, or less from AliExpress. My HONS inserts work as well as any glasses I've had. I have -1.50 myopia in both eyes, with different levels of astigmatism.

There are perscription lenses, but not sure how well they work https://lensology.co.uk/xreal-air-2-ultra-lenses/

they don't work for me having astigmatism with or without prescription glasses.

When I did a Vision Pro demo they had lenses on hand to accommodate my astigmatism. It was pretty nice…and about 10x the cost of this

Oh, that's really cool though that they can handle it!

It's funny that 3500 seems sooo much to spend for hardware now... over the last 25 years, it's gotten so much cheaper between lower price macbooks and not needing to upgrade phones and laptops nearly so often.

Its not so much to spend for a full powerful computing device which you can do anything you need to on for work or play (like a powerful laptop or desktop), but it is a lot for a purely media consumption device like a headset (which is essentially a fancy TV).

I'm hoping more people will author articles about using these types of displays full time. There was an article posted a month ago about someone using XREAL ONEs with an x86 PC and a portable power bank. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668192

I've done some cursory research on the XREAL Air 2 Pros because they are currently discounted at 299 USD. I'm interested in retiring a 4K 43" monitor which has been slightly too large.

My question to anyone who has tried XREAL's products is whether the more expensive XREAL ONE model provides a much better productivity experience for 499 USD?

So far, I'm not convinced the Air 2s provide a 'stable' enough image for productivity tasks as this article states. I found a Youtube reviewer who created a rendition of what it is like to use them for video editing - and they weren't enthusiastic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZhD8Dt6akY&t=316s

Linus Sebastian from LTT did go on Jimmy Fallon a few months ago and show off the XREAL ONEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vybLi25Q8Fw

For me, I'm not interested in XREAL's Android offerings; I'm more interested in Graphine or e/OS, but would need to purchase a new tablet and a new phone with USB-C display output. I did pick up a Chuwi Hi10 X1 Intel n100 tablet a few months ago for about 200 USD, so that solves the battery problem for me. https://store.chuwi.com/products/hi10-x1-n150

If I didn't have that, and wanted to go the powerbank with X86 route, the company MeLE does have some very, very small mini pcs. https://store.mele.cn/products/mele-quieter-4c-n100-3-4ghz-f...

To many people asking about keyboards, I'd recommend simply getting a 60% with bluetooth, or an adapter which converts a regular USB keyboard into a bluetooth adapter. I'm also a trackball user, and the Japanese company DEFT makes some decent ones.

Nice to read I'm not alone thinking of this nomadic kind of setup. And also I got the feedback I hoped on the Xreal Air 2 glasses : https://eu.shop.xreal.com/fr/products/xreal-air-2

Hey thanks (I'm the author)! BTW the "Pro" version has the electrochromic dimming, so I recommend paying a little extra for that unless you're really sure you're not going to need it.

EDIT: To clarify, I meant the "Xreal Air 2 Pro", not the "Xreal One Pro". The latter are much more expensive.

Your price point for the used glasses is quite lucky to just play around with it or using it sometimes.

They cost 800 new :|

1080p is that really okay?

They are $299 on sale on the vendor website right now. I won't link because I don't want to promote them necessarily, but I think you must have seen a different vendor or something?

I also paid less than $300. OP must be referring to a different model.

Looks like they’re weirdly expensive through the EU store. Just navigate from xreal.com - I see them for $US 299

Have you looked on Amazon? I got the One (not pro) for less than £500.

I've been thinking about using xreal glasses for coding but all the reviews I've seen seems to think that the fidelity isn't good enough for reading text for lengthy stretches of time. This article is the first counter argument here.

Poster laments the lack of a quality folding keyboard.

Well, though not in production any more, there is one that is absolutely perfect: Microsoft Universal Foldable Keyboard.

You can still find it on eBay, and it’s unfathomable — though perfectly in-character — for Microsoft to have terminated it.

Thanks for sharing that. I found one “new” on ebay as you suggested. Will give it a try.

