Credit: TechCrunch
Looks like the goggles from VR Troopers.
After some misfires a few years ago (looking at you, Google Glass), AR smart glasses have been mostly relegated to the back end of the modern technology scene. It’s cool tech, for sure, but no smart glasses have managed to really capture the public’s heart and mind as of yet. Microsoft’s HoloLens glasses, released back in 2016, were definitely impressive, but they lacked practical day-to-day applications, focusing more on business applications. The newly released HoloLens 2 isn’t a major game changer, but it could show signs of interesting things to come.
The HoloLens 2 features a larger view than its predecessor, measuring in at 52 degrees over the previous 34 degrees. Don’t worry, it only takes up a portion of your view, so you can see in front of you just fine. The HoloLens 2 can also detect a wider range of hand gestures, such as waves, wipes, and swipes, which is definitely an improvement over the original HoloLens’s finger-centric controls. Most impressive is a surprisingly pinpoint eye-tracking system that almost always seems to know where you’re looking, doing its best to keep the AR stuff within your line of sight.
There’s still not many practical applications, and for $3,500, I imagine only a really wealthy office or something could afford one. Still, the definite improvement of the HoloLens 2 over its predecessor is promising; at the rate they’re going, Microsoft could have a commercially attractive pair of smart glasses on the market within the next decade. Now if we could just add laser vision…
