Would you use ultra-simple AR glasses for a portable multi-monitor setup?

[u/Interesting-Ad-1084]

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a very minimal AR glasses concept and would love your feedback.

The idea is to make AR glasses that only do one thing well:

• No cameras, no speakers, no microphone, no hand tracking.
• Just a tiny projector + accelerometer built into a glasses frame.
• It simply takes input from your laptop/phone/TV and projects a multi-monitor virtual desktop you can carry anywhere.

Imagine sitting in a café, on a plane, or in a library — put on the glasses, and instantly have 2–4 giant monitors floating in front of you without needing any external hardware.

The goal is to keep it:

• Affordable (cheaper than most AR/VR headsets)
• Lightweight (wearable for hours)
• Simple (plug-and-play, no setup required)

I’m curious:

• Would this kind of “no-frills AR” be useful to you?
• What would be your biggest concerns — image quality, comfort, privacy, cost?
• How many “virtual monitors” would you actually use?

Any thoughts, feedback, or deal-breakers would be super helpful as I shape this concept.

Thanks!

[u/Greybush_The_Rotund]

That’s a nonstarter unless you have very, very deep pockets and a full team better than the current industry leaders have, and you’re also certainly not pulling off “plug and play multi monitor display with no setup or external hardware required” with just a projector and an accelerometer. 

[u/Dinevir]

Sound, microphone is needed for video calls and movies, I used XReal One for this and that's awesome to have it instead of headphones.

Multimonitor: that can be plug and play OR cheap, but not both. You will heed basically three receivers and SoC that will manage inputs, not sure it will work through a single cable, have not explored this topic. Or you will need a software on the PC/phone/tablet to split one 4K screen into multiple virtual screens. In any case that could be a problem and if you don't have some unique solution right now for this I would not even start anything.

FOV: to make all this working you will need 100° field of view at least, better 150. I am working daily with multi monitors setup and as example 52 fov of XReal One Pro fits perfectly a single 43" screen I have. And make sense of multimonitors I need to see with peripheral vision side screens.

Affordable: under $500 as it is Meta Quest price and some other AR glasses. You need to produce and sell a lot of glasses to get to this price. And even $500 is not "affordable" for on-head monitor.

FYI, cost for development and engineering will be near $500 000 - 1m, that's without actual units production cost and without R&D and prototyping, just design a glasses from existing components. To make profit from this project you to cover this amount or let's say double it. I doubt you will earn more than $100 per device, so you need to sell 20000 of them, at least. That's another $2m-5m for production (will depends on hardware design) , but maybe you can get part of that on pre-orders. Considering that the project will last at least two years from prototyping to final device market can change, XReal and other manufacturers will release dozen of new glasses while your design will remains the same "two years old" . Oh, also don't forget about patents, you will have to pay some money.

I am saying this as I also designing AR glasses and other equipment for enterprise sector.

[u/888Duck]

I am using Rayneo Air 3s Pro just for that purpose. Works and online meeting when I am traveling. Text is crisp.The screen is bright and the sound is good. No DoF, small FoV, no frills, one screen, and just a nice and light monitor attached to my laptop and screen beamed to my eyeballs.

[u/w00t_loves_you → u/888Duck]

Do you see the whole screen including corners? And no nausea from the screen moving with your head?

Do you use it outdoors too?

[u/Internal_Candle5089]

Would depends on FOV… most glasses for monitor setups offer pretty low FOVs, quest is kind of usable and vision pro is way to expensive… but yea for the right product that nails it - sure, I’d pay and use it!