Snap announced the fifth generation of Spectacles, its standalone AR glasses. Spectacles are powered by Snap OS and are available as part of the Spectacles Developer Program for $99 per month with a one-year commitment. This new generation of Spectacles is not yet available for general consumers.
Spectacles hardware has received a significant upgrade compared to the previous generation. Spectacles weigh only 226 grams despite featuring four cameras that enable seamless hand tracking and a visual engine. Snap claims that the Optical Engine has been designed and built from the ground up to enable a see-through AR display. Also, Spectacles uses Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors to deliver sharp visuals. Snap claims that this new Spectacles can render content with 13ms latency (“motion to photon”) 6DoF with 120Hz late stage reprojection frequency.
Similar to Microsoft HoloLens, Snap uses waveguides to move light into your field of view. Unfortunately, the field of view is still small. This new 5th-gen Spectacles' Optical Engine delivers a 46-degree diagonal field of view with a 37 pixel-per-degree resolution. One good thing is that they can tint automatically based on your environment's lighting to make the content vibrant regardless of lighting conditions.
Spectacles are powered by two Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, and this dual SoC design helps split the compute workload across the two processors. These AR glasses feature titanium vapor chambers to improve heat dissipation. Due to the compact nature of these glasses, battery life is very poor. Snap claims that they can deliver up to 45 minutes of continuous standalone runtime.
Snap also announced the revamped Lens Studio 5.0 that will allow developers to easily push their projects to Spectacles. Using the new Spectacles Interaction Kit, developers can create new intuitive Lenses without developing their own interaction system from scratch. Also, developers can create Lenses with TypeScript, JavaScript, and improved version control tools for team-based development.
Snap is also bringing the power of multimodal AI models to Spectacles through its partnership with OpenAI. This will enable developers to take advantage of new AI models in their Spectacles experiences to deliver compelling new experiences for users. Snap's Spectacles is compatible with both iOS and Android. As per Snap's website, iOS devices running iOS 16 or above, and Android devices running Android 12 or above will work with the new 5th Gen Spectacles.
While not yet available for consumers, the new Spectacles and developer tools signal Snap's commitment to advancing AR technology. The integration of AI capabilities opens up exciting possibilities for future AR experiences.
Source: Snap Inc.
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