Any number of companies are
making augmented reality glasses.
Not exact matches
And lightweight
augmented reality glasses for everyday wear have so far failed to
make headway (think Snap Spectacles or Google
Glass).
Companies that
make parts for
augmented reality glasses — including Vuzix, WaveOptics, Lumus and Apple supplier Quanta — all have products in the pipeline for that time frame.
Augmented -
reality glasses already
make it possible to visualise what was once unseeable, by overlaying graphics onto your field of view.
The emergence of Google
Glass made a big splash, and got people talking about
augmented reality and the possibilities it promised.
German optics company Carl Zeiss and Deutsche Telekom
made a joint bet on
augmented reality smart
glasses, having recently founded a startup dedicated to researching and developing such solutions.
Apple is taking
augmented reality seriously and rumors are already circulating that the company is
making its own pair of AR
glasses.
Taking into account recent reports that the Cupertino giant has been working on its own smart
glasses in the style of Google
Glass, the move towards developing technologies for
augmented reality makes a lot more sense.
Google is reportedly working on a standalone headset that blends
augmented reality with virtual
reality, which could
make up for Google
Glass.
Apple's smart
glasses probably won't be ready for another year or two at the earliest, but if you're still wondering what a pair of
augmented -
reality glasses from Apple might look like, Freelancer.com — a popular freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace — recently held a contest to see what a pair of Apple -
made smart
glasses should look like.
As my colleague Lauren Goode mentioned, Apple is supposedly developing
augmented reality glasses, and it needs apps to
make that work.
Although its price and design — the Blades look like something stolen from a 3D showing of Star Wars — will almost certainly
make the Vuzix Blade a niche product, the addition of Alexa and an
augmented reality display
makes them more practical than previous wearables, such as Google
Glasses and the one - trick Snapchat Spectacles.
Perhaps Apple will adopt some of Xiaomi's new solutions for next year's iPhone, which is expected to be
made mostly of
glass to deliver a groundbreaking new
augmented reality experience.
Suffice it to say that Bose didn't actually create anything new or groundbreaking here, but by
making audio the focus of its unique
augmented reality glasses, it was able to create an experience uncluttered by unnecessary visual overlays and a level of immersion that's ordinary in a way that doesn't push past being too gimmicky.