AR glasses are nice and all… but don’t forget what’s growing in the shadows
Holographic displays can increase sales by up to 600%
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You’ve heard about smart glasses, but do you know that holographic displays can provide similar benefits much sooner? This article shines light on why hands-free, three-dimensional, and always-on displays are an important near-term marketing tech that’s much closer than the AR smart glasses everybody is dreaming about.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m super excited about the next generation of AR and XR glasses that are rumored and teased all around the interwebs. Because hands-free and consumer-facing smart glasses will catapult AR into the next stage of its development — hello AR 3.0 — and will make spatial AR experiences the new hot thing (hotter than its first heat wave during the Summer of Pokémon GO in 2016).
Holographic displays enable hands-free AR experiences that are always-on and that, most importantly, don’t require customers to activate them
The gif below shows a concept of people ‘walking’ their Pokémon as if they were real, an illusion that is reinforced by two or more Pokémon interacting with each other. On top of this, these AR characters are socially shared between users; meaning that I can see your Pikachu and you can see my Bulbasaur.
And you probably already noticed the craziest thing: Nobody is holding up a phone! The Pokémon world becomes frictionless entangled with our world (see the ENTANGLE acronym in my research article way back in 2016), thanks to Microsoft’s Hololens 2.
Niantic, the maker of Pokémon GO, recently posted a job listing for Head of AR OS Engineering because they know that AR head mounted displays / smart glasses are essential to make this future a reality. Also in March, Microsoft demoed its new Mesh platform (see video below) that powers above experience. The demo video shows a future in which holograms melt down distances and let us collaborate and enjoy moments together in naturalistic…
