Sponsor: Good Virtual Reality At The Augmented World Expo June 15-18 By Way Of Snap

Good Virtual Reality will be in Long Beach the week of June 15 to visit the Augmented World Expo with Snap sponsoring travel.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is scheduled to headline the event with a keynote talk titled “Making Computing More Human” on Tuesday, June 16 starting at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time.

Snap has been in development of the Spectacles platform for a full decade with five generations so far — the first three as camera glasses with added capabilities over time and the last two as full AR glasses for developers ahead of what’s expected to be a broader push for consumers. Notably, a USB-C connector on the latest units can connect to a side-worn battery pack to enable all day use.

Spectacles latest developer-oriented glasses were used on stage at AWE in 2025 to demonstrate how they could aid in a game of pool, photo by Ian Hamilton.

After more than a decade of work in this space, my attendance at AWE this year allows me face to face contact with a broad collection of industry experts and professionals for the first time as a fully independent journalist.

The event also allows me to take a deep dive into contrasting Snap’s approach with others working in the space. Snap’s app and design principles include colocated experiences with nearby glasses that find one another quickly as well as a snappy mobile app for managing the hardware from a mobile phone. My recent podcast with Steve Lukas and Alex Coulombe outlined colocation as the core thing needed for mainstream good VR. Meta, meanwhile, still chokes its app for managing Quest headsets with flatscreen Horizon Worlds content rather than quick and easy operation of the eyewear you bought, as the Meta AI app for managing glasses is bogged down with AI generated slop. Meta also took a note from Snap’s playbook with a collapsing pocketable charging case for Spectacles seen in an earlier generation of the glasses. Will we see new work from Snap presented at AWE 2026?

There’s a hackathon planned in connection with AWE and, with the event taking place shortly after the official closure of Rec Room, I’ll be asking around to see what details I can find about what a number of people hired from that effort are up to at Snap.

My thanks to Snap for supporting my work here with Good VR. You can donate directly to support Good VR or email sponsor@goodvirtualreality.com if you’re interested in scheduling a sponsorship.