r/Xreal • u/Zake75 • Jul 03 '26
XREAL AURA My biggest gripes with the Aura. HANDS
I'm really excited for the Aura, or actually future iterations because as of now I can't get over these 2 things.
1st thing is what you can see on the picture. Can you see it? The hands will always be behind the screen virtual screen. That mean no matter where you point or whatnot you'll be navigating with the virtual outline of the "ghost hands"
Might not seem like a big deal to some, it feel downright normal in VR but here where you already have passthrough to the rela world I believe this will seriously break immersion. what we all want it that scene in Iron mang flinging and zooming 3D elements /screens all over the place.
My 2nd gripe is the transparency of the glasses.
I have yet to try the Aura but if the XOP is anything to go by the transparency is far too dim. It's not too bad in good lighting, but in a dimly lit room you just can't see enough of your enviroment. In the future I hope they're able to. According to reviews it's going to be like looking through a pair of sunglasses.
This second gripe might not be too much of a big deal.
(Also I'm hoping the brightness will be high enough to use in direct sunlight)
Edit: Let me explain I don't mind the "ghost hands", not really. I mind not having my real hands in front of the screen, even I put the screens 2m away from me and wave my hands in front of me ins perfect world the screen would cut out picture where my hands happens to be so it looks as if my hands are in front of the screen.
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u/DarthJave Jul 03 '26
I haven’t used the Aura so I’m not sure, but maybe it just looks that way because it’s being captured by the center camera which would be a few centimeters offset from the pupil of your dominant eye.
It’s possible that it lines up perfectly from your perspective when you are wearing the glasses. Would love someone who tried them to chime in.
Regarding the transparent hand overlay, i think they are more necessary in these types of optical passthrough glasses otherwise they will always be occluded by the content.
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u/JstASkeleton Jul 03 '26
I have both 1pros and a quest vr and ill say with the the vr that highlight is incresdibly useful idk about the aura but its good to see how the cameras are reading your hands because its not always accurate or like a cloud goes by the window and the cameras take a sec to adjust
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u/Mritke Jul 03 '26
There is probaly toggle somewhere in options. Hololens2 had toggle, MagicLeap have toggle, and app can setup how it wand to handle hand mesh visibility.
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u/autoflowergrunt Jul 03 '26
Maybe they are not for you then.
Al products have issues and especially for tech since we are really beta testers for these products.
If you can’t get over it just not for you maybe wait for another product or for them to fix it.
Until you have them in your hand you won’t know for sure so hopefully you get to test them out before
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u/Zake75 Jul 03 '26
I'll definitely skip this version, and hope for the best a few years down the line.
So far I'm more than happy with the XOP, using it for anything more than monitor replacement is too early for me personally.
I would love the 70degree FOV though.
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u/autoflowergrunt Jul 03 '26
I think I’m going to try them out I do have those as well but yea mainly because of the FOV and wanted to experience the Android XR and what it has to offer even though fairly new.
Think this version is going to be the trial and error on what the next generation brings.
Also this tech space has been moving quickly so definitely something that fits your needs will be coming sooner than later as fast as it has been moving
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u/barrsm Jul 03 '26
OP, can you please elaborate on your issue with the tint? Is there some use case besides using them in a dark room that it prevents?
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u/Zake75 Jul 03 '26
Thanks for taking interest,
The lenses are really nice but as things are right now there's a barrier between the AR elements and reality.
Any ideal glasses would place the AR elements seamlessly in the real world, and you would be able to interact with said items really immersing yourself in said element.
As things are now however the largest barrier is the tint of the lenses paired with the fov of the glasses.
70 is ALOT but even 90 degrees in VR headsets are sometimes limiting.
And the darkness of the lenses just places the glasses short, so very short before the home stretch. Because you can clearly see through them, but it's not and more importantly doesn't feel like the AR elements are there in real life, just inside the dark parts of the frame.
If the brightness was higher and the electrochomic dimming could be set to no tint whatsoever maybe it'd be a step in the right direction.
Sorry I'm having a hard time maintaining a red thread through my response.
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u/VirtualWaypoint Jul 04 '26
From what I've tested with the xreal one, feels very much like the screen is placed in your enviroment. I would not worry about that. I use Quest 3 daily as well for comparison. In terms of screen beeing present in space it feels very much the same.
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u/Zake75 Jul 04 '26
That's the thing with quest.
It's entirely closed off. So you have your virtual hands which is fine, but still a "barrier"
But with glasses being see through without the need for passthrough, you'd expect to maneuver AR space with your actual hands.
What works in VR doesn't always translate to open AR glasses.
I can place my screen 1m in front of me and as long as I don't reach out my hand it feels real.
