Snap’s Spectacles Introduce You To The World Of Augmented Reality
Snap Inc. unveiled Spectacles today, their first pair of display glasses designed for creators to overlay their creations onto the world.
Snap’s press release says that the Spectacles aren’t for sale. They are only available to an undisclosed number of AR effects creators through an application program online, The Verge reports. The battery only lasts 30 minutes per charge.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said the idea is to encourage a small portion of the 200,000 people who already make AR effects in Snapchat to experiment with creating experiences for the new Spectacles. He said that AR glasses will take roughly a decade to reach mainstream adoption.
“I don’t believe the phone is going away,” Spiegel told the outlet. “I just think that the next generation of Spectacles can help unlock a new way to use AR hands-free, and the ability to really roam around with your eyes looking up at the horizon, out at the world.”
According to Spiegel, head-worn devices like these new Spectacles will create a big shift in how we interact with computers. He said, “You have to invent a whole new way of interacting with computing when it’s volumetric and integrated with the space around you. So I don’t see Snapchat transitioning to wearables that directly, but one of the things that’s really fun is to think about what the new interaction paradigms can look like.”
The Spectacles are fully integrated with Lens Studio, Snap’s desktop application designed for augmented reality creators and developers to build and distribute Lenses across Snap’s AR platform. By using the program, creators can wirelessly push their Lenses to Spectacles directly for rapid testing, allowing creators to build and interact with their Lenses in real time.
Watch the video of augmented reality creators testing out Spectacles below:
Check out Photos of the Lenses creations
