Apple AR Glasses from 2030
Apple is almost guaranteed to release AR glasses or some other type of head-mounted AR device soon. This article isn’t about that. This article is about what we could see in AR glasses years from now. What Apple will ship in 2030, or 2040. This is a purely speculative idea for super-advanced AR glasses that could be coming in a decade or so.
It all starts with the hardware. They’ll be absolutely packed with sensors. Like TrueDepth, but for longer ranges, all over the device. Cameras (regular, telephoto, and wide-angle), IR cameras, dot projectors, time-of-flight sensors, etc. The inside will also be packed: WiFi, Bluetooth, U1, gyroscope, accelerometer, manometer, GPS, and more.
All of this to help achieve incredible spatial awareness. It uses all of its sensors to generate a virtual map of the space that it’s in. As you move around, it builds a better and better picture of its environment. It uses this to place 3D objects in a virtual space that corresponds precisely to the physical space that surrounds it. It can achieve extremely precise AR because it knows the space around it extremely precisely. And, if you go to a different location, it also builds a map of that place. You can go back to the first location, and it will use its cameras, GPS, and other sensors to recognize it and fill it with the virtual objects that were there when you left it before. The virtual objects that were there when you left are there when you come back.
It can also use these sensors for upgraded People Occlusion. People Occlusion, but for everything. Object Occlusion. If you move behind a wall, it can tell using the time-of-flight sensors that it is, indeed, behind a wall, and hide objects that you shouldn’t be able to see from behind the wall.
It could use this incredible spatial awareness for many interesting concepts. Maybe you could map out digital features such as messaging or writing to physical locations around you.
You could map Pages to a physical location. Your desk could always show your most recent Pages document on top of it. Anytime you want to edit that document or start a new one, you could just go to your desk. As you approach, virtual buttons could appear for things like adding a new page or formatting text. Now, let’s pretend that there’s a Magic Keyboard or the like on the desk that automatically connects to your glasses when you’re near it. Now you can just sit down at your desk and start typing away at your document whenever you want.
You could also map something like Weather to your front door, so you could glance at the temperature as you head out to know if you need to grab a jacket. You could add a calendar to your wall. Maybe you put your Google Wifi app next to the modem. Or, the stereotypical example, you put a massive virtual 99-foot TV on the wall.
There are, of course, technical challenges to such a device, such as the fact that it would need a big battery. Bigger than could fit into any pair of glasses today. Theoretically, better battery technology will exist years from now that could make these glasses possible, however.
We would probably also need awesome silicon. Like an M-series motion co-processor, A-series CPU/GPU, and W-series wireless chip rolled into one big super-fast package. This isn’t too unrealistic, though. Apple has some of the best silicon on the market, and getting it to this level would only take a year or two.
I believe that these technical challenges can be solved. Even if it takes a while to solve them. These glasses are from 2030, remember.
This AR headset would make the physical world and the virtual world. With ambient virtual objects around you that stay in the same place no matter where you go, it becomes harder to distinguish between what’s real and what’s computer-generated. Your world is literally augmented.
This is quite possibly the next big thing for technology. We’ve gone from desktops to laptops to smartphones and tablets to watches. Technology has gotten more and more personal. With AR glasses like these, technology would literally become a part of everything we do, everywhere we go. It can be helpful and present, but subtle. Technology can be truly immersive, and truly powerful.
Thanks for reading!
