Welcome everybody. Welcome, everybody, to this CES show. I'm amazed at how many people are here today. As you well know, under the pandemic, I can never believe that I'm actually giving a talk with a mask on. So is he. I think today is very interesting. Everything's being live-streamed, so many people cannot attend. I know people in Hong Kong and people in China, people actually in California, they all want to see this show to talk about the Metaverse. First of all, we'll also have food and drinks afterwards, so that you don't have to be worried about it, and it's gonna last about half an hour to 45 minutes. I'm very happy to talk to you after that. With that, Chris, go ahead.
All right. Thank you, John. Well, thank you for inviting me, first of all, to attend this and moderate our fireside chat. There's no fire here.
Yeah.
That's okay. It's informal, is the point here. We're gonna talk about the roadmap.
Yeah
... from Solos all the way to the Metaverse. Whatever the Metaverse is. In fact, I think I'd like to start. The first question to you is, what is the Metaverse?
This is the most wonderful question. As you well know, the Metaverse is extremely popular. In the last few months, you have heard everything about the Metaverse. In fact, Metaverse has been around for a long, long time. Even when we're young, we always imagine a different universe. It's our fantasy world. Currently, Metaverse seems to be if you see something, then it's Metaverse. That's not true. Humans have five senses. One is voice. Audio voice, the sound. The second sense is sight. We see things. These two are the most important of the five senses. You have touch, then you have smell, then you have taste. How do you define Metaverse? Our definition is it's a continuum. It's a continuum of a physical analog world with this imaginative virtual digital world.
Mm-hmm.
It can go from very small amount to a very big amount. It can go from sound, also it can go to sight. Eventually, it could be touch. And maybe even at the end, I don't know when, you will have the taste in there. Until you have all this, do you really have another universe? Right. I think this is my long way to answer that.
Mm-hmm.
I think the Metaverse has been around all the time. Our thing, our journey, and I can go back to the journey that really started 30 years ago when DARPA asked us can we put a computer on the head.
Right.
Hands-free for the soldier. We identified a couple of things that need to be done. It cannot be a CRT on the head, so we put a whole idea of a solid-state screen, a micro screen, and special optics to magnify it. The other thing they want is what is the input, output? You're hands-free. We say it has to be voice. The voice, because of the military, DARPA wants, can it be noise-free so that on the battlefield it can work. That's why we developed two technologies. One is the micro screen with optics. One thing we call now is the Whisper Technology.
Mm-hmm.
That allows you to have a noise-free whisper, easy to hear, and easy to communicate. Out of the noise-free whisper, we have the Solos, which we're gonna later on get people to talk about the Solos. That's the first Metaverse. I call it a sound Metaverse. Sound is as important as sight. You cannot have such sight without sound. What is your VR set with no sound? Forget it.
Mm.
Right? I think people are getting too narrow about it. That's the most important. Go ahead. I'm sorry I-
No.
went a long way to
Well, I mean that's a good point. I mean, when people look at a movie.
Yeah
They always say that the sound is 50% of the experience, right? Why would that be different in an immersive experience, or a virtual experience or an augmented experience? You're right, we're only talking about two senses for the most part at this point. Sometimes they get a little bit of haptic , you know, it's sight and sound and haptic a little bit at this point.
Mm.
If it's a continuum of experiences from the very minor to the very immersive, what's a good starting point? Is sound a really good starting point for this?
This is a very good question. If you look around you, we are all users; we're humans. What do you use for the sound? How big is the market ? Almost everybody has a headset, has AirPods, okay? Make phone calls. Just think about the smartphone. The smartphone started with a phone and sound. Your smartphone started with sound. There was no screen there.
Mm-hmm.
It actually connects us to the world. This is a sound universe. I can talk to people in Hong Kong and Japan. The sound started first. The smartphone started with the sound. You put a screen in there. This is exactly what we do. Solos like that sound. Give the sunglasses. You eventually want to see sight. It has to be on the head. It has to be around you. It's not the AirPods. How are you gonna put the screen in the AirPods? AirPods sold $25 billion last year.
Mm-hmm.
$25 billion. It sells more than Tesla. It's just sound only. It's a light little thing in the ear. I think people have to understand. I mean, we do a lot of microdisplay, so we can talk about it. People don't say, "Oh, yeah, you don't have a display." No, we have a lot of beautiful displays. We also say sound is very important. I think after sound, we're gonna put in display. You're gonna see two types of things going on. We're gonna have sound, and you're gonna put displays in there.
