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covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight linux bias an ar
smart viewer by qualcomm is designed to
let you pin your
virtual screens right on the wall of
your office while you work
i'll tell you all about it in a moment
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the stories we cover each week
so on with the story a new type of
augmented reality glasses called the xr1
smart viewer
have been introduced by chip maker
qualcomm and are set to be released by
mid-2021
the ar glasses connect by usbc to either
a pc or a smartphone
looking much like sunglasses the smart
viewer is actually quite like
lightweight unlike gaming ar
counterparts which are rather heavy and
bulky
rather than being a self-contained
product the xr1
is intended to be a must-have accessory
the xr-1 is designed with features such
as spatial awareness and hand tracking
using two 1920x1080 led
displays that have a 90 hertz refresh
rate
there's an array of cameras to provide
to provide virtual overlay
while also detecting planes in whatever
physical territory you're in
this makes it so you can pin up virtual
windows on the wall of your room or
office
so that you can view multiple pc
displays in a row all at once
you can also set a virtual object down
on a table
and use gesture control to interact with
it
there is a however a limited range of
view just 45 degrees which is somewhat
similar to hololens 2 by microsoft
the lightweight design of the xr1 smart
viewer was accomplished by programming
it to perform
only some of its tasks with built-in
electronics while counterpoising the
rest with an external computer device
the push for ar glasses has been a
qualcomm objective for a couple of years
now
as they believe it could energize the
budding f
5g cellular market by creating both a
demand
and incentive for mixed reality apps
that are high bandwidth
as yet ar glasses are still far from
mainstream
but that may all change this year as the
xr1 and a few other competitor products
all become available around the same
time in mid-2021
just last year facebook announced that
they'd be entering the ar hardware realm
in 2021 through the release of
ray-ban smart glasses with limited
ar-like features
and lenovo a chinese multinational
technology company
has also announced a soon to be released
product called think reality a3 glasses
which are based on the xr1 reference
design
there's also a rumor that apple might be
working on a high-end
ar vr headset too i can't believe that
we're going to see this tech
this year i know it's like man
i never thought i'd see this kind of
tech in my lifetime you joked as we were
talking there that
this is very minority report and when
becca was saying about
how it uses gesture control and
everything to
be able to control it just absolutely
makes me think the same thing
what i love about this is that we've
seen attempts at ar
in the past and it's always
in my in my recollection it's always
been
trying to add augmented reality to our
existing environment
in such a way that it changes the
paradigm
of the user's interaction that's right
which if you think about it is is
interesting i mean ar is going to lead
to that
but i think because companies have been
driving to shift the paradigm
as they introduce the new technology
the adoption of that technology is poor
because users don't want to change
that's right yeah i don't want to change
but if you give me ar glasses that can
now
give me the same user interface the same
paradigm of taking my computer monitor
and placing it on the wall
that to me makes sense so
i don't have to learn new ways to
control i don't have to
um you know like the ar that we've seen
so far has all been this whole shift in
the way that the interaction
occurs yeah but i'm still able to
control it just like my normal computers
right absolutely that's i mean the cool
thing about this story is the fact that
a
we're seeing this this year this year
mid-2021
not only from qualcomm but becca was
mentioning that we're seeing we're gonna
see this from other
yeah uh technology firms as well yeah
it's true it's
very cool but but the second thing is
the fact that
um it's not just the visual aspect
i mean like you see it with different
games and stuff on your phone where they
use
you know augmented reality and it it
does its
automated thing yeah this is fully
interactive
because it is your computer and that
yeah that is very neat to me and i
kind of the way my brain works i'm i'm
waiting to hear about the first person
who goes
oh hey take a look at this people look
what are you talking about
put on your qualcomm glasses
i love also the privacy aspect of this
absolutely so
as i'm doing think about this in an
office environment where you're
like a medical office for example so now
the the technician
can be working on a screen that
only they can see because it only
exists for that person that's wearing
those glasses
they don't have to worry about other
people seeing the the screen or anything
like that
um and and then qualcomm also kind of
goes on to say yes that's what we're
doing
but there's also going to be a certain
level of ar as well
yeah so then there will be that other
paradigm
available as maybe part of the software
as well
oh it makes sense so here's a great way
to use it but we may also
offer you some other things and it's
1080p times two
yeah which is great so we're going to
have good resolution it's going to be
fantastic yeah now if i can go
slightly to the i don't know what i call
negative
but the dark side well the one thing
about this that i
don't like uh-oh is that you have to be
tethered to your phone or your computer
it's not i like that it's not bluetooth
or or or any sort of wire so to me that
says low latency well give me that says
i can tap into the ai
chip of my phone sure extremely fast
interaction
which just doesn't have their phone in
their pocket jeff fair enough
but it's the fact that oh it's a cable
so how many people are going to like
oh they go to take your glasses off grab
your phone like
i'm thinking that like the connection
standpoints i mean
you know you plug in your i mean this
phone i i can wirelessly charge it which
is beautiful because
yeah the amount of times that i've
gotten to pick it up it's like oh i'm
tethered next thing you know you break
the connection fair enough so it's
little things like that where i'm like
man they've gone so far
and they just missed this one element no
i don't believe they missed it at all
jeff
i think so i think that the tether is a
brilliant way
to keep this accessible from
a usability standpoint yeah so rather
than having a big ar
glasses that wraps my head and it has
the computer built in
i'm thinking of you microsoft all it is
is like a pair of sunglasses
because that really looks like
sunglasses because it allows you to use
the processor power of this guy
i don't have to have this size thing
strapped to my head
yeah fair enough all right all right
i'll give you that point
thank you i'm still not a fan of the
cable your comments your thoughts
cable or no cable would you rather the
big honking thing that microsoft makes
i think it can be done without the big
honking thing it probably
will be but let's start somewhere jeff
fine
i want the future now now now now now
that's right yes what do you think about
the concept of lightweight ar glasses
for an office-like setting
would you want to use them in your line
of work do you think they will create
greater efficiency in work or just
greater distraction
let us know your thoughts in the
comments below from the category 5
tv newsroom i'm becca ferguson thanks
for watching
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