Facebook confirms smart glasses without releasing augmented reality this year
Facebook confirms that it will release smart glasses together with Ray-Ban this year. Contrary to previously thought, the glasses will not have augmented reality functions. It is not yet clear which functions the glasses will have.
The glasses can be wirelessly connected to a smartphone, but do not use augmented reality. It is still unclear which functionalities the glasses will have. Speaking to Bloomberg, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s head of AR and VR, says he doesn’t want to overhype the goggles: “The goggles are definitely connected and they have a lot of functionality, but let’s talk about what functionality exactly. “. He does say emphatically that they don’t call the glasses augmented reality glasses, but ‘smart glasses’, because the glasses do not come with an AR overlay.
Facebook has been working on smart glasses for some time now. In 2017, the company announced AR glasses for the first time, but then indicated that the technology had not progressed far enough. In 2018, Facebook confirmed that it was working on augmented reality glasses. At the end of 2019, Bosworth also indicated that he was also working on its own operating system for AR glasses. For that, it hired Windows NT developer Mark Locovsky, among others.
Last September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced smart glasses again during Facebook Connect, a conference of Facebook Reality Labs, the division of Bosworth, which is also responsible for the Quest 2. Facebook also started testing AR glasses. under the name Project Aria. Those glasses have an 8-megapixel camera and microphone, weigh about 70 grams and have Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 5 and have GPS, a barometer, a compass and gyroscope.
In the same month, CNBC News reported, citing anonymous sources, that Facebook plans to release AR glasses around 2024 that the company sees as a replacement for the current smartphone. Those glasses must be able to answer telephone calls and have a small AR screen.
Image of Project Aria, Facebook’s previously announced smart glasses