The image is called "chorus image" and it can be found on thecdn.vox-cdn.com.
The creator of augmented reality is in Spectacles.
The photo was taken by snap.
The tech industry focused a lot of its energy on a single question in the year 2021, who will build and own the next generation of the internet?
In one corner you have the upstarts who want to topple the existing world order and rebuild it from scratch. The companies give their name as a goal.
In the other corner you have the existing tech platforms, who think of the next generation of the internet as a slightly more interoperability version of the existing web. The new hardware will bring us together in a series of linked experiences that occupy an ever-increasing share of our waking hours. This is called the metaverse by platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has said that he imagines people bringing non-fungible token along with them as they traverse the company's virtual worlds. The battle for the metaverse has already attracted at least a half-dozen established companies investing billions of dollars in realizing it.
Let's talk about one that flies under the radar and is taking a more straightforward path. While other companies are painting grand visions of the metaverse in press interviews and op-eds, Snap has quietly focused on two of the ideas that can actually bring it into existence: steadily improving its hardware every year or so, and attracting developers by giving away that hardware and offering them ways
:noupscale is a file by the author of the article.
The core function of augmented reality glasses is to project images in front of your face, turning your field of vision into a virtual computer screen on which you can receive messages, play games, and interact with digital or real-world objects for educational or commercial purposes. Most platform executives agree that this would be a good and useful thing, and that a lot of people would buy the hardware that makes it possible.
The problem is that the tech isn't ready, and it's far beyond the ability of today's platforms.
The Wall Street Journal predicted this week that high-tech glasses will be Apple's replacement for the iPhone. It looked at similar efforts from other companies. The Journal devoted just a single sentence to the fact that the latest version of Spectacles, the first major set of high-tech glasses, has augmented reality functions.
When they were announced in May, Spectacles was the first pair of glasses I didn't get to try myself. Instead, the company gave them a few months to build and gave them a bunch of developers who created augmented reality effects, games, and utilities.
I was invited to a backyard in San Francisco's Castro District to see the results of the experiment.
These would only be desired by the most hardcore futurists.
Two things became clear after a few minutes of wearing the glasses. These are more of a product for developers than consumers. The high price and 30-minute battery would limit their appeal to the most hardcore futurists.
I was convinced by my morning with Spectacles that augmented reality glasses have a promising future, and are likely to print money for the companies that perfect them.
It started with a donut. Brielle was introduced to me by some executives at the table and is part of the company's Ghost program for up-and-coming developers. One idea came to her while eating at a restaurant during COVID, when she was making dozens of augmented reality effects forSnapchat. The restaurant had begun telling customers to use their phones to access the menu. It would look better in Arkansas.
She used the software to make a menu that is three-dimensional and sits on your table. I waved my hands to get to the virtual goods when I opened it. The donut looked realistic enough that I was hungry. My phone had a QR code menu, but that was not as good. I felt that way despite the low resolution of the text, at least compared to what you might see on a current- generation phone.
The team had other tricks. The zombie chased me around the yard. Alex Heath, who got a similar demo at The Verge, posted a video of his zombie chase that gives you the idea. I hung Christmas lights on trees.
Noupscale is a file onchorusasset.com.
The reporter wears Spectacles.
The photo was taken for The Verge.
The flaws are obvious. Spectacles can produce a small field of view using its current technology. You might think that you will be able to see a digital overlay that covers everything you see if you wear the glasses. It is a small box at the center of your vision. I was constantly moving ahead to try to get the digital effect back in the box where I could see it.
In some cases, the objects were small and slow moving, and this was fine. The field of view in the zombie chase was so small that I found it impossible to play.
When I first wore the glasses, I thought the state of the art was further along than it is. I used Spectacles to make a toy dinosaur for the demo I did at the end of the day. It looked like a perfect hologram, which would delight any child who saw it.
There is a small thing today that points to a big future.
:noupscale is a file by the author for The Verge.
Today's Spectacles are being turned into the iPhone of the future by SnapSnap. Apple is working on a headset that will combine virtual reality and augmented reality. Next year, Meta is going to launch augmented reality glasses. Microsoft just signed a deal with Samsung to collaborate on a future generation of its HoloLens headset that will likely be aimed at consumers. It is not expected until 2024.
Hardware projects of their own are likely to follow the software-oriented efforts from Roblox, Epic Games, and Niantic. A reference design has already been commissioned.
Bobby Murphy told me this week that the company has been working on this initiative for many years, and that it was predating much of its current competitive set.
Murphy told me that they have been invested in and interested in the future of augmented reality for a long time. The ability to see and render digital experiences directly into the world is in line with how humans operate.
More than 2.5 million augmented reality effects have been created by 250,000 people. The company says that more than 300 people have gotten 1 billion or more views. 6 billion times per day, are the views of the Snapchat lenses.
Of course, the majority of those are for entertainment, such as making your face look younger, or prettier, or distorted to send snaps to your friends, or to place a digital dancing hot dog in the environment around you. A feature on the app that lets you use the camera to identify trees is one of the new experiences that the company has started to layer on.
Does money grow on trees?
It turns out that the funny-face glasses trained a generation of users that a screen can be a window into a real-world experience.
Murphy told me that it was a helpful starting point for pushing into a much wider variety of use cases.
Murphy won't talk about the metaverse a lot. The company seems confident enough in its existing vision to not use the words of the moment. Murphy says that the recent acceleration in development is real.
He said that there is not a leap in technology, but that there is a broader emergence of use cases for which augmented reality is escaping the novelty sphere and actually driving real value for companies and creators.
There is no way to know when the next leap will occur and when hundreds of millions of people will begin wearing their augmented reality glasses. I am having trouble believing that someone will get there eventually, and maybe sooner than a lot of people think.
Murphy said that the way that they are looking at their opportunity in the future is around developing a singular,holistic platform. It's possible to make something really compelling, and get that in front of people, through CameraKit, through Spectacles, and then build a career or business through that kind of path.
Winning over developers isn't a guarantee of success in the mixed-reality future. No one can win without them. For the moment, there is more enthusiasm for the company than there is for its creators. Even if the company never calls it that, they might make the metaverse an actual reality.
