Google posted a new edition of its Android Show today (Dec. 8) with a special focus on its Android XR platform. The show covered a variety of announcements, including confirmation that the Xreal Project Aura smart glasses will be launching in 2026.
However, the biggest news in our minds was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment that lasts 17 seconds in the 31-minute video.
At around the 11:50 minute mark of the above video, Austin Lee, VP of XR UG Group at Samsung, and Katherine Erdman, a Google XR product manager, gave a "sneak peek" of system-level autospatialization.
The feature basically takes all of your 2D content from games and images to YouTube videos and apps. It's a surprising announcement because it's essentially buried in this video and came out of nowhere.
However, we think this feature will be huge when it launches in 2026.
What does autospatialization do?
As mentioned, this was just a sneak peek of the feature, and Erdman says the feature won't launch for XR devices until "next year."
What we can see from the video is that you can tap a button in an app's settings menu to turn what you're looking at from 2D to 3D.
"You can turn regular 2D content into 3D in real time," Lee stated. He goes on to ask viewers to imagine what it would be like if every game, YouTube video, and even the web were immersive.
Immersion and 3D content are one of the selling points of VR and XR headsets. Hopefully, we'll learn more about how autospatialization will work in Android XR soon.
What else Google announced
A significant chunk of the video is meant for developers creating apps and content for the Android XR platform.
However, there are some teases. We got one of our first looks at the Xreal Project Aura in action. Briefly, Google showed off hand gestures for controlling menus and opening apps on the virtual display. Aura will run on a puck that also acts as a trackpad.
It's more than we've seen about the upcoming spatial glasses, but we finally have a clearer idea of how Project Aura might work when it launches next year.
They also showcased a partnership with the fashion brand Gentle Monster for high-end AI smart glasses. Other announced or teased features hint at glasses similar to Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses.
Tom's Guide Global Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer just went hands-on with the Google Android XR glasses, calling them Google Glass done right.
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