For decades we’ve seen scifi concepts of a heads-up display (or HUD) that presents all sorts of different pieces of information right on a person’s field of vision, completely personal to the wearer. In the last couple of years, concepts began to arise for contact lenses that could project such a display, though any serious plans to make the product were stymied by the question of how to give power to the things, not to mention how to mass produce such fine and fragile pieces of technology. More reasonable attempts at making HUD technology available have come in the form of smartphones using built in cameras for “Augmented Reality” (or AR). Google has even dipped its toes in the tech waters before with “Google Goggles”, available as part of the Google app for iOS, and as an independent app for Android. But in the last couple of days, every previous poke at real, practical heads up displays has been brought to its knees in the face of Google’s Project Glass.
Seen above is the first glance the public eye ever got into Google’s Project Glass.
But that was two days ago.
Already, we’ve seen Sergey Brin wearing one of the devices in public, confirming that while the product may not yet work quite as the video above advertises (emphasis on ‘yet’), it is a very real product, and Google is serious about developing it. Currently, the tech giant has stated it plans to release the first publicly available version of the device by the end of this year. Many of the details on Project Glass are still scarce, such as if it tethers off of a smartphone or operates independently, what its power source is and how long it lasts, and so on, but even right now this could be the most interesting new development in 2012. If Google manages to even come close to delivering on what its concept video demonstrates, they could have a monumental winner on their hands set to truly revolutionize the tech industry.
