Samsung has been playing with AR glasses for years, most recently an extremely basic set of image projection glasses on the CES 2020 stage, but I’ve never seen the company suggest it might want to build a truly ambitious augmented reality wearable computer. device – until maybe today.
WalkingCat, a fairly reliable source of gadget leaks, has published two new concept videos showing some of the cool things a ‘Samsung Glasses Lite’ could do, like projecting a giant virtual screen where you can play your games, sitting back in your private theater, giving you a giant virtual computer monitor, activating an auto-dimming ‘sunglasses mode’ or act as an instant first-person view screen for your DJI drone, complete with telemetry.
The second video shows the very similar concept of the ‘Samsung AR glasses’, but this time it shows the user ‘see’ digital 3D objects in the real world, an image that you should be instantly familiar with if you ever get one have seen. of Microsoft’s HoloLens marketing.
However, if you’ve never tried a Microsoft HoloLens or Magic Leap, you should know that reality is a long way from the visualizations you see here. Today’s waveguides, lasers, projectors and micro-mirror combinations usually give you a fairly small field of view with clear AR glasses like this one. Standing next to a virtual computer monitor would only allow you to see part of it – the rest would be out of your sight.
To me, the most interesting part of these videos is how Samsung envisions you using a smartwatch to navigate the interfaces. In the short term, that may be more realistic than trying to tap things that don’t really exist or gesturing in mid-air with your hands, and smartwatch control is a paradigm that other companies working on AR headsets are no doubt considering. Apple, of course, has both a smartwatch and an AR headset in development, and Facebook’s hardware division that builds AR glasses is now reportedly working on a smartwatch as well.
Speaking of Samsung and smartwatches, two well-known readers now say Samsung may be moving back to Android for its next smartwatch, rather than its own Tizen platform that it has been using for watches for years.