Spatial Realities

INTERVIEW

Das Team auf der re:publica in Düsseldorf hat gut abgeliefert. Nach meinem nicht unkritischen aber zugegebenermaßen neutralerem Vortrag, lieferte Paulina Porten im Anschluss mit ihrem Vortrag „Leave Kylie Jenner Alone“ genau den Finger in die Wunde, den der Tech-Branche völlig egal ist: Meta, aber auch andere Hersteller, inszenieren KI-Brillen wie im Falle Metas mit Kylie Jenner als hyperstylisches Lifestyle-Gadget und setzt auf klassisches Pinkwashing. Weiblichkeit wird hier als vertrauensstiftende Fassade genutzt, während dieselben Brillen draußen im Alltag reale Gefahren für Frauen – etwa durch Spanner und Rizzfluencer – befeuern. Paulinas klare Botschaft: Statt oberflächlicher PR-Kampagnen braucht es echtes Safety by Design und viel mehr diverse, feministische Perspektiven in den Entwicklungs- und Chefetagen.

Wie Paulina zu XR kam? 2018 rutschte sie während ihres Designstudiums eher durch Zufall in einen AR-Kurs, weil alle anderen Kurse voll waren – und blieb fasziniert an der Schnittstelle von digitaler und analoger Welt hängen. Nach Arbeiten zu Bürgerbeteiligung (Augmented Participation) und Technologievermittlung stieß sie auf Studien zum Digital Gender Gap und die strukturellen Hürden, die Frauen in der Tech-Welt ausbremsen.

Es kam schließlich alles zusammen im Kölner Startup FemReality, dass sie 2025 gründet. Mit gendersensiblen XR-Workshops bringt sie Jugendliche – und insbesondere Mädchen – direkt an Schulen und außerschulischen Lernorten mit immersiver Technologie in Kontakt. Über spielerisches Learning by Creating mit VR-Tools wie Open Brush und Design Thinking gestalten die Jugendlichen eigene Zukunftsszenarien (wie nachhaltige Städte im Projekt mit RheinEnergie). Das baut Berührungsängste vor Hardware und Software ab und begeistert junge Talente nachhaltig für technische Ausbildungsberufe.

Weitere Themen:
Eventtip: nextReality Festival am 18.+ 19. November 2026 in Hamburg
News: Der XREAL Aura Preis ist da!
News: Die Meta Vanguard bekommt Sicherheitsgläser.

WATCHING FILMS IN VR: DRAYMOND GREEN & IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING
Thomas Riedel and Thomas Bedenk checked out Meta Quest’s new docuseries Open Season featuring NBA bad boy Draymond Green, and they’re definitely digging the 180-degree stereoscopic setup shot on Blackmagic Ursa cams. You genuinely feel like you're riding shotgun in his Porsche, but whether this kind of expensive, subsidized storytelling will ever turn a real profit remains a big question mark.

FOV DRAMA: THE NEW META VR GLASSES
VR enthusiasts are already whining about the rumored 70-degree field of view and Meta’s 54-degree dev safe zone, but the hosts aren't sweating it. Sure, following a fast-moving ball in sports might suck with a narrower view, but paired with crisp OLEDs, it’s more than enough screen real estate to chill on the couch and binge movies.

HARDWARE LEAKS: SAMSUNG'S INCOMING SMART GLASSES Spotted
FCC filings hint that Samsung is finally getting ready to drop its own displayless AI glasses, teaming up with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster for a bunch of frame styles. As an Android fanboy, Thomas is hyped to get proper ecosystem integration and give Meta some much-needed competition in the wearable game.

LASERS TO THE EYE: TDK’S DIRECT RETINAL PROJECTION TDK
showed off a wild new setup that bounces lasers straight onto your retina via meta-optic mirrors, neatly killing the annoying vergence-accommodation conflict. It could pave the way for super slim, normal-looking frames, but with monochrome green visuals and the nightmare of needing pinpoint eye tracking, it’s not taking over the world just yet.

Is Meta serious about confidential VMs for Muse?
Is Charm targeted at kids?
Are Meta VR Glasses the best VR glasses yet?
In this episode Thomas and Thomas are discussing Meta Connect revelations of 2026!