What about a wearable split 34-key keyboard? That could work, for outdoor coding. Or voice interface, there was a video of a guy coding in Emacs using that.

This is neat. I’ve been thinking about doing something like this on my Quest 3, but it’s a fair bit bulkier than this setup. One upside is, you already get an Android and can setup pretty much anything you might want! (I’ve sideloaded F-Droid on mine, going to see if Termux works.)

Re: Bluetooth keyboard – you can get a Thinkpad keyboard as a Bluetooth one. It’s slimmer that the usual bottom half, so it’s much more portable. But it’s not folding, of course.

> I wrote most of this blog post sitting at a picnic table in a park. Screen glare and brightness is not an issue. I can fit into tight spaces. This setup was infinitely more comfortable than a laptop when on a plane. Some coffee shops also have narrow bars that are too small for a laptop, but not for this. The phone has a cellular connection, so I'm not tied to wifi. In other words, there's a sense of freedom that you do not get with a laptop. And I can be outdoors. One of the things I've grown tired of as software dev is feeling like I'm stuck inside all the time in front of a screen. With this I can walk to a coffee shop and work for an hour or two, then get up and walk to a park for another hour of work.

Am I the only one who wishes they could be inside in a windowless room 24/7/365? There’s climate control, HEPA filtration, good chairs, peace and quiet, precisely the light level and color and direction I like, etc, at all times. Every time I go outside, the environment is worse than being at home indoors.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one on the planet who doesn’t enjoy being outdoors at all.

> Am I the only one who wishes they could be inside in a windowless room 24/7/365?

I spent a decade in a building like that for my 9-5 job. It gets old, unless you really hate sunlight and fresh air.

It being an office building, you likely did not have nearly the level of environmental control I describe.

I do really hate sunlight, but fresh air is essential. If you don’t have fresh air indoors, your HVAC design is bad. Air is one of the easiest things to move around.

It wouldn't be too expensive to make what you want, you could always buy a small plot of land and build a custom home to try it out. Shouldn't be more than $200-400k, possibly less depending on the area.

I’m doing precisely that, but I have simulated the same in the meantime by taking a normal residential house and completely blacking out and sealing the windows in the largest upstairs room. It’s excellent. When I turn off the lights it can be pitch black and 68F at noon in the middle of the summer in the Mojave.

I had to cover the windows in all the adjacent rooms to make this work, but it does.

i wish i could have those bright window spots everyone hates. the glare doesnt bother me.

i do just go outside on the building deck instead

Nah, there are at least few of us.

I still go out though to walk and cycle, sometimes eat, but anything else is more comfortable at home.

Don't forget the lack of bugs landing on you and crawling on you!

> Am I the only one who wishes they could be inside in a windowless room 24/7/365?

Seems like the sort of thing that might later turn out to have been a bad idea regardless of how it seemed at the time.

I find that working outside or at a cafe is too distracting. I agree with what you're saying with regards to work or even reading.

I enjoy outdoors for relaxation and forgetting about work though.

Stuff like this is a glimpse into the future that we were robbed of by the current big tech status quo.

They're running a 3rd party OS on their phone using a 3rd party external keyboard and 3rd party display. Interoperability! Imagine that! Running whatever software you want with whatever accessories you want on hardware that you own! Tech should have made it easier to accomplish this!

What a shame that you really can't do this using an iPhone. Unless things have changed recently the closest you can come to this is using iSH to run some linux binaries (x86_32), but it's quite limited last I checked.

UTM runs virtual machines on iOS and has been around a while: https://getutm.app

Issue is that Apple doesn’t allow apps to run JIT so if you want the JIT version of UTM, you need to sideload or Jailbreak. The non-JIT version is on the App Store.

Are there any OSes that have usable performance (<1min to boot) on iOS without JIT? I tried a few and they were impractically slow.

What’s the performance penalty for the non JIT version?

Reviews on the App Store say very slow and you can’t move windows without waiting minutes. A Linux distro that’s CLI only seems to work.

