Kyle Piira

Tag: travel

  • A Portable Screen That Mostly Gets Out of the Way

    I recently picked up a pair of Xreal 1S display glasses with one very specific goal in mind: something I could use on longer trips on planes, trains, and buses to watch movies and TV without hauling around a full VR headset or squinting at my phone.

    This is my first pair of display glasses, but I’ve spent time at both ends of the spectrum. I’ve owned full VR headsets like the Quest 2, Quest 3, and the Apple Vision Pro. Those give you a giant virtual screen, but they’re heavy, bulky, and not something you casually bring on a trip.

    At the other extreme are products like the Meta Ray-Bans. They’re basically normal glasses with a bit of tech sprinkled in. Convenient, yes. Useful for watching a movie on a plane, not really.

    The Xreal glasses sit in the narrow space between those two worlds. They don’t try to be a full immersive VR system, and they’re not just smart glasses with a few novelty features. They’re aimed squarely at one thing: acting like a portable, private screen you can actually use while you’re in transit.

    Apple markets the Vision Pro heavily as a movie-watching device, but I never enjoyed that experience. The headset is heavy, and I never stopped being aware that it was strapped to my face. That’s very different from normal glasses, where after a few minutes you mostly forget they’re there. On top of that, the Vision Pro is fragile, bulky, and impractical to travel with. Bringing it along just to watch something on a plane or train would take up most of my personal item space, and it never felt worth it.

    The Quest 3 has similar issues. It’s lighter and cheaper, so I worried less about damaging it, but it’s still awkward to travel with and not something I’d casually toss into a bag.

    That’s where I hoped the Xreal glasses would be different, and for the most part, they are. They’re small and light enough to fit easily into a backpack, or even a fanny pack if you really wanted to. That alone makes them far more realistic to bring on public transportation. They’re also light enough that they don’t feel like they’re dragging your face down after half an hour.

    Another thing I like is that they don’t have an onboard computer. Everything comes from my iPhone. That means one less device to charge or think about when I’m traveling. The glasses do drain my phone battery faster, but I already carry battery packs anyway. I have a MagSafe battery that snaps onto the back of my phone and charges it wirelessly, and I can still plug the glasses into the USB port at the same time. That setup works well enough that I didn’t need to buy anything extra.

    I do wish there were a wireless option. Having a cable plugged into the phone adds friction, especially when you’re shifting around in a seat. Being able to just AirPlay to the glasses would be ideal. I understand why it’s wired, since the phone is also powering the glasses, but it’s still something I notice.

    Because the glasses simply mirror my phone, every iOS app works. This turned out to be a bigger deal than I expected. On VR headsets, app support is always spotty. The Vision Pro still lacks official apps for major services like YouTube and Netflix, and on the Quest you often end up watching content through a browser. That’s fine at home, but it’s frustrating when you’re on a plane or train and want offline downloads to actually work.

    With the Xreal glasses, I just download content ahead of time using the native apps. Netflix, YouTube, whatever. It all works exactly the way it does on my phone, with no workarounds.

    One thing I really don’t like is that the iPhone screen has to stay on for the glasses to keep displaying content. Ideally, the phone would behave like it’s connected to an external monitor and let me turn the screen off. That would save battery and feel much cleaner. Because the screen has to stay on, I had to disable auto-lock while using the glasses. I hate doing that. Auto-lock is a basic security feature, and I’ve already had a few moments where I set my phone down, forgot about it, and came back later to find the screen still on.

    For now, I’m manually toggling auto-lock on and off when I use the glasses. It works, but it’s annoying, and it feels like something Apple should be able to improve eventually.

    The displays themselves are better than I expected. I’ve tried doing real work in VR before, and it never stuck. With the Vision Pro, the resolution was incredible and text looked perfect, but the headset was too heavy to wear comfortably for long stretches. With the Quest 3, I didn’t even get that far because the resolution wasn’t good enough for reading code. Text felt blurry and pixelated, and I gave up quickly.

    Out of curiosity, I tried working in the Xreal glasses on my laptop while sitting on the couch. I managed about two hours without much trouble and probably could have gone longer. The text isn’t as sharp as the Vision Pro, but it’s noticeably better than the Quest 3. Clear enough that I didn’t feel eye strain or frustration.

