Lynx released a teardown video of the R-1 headset. Interesting to see a company do this for their own hardware.
And there’s even another youtube live stream scheduled, 30 August, no, postponed to September 6th (“in true Lynx tradition”, as someone on the Discord said), no, postponed to September 9th, 18:00, titled “Surprise”.
Also, the latest twitter post from Stan seems to suggest they’re going to ship headsets again…
Today a new (written) update appeared on the Lynx kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stanlarroque/lynx/posts/4189045
Main points:
- “Hundreds of devices are ready to ship”, after being recalibrated in the Paris office. But unclear when a next batch of devices will be produced in the factory.
- You can indicate if you still want your kickstarter-order/pre-order Lynx R1, or if you want a refund. Forms are on the page linked above for both cases.
- The company Lynx apparently now has a partnership with “a major company”. Too soon to announce who it is, so we’ll see what comes out (if anything, i.e. Lynx-style)
The R1 has seen some delays and we can understand the frustration.
Well, that’s a bit of an understatement (btw, the italics are in the original text)…
Edit: on Twitter Stan adds “I was happy to write this entry.”
Not too much news in this youtube live update:
-
Regarding R1 orders. As mentioned above, there’s one form to update your address, and one to request a refund. Refund data information will be updated next Thursday based on all inputs and then processed. It isn’t entirely clear if filling in the update-address form gives any kind of benefit in terms of priority of delivery. But any requests for refunds will shorten the queue, of course.
-
They have around 400 headsets ready, and started shipping those last week. Will continue in the coming weeks. There’s n transparent headsets produced, unclear when that would happen.
-
“The company is now much more stable […] Found a partner”. However, can’t talk to much about this yet. Stan had another version/draft of the update for Kickstarter, which was basicaly “sorry guys, it all ended”. However, that one wasn’t needed. “We’re out of trouble”.
-
Lyxn have a finished controller product, but need to check some IP things before showing it publicly. Ready to be put in production somewhere. But question where it will produced. Compatible with R1 and next products.
-
Probably another update by end of October, probably show controllers and
software updates
Some answers based on Q&A:
-
Still working on OS. Will open-source 6 DOF software stack, based on OpenSLAM. Will work with Wolvic (indirectly) on the WebXR stack.
-
Are looking into eye tracking. Eye tracking BOM is around 50-100 dollars. Are not expecting <500 dollar headset with eyetracking, so don’t expect it to become an industry standard on all headsets.
-
Snapdragon Spaces currently not aligned with Lynx products. But keep an eye out on updates in the future.
There seemed to be a few more interesting questions placed in the chat that Stan ignored (such as, have you shipped more or less than 500 headsets to backers?)
1 like
Not everybody on the Kickstarter comments page is mad at Stan Larroque…
1 like
From https://stan.sh/2024/12/11/the-next-step :
No matter what will happen and what you can learn/speculate from it, these are my words:
Lynx is still committed to the same mission: unlock the best Mixed Reality experiences with amazing devices and OS-level integration for spatial computing.
We are not acquired, nor did a new fundraising. The team is still in place, and still working on exciting new projects and supporting the existing Lynx-R1.
Good to hear.
For the R1, we are shipping now the last hundreds of devices going to our community (you should see the shipping emails before the end of this week), and will refund the few who asked, as previously declared. We needed a bit more time than anticipated after this summer as the company faced some challenges in 2023 and 2024.
Well, that would be great, but let’s see if this indeed happens as promised.
Tomorrow, exciting news will occur for everyone in the AR/VR (still small) world. Lynx is involved and some pieces of something we’ve been working on for a few months will be revealed.
This is the Android XR announcement, as also mentioned in Android XR Announcement, by @WilcoBoode. From https://www.uploadvr.com/sony-lynx-xreal-android-xr-devices/ :
Meanwhile, Lynx tells UploadVR that while its existing R1 headset will remain “as is”, it is building a new headset that will run Android XR.
That raises some questions, as it’s unclear if Lynx can still provide an open headset when based on Android XR? And would such a headset be tied to Google’s services (and data usage, etc)?
1 like
And another promise broken. Nobody on the Lynx discord seems to have received a shipping email…
Thank you for all the updates. Its sad to hear that they are breaking these promises.
No update yet on the kickstarter page (or Stan’s blog, https://stan.sh). Plus “tomorrow” on 19/12 is Friday 20/12, not Thursday.
More Lynx news today. A Kickstarter update optimistically titled “Shipping restarted”:
After extinguishing the last fires around the company, we were able to restart our shipping operations for the R1!
Some more 200 units are shipping with a cadence of 15 headsets per day from the office.
Our last R1 units will arrive in January in Paris and will ship very fast after a necessary recalibration of the optical blocks. Our supplier messed with that badly on the last batch and it was costly for us to reopen and recalibrate hundreds of headsets…
And in https://stan.sh/2024/12/20/the-next-step-2-2/ some more details on Lynx R-2 and AndroidXR:
We are adopting Android XR as an OS compatible with our future headsets. The Lynx-R1 will not be compatible with AXR, but I expect all our future products to be AXR-compatible.
The hardware team is working hard on a new product, and you will hear more later in 2025. The software team is still doing R&D and OS work on the side of our AXR integration, for specific customers like in Defense or the medical field, and for some users who will still want something different.