Right off the bat you can tell that Meta 1 is a bit different than Google Glass, but that’s also because Meta 1 serves a particularly different function than what Google Glass offers. While Glass merely consists of a small display that shows you alerts and other information, Meta 1 shows you virtual 3D objects that are mixed in with the real world in front of you.

The device itself is still in the development stages, hence the fact that the Kickstarter campaign is for a dev kit of the Meta 1. And as such, the pair of glasses aren’t quite as compact as Google Glass. The Meta 1 features rather squared-off frames that look uncomfortable, with a 3D webcam mounted on the top. Granted, it’s only meant for developers, so the final version should be much more catered towards consumers.

Essentially, the goal for the Meta 1 is to create HUDs similar to those seen in Iron Man and Minority Report, but once more developers join in and begin to make apps for the headset, the possibilities will most likely be endless. The video above gives some decent examples of what’s possible the Meta 1.

The hardware specs of the Meta 1 are quite impressive at this point. You get a 960×540 resolution with each eye that comes with a 23-degree field of view for each eye as well. The webcam that sits on top includes two cameras (one for each eye), and the glasses have HDMI and USB input. And despite looking a bit cumbersome to wear, they only weigh a little over 10 ounces.

The company plans to have these development kits shipped out starting in September of this year. As for price, the full development kit will cost $750, which is a bit steep compared to other headsets, like the Oculus Rift, but the Meta 1 does seem a bit more complex. Granted, it’s still half the price you’d pay for Google Glass Explorer Edition, so if you’re bank account is only allowing so much cash to be spent, the Meta 1 is the cheaper grab.

The current developer device, the Meta 1, is admittedly somewhat less aesthetically-pleasing than Google’s Explorer Edition of Glass. Epson has brought its Moverio BT-100 to the party, a headset which projects information onto both lenses rather than just one eye. It also has integrated WiFi, runs Android, and lasts for an estimated six hours on a full charge (it’s worth noting that the battery and processing is housed in an external box, which connects to the headset via a cable).

Onto that, Meta bolts a low-latency 3D camera which is used to track hand movements. Resolution down to individual fingertips is supported, and so complex gestures – like a “thumbs up” movement to “Like” a post on Facebook – can be recognized.

Meta concept video:

Just as per Google’s intentions with the Explorer Edition, Meta is hoping to leverage developer interest in preparation for a far more aesthetically-pleasing consumer version of its headset. That could eventually look like a regular pair of sunglasses, with the twin-camera array neatly slotted into the bridge. Whether that sort of design could also accommodate sufficient battery capacity for any meaningful period of use remains to be seen, however.

Meta is also yet to confirm how much the Meta 1 dev-kit will cost. The unmodified Moverio headset has a list price of $700 (though its street price is down to just $400), though of course that doesn’t take into account the added camera hardware, plus Meta’s external processing box and SDK. The first fifty dev orders will get a $200 discount, however, Meta revealed to pre-interest signups in an email this morning.

Google left its Glass discussion out of the opening I/O keynote, saving it for day two developer sessions where it showed off warranty-voiding Ubuntu installs and native app support with the Mirror API. However, it isn’t the only wearable we’ve been playing with this week. Recon Instruments brought along its Recon Jet headset, a sports-centric take on the concept, which is expected to begin shipping later in 2013.

Cooked up at a medical hackathon, the app is still in its early stages, though it does show how a wearable computer like Glass could be integrated into a doctor or nurse’s workflow. MedRef allows the wearer to make verbal notes and then recall them, as well as add photos of the patient and other documents to their records, all without using your hands.

However, it’s the facial-recognition which is arguably the most interesting part of the app. All the processing is done in the cloud, with the current demo using the Betaface API: first, Glass is loaded up with photos of the patient, and then a new photo is compared to the “facial ID” those source shots produce with the matching tech giving a percentage likelihood of it being the same person.

MedRef for Glass video demo:

There are still some rough edges to be worked on, admittedly. In the demo above, for instance, even with just two individuals known to Glass, the face-recognition system can only give a 55-percent probability that it has matched a person. Any commercial implementation would also need to be able to see past bruising or surgery scars, which could be commonplace in a hospital, and evolving over the course of a patient’s stay.

Currently, the MedRef app data is limited to a single Glass. Far more useful, though, would be the planned group access, which would allow, say, multiple surgery staff or a group of doctors to more readily find notes for patients they might not have previously seen. Meanwhile, the form-factor of Glass would leave both hands free, something we’ve seen other wearables companies attempt, such as the HC1 running Paramedic Pro.

Nonetheless it’s an ambitious concept, and one which could come on in leaps and bounds as cloud-processing of face-matching gets more capable. “In the future,” NeatoCode suggests, “on more powerful hardware and APIs, facial recognition could even be written to run all the time.” That could mean an end to awkward moments at conferences and parties where someone remembers your name but you can’t recall theirs.

There’s more detail at the MedRef project page, and the code has been released as an open-source project on GitHub.

SOURCE: SelfScreens

Wearables are new to quite a few folks. Although they’ve seen (and perhaps used) pedometers or those wristbands that track their movements, the average customer has never really thought about wearing glasses that would allow for communication and all of the other features Glass boasts. And thanks to some smart marketing on Google’s part, quite a few people are now saying that they’d jump at the chance to buy Google Glass when it hits store shelves.

But I’d ask all of those people to truly consider what they’re saying. Yes, Google Glass appears to be a nice-looking device for those who don’t mind wearing an oddly shaped lens on one eye, but for the rest of us walking around town, doing so doesn’t exactly tell the world that we’re the most fashionable people.

Aside from that, I just don’t see the value in all that Google is promoting with Glass. Sure, it’d be nice to look at directions through one lens, and having the ability to snap a photo or record video is great and all, but I can do that with my smartphone. And when I don’t want to do any of that, I can just slip my smartphone into my pocket and not worry all that much about it getting damaged.

Google Glass, on the other hand, looks like an expensive, broken piece of tech waiting to happen. As those of us who wear glasses know, it’s not that hard for them to get all kinds of screwed up in our pockets or when they fall off the coffee table. When it’s a $100 pair of glasses, that’s not such a bad thing. But if we’re talking about Google Glass, which could be exceedingly expensive, it’s a much, much different story. And I just don’t see how Google is going to sidestep that issue.

Beyond that, I guess I’m not sold on the whole wearable technology craze. Yes, I know analysts are saying that the marketplace will grow in leaps and bounds in the coming years and billions of dollars will be spent, but I’m not convinced. Save for a few products, wearable technology is still very much a niche product category. And I don’t think that even Google can change that.

To me, Google Glass is more a novelty device than something that can truly be groundbreaking in the technology world. It’s a neat idea and it’s something that I can see people getting excited about, but does it really deliver value in practice? Theoretically, it’s cool, but I just don’t see it actually appealing to people who want the latest and greatest execution of wearable technology. On that front, I think Google Glass will fall short.

So, I’m not really sure Google Glass is worth it. I suppose I’ll be able to make a final decision when I know exactly how much Google Glass costs. But until then, I’m not expecting too much value.

1. Sports

A first-person perspective video is not an entirely new concept for some regions of the sports universe – NASCAR has been live-casting the insides of vehicles for several years, in fact – but with a sport like hockey, this idea is just appearing. What you’re going to see here is developer Joseph Lallouz playing some ice hockey with Google Glass, letting the NHL know that they’ve got some new entertainment possibilities on their hands.

2. Music

The world of instructional videos are certainly opening up here at the advent of Google Glass and the augmented reality glasses releases of the world. In a video filmed through Glass by musician Henrik Nordberg, you’ll see him and his fellow students playing a song at Sycamore Strings Academy. While this particular video doesn’t act as a set of directions for the viewer, you’ll surely see the possibilities unfolding.

3. Do It Yourself Glass

Back at the beginning of this year, Google X (aka Google Department of Science Fiction) Experience Lead Tom Chi spoke at a TED convention about the possibilities blowing up with rapid prototyping, one of these being the ability to create what’s effectively your own Google Glass device with a few simple elements. He also shows some Minority Report technology and its relative simplicity, too.

This is just the beginning

Google Glass is only in the hands of less than 1,500 users at the moment, and very few of them are sharing their experiences with the public. Once this user experience expands to the general public – and once developers using the units out there today find themselves being a bit more comfortable with sharing their creations and findings, they’ll be pushing videos out like no tomorrow. Stay tuned to SlashGear’s Google Glass tag portal for more as this saga unfolds!

In fact, IllumiRoom won’t get shown to the public until Siggraph in July, missing out E3 2013 in the process. The tech is “working well” according to the researchers, but it’s still in the early stages of development.

Microsoft has been dripping details around IllumiRoom for some months now, after surprising attendees at Samsung’s CES press conference back in January with a demo of the augmented reality system. Currently pairing a Kinect for Windows with a basic projector and a PC, IllumiRoom first automatically maps the user’s living room and then creates a 3D wireframe which can be used to extend play off of the screen and into the surrounding area.

