Why Don’t We Have Ready Player One In real life Yet? Augmented World Expo 2025 Recap & XR Industry Insights
Curious why augmented reality (AR) and extended reality (XR) haven’t taken over our everyday lives—despite all the hype? In this episode of the Dauntless XR Podcast, co-founders Lori-Lee and Sofia break down their biggest takeaways from Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2025 in Long Beach.
From sci-fi AR glasses to immersive VR experiences, they explore what’s holding back XR from going truly mainstream, highlight the tech trends shaping the industry, and share personal stories from the conference floor. If you’re passionate about XR, AR, or the future of spatial computing, this recap is for you.
Episode Highlights
AWE 2025: Who’s in the Room?
The conference has grown from a startup-centric event to include major players like Snap, enabling tech companies, thought leaders, and—for the first time—policymakers.
Why Isn’t XR Mainstream Yet?
Hardware remains a major barrier: Comfortable, affordable AR glasses that people want to wear are still a challenge.
Content and utility: XR needs applications so valuable that users are willing to take extra steps, like wearing headsets or glasses.
Context awareness: For AR to work in real-world environments, devices need to understand surroundings—still a technical hurdle for widespread adoption.
Best & Worst Demos
Most underwhelming: Object recognition demos that didn’t offer meaningful augmentation beyond what the human brain can already do.
Most impressive: “Jigsaw Night,” a mixed reality puzzle game with seamless hand tracking and user experience—showing that intuitive design can keep users engaged far longer than average.
Consumer vs. Enterprise Focus
While gaming and consumer tech dominated, enterprise applications and even military tech were present—reflecting the industry’s broadening scope.
Conference Tips
Arrive early for badge pickup and to explore demos.
Going as a speaker or volunteer offers a unique perspective.
Bring coworkers for a more enjoyable experience!
XR Industry Trends
The ongoing rebranding in XR (mixed reality, spatial computing, etc.).
AI’s subtle influence—expected to grow, but kept in check at AWE 2025.
The critical role of both “content” and “context” in XR adoption.
What is XR?
XR stands for extended reality, an umbrella term that includes augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR). XR technologies blend digital and physical worlds, enabling immersive experiences and hands-free workflows across industries.
Any tips for attending AWE?
Arrive early to make the most of demos, consider speaking or volunteering, and bring colleagues for the best experience.
What was the theme of AWE 2025?
The theme was “Go Mainstream”—focusing on what the XR industry needs to do to move from niche to everyday use.
Why isn’t XR mainstream yet?
Despite rapid innovation, XR faces a few key barriers to mainstream adoption:
Hardware limitations: Comfortable, stylish, and affordable AR glasses are still in development.
Content and utility: There’s a need for must-have XR applications that deliver clear value beyond entertainment.
Context awareness: Devices must understand and interact with real-world environments seamlessly, which remains technically challenging.
User experience: Many solutions still require extra steps or equipment, making them less convenient than traditional tools. As these challenges are addressed, XR is expected to become more widely adopted across industries and by consumers.
Episode Transcript
No time to listen to the podcast? Read the full transcript below.
Dauntless 009 - AWE Recap
Lori-Lee: the future isn't coming. It's already here from sci-fi AR glasses to VR worlds that are more real than reality. We just got back from Augmented World Expo 2025 in Long Beach, and there's a lot to unpack. before we do, here's the kicker. With all of this mind blowing tech, made real life. Why hasn't AR taken over yet? Why aren't we all walking around? With AR glasses and digital overlays popping up stuff all the time.
Sofia: Why not?
Lori-Lee: So stick around because the answer just might surprise you.
Sofia: Before we jump in a little bit of context, a WE stands for Augmented World Expo. It is considered the world's largest conference that is focused on xr. They run the gamut at talking to both enterprise and customers, and I think before we get too much into the content, it is. Really helpful to talk about who attends.
So in your experience having just gone, who was there?
Lori-Lee: We actually first attended a WE back in 2018. We were in their startup pitch competition, and we pitched the company that we have now
just an idea on a pitch deck. Actually, I think by the time we went to a WE, we had actually incorporated, but we hadn't built any product. We definitely weren't full-time on the business.
