When you wake up in the morning, put on your glasses, you can see today's weather and schedule; when you can't find the way out, you automatically think about whether you should turn left or right... We've seen futuristic depictions like this many times, but a decade later, AR glasses have never really gone to the consumer end.
At the OPPO 2021 Annual Future Technology Conference held earlier, OPPO Air Glass smart glasses were officially released. At the conference site, we only did some light experience of this product, at that time, in addition to the product itself, what impressed me more was the words said by Liu Chang, president of oppo Research Institute - "OPPO Air Glass is a smart glasses that consumers can really reach." ”
It is worth noting that from the current situation, it will take a long time to achieve the wide application of AR. In this process, OPPO proposed that consumer-grade AR can be implemented first in the form of aR assisted reality. Therefore, oppo Air Glass should be accurately said to be aR glasses, that is, a tool to assist reality.
Soon, this consumer-grade aR glasses will be available to the public, and we have been experiencing this product for more than a week. Put it this way, don't rush to wave with the future, OPPO Air Glass is indeed unexpected by many people, but it may still be different from what you imagined.
"Backward" design
In fact, as early as 2018, OPPO has begun to try in the AR field, not only launching the developer platform OPPO ARunit, but also releasing two AR glasses products in succession, but neither of them has been mass-produced. The OPPO Air Glass released this time does not adopt the appearance of the previous two generations of concept machines, but a more rare monocular split design.
It is mainly composed of three parts: an spectacle frame, just like the usual wear, you can choose flat light, myopia can also be replaced according to the degree of the eye lenses used; a charging base, with a Type-C interface, glasses put on the charge, similar to the magnetic electric shock design of the bracelet.
The design of this charging base is still worth mentioning, both to facilitate the placement, storage, and charging of glasses, but also to have OPPO-style elegance, and the curved shape that is finally presented is indeed very imaginative and futuristic.
In addition, because the battery in the glasses is very small, it can only meet the continuous use of about 2 hours, and the base also plays a role in increasing the endurance. For example, when I usually work, I don't wear glasses for a long time, and when I don't need them, I put my glasses on the bottom seat to charge, and then wear them when I get up and leave, so that the power is replenished again.
Finally, there is the body of aR glasses, the shape of the lens part is not a traditional oval, but more like sunglasses, OPPO named cicada wing shape, 1.3mm lens thickness is indeed light. The mirror body part is smooth throughout, and the internal stack includes optical machines, PCB motherboards, touch, batteries, dual microphones and other devices.
The speaker is located at the bottom, with a sliding touch strip on the side, which is one of its interaction methods, and is assembled on the spectacle frame by magnetic suction. The weight of this body is only less than 30g, which is currently the lightest monocular waveguide glasses in the industry, and the glasses frame is also very lightweight, so the overall feeling after wearing sunglasses is similar to that of usually wearing sunglasses.
However, because it is magnetic, you need to pay attention to the focus point when you first wear or take it off, otherwise it is easy to break it directly. After wearing it, as long as it is not a violent run and jump, normal walking is still very stable. When it is launched next spring, there will be a variety of styles of frames to choose from, which can be matched according to their actual situation and preferences.
After several colleagues tried on these glasses, the first question was basically why did they change to this split design and not merge the two into one?
I think that this split design, in addition to reducing the volume and weight and better adapting to different visual groups, there is also a reason that is easy to be overlooked is that it can protect the eyes at the same time.
Although OPPO uses two pieces of sapphire glass to cover the waveguide display area in the middle, it is glass after all, and it is so close to the fragile human eye, adding a pair of glasses can obviously play a better protective role. From this point of view, it is safer to choose a framed version of the frame.
So why 2022, OPPO Air Glass or monochrome display? This brings us to its optical scheme.
OPPO Air Glass uses today's mainstream diffractive optical waveguide technology, which hides the micro LED miniature display the size of a coffee bean in the frame, projects light to one side of the optical waveguide, and after countless reflections and diffusions, it is finally transmitted to the human eye.
In fact, oppo using this Micro LED micro display is indeed the current industry is more optimistic about the direction, compared to OLED can bring higher brightness, OPPO Air Glass can provide an average of 1400 nits into the eye brightness, to solve the problem of outdoor viewing. However, Micro LED is currently only a monochrome display, and the maturity of RGB modules may have to wait for several years.
The picture projected onto the screen by the light waveguide is fixed and the distance and display size cannot be adjusted. In my use, I found that due to the individual differences in each person's eyes, for non-visual reasons, some people can see the screen clearly, but some people look blurry. And judging from the trials of more than a dozen colleagues, this proportion is not small. So if you're planning to buy it, it's recommended to try it on first.
