French startup LYNX today revealed the R-1, a standalone VR headset built for pass-through AR and powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon XR2 chip. The enterprise-focused headset uses a novel lens design which makes it compact.

Lynx is a new player in the XR category; the small startup today revealed its first headset, the enterprise-focused Lynx R-1. Though it uses occluded displays (like a VR headset), the company says the R-1 is designed for pass-through augmented reality—with the capacity for both VR and AR in a single device, we’re calling this a mixed reality headset.

According to the company, the Lynx R-1 is set to release this summer, priced at $1,500.

Image courtesy Lynx

The R-1 is one of the first products announced with Qualcomm’s powerful new Snapdragon XR2 chip, making it a self-contained standalone MR headset with inside-out tracking. Taking advantage of XR2’s support for many cameras, Lynx has equipped with the R-1 with six cameras: two B&W positional tracking (B&W), two for pass-through AR (RGB), and two for eye-tracking (IR).

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The R-1 also uses a unique lens design which Lynx describes as a “4 fold catadioptric freeform prism.” From photos, the novel lens (while itself bulky) appears to allow the display to be very close to the lens, potentially making the headset notably more compact than headsets with more simple lenses (like Quest and Vive Cosmos).

The headset has one LCD display for each eye, with a resolution of 1,600 × 1,600 and a refresh rate of 90Hz. The company claims a 90 degree field of view and 18 pixels-per degree.

The specs shared by Lynx include integrated audio, controller-free hand-tracking, eye-tracking, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, WiFi 6 (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.0, and a USB type-C port. The company claims 2 hours of “active use” battery life.

Image courtesy Lynx

Lynx is targeting medical, military, and industrial use-cases, among others. As a standalone headset, we expect the R-1 will use an Android-based foundation, but it isn’t clear exactly what the OS environment on top will look like, and whether or not the company intends to build its own software distribution platform and storefront for the headset.

Check out the company’s reveal video below to see more of Lynx:

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Anony Anonymous

    wtf!

  • gothicvillas

    I stopped reading after 90 fov. These people are clueless

    • Sofian

      They say 90°x90°, so that would be a 110° diagonal.

      • Jistuce

        Diagonal field of view is a bullshit fake number and we shouldn’t encourage it. Also, this device looks like it has a circular field of view, so it is 90 degrees along any axis you choose.

      • G-man

        its a circular field of view. so no. its 90 degrees in all directions.

      • Chloe Mcholoe

        even that is terrible. my vive which is 6 years old can do 115×110 i think. not sure about the vertical. but without my lense covers i measure 115 horizontal, and with them 105. remember that even 5 degrees add a lot to the experiance.

  • Sofian

    1600×1600 isn’t enough.

    • Dennis

      This is a standalone headset

      • Ad

        With an XR-2. Regardless, even with sub sampling it needs to look like it’s not even a screen. How do you walk around like this?

    • Xron

      This is Mixed headset, more of AR….

  • Jeff Axline

    Human Centric Design so that’s nice. This is not for Russian cows.

    • Immersive Computing

      “Human Centric Design”…I’d hope so considering its a head mounted device. I’m interested to learn more about these Russian cows though!

      • Ad

        Google it

  • Smokey_the_Bear

    meh, nothing impressed me, looks like I’ll be sticking with my quest.

  • Fabian

    Just boring. If this was $150 instead of $1500 I still wouldn’t buy it.

    • Chris Blackburn

      Lol, sounds like realistic expectations of tech to me

    • Actually it costs $150 if you buy it today :O

      • Adderstone VR

        Their site says “Due today: $150” – that’s just to reserve your pre-order
        Like the Cybertruck pre-orders that are $100 to reserve your spot – fully refundable

  • 144Hz

    other things you can buy for $1500

    a valve index and an oculus quest
    a mid range gaming pc with an ultra wide monitor
    a 2002 honda civic
    375 big macs
    100 pizzas
    11 kegs of Heineken
    13″ Macbook pro

  • centurion2065

    Let’s see… 90 degree fov, and $1500? No thanks. Frigging moronic…

  • MW

    I alslo don’t get 90 fov. Medical? Maybe. Military, and industrial? No. And definitely not for entertainment. Moreover there are cheaper (and better) headsets on the market. Why I should buy one of those for company instead of three or four Quests??

    • Xron

      Ar… ~.~ not vr

    • If you look at the AR+VR headset market right now, you only have Varjo XR1 for $10k and the VR headsets with low quality video pass-through. There is no better stand-alone headset that does AR and VR afaik.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Does the Quest have eye tracking? Does the Quest have actual business plans already?