Right. Well, actually, maybe this is a good time to invite Paul Baker to come up and talk about Solos, 'cause these are smart glasses that are directly developed to solve-
Yes.
Paul, please come up and join us.
Thanks.
Yep.
I'm Paul Baker. I'm COO at Kopin. I'm here, actually, standing in for the folks at Solos. We're close partners with Solos Company, and some of the Solos folks couldn't come here because of the pandemic, so I'm happy to step in 'cause this is a fun product to talk about. As John and Chris have been saying, the Solos is really about the audio universe. One of the principles that John really instilled in Kopin is the idea of human first in terms of technology products that, as you know, the world is littered with technology products that are too much technology all at once, forcing upon the consumer, and it's more sometimes than the consumer can digest.
As John and Chris were just talking about sort of the incremental step toward Metaverse, we believe there's one stop along the way that's the audio Metaverse. That's really the genesis of Solo's smart glasses. They're audio-based. They have many of the functions that you guys are familiar with. You can take your phone calls. You can listen to music, or listen to podcasts. It's got its own ecosystem, so you can utilize applications with the glasses. It's got some really neat features, but one of the most important ones is, as I was just saying, human first. One thing that we know is that if people don't feel good about how these things look on them, they will not wear them, no matter how good the technology or how fun the technology is.
We've designed, or Solos has designed, the glasses with that in mind. If you have a chance to go into the next room, you'll see that there are more than 50 different styles of glasses, sunglasses, and blue light filter glasses. One of the really unique things about Solos is what's called the SmartHinge. All the brains of the system are in these stems on both sides. They're removable, so that the user can change the front plates to different styles, and change the sunglasses, so that their investment in the technology resides in the stems that go with them. Lots of people like different looks for different occasions, different uses.
That's one of the novel things about this that enables a fashion sense with these glasses, you know, in options for the customer. One of the things you know why these are important? Why do people want them? As Chris and John were saying is it's a step toward the Metaverse further down the road, and it's a step that consumers can take and digest how to sort of evolve their use. One of the things
If I may, it may not just be a step. It's a valid point that can be a persistent point because there are applications.
Exactly.
where this is all you need.
Yeah.
Yes. No, very true. That's to that point, it's all you need. One of the things that we find is that while there's many uses for the glasses, what is very clear is that very specific uses resonate with certain people. There's some people for whom these they think of them as their work- from- home glasses.
Mm.
They wear them all day long. They're on Zoom calls and Teams calls all day long, and they just keep their glasses on literally all day long. If they wear glasses, they've got prescriptions. If they don't wear glasses, they have the blue light filter because they're on their screens all day. For other people, it's athletics, running, or biking. They love that because they don't like running or being out on the street with something in their ear where they can't be sort of as aware of their surroundings. For them, their starting point is running. Then, because there's multiple uses, multiple applications, they start to branch out from there. That's their starting point. You see, young people, students like to listen to music while they study. Rather than have either one earbud or two earbuds in their ears, they can listen to these.
They can have their blue light glasses on as well. Interestingly, we in our own company, you know, sometimes we have workers that work with one earbud in their ear, and we certainly discourage that. The glasses really are sort of their own option. What they're finding is, "Hey, this, I'm listening to something all day long. I need to be able to hear when somebody's calling my name or calling attention.
Yeah.
Or there's some noise around me. It affords you that opportunity as well. The key that we see is there. There's lots of things that you can do with these. If you know, again, it's listening to music, it's phone calls, it's podcasts.
I was talking to a guy today who uses them for watching TV. It's not loud, but he can hear his children if he needs to.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, there's applications, there's posture applications, there's other applications that, you know, are compatible with.
Mm-hmm.
Strava and other sports applications. Again, people have a very specific starting point, and then they kind of branch out from there. The wonderful thing about these is the technology, the other technology inside that, in fact, is one of the CES awards, is the Whisper Technology that was really started at Kopin. It is a very unique technology in how it handles noise in a loud environment. Again, think of you wearing these glasses in a restaurant or while you're walking down the street. I mean, you can see in New York City, probably 50%, 40% of the people walking down the street have some form of earbuds in their ears. These glasses enable them to walk around without closing off their hearing to the outer world.