    That said, I’m not replacing my monitors. I still prefer a normal setup, and wearing what look like oversized sunglasses during a Zoom call would look ridiculous. But as an occasional option, it worked better than I expected.

    Where the glasses really shine is watching movies and TV. You don’t need extreme resolution for that, and I actually prefer keeping the virtual screen a bit smaller so nothing clips at the edges of the field of view. The field of view isn’t huge, but it’s large enough that it doesn’t bother me.

    The glasses have two display modes. One anchors the screen in space, and the other has it follow your head. For movies, I prefer the follow mode. For work, the anchored mode makes more sense, since you can look toward different parts of the screen without the whole thing shifting around.

    They also include a feature that converts content into 3D. I was excited to try it, but was underwhelmed. It’s fine, but not great. It tries to guess what should pop out of the screen, and the results are inconsistent. Sometimes it’s more distracting than immersive. I turned it off after a few minutes and haven’t really felt the urge to use it again.

    These are more comfortable than a VR headset, but they’re still not normal glasses. After a while, the nose pads start to bother me, and the top of the glasses gets warm. Not hot, just warm enough that you notice it. Little things like that add up and remind you that you’re wearing something on your face.

    I don’t think I’ll use these much at home. I originally thought they might be nice for lying on the couch when the TV angle is bad, but I don’t find them comfortable enough to choose over just holding a tablet or phone.

    Overall, for what I bought them for, watching movies and TV while traveling, I’m very happy with the Xreal 1S glasses. They hit a sweet spot that VR headsets miss by being small, light, and practical. I don’t expect to use them for much beyond travel, but for that specific niche, they work surprisingly well.

    One other use case I’m curious about, but haven’t tried yet, is wearing them on a treadmill or exercise bike to watch content more comfortably. That might be a future experiment. For now, they’ve earned a spot in my travel bag.

  • Luxury Overnight Buses as an Alternative to Flying

    I recently came across an intercity bus service starting up in Europe that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. It’s an overnight bus, but not in the usual sense. Instead of upright seats and cramped legroom, the buses are built around fully lie-flat seats, similar to what you’d find in first class on a long-haul flight.

    Floor plan of a European luxury sleeper bus

    The idea is almost obvious once you hear it. Airlines already know how to make seats people can actually sleep in for eight or ten hours. So what happens if you take that same idea and put it on a bus, where the trip is slower but much cheaper to operate? At that point the comparison is no longer bus versus plane, but time versus comfort.

    If the entire trip happens while you’re asleep, the extra travel time matters a lot less. You board at night, go to sleep, and wake up somewhere else. There’s no early alarm, no airport security, and no sitting upright trying to doze for ninety uncomfortable minutes. In the best case, it barely feels like travel at all.

    Where this really starts to make sense is for trips that are just a bit too long to drive comfortably in one day. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and some of my family lives in Orlando. That drive is about eight hours on a good day. It’s long enough that you lose a full day to it, but short enough that flying can feel like overkill once you factor in the airport time.

    An overnight bus fits almost perfectly there. You leave Charlotte around 10 p.m., sleep through the night, and arrive in Orlando early the next morning. You didn’t spend the day driving, and you didn’t spend the night in a hotel. You just… arrived.

    That said, there’s one part of the European implementation that I think really works against the whole idea. Many of these routes include multiple intermediate stops. A single bus might start in one city, stop in several others along the way, and keep going past your destination.

    That sounds efficient on paper, but it creates a real problem for passengers. If you’re getting off at one of those intermediate cities, you may be forced to wake up at two or three in the morning. At that point the magic is gone. You’re tired, it’s dark, and there’s nowhere to go. Now you need a hotel anyway, which defeats one of the biggest advantages of the service.

    I think these routes should be strictly point to point. One bus per corridor. Charlotte to Orlando. Charlotte to Tampa. Charlotte to Miami. Airlines fill planes on these routes every single day. There’s no reason a well-designed overnight bus couldn’t fill up too.

    Going point to point also opens up something I think is crucial: treating the bus more like a hotel than a vehicle. Imagine arriving at your destination at 6 a.m. but not being forced off the bus immediately. Instead, your ticket includes a checkout time, maybe 9 or 10 a.m. If you want to get up and leave right away, you can. If you want to keep sleeping, you can do that too.

