Spacetop for Windows: A reason to buy an AI PC at last?

AI PCs haven’t exactly flown off the shelves, but Spacetop for Windows might finally provide a reason to buy one.

Sightful’s Spacetop has been around as a concept for a few years. It’s an augmented reality headset that provides an enormous virtual desktop working area. Until now, the Spacetop glasses have connected to the company’s own proprietary hardware, which was basically a laptop without a screen. The company also created its own operating system to power the device, but that meant it was incapable of running the Windows apps that many businesses rely on.

Now, the company is releasing a version of the glasses that work with a regular Windows 11 laptop, albeit only so-called AI PCs with a dedicated NPU. To date, PC manufacturers have largely failed to exploit the potential of the NPU, leaving it to handle mundane tasks such as blurring backgrounds in videos or running under-powered local AI services.

For Spacetop, the NPU “lets us do compute that otherwise would either not run in real time or, if it would run in real time on the CPU or GPU, it would take 10x to 100x more power, so it would drain your laptop battery,” said the company’s CEO and Co-Founder, Tamir Berliner, in a briefing with TechFinitive.

The lack of NPUs in mainstream Windows hardware is the reason Sightful previously had to build its own hardware. However, the widespread availability of AI PCs means the company can now reach the “full audience of anyone who needs to travel or work remotely, anyone that needs to be productive but cannot always sit in the office,” said Berliner.

Supersized Windows apps

Sightful is using the Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses to power its virtual desktop, which offer 1080p resolution in either eye, as well as speakers and a microphone for tasks such as video conferencing.

The glasses create the equivalent of a 154in screen at a distance of 13in, according to Xreal. They also have a range of dimming settings, so you can block out what’s in the background if needs be. They plug into the laptop via a USB-C cable and are powered directly by the laptop.

Spacetop for Windows isn’t just a massive virtual Windows display. There’s no Windows desktop as such – each app can be positioned independently within the workspace, with appropriate scaling that makes text in apps easier to read than if you were sitting in front of a massive television screen, according to Berliner.

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“We actually included technology that tracks your keyboard, tracks the laptop, and makes sure that we always place the content where you want it to be,” Berliner said.

The company claims it’s also worked around irritations, such as losing your cursor as your eye sweeps across the massive virtual display.

“If you look at the top left, the cursor is already there,” said Berliner. “As far as you’re concerned, you just move it to where you want it to be, and you’ll see that it gets exactly there. It’s part of what we utilise AI for.”

The same applies to shuffling windows around in that enormous work area. “If you have a window that’s on the bottom left and you want to drag it all the way to the top right, you don’t actually move it all the way,” he said. “As you start moving it, you already look to where you want to place it. We understand that context, and it just goes there.”

How well all this works in practice awaits to be seen when review units are distributed, but Spacetop for Windows is on sale today if you’re desperate to give it a crack. It costs $899, and another $50 for prescription lens inserts. The Spacetop software will also cost an additional $200 a year, although you get the first year for free.

You’ll also need to supply your own AI PC, with the company listing compatible models on its website.