If they're, for example, talking on the phone with somebody, the Whisper Technology blocks out all of that surrounding noise, so the person on the far end is just hearing the person's voice. They're talking to Tom; the voice sounds just like Tom. They're not hearing the sirens, the horns, and everything else that's going on around them. That, as I mentioned, is called Whisper Technology, which really started in Kopin and is used in these glasses as well. The last thing I would say is, if you haven't experienced 360-degree directional sound, these glasses have it.
It's really a unique experience where you hear the sound as it's intended coming from different directions, so that if you're listening to high fidelity music, it sounds like you're in a symphony hall. If you're watching a video, it often, as Chris was saying, you know, sound is an important part of that experience. You are hearing, you know, the loud noise from over there. You're hearing the voice from over here or from behind you, et cetera. It's really unique. You guys should visit a demo. Drew, who's here, will be able to demonstrate it for you after the talk here. That's what Solo's glasses are about. First stop on the way.
Well, actually, let's talk about what the next stop might be.
Okay.
As the Metaverse develops, there'll be much better communications, faster communications, there'll be access to cloud servers, and edge servers. What sort of new functions for AR glasses, a voice glasses solution, do you see coming? Like, maybe instantaneous translation, for example.
Yes. Actually
Mm-hmm.
John is wearing his Solo's glasses. He wears them every day, all day, and does all his phone calls by that. Most of the time, John doesn't carry his cell phone with him. He's got his cellular watch. Applications like that, again, I talked about some of the foundational applications for people.
Yeah.
As this develops, we will see those types of applications, and the consumer will branch into those types of applications that are possible with these glasses.
Yeah.
through their computer, through their watch, to have things like simultaneous translations for two people speaking different languages, to be able to hear and speak to each other, instantly.
Yeah. I think it's important. I wanna make sure that Paul doesn't become a salesperson for Solos. He's not the CEO. He sounds like a marketing person or so. The interesting thing about Solos. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, thank you. The interesting thing about Solos or sound is that we try to create a universe, a sound universe. That's why I also talked about spatial sound. It's not surround sound, it's spatial sound. It's 360-degree sound. It's open ear. It's not stuck to your ear. So all these things give you a natural experience with sound, but it's not. It's a digital sound. You can communicate with everybody around the world. Now we have to put in the display, the vision side.
Right.
Let's talk about the vision side, because the metaverse is really a multiple universe created by the digital contents that we have. Through the internet, you can connect to everybody in the world. Whether it's the sound, whether it's the sight, you can have multiple players, multiple speakers. The next thing is let's put it into this thing. We're supposed to put in the two things, which is the next thing, of course, the AR, you put augmented reality. I think we're still not here yet.
No.
Okay. The best part is that putting the augmented reality for the enterprise world, for the military world. We're very much in the military world, augmented reality. In fact, there are a lot of them. But oh-
Just one second.
Andrew's here.
Okay.
We just talked about the sound. We finished the sound. We're going into this augmented reality now. We're going to take the vision side into the glass. Of course, at the end, we'll talk about the fully immersive experience. We're talking about the augmented reality experience, and we're very happy. Go ahead, Chris. Introduce Andrew.
Yeah. Andrew Chrostowski.
Chrostowski.
Chrostowski. All right. Andrew, please join us up here.
Do you have your system?
Yes, I do.
Yeah. Well, let's, because this is on a live stream, we want to see the latest.
Yeah.
Latest of this thing.
Can you give him a microphone too, please?
Yeah. Andrew is the CEO and Chairman of RealWear. They just recently announced this hot product. Hi, Andrew. Thank you for coming.
Yes.
Could you sit here so the camera can zero in on you?
All right. Hey. Welcome everybody. Thanks for having me. Sorry to be a little bit late here for CES. I'd like to introduce you to the RealWear Navigator 500. I'm Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman and CEO of RealWear, and this device is the eighth generation of our wearable voice control technology. This is a tablet computer you wear on your head, where we've replaced all the touch and gesture with voice command only in a 105 decibel environment. Literally, if you have an APK, you can make it happen on this device. Its focus is on industrial workers who work with their hands. That means front- line workers from oil rigs to manufacturing lines to doctors and surgeons in operating rooms. Wherever you can be a connected worker and get value from being connected to information, real-time collaboration, this is the device we've developed.
It's a wonderful device, and Kopin, which is a partner, we're making the display and the optics for them.
Absolutely.
I plug a little bit for the Kopin.
Yeah.
