A lot of long time forum members are probably thinking you sound like you know what you are talking about. NOT
By all accounts the retro reflector throws back most of the light and gives a bright image. Significantly it allows the viewer to see things at a natural optical distance and reduces headache and disorientation some users experience with other devices.
Why not listen to the old Amphour episode Jeri did with Chris and Dave to hear more about it. Then come back with your comments still not having worn a pair and seen for yourself.
It's funny you should talk about seeing for myself when you clearly have not seen them with your own two eyes and are just parroting back what others tell you.
I may not have used these glasses personally, but I have used the next best thing: a pico projector. And I can tell you that with a pico projector projecting onto a white surface in a well lit room, is barely visible with the projector a few feet away from the surface.
Now, the retro-reflective surface will improve this some, but there's one factor you cannot escape: Light cannot make a surface darker, and the retro-reflector will always appear gray. That right there kills your contrast, and is why whenever anyone uses any projector, even ones which can put out far more light, they do so in dark rooms.
Have you not noticed that every demo of this thing is in a dark room?
Here is a screenshot from their demo, with the image projected from the camera's point of view so you can see it:
Do you see any black in that projected image? No. The contrast is terrible. And that's in a dimly lit room.
Let's see what happens if we crank the light up in the room a bit:
This is simulated of course, but should be close to what the image would look like if the room were more well lit. Now imagine if instead of it being a room of average brightness in the evening, it were a sunny day. My living room is twice as bright as this with all the shades pulled down in the summer and I live in the northeast where we don't exactly get the most sun.
This really shouldn't come as a surprise either. Just how much light do you think you could get out of three tiny LEDs in a headset without it getting up to 150 degrees in a few minutes? They're probably driving the LEDs with no more than 1W so the headset gets warm but doesn't burn you, and they're spreading what little light they have over a large area.
Anyway, all speculation aside, the photo above proves that I said about the contrast. Even in the best of conditions, it's not great.