Introduction – Display Skeptics Videos

It can take me weeks to prepare an in-depth study of a particular AR product, and I have been looking for an outlet to provide more information more quickly. Former Apple engineer Radu Reit and I have started a video series called Display Skeptics, where we discuss both news and technical content. To date, we have three episodes up, with both a short 30-minute preview and roughly 60- to 90-minute full shows, available via a Patreon paywall. Both Radu and I pay out of pocket for the AR hardware we analyze and the equipment we use, so please consider supporting us on Patreon with a $20/month membership or $15 per episode if you want to see more content.

This article will touch on some concepts covered in episode 3. The 30-minute free YouTube version can be found at Display Skeptics Episode 3: December 2025 News & 2026 Conferences, and the full 1 hour and 18 minute version can be accessed here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/display-skeptics-145837820.

Meeting at CES and AR/VR/MR

I’m later than usual in my planning for CES this year, so I have more open meeting slots than in prior years. CES 2026 is just a few weeks away (January 6-9, 2026), and I will be there for the entire conference. If you or your company would like to schedule a meeting with me at CES 2025, please email meet@kgontech.com.

I’m also going to be at SPIE’s AR/VR/MR conference in January, which has expanded from three to four days, from January 17th to 22nd, 2026. You can use meet@kgontech.com contact me to set up a meeting time.

In the News

In the news portion of the video, we covered the topics outlined below (see the videos for more details)

Meta cutting Metaverse Team by 30%, reported by Bloomberg on December 4^th

Meta has been spending nearly $20B per year, so while 30% is significant, Meta will still have by far the largest AR/VR/XR effort of any company. Several sources have pointed to the biggest scaling back will be in VR. Generally, the belief is that the VR market, while real, is limited to a small subset of dedicated gamers. Efforts such as introducing low-cost VR headsets at a loss only result in a small, temporary bump in the market without sufficient follow-on sales to justify the losses.

In the video, I commented that the same thing appears to have happened with the Apple Vision Pro (AVP), where it was rumored that they would introduce a low-cost version. The problem with AVP was not the price but the functionality. Adjusted for inflation, the AVP is less expensive than other early adopter products. If people liked what the AVP could do, the price was not a barrier. I have an AVP that I already paid for sitting in a cabinet, and I don’t know why I would take it out (see my many articles on the AVP).

Meta Ray Ban Display reported to have shipped 50K units, with another 50K on backorder

I don’t know the accuracy of the numbers, but I have seen reports that Meta Ray Ban Displays (MRBD) have shipped 50K units, with another 50K on backorder. This “feels” about right, given that I was able to buy four of them, each order taking longer. The biggest issue I have with the MRBD is once again the functionality of the applications. Right now, there are only Meta applications. Radu pointed out that Meta has recently released development tools for the MRBD.

I have also heard a rumor that Meta is developing glasses with MicroLEDs displays. I don’t know what problem this solves for them that staying with LCOS doesn’t, at least in the short term. There are also rumors that they are considering diffractive waveguides over the current Lumus Geometric (, but this would come at a loss of efficiency and color uniformity, plus a major increase in eye glow.

Google announces both AI+display glasses with diffractive waveguides & display glasses likely using microOLED birdbath in partnership with Xreal for 2026: https://www.android.com/xr/show/

Google is taking a different tack than Meta, relying more on hardware partners, including Samsung and Xreal, to develop headset hardware, while at the same time trying to cover the audio (only) AI glasses, AR/AI glasses with displays, and VR/XR with camera passthrough. Google has the advantage of leveraging its Android application base.

I consider Xreal’s current designs more VR than AR, with only 20-25% transparency. Their optical designs (see XReal One Pro Optics and Its Connections to Ant-Reality and Google) provide much better image quality than waveguide-based designs, but are bulkier and have very low transparency. They are more for portable VR (ex. Steam Deck) and video watching than for augmenting the real world. As I often advise, one has to decide whether the real world or the virtual image is most important, and in the case of Xreal, they have prioritized the virtual image.

As I discussed in Google XR Glasses Using Google’s Raxium MicroLEDs While Waveguide Lab Sold to Vuzix, Google appears to be taking a strange approach of buying MicroLED component maker Raxium in 2022 and exiting Waveguide R&D while leaving headset development to its partners. I’m more than a little skeptical that, even with Google’s backing, they will have monolithic, full-color, native LEDs (Raxium’s technology) with high enough yield to be system-wise cost-effective for many years.

