Facebook promised to release smart glasses this year, but without augmented reality

“These are definitely pluggable glasses, and they provide a lot of functions, but we are very restrained about the functionality they provide,” said Mr Bosworth. – We are delighted with them, but we do not want to overestimate expectations. We don’t even call it augmented reality; we just call it smart glasses. “

Facebook first announced plans to release AR glasses in 2017 and has since worked on several camera technologies that allow digital images to be projected into the physical world, such as photo filters for smartphones’ front cameras. In recent years, Facebook has also invested significant hardware development resources, acquired virtual reality company Oculus, and launched a home video communication device called Portal. Facebook’s VR, AR and hardware departments have over 6,000 employees, the whistleblower said. This is a larger Facebook team than the Instagram and WhatsApp apps, each used by billions of people.

Smart glasses are part of the company’s long-term efforts to create the next major platform. COO Mark Zuckerberg is a strong supporter of AR and VR. But the first version of Facebook glasses will not receive augmented reality, that is, the ability to add digital objects to the physical world. The company hasn’t disclosed the feature set for the future glasses yet, but claims they are in line with Facebook’s overall philosophy of promoting AR.

For example, Andrew Bosworth noted that glasses would allow you to make the first-person video at any time without taking your smartphone out of your pocket. Let’s see how interesting Facebook product is. Google also had promising Glass glasses, which, in fact, remained in the prototype stage for developers.

Snap previously released several versions of its smart glasses called Spectacles, which also allowed video recording. And Apple is rumoured to be working on its own smart glasses variant too.