AUGMENTED REALITY STEPS UP TO CHALLENGE ITS VIRTUAL COUSIN

AR likely to dominate the AR/VR market by 2020, experts say

Meron Gribetz knows what the future of work looks like. And it doesn’t have computer monitors.

“Look out at all those desks,” says Gribetz, CEO of augmented reality headset maker Meta. “Within a year or two, I want everyone here to be doing their work using our glasses. The change is coming.”

Hollywood, thanks to prescient science-fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick, has already shown us this version of the future. Think Minority Report, when Tom Cruise dons black gloves to manipulate holographic images floating in front of him. Or Iron

Man’s Tony Stark working out his superhero calculus with brisk hand gestures.

While such technology once seemed like fantasy, companies such as Meta — whose sub-$1,000 Meta 2 glasses are available for preorder today on its website — are demonstrating that our holographic future is tantalizingly closer than we think.

“My prediction is that in five years we’ll be wearing a thin strip of glass over our eyes,” says Gribetz, 30, an Israeli-born entrepreneur who founded Meta in 2013. “The key with AR won’t be the hardware as much as creating a zero-learning-curve user interface. It’ll be pure intuition. We call it the iOS of the mind.”

The tech spotlight of late seems to be shining primarily on virtual reality, or VR, which provides an otherworldly escape via goggles that block out your surroundings. This year’s coming wave of high-end gear from Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony will only stoke these VR fires.

In contrast, augmented reality, or AR, layers an interactive virtual world on top of what’s around us. Remember Google Glass? That was a $1,500 AR effort that flopped. But Google is going back to the drawing board with a leading investment in secretive AR company Magic Leap just as others push AR forward. Some of its competitors: Microsoft, in the form of its forthcoming HoloLens; Epson, known for printers and projectors; and ODG, a San Francisco-based tech company started by longtime inventor Ralph Osterhout.

In fact, AR is likely to dominate the AR/VR market by 2020, taking 75% of an anticipated $120 billion pie, according to industry advisers Digi-Capital.

Don’t get too excited just yet. Much like VR still has stumbling blocks on the road to broad adoption due to limited content, AR has its own hurdles to overcome.

Those include not only its form factor — today’s offerings range from chunky glasses designed by ODG and Epson to visor-like wear from Meta and HoloLens — but also the need to prove what’s being offered is superior to its non-virtual counterparts. In other words, while it might be cool to see a computer monitor hovering in front of you, there’s a question about whether a user really needs that, asks Brian Solis, principal analyst with Altimeter Group.

“Simply replacing use cases that we all are quite happy with right now, like a laptop or tablet or smartphone, isn’t enough,” Solis says. He predicts AR will come into its own around 2020. “Don’t forget the public reacted badly to people who wore (Google) Glass. In the end, AR has to be something we wear by choice because the benefits are greater than the societal reaction to it.”

In the near term, analysts say AR is likely to rack up a string of small victories in the enterprise space long before any big wins with average consumers.

Among those making headway are ODG’s $2,700 self-powered AR glasses, the R-7, which are used by surgeons to see vital-sign monitors in their peripheral view, and industrial workers getting live holographic repair guidance as they work. And Meta has dozens of high-end partners such as Airbus and Bentley — some of whom contributed to their $23 million Series A round last year — who have been using Meta 1 glasses for collaborative drafting.

HoloLens is a $3,000 untethered device powered by Windows 10. It has partnered with NASA to help astronauts get virtual help on mission tasks and with Volvo to help showroom customers custom-configure cars in detailed hologram form.

And then there are hyper-specialized AR applications such as Skully, which sells a $1,500 motorcycle helmet that offers a built-in data display and that also projects the road behind the rider. CEO Marcus Weller says the AR momentum is building.

“I’ve been to the Consumer Electronics Show for the last three years, but this past January was the first time when the investors I met with knew how AR was different from VR,” Weller says. “Smartphones increasingly are a portal of confusion and distraction. The promise of AR is that it keeps you involved in the present.”

Onetime printer kings turned projector pros Epson agree. The company’s Moverio BT-300 AR, around $800, launched recently at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and is aimed at improving physical interactions with the real world, including museum visits and amusement park rides.

“Purpose-built content is what will drive AR forward,” says Eric Mizufuka, smart eyewear product manager at Epson who thinks AR’s potential could in time eclipse VR. “Being able to walk around a room freely and see your body along with the overlaid images is just a more natural experience. But to get there, AR needs to be increasingly small, light and wearable.”

“Don’t forget the public reacted badly to people who wore (Google) Glass. In the end, AR has to be something we wear by choice.”

Brian Solis, analyst, Altimeter Group