Augmented Reality Glasses (AR Glasses) is an idea of packing all the currently available features into a stylish form. Wearing glasses is really cool and if glasses comes along with technological features, it can spice up the feel of glasses. Many of the companies are trying to develop such products. But, the fact is that no one has been able to develop such gadget successfully. Google too tried their hands to develop Augmented Reality Glasses known as ‘Google Glass’ but failed to do so. Magic Leap’s bulky headset and Intel’s Vaunt glasses are good examples of great attempts to build such glasses. Facebook and Apple is not showing any feeds related to this but might be developing such things secretly.
Snapchat’s View on AR
With technological development, consumers over the world are waiting for new products. According to Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel, taking risk is very important when you want to come up with great product ideas. Investing proper amount of time to get the things right is very important. A lot of factors are important to consider in developing such AR technology for future and good timing is one of those features. They will try to develop products and wait for the proper time for taking risk. Building augmented reality glasses could be considered as the biggest idea of Snapchat. But, today’s state of augmented reality hardware is far away that is required to develop desirable AR gadgets.
Snap Spectacles
Snap came up with v1 spectacles in 2016 with a way to record circular first-video. But, it did not work perfectly because of poor resolution, limited battery life, can’t take selfies and many more. They managed to sell about 150,000 pairs of it and lot of pairs remained unsold. But, after two years, Snap is back with v2 and v3. We can expect a lot of improvements such as water resistant, range in colors, smart features and many more. Snap will be launching v2 spectacles late in 2018 and v3 in 2019. This would not deliver the exact AR glasses which will seamlessly change our lives, but would try to meet AR technology imagined by the users.
Struggle of Snapchat for AR
Actually, Snapchat is a camera company and it does not make smartphones. But, they are trying their hands on augmented reality with softwares. AR glasses are supposed to overlay virtual reality objects on our view. Glasses can make you look like a real life spy. But, it creates a barrier between you and others. Also, while you are wearing them, others may think that what we might be recording. Unless such glasses come with some superpowers, it won’t create a competition with smartphones. Snap being a camera company, cannot meet with elegance of products from the company such as Apple. If Snap wants to come up with v5 or v6 spectacles in the future, they will have to spend billions of dollars and years to develop AR glasses with some supernatural powers.
