Well, the glasses are real, at least — that's Google's augmented reality glasses, the much-talked-about "shades" that were just recently seen adorning the noggin of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Google's even released a concept video about its so-called "Project Glass," showing off some scenarios where the glasses' small, single display can add additional detail and context about all the details of a person's everyday life.
Looking up into the ether could allow Project Glass-wearers to pull up a quick tasks list or check the current weather conditions. Notifications from friends (Google Plus friends, no doubt) could pop up in one's field of vision as if you had an instant messaging client strapped to your head. And then there are the maps: A snappy, icon-driven directional system that looks as if it would be a lot slicker to use to find out how to get to a particular location than staring down at one's smartphone.
The problem? Reality. Specifically, the fact that the physical construction of Google's glasses — at least, the prototypes being worn around by Brin himself — doesn't appear to be able to deliver the same experience that Google's touting in its YouTube video.
Georgia Tech's Blair MacIntyre, director of the university's Augmented Environments Lab, is a bit blunter in an interview with Wired's Roberto Baldwin.
"In one simple fake video, Google has created a level of over-hype and over-expectation that their hardware cannot possibly live up to," MacIntyre says.
According to MacIntyre, the size of the single screen that's placed right in front of a user's eyeball is more akin to a tiny heads-up display than the full-picture augmented reality shown in Google's promotional video. Additionally, it's going to be exceedingly difficult for Google to create an identical text overlay across varying levels of external brightness: Users will notice a distinct difference in the quality of the glasses' display between the lighting setup of a typical office and the bright outdoors, for example.
Google's Android-driven glasses are expected to appear later this year for anywhere from $250 to $500, true augmented reality buffs remain a bit more skeptical. For Google's concept to work, its glasses have to be able to dynamically focus: That's a technology that's around two years' out for the kind of setup that Google envisions in its promotional spot.
Cool technology, no doubt, but once pundits and enthusiasts alike start picking away at the Project Glass, cracks begin to emerge. And if Google's glasses can't live up to the hype that the company has itself created, are people really going to splurge for a not-quite-so-Terminator-like experience? Is augmented reality that much of a must-have on peoples' technological plates?
For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).
