List of hardware – Head-mounted Displays
Hololens
List of hardware – Glasses
- Facebook Ray Ban smartglasses (https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/16/21439929/facebook-ar-smart-glasses-ray-ban-announcement)
- Apple glass (https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses)
List of hardware – VR Walker
Most preferred devices for VR
The possibilities of VR are limited by it’s physical environment when it comes to simulation for open-world scenarios.
One way to overcome physical boundaries is to use a VR walker.
Imagine playing a game of counter strike in VR where you can physically interact with the counter strike world without environment limitations. VR walker significantly improves the impressiveness since player can now “freely” walk in game.
Most preferred devices for MR
For Mixed Reality, I foresee that the widespread adoption will be on consumers and smart glasses can be the enabler for that.
MR may seem really cool but we cannot ignore the fact that it is weird to hold your phone up and catch pokemons in a public setting. For the use of MR to be considered “normal”, the interaction with the device that enables it need to be “normal” and “natural” as well.
Therefore, smart glasses fits the use case because the usage of MR is hand-free and the consumption of the MR content is natural in a way that it does not disrupt the natural day-to-day movement of an individual.
One of the exciting release is the Facebook first smart glasses where it collaborates with Ray-ban. (see below)
For the widespread adoption of smartglasses, it not only need to provide the necessary functions, but it also needs to “look” normal when wearing. This is where I think Facebook and Ray-ban collaboration really shines since Facebook can take care of the tech aspect really well while the look and feel of the physical glass can be handled by a well-established brand such as Ray-ban.