philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Here’s what I made of Snap’s new augmented-reality Spectacles

... These fifth-generation Spectacles can display visual information and applications directly on their see-through lenses, making objects appear as if they are in the real world. The interface is powered by the company’s new operating system, Snap OS.  ...

In my demo, I was able to stack Lego pieces on a table, smack an AR golf ball into a hole across the room (at least a triple bogey), paint flowers and vines across the ceilings and walls using my hands, and ask questions about the objects I was looking at and receive answers from Snap’s virtual AI chatbot. There was even a little purple virtual doglike creature from Niantic, a Peridot, that followed me around the room and outside onto a balcony. 

But look up from the table and you see a normal room. The golf ball is on the floor, not a virtual golf course. The Peridot perches on a real balcony railing. Crucially, this means you can maintain contact—including eye contact—with the people around you in the room. ...

To accomplish all this, Snap packed a lot of tech into the frames. There are two processors embedded inside, so all the compute happens in the glasses themselves. Cooling chambers in the sides did an effective job of dissipating heat in my demo. Four cameras capture the world around you, as well as the movement of your hands for gesture tracking. The images are displayed via micro-projectors, similar to those found in pico projectors, that do a nice job of presenting those three-dimensional images right in front of your eyes without requiring a lot of initial setup. ...

Snap isn’t selling the glasses directly to consumers but requires you to agree to at least one year of paying $99 per month for a Spectacles Developer Program account that gives you access to them. ...

Having said that, it all worked together impressively well. The three-dimensional objects maintained a sense of permanence in the spaces where you placed them—meaning you can move around and they stay put. The AI assistant correctly identified everything I asked it to. There were some glitches here and there ...

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/17/1104025/snap-spectacles-ar-glasses/