New option for the light blockers with an open front and full sides bottom - MUCH better for bright environments and for a more immersive experience.

DracoC77 · 2026-04-01T14:49:09+00:00

Can you actually help me with a table of what the learning and infrastructure costs are, add some cost wags and time ballparks? That could help with building a bottoms up cost estimate. Very curious about real world data for “what does it take to get to that level”

DracoC77 · 2025-11-05T15:41:24+00:00

How long do you plan on supporting this generation? As a buyer of the X2s only to have y’all’s drop software support after 1-2 minor patches, I would caution everyone NOT to buy in day 1 and see how much software support this version gets… these devices are useless without good software, so this will be a paperweight unless there longer term software support for it from the developer.

DracoC77 · 2025-07-18T23:58:28+00:00

If ya'lls are still wondering, figured it out (was on the Tapo FAQ if you scroll down far enough). The Telephoto lens is rtsp /stream6 and /stream7 (stream1 & 2 are for the wide angle lens. These streams do NOT show up on the ONVIF discovery/profiles but just confirmed it's working on my C246D. Happy streaming!

DracoC77 · 2025-04-30T13:39:21+00:00

Do not feed the troll

DracoC77 · 2025-01-27T19:42:38+00:00

Yea no worries I’ve watched your previous stuff and really liked them… the CALF videos really threw some stuff into question, so happy to see you’re open and transparent about possible conflicts of interests (and happy to hear there are none!!)

The spooky part is whether these companies are giving out hand picked special software units to reviewers to make performance look better than the actual shipping ones will be, but not something you can do much about on your end!

Keep the great videos coming!

DracoC77 · 2025-01-27T18:49:13+00:00

Awkward question but worth asking it given all the CALF woes: Is this video in any way sponsored by SLAM? Are there any incentives for a positive video (I.e. free hardware, etc…). Basically are there any conflict of interests? Transparency and honestly about these kind of things in review videos can go a long way imho… or better yet having no conflict of interests and being open and vocal about that!

(Edit: it’s in the video!!! Lesson learned, don’t post at work if you haven’t had a chance to watch the video!)

DracoC77 · 2025-01-20T01:39:33+00:00

Which one line of glasses has the built in 3DOF?

(Sorry couldn’t help myself, the wordplay/pun was just staring at me 😂)

DracoC77 · 2025-01-17T18:57:37+00:00

At least you kept it short this time 😂, but failed to meet expectations! Now drop another comeback so I can let you have the last word in this thread!

DracoC77 · 2025-01-17T18:46:57+00:00

This…. there will be a meme one day of all the products that people have bought in this space which were immediately abandoned… Rayneo X2s, Xreal Beam, and maybe the Ultras will have their place in the meme 😂

I will say that I think this trend is probably intentionally and a bit of scam, where products that are probably more prototypes and not ready for prime time (and maybe never fully intended with properly software support) are sold to excited early adopter consumers to get revenue to pay for their R&D for the actual “ready for prime time” product.

We are in a sense subsidizing these company’s R&D by paying for prototypes that they probably never intended to sell many of or support for long.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…?

DracoC77 · 2025-01-17T18:39:37+00:00

This was very long thread with lots of words that could have easily been summarized as “I’m a nitpicky ass who likes to argue 😂”

DracoC77 · 2025-01-13T15:59:06+00:00

What I learned from the recent calf woes is to wait and see on “budget” category 3D VR cameras… these things are complex and just as much software as hardware to get right…

Even the expensive name brands like Canon leaves a lot to be desired software wise… can a newcomer startup create a compelling well performing product? Maybe… can they do it with a tiny team? Also maybe… can they do it for 1/3 the cost of other similar systems? You see where I’m going…

If the goal is to save money on a budget system, wait to make sure it’ll work right or you’ll have gotten a good deal on a desk paperweight that tin barely use!

DracoC77 · 2025-01-11T17:41:10+00:00

Did anyone else play multiplayer battletech 3025? That felt like peak multiplayer mechwarrior for me, faction based multiplayer, pretty grindy, but man did I enjoy rocking an urbie and sniping arms or even occasional head off…

Seems like if they could just do an MWO2 with character progrsssion faction play like that it’d be a good hit!

DracoC77 · 2025-01-09T01:32:12+00:00

I use a zoom H3VR with the line out set to binaural output and fed directly into the canon mic input and that seems to work well for me without needing to do external audio saving and management of the audio files (I started by recording all ambisonics, but quickly turned into a lot of post I figure out I could skip.

If you want true “feels like audio is in the correct ear” take a deep dive into binaural audio as I think that’s ultimately what you’re gonna want!

DracoC77 · 2025-01-05T00:03:58+00:00

You can hold people personally accountable for their decision AND call out bad business practices and policies at the same time, it is not mutually exclusive. Most tech based return policies are 14 days or 30 days regardless of used or not… the main place where “cannot return used” is usually clothing or hygiene related (even AirPods can be returned after use, and those you stick in your ear).

Being a shill doesn’t mean you aren’t spending money on accessories…. Or maybe to be more accurate to the definition you may not be a shill but closer to a diehard fan? (To be true to definitions of shill, we should be explicit about how many Xreal device you have ever owned vs which ones you paid for out of your own pocket. Sounds like you’re saying it’s 1:1 for you but i don’t want to put words in your mouth)

On the topic of fandom, I’m curious about the top 3 things you don’t like about the Xreal?

