A South Korean Company Is Solving a Big Problem with AR Glasses

When you use AR glasses to look at virtual objects right in front of your face, something uncomfortable often happens. Your eyes struggle. You get dizzy or tired. For years, this has been one of the biggest reasons people don't want to wear AR glasses for long periods.

A South Korean company called LetinAR thinks it has found a way to fix this. The company, founded in 2016 by two high school friends, has developed a new type of lens that lets you interact with virtual objects up close — about 10 inches away — without the dizziness and eye strain.

What Is the Problem LetinAR Is Solving?

Here's what happens inside your eyes when you look at AR glasses. Your eyes naturally want to focus on objects that are far away or near you, and your eye muscles point toward objects based on their distance. These two things normally work together smoothly.

But with AR glasses, the virtual images appear to be up close, even though the light is actually coming from a screen that's at a fixed distance from your eyes. Your eyes get conflicting signals. The image tells them "look at something near me," but your eye muscles don't quite match up with what you're seeing. After 10 or 20 minutes, this causes discomfort.

LetinAR's new lens design solves this by using what it calls Pin Mirror technology. The lens lets your eyes focus properly on virtual objects that appear very close to you — around 25 centimeters, or about 10 inches away. This means your eyes get consistent signals, and you can use the glasses comfortably for hours.

The Lens Technology

LetinAR's main lens system is called PinTILT. Think of it as a hybrid: it borrows the best ideas from two older lens designs used in AR glasses and combines them into one.

The PinTILT lens is made from polymer — a type of plastic — not glass. This matters because plastic lenses can be shaped into very complex internal structures that would be impossible to grind into glass. Plastic is also lighter and cheaper to manufacture at scale.

The company offers two versions of its lenses for developers and manufacturers to test: T-Glasses, which has a 22-degree field of view, and KeplAR, which is designed for more advanced setups. Both let companies experiment with LetinAR's optical technology before committing to a full product.

How LetinAR Started

The company's core technology came from an unexpected place. LetinAR's co-founder was watching a partial solar eclipse on July 22, 2009, and noticed something interesting about how light behaved. That observation eventually led to the Pin Mirror lens design.

LetinAR has raised 4 billion Korean won — roughly $3 million — since it was founded. The company showed off its latest lens system, called FrontiAR Pro, at CES 2024, a major technology conference in Las Vegas.

What LetinAR Actually Does

LetinAR doesn't make finished AR glasses for consumers. Instead, it makes the optical components — the lenses and light-management systems — that other companies can put into their own AR glasses.

This is a smart business model. LetinAR stays focused on what it does best: solving the optical problems that hold AR back. Other manufacturers can use LetinAR's lenses in their products without having to solve these problems themselves.

Why This Matters

The broader context here is that AR technology has been stuck on a handful of technical problems for years. One of the biggest has been user comfort — people don't want to wear glasses that make them dizzy or tired. LetinAR's solution is meaningful because it removes one of the main reasons people avoid AR glasses.

If AR glasses become comfortable enough to wear all day without fatigue, more people and businesses will adopt them. That could open up entirely new uses: surgeons could use AR during complex operations, factory workers could follow step-by-step assembly instructions overlaid on their equipment, and designers could manipulate 3D models with their hands from across a room.

The company has won industry awards — including recognition from CES and from SPIE, a professional group focused on optical technologies — which suggests that other experts believe LetinAR's approach is technically sound.

LetinAR represents what happens when a small team focuses tightly on one hard problem instead of trying to build an entire product line. The company has positioned itself to benefit from the growing interest in AR without having to compete directly against the large tech companies that make finished glasses.