So, explosions on-screen can cause ripples that spread out around your TV cabinet and beyond, while fireballs can spread outside the limits of your screen. Alternatively, IllumiRoom can be used to heighten the mood of the game, creating virtual snow, for instance, that can not only fall within the room but accumulate on shelves and tables.

Microsoft Research’s attentions aren’t just on gaming, however, despite the obvious applications for Xbox. The IllumiRoom system could also be used to make TV and movies more immersive; in a newly released paper for the CHI 2013 conference this week, the team shows a DIY dual-field-of-view camcorder prototype which simultaneously captures the core video and its extended surroundings, the latter to be projected around the TV.

Nonetheless, while it won’t be ready any time soon, IllumiRoom’s primary purpose looks to be extending the immersive gameplay of the next-gen “Xbox 720″, an obvious way to build value into the console in the face of low-cost casual gaming on smartphones and tablets. Considering Kinect followed on after the Xbox 360 had already been in the market for some time, there’s nothing to say that IllumiRoom couldn’t arrive after Xbox 720 has bedded down into living rooms, providing a mid-life refresh of sorts.

The Microsoft Research team responsible for IllumiRoom is currently using a standard projector with a wide field of view, and a Kinect for Windows sensor bar, though any commercial implementation would probably be designed to sit on a coffee table. Automatic room calibration is included, projecting various patterns and sequences which map the outline of the TV, furniture, and the room’s geography in 3D; future iterations could even identify and track moving objects, such as people, as they move through the projection.

Once the layout of the gaming arena is understood, IllumiRoom’s real magic can begin. Various implementations are proposed, from fully extending what’s on the TV to greater fill the room – making for a more immersive environment – to picking out specific elements to highlight them, such as weapons fire that escapes from the primary display. By changing how physical objects in the room have their own textures projected, furniture could be made to ripple and wobble, change color or desaturate, or have their lighting adjusted.

Alternatively, the IllumiRoom system might just expand on the theme of the current game: having virtual falling snow spread across the living room, perhaps, building up on the actual furniture. The three possibilities, Microsoft Research suggests, are “negating”, “including”, or “augmenting” real-world objects: either digitally masking them, allowing them to remain visible, or adding to them with projected graphics.

“Ideally, IllumiRoom would be directly integrated into a next generation console and new games would be designed for IllumiRoom from the ground up. We envision an API that enables triggering illusions, changing surface appearance, controlling room lighting, inserting objects into the physical environment, etc.” Microsoft Research

While the best result would be if games natively supported, and integrated, IllumiRoom functionality, the system could also fashion a suitable AR scheme by analyzing gameplay in realtime, similar to how Philips’ Ambilight system tracks on-screen colors and matches them with its periphery of multicolor LEDs. The developers also suggest that audio cues could be used, such as triggering a ripple of the surrounding projection whenever the system hears a gunshot sound.

There’s also potential for how IllumiRoom could work with non-game content, such as movies and television; the team fashioned a prototype extended field-of-view camcorder – in effect pairing a standard camcorder with one that has a wide FOV – with the main screen showing the core video and the IllumiRoom projector showing the peripheral footage.

“Can a grenade from the latest Bond film explode in your living room? How would such content be authored? It would be im- portant to investigate how the movie director should deal with the fixed nature of a film and the randomness imbued by the system adapting to the user’s living room” Microsoft Research

Unsurprisingly, there’s still no (public) talk about how IllumiRoom tech and Microsoft’s Xbox ambitions might work together. As it stands, the current projection system relies on a PC for its brain, though it’s worth remembering that Kinect itself started out as a proof-of-concept peripheral, and only later evolved into an Xbox 360 add-on.

[via The Verge; via CHI 2013; Thanks Zak!]

As Eric Mizufuka explained this week, the Moverio BT-100 is “a wearable display – smartglasses – with a shade that’s removable.” What you’re seeing with these glasses is an image that can get as large as an 80-inch display depending on what you’re using them for, and they’re able to work with apps such as the one presenting 3D device augmented reality training that Scope AR is showing off this year.

At it’s base, this device is powered by an Android control unit – it’s able to run and launch Android apps just like a smartphone would, so to speak. This product in its current form was launched over a year ago, and according to Mizufuka, the unit was and is “seen originally as more of a developer platform so developers could take the lead on creating apps that would eventually shape the device.”

Epson’s Moverio BT-100 glasses are not yet consumer market ready – they’re not yet in a place where they’re meant for the consumer market, instead concentrating on developer efforts to create “that one killer app” to start the machine that is the succssful launch of the platform.

As for how they fit into the augmented reality or “smart” glasses universe thats coming to light here in 2013, Mizufuka suggests that there’s a four-point set of categories that each unit in this new market fall into, each pair of said glasses working with two.

Binocular / Monocular
Transparent / Non-Transparent

While the Epson Moverio BT-100 unit falls into the binocular and transparent category, Occulus Rift is a binocular, non-tranparent device. Google Glass, on the other hand, is a monocular tranparent device.

Epson’s product makes its way in the market with features that are, as Mizufuka suggests, rather unique. “[Moverio BT-100] is unique in that you can see 3D, and unique in that it’s in the center of your field of view so you can overlay 3D images over real objects.” This is what the company calls Real Augmented Reality.

Mizufuka let SlashGear know that they’d be creating the final consumer units as a product that people will want to use, one that they intend to be able to be worn by everyone. “Glass is a beautiful product and it’s miniturized very well, but you still have some consumer kickback saying it’s too geeky.”

CEO and lead developer of Scope Technologies Scott Montgomerie let us know that as soon as they discovered Epson’s augmented reality glasses, they knew they had to collaborate. Their need for such a solution for their idea to overlay machine parts in 3D for users training in the industrial market seemed like a perfect fit. “Industrial Augmented Reality for machinery, overlaying 3D images over real machines seemed impracticle at first – until the idea of augmented reality glasses, like Moverio BT-100, came up.”

Mounting a camera on top of the optics they’d already had, they created the device you see demonstrated here:

Montgomerie continued: “Our strategy is in the near term to focus on these verticle market applications. I think the consumer is just getting comfortable now with wearable displays, as soon as we’re able to find that killer app in the market, we’ll be there.” Sound like the right path to take to you? Epson’s Mizufuka let it be known that the final consumer product would be both affordable and made for the mass market – and we’re hoping for more soon!

As fitting meetings go, the intersection of Gibson and Glass is a hugely appropriate one. In Neuromancer, Gibson described a wearable display embedded in eye-lenses fused to central character Molly Millions, and through which a cyberspace-immersed hacker could communicate through text messages.

Although former MIT researcher Steven Mann is best known for translating augmented and mediated reality concepts to real-world hardware, having spent several decades refining his wearable techn, Gibson’s role in describing “the dystopian future in which humans are augmented with computer implants,” as MIT described it, makes him equally important. However, Gibson is also known for being only tangentially interested in technology, a fact which apparently led to some consternation after he had a chance to wear Glass.

“I also got to try Google Glass, if only for a few seconds” Gibson tweeted after the event. “Was faintly annoyed at just how interesting I found the experience.” Asked how well it worked, Gibson commented that the “focal-point tech was impressive.”

The headset itself was brought to the NYPL by Dow Jones consumer technology head Erin Sparling, who was himself surprised that he was the first to help Gibson experience Glass. The Explorer Edition began shipping earlier this month to those who put down $1,500 at Google I/O last year, though Google chairman Eric Schmidt has said that it is likely to be 2014 before a consumer version hits shelves.

[via BoingBoing; Image used by permission of Joe Kendall]

These glasses promise all the features of the company’s Star 1200XL Wide Field of View See-Through Augmented Reality Video Eye Wear with some notable enhancements. The new 1200XLD has a new HDMI interface and supports content featuring DRM. The new glasses also support 3-D video sources.

The augmented reality features of the new glasses include 3DOF motion tracking sensors and an integrated full HD resolution camera for tracking and recognizing real world objects. That camera allows 3-D computer-generated content to be locked in place and overlay on top of the users direct view of the real world. The glasses also feature a USB interface and are described as a see-through AR-enabled an ocular video eyewear with a 35-degree field of view.

The displays used for the glasses have a 16:9 aspect ratio, support full color, and have native resolution of 852 x 480. The glasses simulate a 75-inch display as seen from 10 feet away. The glasses are also adjustable with customizable eye-separation and AccuTilt for visual clarity and display quality. They sound really cool until you get to the end and realize the retail price is $4999 putting them out of the reach of pretty much everyone.

[via Vuzix]

However, despite suggestions, Baidu is supposedly not in fact collaborating with chip firm Qualcomm to address one of the most common criticisms of wearables projects: that their batteries simply don’t last long enough to get the user through anywhere close to a full day. Google has been tight-lipped on exact runtime estimates, but Vuzix’s M100 system, for instance, only manages a few hours with the microdisplay perpetually active.

The Sina Tech report claimed Baidu was aiming for 12 hours or more of solid use, and counting on Qualcomm’s power management technologies to deliver it; not so, Baidu’s Kaiser Kuo told Mashable, describing the Eye project as a “small scale” test before any commercialization possibilities are explored.