Actually, RealWear has been a very good partner for us for many, many years, as many of the people actually came from Kopin.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know the problems that you're solving have been problems that have been around for a long time. I actually remember back in the mid and late 90s, I was working with a company called Xybernaut. Do you remember Xybernaut?
I don't, but.
A belt-worn computer with a head-mounted display and a massive display out here. I mean, minimal functionality. Look what we can do now.
Yeah. Not only can this do what it does today, but it's a modular, future-proof platform. In this device, there is a 48-megapixel camera sensor. It can be replaced by the user, and we can replace it with any other camera. As camera technologies advance-
Yeah.
You can simply replace it with a different, more powerful camera. A fused thermal imaging camera is in our pipeline. The display and boom arm display technology is changing all the time.
Yeah.
This is also able to be changed at the service level. We've really built this thing to be future-proof so that a life cycle for an investment for an industrial partner can depend on it for, you know, three to four years, and know that they can put exactly the right product in the hands of their users based on their needs.
Yeah. It's a wonderful device for your great folk, enterprise work.
Yeah.
Thank you very much, Andrew. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Actually, what's kind of interesting about a product like that is the form factor. You've got this little display on a boom that provides just a small amount of information in a look- up or a look- down kind of capability. That's just one implementation of augmented reality, right?
Yes.
It solves specific problems where you have information snagging or a limited amount of information. Do you think this? Well, actually, Andrew, come back up and answer. Come on, answer another question for us.
Yeah, that's a, it's like a very beautiful question.
Yeah.
Any questions, yeah.
Tell us about the applications where this is particularly useful, this form factor, and this kind of voice, power, and display capabilities?
Well, I believe.
Of course, this microphone here.
Thank you so much. Is that better? It's so weird to do this with a mask on.
I know.
You can't tell exactly what you're saying. I am smiling. You know, the applications, right? It's as diverse as you can think of in terms of how a connected worker can get value. The primary initial use case that thousands of our customers use, we have over 5,000 global customers. We've shipped over 55,000 of these units that are deployed. We're going way past the demonstration.
Sure.
Stage of this activity. It starts with remote collaboration. Think of how we've worked in a hybrid work environment for the last few years. We've been working in Zoom, we've been working in RealWear, in Microsoft Teams, or in Cisco Webex, or what have you. Today, if someone has an oil rig that goes down, they can reach out, and instead of putting somebody on a car to drive to a heliport to fly them out to the rig to solve the problem, they can connect in real time, solve the problem quickly, and all of that downtime turns into value for the customer. That's true whether you're making high-speed manufacturing for food and beverage, whether you're building automobiles, you know, all those kinds of downtime activities where you're a field technician. How many times does, you know, the technician go out somewhere, and doesn't quite know how to get the information?
Yeah.
They can pull up the manual. They can do it hands-free. They can do workflow. Anything you can think of in terms of this idea of getting information, collaborating, documenting through workflow, is an ,applications that make a big difference with our product.
Right. What is the field of view on these typically?
Typically, a 23-degree field of view.
23. Okay.
That's important because you think, well, it could be bigger.
Yeah.
You 've got to understand that we're a digital second, reality- first product. Think about your airline pilot. They're looking at the reality first. They're looking around in his field of view. They need to see what they're, you know, what's around them. When they need information, he or she glances down at their instrument panel. That's what you're doing with our product. You're not living in that cognitive load environment. You're doing your work, and when you need information, you're glancing down and getting the information you need, whether it's a diagram.
Right.
A work instruction or what have you.
Right. I think that's a really important point, that you don't need to be in a completely immersive environment, a full, wide field of view, whether it's augmented or virtual reality, to do important jobs in the market today.
Well, I'm a huge fan of the Metaverse, and John and I have both have talked about this a little bit, that there is absolutely value in this idea of digitization and sort of this immersive technology.
I don't want my head stuck in the Metaverse when I'm next to dangerous equipment.
Right.
When real-world consequences come from not paying attention to what you're doing. That's where our assisted reality approach makes sense for those workers who are working with their hands in those kinds of environments. In the environment where that's not the case, absolutely, there's degrees of augmentation. That whole spectrum from reality to sort of virtual reality.
Right.
We all work in the right place for the right tool.
Very good, Andrew. In fact, I could amplify that. I'd say that a Kopin fabless model is, in fact, to get the voice algorithm, display the optics, and help everybody. We have the Kopin Inside guide. That's why I wanna make sure you understand we had to have display and optics in there. Later on, we're gonna talk about immersive the same way.
