After successfully fighting off Magic Leap’s claim that it stole trade secrets, Nreal is finally able to launch its Light mixed reality glasses into the consumer market. Starting today, folks in Korea can pre-order the Light — locally rebranded as “U+ Real Glass” — as part of a mobile phone plan on the LG Uplus network, so long as you pick the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 or the LG Velvet as your handset. That way you can buy the Light at a subsidized price of 349,500 won (about $295). You can also purchase the glasses separately for 699,000 won (about $590) at an LG Uplus store from August 21st, if you’d rather use them with other phones.

Nreal

Since Nreal designed the Light with 5G smartphones in mind, this consumer kit lacks the Toast computing unit we saw in earlier demos. What do you gain, however, is a “VR Cover” that blocks out your view of the outside world, thus converting the Light into makeshift VR glasses. They won’t replace dedicated VR headsets given their 52-degree diagonal field of view (it’s the same figure for Microsoft’s enterprise-centric Hololens 2), while most VR headsets exceed 100 degrees here, but it’s still a nice bonus feature for when you want to immerse yourself into games or video.

Augmented-reality headset maker Magic Leap made a fairly serious accusation last year, when it claimed that former employee Chi Xu had used “stolen” company secrets to set up his own business, Nreal. The Beijing-based Nreal made waves at CES in 2019 with its $499 mixed reality glasses, which Magic Leap said were “strikingly similar” to the Magic Leap One device. Now though, a federal judge has thrown out the case.

Following Nreal’s motion to dismiss Magic Leap’s original lawsuit, the United States District Court of Northern California ruled that Magic Leap didn’t adequately allege that Xu exploited proprietary information to build his own mixed-reality glasses. In other words, Magic Leap failed to make any viable claims.