    That small change makes a huge difference. It turns the experience into transportation plus lodging, rather than just a long ride.

    Once you think about it that way, other details fall into place. Clean bathrooms are non-negotiable. Food should be available, even if it’s simple. A small breakfast option at the arrival depot would make mornings feel less rushed. Luggage handling could work the same way hotels do, with a claim system so people can leave when they’re ready instead of all at once.

    In theory, you could even plan trips where you string together several of these overnight routes and barely use hotels at all.

    This kind of service feels especially relevant in the United States. We used to have a far more extensive passenger rail network, but much of it is gone now, and recreating it at a national scale would take decades. What we do have is a massive interstate highway network that already connects most major cities.

    Intercity buses can take advantage of that immediately. The infrastructure is already there, and it’s effectively subsidized. For trips in the seven-to-ten-hour range, a comfortable overnight bus could easily compete with flying for a lot of people.

    Looking further ahead, this gets even more interesting when you consider autonomous driving. Long highway stretches are exactly where autonomy performs best. If the bus doesn’t need a human driver, that role could shift toward an onboard attendant instead. Someone whose job is to help passengers, keep things running smoothly, and generally make the experience better.

    That kind of staffing change could actually improve the service rather than cheapen it.

    This isn’t going to replace planes, and it’s not meant to. Nobody is taking an overnight bus from the East Coast to the West Coast. But for the many city pairs that sit in that awkward middle distance, this feels like a genuinely underexplored option.

    I would be surprised if something like this doesn’t eventually appear in the U.S. Once someone gets the execution right, it’s the kind of idea that feels obvious in hindsight.

  • Taxis still fall short

    I was recently in Miami, and like most trips I take in the U.S., my default plan for getting around was Uber or Lyft. I almost never take taxis anymore. It’s been many years since I last relied on one.

    But this time, I made an exception.

    I had just gotten off a cruise ship at the Miami cruise terminal. There was a clearly marked taxi stand right outside, with a line of cabs waiting. Our destination was a coffee shop in downtown Miami on 4th Street, no more than a five-minute drive. I could have called an Uber, but the taxis were already there, luggage in hand, no waiting. It seemed more convenient.

    I also had a bit of optimism going in. I’ve heard people say taxis have gotten better over the years. Some folks who strongly dislike Uber and Lyft will tell you taxis are fairer to drivers, better regulated, and generally less sketchy than they used to be 10 or 15 years ago. So I figured, fine, let’s give taxis another shot.

    That optimism didn’t last long.

    We got into the first cab in line, loaded our luggage, and told the driver where we were going. The moment he realized it was only a five-minute trip, his mood visibly shifted. He was clearly annoyed, borderline angry, that we weren’t going somewhere farther, like the airport.

    I get it. Longer trips pay more. But at the end of the day, taking fares is the job, and giving passengers attitude because the ride is short is just unprofessional.

    We got in the back seat and started driving. About halfway there, we stopped at a traffic light next to another taxi. Our driver rolled down his window. The other cab rolled down theirs. Then, right in front of us, our driver started complaining about us to the other driver, about how short the trip was and how ridiculous it was.

    We’re sitting right there in the back, listening to him complain about us like we weren’t even there. It was surreal.

    Then things got worse.

    As we approached 4th Street, our actual destination, the driver blew right past it. No turn. We kept going. 3rd Street. 2nd Street. 1st Street.

    Only then does he say, “Oh, you were going to 4th Street, weren’t you? Guess we’ll have to go around the block.”

    We looped all the way around, taking the long way back.

    I don’t believe for a second that he missed the turn by accident. I’m confident he did it intentionally to run up the meter. This is exactly the kind of behavior taxis have been infamous for forever, taking the long way, especially when you know the passengers are tourists.

    Eventually, we arrived.

    I asked how much it was.

    “Eighteen dollars.”

    For a five-minute drive. An Uber for the same trip would have been around $8.

    I asked if he took credit cards.

    “No. Credit card machine is broken.”