Yeah.
We've developed this display, the optics, the packaging, with the modules for people to use it. So we don't make the end- user system. RealWear actually goes out there and markets it, and he understands the market a lot better than I can. Okay. Thank you, Andrew.
Thanks. So we're gonna go more immersive now. Yeah.
Yep. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Andrew.
If you have any questions, I'll be around to talk with you.
Right. Thanks. I kind of see the next step, then is if it's a small field of view, glance up, glance down. Yeah. Information snacking, which is kind of what we're talking about here. Now you expand the field of view. You provide more SLAM kind of capabilities, and provide more processing power. Do you see that as part of a valuable application? Yeah. As we mentioned, this whole thing is a continuum.
Right.
You started with something. For us, we think we started with sound. Sound is all invisible. It's all around us. It's easier to handle, and it has a very big market already. That's what we do. The next thing we wanna do is, how do we put the vision in there? Like, the real way is a good example. You put in a second monitor next to you, which we use the second monitor. We drive around, and we look at the monitor all the time. The factory has a second monitor. It's an iPad. But this time it's a wearable, it's hands-free.
This is something the consumer, the user, can accept right now. However, I always have that dream. When I was young, I always liked to read books. In some way, I put myself into a fantasy world. I would like to say, "Why don't we make that ultimate Metaverse glass?" You put it on, you have the great sound, natural sound like the ambient sound that you're used to, then you see a screen, and the screen is so good you don't even know what is real, what's not real. It's a little bit scary, okay? You wanna have this very large view, extremely sharp. You put it on, you don't have to fuss around with it. It immediately works. Well, how far away that is, I think the early version, if you look at the Oculus, is in some way something that consumers can accept .
I should stop there and let you ask a question and move on. Well, all right, if you wanna talk about Oculus. You told me your grandson got an Oculus 2 for Christmas. Yeah. He put it on. Tell us about his experience. Yeah. First of all, thank you for mentioning my grandson. Now everybody knows that he's old. My grandson, 13 years old, and my son, we actually went to a vacation place, and they played this Oculus. They gave me the gift, but actually, they gave themselves the gift. They played it for three days. They asked him a question, "What do you like about it, and what don't you like about it?" They obviously liked it. They played for many hours with it.
I said, "What's wrong with it?" He said, "First thing," my grandson said, "I feel dizzy." The mother came in, I allowed him to play for only one hour a day. "I feel dizzy." Second, he say it was too heavy. It's very interesting. He's not that worried about this thing sticking out. He just doesn't like it, the heaviness. The third is that the image is not sharp enough. It's okay to play games, but it's not the real world. He knows it.
Right.
It's not the real world. Actually, to me, he also worries about latency, so maybe that's how it caused this dizziness. That's the thing about Metaverse. Metaverse really is a true Metaverse. Glass should be like our Solo's glass, like this. Solos glass now is 30 g. Same size, same weight as your sunglasses. Can we get there? You see this. This is one of my dreams over there. There's a Metaverse glass that will at least give you like a portable IMAX theater, a personal portable IMAX theater. To this end, we actually achieved that. It took us many years. If you have time after this call, you're going to look at our recent, which we call P80, with that new display, OLED display.
You look into it, you say, "You got it." Not the end. You got the beginning of what I call a Metaverse glass. This is such glass will be pretty light. Thanks to Panasonic actually, Panasonic through their subsidiary came out with this Metaverse glass. In fact, they take a lot of publicity on this. I think it was in Financial Times yesterday now. Mm-hmm. They use our display, micro OLED display, and our pancake optics. Maybe we should introduce.
Yeah.
Our Iwasa-san, are you here?
Yeah.
There you are. He's the president of... Come over here. Iwasa-san, please. Iwasa-san. Where's your set? Oh, you didn't have time to bring your set with you. Yeah. If you're not sure, go get a video and say yeah. I just said-
Okay. Well, while he's going to get that.
Yeah.
Let me ask you.
Yeah.
What do you think are the requirements for, let's call it a next generation VR glasses solution? The technical requirements.
The technical requirement. I believe ultimately I think people want consumer now. We should talk about consumer.
Okay.
The enterprise world and defense world will do a lot of other things.
Okay.
I mean, you know, wearing the F-35 helmet, the helmet's $400,000.