I've tried the non JIT version, and while it's cool that something like this even works, it's not actually usable. It's very, very slow for anything graphical. You might be able to get away with just running a terminal.

This is my favorite portable keyboard: https://www.logitech.com/en-us/shop/p/keys-to-go2-universal....

Unless they have a way to lock open, foldable keyboards will always subtly bend which is annoying enough for me to ditch the folding part entirely.

I wish they also included the trackpad beneath it. I basically want a laptop base without the screen.

There are various products like https://inateck.com/collections/tablet-keyboard/products/blu....

There’s also https://www.esrgear.com/products/ipad-air-13-2024-ascend-key... which I think are standard Bluetooth as well.

You can just unmount the display and have a base. I used such setup for 6 months as a teenager plugging it everywhere I go.

There are people who have bought MBPs with broken screens and deleted the screen to use them with the Vision Pro. Works quite well!

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUa_pPUbpGQ.

I wonder if the keyboard covers for the Microsoft Surface tablets could somehow be repurposed.

That’s a great place to look because they sell this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-pro-flex-keyboard/...

Tempting!

they arent that nice, compared to what im currently using (epo64: https://a.co/d/gRQnvjE apparently on sale atm)

that said, my surface pro 3's keyboard is quite old now, so maybe the new ones are nicer

They more-or-less improved the keyboard immediately after the SP3. The SP4 is a night-and-day difference to the SP3 (to the point where I was considering getting a SP4 keyboard for my SP3 when I still had it), and they've gotten better since.

Over a decade ago microsoft actually sold a Bluetooth adapter for the surface keyboard

I have the non-cover version of this (or at least, it's another Logitech keyboard with a very similar design but lacks a cover - the K380s), and I also have a Keychron B1 Pro and a TKL mechanical keyboard, but my cheapo K380s still feels better to use to me.

IMHO the best option would be a LingLong Lunar. But they are pricey right now.

> FOV is actually too big [...] Seeing the top and bottom edges of the screen means moving your eyeballs

Or head tracking.[1] Aphysical rotation exaggeration avoids trading eye for neck stress.

> I do feel a little weird wearing these in public, but not that weird.

Non-weird can be an expensive constraint, fruitful to relax if going beyond a minimalism setup. A baseball hat can barnacle quite a bit before people find it remarkable... at least around Boston. For instance, for head tracking, an Intel RealSense, or a hat fisheye camera and tennis ball on the table, or an optical marker on a hat chopstick, can be simpler, easier, lower power, and less expensive, than invoking "and it has to look non-weird". With current tech, that's almost as challenging as "and it has to be a product".

> as these AR glasses continue to improve and Linux continues to be flexible and awesome.

I suggest Nreal (now Xreal) made a bad call here. They developed internally on Ubuntu, but chose to shut out linux. (Caveat: I've not followed in a few years, maybe that's changed.) Unicorn dreams and race to mass market - maybe the right call if everyone started watching media on phones with glasses. But it could have been an inexpensive risk mitigation, and a worthwhile investment once market fit was clearly a long haul. Is there some doc which lays out alternatives for a company who thinks they have a crown-jewel binary blob, to allow the community to wrap it for linux consumption, with minimal "we just throw a blob over the wall - we don't support linuxes" cost? It's been a lot of years that something like TFA has been possible, during which a lot of developers could have been exploring for viable market niches. Instead of... not.

[1] https://x.com/mncharity/status/1225091755667853318#m

> The biggest downside of the glasses is that the FOV is actually too big. Seeing the top and bottom edges of the screen means moving your eyeballs to angles that are just a little uncomfortable,

Is there a window manager and/or eyeball tracking trick that could be added to this setup to bring content into the center?

That's not a FOV issue, that's a DOF issue.

You can't comfortably use any XR system for more than videos, if you can't use your neck to look around.

I have the same setup, it works well, been doing this for years now. I like to be outside as much as I can and for that reason I like having 20 hour battery life (good phone with an external battery). My setup fits in my pants pocket and usbc chargers are everywhere (bars, restaurants, hotel lobbies, everyone has then at home) if you don't need to charge a laptop with them. Where I live is a lot of sun and seeing your laptop screen even in the shade is hard; no problem with this.