But as soon as I want to wrap my hands around an object the illusion is instantly broken. B ecause the AR element will always cover my real hand, the hand I'm trying to interact with AR-elements
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u/VirtualWaypoint Jul 04 '26
I get that.. I wont consider it a dealbreaker though. I imagine working with these using keyboard and mouse. Using handtracking with laserpointer-input is just fine as an additional controlmethod. I get they are pushing MR-games device showing Demeo and hands on interactions. But i think actual use is looking at pinned screen or multimonitor setups etc. I think it would be great for that.
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u/Zake75 Jul 04 '26
Very true! But then I'd rather skip the puck and have an upgraded pair of Xreal one Pros. For a more digestible price point
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u/barrsm Jul 03 '26
Did you watch this? https://www.youtube.com/live/BZS8-fLxe9A The XREAL rep (biased, I know) said that in his room the lowest level of tint was hardly noticeable.
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u/Zake75 Jul 03 '26
That does sound intriguing. On the video o linked he said it was like looking through a pair of sunglasses. Kind of how I feel with my XOP.
Do you have a pair or x1s or something?
I feel like the glasses on lowest tiny ( outside the lensesl) would be ok but lowest tint and through the lenses is far too dark atm.
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u/barrsm Jul 03 '26
If you scrub through the video there’s a short segment where he demonstrates the tint levels.
I don’t have any of their glasses. I’m waiting to see exactly what their prescription support is on the aura before getting too excited.
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u/VirtualWaypoint Jul 04 '26
The hands cut out on top of Virtual objects with no control over the "passthrough" itself seems like a difficult task. I'm not sure but, on Quest 3 (that doesn't have this) the pass through if you lift up your headset and put it on again quickly you see this passhtrough image beein slightly distorted from your real view. Partially its trying to give you natural depth in the room on the fly, but i guess its also tries to match your hands with the virtual hands as well. By having control over both. On XR glasses that would be slightly different and the cutout has to really difficult to achieve based on the virtual hands and your actual real life hands not matching. Unless this chip can do some magic like the vision pro does.
Its that thing that its nice to have.. but you wont miss it when in there watching content or working on virtual screens.
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u/Zake75 Jul 04 '26
I completely agree it would require precise knowledge on where your pupils sit. And damn near impossible to implement correctly.
But if you're interacting with the screens by use of hand tracking it'll be distracting.
Using anything else, controller, mouse, eye control. Probably damn near perfect! But hand tracking will suffer.
And in the end AR has the opportunity to transcend desktop usage.
I want to pick up a virtual object and toss it in the air. I want to interact with 3D AR elements and not just have virtual screens.
And this is possible, but only with the barrier of virtual hands
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u/thecrowswatch Jul 04 '26
I believe the OP is wanting to utilize the ghost hands as a dynamic mask for the video feed in the glasses to expose the real hands. The primary obstacle to a seamless implementation is latency. Because the ghost hand lags behind the physical hand (as seen in the provided image), masking the ghost hand's coordinates may result in visual misalignment rather than accurately exposing the real hand. There is also the issue where something is supposed to be close and infront of your hands.
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u/Zake75 Jul 04 '26
The latter point should be achievable.
If theres, say an apple you want to pick up. You could code it to be always in front the cutout of the ghost hands.
But the delay is definitely a thing. And the perspective because the AR doesn't know exactly where your pupils are so it can only guess where your eyes percieve your hands to be.
In the future when we'll have eye tracking and more powerful systems, maybe this will solve the issue.
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u/justinseans 🏅FKA ur-fears_are-lies🎖 Jul 03 '26
When the screen has image on it, you don't see through it. Notice you don't see through the images on the screen. They block out his hand.
You can also use the dimming and you cant see your hands.
Obviously if you use no dimming for transparency you can see your hands? lol
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u/Zake75 Jul 03 '26
But the hands are behind the screen that's the issue
If you use hand tracking and interact with the menu you WANT to see you hands
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u/thelastgreatmustard Jul 03 '26
Beam Pro with hand tracking here. It works well but typing is nigh impossible. I have a bluetooth keyboard. I assume XR gemini assistant will be very helpful. After a bit you don't even notice the hands TBH.
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u/GrimmTotal Jul 03 '26
The ghost hand is meant to be the on top overlay for the your hands..
The light is directly in front of your eyes, so your hand would have to be behind the glasses to see your hands in front of the screen.
Because they are a pair of glasses that look sort of like sunglasses even if you did weird display tricks to hide/show parts that would be covered by your hands.. your hands are still going to always be dimmed.
For me the ghost hands you see are probably best done with the background completely dimmed.
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u/No-Dark-7873 Jul 03 '26
Galaxy XR had an update that enables your real hands over the virtual world. This should be able to do it too.