    At that point, I had basically hit every taxi cliché in one ride:

    • Driver gives attitude over a short trip
    • Complains about passengers while they’re in the car
    • Takes the long way to inflate the fare
    • Credit card machine “broken”

    We gave him a $20 bill, told him to keep the change, and left. The rest of the day was fine, but the experience stuck with me.

    What really struck me is how little taxis seem to have learned, even after more than a decade of competition from Uber and Lyft. This ride could have happened in 2006 and it would have felt exactly the same.

    The system feels fundamentally broken. Drivers are incentivized to behave badly, take longer routes, avoid short trips, and squeeze tourists for a few extra dollars. Because there’s no real accountability, the same behavior persists year after year.

    For all their faults, Uber and Lyft got one thing very right: incentives.

    Drivers aren’t paid more for taking longer routes, so there’s no reason to intentionally miss turns. If this had been an Uber, I’m confident the driver would have taken the most direct path, because dragging it out wouldn’t benefit them at all.

    So when people tell me, “Taxis are better now,” or “They’ve adapted,” I can only speak from experience. As of 2026, in Miami, they haven’t. They’re still just as scummy and unreliable as they’ve always been.

    Maybe in another 10 years they’ll finally figure it out.

    Or be replaced by Waymo.

  • Death by Poor Urban Planning

    Every time we hear about a tragic car crash, the story is usually framed around individual blame. Someone made a mistake, someone wasn’t paying attention, or someone was reckless. But beneath these headlines lies a harder truth. Our urban design itself creates the conditions for these deaths. Poor urban planning is not just an inconvenience or an aesthetic misstep. It is a public health crisis that costs lives every day.

    In too many American cities, Charlotte included, roads are engineered like highways. They are wide, fast, and hostile to anything but cars. Corridors such as Independence Boulevard prioritize vehicle flow over human life, encouraging high speeds and leaving pedestrians and cyclists exposed. In this environment, even a brief lapse of focus, just a few seconds, can turn a mistake into a tragedy.

    Accident on Independence Boulevard, Charlotte NC injuring 6 people

    Just a few hours ago, as I write this post, there was an accident on Independence Boulevard that sent six people to the hospital, one with severe life-threatening injuries. It is tempting to place all of the blame on a driver going too fast. The harder truth is that the driver was simply responding to incentives created by reckless city planning, such as wide lanes, high speed limits, and a lack of safe transit alternatives. If the road had been designed to slow speeds and protect people, it is likely this crash would not have been so devastating or have happened at all.

    And incidents like this are far from rare. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department website listed seven similar traffic events in just the past three hours alone.

    To err is human. Every driver will make mistakes behind the wheel, such as misjudging a turn, glancing at a phone, or reacting a second too late. A safe transportation system recognizes this reality and builds in forgiveness. Narrower lanes, slower speeds, and protective infrastructure can ensure that a mistake does not automatically mean death. But our current design does the opposite. It demands flawless driving from every user, every second. That is not just unrealistic. It is negligent.

    There is another layer to the problem. Many people simply should not be behind the wheel of heavy machinery. Teenagers, seniors, those with medical conditions, or people who are poor drivers are still forced to drive because cities have left them with no alternatives. By designing systems where car travel is the only viable option, we compel people into dangerous situations that put their lives and the lives of others at risk.

    The spread-out, car-dependent development pattern of low-density housing, long commutes, and seas of parking creates endless demand for driving at higher speeds. Strong Towns and other urbanist voices have long warned that this model is both financially unsustainable and physically dangerous. More driving leads to more crashes, and higher speeds lead to more fatalities. The math is simple, and it is killing us.

    If we want fewer deaths, we must stop pretending this is about individual failure. Real safety comes from systemic change.

    • Slower streets with narrower lanes, traffic calming, and enforced lower speed limits.
    • Safe alternatives such as protected bike lanes, sidewalks, and reliable public transit.
    • Walkable, mixed-use communities where housing and jobs are close together, reducing the need to drive.
    • Equitable design that prioritizes vulnerable road users and invests in underserved communities.

    We call crashes “accidents” as if they were unavoidable acts of fate. They are not. They are predictable outcomes of policy choices, zoning codes, and street designs. Every fatal crash reflects a system that refuses to put people’s lives above the convenience of cars.

    Poor urban planning kills. With better choices and people-first design, we can build cities where human mistakes no longer cost human lives.