The chip firm was also tipped to be contributing its image-recognition expertise, presumably based on the Vuforia system which already supports cloud-based processing. Qualcomm offers the Vuforia SDK freely to third-party developers.

Other rumored hardware includes an “ultra-small” LCD screen, bone conduction for audio – just as Google’s Glass is expected to have – and an onboard camera, in addition to functioning as regular prescription spectacles should the wearer require it. Advanced voice-recognition will be used to control Baidu Eye, while image recognition of not only faces but books, buildings, and even user-gestures for navigation is said to be supported.

Baidu isn’t talking release schedules for Baidu Eye, but internal testing already underway. “We’re doing some internal testing on it now on a small scale, and evaluating where this goes from here” Kuo said. “That’s why we didn’t make any public official announcement on this” The prototype – shown in a screengrab above, and taken from a video which Kuo confirmed was filmed in Baidu’s offices – is still in the early stages, mind, and seemingly requires a tethered connection to some sort of offboard processing.

Although Glass-style gadgets may be the most eye-catching of the new breed of wearables, the Chinese report suggests Baidu isn’t solely looking to the Eye headset for its mobility strategy. The open-platform would also support other wearable tech, it’s claimed, whether that be watches, necklaces, or headphones, with developers able to cook up augmented reality and other apps for distribution via Baidu’s app store.

Kuo said that some Chinese reports about the Eye development were incorrect, though did not specify which parts of the story were wrong. Describing the headset as an “ocular wearable interface” he said that it was similar in overall concept to Google Glass, but was nonetheless intended to deliver different functionality.

[via TechCrunch]

A company called ReinCloud has recently shown off a very interesting augmented reality TV platform called ARGTV. The application won first-place overall in the TV Hackfest competition recently. According to the CEO of the company, the TV platform would do things like allow a viewer to share a drink with Don Draper from Mad Men.

Using the company’s ARGTV platform you would be able to pick up a virtual bottle of gin like the one being poured on TV and examine it from all angles. You can turn the bottle around and read the label on the back if you wanted to. Users would even be able to purchase an actual bottle of liquor using the TV platform without having to use your phone or turn the TV channel.

This sounds like a very interesting way to improve the interactivity with TV advertising to me. The company expects to ship its ARGTV product in Q3 of 2013. However, that ship date is far from guaranteed at this point because the product has to be fully funded. There’s no indication that the platform is seeking funding via Kickstarter or another crowd sourced funding service.

[via ReinCloud]

Whereas Glass has a full Android-powered computer integrated into the headset, GlassUp is merely a wireless display, using Bluetooth to link to your Android, iOS, or – eventually – Windows Phone handset. That keeps power consumption down; a standby time of around 150hrs is promised for the first-gen model, or a full day of periodic use such as, say, when emails or Tweets come in. An updated model will use Bluetooth 4.0, making it more power-efficient.

What differentiates GlassUp is the display technology itself. Whereas Google has opted for a transparent prismic display embedded in a glass block positioned at the corner of your eye, GlassUp’s patented system uses a micro-projector fixed on the inside of the glasses arm. That focuses a yellow monochromatic image on the inner surface of the right lens, at 320 x 240 resolution. Not enough to replace your phone or tablet for multimedia duties, true, but certainly sufficient for text updates and basic graphics.

Like Glass, there are a fair few sensors and controls integrated into the arm of the glasses: GlassUp has a touch-surface which recognizes tap and double-tap, long-press, and swipe, in addition to a power/control button. There’s also an accelerometer, digital compass, ambient light sensor, and altimeter.

Unfortunately, the prototype GlassUp brought along to CeBIT wasn’t market-ready. More striking in its design than the concept – which manages to look reasonably discrete, in a chunky retro way – the silver headset required a USB link to a computer for its display signal and power, and the projection itself is onto a noticeably orange-tinted pane in the right lens. Meanwhile, even when the battery-powered version is ready, if you want to have the display active all the time – such as when navigating, for instance – the runtimes will be “a few hours” rather than the all-day longevity promised with more sporadic use.

GlassUp argues that, whereas Google’s wearable requires users to glance up and to the side to see the display, their system is far more discrete: the information floats directly in your eyeline. Another advantage is availability and price, though neither Glass nor GlassUp are quite ready for the mass-market. GlassUp is accepting preorders for the headset, at €299/$399, with deliveries of the first units expected in September 2013.

Google knows smartphones, and that’s familiar territory for the Android team, and so unsurprisingly Glass builds on top of that technology. So, inside the colorful casing there’s Android 4.0 running on what’s believed to be a dual-core OMAP processor. This isn’t quite a smartphone – there’s WiFi and Bluetooth, along with GPS, but no cellular radio – but the familiar sensors are present, including a gyroscope and an accelerometer to keep track of where the wearer is facing and what angle their head is at.

The eyepiece itself runs at 640 x 360 resolution and, when Glass is positioned on your face properly, floats discretely just above your line of vision; on the inner edge of the L-shaped housing there’s an infrared eye-tracking camera, while a bone conduction speaker is further back along. Glass is designed to get online either with its own WiFi connection, or to use Bluetooth and tether to your smartphone. That given, it’s pretty much platform agnostic for whatever device is used to get online: it doesn’t matter if you have a Galaxy S III in your pocket, or an iPhone, or a BlackBerry Z10, as long as they can be used as a modem.

Where Glass departs significantly from the typical Android phone is in how applications and services run. In fact, right now no third party applications run on Glass itself: the actual local software footprint is minimal. Instead, Glass is fully dependent on access to the cloud and the Mirror API the Glass team discussed briefly back in January.

In a sense, Glass has most in common with Google Now. Like that service on Android phones, Glass can pull in content from all manner of places, formatted into individual cards. Content from third-party developers will be small chunks of HTML, for instance, with Google’s servers supporting the various services that Glass users can take advantage of.

When you activate Glass – by tilting your head up, to trigger the (customisable) motion sensor, or tapping the side, and then saying “OK, Glass” – you see the first of those cards, with the current time front and center. Navigation from that point on is either by swiping a finger across the touchpad on the outer surface of the headset or by issuing spoken commands, such as “Google …”, “take a picture”, “get directions to…”, or “hang out with…” A regular swipe moves left or right through the UI, whereas a more determined movement “flings” you through several items at a time, like whizzing a mouse’s scroll wheel. Tap to select is supported, and a downward swipe moves back up through the menu tree and, eventually, turns the screen off altogether. A two-finger swipe quickly switches between services.

Some of the cards refer to local services or hardware, and a dog-ear folded corner indicates there are sub-cards you can navigate through. The most obvious use of this is in the Settings menu, which starts off with an indication of battery status and connectivity type, then allows you to dig down into menus to pair with, and forget, WiFi networks, toggle Bluetooth on or off, see battery percentage and charge status, view free storage capacity and firmware status (as well as reset the headset to factory settings), and mange the angle-controlled wake-up system.

In effect, each card is an application. So, if you ask Glass to perform a Google search – using the same server-based voice recognition service as offered on Android phones – you get a side-scrolling gallery of results cards which can be navigated by side swiping on the touchpad. It’s also possible to send one of those results to your phone, for navigating on a larger display.

For third-party developers, integrating with Glass is all about integrating with the Mirror API Google’s servers rely upon. So, if you’re Twitter, you’d use the API to push a card – say, to compose a new tweet, using voice recognition – to the Glass headset via the user’s Google+ account, coded in HTML, with a limited set of functions available on each card to keep things straightforward (say, dictate and tweet). Twitter pushes to Google’s servers, and Google pushes to Glass.

As a system, it’s both highly flexible and strictly controlled. You could feasibly push a card to Glass from anything – a website, an iOS app, your DVR – and services like Facebook and Twitter could add Glass support without the user even realizing it. Glass owners will log in with their Google account – your Google+ is used for sharing photos and videos, triggering Hangouts, and for pulling in contacts – and then by pairing a Twitter account to that Google profile, cards could start showing up on the headset. All service management will be done in a regular browser, not on Glass itself.

On the flip-side, since Google is the conduit through which services talk to Glass, and vice-versa, it’s an all-controlling gatekeeper to functionality. One example of that is the sharing services – the cloud right services that Glass hooks into – which will be vetted by Google. Since right now there’s no other way of getting anything off Glass aside from using the share system – you can’t initiate an action on a service in any other way – that’s a pretty significant gateway. However, Google has no say in the content of regular cards themselves. The control also extends to battery life; while Google isn’t talking runtime estimates for Glass yet, the fact that the heavy lifting is all done server-side means there’s minimal toll on the wearable’s own processor.

Google’s outreach work with developers is predominantly focused on getting them up to speed with the Mirror API and the sharing system, we’re told. And those developers should have ADB access, too, just as with any other Android device. Beyond that, it’s not entirely clear how Google will manage the portfolio of sharing services: whether, for instance, there’ll be an “app store” of sorts for them, or a more manual way of adding them to the roster of supported features.