So for most of a's existence, it has been primarily for startups that are building applications and hardware to support. Augmented reality. And traditionally most of the attendees was startups, startup founders who were there, pitching, trying to network, make connections, hire, get hired, that kind of audience. Since then, it has evolved quite a bit and this year we of course still had startups. They still have their pitch competition, but then we had more established businesses as well, like Snap was there. They were one of the main sponsors. They've always had enabling technology companies, so companies that are not necessarily making augmented or virtual reality products, but enable the creation of those products. So they were there. We had plenty of thought leaders and influencers. We had some enthusiasts. And then we had policymakers as well, which was.
Sofia: Hmm. New. At least for me. I don't remember having that kind of audience there last time, but there definitely was this year
Yeah, the policy maker angle is definitely new. But maybe that is a sign that it's going more mainstream. Speaking of that, what was the theme of this year and what did you think of it?
Lori-Lee: Yeah, the theme this year was go mainstream. It was literally the wifi password, which hopefully I'm
Sofia: Commitment,
Lori-Lee: yeah. And when I first saw it, I was a little bit like, eh, really? really? But I think. was approaching it with maybe not the lens that they intended, because I thought it was trying to say XR has gone mainstream.
Come on guys. We're mainstream now. We're cool. But it was not that. It was more, what do we need to do to close the gap so that we can go
Sofia: Hmm.
Lori-Lee: What are we doing? Everyone talk about what you are working on and what you are doing that is progressing to hit that tipping point and go from fringe to more of a mainstream technology. My thoughts on it changed. I think that's a good conversation to be having. I think it's timely, given everything that's been happening with ai, which is a huge enabling technology for xr. I do think there were definitely. People in attendance who were maybe a little bit naive about the timeline for things to go mainstream.
There were definitely people that were like, what are you talking about? XR is mainstream. And I'm like, just because you spend 16 hours a day in an XR headset does not mean that most people do. but that's what happens when you get a bunch of people who this is their lives.
Of course, you're gonna get people that are more on the extreme side and, live it a bit more than the average person. But yeah, I thought it was good.
Sofia: That's awesome. I know that we have talked about interoperability, hardware, like there's a couple things that from our lens and XR are like these. These are the things preventing it from becoming mainstream. Was there anything new that came up. Like maybe one that because we're focused more on the enterprise isn't something that comes up for us that was more of a consumer problem.
Or were the reasons that they were talking about the gaps that they were talking about, we need to close are all ones that we've already discussed.
Lori-Lee: There are ones that we've discussed, we discuss internally all the time. At a high level, the main things that are preventing XR from becoming mainstream. And we're all living in a hopefully less dystopian version of Ready Player One. One is the hardware. The hardware turned out to be a much tougher challenge than what we could have really forecasted in 2018. We knew it was gonna be hard, but I don't think anyone thought it would take this long to get to a place where we have. Either a VR or. Augmented reality device that people actually want to put on their faces,
That is considered a pretty common barrier. The content creation piece. So like delivering something that is so valuable in XR that you go through the extra. Step of putting on glasses or a headset in order to use it. I guess I blended things there, but there's the content side and then there's the utility side, which was something we also saw with like blockchain and NFTs, like making something that is just so goddamn useful that it is worth these extra steps. We haven't quite hit on that yet and where. Where I think a lot of the industry kind of skirts that is with entertainment and gaming because
That is scratching a different itch, right? Like the goal
Sofia: Right.
Lori-Lee: Not to be super useful, but to be entertaining. And that has been an easier milestone to reach for a lot of companies, big and small. I am trying to think of what else I feel. I feel like there were three things and I named two and a half 'cause I blended one, but, I don't know. Can you think
Sofia: There are things we've talked about before. I was just curious, again, with a wider range of people there, were there other gaps or are the gaps really well known and is it that it's just really hard to close? That I'm sure will come up as we close the other gaps, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Lori-Lee: Yeah, I guess the third thing is once you have the glasses or the headset at a point where you wanna wear it and it's comfortable to put on your face and you have the. Content available to provide people is there's, a missing piece of the device being able to orient itself in our world. Not necessarily a problem with vr. 'cause usually if you're using vr, you're sitting in a chair or you're standing in a pretty contained spot. So the headset doesn't really need to know too much about your surroundings.
