With Oculus Connect 6 (OC6), Facebook has officially confirmed after months of speculation that the company is developing its own user-centric Augmented Reality (AR) glasses.
Andrew Bosworth, Vice President of AR/VR at Facebook, revealed on stage during his OC6 keynote speech that the company currently had “some” prototypes of AR glasses in the works, but did not provide specific details about them as it will be several years before the hardware can be considered consumer-friendly. Meanwhile, Bosworth says Facebook Reality Labs` research team is already working to “build the core infrastructure that will underpin tomorrow`s AR experiences” and aims to bridge the gap between the physical and digital words to unlock human potential and bring people closer together. The company refers to its research activities in the direction as “LiveMaps”.
“In addition to localization and mapping technology, LiveMaps uses image processing and creates a shared virtual world map,” Oculus said in a blog post. “Instead of reconstruction your environment in real time, these AR glasses will one day penetrate existing 3D spaces that were previously stored in the cloud. That means dramatically reduced processing power, so this technology can run on a mobile chipset. With these 3D spaces, your avatar could teleport anywhere in the world and allow you to stay in touch with the people in your life while on the go.”