What is clear is that Google isn’t going into Glass half-hearted. We’ve already heard that the plan is to get the consumer version on the market by the end of the year, a more ambitious timescale than the originally suggested “within twelve months” of the Explorer Edition shipping. When developer units will begin arriving hasn’t been confirmed, though the new Glass website and the fresh round of preorders under the #ifihadglass campaign suggests it’s close at hand.

Glass still faces the expected challenges of breaking past self-conscious users, the inevitable questions when sporting the wearable in public, and probably the limitations of battery life as well. There’s also the legwork of bringing developers on board and getting them comfortable with the cloud-based system: essential if Glass is to be more than a mobile camera and Google terminal. All of those factors seem somehow ephemeral, however, in contrast to the potential the headset has for tying us more closely, more intuitively, to the online world and the resources it offers. Bring it on, Google: our faces are ready.

Canon is implemented true mediated reality with its headset, using stereoscopic cameras on the front of the HM-A1 HMD to take a view of the real world and then overlaying computer graphics, which are then fed to the twin displays inside. They run at 1280 x 960 resolution, higher than many cheaper HMDs we’ve seen, and use a specially created free-form prism display system that Canon claims means less distortion and fewer optical aberrations around the periphery.

Capturing and displaying graphics is only part of the overall system, however. The MREAL setup also requires tracking data, to know where the user is looking and what they’re interacting with, and of course a software platform that hooks into whatever 3D environment you’re exploring. On the sensor side, there’s a combination of visual markers and an optional gyroscopic sensor, the latter of which tracks the orientation of the headset in space per frame of video.

It’s the markers, though, that are more commonly relied upon. MREAL can work with optical and magnetic sensors, including third-party brands, but the most obvious are a series of QR-like glyphs which can be used to mark the sides of a physical mock-up. By tracking those glyphs, MREAL can map the movement of the virtual object against the user’s manipulation of its physical counterpart.

So, a basic model of a car, or a camera, or the control surface in the plane could be marked out with a few MREAL glyphs, and then Canon’s system will overlay whatever proposed controls or components are intended. The wearer can interact with those controls as if they were real, able to “look around” the environment with the physical perfectly matched to the digital representation.

On the software side, Canon’s MR Platform has been designed to hook into the most common CAD and 3D visualization packages, with an MR Platform SDK to make integrating existing graphic design software with MREAL straightforward. RTT, the makers of 3D visualization software RTT DeltaGen, has already confirmed it will be combining the package with MREAL; existing customers include Audi, BMW, GM, Ferrari, and Porsche, as well as Adidas and Electrolux.

It’s not just prototyping and industrial design that Canon sees as benefiting from MREAL, however. Another avenue the company is pushing is museum use, where visitors would be able to don an HM-A1 headset and have characters – whether famous faces from history, dinosaurs, wild animals, or fantasy constructions – appear in the real-world with them, interacting as if themselves real. Another possibility is retail, where designers of custom furniture, architects, and others could use MREAL to walk their customers through the design refinement process, tailoring the final product to them without costly iterative prototyping along the way.

Compared to the wearable displays we’ve seen on Google’s Glass and from others, Canon’s is obviously a league ahead. The blending of the digital graphics and what’s actually going on around you is surprisingly good, with the mapping of the two very accurate. You can see your hands – if the system decides they’re relevant to the environment – and after a little acclimatization, it really is like you’re handling a more complex object or coming face to face with a dinosaur.

Interactive Demo Gallery

We tried several demos with the MREAL system, tailored to different potential clients. In an educational-style environment, we were able to interact with a virtual dinosaur, walk around it and pet it, while still seeing other people in the vicinity not wearing a Canon HMD. In another setup, we were able to virtually “kick the tires” of a digital car, customizing colors and trim, exploring the dashboard, and generally seeing what we could expect to be driving despite the real-world object being far more basic in its design. A virtual earth-mover allowed us to experience the cabin and identify ergonomic flaws, such as controls that blocked access to the cup holder, and which might normally demand a physical prototype be built before the issue was identified. There’s more details in our hands-on videos.

Hands-on Demo Gallery

As Canon and its partners see it, the big difference between something like Glass and its MREAL system is the introduction of haptics. “We’re already overloading the eyes as it is” Simiosys’ Christopher Stapleton explained to us. “The question is what’s going through what channel, and how. So, this whole aspect of multitasking isn’t about the number of tasks, it’s about competition for attention.”

“You have all the senses, in all dimensions and all directions, all this impact, we’re overloading the eyes in proportion to the hearing, or the touch. The eyes have depth-perception to a certain extent, but the only interactive sense we have is touch, so the aspect of mixed-reality and haptics is a huge jump in how much we can do. What [Google] is doing is too much in one area.”

Meanwhile, the traditional idea of a GUI – whether text or icons – is quickly becoming overwhelmed by the complexity of what today’s systems can deliver. Instead, Stapleton argues, systems like MREAL can take what would be a very complex interface and make it more naturalistic. Today’s users aren’t looking for ever-increasing menus and toolbars, he says, but gesture response, social interaction, and a more human way of encountering the digital world.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all this doesn’t come cheap. Canon will be selling the entire MREAL Mixed Reality System – the HM-A1 headset and the MR Platform software – for $125,000 from March 1, with a $25,000 annual maintenance fee on top. That might sound expensive, but Canon balances it against the existing costs companies face of producing a hardware prototype. That process – which can be relatively quickly and affordably mocked-up virtually using MREAL – is an even more expensive one, and it’s easy to see how MREAL could earn its keep over time.

Canon MREAL Mixed Reality Presentation Gallery

Now there’s nothing wrong with making smartphone notifications more useful or easy to consume: that, after all, is why interest in Pebble and other smartwatches has been so high. Yet the initial promise of Glass had been so much more than that, harnessing the power of Android and ubiquitous connectivity and wearer-attention to augment your daily life in persistent ways a smartphone could never manage.

Okay, so the first promo video was ridiculously far-fetched, but as time went on – and the Google team members lucky enough to have access to Glass prototypes teased us with photos, videos, and sky-dives filmed using the headset – it began to look more like Glass was a camera first rather than a wearable computer. Those fears were compounded after early hands-on reports began to trickle out, with talk of little more than email alerts and other notifications dropping into the corner of your vision.

That seemed, frankly, a waste, and so it’s great to see a more realistic explanation of what Glass will do in Google’s new campaign. The display isn’t just a notification pane, it turns out, but a proper screen (albeit transparent) capable of showing Google search results, color navigation directions, and more.

Google Glass walkthrough:

Best of all, it’s very much a two-way stream of information. Glass isn’t just showing you data and then expecting you to pull out your phone to respond to it, as per most smartwatches we’ve seen, but uses voice commands of impressive complexity to operate. The instruction “OK Glass” apparently wakes the headset up, and then you can ask for Google searches, photographs and video, and even for language translations, with the headset discretely whispering the foreign phrases in your ear.

In fact, there’s little suggestion that the trackpad on the side of Glass plays much part, with Google showing only voice commands to navigate through the modified Android OS. It’s worth noting that the video chops together only the key features, however; the actual transitions between them – jumping back to whatever homescreen Glass has, and stepping through pages of search results, for instance – isn’t shown. That may well demand some touchpad stroking. There’s also the question of whether Glass works with touch controls alone, or if you have to give it vocal instructions: that could undermine discrete use of the headset, in situations when speaking out loud isn’t really acceptable. At least one of the pictures Google has freshly released today shows what appears to be an eye-tracking camera on the inside of the eyepiece.

One thing that’s clear already is that this isn’t really “augmented reality“, at least not as we generally conceive of it. Glass doesn’t modify your view of the world, or do any clever floating of glyphs or data around people or objects in your eyeline; it can’t change the way you see things. Instead, it’s more akin to a smartphone that’s been squeezed, extruded, and generally reshaped to fit your face rather than in your pocket: assisting your hunt for digital information, yes, but leaving it up to you as to how it integrates into your life.

Google seems keen to involve more than just developers in the latest round of Glass Explorer Edition presales; whereas only coders had the chance to slap down $1,500 back at Google I/O 2012, this time around the company tells us it’s looking for a more diverse group. In fact, the #ifihadglass campaign doesn’t even require those 8,000 picked to commit to producing their application suggestions. Instead, they’ll be selected on the basis of creativity, the social reach of them having devices (i.e. the scale of the audience they could preach the good Glass message to), and how compelling and original their ideas are.

There’s still plenty to be learned about Glass. Google has teased its cloud-based engine for the headset, but has otherwise said little about the development environment involved, and the biggest concern – battery life – is still conspicuously overlooked anytime the search giant mentions wearables publicly. We also don’t know when the Explorer Edition headsets will be released, though Google tells us that those people who ordered at Google I/O last year are first in line to get their units. Still, the huge amount of “geek” interest bodes well for the commercial launch, whenever that might be, and while Glass may not be the mainstream push for augmented reality we initially expected, the potential is still there to change the way we interact with the world – real, and digital – forever.

