AR Glasses and VR Headsets Are Coming For Your Monitor Setup

Mark Zuckerberg has a lot on his plate these days, but when he's not parrying off investors' calls to back track on his Metaverse vision, he's been thinking a lot about screens and how advances in VR and AR may render them completely obsolete. I first heard his thoughts on this matter during his interview with Joe Rogan, where he described a thought experiment he frequently ponders about what currently physical objects and experiences do not need to be physical. One of the first things he mentioned was....screens. Which when you think about it, if the technology exists to replicate the function of a screen without the bulkiness of the physical object (TV, Phone, etc.) wouldn't that be pretty useful?

Let's just think about the three monitors in your office that 3X your productivity. What if you could take those three monitors with you anywhere? And better yet, adjust the size and number of monitors with a flick of a finger? The ability to take the work productivity of three monitors anywhere would provide unprecedented flexibility for all kinds of careers, especially those road warriors in sales, consulting, or finance whose work is spent traveling coast to coast with many a night spent in hotel rooms. Wouldn't the ability to pull up three monitors to work on cash flow models or presentation decks at a moment's notice be a game-changer? The same goes for anyone taking advantage of remote work policies to travel the world. Your beach villa in Saint Tropez or Chalet in Aspen just became a real life office.

While this world may seem far-fetched, it is quickly becoming a reality. Multiple companies are working on this technology as we speak, and as you might have guessed by the beginning of this article, Meta is one of the leaders in the pack.

Meta has released its inaugural lineup of applications for its new VR Headset, the Meta Quest Pro, and one of the more intriguing applications is Immersed. A work productivity app that uses passthrough technology to bring your physical work into the virtual world. One of the significant features is the ability to mirror your PC on up to 5 virtual screens of any size.

I have not personally tested this app, but if it works as advertised, the ability to project high-quality screens in your office is pretty cool. I can't say it saves you money because the new Quest Pro is expensive, $1500 a pop expensive, and screens these days are dirt cheap in comparison, but it certainly can save you a ton of space and add a ton of flexibility to your work life.

But if the full VR headset is not your jam, Meta is one of multiple companies working on making your desktop monitor a thing of the past. Nimo is bringing AR glasses to the workplace with its interactive desktop display. While these glasses are more focused on providing a purely augmented experience, the $1200 price tag is still quite cumbersome. And to add on, while the promo video is quite slick, the tech is likely to be less proven than a product that Meta ships. Either way, it is exciting to see the beginning of what an AR-enabled future could look like.

These AR/VR use cases are real-life examples of how the Metaverse will change how we live, work, and play in the future. For the Metaverse to take off, it must have a useful presence in all three phases. If you can only experience the Metaverse for entertainment or it only has incremental uses in improving your quality of life, it will never reach its full potential. But if it becomes advantageous to your work life, we will see the potential of 3D real-time rendering immersive worlds take off.

So this begs the question, would you ditch your current monitor setup for a portable set of Augmented Reality screens? (Drop a comment with your answer and thoughts!!)

-Blake