Okay.
It is a truly fantastic AR helmet. It sees 360 degrees night and day.
Right.
Okay? Night and day. Degrees. I think for consumers, I think the eyeglasses cannot be too heavy. I really, truly believe 200 grams is probably the maximum they can use, okay? For a long period. Short time, Oculus is around 500, 450. I do believe my assumption is correct. Second is visibility. If it's a true Metaverse, you wanna see an image that you cannot tell is a still graphic, it's 3D, but it looks like at it's matte finish. You cannot see any grains. We're almost there. However, the image is only about a 150-inch screen. Eventually, you wanna get a bigger and bigger screen, like an IMAX theater. You cannot make it big with graining, graininess in the screen. I think a lot of people try to make it big, but the image is grainy.
This is like the early days of projection TV. Very big, but it's ugly. Nobody buys them. It's all rejected, right? Same thing with 3D. You pick another glass; it's really easy. With this type, you automatically get 3D. Automatically. The display should be very high resolution. Ours is 2.6K x 2.6K. I didn't wanna go too big an image. 150-inch. That you can see a matte finish. You cannot tell you go in there. But if I wanna go higher, you have to go higher resolution. I think the idea is, you need about 4K x 4K on each eye, then you get about 8K in the stereo side.
Well, we'll talk about that more.
Yeah.
That's a marketing thing. I wanna come back to that.
I'm sure you wanna come back.
Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Hey, what's the son? You wanna come up?
Yeah. You get the unit now. This is the Panasonic one. They just announced, I think, two days ago. They're using the 2.6K by 2.6K.
Micro OLED.
They use pancake optics.
Right.
It's all plastic pancake optics now. It's quite very light now, right?
Yeah. Quite very light. The total is 2,250 g only.
Mm-hmm.
It's quite lightweight.
Yeah. I tried it. It's quite comfortable.
It's comfortable.
Yeah. Quest two is $450.
$450 or $460 .
Yeah.
It has the diopter adjuster function, you know?
Yeah.
These eyeglasses, myopia users like me, it's nothing to use eyeglasses.
Right.
Quite comfortable to use long hours because I spend some days over six hours or 10 hours in the Metaverse right now.
Why? Why?
It is good.
He's young.
In the future, within two or three years, maybe you guys spend so long time in the Metaverse. You guys already using the smartphone every day, sometimes Sunday or Saturday or your sons are using the smartphone four hours, five hours, six hours.
That's true.
Like, PS5.
Mm.
Maybe your son is spend the time, long time in the PS5, right?
I don't-
His son was.
His mother would not allow it.
Yeah.
I think this is the latest, the hottest invention right now.
Yeah. We're gonna launch this product in this spring. Our first release is around $900.
Okay. Okay.
Purely focusing on the heavy users of the Metaverse.
Right.
The low-end, the mid-end, and the middle company will just touch the market. The Metaverse is quite spread out. We're gonna maybe the high-end customers have a different type of use case. We are focusing on the wire, because our heavy users don't use it for a long time, there's no need to use the battery.
Mm.
You know, remove the battery, then make it much lighter.
Right. Okay. There's a diopter adjustment for each eye, and there's an IPD adjustment.
Yeah, of course. You can change and move.
Right.
This one gives you about a 250-inch screen TV. Right? Around the FOV could be.
Yes.
-around 250 .
Okay.
Which is very large. 250. How many people have a 250-inch screen at home?
Like that, this type of room, right?
What are the applications you see for the first use of this?
The first use of the glass application is VRChat.
VR?
VRChat is our biggest.
Okay.
Metaverse, a VR-based Metaverse service.
Interesting. Okay.
They are still a small company, but quite the high-speed leading up, so.
Okay. Well, that is kind of a long use.
Yes.
I would suspect then.
Yeah.
Interesting. How about games? You see that as a viable first?
Metaverse means that you can do in the gaming in the Metaverse. The Metaverse and gaming is not different dimension. It's a completely different dimension because once you go into the Metaverse.
Yeah.
The Metaverse is the same as the real. The gaming in the real, right?
Yeah.
There is a table, so you can do in the trump game or the chess game or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
Once you go into the Metaverse, you can enjoy the game. Of course, the glasses have use for the game.
Okay. Okay, available only in Japan or?
At first, maybe we're gonna start from Japan, but quickly start the business in the U.S.
Okay. What's on your roadmap? What's next after this?
