Augmented reality glasses as rudimentary as they were 15 years ago

AR tech has long way to go

Augmented reality glasses still have a long way to go. That’s the feeling of Michael Gervautz, an industry veteran of 15 years and the man heading up Qualcomm’s Augmented Reality Department in Europe.

Michael Gervautz says that he has yet to see a decent set of AR glasses that will get anywhere near replicating what we all want from the technology, and that even the latest models hitting the market are as rudimentary as those he was using when he first started working in the industry.

According to Gervautz, there are two main reasons why AR glasses haven’t been a success to date: poor viewing angles and the inability to effectively track someone’s head movements.

"There is currently nothing that offers you a 180-degree viewing angle," he explains. "At best, the glasses let you see 40-degrees, which just isn’t good enough."

Those glasses, like the ones from Vuzix or the recently announced Sony headset, are designed for watching videos as if you are in the cinema, so, according to Gervautz, are unlikely to be successful for true augmented reality applications.

When it comes to tracking your head movements, he believes that there is no real way, unless you are in a controlled environment, of tracking a user's head to see where they are looking:

“We are learning a lot with the phone and its precision, but it’s going to be some time before that moves into glasses,” he says.

Augmented reality advocates see-true AR glasses as the Holy Grail of the tech, and will allow users to overlay a myriad of information, be it dating or military stats, so those wearing glasses can supplement what they see with additional data.

Sadly, Gervautz didn’t have a time frame of when he thought these two problems might be solved.

Tags: Augmented Reality Qualcomm Sony Vuzix Gadgets

Augmented reality glasses as rudimentary as they were 15 years ago originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:41:00 +0100

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