5 AR IS GOING TO BE BIG

Often the best CES demonstrations don’t take place on the showfloor, but behind the scenes in one of the hotel suites in Las Vegas. That was certainly the case at this year’s CES, when an Israeli company called Lumus gave us a demo of what the future of AR glasses might look like.

When most people think AR, they think Google Glass or Microsoft’s Hololens: gawky, awkward-looking headsets that only the unabashed would think about wearing in public. Lumus, however, has shrunken the optical engine for AR glasses down into a chip that’s a few millimetres square, potentially paving the way for an AR headset that looks a lot more like an ordinary pair of glasses.

Before we put the headset on, Lumus’s staff asked us for our glasses prescription – glasses and modern XR headsets don’t mix – highlighting that this tech is intended to be embedded into your day-to-day specs. And we’re glad we got to see it with clear vision, because the Lumus Z-Lens 2D waveguide delivers a stunning image.

The glasses have a 2 x 2K resolution and a 50° field of view. That may sound limited, but it allows you to clearly see items displayed in front of you, while still providing plenty of peripheral vision – crucial if you’re expecting to wear these things in the street.

The image was incredibly sharp. The brightness was extraordinary, too, peaking at 300cd/m2 Lumus says such brightness will be necessary if you want to see stuff in bright sunlight, rather than a hotel room.

After 20 minutes wearing the glasses and watching various demos, it’s clear AR has enormous potential – whether that’s providing data as you walk down the street, adding extra virtual displays to a laptop sat in front of you, for gaming, or for watching movies on a plane without having to squint at a tiny screen in the chair in front you. It will be huge.

Lumus couldn’t tell us which companies it’s supplying its optical engine to, but we know they’re household names. Reports suggested that Apple could launch Lumus-based AR glasses this summer, but sadly those rumours have been quashed.