It’s telling that there are exactly zero photos of these glasses on a human face
There are videos of their CEO wearing them. They don’t even fit his face.
Snap Smart Glasses
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#42Not a thing about privacy. I assume they are streaming the world back to their servers. Where are the guarantees that nobody sees what you see? Nobody gets telemetry on what you are looking at, etc etc. I'm not prepared to have those things near me and will likely ask people wearing them to put them away without understanding the privacy implications. This should be a front page discussion instead of not mentioned.
Don't worry about that. Nobody will buy these things.
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#43Looks dorky.
And creepy.
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#44I don’t know why people make such a big deal about the look like that’s going to matter for an early adopter spatial computing device. Two things matter: ergonomics and utility. The number one issue continues to be long term comfort and among that primarily weight/pressure. These weigh almost twice as much as xreal, but about a quarter of a quest. Given that they put power and compute onboard and seem to distribute w…
I think Apple has convincingly demonstrated that the look matters A LOT for high-end technology consumption.
And yet they've released the "Vision Pro"
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#45ugly , fugly frames.
always with the thick ugly frames
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#46I don’t know why people make such a big deal about the look like that’s going to matter for an early adopter spatial computing device. Two things matter: ergonomics and utility. The number one issue continues to be long term comfort and among that primarily weight/pressure. These weigh almost twice as much as xreal, but about a quarter of a quest. Given that they put power and compute onboard and seem to distribute w…
The problem with that "look" is that it's a dead end. These things won't be having a real glasses form factor and high enough specs to be useful anytime soon. They'll remain comically oversized for years/decades to come. So why bother with glasses form factor? I'd rather have something like Hololens or VisionPro, that's big enough to fit in a larger battery, more sensors and more compute, and can be comfortable at the same time because it has room to include a top-strap. With a glasses form factor all the weight is resting on your nose and with anything over 60g that's going to get pretty uncomfortable.
And all that aside, the real killer-feature with AR/VR is the software and so far it doesn't fell like anybody has figure out what people are even supposed to do with these things.
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
These microdisplays and microlenses and holographic waveguides are complicated. Snap seem to use technology from WaveOptics it acquired, and it require entire glass(not just display area) to be micromachined like silicon chips, of this size. The microdisplay is LCoS based, which needs to be front lit and front viewed through a tiny prism as well. And they would all have to go together with micro scale precision witho…
You’re making it sounds like the margins on this are probably not great. Do you know if it’s likely that these aren’t meant to be directly profitable, or is it possible to get all of this technology together for around $1000–$1500 USD?
I don't know, I just know that these components used are both individually and collectively expensive to make. But a hypothetical $1500 per unit cost with delta between it and $2200 covering initial costs do sound somewhat plausible to me as an enthusiastic layperson.
The most costly part would be the transparent waveguide plates. They look like thin sheets of glass, but also virtually work as series of lenses and mirrors against light entering a small designated spot. WaveOptics[1] that reportedly supply that device seem to build them by stacking three plates for RGB made with electron beam lithography and nanoimprinting, which are both relatively slow, low volume semiconductor processes. The PR reel shows 10 monochrome waveguide plate patterns on one 200 or 300mm wafer, so theoretical wafer to RGB stack ratio is only 1:3. Nowhere in product pages of both Snap and WaveOptics says the wafers are glass, so I assume it's something else.
R&D costs are also not trivial considering that this isn't first gen product, but 5th or 6th gen. They'd have to be recoup costs of those devices as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was technically sold at small losses or at cost from accounting perspective.
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#48I’ve found it interesting that fashion-forward women I know have begun wearing glasses that look remarkably similar to these. A friend wore a pair this week I would have sworn were chunky smart glasses like these, even containing exaggerated black ornaments that read as front-facing cameras where the stalks met the frames.
I don’t think it’s paranoid to acknowledge that fashion trends come from relatively few designers and editors, whom could relatively easily be motivated to sync up mass aesthetic sensibilities with engineer constraints.
Luxottica has a monopoly on nearly the entire industry, manufacturing (and even directly retailing) nearly every brand of glasses you can name, and they’re both heavily invested in Meta and their own engineering efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica https://www.essilorluxottica.com/en/brands/smart-eyewear-sol...
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#49Spiegel and Murphy have been pursuing the specs for about ten-ish years now. It's a pet project and it doesn't really seem to matter what the ROI, privacy, or real market demand actually is.
Last time i was following this concept space with any real attention, they had a pretty sizeable inventory of (perhaps a previous version, maybe these are the same equipment) without any clear path to consumers.
Now with the hand waviness of 'preferring' local model they seem to believe that this will make people want to wear something significantly worse than the military 'BCD' frames.
For a company which is practically only marketed to 'the youths' this doesn't seem at all realistic. The primary users of the company's services dont actually purchase the devices they use to access snap, the 'parental units' are the source of funds.
Add to that, the fact that this kind of streaming video capture and broadcast is becoming very concerning for many of the governments when it involves non age-gated and positively-IDentifiable users, and the road to commercial levels of production is getting bunpier, not smoother.
Best-of-luck guys; but why is this year better for this product than before?
Re: Snap Smart Glasses
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
First iPhone seemed useless and expensive.
No, it didn't. The first iphone looked incredible and expensive. People complained it didn't have apps and didn't support java, but it was very cool. Also, it cost $500.
$500 with new 2 year agreement.
The steep pricing initially hindered sales; Apple discontinued the 4GB model and dropped the 8GB model to $399 (from $599) just a few months later.