The issue with the top and bottom edges and the too low res are the only downsides; both will be fixed as time passes and the inconvenience beats lugging a laptop and charger around and finding outlets instead of literally never needing any except while sleeping.

Technically wouldn't it be much easier to just do the actual programming in a GitHub code space ?

I guess you'd need a stable connection though. I might try this as soon as Android actually impliments desktop mode correctly. Surprised OP didn't use Samsung Dex.

Does GitHub code spaces allow you to compile stuff and get artifacts? I've never used it so I'm not sure what the limitations are compared to the Linux desktop (which is about as powerful as you can get)

Ive been thinking the same thing! Except with Code-server or some other way to get vscode's remote over ssh

OP wanted to work on a plane though.

Thinking the same. Also considering the amount of speed up you get from the copilot .

I've long wondered whether working within AR glasses improves one's ability to focus. My hypothesis is that I have fewer shiny objects in my periphery to create distractions. Can anyone who has experience with AR glasses comment?

> On average I'd drain about 15% battery per hour. So 4 to 5 hours before you need to be thinking about charging, but I'm not sure you'd want to have the glasses on longer than that anyway.

I know there are splitters break a USB-C port out into a USB-PD port and a data transfer port, but can those (or a different accessory) also be used to provide PD to the phone for prolonged usage?

eta: Never mind, just saw that the XREAL Hub addresses this. I still wonder if there's a cheaper option, but most seem to be designed for PD out, not in.

I tried this with the VITURE Pro XR (has adjustable lens so if you are nearsighted and wear glasses they work) but with a linux laptop. I couldn't stand the static image (focusing on the top and bottom of the screen was painful) and wanted headtracking which only worked on Windows or the phone. There was a project I found of someone adding support for it but it was pretty jank at the time.

Anyways, ended up returning it but kind of wish I thought of just using the phone. Might finally get me to learn NeoVIM

I would love an article on how to setup the phone @mikenew

I am a complete novice with this but very interested in replicating the setup as I feel the urge to be freer while coding

I remember back then my laptop broke during the beginning of COVID, and I was left with a smartphone that is incapable of doing Termux stuff.

To cope with that I have ended up making some toys like Discord bot that evaluates code, requested access from Insomnia 24/7 to SSH into Linux environment for programming purposes.

It was fun experience and I've ended up learning a lot of programming stuff before I've even started my study in university for computer science.

There is a review of Xreal glasses in russian internet, auto-translate is interested. Guy started losing vision pretty quick after using them as monitor replacement. Take care

https://www.iphones.ru/iNotes/otkazalsya-ot-ochkov-rasshiren...

  >  Can someone please make a good folding keyboard? This little $18 piece of plastic is decent for what it is, but this was the weakest part of the whole setup, and it feels like it should be the easiest.

Amazing, I just linked the targus one somewhere below but it's for an HP Jornada Palm Pilot, awesome that its been revived for bluetooth!

I can only see out of one eye at a time, is binocular vision needed for these glasses to work?

Yeah I also have amblyopia and am curious about this. How does it work with the two lenses/screens? I assume if eg one with normal binocular eyesight closes one eye, they are able to see the screen on the open eye side normally? In some sense I would imagine it should be just minus one problem to solve this way (the vergence accommodation) if one does not care about stereoscopy.

I tried once the apple vision pro and it seemed fine, amblyopia-wise at least. It was too briefly though to know for sure how it would be like using it for longer.

I've been wanting a simulavr since I saw the first videos. A proper Linux dev environment in a pair of VR classes (and I really wouldnt want to hack around Linux on android). Too bad that they still far away from being real.

I actually tried doing web dev on a Meta Quest 3 recently, but found the biggest limitation to actually be the lack of devtools in Android.

