The mixed reality headset Lynx R-1 has the ambition to compete with Oculus Quest.
Crédits photos : Lynx
Early in October, the project of Stan Laroque and its teams was launched on Kickstarter. It’s the first standalone mixed reality headset made in France, mixing virtual reality and augmented reality. The crowdfunding campaign is already beyond the expectations of the designers.
The first standalone mixed reality headset
“At Lynx we want to change the way we interact with virtuality forever.” That’s the motto of Stan Laroque and its team. A new way to imagine and approach immersive technologies. Lynx R-1 is a proof of this desire of innovation, by becoming the most versatile headset of the market today: standalone and able to connect to a PC, mixing virtual reality and augmented reality. “The headset will be the first one to cover all those 4 categories”.
In the blink of an eye, you can switch from a virtual reality game to an augmented reality experience. “It’s even possible to switch between AR and VR in the same app for unique experiences.” To design this unique mixed reality headset, it took a team of 14 immersive tech enthusiasts. In this team, there are designers, electronics engineers, Unity experts and low-system architects.
A headset for professionals and regular consumers
At the time of the first announcement of the headset’s launch in early 2020, the Lynx company aimed exclusively at the business world and the professionals, thinking about the many use cases that would benefit from this approach. But following this announcement, the Lynx team received a lot of demands from developers interested in mixed reality who wanted to offer more experiences to the general public. Several regular consumers also contacted the designers, looking for a standalone headset that would be different from the others of today’s market and that would offer a new experience.
The result? The launch of this crowdfunding campaign online. It will allow the large-scale manufacturing of the mixed reality headset. Lynx will provide an open software platform without subscription or mandatory account creation, with a clear policy on data privacy. The headset is now in its pre-production phase, meaning that the design and the components have been validated. The Lynx team is working with a company in Taiwan to launch the massive manufacturing of the mixed reality headset.
Technical specifications of the Lynx R-1 headset
The mixed reality headset Lynx R-1 is compatible with Unity3D, SteamVR and soon Unreal Engine. The high-performance processor Qualcomm XR2 brings 6 Go of RAM and 128 Go of internal storage. An SD card slot offers up to 1 TB of external storage. Like the Quest, Oculus’ standalone headset, the Lynx R-1 has hand-tracking and 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF). The resolution is 1600 x 1600 pixels in each eye, with a frame rate of 90 Hz and a 90° field of view.
Those rather powerful and high-quality features place the Lynx R-1 in competition with headsets like the Oculus Quest. As for price, the headset is announced at €530. A limited edition with a transparent front face is at €745. For professionals, the headset costs €950, with the right to sell it and a premium technical service. Will Lynx have the same success story as Oculus? When we know that the last one also started on Kickstarter, we have the right to dream. The first deliveries in April 2022 will tell us.
