Samsung imagines what its first AR glasses might look like in these leaked concept videos

Samsung has been playing with AR glasses for years, most recently trotting an extremely basic set of image projection glasses to the CES 2020 stage, but I’ve never seen the company suggest they might like to build a computer. truly ambitious augmented reality laptop. device – until maybe today.

WalkingCat, a fairly reliable source of gadget leaks, released two new concept videos which show some of the fun things a pair of ‘Samsung Glasses Lite’ could do, like projecting a giant virtual screen where you can play your games, let you relax in your private theater, give you a computer screen virtual giant, trigger an auto-dimming ‘sunglasses mode’ or act as an instant first-person view display for your DJI drone, with telemetry.

The second video introduces the very similar concept of “Samsung AR Glasses”, although this time it allows the user to “see” 3D digital objects appear in the real world, a visual that should be instantly familiar to you if you are familiar with it. have already seen some. from Microsoft’s HoloLens Marketing.

If you’ve never tried Microsoft HoloLens or Magic Leap, know that the reality is far removed from the visualizations you see here. Current waveguides, lasers, projectors, and micromirror combinations usually give you a fairly small field of view with clear AR glasses like these. If you were standing right next to a virtual computer screen, you would only be able to see part of it at a time – the rest would be out of your line of sight.

For me, the most interesting part of these videos is how Samsung imagines you will be using a smartwatch to navigate the interfaces. In the short term, this might be more realistic than trying to tap into things that aren’t actually there or gesturing in the air with your hands, and smartwatch control is a paradigm than others. companies working on AR headsets are definitely considering. Apple of course has both a smartwatch and an AR headset in development, and Facebook’s hardware division that makes AR glasses is reportedly working on a smartwatch as well.

Speaking of Samsung and smartwatches, two known leaks are now saying that Samsung may be reverting to Android for its next smartwatch, instead of its own Tizen platform, which has been used for watches for years now.