Here is the blog I did discussing the limitations: https://benkaiser.dev/web-development-in-vr/

I wonder if something like this running on the quest could technically work, but I suspect it would be too heavy running Linux chrome in a chroot. You also lose the cool "place and resize your windows anywhere" if it's all stuck inside one window for a desktop.

The Xreal Air 2 Pro costs $299 new; why would you buy it used for $260?

I believe they only went on sale fairly recently, the author may have bought them used when the new ones were more expensive.

At risk of the obvious, because it saves $39 and reduces landfill waste.

I hope they can figure out why these give some people headaches and eye strain (like myself) I really want to use this, but can't stand the pain for more than a few minutes.

One reason is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergence-accommodation_conflic.... Very difficult to solve.

For normal VR/AR, definitely, since you want to have objects moving in the Z direction. For this usecase it should be enough to show the "flat" virtual screen at the focal distance.

I've tried this with a folding phone, it's... Ok

On keyboards I found a Royal Kludge mechanical keyboard, feels great but unfortunately one of the keys switches is cracked, I'm sure I could glue it down but haven't yead had time to dismantle it.

In terms of lilputian mice, the "CapacMouse" is.. far far better than it should be.

I had tried a similar setup over a year ago. The blurry edges of the screen and weight of the glasses were an annoyance, but the main reason I didn't continue using it was because I'm moderately near-sighted and often switch from contacts, to glasses, to no corrective lenses, which wouldn't work with fixed focus VR glasses.

with the gen ai cli tools, i think if i go all in, i could skip lugging my laptop around. theres some UX warts to phones where i think i need a keyboard for tab, ctrl+c, ctrl+v, ctrl+d, delete, and so on, that arent in gboard, but i think it could be a fun side project to design and build a tiny mechanical keyboard that only had those buttons i need

im running the newer pixel fold, so ive already got a ton of screen real estate.

ive made a couple code changes phone-only now, using the amazon internal browser that has ssh access to my dev desktop.

im missing the ability to get cloudwatch logs and the like, but when i get a good mcp, i think i can leave my laptop at home

my previous workflow was mostly on pen/paper though, only touching the keys when i know what code im going to write, or when i need to lookup something specific, so i think im in a better spot for phone dev than somebody with ten monitors each showing some chunk of code

I forked Hacker's Keyboard so it would work on newer versions of Android and some other customization for GNU Screen shortcuts. That with another personally forked ConnectBot (SSH client) and I do 95% of my hobby clojure (tersness helps) programming on my pixel.

Would you be willing to share your fork?

…when compared to something like the Apple Vision Pro. Which, funnily enough, can't do any of what I ended up caring about. It can't fit in your pockets, and it's no more capable of "real" computing than an iPhone.

I hope some exec from Apple reads this and thinks about it.

The AVP connected to my MacBook Pro in Ultra Wide mode is fantastic for coding—though not exactly portable. Still, working from the garden and enjoying the fresh air beats being stuck in front of multiple monitors in the home office, any day.

Look forward to when Apple releases AVP Air.

Yeah, but that is a used cars worth of apple equipment to do what one could do with a cheaper headset and an iPhone if not for software limitations.

i've been doing some hobby programming on a steam deck for the last ~week. (since i got the steam deck). it's got a variant of arch linux pre-installed and it's x86_64, so a lot of those steps are covered

might have to try it with AR glasses. but, the screen is bright enough that it's usable outdoors anyway

i've been using copilot with voice input, with a bit of on-screen keyboard usage when it's not cooperating. i'm mostly giving it fairly simple edit instructions ("write a for loop at line 50"), rather than full on vibe coding, and it's working much better than i expected

i'm not using emacs/vim, because the steam keyboard doesn't have a ctrl key, and i have to use a less ergonomic kde on-screen keyboard to push it (and i'm a heathen that prefers vscode anyway)

I think the keyboard in such setup needs a disruption, because it is the last piece which keeps us in the old world of typing machine on a table.

I am thinking about some kind of wearable keyboard, either attached to trousers on laps, or kind of gloves. But gloves usually have no tactile response.

