Augmented Reality, with Google Style?

Post contributed by Nicholas Belitz -


  A new device from Google was teased last week, it is code-named Project Glass. The product was seen when Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wore the device out in public last week. The new device is a pair of augmented realty glasses. The glasses have a HUD (heads up display) that will give wearers the same information they would receive from their smartphone and will even have capabilities to interact with the internet.

  These glasses are receiving mixed reviews according to an article on CNET.com which includes interviews from three experts in the augmented reality field. Blair MacIntyre, director of the Augmented Environments Lab at Georgia Tech has this to say about the new device, "In one simple fake video, Google has created a level of overhype and over expectation that their hardware cannot possibly live up to." It seems that many of the experts do not believe that this device (in its current state) will really amount to anything.

Source - Google's augmented-reality glasses: Is it all PR?  c/net news

Barbie goes Online, Gets Augmented (Reality)

Barbie's got a brand new marketing campaign as part of its 50th birthday celebrations. 

  On the glitz side, Barbie installed the "ultimate Dream Closet" as part of Fashion Week in New York.  This ultimate Barbie accessory was 24 feet tall, with jewel-encrusted doors leading into the two-story, 9,000 square foot closet.  The closet also featured its own 'magic mirror' which used augmented reality to let users see how they'd look in many of Barbie's most glamourous outfits.
   Another part of that is the launch of a new, more globally focused web destination, BarbieWow.com.  The site will include a more basic version of the augmented reality mirror, using Zugara's Webcam Social Shopper platform.  It's also partnering with popular social media sites such as Polyvore, Pinterest, and Rent the Runway, "so that girls can create and shop for real-life looks on the site."
  Aside from the interesting application of augmented reality, and seeing how Barbie's following the trend towards increasing interactivity, social media and engaging with your audience, I foresee some interesting questions emerging in terms of privacy and encouraging preteens to shop online.

Source - Barbie's Augmented Reality Dream Closet Let's You Try on Her Most Famous Outfits,  psfk.com

Virtual Reality contact lenses in 2014?

A U.S. firm, Innovega, recently released information about a new display system that combines a pair of lightweight glasses with a built-in translucent screen with a pair of nanoscale-engineered contact lenses to deliver a 3-D viewing experience equivalent to watching a 240-inch TV from 10 feet away.  The contacts are there to help focus the image within the eye, which allows the glasses providing the display images to be less bulky.  The contact lenses are said to wearers to simultaneously focus on the near-eye displays and more distant objects, which permits the combination of digital content with normal viewing of the real world around users..

  As such, one DARPA spokesman indicated that the system could be used as both a full "virtual reality" display that shuts out outside images, and for augmented reality images where digital information appears to be overlaid on top of what the user would normally see.

'Instead of oversized virtual reality helmets, digital images are projected onto tiny full-color displays that are very near the eye.'

The glasses that provide the actual screen and image can be paired with smartphones, tablets, or portable game devices (in consumer versions) that would deliver the video or other images.  There are also military applications for heads-up displays for targeting or other battlefield information.

As with all of these glasses-display systems, I have to wonder how well they'd adapt to people with less than perfect vision.  Somehow, these press releases don't seem to address that.

Source - Virtual reality contact lenses that beam images directly into your eyes could be on sale in 2014,  Mail Online Science & Tech blog.