That's a secret, but they're much lighter.
Okay.
Much more comfortable. Also the, no wire.
No wires.
Yeah.
What do you think, Wi-Fi 6 or 5G, what's the best way to connect to?
Oh.
a source?
That's quite a good question. Wi-Fi 6 is better for our use case because our customer is a high Metaverse customer. But sometimes the 5G is quite good, related to the cloud-based rendering. Because a PC-based Metaverse is so beautiful and such a good experience, like a 250-inch TV.
TV 250- inch.
experience.
Yeah.
Well, of course, in the future, you'd like everyone would like to enjoy the good Metaverse outside.
Yeah.
The processors, smartphone processors are rising up every year, but PC processor is also rising up every year.
True.
The breakpoint needs a super high- power computer on the cloud and a rendering on the cloud, very beautiful PC.
Which would be better for 5G, probably.
Yeah. 5G.
Yeah.
That is one of the features.
Right. Yeah, especially in industrial applications where they can set up very high bandwidth 5G networks, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. Especially the millimeter wave.
Millimeter.
I wanna see millimeter wave.
I need to try that one. No one has tried that.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
It's very interesting, and I really think I enjoy what Panasonic was doing. Panasonic actually has been a good working Kopin for this Metaverse glass for about four years. We try to develop the display and the pancake optics. When they're getting close to the product, they actually move into a subsidiary, which is fully owned and run by very young people. He's the president, and he pushes this product out. He understands the consumer, the use case.
Right.
That gives me a lot of confidence, like, big companies can run like that.
Yeah.
Yeah. They say, "Okay, it's ready. The first round, let the young people push it out." You know, you can see it. I mean, he's obviously one of the youngest people in this room. That he's running. I think there's a lot of future, but the real Metaverse glass is still some time away. Remember, not only sound, not only voice, but you have touch and a lot of stuff, and you have to get an image maybe bigger than 250-inches. Maybe you wanna get a 400- inch screen, something like that. That's where there's another challenge going on.
Right.
Okay. Go, continue on, Yo. I'm sorry.
Okay. Well, let's come back to the marketing question, right?
Yeah.
For example, some Metaverse glasses people will say, "Well, we have an 8K display," but it really means it's two 4K by 4K displays, which is not really 8K. Do we have a marketing problem here? Do we need to have the marketing police talk about the resolutions, or is pixels per degree really the right way to evaluate?
It's a very good question. Maybe it's a good time for me to introduce Chris again. You know, he's the executive director of 8K Association. He's very sensitive to this word, 8K.
I guess so.
Okay. When we mention 8K, he's getting bent out of shape.
Oh, okay.
It is true. As you well know, there's a big debate in the science area, the engineering area , versus the marketing area. Now you can look at the 8K TV with your two eyes, looking at one screen. It's 8K. Nobody debates with that. Now, you have two 4K TV on your eyes. Now your each one is in one eye. What is this? Is this 8K? Because it's two screens, right? Two eyes see it in two screens.
Right.
The big question in the military for a long time. What do you really have? We know it's more than 4K. Each one is 4K. But is it really just added up to become 8K, or is it somewhere in between? Chris and I argue about this, right? The marketing guys on the VR, these VR glasses are gonna add it up. Two 4K automatically become 8K. If it's true or not, we don't know. There are studies done by the military; they're thinking somewhere in between, maybe a square of two.
Yeah. That's for a stereoscopic image.
That's right.
Like, yeah. Right. Now, suppose you start to add multiplanar images, and start to go to light field displays. How do you measure resolution? What does the resolution even mean? Is that definable at that point?
What Chris is saying is just like TV now. I always think 4K TV is good enough. Now, of course, he had this association with 8K. I tried to buy 4K TV last month for Christmas. He asked me to stop. He said, "In a few months, it'll be 8K TVs. Why you wanna get yourself outdated?" I think the real true VR Metaverse glass is gonna be a continuum. Just like cell phones, each generation comes out better, higher resolution, bigger screen, lower weight, higher performance. It's gonna last for a while. The real cell phone, I think the tipping point with the iPhone was 19, 2005?
No, like 13 maybe.
13. Yeah, it's about eight years, and now it's almost. I think it's good enough that probably would not change every three years, maybe every three years.
Right.
