Are The Ray-Ban Stories Training Wheels For AR Glasses?

It is no secret that Facebook has bet a lot of its future around VR and AR. They made their intentions known when they purchased Oculus, the company behind the Oculus Rift VR headset. They paid a whopping $2 billion for it in March of 2014. 

Initially, it seemed like Facebook’s interest was in VR gaming since that was the focus of Oculus. However, within six months of the acquisition, Facebook shared that their interest in Oculus included using this VR headset for creating virtual rooms and communities for their users. 

Recently, Facebook announced a partnership with Ray-Ban to create glasses to include image, video-capture and audio. While not true AR glasses, the Ray-Ban Stories is a solid attempt by Facebook to enter the market for interactive glasses.

According to Facebook’s announcement of these glasses, “Ray-Ban Stories’ dual integrated 5MP cameras let you capture life’s moments as they happen from a unique first-person perspective. You can easily record the world as you see it, taking photos and up to 30-second videos using the capture button or hands-free with Facebook Assistant voice commands. A hard-wired capture LED lights up to let people nearby know when you’re taking a photo or video. Streamlined, open-ear speakers are built in, and Ray-Ban Stories’ three-microphone audio array delivers richer voice and sound transmission for calls and videos. Beamforming technology and a background noise suppression algorithm provide for an enhanced calling experience like you’d expect from dedicated headphones.”

Facebook’s software is what makes these glasses even more interesting. According to their release, “Ray-Ban Stories pairs with the new Facebook View app, so you can share your stories and memories seamlessly with friends and social media followers. The Facebook View app on iOS and Android makes it easy to import, edit and share content captured on the smart glasses to apps on your phone: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat and more. You can also save content to your phone’s camera roll and edit and share from there. And new, exclusive post-capture enhancements built into Facebook View let you create unique content to put a special spin on your posts.”

I have had the Bose Frames sun glasses for over a year. I like that the audio headset is built into the frame of the glasses. The audio is good for phone calls, and the stereo audio works well enough to get stereo audio when wearing them. 

Both sets of glasses are tied to an iPhone or Android smartphone and include a touch user interface to answer phone calls or switch songs by tapping a live section of the glass frames as needed. 

Neither includes any type of embedded video screen so they can in no way be considered AR glasses, even though they can get audio data through the embedded headphones, via OK Google or Hey Siri requests. 

However, you can see by the form and function of the Ray-Ban Stories glasses that Facebook has created what one might call a stepping stone or early training wheels that could help prepare the users of these glasses for whatever eventual AR glasses Facebook will bring to the market in the future. 

Indeed, any serious AR glasses will include cameras and high-quality audio tied to specialized software to make these features sing and dance. While important features, these can by no means be considered AR functions.

There are quite a few technologies that are not ready for prime time to make AR glasses a reality yet. 

One big one is the optical lenses and tiny video screens that can place images and information in front of a user’s eyes that deliver AR-based content, images, data, and information. This content needs to be either on-demand or through special software that anticipates what a user needs to see in real-time.

It will also need specialized CPUs and GPUs embedded in the glass frames to boost any functions sent to it from a smartphone. It appears that the first set of AR headsets will be connected to a smartphone, where all of the heavy lifting needed to deliver an AR experience will be processed. However, the AR frames will still need specialized CPUs and GPUs to manage some of that data sent to it from a smartphone hub.

Another technology still needed is a way for the smartphone to send that AR content to the glasses. Early versions may need a tethered approach, but research shows that mainstream consumers detest having a cord connected to AR glasses. 

That means that a wireless form of communicating with any AR smart glasses needs to be perfected, which will include more powerful, very tiny antennas and communications chips that need to live in the glass frames and are not available yet. 

Over time, if tech engineers can achieve the kind of technology breakthroughs needed to place all of the processing power in the glasses themselves, we could someday have AR glasses that work on their own and will not need to be connected to a smartphone to work. That reality won’t be anytime soon. In my talks with supply chain experts, we are at least five years, if not more, from having the kind of technology needed to make a power AR set of glasses that can manage the processing in the glasses themselves. They confirmed to me that the first, second, and perhaps the third generation of AR glasses, once they come to market, will need to be connected to a smartphone or some other portable data processing device to work properly. 

There have been rumors that Apple could bring its AR glasses to market in 2022. Given the technology needed to make even first-generation AR glasses acceptable to mainstream consumers, I have my doubts. 

On the other hand, AR glasses are the next big thing for Apple, Facebook, and Google and you can bet that behind the scenes they are investing billions of dollars into creating the technology to eventually bring their versions to the market.

Facebook and Ray-Ban’s Stories glasses are an interesting step towards getting their customers familiar with eye-ware as means to get computer-aided data and information to their customers. But the industry is still a few years away from making truly smart AR glasses that fulfill the real promise of AR.