But if you have, a pair of glasses on and you're walking down the street. In order for those glasses to be effective, it needs to know what street you're on. It needs to know where you are. It needs to know if there's a dog in front of you. It needs to know if there's a bus behind you. Like it needs to know all these things. Up until fairly recently that has been out of reach. It hasn't been a problem because we haven't gotten to the point where someone's trying to walk down the street, with AR glasses on. Although I did see someone walk down the street in a Magic Leap one when I was in, Silicon Valley once, and that was something else
Sofia: Not the headset I would've expected to see on the street, not what I would've put my money behind.
Lori-Lee: No,
Sofia: agree with your point though. I mean there was a great AR insider article not that long ago that encapsulated that problem statement and the content is king, but context is Queen I. And XR needs both.
And I was like, yes, 100%. There's a lot of attention around the content problem, but the context problem, which I would argue Niantic is the one making the biggest bet on wanting to be the leader in solving that gap. So
Be interesting to see how this plays out when we go in future years.
But I know you mentioned that there's a lot of companies there, so you got a lot of opportunities to try different tech. And I'm curious, what was the most underwhelming demo that you did?
Lori-Lee: Ooh, that's tough. There were some of the apps on the snap spectacles or spectacles
Sofia: That's what they should have called them.
Lori-Lee: I know
Sofia: Yeah.
Lori-Lee: it's the opportunity that I got in there and, you can like it.
It's stuff like identifying. You can have it be like this is a pair of glasses, this is a computer mouse, this is a houseplant.
Sofia: Oh, so it's doing object segmentation. Okay.
Lori-Lee: yeah.
Sofia: Okay.
Lori-Lee: that. Or, there were a lot of those kind of demos, not just on those snap spectacles that were just okay, like this is fine, but I need it to do more.
Sofia: Because your brain can already identify those things. Your brain already knows what that is, so it doesn't feel like an augmentation of anything.
Lori-Lee: Like it, it was a great demonstration of. Image segmentation, object recognition are very cool. But like we did something similar with the Lego demo. Where you built something out of Legos where the glasses were identifying that these are Legos. Step one, like great, but then it had to tell you which ones to pick up.
So we had that extra layer of usefulness because it's telling you, okay, select these ones. And then it was giving you instructions on how to put them together. I tried a lot of apps that only did step one that were like, okay,
Here's the thing. And I'm like, great, but like I didn't need five minutes of setup to get in here for you to tell me this is a coffee cup.
Sofia: I already knew it was a coffee cup.
Lori-Lee: Yeah.
Sofia: That's fair.
Lori-Lee: And maybe these were not like underwhelming, but they were demos I did not try because I was scared. Where pretty much all of the full body VR experiences where you're strapped into a rig. Like they had a bungee jumping one.
Sofia: Oh God.
Lori-Lee: yeah, I have video of it.
I'll insert the clip here. I don't even know what it was for because I saw it and I was like, Nope. But you were like in this rack. you're in a headset and you're like moving these levers and you're like, like an elliptical, but I don't know. I don't know what's going on in there.
And I don't need to know if many people ask me if I tried the bungee jumping, one, and I'm like, no.
Sofia: I am afraid of heights, so that would be a hard no for me.
Lori-Lee: The heights part didn't bother me, but lot of those where you're completely immersed and you're strapped into something, have a higher percentage of making me nauseous, like me personally, and like the idea of doing that with an audience, I was like, I don't
Sofia: No thanks.
Lori-Lee: Yeah. Get publicly ill on a conference floor.
Sofia: No, I get that. we did sandbox VR a while back, which I think I told you about, where it's technically full body, like you're wearing sensors on your wrists and legs so that the character can move when you move. And my like only requirement, 'cause I had a group of friends that wanted to go, as I said, we can't do the zombie one.
