AR glasses for everyone: The Race is on

Augmented reality on smartphones is just the beginning

Some of you will immediately ask: “AR glasses? For every day? Do I need that?” Others may remember the debacle with Google’s Glass Project and consequently will not have high expectations. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick in judging this. Sure, it’s great when you explore three-dimensional, virtual copies of real products with your smartphone in augmented reality for the first time, which have previously been digitized with our technologies. But, nonetheless, doing so we feel as if we were researchers and exploring the world with a magnifying glass. So far, we just need the small smartphone screen or the slightly larger tablet as a display instrument. A by no means insignificant limitation that we do not immediately notice due to the enthusiasm for the new, groundbreaking beauty of augmented reality and which we therefore perceive as normal.

This is what the new Spectacles 4 from Snap looks like. Lots of bold technology in a small space.

Image: Snap Inc.

Here’s a promise: Everyday AR glasses for everyone will be available very soon

And it is precisely this limitation that will disappear as soon as everyday AR glasses are available for everyone. No expert has the slightest doubt that this kind of AR glasses will be available in the very near future. We do not yet know what these glasses will look like in detail. But for a long time, it has been rumored that Apple and Facebook are well advanced in the development of such glasses.

Snap Inc. from Santa Monica, CA (USA) sets the pace

Last Thursday, May 20th, Snap Inc., the company behind SnapChat, unexpectedly opened the race for such glasses. As part of its partner summit, Snap Inc. presented its fourth generation “Spectacles” – AR glasses weighing 134 grams that enrich the user’s real environment with virtual objects. Equipped with two cameras, four microphones, two loudspeakers and a translucent display that is quite powerful with up to 2,000 nits, it masters the tracking of hands, markers and of course the surfaces of the environment. The whole thing sounds like a technical treat and promises a lot of fun.

Before we can buy them, however, we must be patient. Snap Inc. is currently testing the glasses with selected customers.

Snap Inc. is increasingly becoming a thought leader in augmented reality. With the just introduced Spectacles 4 there will be endless new possibilities. Not only – as for most of our customers – in the AR presentation of products.

Video: Snap Inc.

What about Apple’s AR glasses?

As always with Apple, you can only listen carefully to external sources. While Bloomberg announced in January that Apple’s AR glasses are still years away from a market launch, DigiTimes expects a start of sales in 2021.

We should know more in about two weeks: Apple will present the next versions of its operating systems to developers at its WWDC 2021 developer conference on June 7th. If a market launch of the AR glasses is planned this year, references to these devices in the early versions of iOS 15 are very likely.

Together, augmented reality will be a lot more fun. Here is Snap Inc.’s vision.

Video: Snap Inc.