  • Ad

    1. It was silly to constrict the FOV just so it could look smaller.
    2. That is not nearly enough cameras. AR pass through needs a ton of cameras and a very high resolution to allow for anything like a good AR experience.
    3. That resolution is way too small, and with that chip it could easily be much higher.
    4. Eye tracking is nice for DFR or whatever but what about hand tracking since this is AR?
    5. Companies need to start saying they won’t work with armies. This isn’t ethical or responsible at all.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Since when does AR pass through need more than 2 camera’s? You only have 2 eyes… I do give you the better resolution point..
      Yes it could be much higher, but then the price of the unit would also be much higher. And because the chip can drive a 3kx3k display doesn’t mean it can also drive 3kx3k/90fps with the games running in ultra mode (hell, I think it will even have problems running them in low mode), all it means is that is can power a 3kx3k display, but it doesn’t say anything about the actual GPU power to pump out nice visuals.

      • Ad

        The price is already too high, and there are much higher resolution headsets out there that cost barely as much as this. The quest even has a higher resolution. The point of the high resolution isn’t the GPU side, it’s whether the actual view of the real world will be sufficiently clear and comfortable. As in, as long as it can take in a wide angle stereoscopic 3 image and then display it on a nearly as clear screen, it’s half way there. The AR elements don’t need to be high res, just the actual world.

  • Not bad. The FOV is a bit little (90°), but the resolution is good and the passthrough functionality is more than welcome. Price of $1500 is a bit too much, though

    • Ad

      That’s barely higher than the quest’s resolution, and this is supposed to be AR.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        AR as in passthrough video AR..

        • Ad

          Yes, and passthrough is where the screen and the cameras are the most important components. Pick up a Vive or Index and try to do basic tasks or functions with it in passthrough mode. It’s useless.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            it’s the camera’s that’s the problem with those, not the resolution of the displays itself.

          • Ad

            Both. This resolution is lower than the quest or the index with a small field of view.

  • I would add that if you preorder it today, it costs only $150!

    • Blaexe

      As a deposit, yes…you’ll pay the rest later. Or do you really think they’ll just drop the price by 90%?

      • Rupert Jung

        Their site is so weirdly texted, that I wasn’t really wasn’t sure what I should pay for exactly, too.

  • Adderstone VR

    Let me guess – top comments summed up
    90deg FOV …Pass
    1600 x 1600 …pass
    $1500 …Pass

    • Sofian

      Regarding resolution there is more to it, you need to watch the keynote.
      They are overlapping 4 images into 1, I am not sure if the result looks like 1600×1600 or 3200×3200.
      Note that 3kx3k is what the XR2 is supposed to bring to VR.

      • Adderstone VR

        Thanks for linking the keynote (my comment above was supposed to be a tongue in cheek poke at the usual comments/gripes)
        I see that they are doing something special with the 4 image overlapping, but they state clearly it uses 2 1600×1600 panels. They seem to divide these panels into four quadrants (presumably 800×800 each) that then gets overlapped….overlap as you want, you can’t turn 2.5M pixels (1600×1600) into 10M pixels (3200×3200 ish) it just doesn’t work that way.

  • Adderstone VR

    However…this is very good news, seeing a standalone with XR2 so early …it was announced just two months ago! (Dec 2019)
    There will be good things to come
    Looking forward to seeing what Samsung produces

    • Andrew Jakobs

      But if you remember when it was announced it was also said that a lot of companies would come out with a headset based on it in 2020.. And this Lynx is set for summer 2020, yet no specific date yet..

      • Adderstone VR

        so what you’re trying to say is?

  • Sofian
  • Ryan

    Looks like the pass-through cameras might slide with the IPD adjustment, which would make sense. Interesting device, but how about content?

  • Rodgerroe

    “90 degrees field of view”

    Hard pass. I’ve no interest in VR companies that refuse to move forward on that department.

  • “enterprise-focused”, that’s it. End of the article. No need to read any further. Shows over. Turn of the lights and go home.

  • JB1968

    Mobile headset for $1500, no way. I think this unthetered mobile chipset wave is plaguing VR progress these days.

  • Nice

    That’s not a quest competitor. I am curious about optics. The sweet spot of where your can be seems to be very small, there was no mention of IPD adjustment. Lynx is a team of 10 people. I woudn’t invest in that project. They try to sell it as AR, but don’t mention camera resolution, refresh rate and FoV.

  • Soapy Hands

    Will these make the faucets in the bathroom work when I wave my hands under them? Still waiting for the water to flow BTW.

  • Chloe Mcholoe

    I know they’re not for consumers. but the hand tracking has no info, and apperntly no cameras? the main ones are for pass trough and only see the front. the ones under seem to have a very tiny fov. and I prefer controllers cause of the haptic feedback