$VUZI A/R News: Eyes on with Vuzix Ultralite: affordable (and amazing!) AR glasses for everyone

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Eyes on with Vuzix Ultralite: affordable (and amazing!) AR glasses for everyone

“Nobody wants to look like the guy who just stepped off the Starship Enterprise,” Paul Travers, the president of AR eyewear maker Vuzix tells me.

He’s being polite here, so I’ll say what he won’t: It’s hard to wear current VR and AR headsets for more than an hour. They’re heavy! Microsoft’s Hololens is really neat, but at a pound and a half, it’s a lot of headgear to wear around. And Magic Leap is cool, sure, but they look odd when you’re wearing them.

Vuzix has the answer. At CES 2023, the company unveiled new Ultralite AR glasses, ordinary-looking plastic frames with a tiny projector tucked in one stem and a tiny battery and Bluetooth radio in the other. Combine that with Vuzix’s waveguides – a layer in the glasses that bends the projector’s light into your line of sight – and you’ve got ordinary-looking glasses that do the extraordinary.

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“This phone has amazing capabilities,” Travers points out. Why try to recreate that? “For instance, speech-language translation. You could be speaking French and I’ve got the glasses on and it’s all in English in the lenses.” Stick a microphone in the lenses and you can completely interact with your phone as well.

“We’ve been at this for 26 years,” Travers told me. His company has been doing waveguides forever and manufacturing them here in the United States at a facility in Rochester, New York. “Back in the day, the Special Forces guys asked us, ‘Can you make Oakley-style sunglasses with computers in them?’ Because we want that and we call it the Oakley Gaze. Half the U.S. military would buy these things if you could do that … So that’s been a focus for us.”

The US government recently gave Microsoft a half-billion-dollar contract for Hololens. Meanwhile, this exists. Perhaps the government should have held out?

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I am so going to buy this on the breakout. Full load.

Vuzix Corp. is a supplier of Smart-Glasses and Augmented Reality technologies and products for the consumer and enterprise markets. Its products include personal display and wearable computing devices that offer users a portable viewing experience, provide solutions for mobility, wearable displays and augmented reality. The firm also holds 246 patents and patents pending and numerous IP licenses in the Video Eyewear field. It has offices in Rochester, NY, Oxford, UK, and Tokyo, Japan. The company was founded by Paul J. Travers in 1997 and is headquartered in West Henrietta, NY.

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I will call my sister who owns the No.1 High End Eyeglass Frame Store in the State of Virginia: Carytown Optical. Just Voted Best in Richmond Eye Shop for 2022!

See short video. My sister is that good looking woman in the white sweater:

https://carytownoptical.com/

p.s. She’s redesigning this website. Don’t let the slow load fool you at this moment. Her online business continues to steamroll. I got one of the last pairs of Varvatos frame (John Varvatos gorgeous daughter has bartended alongside me in different Key West clubs.)

When John went bankrupt during COVID-19 in 2020 it hurt. I’m happy to say he is back. He’s a real gent. Never spoke to him in Key West, but just watched how classy he was and how he treated strangers - even drunks. Class Act and one of the most handsome men with white hair in America.

3 paragraphs from wikipedia: John Varvatos (company) - Wikipedia

In April 2008 Varvatos opened at 315 Bowery, formerly the rock ‘n’ roll landmark club CBGB.[1][4] Here, Varvatos attempted to preserve the original allure of the landmark, displaying his clothes among vintage books, high-end stereo equipment and a preserved wall of the original club, including band flyers.[3] The opening was celebrated with a benefit party for VH1’s Save the Music, with guests performances by Slash from Guns N’ Roses, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction and Wayne Kramer of the MC5.[15] Today, the location hosts free monthly concerts, with a variety of up and coming music acts, as well as established ones.[5][16]

In 2009 Varvatos was recruited to host a monthly radio show, New York Nights…Direct from the Bowery,[17] on SIRIUS XM’s The Spectrum channel.[4][5] The show includes songs and interviews from various artists who have influenced Varvatos throughout his career in fashion.[18]

