AWE 2022 – Shiftall MeganeX hands-on: An interesting approach to VR glasses

At AWE 2022 I had the opportunity of having a very short hands-on with the Shiftall MeganeX glasses, one of the most awaited pieces of hardware in the XR community. And even better, I have also had the pleasure of speaking with the CEO of the company! Let me tell you in this post everything I learned…

Shiftall MeganeX

At CES 2020, one of the best in the show for us VR people were the Panasonic prototypical VR glasses. These glasses were only 3DOF, but thanks to their lightweight design and the steampunk style, they looked like something totally different from what the VR market was offering at that moment. All XR journalists at CES wanted to make a picture with them.

The Panasonic VR headset is very cool! Great pixel density and ingenious IPD/focus personalization. pic.twitter.com/cFS7LwvRa8

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) January 8, 2020

From that moment, the community started being interested in them. In 2021, always at CES, Panasonic showcased an improved design, with integrated tracking cameras and speakers. The headset was supposed to run by being connected to a smartphone via USB-C.

This year, the device switched completely name: the Panasonic branding disappeared, to make room for the “Shiftall” name, which is quite unfortunate because it’s easy to mistake its name with “Shit falls”… which is an accurate representation of my life as a developer, but not a good name for a headset.

The device’s full name had become Shiftall MeganeX and the headset was converted to a headset for PC. The community was a bit puzzled by the choice of the PC platform for a device that is this lightweight, but the interest persisted.

Meeting with Shiftall CEO

At AWE I visited the Panasonic booth where I found Takuma “TK” Iwasa, who is the CEO of Shiftall. He was an incredibly kind person (like most Japanese people) and answered every curiosity I had. He told me that the project stems from Panasonic, but now is managed by Shiftall, which is a startup that is a spin-off of Panasonic. Panasonic provided the reference design for the headset, and Shiftall is caring about making it a product. Of course, Panasonic and its subsidiary Shiftall collaborate a lot, and in fact, at AWE the stand was managed by both companies. Jokingly, TK told me that there was an easy way to distinguish the people from the two companies: he could wear a T-shirt because he’s a startupper, while all the people with a tie in the booth were from Panasonic.

Shiftall is comprised of just 32 people and has the hard mission of trying to compete with some major tech companies in the VR market, like Valve, Meta, or Bytedance. The headset is not the main business of the company, which actually makes money by selling the affordable HaritoraX full body tracking system, that is very appreciated by the VRChat community. Of course, he hopes that also the headset may become successful.

The reasons for PCVR

I asked TK why they decided to go for PCVR when the form factor would be ideal for a standalone or smartphone-tethered headset. He told me that Shiftall is still a startup, so it must be very careful budget-wise. This means that it can’t try to implement too many features on its product: it must focus on the needs of just one category of users.

He thinks that PCVR users can be the best market for this headset for these two reasons:

• The headset is very lightweight and so it can be the most beneficial for the people that wear a headset for the longest time every day. According to him, PCVR users are the ones that use headsets for longer sessions, so they are the ones that can benefit the most from a very light device
• The current chip for standalone headsets is the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, which can’t support the big 5.2K OLED display of this HMD. So standalone was not even an option.

There is also another reason for going with PCVR. Using SteamVR, the MeganeX can not only access a huge library of already existing games (which would have been impossible with a standalone device using its own store), but it can also work together with other existing SteamVR accessories. So you are able to use MeganeX with Vive Trackers and Valve Index Controllers, for instance. This way the device can plug into an already existing and vibrant ecosystem and be easier to sell to the VR market. This is why Shiftall has just announced a SteamVR tracking bar for its device: even if the headset supports inside-out tracking, by using the SteamVR one, it can plug better into the SteamVR ecosystem.

The idea is that people already having a Vive Pro can get rid of it and switch to a much lighter peripheral by keeping al the rest of the setup (e.g. the controllers) untouched.

Shiftall MeganeX specifications

These are more or less the specifications of the device:

• Display: 1.3inch Micro OLED 5.2K (2,560×2,560 per eye) 10bit HDR/120Hz
• Lenses type: pancake
• Weight: Approx. 250g (8.8oz)
• IPD adjustment: mechanical
• Tracking systems: 6DoF, camera-based inside-out head tracking; outside-in tracking via SteamVR
• Connection: Display Port Alternate Mode on USB-C or Display Port + USB2.0

Shiftall MeganeX price and release date

The MeganeX project is in an advanced state, and should be “close to mass production”. TK is hoping for a December launch, but when you are developing hardware, you never know what delays you may have. The launch should start in Japan and the US, while Europe should be down the line because of its stricter regulations.

