Stealth French startup LYNX is teasing the forthcoming reveal of its Lynx R1 headset which the company describes as a standalone headset with both VR and AR capabilities. Lynx says it will reveal the headset during a February 3rd livestream at the SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco.
In a tweet posted yesterday, Lynx CEO Stan Larroque teased the headset and its forthcoming reveal, and pointed to the company’s website. He describes the headset as being ‘standalone’ and capable of both AR and VR; on its website, the company is promising “innovations in optics, hardware, and ergonomics that will open amazing opportunities in all industries.”
From the teaser image and some chatter from employees, we’ve gathered that the AR functionality will come via pass-through video, but we’ll have to wait until the reveal in which Larroque promises to “explain carefully how we overcame some challenges and some technical points.”
That will happen at 2:30PM PT on February 3rd at the SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco, and Lynx says it will be livestreaming the announcement.
Lynx has thus far remained secretive but there’s a few tidbits we can glean today. The French company sizes itself somewhere between 11 and 50 employees, according to LinkedIn, though we can only find six employees listed on the site. Among them is Marc Piuzzi who spent two years at StarVR, a company which was developing a promising ultrawide FOV VR headset before abruptly going dark in late 2018; Piuzzi joined Lynx in June 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile.
On his personal website, CEO Stan Larroque describes himself as a “25 year old computer scientist” who works at “the intersection of hardware, optics, computer vision, robotics, real-time low-latency software and 3D rendering.”
While it’s hard to imagine what innovations a small startup could have up their sleeve, it wouldn’t be the first time a scrappy company upset the status quo; Lynx’s gambit of revealing its headset at a technically-focused conference like SPIE Photonics West at least speaks to the company’s confidence.