So, to take a photo you can merely wake the headset with the “OK, Glass” command, and then say “take a picture” complete with a preview in the corner of your vision. The same is true for video – “Start Recording” – and you can trigger Google+ Hangouts too, giving friends a live streaming view through the headset’s front-facing video camera.

There’s also support for directions, with overlays of which roads are coming up, what path to take, and ETA, together with the ability to Google for information such as “how long is the Brooklyn Bridge.” Glass even supports voice-dictated messages, and translations, so you can ask “how do you say bread in French?” and have the headset whisper the answer to you.

Google Now-style features, such as flight information cards, are also included, popping into your vision when relevant rather than forcing you to manually ask for them.

Meanwhile, there are new images of the Glass headsets, including five different colors – charcoal, tangerine, shale, cotton, and sky – and seemingly confirming that the wearable will be water-resistant. Considering it’s designed to be worn all the time, that’s probably a good idea. A version with sunglasses lenses attached is also shown, and we know Google is thinking about prescription lens support too. Finally, the headband itself is seemingly made from flexible metal, for better resilience.

Google is yet to delivery the first batch of Glass Explorer Edition headsets to Google I/O 2012 preorder customers, though that hasn’t stopped it opening up for a second round of orders. Developers who can give a sufficiently interesting use-case will be invited to preorder one of 8,000 more Glass units.

They’ll have to convince Google that they’re worthy customers, however, using either Google+ or Twitter to do that. In the space of a fifty word or less outline, accompanied with up to five photos and up to a fifteen second video, they’ll need to explain what they’d do if they had a Glass headset.

Applications are being accepted up until February 27, which basically means a week to come up with a killer idea. Of course, since the applications are all being made publicly, the longer you wait, the more likely it is that someone else might figure out your idea and detail it first.

Only three applications are allowed per person, and they can’t be modified after being submitted. Google will be judging them via an independent jury, based on creativity, compelling use, originality, and “social and spectrum”; there’ll be 8,000 headsets to be had in this new round of orders. Collection will be made in person, at one of three special “pick-up experience” events held in New York, Los Angeles, or in the San Francisco Bay area.

If you’re not a developer, but would still like to keep abreast of some of the ideas people are coming up with, you can follow along on both Twitter and Google+ using the #ifihadglass hashtag. More details in the FAQ.

[via The Verge]

These glasses were announced a while back and are now available to purchase for $1499. The Wrap 1200AR glasses are certainly not cheap. The little screens inside the glasses simulate a 75-inch screen as seen from 10 feet away. The display supports 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios and each has a resolution of 852 x 480.

When combined, the two display support resolutions all the way up to 720p. The glasses supports 60 Hz scan rates and have a 35° diagonal field of view. The small displays support 24-bit color and the glasses weigh about 3 ounces. The left and right camera systems can be independently adjusted and the glasses support 2-D and stereoscopic 3-D video.

The video glasses also offer a wide variety of adjustment allowing the user to adjust the eye separation, display angle, and to adjust the diopter. The glasses have tracking technology with 3° of freedom able to track head yaw, pitch, and roll. Connectivity options on the glasses include VGA, and USB. An adapter for DVI connectivity is included.

[via Vuzix]

The prototype headset is a clunky beast, admittedly, consisting of an Epson Moverio BT-100 with a low-latency 3D camera mounted on top. According to Noah Zerkin - who you might remember from his run-in with Google’s Sergey Brin a week ago, and who had the chance to play with a Meta dev-kit - both components feed into custom electronics in a separate box, and which can currently track individual fingertips and overlay glowing dots over them in real-time, similar to what’s shown in Meta’s concept video.

Meta isn’t just using off-the-shelf Moverio headsets, either. The company has inked a deal with Epson [pdf link] to collaborate on augmented reality technologies, with the pair promising applications in media, retail, gaming, productivity, and more.

The initial promo video, however, takes an altogether consumer-friendly approach, positioning Meta as an ideal accessory for the web-obsessed social media user. That includes overlaying digital graphics – in this case Facebook – over elements of the real-world, and then using gestures to interact with them; for instance, a physical “thumbs-up” motion “Likes” a Facebook post, while news articles can be browsed by sweeping through, and then grabbing, preview bubbles floating in mid-air.

For fashionistas (a pretty broad term, if you take it to include anybody who might feel a bit self-conscious about wearing the Franken-headset Meta developer kit), there are more streamlined designs in the pipeline, with the company envisaging a slick pair of sunglasses with the stereo cameras discretely embedded in the bridge. Hopefully that would also include higher-resolution displays than the qHD resolution each Moverio panel currently runs at, and of course there are issues of battery life still to be addressed.

Epson’s existing headset runs for up to six hours, though that’s using a wired remote control unit with a battery pack. According to Zerkin, Meta and Epson are looking to replace the LCD screens in the existing Moverio with OLED panels from providers such as MicroOLED; that should introduce improvements in both visibility and power consumption.

Still, true mediated reality – as opposed to augmented reality - is an ambitious next-step for the wearables industry, and Meta believes there’s room for it to succeed. The company plans to launch its Meta 1 dev-kit on Kickstarter soon – no word on estimated pricing at this stage - and target imaginative developers of AR apps, just as Google will do later this month with its first Glass Foundry event.

According to Brin, who acknowledged that he was a part of the core Google X Lab responsible for developing Project Glass in addition to other high-concept research such as self-driving cars, around one hundred people outside of the X team currently have wearable prototypes. Exactly how many people are employed in Google’s R&D-centric X division is unclear.

Google took preorders for Project Glass Explorer Edition back at Google IO 2012, offering keen developers the opportunity to secure a unit in return for the not-inconsiderable sum of $1,500. However, select developers on the wait-list for a Glass headset will get an early opportunity to play with the wearable, as Google kicks off its Glass Foundry developer events later this month.

The first of these events, in New York City (a second, in San Francisco, will take place at the start of February) will see Google outline its new Mirror API, which will bridge the cloud and Glass headsets and allow developers to feed information from their apps to the wearable. However, attendees won’t be able to take away the Glass prototypes themselves.

Google previously said that it expects to have consumer versions of Glass on the market less than twelve months after the Explorer Edition sets start shipping. Pricing for the mass-market version is unknown, though Brin has indicated that it would be “significantly” cheaper than the $1,500 developer kit.

As each project tracks toward release, however, the ecosystem of more straightforward body-worn gadgetry such as activity monitors like Jawbone’s UP picks up for what’s predicted to be a bumper year of sales. Still, among sensor ubiquity and the specter of power paucity, the fledgling wearables industry hasn’t apparently decided whether it’ll face this brave new augmented world hand-in-hand, or jealously guarding its data.

[Original Sergey Brin image via Noah Zerkin]

Project Glass and Memoto both take photos, but otherwise they come at the wearables space in a very different way. The Google headset shoots stills and video on-demand, but isn’t – as far as we know – intended for permanent streaming. Memoto’s camera, however, is intended as a life-logging tool, periodically snapping shots and tagging them with location and direction; earlier today, the team behind the project confirmed there’d now be a digital compass in there too. Other wearables take their own routes to your wrist, jacket lapel, or elsewhere on the body, such as UP or other digital activity monitors.

Though the ethos may be different, much of the hardware is the same. Headset, wearable camera, and wrist-born pedometer-on-steroids all have motion sensors; both Glass and Memoto have digital compasses, and GPS. There’s a huge degree of overlap, even more when you factor in that most users of wearables will also be carrying a smartphone, with its own battery of sensors and radios.

So, with Memoto’s new-found digital compass, how does its hardware differ from that of an UP, or Fitbit’s Flex? All three have the ability to monitor patterns of movement and figure out if you’re running, or walking, or sleeping; all that’s missing is the software to do the crunching of that data on the camera. Why should tomorrow’s wearables enthusiast carry two, or three, or more accelerometers and magnetometers, when the data from one is sufficient?

Of course, sharing sensors is only one element of what convergence demands: there’s a bigger compromise to be made, when fewer gadgets perform more tasks. Battery life continues to be the bane of the consumer electronics world, and that headache is only going to be magnified when it comes to body-worn technology. A hefty smartphone with a big screen and a 3,000mAh+ battery might be acceptable in your jacket pocket, but a power pack of that size simply isn’t going to fly when you’re wearing it on the side of your head.

In many ways, then, the PAN – or Personal Area Network – is inescapable. The early iterations of wearables are naively insular in their approach: they try to do everything themselves, with little reliance and few expectations of the other gadgetry on your person. Take, for example, Vuzix’s Smart Glasses M100, a prototype of which we played with at CES earlier this month. Inside the chunky headset there’s a full Android computer, with all the connectivity you’d expect from a reasonably recent smartphone, bar the cellular data.

