At Snap Partner Summit 2024, Snap Inc. announced its fifth generation of standalone Augmented Reality (AR) glasses—Spectacles, a “new see-through” that uses Lenses to blend the virtual and real world in a new interactive way. For instance, imagine an AR game where the visual characters from the game appear right before you sit. With these Spectacles, you can interact with these in-game mechanisms.
Powered by Snap OS, an operating system specifically designed to enhance people’s natural interactions with the world, these sizeable glasses accommodate four camera lenses, two Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm, and titanium vapor chamber cooling to power the screen and track hand motions.
The Optical Engine leverages Snap’s proprietary technology for a see-through AR display with two small and competent Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors. Reportedly, images created by the LCoS projector use Advanced Waveguide, which produces vivid, sharp images and has billions of nanostructures to combine the view of Snap OS with the real world. Snap claims that the view from Spectacles is equivalent to a 100-inch display from 10 feet away.
Moreover, Snapchat has launched a new Spectacles app that allows users to customize game controllers with Lenses. With the Spectator Mode in the app, even users without Spectacles can witness the flow along the phone screen.
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Snap OS – Software Powering Spectacles
While Snap has offered several smart glasses for a while, the most significant improvement in the Spectacle is the inclusion of Snap OS. Snap OS is said to “bring Spectacles to life through an intuitive interface” and can reflect “how people naturally interact with the world.”
With Snap OS, backed by Snap Sptial Engine, users can seamlessly operate the Spectacles interface by hand and voice. The platform is specially built for natural interaction, understanding the world holistically so that Lenses appear realistic in three dimensions. With just 13 milliseconds of motion-to-photon latency, Spectacles renders incredible accuracy.
For now, Spectacles is available only for developers in the U.S. at $99/month with a one-year commitment. The Spectacles Developer Program can be joined at Lens Studio.
