We started OuiSnow because of something that happens on every ski trip: your group splits up. Someone's in the bathroom, someone went ahead to the lift, someone's still getting coffee. You end up spending a significant amount of the day managing logistics instead of skiing. Then you want to check the live status of your favorite sector, at the risk of your phone falling from the chairlift - and as a bonus, your hands get cold in the process.
The obvious solution is to put location sharing and navigation in your field of view, hands-free. Nobody has built this yet because the hardware wasn't ready.
Last May we took Apple Vision Pros up to Les Deux Alpes at 3,600 meters to see if the basic idea worked. This wasn't beta testing. This was us trying to find out early whether we were crazy. Unsurprisingly, skiing with a Vision Pro strapped to your face is genuinely dangerous - ex-Apple employees warn you can go blind if you fall - so we were very careful. But the core concept held up.
What surprised us was how interested people were. Ski instructors, athletes in training, resort staff - many wanted to try it. Partly because a Vision Pro on a ski slope gets attention! But partly because everyone has been in this situation: cold hands, can't find friends (or family), wondering about upcoming conditions.
To develop this properly, we built a custom HUD simulator in Swift that mimics AI glasses behavior while staying inside Apple's developer environment. That let us iterate fast without waiting for actual hardware (which we're still waiting for).
Of course, we depend on the major companies and their roadmaps. Meta has great distribution - 7M glasses sold last year - but the SDK is very early and there's no app store. Google has Android XR and a solid SDK, but no glasses yet. Apple's glasses will probably have the best SDK and ecosystem integration, but we can't wait for that device to start building - so we're experimenting now.
We're running closed beta tests in Les Sept Laux and Trois Vallées with friends and their Meta glasses. We're starting small and adding testers gradually. If you ski a lot and like shaping early products, we'd love your help.