Because it like looked too scary from the trailers, and sure enough, the room next to us was doing the zombie one
Lori-Lee: I.
Sofia: and someone screamed the entire time. Like I was so relieved when I could get the rig on and put the headphones on because I was like, I cannot listen. To 'cause it, it sounded like someone was like going through a like haunted house and I was like, no, thank you.
I don't wanna do that one. It was very fun. The one that I did, it was in, I think it was called Rebel Moon. That was a good one. That was a full body experience. But yeah I could understand I was able to move freely in that one. So even though I had all the sensors and it was a VR headset and everything, it didn't really affect me.
But I think that's because I was able to move. I wasn't like physically confined. And in any way. So I totally support your decision to not try those, but we might have to pick one to try in a less dramatic situation that is not a conference where people are watching you.
Lori-Lee: Yeah. If I could have seen, like if they had a screen up to show what the person was seeing,
Sofia: I,
Lori-Lee: if it was just like a demo video, that would've made me maybe a bit more likely. But
Sofia: yeah, that's true.
Lori-Lee: I was one of these people, but once you're in there, there's a bunch of people like taking photos and videos of you, like strapped into this thing and I'm like I don't need that content on the internet.
Like I'm good.
Sofia: You are like, thanks, but no thanks.
Lori-Lee: Yeah.
Sofia: Okay. Flip side, what was the most surprising or the best demo that you did?
Lori-Lee: Completely unexpected. The demo I did was this game called Jigsaw Night, which was developed by someone we actually knew. I didn't know he was gonna be there. Steve Lucas, We worked with him at Magic Leap and he has
Struck out on his own and made this jigsaw puzzle app that's mixed reality.
So you can still see, your surroundings and you
Sofia: Oh,
Lori-Lee: Yeah. And the puzzle like
Sofia: I would love that.
Lori-Lee: it was so good. And the reason it was so good is because they made the user experience. So seamless, like the concept of doing a puzzle, like a regular jigsaw puzzle in mixed reality or augmented reality.
Like maybe not that groundbreaking, but they executed it so well, like most, experiences where you're in a full headset not. glasses or smart glasses, most people tap out after about seven minutes.
Sofia: Yeah.
Lori-Lee: That's the regular, right? Like the benchmark is, that's about as long, or is it five minutes?
It might even be less. I spent 17 minutes in there doing a puzzle and was not fatigued.
Sofia: That's awesome.
Lori-Lee: is like how satisfying it was to get the puzzle pieces to snap together, which you
Sofia: Oh, fun.
Lori-Lee: right? Like when you
Sofia: Yeah. You get that tactile like click.
Lori-Lee: so they made that in XR
Sofia: that's awesome.
Lori-Lee: it's not haptics because you're just using your hands to do this.
You don't have controllers, which I think was also a key part of it. I could just use my hands like you actually live with
Sofia: That's nice.
Lori-Lee: But yes, it was flawless, user experience. I actually heard a quote Palmer Lucky spoke at this one and he said The best UI is when it feels like there's no ui. And yeah, that's what this puzzle game was like. You can try it. It's out on Quest. I don't know if it's free or paid, but you could like, just because you can orient the puzzle anywhere. You could literally be lying down on your couch and just like doing a puzzle.
Sofia: Oh, I know what I'm gonna be doing with my class
Lori-Lee: Yeah, it was funny too 'cause while I was in there like my puzzle of hot air balloons over some, gorgeous looking valley.
Sofia: Pretty.
Lori-Lee: My puzzle was like up here and I was standing and doing it, and someone else in an adjacent experience was like, how do I put the puzzle? Not on the
Sofia: Down,
Lori-Lee: like down. And we were like, why would you wanna do that? It's gonna hurt your neck. 'cause now you're gonna be doing this.
Sofia: you're pulling the weight of the headset forward.
Lori-Lee: Yeah. And it was funny that people you're given all of this freedom to just, put things wherever is comfortable. But people still default back to but puzzles are supposed to go like on a table at like this height. And it's no, it can go anywhere.
