Standing on a crate inside Walt Disney Studios Stage 1 is Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy. He spoke to many people wearing the same ordinary looking sunglasses as me, and was larger than life, speaking with full body movements and natural movements.

Then I took the glassand I can see that Rocket is on the screen, not an animatronic figure standing in a physical crate. When Rocket stops moving, from behind a curtain — Wizard of Oz-style — steps an actor who does all the movements and voice work for Rocket.

I can wear these glasses all day and never know there is anything unusual about them. They’re regular sunglasses when you’re out and about, before changing XR glasses when you look at a special screen.

LED screen technology and glasses from Liminal Spacea startup chosen as part of 2025 Disney Accelerator Program. Start by giving AR experiences in music concerts, Liminal Space creates display systems with microLED chip technology. It creates holographic 3D displays that are used for everything from stadiums and arenas into small spaces like attractions and galleries.

During a Demo Day event at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank last November, Liminal Space co-founder and CEO Nathan Huber explained on screen that he wants to improve how virtual reality is a “solo, isolating experience” because you are wearing a large headset alone, and all you see is the display. You cannot share it with people around you.

“We can give you the same level of immersion and awe (as VR), but you can see your friends and family … and do it all for one to 10,000 people at the same time,” Huber said in the Demo Day video, describing a world where things “are augmented by digital enhancements around you.”

Liminal Space sunglasses are closer to augmented reality than VRas well as a big step up from the old 3D glasses currently used in theme parks.

While VR — like Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta Search 3 — requires a headset and plunges you into a completely virtual world, AR overlaps with the real world with graphics. Smart glasseslike Ray-Bans on Meta (that Disneyland is already experimenting), use AR to overlay real-world information, as well as provide camera recording functions and phone attachment.

As theme parks compete with each other to provide their guests with most immersive atmosphere possibly, Disney’s backing of Liminal Space shows that it is interested in adding more hyperrealistic screens to its parks.

How realistic are these XR visuals?

Following Rocket’s steps, the Liminal Space demo screen takes us around the world Avatarfeaturing scenes from future sequels (no photos allowed). We fly through thick green vegetation, bulging trees, floating cliffs, neon flowers and flying reptiles.

“The quality of the visuals — it’s bright, it’s crisp, I’m seeing details in this footage that I’ve never seen before,” said Leslie Evans, executive Imagineer at Walt Disney Imagineering R&D, in the video. “People painstakingly interpret these scenes, and when that happens, I want you to see every detail.

It feels as real as 3D and VR can: Everyone sighs as we reach a summit in the world of Avatar and tilt forward, “falling” into the rainforest below. Despite these dizzying heights, it’s somehow less nauseating than strapping on a full VR headset and looking at another reality. Maybe it’s because you can still see the real world around you, or because you’re not wearing a heavy headpiece.

Leaving aside the comparisons of VR and AR, these glasses offer a more sophisticated version of the screens of Avatar Flight of Passage ride on Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, especially with the new Avatar visuals I experienced. The Liminal Space sunglasses are the next step up from the awkward, plasticky sets you’re given at the start of rides and shows like PhilharMagic and Toy Story Mania — the ones you say don’t wear until the show starts, and that only works if you look dead straight at the screen and put them on properly — with the idea that you can walk comfortably in them all day and make them work anywhere.

It seems this is what Disney intends to do with the technology (Disney told me it is still exploring the possibilities and has nothing to share right now). The glasses have a double duty, both sunglasses and every time you find a screen in an attraction or while walking in a land.

Modular screens throughout the theme park?

Liminal Space glasses also work from multiple viewing angles while viewing the screens, which help create the feeling of total immersion.

Michael Koperwas, supervisor of Creative Development and Digital Design at Industrial Light and Magic — the famed visual effects studio founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas in the 1970s — talked about using modular screens from Liminal Space for park experiences.

“All these different screens create these low-friction, beautiful ways to expand the world you’re already in,” Koperwas said during a showcase video at Disney Demo Day. “Having a modular display like that is essential to making these locations feel neat, feel magical, feel beautiful, and full of surprises.”

The company’s glasses are cheap to make, Liminal Space said, meaning theme parks can easily provide thousands of pairs to guests, who can even leave with them at the end of the day and bring them back for their next visit.

This isn’t Disney’s first wearable park: In 2013, Disney introduced the MagicBand for guests to purchase and wear at Walt Disney World, allowing them to swipe the band to enter the parks and their hotel rooms, and pay for merchandise and food. the MagicBand Plus added more functionality and arrived at Disneyland in 2022.

In the Liminal Space demo, I switched from black framed sunglasses to white ones and went into the next room. It has a large circular screen showing Impressionist works of art, which fade from one to the next. A large Vincent Van Gogh stared at me, inviting me to enter his Self-Portrait with Straw Hat. The image is transferred to Van Gogh’s Sunflowersand the soft saffron petals curled towards me.

The image changes again, and this time I’m not just looking at a century-old painting — I’m standing on a European street as snow falls around me. Like a child watching a 3D movie for the first time, I couldn’t help but reach out to try to touch the drifting snowflakes. Through the Liminal Space sunglasses, they move around me.

And unlike the traditional 3D glasses you’d wear to watch a Disneyland movie, where the image doesn’t get any closer as you get closer to the screen, the Liminal Space demo feels like you’re walking into the video itself. As I slowly walked closer to the falling snow, it began to fall around me, moving in my peripheral vision as well as in front of me.

Walt Disney Imagineering wants to give park visitors immersive experiences like this that aren’t just like watching a TVsaid Jody Gerstner, executive of Show Systems at Walt Disney Imagineering.

“Because the circular (screen) is so good at this bright image, and because the filter gives you an unobstructed view when you move your eyes back and forth, this can be a big win for our visitor quality,” Gerstner said in the Demo Day video.

Speaking to a packed theater, Bonnie Rosen, general manager of the Disney Accelerator, said the whole point, whether it’s AI, 3D printing or VR, is creating the imagination that comes to life.

“Innovation happens every day at Disney,” he said. “This company lives and breathes creativity. We just don’t talk about it until it’s inevitable, and then someone calls it ‘Disney magic.'”