PARTNER OF THE EPISODE: https://immersive-x.de

Five years after the metaverse hype, we find ourselves in an era defined by smart glasses and compute pucks. That is the central takeaway from this Meta Connect special of Spatial Realities, where Thomas Bedenk and I sat down right after the keynote to analyze Meta’s latest announcements and what they mean for the XR landscape. The clear centerpiece of Meta's strategy is AI, spearheaded by Meta Muse—an autonomous agent running in private virtual machines designed to plan, purchase, and manage everyday digital life. Alongside Muse came an unexpected hardware companion: the Muse Charm. Shaped like a Tamagotchi with a display, camera, and 5G connectivity, it strips the assistant down into a standalone, approachable physical token. But while it feels accessible, it also raises immediate questions about target audiences, privacy boundaries, and how comfortable we truly are handing over our digital routines to an AI ecosystem. On the glasses front, Meta expanded its hardware lineup across multiple tiers. Most notable is the move into pure audio glasses without cameras, trading optical data capture for privacy-conscious users, lighter weight, and extended battery life. Meanwhile, the flagship Ray-Ban Meta line received a Gen 3 upgrade featuring slimmer frames, improved battery life, six microphones, and Dolby Atmos spatial audio capture, accompanied by new frame styles and software-driven hearing corrections. The most discussed hardware of the night, however, was the new Meta VR glasses. Positioned with the tri-part marketing pitch "cinema, computer, console," the device weighs roughly 100 grams on the face by offloading its processing and battery into a wired pocket puck. With micro-OLED displays running at 120 Hz, downward-facing cameras for hand tracking, and integrated eye tracking, Meta aims to deliver a high-clarity spatial viewer rather than an ultra-wide FOV headset. It serves as a spiritual successor to the Quest Pro line, sacrificing peripheral immersion for portability, high PPD sharpness, and lighter wear. At $1,299, the VR glasses mark a distinct shift toward portable media consumption and lightweight computing. Yet, as we examine in our discussion, Meta’s recurring bottleneck remains unchanged: while hardware form factors are shrinking into practical devices, the ecosystem still lacks dedicated, mature productivity software to turn spatial computing into an indispensable everyday tool.

IFA BERLIN RECAP

In this Episode Thomas Riedel and Thomas Bedenk share their takeaways from IFA Berlin, balancing stage debates on the societal impact and privacy of smart glasses with hands-on tests of new hardware from RayNeo, Rokid and Meta. Cutting through the show floor’s generic gadget noise, they highlight Android XR as a much-needed unifying layer to standardize development across fragmented wearable form factors.

HARDWARE NEWS & INDUSTRY ANNOUNCEMENTS

HTC is doubling down on smart glasses as traditional revenue streams decline, expanding the Vive Eagle into North America, Europe, and Australia. The hosts examine its rounded Panto design, slow-motion capture, and snap-on magnetic battery, alongside the viability of its post-trial AI subscriptions. They also look ahead to Meta’s newly announced workflow tool Muse and its upcoming glasses integration, followed by expectations for Apple’s imminent product event. Because if the ApirPod Cameras are coming that is Spatial Computing!

FEATURE: NEXTAPP DEVCON & BRIDGING MOBILE, GAMING, AND XR

Where will the developer base for mass-market XR originate? NextApp CEO Greg Fawson traces the event’s journey from Berlin’s 2009 Android meetups to a cross-platform summit, arguing that mainstream mobile engineers hold the real key to scaling spatial software. Previewing the upcoming three-day conference, the discussion covers dedicated tracks for XR, mobile gaming, and agentic AI coding, emphasizing the need for open community exchange to solve shared platform bottlenecks.

Get your tickets for NextAppCon here:
- Get one of 10 free ticket with the code spatialfree
- Get one of 100 tickets for 50% with the code spatial50

GenAI transparency notification: For this episode the audio of Greg has been optimized using the speach improvement tool of Adobe Podcast. No edits have been made with GenAI and no additional content was generated. All edits are made by hand with Adobe Audition.

INTERVIEW

What do you do when you meet somebody at a hackathon you work really well with? You found a new company! That is exactly what Ines Hilz and Andrew Douglas did after teaming up at a Meta Hackathon in London, going on to launch Sunflower VR and develop their new AI-driven AR try-on mirror, Aeva Display. In the interview, they delve into developing within Snap’s ecosystem, highlighting how Lens Studio’s AI-assisted toolset, agentic workflows, and environmental tracking features empower creators. Finally, they share crucial advice for hackathon participants developing for Snap Spectacles, emphasizing the necessity of testing frequently on-device to properly calibrate typography, color palettes, and transparency for additive holographic displays.

NEWS

- The Headset-Price Guess game! Featuring: Pico Space Pro, Steam Frame, Project Phoenix, Meta Ray-Ban Display 2
- Reading Suggestion: Smart Glasses: Why a Ban Is the Wrong Approach
- The representative poll of the day by Bitkom: How do you feel about smart glasses?
- Link-Tipp: “Harm Through the “#RizzCam”: Smart Glasses, Ambient Capture and Invisible Harassment”
- Apples iPhone-Event (September 9): AirPods with cameras!