Sure, augmented reality is nice, but how about it coming in a biçim that doesn’t look weird on your face?
This, it seems, was the thought process behind Oppo’s new augmented reality glasses prototype, unveiled at MWC Barcelona on Monday.
The Oppo Air Glass 3, as they’re called, are almost indistinguishable from regular glasses, and with a weight of just 50 grams, shouldn’t be uncomfortable to wear over longer stretches of time. In the upper corner of your vision, however, they hide a virtual display that Oppo claims is the “best full-color display of its kind.”
The glasses are used either by touching the frame to activate the AI voice assistant and then issuing voice commands, or by using the touch interface to perform voice calls, listen to music, browse through photos and the like. The glasses feature four microphones and noise isolation, meaning that you should be able to hear music in high quality while still not annoying the people near you.
The AI assistant in question is Oppo’s LLM (large language model) called AndesGPT. It’s currently not available outside of China, so it’s unlikely that these glasses see a global launch very soon.
Still, there’s something to be said for glasses that don’t look at all out of the ordinary, while still giving you some AI-related capabilities. Google was the first to try it, with its ill-fated Google Glass, and we’ve seen other instances of smart glasses recently, such as Ray-Ban’s Meta Smart Glasses, though those don’t feature a display.