October 27, 2020 – Shadow Creator, an augmented reality (AR) hardware company based in Shanghai, has announced an ODM partnership with PhotonLens, an AR smart glasses startup based in the UK. PhotonLens will serve as co-designer and global distributor of ‘Photons’, a smart glass and lightweight active gaming system. The partnership was disclosed as Shadow Creator CEO Victor Sun announced the release of the new device, called ‘Honghu’ in Chinese.
Speaking at the 2020 World Conference on VR Industry (WCVRI) in China, Sun stated, “Shadow Creator is co-designing an international, consumer-ready variant of the Honghu device with PhotonLens, with a special focus on active gaming and fitness.” He continued, “With the powerful performance of the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Platform, our latest Honghu MR glasses have achieved a significant performance improvement, which can fully meet the diverse needs of consumers, operators, and industry customers.”
Sun added, “Our partnership with PhotonLens marks a new era for us as we seek to create a truly consumer-ready AR device that allows people to have fun with immersive media and games, without being isolated from the world or being limited to a small phone screen.”
According to PhotonLens, Photons will offer users full tracking of the upper body as well as 26 hand gestures and five control modes. This will allow users to control the smart glasses with either hand and arm motions, dual wireless 6 DoF controllers, voice commands, multi-touch panel, and bluetooth controls. Plus, Photons will weigh 85 grams, and as noted above, will have a focus towards gaming and exercise.
PhotonLens CEO, Patrick Liu, commented: “Through our ODM partnership, Photons will unlock new possibilities for consumer-ready AR gaming. With dual 6 DoF controllers, Photons are the only device that offer full 6 DoF head-to-hand tracking, without the need for external sensors. Through an innovative hidden tracking light ring and a magnetic trigger button design, Photons’ 6 DoF controllers are so light and compact that users can easily put them in their pockets and carry them around. Meanwhile, the SLAM algorithms we use offer impeccably accurate positioning, down to the centimeter, meaning that users can seamlessly play games indoors or outdoors. If you want to see what the future of AR is going to look like in the coming years, look at what Shadow Creator and PhotonLens are doing now.”
According to PhotonLens President and Co-Founder, Lisa Pan, the company has also partnered with fashion brands like Ralph & Russo to run XR-enabled fashion shows as part of PhotonLens’ promotion of XR in the fashion and lifestyle industry.
Photons will be available for pre-orders on Kickstarter by December of 2020 or January of 2021. Shadow Creator recently won an Auggie Award at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) Asia event in August this year, for the “Best Hardware” category. In a similar vein, at WCVRI conference this month, the top 50 XR firms in China were announced, of which Shadow Creator was one.
For more information on Shadow Creator, please visit the company’s website. Similarly, for more information on PhotonLens, please click here.
Image credit: PhotonLens
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.