That makes for a wearable with impressive standalone abilities, but also one that’s greedy for power. Vuzix’s headline estimate is up to eight hours of “typical use”; however, what’s “typical” in the manufacturer’s opinion is sporadic activation summing just two hours in total, or even half that if you want to use both display and camera. All that despite the fact that your smartphone – which you’ll probably need anyway, since Vuzix supplies a remote control app to more easily navigate the M100′s apps – has a processor, battery, radios, sensors, and other hardware already.

Bluetooth 4.0, the most power-frugal iteration of the technology, may go some way to popularizing PANs. Still, that’s just the virtual cable: the glaring omission is any sort of wearables standardization, which would allow your eyepiece from manufacturer X to output the information from smartphone Y, having called upon sensors Za, Zb, and Zc dotted around your body (not to mention in spread around the ecosystem around you).

Predictions have it that the wearables market will explode over the next 4-5 years, albeit beginning with more humble tech like activity tracking bracelets, but building to Glass-style headsets once the technology gets in line with affordable pricing. That may well be the case, but it will take more than slick hardware and project execs that drink the Kool-Aid to motivate the industry. We’ve put up with silo’d ecosystems in smartphones, and stomached it in tablets, but if wearables are to succeed the consumer electronics industry will need to set aside its appetite for insularity and embrace openness in augmentation.

It’s not the first NYC sighting, either; last month, an unknown man wearing an altogether more eye-catching red Glass headset was caught on camera. That version also included what appeared to be prescription lenses, reassuring eyeglasses-wearers that they wouldn’t necessarily be left out of the augmented reality fun.

Exactly what Brin was using the headset for is unclear, but its cloud-based functionality is likely to have been significantly curtailed since he was out of signal range. Exactly which features Glass can carry out when isolated from a network, and what relies on access to the Mirror API, have not been explained, but certainly uploading photos and video to Google+ would be out of the question while Brin was on the subway.

The spottings come as Google prepares for a pair of developer events - one in New York, another in San Francisco – at the end of January, at which select coders will get their first chance to cook up apps and features for Glass.

Google is yet to confirm when the first Glass “Explorer Edition” headsets – the $1,500 apiece, early-access units sold to developers at Google I/O last year – will be shipped, and it seems the units at the developer events this month won’t be handed out to attendees to actually take home.

[via The Next Web]

Vuzix is fitting a lot into its headset, borrowing specs more commonly associated with a smartphone: a 3-axis head tracker is paired with a gyroscope, GPS, and a digital compass, a 720p HD camera, 4GB of onboard storage, and an 8GB memory card. There’s also a companion Android app which can be used as a remote control, with a trackpad for navigating through the M100′s menus, and an app launcher menu.

Unfortunately Vuzix isn’t showing any of those apps right now, only a video clip that runs on a loop. It’s a little disconcerting initially, watching it through one eye – Vuzix will offer both ear hooks and a head-strap arrangement, which can hold the Smart Glasses on either ear depending on which is your dominant eye – but you quickly grow used to the concept, glancing across to see the bright, clear content.

Audio, meanwhile, is loud and surprisingly solid considering it’s coming through one ear only. Physical controls are limited to a trio of buttons across the top edge – for volume up/down and select – as well as a power button. Using the remote app makes more sense, however, as it doesn’t shift or move the eyepiece on your ear; there’s a little flexibility in how the eyepiece is positioned, with an extending arm that can be bent slightly.

Vuzix Smart Glasses M100 hands-on:

Battery life may be the M100′s downfall. Vuzix is quoting up to eight hours of use, though that’s not solid runtime. Instead, the company expects users to turn their Smart Glasses on periodically, using the display sparingly: leave it on full-time, and the M100′s battery will last for more like two hours (or even half that, if you use the handsfree, display, and camera simultaneously).

Still, with Google’s Explorer Edition Glass priced at $1,500, and Vuzix already pushing the AR SDK out the door, the “under $500″ M100 might well find some eager buyers. We’re looking forward to trying out the final results to see how the Smart Glasses hold up to day-to-day use.

Furlan’s hardware falls roughly in line with what we’ve seen other projects piece together in earlier AR attempts. He opted for a MyVu eyepiece – a 0.44-inch microdisplay culled from a cheap Crystal headset, such as used in this UMPC-based wearable back in 2009, and this Beagleboard version in 2010 - hooked up to the composite video output of a 4th-gen iPod touch; that way, he can see a mirror of the iPod’s UI floating in his line of sight.

Meanwhile, a Looxie Bluetooth Video Camera - stripped of its casing and attached to the goggles – streams video to the iPod touch wirelessly. Furlan says he’s cooking up a second-gen version running off a Raspberry Pi, again another approach we’ve seen other wearables experimenters take. That, Furlan says, will allow for more flexibility with the Looxie’s input, as well as greater support for other sensors such as accelerometers.

The interesting part is how Furlan’s experience of the wearable evolved, from initial discomfort and a sense of information overload – the feeling of needing to keep up with every notification, server status, stock price, and message that pops up – to a less conscious consumption of the data flow:

“When I wear my prototype, I am connected to the world in a way that is quintessentially different from how I’m connected with my smartphone and computer. Our brains are eager to incorporate new streams of information into our mental model of the world. Once the initial period of adaptation is over, those augmented streams of information slowly fade into the background of our minds as conscious effort is replaced with subconscious monitoring” Rod Furlan

That fits in line with what we’ve heard from Google itself; Glass project chief Babak Parviz said recently that part of the company’s work on software has been to deliver a pared-back version of the usual gush of information that hits our smartphone and tablet displays. Developers, for instance, will be able to use a set of special cloud APIs to prioritize specific content that gets delivered to the Android-based wearable.

Furlan concludes that the biggest advantage of wearables won’t be overlaying data on top of the real world – what we know as augmented or mediated reality – but being able to persistently record (and recall) all of our experiences. That does differ from Google’s perception, where capturing photos and videos is only seen as a subset of Glass, and the headset is gradually being positioned as a way to access a curated feed of the digital world, whether that be from Google Now prompts or something else.

[via] 9to5Mac]

“We constantly try out new ideas of how this platform can be used. There’s a lot of experimentation going on at all times in Google” Parviz said of the development work. “We’re also trying to make the platform more robust. This includes making the hardware more robust and the software more robust, so we can ship it to developers early this year.”

Part of that hardware work is to increase battery life, with Google still aiming for all-day longevity from the headset. That’s certainly ambitious, given the limitations alternative wearables from Vuzix and Olympus demonstrate: there, continuous runtimes of around two hours are the maximum predicted, though Olympus has argued that, when used in periodic chunks, the battery in its system could last up to eight hours.

As for how wearers will interact with Glass, Parviz highlights the side-mounted trackpad that we’ve already seen Google employees make good use of. ”We have also experimented a lot with using voice commands” the former augmented reality researcher says. “We have full audio in and audio out, which is a nice, natural way of interacting with something that you’d wear and always have with you. We have also experimented with some head gestures.” Previous rumors suggested Google was using a bone-conduction system for private audio playback, inaudible to anybody but the wearer.

Hardware is only half the battle, however. Parviz argues that Glass is “an entirely new platform” and, while conceding that it doesn’t offer true augmented reality in its first generation, requires a new angle on software and services. “We’ve taken pictures and done search and other things with this device” he says, though it could also involve elements pared from Google Now.

“I think since our platform allows for very quick access to information – if you need to have access to visual information, you almost instantly get it – something like Google Now could be very compelling” Babak Parviz, Google

For developers, though a full SDK for Glass is not yet available, there are a few hints as to what they can expect when coding for the headset. “When we ship this, we will have a cloud-based API that will allow developers to integrate with Glass, which enables a wide variety of Glass services while keeping a consistent user experience” Parviz confirms. “It’s the same API that we used to build the e-mail and calendar services that we test on Glass.”

With those APIs, developers will be able to deliver select data to a Glass user, rather than overwhelming them with all the information that might fit onto a typical smartphone screen. Instead, they’ll be able to pick out curated content – specific types of email, Parviz suggests – which would be shuttled to Glass and either displayed on the eyepiece or read out using text-to-speech, with spoken replies supported.

Though Sergey Brin has taken the spotlight with Google Glass more frequently, Parviz brings the technical background to the project. Before working at Google, he researched opto-electronic contact lenses for use as wireless displays, complete with wireless power.

Google’s Sergey Brin sported a set of Glass with sunglasses lenses back at Google IO, with the tinted sections apparently clipping into the brow frame. Meanwhile, Google had also confirmed that it was looking at prescription lens support.

Google is also exploring the potential to integrate the Glass display cube into a set of prescription lenses themselves, rather than using a separate display altogether. That would require more precise optical work, of course, and could prove significantly more expensive when it comes to changing your prescription.

Exactly how well the Explorer version will handle lenses remains to be seen; Google has described it as a test kit for developers to begin coding augmented reality-compatible apps, rather than the final form-factor of the hardware. It’s also believed to feature a bone-conduction earpiece for sound inaudible to anyone but the wearer. Judging by what look to be discrete metal lens rims, however, it’s an altogether slicker system than the large black glasses Google showed photos of at I/O 2012.