CREAL announces FLCOS Time Sequential Pixel Replication

CREAL has been developing head-worn light field headsets since about 2017. While they have developed interesting technology and demo systems, they still seem fairly far away from something that could be a volume product.

They want to find a near-term market for the technology they have developed. They developed an FLCOS (ferroelectric LCOS) with switching speeds on the order of 10x faster than those of the more common twisted nematic (Tn) LCOS. They are also using laser illumination and MEMS technology developed by CREAL to replicate the display resolution and FOV of a small device, up to 9 times. They believe they will be able to support a 3K x 3K display and a 75-degree FOV from a 1cc light engine. For more information on this technology, see CREAL’s white paper on C-Blast.

Karl’s Regular Conferences

Last year, I attended five conferences: CES, SPIE AR/VR/MR, SID Display Week, AWE (US), and
MicroLED/ARVR Connect (Eindhoven, Netherlands). Below are some of my quick comments on each conference.

CES – Las Vegas in early January

CES is always a logistical nightmare, with multiple conference venues and meetings in hotel suites spread across the Las Vegas area. During busy times of day, it can take 30 minutes to over an hour to go between venues. While there is a dedicated XR area in Central Hall, larger and more established companies often exhibit in their own booths there or at other venues in suites and meeting rooms. Often, startups and smaller companies are located at the Venetian in country-specific booths or in booths that sponsor multiple startups. This year’s exhibitor directory lists 292 Companies in the category of XR and Spatial Computing. It is physically impossible to see everything.

SPIE AR/VR/MR – San Francisco in late January

SPIE’s AR/VR/MR continues to grow, expanding to four days this year. While the conference name included “VR,” the content and exhibits are primarily focused on optical see-through head-worn displays. This has proven to be my favorite conference to attend because of the quality of the presentations and the exhibits. It’s also very simple: almost everything happens on one floor of the large Moscone West conference center, with just the occasional hotel suite nearby, making it easy to take in almost everything. As many of the attendees are regulars, there is also a collegial atmosphere.

SID Display Week – L.A. (2026) in early May

Display Week, as it name implies, concentrates on displays both large and small. I can’t justify attending Display Week every year, as only a small percentage of exhibitors offer microdisplay devices, which I cover. I’m likely to skip it this year, as the venue is in Los Angeles rather than the more common San Jose. Fewer companies’ AR hardware, many of which are based in the Valley, will travel to Southern California.

AWE – Long Beach in mid June

The AWE (US) exhibition was once the best place to see a wide range of AR headsets in one place. But with the move to Long Beach in Southern California, I’m finding much less AR/XR hardware. While the venue and the area around it are certainly nicer, it is drawing a different, and less interesting for me (I cover AR/XR displays and optics), set of companies. As with SID Display Week mentioned above, many tech companies in the Valley are less likely to attend, and even if they do, they will send far fewer people.

MicroLED/ARVR Connect – Eindhoven, Netherlands, in mid-September

MicroLED and ARVR Connect in Eindhoven was a conference I attended last year, and I am going again in 2026. It started as MicroLED only but has expanded into AR/VR. In some ways, it reminds me of the early days of the SPIE AR/VR/MR conference. The plan is for me to teach a “master class” and then hold a panel discussion on display devices for AR.

SPIE AR/VR/MR 2026 Display Papers On Laser Displays

Alexander Mityashin on LinkedIn regularly posts interesting articles on AR. He is presenting at SPIE AR/VR/MR 2026 and noted in a post two weeks ago that almost all the technical sessions focused on laser displays (laser beam scanning or laser illuminated LCOS). There is only one paper talking about quantum dot color conversion, and none directly on MicroLEDs. In past years, there were many MicroLED papers and few, if any, on laser displays.

In a later post, Alexander noted that “On many minds right now: after the latest landscape changes, is laser AR still ‘tier-1-backed’ – or just tier-1-adjacent? And how much $ firepower actually stands behind turning it into products?” Looking over the summary of the presentations, it seems more researchers are doing what researchers do rather than a shift to laser displays becoming mainstream anytime soon. I’m particularly skeptical about LBS and even more skeptical about fiber scanning display (see: Magic Leap Fiber Scanning Display (FSD) – “The Big Con” at the “Core”). I am interested in the concepts for laser illumination of LCOS, such as those presented by Meta and Vitrealabs. For more on my thoughts on this subject, see the Display Skeptic’s Patreon video. I have included below a PDF page with links to the various summaries on the SPIE website.

Next Up

I plan to return to my series on the Meta Ray Band displays soon (within the next few days). I have been doing some detailed display analysis.