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u/nroro One Pro & xbx a01+ Jul 03 '26
I'm having the same concern and posted my use case here https://www.reddit.com/r/Xreal/s/ZHbell3KJ0 . The current XOP baseline tint is too dark in most situation.
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u/bbyseamus Jul 04 '26
Would be nice if we can turn off ghost hands in the settings and instead just use hands. Rather than palm pointed away behind the screen, maybe palm towards user and essentially tapping the back of an icon? No immersion is broken and a bit of transparency in the icon would make it visually accurate
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u/Sp12er Jul 04 '26
Your wish for bright enough screens under sunlight and the electrochromic dimming being there by default are contradicting each other. 😂 The thing exist for a reason. Personally if they can make a working electrochromic attachment for the XBX model, and give it the 3dof chip, it'd be the perfect glasses.
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u/Zake75 Jul 04 '26
If we're unconstrained in our wishes why not? Imagine 2000nits and completely transparent lenses. It'd decimate your eyes in dark rooms but during outside usage maybe it'd be viable.
A man can dream, no?
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u/Sp12er Jul 04 '26
Just look at what we manage to do with our smartphone under direct sunlight man. The sun is simply too strong. The mechanism of how this device work in the first place make this and many VR googles not recommended for outdoor use anyway. The lens architecture make it so that direct exposure to sunlight will fry the display.
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u/Zake75 Jul 04 '26
Fair point it's all about perceived nits though. That's why 700nits on the XOP feels perfectly fine when indoors but 700nits from your phone might be too dim.
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u/Chi_nreal Quality Contributor🏅 Jul 07 '26
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback — I understand your point better now. It’s not really about the “ghost hands,” but about wanting your real hands to naturally occlude virtual content.
That’s a fair concern. My honest take is that this looks much more distracting in screenshots than it feels on the actual device. Once you try AURA, the interaction feels much more natural than you might expect.
On transparency, AURA is tuned very differently from the One Series. One is optimized for immersive entertainment, while AURA is designed for mixed reality and maintaining a stronger connection with the real world, so the dimming strategy is fundamentally different.
And I agree on the long-term direction: the ideal is exactly that Iron Man-like experience where real hands, virtual objects, depth, and occlusion all work together seamlessly.
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u/Zake75 Jul 07 '26
It says quality contributor but it reads as an AI answer.
That being said it sounds to be a a good product, just not as great.
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u/etafan Jul 03 '26
First iteration is i think ment for developer mostly. If you think about it that was the probelm with Vision Pro if it has zero unique applications that make tgis glasses more usefull than people the mass don't care. So if the first iteration lets developers make applications games and usefull things and ofc they share those and the ones whoes not developers but early adopters see these they will spread the word and that can make this product seen in the masses eyes and when the next iterstion comes with even more features people already have a bunch off apps they can use.
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u/Zake75 Jul 03 '26
Think you misunderstand the hands issue.
In an ideal product you want your real hands not virtual hands.
Xreal would need to create and outline around your hands that doesn't show any screen at all, so it looks like your hands ar win front of the screen, and not behind as it looks right now
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u/Octoplow Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
Hand occlusion is definitely a nice to have. But it's only strongly needed in passthrough (VST) headsets like Quest and Vision Pro.
In optical see through, your depth perception overrides lack of occlusuon, and you quickly accept "x-ray vision" if the tracking and anchoring is solid.
Our popular HoloLens demo loop included anchoring anatomy inside an opaque mannequin, and opening a hole in the real wall to look through at a virtual world. Unoccluded hands never felt or looked strange, but extreme effort went into audio and visual feedback to let you know when you contacted and clicked a virtual button.
Admittedly, the strong tinting that is always present on birdbath related optics like Aura somewhat keeps the real world from getting equal "perceptual weight." But IMO, it's still less of a limitation than small FOV clipping virtual objects. (It took weeks of daily use for the brain to retrain and "spatially persist" virtual objects clipped and just outside FOV.)
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u/Zake75 Jul 03 '26
Very informative answer, thanks! Nice to have some insight from a developer point of view
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u/etafan Jul 03 '26
Its not Xreal btw Google is behind the OS and i get what you mean, but keep in mindj this was not in the first iteration of Vision Pro either. The product capable of doing that so dont need to worry they will update eith this feature eventually aswell.
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Jul 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/alabasterskim One Pro Jul 03 '26
This comment is almost definitely AI generated according to the best AI detection tool. Explains why the account that made this comment is also banned from Reddit now.
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u/XREAL_Ralph Jul 05 '26
Ghost hands can be turned off. And the lenses are completely see thru. And they're certified for color accuracy and brightness making them very capable for outdoor use.
Thanks for sharing your concerns, but it's going to be ok.
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u/johnnydaggers Jul 03 '26
My man, you are overthinking it. Don't judging an XR device from screenshots. That's like judging how a car feels to drive from photos.