Sofia: It's the back to the context, right? If a task has a really deep association with a physical context, that's gonna be super hard to break the assumption. I love that though.
Lori-Lee: Yeah.
Sofia: What was the conference we mentioned earlier that there's a spread of both enterprise and consumer technology at a conference like this.
At least for your experience, the demos that you saw, the conference, content and tracks that you went to. What dominated the conversations? Was it gaming and consumer tech, or was it enterprise?
Lori-Lee: I think the organizers of a WE are conscious to let people pick. Which of those tracks they want to do. And you can very much just live in that lane and not anything else. So I think it was fairly balanced, but as Snap was the main sponsor and a lot of the main sponsors were gaming companies, it did skew more consumer and specifically gaming.
And if you wanted Enterprise and I even saw some military tech there, like that was available. But yeah the gaming side definitely dominated.
Sofia: that makes sense. If you were gonna go again next year. Or if someone was going for the first time, is there anything you would do differently from this year? Is there any advice you would have for someone who is going the first time
Lori-Lee: I. So this year I went as a speaker, which was a very different experience. So I think if you have something to contribute like thought leadership or something you're an expert in and want to speak on, going as a speaker is a very different experience and I really liked it.
So I would do that again. I know you can also volunteer if you're not. Too sure if the conference is the right thing for you. I probably arrive a day earlier because I
Technically the day that the conference started, and most people arrived the day before and did badge pickup, and they had a whole extra morning to go through the convention floor and try out all of the different booths and demos and everything. because I was scheduled, doing different talks, I really only had one chance to do that.
Sofia: Maybe next year.
Lori-Lee: yeah, next year I went by myself and it's definitely more fun with coworkers and friends.
Sofia: Plus it's in Long Beach, which is beautiful, so
Lori-Lee: Yes, I
Sofia: hurt.
Lori-Lee: definitely took advantage of it being in Long Beach and went and walked by the marina and the beach every single day.
Sofia: I love that for you.
Lori-Lee: Yeah.
Sofia: I guess we'll have to see at next year's a WE what theme they picked because man, did they really hedge themselves by saying go mainstream. How do you follow that up will be interesting. So we'll have to check back in a year and see what they are talking about then.
It's certainly not an XR conference to miss. I think if you're. Serious about the space or seriously about the tech? There's a lot there.
Lori-Lee: Yes, it's a great place, a great opportunity as well if you are. Still, exploring the technology to get exposed to a lot of different applications and ideas and ways people are using it. Don't think many people there would've even known that Economic Forum is using XR to educate leaders about climate change
Sofia: That is so cool.
Lori-Lee: yeah. I really wanna see what they do next year for the theme and if it has anything to do with AI, I think they really resisted having AI in the theme and dominate it too much. Even in the topics, like I'm sure there were dedicated sessions and panels to AI integration, but it wasn't, get like any. Prime time, which I think was by design. So we'll see for next year if they can hold back the AI tide from taking over the event.
Sofia: crystal ball I think they will bring it in, but probably not with the terminology. So they'll use things like spatial computing with intelligence, spatial intelligence, smart glasses.
They'll just rebrand.
Lori-Lee: Yeah.
Sofia: Which is such an XR thing to do by the way, right? Microsoft comes out with their thing and is this is mixed reality, not augmented reality.
And then Apple came out this is spatial computing. We love a rebrand in the XR industry.
Lori-Lee: Yeah. constant reinvention, that's how you stay alive. And say that with the asterisks of the, they didn't have AI that might also have to do with who their sponsors were.
Sofia: True.
Lori-Lee: they did have other sponsors that might have been like, we don't want to lean into the AI thing just yet.
It might not be artificial intelligence, but there will be intelligence sprinkled
Sofia: I think so.
Lori-Lee: Yeah.
Sofia: It's gonna have to, we'll come back next year and follow up.
Lori-Lee: Yep.
Make sure you're subscribed. So you hear our 2026 recap and if you enjoyed this breakdown, make sure you check out our previous episodes about how we bootstrapped our business and how to find a co-founder. until then, we'll see you next time. Bye.
Sofia: Bye!
