17 Sep 2026
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Mike Boland
AWE Talks: Behind Specs' Full-Stack Approach
Welcome back to AWE Talks, our series that revisits the best AWE conference sessions. With AWE USA recently concluded, there's a fresh batch of stage footage to keep us occupied for weeks.
We continue the action and insights this week with a deep dive on the full AR stack that Snap has built. In honor of this week's Specs launch, we look back at this panel of Snap execs that explains their design decisions.
See the summarized takeaways below, along with the full session video. Stay tuned for more video highlights each week and check out the full library of conference sessions on AWE's YouTube Channel.
Speakers
Mike Boland, Chief Analyst, ARtillery Intelligence
Qi Pan, Director, Computer Vision Engineering, SPECS
Russell Patton, SPECS Product Manager, Snap
Kenny Kubala, Sr. Director, Hardware Engineering, SPECS
Key Takeaways & Analysis
- One of Snap Specs' hallmarks is its combination of AR attributes, which it alone holds.
- It's standalone, optical see-through, full-feature dimensional AR, and consumer-geared.
- No other device can claim all four capabilities, though some check one or two boxes.
- For example, Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses are standalone but not full AR.
- Vision Pro is full AR but isn't optical see-through nor standalone.
- Magic Leap 2 (end of life) is optical see-through and full AR, but not standalone.
- Xreal Aura comes closest and checks all boxes except that it's not standalone.
- Achieving this combination wasn't easy and, as always, required tough tradeoffs.
- To pull it off, Snap says that it required building and owning the full stack.
- This enables control over key factors like latency across the system.
- It also enables tighter synchronization and sensor fusion for performance gains.
- We hear a similar narrative from Meta, Apple, and others – a universal reality in XR.
- Assembling these pieces isn't easy nor cheap, but Snap's been doing it for 10 years.
- This boosts Specs' chances of outperforming other devices, and that could be seen soon.
- Meanwhile, generational evolutions will come in time, as the price also goes down.
- This will take years, but Snap (and Specs Inc.) says that it's committed to that long haul.
Want more XR insights and multimedia? ARtillery Intelligence offers an indexed and searchable library of XR intelligence known as ARtillery Pro. Learn more here.
