Snap’s latest augmented reality glasses have a completely new — but even bigger — design, a larger field of view, and all-new software that supports full hand-tracking skills. But the company is only making the fifth-generation glasses available to Certified Developers Willing to commit to an annual fee of $99 per month to get started.
It’s an unusual strategy, but Snap says it’s taking this approach because developers are better positioned to understand the capabilities and limitations of AR devices. They’re also the people most willing to commit to a $1,000-plus job to invest more in the technology.
Developers are big fans of AR, explains Sofia Dominguez, Snap’s director of AR platform. They’ll also be building the kind of experiences that will eventually make two Snapchatters excited about it. “This is not a prototype,” Dominguez told Engadget. “We have all the ingredients. We’re ready to expand when the market is open, but we want to do it carefully and chart developments as we go.”
I got a preview of two glasses ahead of the Partner Summit event, and the glasses don't look like a prototype like its first AR-enabled glasses. M 2021The hardware and software are much more powerful. The AR displays are sharper and more immersive, and support more than two dozen AR experiences, including some from big names like Lego and Niantic.star wars The Industrial Lighting and Motion developer also has a lens in development, according to Snap.)
Eye
To state the obvious, the eyes are huge. Almost comically large. They're much longer than my face and my arms are at the end of my head. A small adapter helped hold my ears more firmly in place, but it still feels like it can correct my face if I suddenly shake my head or bend over.
However, the new frames look more like real glasses than the fourth-generation glasses, which featured a narrow, angular design with dark lenses. The new frames are made of thick plastic and have clear lenses that can be darkened when you leave the house, as well as transitional lenses.
The lenses feature Snap waveguide technology, which, combined with “micro-displays made of liquid crystal in silicon,” enables augmented reality capabilities. Each pair is also equipped with cameras, microphones, and speakers.
Inside each arm is a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Snap says the dual-processor configuration delivers more efficiency and avoids the overflow issues that plagued its predecessor. And the move seems to work. In an hour-long demo, the eyes didn’t feel hot for a while, and they did feel a little warm to the touch after extended use. (The 5G Eyes have a battery life of about 45 minutes, versus 30 minutes on the 4G model.)
Snap has also greatly improved the augmented reality capabilities of Spectacles. The projected AR content was clear and bright. When the sun came out, the lenses dimmed, but the content was much more vibrant when you were indoors. With a resolution of 37 pixels per pixel, I couldn’t distinguish individual pixels or diffuse borders like I can on some other AR devices.
But the best part is that the last two AR demos have a larger field of view. Snap says the field of view triples in the front-eye generation, increasing the range of visual content to 46 degrees. Snap claims that’s the equivalent of a 100-inch canvas in the room with you, and my demo looked much more engaging than anything I’ve seen in 2021.
Not entanto, not completely enveloping. Sometimes, I still found myself looking around the room, looking for the rheumatoid arthritis effects I knew were around me. On the other hand, I have to physically move around more to see all the AR effects. For example, when I tested a human anatomy demo, which shows a life-size model of the human body and two different systems, I couldn’t see the entire figure at once. You have to move your head up and down to see the upper and lower body targets.
Snap OS
Another big feature of our latest eyewear is the addition of full-fledged device tracking capabilities. Snap has completely redesigned the underlying software for Spectacles, now called Snap OS, so that the entire user interface is controlled through hand gestures and voice commands.
You can open the main menu in the palm of your hand, like AI Pin da Humane, and simply tap the corresponding icon to do things like check an app’s history or go to the Lens Explorer slider. There are also pinch and tap gestures to launch and interact with Lenses. Embora or Snap still offer these Lens experiences, and they feel more like full apps than the AR Lens effects you might find in Snapchat.
Lego is a game that lets you stick pieces together and build things. You can also try out the mini golf game where you play golf on an RA course. Niantic has created an AR version of its character Peridot, similar to a Tamagotchi, that you can place around.
You can also interact with Snapchat’s AI assistant, MyAI, or “paint” the space around you with AR effects. Some experiences aren’t collaborative, so if two people are wearing Spectacles together in a room, they’ll be able to visualize and interact with the same AR content. If you only have two eyes, it’s possible that others around you might get the idea that you’re selling through the Spectacles mobile app. It lets you beam your viewing to your phone, the same way you beam VR content from a voice phone to a TV.
The new gesture-based interface felt surprisingly intuitive. Sometimes I used the glasses for more precise movements, like gluing and placing individual Lego pieces, but the software never seemed buggy or unresponsive.
There are more interesting use cases here. Snap is again partnering with OpenAI so that developers can create multi-mode experiences for Spectacles. “In a nutshell, developers can draw their (OpenAI) models to experience Spectacles, so we can really leverage more utilitarian camera-based experiences,” Dominguez says. “These AI models can help give developers, and ultimately their end customers, more context about what’s in front of them, or what they’re looking at, and what they’re selling.”
Or are augmented reality devices ready at any time?
CEO Evan Spiegel has spent years touting the promise of two AR glasses, a vision that long seemed far-fetched. But if the company’s 2021 glasses show that AR glasses are finally possible, it seems like 5G glasses could finally enable Snap to make AR devices that are more than just an experience.
However, there are still some significant limitations. For example, the eyes are still a bit big and heavy. It's hard to imagine the 5G eyes clearly clustered with normal eyes, and it's hard to imagine walking around with them in public.
Now, again, this may not matter much to the people Snap wants to reach. As virtual reality and gaming have grown in popularity, people are becoming more willing to wear the necessary cloak in public. People use Apple’s Vision Pro hearing aids on airplanes, in coffee shops, and in other public places. And as Snap points out, our eyes are less hairy, we don’t cover our entire faces or darken our eyes. E Dominguez says the company expects its devices to get smaller as well as smaller over time.
But the company may also need to find a way to discount or price the pair of eyes. Each pair is supposed to cost thousands of dollars To produce them, which helps explain Snap's current insistence on an assembly model, but it's hard to imagine AR enthusiasts spending more than $1,000 on glasses with less than an hour of battery life.
Snap seems to be very old. The company has always been vocal about the fact that it’s playing the long game when it comes to augmented reality, and that thought isn’t silent. Dominguez has repeatedly said that the company intentionally started with developers because they’re “early adopters” of a device like the fifth-generation Spectacles and that Snap intends to be ready whenever an update hits the consumer market.
The company is also not involved in the implementation of AR devices. As with all indications, Meta is set to show off the first version of its promised AR next week at its developer event. Its eyes, like Orion’s, won’t be available to anyone. But note that the meta map of the space could be useful to Snap as it tries to sell its vision of an AR-enabled world.