As for the price, I wasn’t able to get even an order of magnitude.

Hands-on

I was incredibly happy of being able to try the latest prototype of this device, because it’s more than 2 years that I would love to see how these steampunk glasses fit with my face. Panasonic was demoing three types of tracking for them: inside-out tracking, outside-in SteamVR tracking (I know, some people say it is inside-out as well, but let’s ignore this discussion for now), and Ultraleap hands tracking.

TK made me try directly the SteamVR one, admitting that the inside-out tracking is still work in progress, and so the performances are not great (I loved his honesty about this). He said that inside-out will be devoted to the B2B market, while for B2C MeganeX will rely mostly on SteamVR tracking. The reasons are the ones that I described above to you: SteamVR tracking is reliable, and also it already has compatible controllers in the market. If the company went for inside-out optical tracking, they should have also implemented a full system to track their own controllers.

I was given the device, and of course, the first thing I did was shooting some pictures of it.

Then I tried to put it on my head, but I noticed that it was incredibly small. TK said not to worry and pull the two glasses temples apart so that I could wear it, and so I did. I could feel the tension of the plastic while I was doing this operation, but luckily the glasses didn’t break and I managed to put them on my face. But even after that, I could still perceive they were a bit too small for my head. I guess this was made as a choice so that these small glasses do not move much on the face of the user while he is in VR, but the result of this is that they are a bit uncomfortable. On the positive side, I could feel that they were incredibly lightweight. I have never had a PCVR experience with such small and light glasses, and it was simply amazing, I felt like I could wear it for hours. I also loved the design, and the selfies I shot with them turned out to be pretty cool.

After I put them on, it was time to fit them. On the external side of every eye “cylinder” there was a diopter adjustment dial, and rotating them, I could set the vision parameters for my eyes. This operation was quite fast and easy to do: I just had to move a physical slider until I saw that every eye had a sharp image in focus.

What was tricker was the IPD adjustment. It’s very easy to change the IPD on this device: all you have to do is take the lenses and physically move them. The headset lets you move the lenses independently and this offers great ergonomic support to cope also with asymmetries on your face. But I’ve noticed that without guidance, IPD tuning becomes complicated, and I found myself confused about which lens to move and in what direction so that to fit the visual system with my IPD. I resolved this issue by moving the lenses together in a specular way as it happens on all other headsets because it was much easier for me. I think that probably this very configurable system can be good if it is automatic, and it is set up by a camera looking at your eye, but if used manually, it can be problematic.

https://gfycat.com/hideoussorrowfulbushbaby

After I was ready, TK launched SteamVR Home, and let me test two things: visuals and tracking.

The visuals were what struck me before all the rest. In the center of my vision, the 3D elements were all bright and crisp. Thanks to the high pixel density of the display and the HDR, what I could see was truly beautiful. But it was like that only in the center. The periphery of the lenses showed heavy distortions to me. It was like things were heavily blurred and less defined there. TK told me that it could be because my eyes were not close enough to the lenses, so he made me try again the device without the eye blinders, and things were a bit better, but the problem was still present.

Regarding the field of view, the company claims that it is wider than Quest 2, but trying it I had not that sensation. At CES 2022, some people speculated that it could be around 95°, and this is in line with my experience.

The tracking was instead rock-solid. It was the classical SteamVR tracking, so even if I tried to move my head fast, it never failed. I had the impression that there was a very lightweight lag with the tracking, but given the short time available, I can’t tell you what caused that. After a few minutes I was trying the device, it crashed and the screen became all black, so I guess that there were some problems with the demo unit.

First impressions

I think that Shiftall MeganeX was one of the most interesting devices to try at AWE Europe, and some other people I met on the showfloor (like Sebastian Ang from MRTV) agreed with me on this.

I like how this headset has a design completely different from the others, especially if we compare it to the other PCVR headsets, which are all big and bulky. This is lightweight and cool to wear. I also loved the definition of the image I could see when I looked in front of me in VR. These are features that make me hope well for this device. But on the other side, I was a bit concerned by the lens distortions, which ruined a bit my experience in VR.

I consider MeganeX a “very interesting work in progress”. If TK and the team manage to solve some of its issues, like the lens distortions and the too stretch fit of the glasses, then this can become a very interesting device that brings a breath of fresh air into the PCVR ecosystem. I really hope for this to happen and I invite you all to keep an eye on this company.

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And that’s it for today! As usual, if you liked this article, please share it with your peers so that to support me and also the amazing people at Shiftall. And if you want me to do more reportages from events, consider the idea of supporting me on Patreon!