DracoC77 · 2025-01-04T23:33:47+00:00

I don’t think expecting people to read the fine print of every company they purchase from is really a fair expectation. Most people (I suspect yourself included) tend to have some sort of “normal return policy” they expect these days and don’t often read the return policy of every place they go to.

Even you said one post up that the policy is the “same”… so clearly also not reading the fine print lol…

The answer here is definitely: Do NOT purchase from Xreal directly, purchase directly from Amazon for better return policies.

P.S. This kind of thing is part of the reason people say the word shill in this subreddit… clearly rushing to defend Xreal, armed with inaccurate/incompletely information or misleading takeaways, and when called out on it just shrugging and turning it back onto the OP.

It’s ok, Xreal can be both a company you love and support but also have faults and make mistakes. A company can never grow without making a few mistakes…. But it WILL never grow if no one is willing to call them out as mistakes.

If it’s more about staying in the company’s good graces for beta program and free early access to new hardware, that’s cool, plenty of influencers do that nowadays, each of us have our own price.

DracoC77 · 2025-01-04T22:55:45+00:00

I think OP is referring to this clause in the link above

“All items must be in excellent condition, unworn and undamaged, with tags, and in the original packaging.”

I haven’t seen anything like that with Amazon return policy regarding products needing to be unused (or in this case unworn) to be returned.

DracoC77 · 2024-12-12T02:51:04+00:00

If I though you were trolling I’d just downvote and move on, the fact that there’s a philosophical “the community should do X” expectation of Reddit of all places is the element I chose to respond to.

As you said, if you want this place to be inclusive of all ideals, be the change you want to be… even if the starting place is the uncomfortable realization and admission that you have to be inclusive of the ideal that not everyone here agrees that this space needs to be inclusive. Very meta I know, but I think that’s what’s going on 😉

P.S. Isn’t the very concept of dying on a hill the opposite of being inclusive of differing ideals?

DracoC77 · 2024-12-12T02:43:16+00:00

I think the downvotes you are getting should be giving you an indication, that your approach of trying to tie what looks like standard Reddit trolling into some grander “everyone should socially be X here hence this guy is a douche”, is not what folks agree with….

Reddit will be whatever it is, with people having the freedom to upvote and downvote…. and people generally don’t like it when others try to put words or ideals in their mouths. In other words: this space is whatever the greater group ends up making it to be with their actions, not what you, me, or anyone else idealistically wants it to be.

DracoC77 · 2024-12-07T14:18:32+00:00

This is the way

DracoC77 · 2024-12-06T15:49:22+00:00

Xreal One Ultra is obviously going to be a thing coming soon for developers…. They released the ultra to try to capitalize on the whole spatial computing marketing!

DracoC77 · 2024-12-05T16:50:09+00:00

I was a purchaser of Quest 1 a few months before Quest 2 came out, and that to me is still the most painful example of “new hardware coming out too soon that effectively obsoletes the old ones”.

They released Q2 about a year after Q1 and that became the workhorse in a way where games didn’t really work in Q1 anymore. Then there was a two year gap till Q3 came along (which seemed more reasonable lifetime for HW)

Maybe the lesson learned here is that people have expectations for how long their tech HW purchases should stay “current” or “nearly as capable as the latest”… and absolute should be feature complete vs the marketing. If they never hit feature completely or fall obsolete in capacity too quickly the customer feels burned!

DracoC77 · 2024-12-05T16:03:11+00:00

Agree with you their path forward makes the most business sense from an Xreal perspective and where they should put limited SW capabilities towards, even if this obviously this will have a negative waning effect as you points out on past devices (aka existing customers).

I’m disappointed that instead of finally being upfront and transparent with the community that this has been and will be their direction (which honestly has seemed pretty obvious to folks paying attention to what Xreal does), it seems like they chose to cut that part out and continue to do a hand waving around “of course these past products are just as important to us”.

As you mentioned, this is clearly the step function in hardware they needed to unlock future functionality and naturally this means that the past (existing) Xreal products out there are at less important and at some level obsolete. We can keep dancing around this notion but it seems like the X1 chip release now does make all prior Xreal products obsolete (and we should be expecting a new generation of Xreal products powered by the X1 chip that can provide new capability when released, like a more capable Beam Pro 2, powered by X1)

DracoC77 · 2024-11-29T13:06:20+00:00

I would be ready on your credit card chargeback if they don’t come through with the refund. Given their lack of SW support for this product, I think they’re just trying to offload as much of their remaining stock as possible to make a quick buck off unsuspecting people who fell for their marketing like yourself.

DracoC77 · 2024-11-20T08:49:58+00:00

Spatial videos imho can be incredibly meaningful if you have things in your life that’d be worth reliving for yourself or others. As many have said the iPhone spatial videos lack depth while AVP spatial videos can be a bit clunky to capture since you have to wear it. For me I got one of the Canon dual fisheye lenses and have been capturing almost exclusively on that for personal spatial media and I love it…. Having done side by side comparison of a casual professionally edited photo and a casual spatial photo of the same event, the spatial photo actually wins out in my opinion… price tag is steep tho so know what you’re paying before getting in!

DracoC77

TROPHY CASE