I'm being very coy about the feature set, as you can tell - that's intentional, I'm not going to answer specifically what features it has. It's all components that people have seen before, but never all in one place. However, they do a lot of the concepts we think will eventually be critical for augmented reality glasses. When you're overlaying digital artifacts onto the world, that's really augmented reality. In the meantime, Facebook is releasing its first pair of smart glasses in 2021 in a partnership with Luxottica's Ray-Ban brand.īosworth says of the glasses, 'We're being careful not to call them augmented reality glasses. While Facebook is planning true augmented reality glasses that can display virtual objects overlaid with the real world, those aren't ready now.

Smart glasses are coming this year, but they're not AR We don't know what Facebook's promised smart glasses, announced last year, will look like. But how much will people trust Facebook as the broker of their virtual universe?Īndrew Bosworth, the head of Facebook Reality Labs (which runs all of Facebook's VR and AR efforts), spoke with me about the company's 2021 mission statement, what comes next, and when we could see neural input devices emerge. And the Quest is finally allowing multiple accounts soon. Facebook doesn't have plans to change that, but there may be changes to how flexible your Facebook identity could be. Meanwhile, Facebook's new Facebook-mandatory VR login process frustrated many customers (and developers) in 2020.

But those won't be the advanced reality-blending glasses you might be expecting.

So, in 2021, what comes next? The company plans to release its first smart glasses this year, in a partnership with glasses-maker Luxottica. Last fall, Facebook launched its impressive Quest 2 VR headset. In many ways, Facebook's product lineup ended up being prophetic for the times we now live in. It's aiming for more.Īfter a 2020 that went entirely virtual for many people, once-fantastic concepts like VR headsets and remote chat screens (including Facebook Portal) no longer seem so strange. Facebook's Quest 2 is already a successful game system.

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