“Exclusive news: Apple and Zeiss working together on augmented reality optics,” Robert Scoble reports via his Facebook page.
“A Zeiss employee confirmed the rumors that Apple and Carl Zeiss AG are working on a light pair of augmented reality/mixed reality glasses that may be announced this year,” Scoble reports.
“That explains why there was no augmented reality in Zeiss’s booth even though it was right in the middle of the AR area,” Scoble reports.
Full Facebook post here.
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Intriguing.
Need it be said? Fascinating…
I find it hard enough to find glasses I like as is, I find it hard to believe Apple will be apple to offer enough choice to make me bother with what is going to be a much more expensive pair of glasses (if only because of the tech). If it was some sort of universal technology that could be built into glasses by any company (glasses play?) with the software and processing done on your phone then I might be interested since the choice would be far greater..
Zeiss could be providing the projecting lens that would display on your own glasses.
Not sure how that would work. Unless it is a non-prescription pair of glasses, any projection system that would attach to any eyeglass frame would have to also account for the differences in the curvature of the glass surface on either or both sides of the prescription lens of your glasses.
The problem with glasses, VR, etc. is try keeping them on and using them for more than 15 mins. before your eyes bleed and your brain explodes. It is a problem not easily fixable, The solution will be hologram technology.
Not VR. AR. Big diference.
Not that big a difference. If you think about it visually, AR is just VR with transparency so you can see the real world at the same time. The big difference is that there is extra processing to properly overlay the VR image on the real world and less processing to render the entire scene.
Grad students at CSU, East Bay developed a fantastic AR prototype in the mid-90’s. It was bulky by today’s standards — all the components were hooked to a backpack frame — and it was powered by a motorcycle battery. But it was fantastic, with GPS, head tracking, binaural sound, voice command…the works. The glasses were by SONY and worked pretty well, essentially a heads-up display for animated elements related to the real world scene passing passively through the glasses (similar to tinted sunglasses). The experience was fun and not at all overwhelming — though the backpack got heavy after a while! Here we are 20 years later and AR is going to explode, IMHO, but much of it will be subtle, not necessarily a heavy “oh wow” experience.
“According to the Vision Council of America, approximately 75% of adults use some sort of vision correction. About 64% of them wear eyeglasses, and about 11% wear contact lenses, either exclusively, or with glasses.”
http://glassescrafter.com/information/percentage-population-wears-glasses.html
http://www.statisticbrain.com/corrective-lenses-statistics/
Smart glasses will also attract non eyeglass users, so there is a market for these devices.
What benefit would people realize by wearing smart glasses? Imagine a person shoveling the snow and having heart trouble. Their Apple Watch could detect an irregular heartbeat before an attack and communicate important life saving information to the smart glasses. How about a scenario where someone is trying to fit a heavy dresser through a narrow doorway? The user could use hand gestures in conjunction with smart glasses to measure the furniture and opening. This could prevent back injuries. The smart use-cases for smart glasses are endless.
There are also dumb, but fun use cases like altering the environment into a Christmas scene with Santa flying through the air and presents falling from the sky, or morphing your friend’s face into the YouTube star known as RiceGum. The possibilities are endless.
Your mention of measuring furniture and doorway sound like a job for the Lowe’s App on the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro already being sold that use’s Google’s Tango AR tech.
Sounds like Apple (Gl)assholes will be appearing soon.
It’ll be the Apple version, AppHole.
EyePhone anyone?