AWE 2023: Hands-on with Digilens glasses prototype and Manus gloves

AWE US finished a few weeks ago, but I have not finished writing about it, yet. Today I want to tell you my impressions about two gadgets that I tried (quite fast) in the last moments of the exhibition. I did not spend much time with them, so I can’t write a full review, but still, you may gather some interesting information from what I am going to say.

Manus gloves

I have known the brand Manus for a lot of time, but I never had the occasion to put my hands inside one of their tracking gloves. Finally, at AWE US, I had the opportunity to try them.

Manus gloves are meant to provide tracking of the finger poses for VR and non-VR experiences. They have no force feedback or vibrations like other gloves in the category (e.g. HaptX, Weart, Senseglove, …), but they are only focused on providing tracking. The glove doesn’t have positional tracking per se, but it is possible to attach to it a SteamVR tracker to track the hand position in space so that the gloves can be used for room-scale interactivity in VR. You may expect a mention of Vive Tracker here, but actually, Manus produces its own professional SteamVR tracker, which fits very well with the gloves.

The glove model that I tried is called Quantum. Because of technical issues, I haven’t been able to try the whole demo, but from what I could see, the tracking of the finger pose looked accurate. I moved all my fingers and I could see the corresponding movement appear on the screen. And being them tracking gloves, I had no problems that I usually have with occlusion when using camera-driven systems like Ultraleap.

The design is also quite cool, and I liked that it used multiple colors on the gloves. The comfort instead was ok-ish: it was not bad, but the material of the gloves was a bit rigid and made the movements of my hands slightly more difficult and gave me some discomfort at the base of the fingers. Nothing major, but still, it was a little downside I thought you would like to know.

Digilens glasses

I have for the first time also tried a device by Digilens. It is called Digilens Argo and it is a pair of augmented reality glasses.

The version I tried was still a prototype because the glasses should go into production in Q3 this year. People in the booth told me that this year some selected partners will receive the first units, and then next year the product will be put on sale for everyone. I was surprised to discover that it was not a reference design, but a product.

The glasses weigh 200 grams: they were lightweight on my head, but I can’t judge properly about their comfort because the prototype had loose frames and the glasses kept falling down from my head.

I tried two demos with these glasses: the first one was just a video playing attached to my head. The second was a small AR experience made with Vuforia: I could frame a marker and see some 3D objects on it. The marker was a sheet of stickers that then I carefully put in my pockets, stealing it from the booth. (They were a gadget given as a gift, but thinking that I was stealing them was more exciting)

I think the visuals offered by the glasses were pretty interesting. The official field of view is around 30-35°, but I had the impression it was more, at least 40°… maybe it was smaller but my eyes could use all of it and so it seemed on par with other competitors that declare a bigger one… I don’t know.

For sure, I appreciated how crisp the colors were: I could see very well the images of the video that was played in front of my eyes.

Interestingly, I could see the video even when looking at the lights on the ceiling of the show floor: the 2500 nits of the display made sure that the visuals were visible in every condition. The Digilens employee at the booth told me that these glasses are ready for outdoor usage. This is amazing, because most see-through glasses are just meant for indoor usage, while this one can be used both indoors and outdoors.

The lenses looked slightly darkened the scene around me, but not that much. The official statement about them is that they are 85% transparent.

Digilens Argo runs on top of a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset, and they will be compatible with Snapdragon Spaces, so developers will be able to use a known tool to create applications for it. At AWE, Digilens announced many partnerships around these glasses: one I’ve already mentioned to you in a previous article is the one with Ultraleap: it will be possible to connect the new Leap Motion Controller to the Digilens Argo to add hand-tracking functionalities to it. Another one they did is with Mojo Vision, the company that in the past was manufacturing smart contact lenses and now produces microdisplays.

It seems that these glasses have interesting features, and I especially liked the display capabilities, but I also can’t avoid commenting on their design, which seems to me more the one of a devkit than of something I would like to wear on the streets. So I wonder what is the target market of this device, or if it is mostly meant as a showcase of Digilens display systems, hoping to sell them to bigger OEMs. Anyway, AR glasses are still in their infancy, and for the current status of the tech, this looks like a good devkit.

That’s it for today! I’ll keep writing about my experiences with XR around the world, and if you don’t want to miss any posts of mine, subscribe to my newsletter to receive them straight in your inbox!