Glasses that can be used to display digital content in the real world are considered the next important computer platform. The Snapchat creators have now presented theirs.
The creators of the Snapchat photo app were the first in the tech industry to introduce computer glasses suitable for everyday use, with which digital content can be displayed in the user’s field of vision. Such glasses are expected from Apple and Facebook, among others – but the developer company Snap overtook them with the presentation on Thursday.
The “Spectacles” glasses only show the virtual objects in a limited part of the field of view. It is initially only available to users selected by Snap and is not available for purchase. The combination of digital content and the real world is known as augmented reality (AR). So far, the technology has mainly been used on smartphone screens, and Apple has been building on it for years.
After starting out with fun functions and digital art, AR is increasingly being used for business applications, said co-founder and boss Evan Spiegel of the German Press Agency. But AR glasses will probably only be able to exploit the full potential of the technology in the next ten years.
So far, we’ve used AR on a small screen, as if we were looking at the world through a toilet paper tube. If we have a much wider field of vision in the future and can use our hands free, it will create entirely new possibilities.
The biggest challenge in the development of AR glasses is currently finding the right balance between the largest possible field of vision for the digital content and the power consumption and the size of the components required, said Spiegel.
It will be a decade before glasses are widely used
One battery charge is currently sufficient for around 30 minutes. “The technological limitations of the hardware today demand a lot of compromises.” Therefore, it will be a decade before the glasses are widely used by consumers, Spiegel estimated.
Snap glasses weigh 134 grams and have multiple cameras, microphones and speakers. They are significantly lighter and more compact than the HoloLens glasses from Microsoft that the software company offers for companies. Another pioneer was the start-up Magic Leap, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing a high-tech headset that required so much processing power that you had to wear a small computer on your belt. “All other products look like a helmet,” Spiegel told the Financial Times. “I don’t think anyone expected us to be ready.”
Bosch was traded as a supplier for Apple glasses
At the beginning of 2020, at the technology trade fair CES, the German technology group Bosch also presented the prototype of light and slim AR glasses in which route instructions or chat messages can be displayed, for example. The images are projected directly into the eye. Bosch was traded in the industry as a possible supplier to Apple – while the iPhone company itself, as usual, does not even confirm that it is working on glasses. Recently, however, it was speculated that Apple could give an outlook on the device at its developer conference WWDC at the beginning of June.
The “Spectacles” glasses are currently primarily intended to enable Snapchat users to create videos of up to ten seconds with cool digital effects. So that leaves a wide field for other application scenarios.