Taking an Arduino as its core, the eyepiece uses an ultrasonic distance sensor and an infrared temperature sensor – accurate to 0.02 degrees fahrenheit – to control a set of colored LEDs. When the temperature drops below 80f, the light turns blue; above 80f, and it turns red. According to McRoberts, it’s capable of picking up a hot item – such as a coffee cup – from 2-3 feet away.

As for proximity, a green LED blinks faster depending on how close the object you’re facing is to you. McRoberts says he is already used to augmenting his senses – he wears a hearing aid – and quickly adapted to the lights, though the reaction from those around him has been more mixed.

“Socially wearing the device is another story. Of course here at OCAD-U it I easily accepted and met with great curiosity and fanfare but in public people don’t understand what it is. Hearing aids are well accepted for their sleek, tight form factor so that I am sure is a huge part of why people are uncomfortable with it. I have been asked most of all if the device is recording them. It has no camera or the capability to record any of the incoming information. But just like a hearing aid it provides what is missing and gives the wearer new information in a usable way” Gregory McRoberts

While the more high-profile demonstrations of augmented reality have generally focused on overlaying a view of the real-world with computer generated graphics – such as directions – there’s a whole other segment of research looking into so-called mediated reality. Steve Mann, widely referred to as the father of wearables, has been working on not just adding to our existing senses but in effect giving humans extra senses in areas we wouldn’t normally have them, such as increasing the range of our vision using HDR techniques.

Mann’s own eyepiece uses high-speed image capture and processing to combine data from three differently exposed frames shot almost simultaneously, allowing the researcher to see detail that the unaided human eye would not normally be able to perceive. The technology – which he wears permanently – has got him into trouble, however; Mann was allegedly assaulted in a French fast food restaurant for refusing to take off the wearable.

[via Adafruit]

Bone conduction has been implemented on a number of wearable audio devices, from Bluetooth headsets – Jawbone’s headsets use speech vibrations picked up through the upper cheek to perform noise cancellation, for instance – to stereo headphones. As well as cutting through loud background noise more efficiently, they also can help keep the user’s ears open rather than plugging them up with earbuds.

That’s particularly useful if you’re using an AR device like Google Glass, which is intended to be worn semi-permanently. Google is yet to give any specific hardware details about audio from the headpiece – in fact, all specifications publicly shared to-date are subject to change, as Google tweaks the design ahead of the initial “Explorer” developer versions set to ship early in the new year – but it was assumed that a small speaker was embedded in the oversized arm-piece.

Such a speaker would have drawbacks, however. For instance, controlling volume would require repeated stabbing at buttons on the Glass device itself, unless automatic volume levels were implemented; that could lead to distractions for those around the wearer, if the volume was set too high. Meanwhile, some notifications might be private, or the audio could be a hands-free call, and discretion preferred.

Audio quality of bone conduction systems tends to be less audiophile-level than traditional headphones, but the technology’s other advantages may well outweigh any shortcomings there. It’s possible that the oblong pad in the image above – shared by Google back in May - is the bond conduction assembly.

This app allows you to get in-depth with the world the way Google intended you to – now we’ve got to wonder why we can’t instantly do the same with our smartphone. Soon, we must assume, sooner than later. Google’s integration with the Nintendo Wii U shows that they’ve got confidence in the system and should be a metaphysical boost for the system in more ways than one.

This functionality was originally shown off briefly at E3 2012 and will be rolling out in early 2013, so says Nintendo. This information was shared today by Nintendo Direct, an update show put out by the company itself with a newly fabulous vision that is an animated Lego version of our best buddy from the top of the gaming group. Have a peek at the full video above and see more about not just the Lego title and Google Maps, but a wave of new games that’ll be popping up soon as well.

This update also included a bit more information on the Nintendo TVii, this being a work in progress for the company that they’re still maintaining will be updated later this month. This update will bring Gamepad controls without interrupting the display. Have a peek at the timeline below to see all the rest of the most recent Nintendo Wii U updates we’ve been jamming on too – and grab a Wii U right this minute if you dare!

[via Geek]

It’s definitely a cool idea, but there’s more to Minecraft Reality than simply seeing your Minecraft creations show up in the world around you. You can actually walk around them to view them from all different angles, and if your friends have Minecraft Reality installed on their iDevice, they’ll be able to track down your creations and check them out too. That’s made possible by the app’s use of GPS tracking to remember where in the world you placed your creations, which is an awesome feature if you ask us.

You can resize the object before you place it, letting you make sure that it fits in with the surrounding well enough before plopping it down in the real world. The app also comes with a few pre-made models ready to be placed, so you can begin using this app right away even if you don’t have anything of your own waiting to be uploaded. Speaking of uploading, players can head to http://minecraftreality.com to upload their own Minecraft worlds for use in the app. Check out Minecraft Reality in action below.

Minecraft Reality is available now on the iTunes App Store for $1.99 [download link]. The listing on the App Store says it isn’t compatible with the iPod Touch 4G or earlier and that it most of the app’s functionality isn’t available on the iPhone 4, so keep that in mind if you’re planning to buy. Do you think you’ll be picking up Minecraft Reality?

[via Mojang]

The digital glasses would track the direction in which the wearer was looking, and adjust its on-screen graphics accordingly; Microsoft also envisages a system whereby eye-tracking is used to select areas of focus within the scene. Information shown could follow a preprogrammed script – Microsoft uses the example of an opera, where background detail about the various scenes and arias could be shown in order – or on an ad-hoc basis, according to contextual cues from the surrounding environment.

Actually opting into that data could be based on social network checkins, Microsoft suggests, or by the headset simply using GPS and other positioning sensors to track the wearer’s location. The hardware itself could be entirely self-contained, within glasses, as per what we’ve seen of Google’s Project Glass, or it could split off the display section from a separate “processing unit” in a pocket or worn on the wrist, with either a wired or wireless connection between the two.

In Microsoft’s cutaway diagram – a top-down perspective of one half of the AR eyewear – there’s an integrated microphone (910) and a front-facing camera for video and stills (913), while video is shown to the wearer via a light guide (912). That (along with a number of lenses) works with standard eyeglass lenses (916 and 918), whether prescription or otherwise, while the opacity filter (914) helps improve light guide contrast by blocking out some of the ambient light. The picture itself is projected from a microdisplay (920) through a collimating lens (922). There are also various sensors and outputs, potentially including speakers (930), inertial sensors (932) and a temperature monitor (938).

Microsoft is keeping its options open when it comes to display types, and as well as generic liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) and LCD there’s the suggestion that the wearable could use Qualcomm’s mirasol or a Microvision PicoP laser projector. An eye-tracker (934) could be used to spot pupil movement, either using IR projection, an internally-facing camera, or another method.

Whereas Google has focused on the idea of Glass as a “wearable smartphone” that saves users from pulling out their phone to check social networks, get navigation directions, and shoot photos and video, Microsoft’s interpretation of augmented reality takes a slightly different approach in building around live events. One possibility we could envisage is that the glasses might be provided by an entertainment venue, such as a sports ground or theater, just as movie theaters loan 3D glasses for the duration of a film.

That would reduce the need for users to actually buy the (likely expensive) glasses themselves, and – since they’d only be required to last the duration of the show or game – the battery demands would be considerably less than a full day. Of course, a patent application alone doesn’t mean Microsoft is intending a commercial release, but given the company’s apparently increasing focus on entertainment (such as the rumored Xbox set-top box) it doesn’t seem too great a stretch.

[via Unwired View]

This update shows a relatively lengthy show of what the game will be all about, keeping with the whole “the world around you is not what it seems” theme that’s been here even before it was written. This game has you being part of one team or the other, both of them aiming to work with “the power.” This power will either be cultivated or destroyed by you and your team – sort of like tagging mode in Tony Hawk Pro Skater. No mention has been made as of yet on if skateboarding will be involved – likely not.

You’ll be grabbing this world energy called “XM” that will be existing in real locations around your city. We must assume that this game won’t be working everywhere in the world – at least at first – unless Google has made it so that every single location in the world can be tagged. At the moment it appears that heavily populated cities will be handles first and foremost.

The man behind Niantic Labs and the project leader here with Ingress John Hanke spoke this week with AllThingsD about the app, noting that it’s something like World of Warcraft in its taking control of your mind with a whole alternate reality situation:: “The concept is something like World of Warcraft, where everyone in world is playing the same game.” He also added that his team was “definitely inspired by JJ Abrams, but we don’t want to leave people in ‘Lost’ situation where they get into fiction of world but then it never ends.”

Expect great things in the near future – feel free to take a peek at the game right this minute on the Google Play app store and let us know what you find! Note though that you’ll need to bust past the Closed Beta status – seeya there soon!

That can include hands-free calling, photography, web browsing, and SMS messaging, as well as visual navigation using services like Google Maps. Any smartphone app which can output to an external monitor will be supported. The 3-axis head tracker is paired with a gyroscope, GPS, and a digital compass for pinning down your location, and there’s an earpiece and noise-canceling microphone for calls and speech commands.

