First announced at Google I/O 2025, Google and Xreal returned to the developer conference to announce that their jointly created “Project Aura” XR smart glasses are real and coming soon.
Google didn’t share a release date or pricing information, but said the XR smart glasses would have a global launch in 2026. Project Aura runs on Google’s Android XR platform and developers will soon have a chance to create XR experiences for the device via the Android XR Developer Catalyst Program.
Some demos that Google is highlighting at I/O include immersive versions of Google Maps, VR YouTube videos at 180- and 360-degrees, a vibe-coded painting app, and “a massive screen viewing and a mini-screen experience fit for multitasking across Project Aura’s extended reality canvas.”
Xreal defines Project Aura as an “optical-see-through” device, meaning it’s a pair of smart glasses with high-res screens and a wide field of view. This is optically different from a pair of display-equipped smart glasses like the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which use a waveguide to essentially beam pixels into a tiny transparent screen embedded into one of the lenses.
I’ll get a chance to try out Project Aura later today after the keynote, but I’m expecting Project Aura to sit somewhere between the Meta Ray-Ban Display and Apple Vision Pro. The compact and open design means you likely won’t get the same kind of immersion as a more enclosed XR headset, but the higher-resolution screens should provide both more clarity and a larger display for “spatial computing.”
We already know Project Aura will have a 70-degree field of view, which is significantly wider than the 57-degree FOV in Xreal’s current, top-of-the-line One Pro AR smart glasses. This wider FOV on Project Aura should mean there’s more “spatial surface area” to anchor app windows to. Xreal also confirmed that Project Aura has three embedded cameras (one on each side of the frames and one in the nose bridge) for hand and eye tracking controls.
Here’s a first look at XREAL’s Project Aura, a pair of Android XR glasses powered by a tethered puck that houses the computer and battery. Together with Gemini, you can watch YouTube videos, browse the internet or use them as a virtual work setup. pic.twitter.com/c9Pk4TFpJr
— Nathie (@NathieVR) December 8, 2025
Project Aura is also a wired pair of smart glasses. While it has a custom-designed Xreal X1S chip, it’ll rely on a tethered connection to a compute “puck.” Xreal confirmed back in December that this compute puck would contain a battery to power Project Aura and it’d also double as a trackpad for controlling the smart glasses’ interface.
The part I’m most excited to try out is the built-in Gemini Intelligence. How will Google’s AI chatbot make XR experiences easier and more seamless than simply poking at digital objects in front of your eyes? Google says that Project Aura can plug into a laptop via DisplayPort-in for “extending the device’s multimodal AI capabilities onto the laptop in three-dimensional AR space, including integrated Gemini support and autospatialization.” Google also says there will be “next-generation AI-powered XR games” for Project Aura.
This story is developing…