I think the Metaverse glass. I think the Panasonic one is a wonderful one, and I think people will buy it, and people will use it. The high-end people are gamers. The gamer always drives the technology. Really, every year, every six, 18 months, you will get a new one. What we try to do is give them better optics, thinner optics, bigger view, and better display to enable all the people to make up the best VR glasses. We also make displays for the military. It's the augmented one.
Yep.
Different optics for RealWear. We also do all the mics and all the sound, the one I give you, the sound. There'll be some of the people here I know, the last couple of days talking to me, and some of their ambitions are shocking. Right. They want us to do a display, maybe. Some optics, maybe. I think the Metaverse world is a continuum.
Yeah.
It's multifaceted. There's no simple answer. Everybody says, "Oh, yeah, we have digital twins you were talking about." The future, of course, the camera you can take care of this, turn everything to digital. But that's still not Metaverse. That just gives you a static digital image. There's no sound. It's not a moving part. A lot of people go crazy about digital twins, which is good, but it's just a very small part of this journey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're actually running out of time.
Oh, we do?
Yes, we're running out of time.
Yeah.
Let me kind of maybe sum up maybe what I think I've heard.
Yeah.
I think Kopin and your partners are focused on applications that solve real-world problems, and you want to add augmentation where it adds value.
Mm.
I t solves specific problems and does not create solutions that are maybe in search of problems to solve. It's easier to pick out a simple problem and add one technology than to try to add 30 technologies and solve every problem. I think that's kind of your philosophy, but you tell me.
Yeah, it's a very good question. I mean, if you look at a journey, today is a journey. If you have the time, you should walk around. You started with the display, and then we have a lot of military. You're gonna see guns, you're gonna see helmets. We are actually in all the defense systems using AR and VR training. That area, we pretty much dominate now. The next thing we try to do is to help the entire enterprise world. RealWear is a great example. Okay? These are all Metaverse. That combination of the digital world and the physical world depends on how much you interface them. We work with Solos to change the whole thing on the glasses, on the audio glasses. My ultimate dream is different. I say, "Can we put it all together?
Put a glass on." My grandson says, "Voilà, this is what I want." All right? When's that? I hope that I get it there before he becomes an adult. It will probably have three, four to five years to get to there, but I think the Panasonic is a big step. I really think Panasonic did a good stuff. We have something now that's only 200-some grams. Remember, I want something less than 200 g.
He says that next year, maybe, we'll get there. 200 g. That is very many grams lighter than the Quest 2, which actually sold around 10 million units over the last 24 months. It's not a small thing. They sold 10 million units. There are people here who want to give us, they say, "Can you give us something like a 2,500-inch screen?" Yeah. Give us three years. We wanted the display to 2.6, we go to 4K. 4K by 4K. So I can combine them and gonna tell Chris, "Chris, I have an 8K.
Okay.
Fine.
Let's stop there.
Yeah.
Thank you all for joining us tonight.
Yeah. Okay, just a quick question. Well, we're running out of time. Is there a question? I don't wanna again talk about it after. Yeah. You've got the Whisper Technology. You've got the sound.
Yeah.
Now you've got half the weight.
Yeah.
The best visual. Where do we go from here?
I think the sound part is a very good point. I think the next thing is the sound , let's face it, once we solve that, we wanna solve the hearing part. We wanna make the sunglasses into hearing glasses. It's a personalization. Everybody says, "I hear music, I want more bass." Or some people, older people, or some people who have more hearing challenges, it will be. The sunglasses will turn into hearing glasses using digital technology. On the VR side, on the AR side, I really believe.
I think this, I think we were already going there. It's only the reality. It could have to be that the headset had to be smaller, lighter, and have a better image, and then maybe a little bit easier to view. That part, I think, is very close, maybe one or two years, it'll get there. The VR side, I think the Panasonic is very good. Let's keep it below 200 g, and hopefully my grandson or son doesn't get dizzy, and use our 4K TV. 4K, or 8K TV.
8K TV.
If they can provide it. That's only a couple of years away. We are behind the scenes. The reason a lot of people don't know about Kopin is that if you walk through it, you have military systems, AI systems, enterprise systems, and now consumer systems. We're actually all in there. Other companies basically spin it for us. It's time for us, I think this is one thing to say, we actually did a lot of good stuff for people, and we just wanna say, we are inside a lot of systems that you guys are using. Then again, if you have a very interesting system, we wanna hear about it, and we're gonna help you.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah.
All right.
Goo d job.
Good job. Got to do that. All right.