Facebook Vision To Develop Its Own Smart Glasses For Future Technology
The Oculus Rift hasn’t been conveyed to everyone who pre-ordered the device but it seems that the man in charge of Facebook, which developed Oculus back in 2014, is already imagining a future where the virtual reality device will have slimmed down to the size and shape of spectacles and morphed into an augmented reality gadget.
On stage at the social media giant’s annual F8 developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a concept for a pair of smart glasses that he considers we will all be wearing in the next decade.
Zuckerberg said he needs the smart glasses to be capable of both augmented reality and virtual reality. The vision is not too different from Google Glass.
"Augmented reality gives you the ability to see the world, but also deliver overlays on top of the real world," Zuckerberg said.
Speaking at the firm's F8 developer conference in San Francisco, he expected the next decade will revolve around video - saying it will have as big an effect as mobile phones.
He also predicted the emergence of smart AI bots and showed off virtual reality glasses indistinguishable from normal glasses he said could be presented in a decade.
'AI will power all kinds of services - and we'll see the emergence of the next major platform, virtual reality,' he said.
'We stand for connecting every person, for giving all people a voice.
'We want to give everyone the power to share anything with anyone'
Zuckerberg unveiled a new addon for the firm's Messenger, adding smart AI bots.
'You should be able to message a business like a friend,' he said.
'Today we're launching messenger platform to build AI bots.
'Developers can build natural language services to communicate with people.'
However, Facebook would have to get to work soon if it expects to project any sense of dominance in the augmented reality field; Microsoft has already been developing their AR device, the HoloLens, for quite some time, it can even rebuild those futuristic looking hologram calls you have seen in Star Wars. Microsoft isn’t the only competition Facebook faces; Snapchat, the company known for its photo-sharing app of the same is also reportedly working on a pair of augmented reality glasses.
One can’t forget the organization that began it all: Google and their failed Google Glass, though an enterprise version is clearly in progress
“Over the next ten years, the form factor is just going to keep getting smaller and smaller,” he said. That will coincide with the development of AR tech, he continued. An example: Today, if we want to show Facebook photos to friends, we whip out our tiny phones. In the future, Zuckerberg said, you can simply unfurl a digital screen of unlimited size.
“When we get to this world, a lot of the things we think about today as physical objects, like a TV, will be $1 apps in an AR app store,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time. But that’s our vision.”