But First…Cool, if Real
Mixed reality rock climbing assistance, just in case Alex Honnold's free solo of Taipei 101 has you inspired:
Mixed reality rock climbing assistant: cool, if real
Becoming Dauntless
Crack open any Psych 101 textbook and a few chapters in, you'll find discourse on Cognitive Load Theory. It holds a key to beating burnout.
Psychologists describe cognitive load as the mental effort required to process information. We all have a limited amount of mental energy available at any given time, and cognitive load comes from two sources:
The complexity of the knowledge we need to process, and
The way that information is presented.
Most consumer technology increases cognitive load: more scrolling, more information, more notifications, more communication channels. Tech companies invest billions into making information as digestible as possible to offset these extra mental demands. But even with algorithm-curated feeds and push notifications, we max out our cognitive capacity because there's simply too much to process. The result? Most people have little tolerance left for complex or contradictory information.
The combination of AI and extended reality (XR) has brought cognitive load theory into the mainstream conversation, particularly for the combined technology's ability to automate basic tasks, present information more effectively, and change how we conceptualize complex information.
At Dauntless, we've explained this benefit for years as "automating processes and allowing humans to focus on the problems that only humans can solve," for example, when educating managers on the Katana platform. Now, we can say "reduce cognitive load," and people immediately understand.
Construction workers, air traffic controllers, emergency responders, pilots, doctors, and nurses all work in roles that frequently burn people out due to constant context switching and high cognitive demands, made worse by long hours and isolation. These are exactly the jobs the XR industry has targeted with solutions designed to make work less grueling: guided workflows, heads-up displays, remote support, automated reporting, intuitive data visualization, agentic automations, and object recognition, to name a few.
The tragic reality? Adoption is slow. While some argue "the tech isn't there yet," the truth is simpler and more brutal: it's easier to keep burning people out, sometimes to the point of death, than to start investing in an upgrade.
If you want to break the burnout cycle at work here are some questions you can ask:
What would need to change in your organization for cognitive load reduction to become a purchasing priority rather than a "nice-to-have"?
If you manage people in high-cognitive-load roles, ask them what's one small intervention you could implement this quarter to reduce unnecessary mental burden. Their answer might surprise you.
What is the cost of burnout measured using a metric like turnover in your team and compare it to the investment in cognitive load-reducing technology?
Tech News to Make You Smarter
Spatial Computing Powers Progress in Physical AI (Remix Reality). Speaking of new buzzwords, here's another one for your tech term codex: physical AI. Physical AI is technology that allows autonomous systems like robots, drones, and self-driving vehicles to understand the physical world. We can get the information to those robotic systems by installing sensors and/or by integrating with existing sensors on spatial tech, including smartglasses, phones, and tracking tags. I covered this back in 2021 about how Apple AirTags use ARKit to understand space and help you find your lost car fob.
Jobs on the Rise in Atlanta (LinkedIn): AI/ML researchers, tax director, data center connections, and my personal favorite, founders. These roles are telling of a post-AI job market, split between jobs that support AI proliferation, and jobs that we don't trust AI to do (or in the case of founders, can't do pre-AGI).
French Startup Lynx Revealed Their New Mixed Reality Headset, The R-2 (Road to VR). This surprisingly low-profile headset has a 126° field of view (compared to Quest's 110°). What caught our attention: it has a flippy-uppy (technical term) visor on the headset. It was one of the features of the HoloLens 2 we loved because it made the headset more practical to use. Lynx is enterprise and prosumer focused, with a bespoke operating system based on Android 14. It means you can sideload APKs, but don't expect games available on this iteration of the device. Tyreil Wood on YouTube has an in-depth video here.
Distance Technologies Unveils Augmented Reality HUD for Military Vehicle Operators. You may have seen a heads-up display (HUD) in airplane cockpits or luxury cars. A HUD provides an "assisted reality" experience, which we posted an explainer about this week. It's not a spatial computer, but it's a headset that shows you can provide value in saving people from having to look down at their phones. Maintaining situation awareness is critical for military personnel and XR users in hazardous jobs like construction. As more people start using everyday devices like Meta Ray-Bans or Xreals while walking, driving, or commuting, "situational awareness" is something we will likely find ourselves inquiring about when buying a new wearable.
Distance Technologies HUD
The posts, memes, job postings, and videos that caught my attention this week:
Unity is hiring non-AI-related roles in gaming (LinkedIn): game netcode engineers, graphics engineers, and integration engineers.
Tools to Create Spatial Audio That Tricks Your Brain (LinkedIn): In a good way.
Trash Your Cockpit Posters (Instagram): Student pilots rejoice. Plus, you can get Flight Deck for 25% off with code PPL26-6DEE7D. Redeem on the app if you can; typing in VR still sucks.
Recently Played >
What we listened to this week
Ted Postol of MIT's Breakdown of US Missile Defense (YouTube) after watching House of Dynamite on Netflix.
Overheard on Slack
Enter the chat. What our execs are talking about…
“I think if I say "human factor design" enough times in the accessibility white paper, it will summon him like Beetlejuice?”
“I'm manifesting a huge tax burden for us for 2026.” Entrepreneur goals.
“Platform lock is one of the silent killers of XR.”
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📸 This is a real app called Smart Climb on Snap Spectacles by Eleanor Taylor.
