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- Hacker News
- It’s telling that there are exactly zero photos of these glasses on a human faceby cush
- There are videos of their CEO wearing them. They don’t even fit his face.
- There's one at the bottom of the page -- ugly, as you might have expected.by positus
- Never buy the first version of a new product, especially if it is an Apple product. Otherwise, who is using their Vision Pro right now?
All I see is people giving them free feedback. So I would expect Snap to reduce the frames and the bulkiness of these glasses in the next version and finally, the price.
by rvz - I used my M2 version of the Vision Pro every day last week, as did one of my colleagues and at least three of our clients.by robeastham
- I use my Vision Pro like 5x a week, it's rough around the edges but I figured it's niche enough that it wouldn't get a meaningful upgrade and be obsolete for 3+ years - seems to have played off well. If you travel a lot it's also amazing.by shmoogy
- It is amazing how much optics technology has improved and caught up past few years. Glad that we are finally seeing virtual screens that overlays with the real world in < 250g. I have been using the 500$ Meta Oakley Sports glasses for evening activities, skiing etc and its clear that in the built headphones & voice activated commands alone provide great value. The muscle memory needs some rework especially resisting the urge to pull out phone every time.by ruckfool
- I'm split on this.
On the one hand, this solves the problem of smart glasses being too stealthy to tell when you're being filmed/broadcast in public by someone wearing them; where Meta's glasses look like Wayfarers, these look a lot more distinctive.
On the other hand, the reason these won't be too stealthy is because they look like those standard-issue glasses the US army was know to give out (upon looking it up: S9 glasses), and those have a reputation.
On the third, mutant, hand, I don't have a fashion sense and I really don't care about smart glasses as a technology, so maybe I'm the wrong person to judge this thing on is merits.
by verandaguy - This is my dream since 10yr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs I think specs glasses is the solution, but very expensive one.by modinfo
- Tell me it’s a bad dream?by vessenes
- Are they pricing it like this because they actually can't produce them at scale? Seems like an unserious price.
- 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 without defects.by numpad0
- Two things about smart glasses:
1. If I'm wearing smart glasses, whether I'm filming or using it for something else is nobody's business. I paid for it, I can do whatever I want with my computer glasses.
2. The fact that someone wearing them can snap my picture and unveil my entire history with one glance is terrifying. If they don't, the company can still do it "accidentally".
3. You can't have one without the other. So i hope these things crash and burn.
by firefoxd - Mine have no cameras, that fixes it.by anonzzzies
- > 3. You can't have one without the other. So i hope these things crash and burn.
Unfortunately they won't.
by rvz - These are ugly $2200 bricks as soon as this company finally goes bankrupt and there is no home they can send their data to, right?
You mustn't be smart to buy 'smart glasses'..
by meta-level - Spiegel 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?
by naishoya - I’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...
by adwi - I 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 weight across pretty large frames I think this might be getting close to a “oh wow” kind of moment where they crossover into everyday utility. The most basic killer use case ironically is 2D screen replacement, whether for mobile, laptop, desktop, or TV/home theatre. For broader adoption sure there’s looks, battery, price, etc. but if they can make it comfortable and useful enough that’s it’s better than using the alternative for some hours of the day, then the industry will sell billions of units over the coming decades.by laser
- > The most basic killer use case ironically is 2D screen replacement
How is this a killer use case?
I feel like the screen replacement thing is one of those features that would be really cool for a demo (“oh wow”), and then the user would rapidly realize that for 99% of the time a screen not hanging from their head would be more comfortable and accomplish the same thing.
by dpark - I think Apple has convincingly demonstrated that the look matters A LOT for high-end technology consumption.by paytonjjones
- 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.
by grumbel - Not 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.by jmward01
- Don't worry about that. Nobody will buy these things.by ulfw
- Bodycams designed to do exactly this cost $50-100. This is clearly an issue, but directly linking it to smart glasses isn't going work.by m0llusk
- They have a privacy section. Not the best most reassuring:
> You’re in charge of what gets captured, and a glowing indicator light lets others know when you’re recording. We prioritize on-device processing, so you’re in control of permissions when third parties request camera or microphone access with internet connectivity.
by HWR_14 - Wdym? There's a "Privacy by design" section:
> You’re in charge of what gets captured, and a glowing indicator light lets others know when you’re recording. We prioritize on-device processing, so you’re in control of permissions when third parties request camera or microphone access with internet connectivity.
I still don't know if I'd trust them, but they at least address it.
by JeffeFawkes