The display itself runs at WQVGA resolution with a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, and gives the impression of looking at a 4-inch smartphone display viewed at a distance of 14-inches. It has more than 2,000 nits of brightness, essential for outdoor visibility when it will be competing with sunlight, and can be used with either the left or right eye.

As for the camera, that shoots widescreen video and images at 1280 x 720 resolution, and can save shots to up to an 8GB memory card. The whole thing runs a specially-fettled version of Android 4.0 on a 1GHz OMAP4430 processor with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of flash storage, with WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth, along with physical power, select, and volume up/down keys.

Vuzix says the battery in the M100 is good for up to 8hrs of handsfree use, or two hours of hands-free use with the display active. That unfortunately halves to just an hour if you want to use the handsfree, display, and camera simultaneously. Google hasn’t discussed battery life for Project Glass in any detail yet, but balancing power consumption, functionality, and portability is going to be a challenge for all wearable device manufacturers. Mounting is via either an over-ear hoop, an over-head band, or a band behind the head.

Vuzix will be offering an SDK for app developers to hook their software directly into the Smart Glasses M100, and since the wearable is a standalone computer in its own right it will readily work with both iOS and Android phones and tablets. It’s already caught the attention of CES, winning the “Best of Innovations” awards in design and engineering for 2013.

Exact pricing and availability for the Vuzix M100 haven’t been revealed, with the company telling SlashGear only that it’s due early next year. However, a developer kit – including the Windows-based emulator, sample code, access to a private coders portal with assistance from Vuzix, and the promise of an early production M100 when available – is priced at $999, with the software elements of the bundle expected to be available in December 2012.

The STAR 1200 XL builds on Vuzix’s previous STAR 1200 headset which we tried out last year, broadening the field of view of that model so as to make the augmented reality world more immersive. As well as the dual displays there’s a detachable 1080p HD camera, based on the Logitech C920, which can be used to track the real-world so that computer graphics are locked into place in the wearer’s perspective.

It can be swapped out for a more compact camera, around one-quarter of the size and weight, though limited to either 1600 x 1200 (at 5-7fps) or 640 x 480 25-30fps video capture. Each camera shows up as a regular USB webcam to your PC.

There are also sensors for tracking movement, removable if you want to save weight, and removable earphones. The control box has a battery good for up to 7hrs usage, with inputs for VGA, component, and composite video sources; you can play back 2D or 3D content.

None of that Google Glass queue-jumping comes cheap, however. The Vuzix STAR 1200 XL is up for preorder at $4,999, targeted at AR developers with a free copy of the company’s own maxReality Autodesk plugin, though other AR authoring apps should work too.

Traditional welding helmets use a sheet of smoked glass for the eyepiece, cutting down on the dangerous glare from the welding process itself, but also reducing overall visibility. The HDRrchitecture system, instead, processes images coming from one or more cameras, rendering a Full HD, 30fps stream with the brighter elements stripped out but the core details retained, all in real-time.

Professor Mann actually developed HDR (high dynamic range) photography several decades ago, and has been making heavy use of it in his own Eyetap wearable computer. There, three simultaneously captured images at different exposures are combined – again, in real-time, and at 120fps – to produce a more detail-rich view of the world than could be seen by the human eye alone.

“By capturing over a dynamic range of more than a million to one,” the Eyetap team says, “we can see details that cannot be seen by the human eye or any currently existing commercially available cameras.” They’ve also come up with a standalone hardware device, small enough to fit into “a large shirt pocket,” which can process two HDMI camera inputs – one for each eye – and two HDMI outputs for separate eyepieces, with the processing done using GPUs and multicore CPUs.

Although the initial work is being presented as ideal for welding helmets, Mann & Co. believe the true usefulness is yet to be explored. Since the system is self-contained, and requires no user-controls or connected PC, it could be evolved into a set of HDR eyeglasses, for instance, aiding those with less than perfect eyesight. There’s more detail in the full research paper [pdf link].

[via Hack A Day]

If you use the Nokia Lumia 900, 800, or 710, you’re in luck. These devices will have access to City Lens starting today. All you’ve got to do is follow the following directions to grab it quite quickly! You’ll be using your device’s camera to see a QR-code first and foremost – from there you’ll get the download and you’ll be on your way! Note that you do need an internet connection to grab this download, so make sure data or wifi are on!

1. Press the Search button on your Nokia Lumia and then tap Vision
2. Scan the barcode
3. Tap on the link when it appears on the screen
4. Install the application from the Windows Phone Marketplace

You could also, of course, just go straight to the Windows Phone Marketplace, but that’s not nearly as fun a process! Have a peek at our hands-on with City Lens through the eyes of the Nokia Lumia 920 here, and note that the final version for the 920 and the 820 will vary just a bit from the version you’re seeing for your 900, 800, or 710 today.

With Windows Phone 8 as it appears on the 920 and 820 you’ll find some features that only appear on Windows Phone 8 devices and above. With this version of City Lens, you’ll be able to pin to start any category tile. You’ll also be able to add your own favorite searches, and you’ll be able to use City Lens in both portrait and landscape modes. Check our timeline below for more City Lens action!

[via Nokia]

To help celebrate this launch date announcement, the folks at Sony have pulled together a developer diary all about Wonderbook. In this first dev diary, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of the idea behind Wonderbook, and how the developers came up with the product some of us will be taking home on November 13. Regardless of your feelings about Wonderbook, the video is actually quite interesting, so it’s suggested that you give it a watch.

When Wonderbook: Book of Spells arrives on November 13, it’ll come in two different forms. If you already own a PS Move controller and a PS Eye camera, the game and the book will be available in a standard package that runs $39.99. For those who are new to the realm of motion gaming on PS3, Book of Spells also comes in a bundle pack that includes the game, the Wonderbook peripheral, a PS Move controller and a PS Eye camera for $79.99. Those are some pretty attractive prices, especially if you already have a Move controller and an Eye, so even though some may be wondering why Sony is even releasing Wonderbook at all, the company can probably count on some pretty healthy sales.

That’s the thing too – hardcore gamers won’t understand what Wonderbook is all about, but that’s okay because it isn’t aimed at them. One look at the developer diary above and you can tell that young children are going to be all over this, and the team-up with J.K. Rowling to make a Harry Potter-themed Wonderbook game certainly won’t hurt. Who’s picking up Wonderbook: Book of Spells when it launches on November 13?

[via US PlayStation Blog]

The end result is a digital picture directly overlaid on top of the real-world view, a different approach to Google’s strategy with Project Glass, where the floating display is set up slightly, and out of the wearer’s usual eye-line. TTP’s version promises a more persistent integration, and requires no change of gaze by the user themselves.

Or, at least, that’s what the end result will be when the prototype gets its next upgrade. Right now, the headset can only show a monochrome, 640 x 480 image, not a moving video, but the hardware to do that is expected to be ready within the next “few weeks.”

While overlaying content onto the surrounding environment potentially looks more impressive, it does open the door to more complex issues for whatever software is driving the headset. Precisely lining up computer-generated graphics with the real-world becomes essential, for instance, a problem Google’s first-gen Glass seemingly bypasses.

Arguably more useful is TTP’s approach to head-mounted display control. Google has been experimenting with a combination of side-mounted touchpad controls and voice-recognition, as well as flirting with object recognition, but TTP has opted for a more straightforward system which tracks eye movement.

Rather than existing pupil-tracking approaches, however, which were discounted for being “relatively computationally expensive,” their implementation relies on electrodes mounted at the temples of the headset, and which measures eye-movement in the muscles there. The electrical signals in those muscles can be crunched to figure out which way the eyes are looking, and that translated into UI interaction.

Project-based systems aren’t new – Lumus has a similar approach with its AR eyepiece - but no single company has managed to corner the fledgling wearables market so far. TTP will not be manufacturing its display or eye-tracking technology, but instead hopes to license it to third-parties; the company is apparently “talking to at least one California-based company” though no names have been mentioned.

In fact, the Glass headsets were posting select images to the DVF Google+ account throughout the show, with various backstage shots of models getting ready (or looking at each others’ bizarre eyewear in apparent bemusement) and then strutting down the runway. The final film – titled “DVF through Glass” – will be released this Thursday, September 13.

“Beauty, style and comfort are as important to Glass as the latest technology” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said of the partnership. “We are delighted to bring Glass to the runway together with DVF.”

It’s not the first eye-catching stunt Google has employed to bring greater attention to Project Glass. The company staged an incredible skydiving entrance for the wearables at Google IO earlier this year, sending Glass-sporting stuntmen from the skies above San Francisco to land on the roof of the convention center and then stunt-bike their way through the stairways to the stage. Live footage of the whole thing was streamed from the Glass headsets.

Like some of DVF’s more expensive clothes, however, Glass will remain the preserve of the few for a while yet. Google put the initial “Explorer Edition” of the hardware up for preorder at Google IO, price at a not-inconsiderable $1,500 apiece, with shipping expected early in 2013. A consumer version is planned for the market within a year of that taking place.

[via MarketingLand]