In July 2014 it was announced that Ringo Starr would be modelling for the fall/winter advertising campaign, and that an associated charitable initiative would benefit The Ringo Starr Peace and Love Fund, in aid of the David Lynch Foundation. Commenting, Varvatos said, “Both inner peace and global peace are very important topics to me”.[19][20][21]

p.s. You can see why I support John. His daughter is one of the Best Bartenders in Downtown Key West, my sister was and may still be the only store in Virginia selling his frames, and he’s connected to famous rock bands I’ve booked over the years and made flyers for when they played Richmond back in the 80s. Synchronicity. Also, Gary Clark Jr who is a “next” electric blues legend, wears the same exact frames I chose. Synchronicity.

Gary Clark Jr. so you are the same page. He’s wearing a pair of aviators in this 11 year old clip. But this guy is big. Bunch of musicians hit my sister’s store when they play or drive through Richmond. My how that town has changed for the better:

Gary Clark Jr. - Bright Lights

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Ha. just realized, my beautiful niece, River, who was a model in NYC and who has her own electronica act, is in the slide show. River is a biology/botany major who is a park ranger now out in Crater Lake, Washington. Coolest young lady you’d ever want to meet. Takes no guff off any guy, and Lord help you if you come at her with the QAnon/M*GA crap, she’ll slice you open with her words and intelligence:

Cary Town Optical

Funny video by River as the artist “Ghost Pi*s,” she found an ancient piece of 80s tech and made this song from scratch. Don’t you ever sit on the NYC subway and manspread her. Ever!

Ghost Piss- Beats in Bed

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Lastly, all of my nephews and nieces are lookers and smart as the crack of Aaron Judges baseball bat sending one 500 ft. into the stand. Here’s the bad news for Republicans: all nine will never vote for a GQP party. They are all Bernie Sanders supporters. River was at Occupy Wall Street playing violin on Day 1. I am proud as all for my brother and my sister’s kids. I can’t wait to kick cancer’s arse and see them again.

And here is where I say goodbye for another two weeks on Fool:

Bloodwork today.

The baddest lone chemo round coming up tomorrow will be done here at home with that electronic pump I hooked into. I will report back on the 3 cutting edge drugs which Genesis is reluctant to give 95% of its colon cancer patients. If a week ago was an 11, I know I might hit a 13 on my pain level scale. (I can take a punch. My battered face tells that story too. That’s why I’m one of the few old guys allowed into this regimen: most of my brothers have other stuff wrong from years on inactivity or too many drugs, too much binge drinking (Key West’s No. 1 Sport), smoking ciggies or pot (you can buy gummis at the store now and people still prefer to blaze - I don’t get it.)

Anyway, the past three days with chemo brain sending me into one chemo rage was just a warmup.

Today, I warn my nearest neighbors that they might hear me howl in agony again or hear me throwing stuff off the porch or beating my old Ford Explorer farm truck with a sledgehammer. (Man, I would hate to hear myself from say a block away. It would have spooked me to a heart attack.)Who knows where I’m heading now. I do know some of the stuff involved: Vertigo, nausea, anemia, and those bursts of mad lucid dreams which bring up some of my darkest moments in the Army. Just chasing the demons out of the foundation so that I can began my rebuild in Summer.

What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.

See you folks in a week or two.

I will have a new name too. No more Peregrine Falcon.

Gone.

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Well, I only gave three vials of blood to Science this morning, when I thought it would be a pint and knock me on my arse.

Still, so weak I will use the elevator tomorrow when I’m attached to the pump and new cutting edge chemo.

Bad Chemo-Brain today, but I did enter $VUZI and carrying a double digit gain on the breakout. Full load:

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My sister tells me she has a client who came into her optical shop with the 6th generation glasses for corrective lenses. So there’s that. If you hate contact lenses, I am hoping the 7 generation glasses spoken about in the OP will definitely allow me to snap in some sunglass lenses.

She is already going to sell these glasses in her high end shop. So, we will have intel at our finger when the first box arrives mid-Spring or Summer.

In demand!

Up 22% or thereabouts on my full load in $VUZI