I agree and have experimented with related ideas. In a sibling comment thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43985513#44016985

https://kbd.news/Tackle-keyboard-2549.html

I want to try some version of this next. I’ve tried tap strap (overlaps with glove idea) and I currently use a retractable lap approach, where the keyboard folds out from chest to be used, it’s still too much friction and too awkward.

This Tackle keyboard approach is a bit obvious once you see it if one can be fully touch type without crossing middle then a split keyboard mounted on torso could work… perhaps … these things require actually trying I’ve found.

Why so physical?

Researchers ate already able to translate thoughts into text[1][2] by wearing a special cap with a fair amount of accuracy.

[1]: https://www.extremetech.com/science/new-cap-uses-ai-to-read-...

[2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.14030

That's promising. But hardly working now with noisy environment like park or a car, and AR screen adds its mental noise too.

The setup in the post plus a speech to text system and aidertmux and aider would be sufficient for a very wide range of tasks. Or a multi screen setup with the phone as a multimodal input system and the AR as the screen.

> ultimately, the aarch64 glibc rootfs tarball of Void Linux fit the bill, and it's been running beautifully.

Void FTW!

It might be a bit bigger than you'd prefer, but this Royal Kludge folding keyboard is apparently great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y941mt8mtmk

This is the future. Foldable, headless computer-in-keyboard and some glasses. In a sense we are doing a full circle to Commodore 64 form factor.

One overlooked aspect is ergonomics. Laptops are terrible for posture, unlike the poster's HMD setup.

There's a 5th option for Linux on Android now (currently Pixel users only, presumably rolling out to everyone eventually). You can get a fully virtualized Debian (AVF) environment by enabling a switch in settings.

> 4. The phone has a cellular connection, so I'm not tied to wifi.

Do American phone companies block sharing wifi from your phone, or why would someone with a phone feel they are tied to a wifi when needing to use a laptop?

Maybe stupid question: What does it mean to add a bluetooth mouse to this setup?

It means you can no longer sit on a park bench.

I cannot imagine working without a mouse.

How do ARM64 binaries like window managers, Firefox, etc run and with graphical acceleration on Android?

I guess as a start the chroot provides glibc and all the other libraries that run natively, but how does any of this interact with hardware?

Has anyone tried the Viture Pro? There are myopia adjusters built in.

Might even use the phone as a trackpad/mouse for other non cli tasks.

Ive been thinking about this too. Got the glasses and was thinking about small wireless split keyboards like the corne-ish zen

My issue is the phone. I will need at least 24Gb of ram for my work.

I don't wish to shill, but I've been looking into this same setup, it appears redmagic could dole this out with a snapdragon elite processor to boot but I have not verified how well it actually works: https://na.redmagic.gg/pages/redmagic-10-pro

Perhaps it's an option to use an SSH session into your workstation or some other remote client technology?

It would be cool to be able to use the screen in the glasses as a monitor. So when you look down at your laptop screen, the screen in the glasses would dissapear or something.

Air 2 Pros!? I have those and can't stand using them for work. I was hoping the One Pros would be a big enough step up that I could use AR glasses for daily productivity.

Can you elaborate what the main issue is for you?

Mainly lack of text clarity, resolution, jitter when trying to keep the image still with the xreal beam, and low FOV

that's really good to know

When you look at reviews they all exclaim how clear and crisp it is, but they are virtually never looking at text, which is approximately the only thing I want to look at.

I compare it to VR headsets, and I've used most of them. I currently use a Quest Pro and consider that clearer and easier to read than the Air 2 Pros

That's really good to know as I have both a Quest 3 and a Quest Pro myself. What I'd say is that Quest 3 is about the minimum I can work with. I did work with Quest Pro for a while and it was just usable but only as an exception. If the current display glasses are worse than Quest Pro then for sure I'm not going to be happy.

What about using this to replace a multi screen setup at home?

Wow I’ve been wanting this for years. My adhd makes it hard to sit at a desk for long periods of time. I think moving locations frequently would be great.

