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Last August, ARtillery Intelligence’s monthly report focused on smart glasses. Given new standards set by Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses, Xreal, Viture, and others, smart glasses are seeing demand inflections. Much of this success is built on the principle of “lite AR.”
What is lite AR? After a decade of chasing heavy AR ambitions, many XR players got realistic about the technology’s shortcomings. They’re zeroing in on the technology’s best self today, rather than aiming for overly ambitious ends. This means simpler visuals… or no visuals at all.
Following that narrative, we now embark upon the next chapter: heavy AR. Also known as dimensional AR, this is defined by visuals that understand and interact with their surroundings in dimensionally-accurate ways. It’s all about simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).
These scene-interaction and dimensionality functions are computationally intensive. That in turn forces design tradeoffs. For example, SLAM requires high-end graphical processing and presents challenges like heat dissipation, device bulk, and cost (Karl Kuttag explains it best).
Though these challenges persist, we’re seeing notable evolution, such as hardware in the past year from Snap (Spectacles Gen 5) and Meta (Orion). But there’s still a long way to go. This is the topic of a recent ARtillery Intelligence report, which joins our weekly excerpt series.
Single-Purpose & SLAM
After the last installment of this series examined the division between video passthrough (VPT) and optical seethrough (OST) AR formats, we now go one level deeper by subdividing the latter. These subdivisions include non-display AI glasses, flat AR, and dimensional AR.
Starting with non-display AI glasses, these don’t have a display system but rather deliver info through audio. To compensate for their lack of visuals, AI has emerged at the right time to add value in intelligent and relevant information, such as assistant functions and visual search.
Flat AR meanwhile includes lower-fidelity immersion. This often means non-interactive visuals and a focused use case, such as Xreal and VITURE. This approach was inspired after many XR players spent years unsuccessfully chasing the elusive dream of dimensional AR.
Flat AR rather involves being realistic about AR’s shortcomings and building around them. When done right (see our VITURE Luma Pro review), this involves avoiding some of dimensional AR’s technical challenges with slimmer form factors that are viable for consumer markets.
That brings us to dimensional AR. It’s defined by visuals that understand and interact with their surroundings, otherwise known as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). These scene-interaction and dimensionality functions are compelling but computationally intensive.
Develop & Deploy
Like video passthrough (VPT) and optical see-through (OST) examined in the last part of this series, flat AR and dimensional AR will coexist and develop in parallel. There are pros and cons for each, so they’ll develop and deploy towards use cases that play to their strengths.
What are those pros and cons? Starting with flat AR, its optical simplicity means that it can be delivered in a form factor that’s much slimmer and socially acceptable. This comes with a tradeoff in that the visual UX isn’t as immersive, but XR players are designing around that.
For example, as noted, display glasses from the likes of Xreal and VITURE have gained noteworthy traction with a focused use case: large private virtual screens to mirror familiar content like gaming & entertainment. This simple but valuable use case can be done in a light form factor.
Meanwhile, AI adds value to flat AR to compensate for any graphical shortcomings. In other words, AI takes the burden off visuals as the primary selling point for the glasses. This can include things like situational awareness, visual search, and other intelligent assistant functions.
As for dimensional AR, its pros and cons are the inverse of the above. The visual UX is immersive and compelling, but that brings cost and device bulk. We could see continued innovation on these fronts, including Snap’s consumer Spectacles next year, and Meta Orion in the long term.
We’ll pause there and pick things up in the next installment of this excerpt series to go deeper on dimensional AR dynamics…
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