What application scenarios can be implemented at this stage
Of course, your biggest concern is definitely how the function is implemented. The hardware configuration of OPPO Air Glass determines that there should be no high expectations for it. The Snapdragon 4100 processor used is a wearable device chip released by Qualcomm last year, which must be installed on the mobile phone before use and used with the mobile phone.
The function is similar to the smart bracelet, checking the weather, schedule, sports health, etc., followed by notification reminders, answering calls. It also has features that the bracelet doesn't have — navigation, teleprompters, AR shops, and instant translation — but it all also requires a mobile phone. So what's the difference between it and a bracelet?
The most direct difference is naturally the way of interaction, although they are wearable devices, but when we use bracelets and watches, we still have to look down, one hand lifts, one hand slides, but the glasses are different, check the weather, time, schedule, basically move the eyeballs on the line.
Does it really work? Yes. When I was cutting vegetables in the kitchen, both hands were empty, this time the WeChat message came, and I saw the content of the message with a slight nod, which left a deep impression on me at that time. And every day when walking the dog, wear it and don't take out your mobile phone to look at the time.
That's it? In fact, we have a lot of scenes in life that are inconvenient to use mobile phones like this, and the logic of glasses is to let users free their hands, so the navigation function of OPPO Air Glass is also a very practical direction.
Set the navigation route on your phone or by voice in advance, and then you can get directions through your glasses. I can't say how much I need it, but this feeling of looking at the arrow that appears in front of you and turning right is still very strange, and it is worth a try.
The use of glasses to navigate, reduce the risk of looking down, its monocular design, the entire line of sight is not large, but still not suitable for high-speed driving. And if you usually have riding navigation needs, then it may be a good auxiliary tool.
The teleprompter function is not very useful to me, but my colleague anchor Xiaoyu thinks it is very useful, after importing the manuscript on the APP, the text appears in front of me, but unfortunately I can't wear it all the time to shoot videos.
In contrast, I think the more chicken function is still instant translation, because to use this function must first be opened on the mobile phone APP, speak English to the phone, and then the glasses can display Chinese, but I have taken out the mobile phone, why not use the translation APP directly?
The above is basically the main function of OPPO Air Glass at this stage, we often hear AR movies, AR games, AR shopping and so on, and it has nothing to do with it. In general, OPPO Air Glass is still mainly based on information presentation, and this monochrome Micro LED screen cannot display too complex content.
Obviously, in order to mass-produce, OPPO Air Glass has made a lot of trade-offs. It is conceivable that even in 2021, there are still many difficult problems to be solved in order to achieve the scenes in the movie.
OPPO is a key step within reach
According to Liu Chang, president of OPPO Research Institute, "In the future, smart glasses will become the most important 'third screen' in personal life after mobile phones and watches." "But after experiencing this OPPO Air Glass, I asked myself, do I really need such a third screen to notify reminders and see the time and weather? Frankly, the answer at this stage is "not necessarily necessary".
But does that mean that aR glasses aren't useful?
There are always many people around us who are full of curiosity, tolerance and exploration of new things, and when Tesla's first model, the Roadster, first launched in 2008, the market did not buy it. Now that Tesla has become the world's largest car company by market capitalization, Roadster has become a collection of car collectors, and the first group to buy Roadster have also gained the opportunity to contact the future earlier.
The emergence of OPPO Air Glass is also largely to meet the needs of such people who always want to experience the future one step ahead. Of course, even if there is a demand for such people, OPPO Air Glass may still not have too high sales, but the market and the industry need someone to take this step, even if they pay the price of throwing money and losing money.
At this stage, OPPO Air Glass may be the best solution that OPPO can give. Put the wearing experience, mass production, and price into priority, starting from the basic function of message reminder, so that users can slowly develop usage habits.
Previously, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies may have painted a beautiful blueprint for AR to us in advance, but to truly achieve the consumer level, we need to be closer to the user side of the enterprise force, when OPPO took this step, choose from aR to the realization of consumer-grade AR, we can really reach.
With the gradual maturity of the upstream supply chain, the active layout of downstream hardware manufacturers, and the slow development of user habits, it is foreseeable that as soon as the next two or three years, consumer-grade AR applications will usher in an explosive period, so does this mean that the future of wearable devices depicted by Google Project Glass ten years ago is finally going to come to life?
The answer can refer to smart watches, nowadays, wearing smart watches to go out has been commonplace, the future of AR glasses must be so, wearing a pair of glasses can go out is as normal as carrying a mobile phone. But until that day, apparently, AR glasses still have a long way to go.