Thanks for sharing. It's a really clear write-up. I’ve been planning something similar and might just follow your setup.

one of the problem that I have using AR glasses for work is that I have to refocus my eyes every time I try to type anything, which is an annoyance. The eyes focus to the infinity on the AR glasses, but near sight when typing. This is on top of the fact that keyboard is much dimmer to look at when wearing the AR glasses.

Learning to touch-type would be helpful in this case

Is the screen fixed in space like vr? Ie it’s a virtual screen. Or does it move when you move your head?

Using VR glasses instead of screens is a wet dream of mine, but VR tech has been one of the worst vendor-locked tech I have ever seen.

I haven't keep up lately, but as a linux-only dev, is there any hw combo which would give me full native hardware support and the ability to develop for the platform?

(I don't count linux-on-[android|win] as a solution)

The xreal glasses mentioned in the article are just displays (or at least they can operate in that way). Their website claim it works with basically anything that outputs HD video (game consoles, PCs and whatnot).

Good read, this is one of those things I've considered doing myself, but never committed to. Having someone describe the experience in such detail is very much appreciated.

> RAM usage often gets close to that 12GB ceiling.

Unused memory is wasted memory. Just because you're almost maxing out those 12 gigabytes doesn't mean you'd be in trouble with less.

It is disappointing that this requires rooting. Essentially this requires deciding if you want a dev environment or banking apps/nfc wallet or be willing to play an endless game of cat and mouse.

really useful when you are travelling without laptop and you need to quickly fix a thing

What about Cardboard VR like headset + a keyboard? Has anyone tried this setup?

I tried this with trinus back in the day, even with the good PPI on my phone then the optics weren't made for the screen and it was hot and heavy. This was with Samsung's gentrified effort at "cardboard"

I'm quite far sighted, is it possible to use AR glasses for farsighted people?

The focal plane of the glasses is around 10 feet, so I think you should be able to see it just as well as anything else at that distance.

With the new 6DoF glasses it could be a viable alternative to a laptop, yes.

6DoF feels like overkill to me if you're only trying to replace a laptop. I'd agree that it's really a lot better with at least 3 though.

I can't wait for high fov variable dof across the image.

Google lens was shot down by a society of thoughtless individuals but we'll see ar happen in a couple decades, I'm sure.

Will be great to life through phones being replaced by glasses and then eventually contact lenses.

Google abandoned it the same way they abandoned everything.

They could have worked out the details to make these devices less hostile to bystanders but they didn’t because it was all just a marketing gimmick with no solid business underpinnings.

Now that Google is rolling out native Debian with Android, this will only get better - in addition to Google's native DeX.

I'm sooo ready for the one device life! :D

AVF feels a bit janky with its constant crashing on startup. 16GB space is a bit restrictive, though I doubt it won't be raised at some point.

You can mount a data partition inside, so the 16GB limit is really just for the system.

Do they have a USB-C cable running from the phone to the glasses?

/a moment of silence for the textblade/

Apple is releasing Vision OS 2 which lets you do an ultrawide display on the Vision Pro. It looks phenomenal and has no lag

They have an ultrawide mode available now. Personally I find it very uncomfortable. You have to move your whole head to see the sides, and the vision pro is heavy. Looking off to the side for a length of time is uncomfortable.

you would have to do the same thing with an ultrawide monitor, minus the weight of the AVP

Not if it's curved.

To add to this: I have a Vision Pro and a 34" curved ultrawide. The latter is much more usable in this regard, because the effective resolution per degree is higher, which means you can keep your head static and use your eyes to look around.

By contrast, you have to use a giant screen on the Vision Pro to get equivalent resolution, which means you have to move your head. It still has its advantages (you can take it wherever you go, and the resolution of the virtual screen can be higher), but it's not yet comparable to a physical monitor, to my chagrin.

The foveated rendering didn’t look phenomenal for me the last time I tried. It gives the perception of a wide FOV but your peripheral vision is still blurry.

