I’ve tested more than my fair share of VR headsets, demoed a host of mixed reality apps, and regularly use my AR smart glasses for entertainment when travelling. But it wasn’t until today that I got to experience where all this tech is headed – and I’m desperately hungry for more.
That’s because I got to spend an hour with the latest (5th gen) Snap Spectacles, a true AR glasses developer kit that doesn’t just play a movie on a giant virtual screen like the Xreal One glasses and its ilk – instead it features sophisticated interactive AR apps complete with hand-tracking in a wireless package.
In some ways it was similar to my other XR exploits, but fundamentally it had a freedom I’ve yet to taste in VR or even MR.
It’s made me rethink claims from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg that we’ll all be wearing AR glasses in a decade. I’ve gone from a mild skeptic to hoping more than ever that the AR revolution is closer than 10 years away.
The star attraction was by far and away multiplayer.
XR multiplayer is nothing new to me. I’ve played VR mini golf with family hundreds of miles away, won VR Squid Game against my contemporaries at a SandBox event, and socialized with people from all across the globe in Horizon Worlds.
They were all pretty cool – certainly better than a Discord call – but these VR experiences are, by their nature, a little isolating. We’re trapped behind our avatars, and even when playing together in the same room we have to keep your distance so we don’t bump into each other.
AR multiplayer had no such troubles. We were there together both in real life and virtually. And it was kinda amazing.
We were able to play with and interact with each other’s Peridots, we could draw in 3D then marvel at each other’s creations – viewing them together from all angles like we were examining a real life sculpture – and in Imagine we used AI to generate toy figurines to make our own fun.
I even demoed a learning app that had us examining a virtual skeleton together – which seemed like the perfect AR tool for a classroom.
Admittedly the apps were a little basic, and at times a buggier than you’d want – for example Peridot did occasionally struggle when we all tried to interact with each of our virtual pets at the same time.
But I could see the vision of what’s to come.
My mind couldn’t help but transport me to a future of people playing virtual paintball in the park, using heads-up navigation that automatically knows the best way to your destination, or getting to explore a world filled with AR critters in a souped-up version of Pokémon Go (though Niantic has sold that mobile game, so I might be left disappointed on that last front).
When I imagined this future it didn’t feel like a distant pipe dream either, it felt like something we were rushing towards. And this demo convinced me it’d be awesome.
More to come
While testing Snap’s specs I also had the chance to chat with Snap’s Director of Computer Vision Engineering, Qi Pan, and Niantic’s Peridot Executive Producer, Alicia Berry, who admitted that there are hardware obstacles still to be overcome.
The glasses aren’t uncomfortably heavy, but they are bulky and a lot less stylish than normal eyewear. That’s because they’re pulling against opposing forces – AR glasses are striving to be lightweight, slim, and fashionable, with long battery life, solid processing power, and cameras, displays, speakers and a host of other components Oh, and they should be affordable, too.
It’s not an impossible challenge, but it’s nine tenths of one, and so it’ll take time for Snap, Meta, and everyone else in this AR glasses race to crack it.
But as Alicia Berry put it, it’s an important goal in their eyes. We’re all hunched over our phones all the time and AR glasses allow us to ‘look up’ and still get all the digital benefits we’ve been accustomed to.
There’s no word yet on when we’ll get our hands on consumer-focused versions of these latest Snap Spectacles, but as soon as Snap is ready to launch them I’ll be ready to get in line to snag a pair. And I think everyone else will want to too.
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