The optics on the Vision Pro are... well, they're not fantastic. It's a challenge to blow up displays that small to meet your field of view. Peripheral vision on the Quest 3 is far better, but the displays are over double the size, which made the lens design problem less challenging.

Apple have since purchased at least one lens design company [0], so future iterations of the Vision Pro should hopefully be less optically-challenged.

[0]: https://mixed-news.com/en/apple-buys-lens-manufacturer-limba...

The Vision Pro is a joke. Way too low resolution (PPD), heavy, expensive, and over-engineered and power hungry. It's baffling how it was ever greenlit.

It's the best possible headset that could have been built with the technology at the time, but the technology at the time was insufficient for the experience that it's designed for. It still has its uses (it's incredible for watching movies and doing work in environments where you don't have a suitably sized monitor), but I agree that it's not a product anyone other than extreme enthusiasts should buy.

I certainly hope it'll get smaller, cheaper and more efficient. I would love more resolution, of course, but I'd be more than happy to keep the existing resolution if the actual ergonomics were improved.

Recent XREAL glasses can do ultrawide already.

The Vision Pro, like most full headsets, tries to do too much.

How can they fix the smallish FoV without a hardware upgrade?

> 1080p

So good enough for gargoyling or other situations where even a laptop form factor is a pain, but not a proper replacement yet.

I came back briefly to ctrl-f for 'gargoyle' once I got about a third of the way through the article so thanks (still would though).

what is gargoyling?

is a Pixel phone the best way to go for this setup or can a Samsung phone work too?

dev setup from the future :)

Can I now completely get rid of the physical keyboard? I will go full in on AR(/VR) when I can comfortably type into thin air, lying down, kinda like this: https://ibb.co/nv8Qj72

this is rad

oh boy

This is nuts in the best way - love seeing someone out here just making things work for real stuff.

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As far as I'm aware, the proposed mechanisms for this have to do with the distance to the focus point -- in other words, the fact that the display is close, not that it's a display. The virtual distance to the display, and hence your eyes' focal distance, is definitely something you can change in VR, and presumably also AR, so I think this would actually presumably be better, wouldn't it?

My AR glasses (viture xr pro) have a focus distance of ~3m. I actually find them more relaxing to look at than my monitors or epaper displays, and that focus distance is what I attribute it to.

> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39982728/

Did you paste the wrong link? This meta-study does not seem to say anything about "up close".

From the abstract:

> Study selection: Primary research articles investigating the association of exposure to digital screen devices (ie, smartphones, tablets, game consoles, computers, or television) with myopia-related outcomes

As someone developing hyperopia, I wonder if this would help...

Actually not sure if the focal length prevents this, if so very exciting

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Why

There's a whole blog post explaining that. Try clicking through!

I can’t grasp tech professionals who nickel and dime over their setup. Like buying used, not using late gen hardware etc. You’re spending half your awake hours in front of the thing, just buy the latest and greatest.

The latest and greatest is often not a significant enough improvement over used hardware to merit the price delta. Just because we can throw money away doesn't mean we necessarily should.

(Also, not everyone can throw money away! The US tech market is an aberration compared to the rest of the world.)

I cant grasp tech professionals who always need the latest and greatest, its like they need to show off to someone instead of just getting on and doing their job.

When I am hiring engineers, I nearly always hire the ones who built their own setups out of crappy old hardware, just to learn how it works and build something cool. Those guys are in it for the love and will work all hours to get something working. The ones who wont work on anything but the latest apple hardware are invariably the awkward ones in the team who demand to be treated in a certain way, and are disliked by everybody else for being picky and looking down their nose at everybody.

Not saying this is a hard and fast stereotype which fits all, but my experience of hiring IT engineers in the UK has shown me this is often the case, and my teams are more productive and happier after weeding those guys out.

once i asked mom to buy me the most expensive knife and fork of the store, she looked at me and said: you are so silly and dumb! later that year she gave me a golden spork. since then all my meals are much better

im debating rhe upgrade to the surface studio thing now that its eol.

the best and greatest is that pen+touch experience, and its gonna be gone maybe forever