Snap Unveils Fifth-Generation AR Glasses: A Leap into the Future of Augmented Reality

Snap's vision for the future rests on Spectacles | Marketing | Campaign India

At the sixth annual Snap Partner Summit, held on 17 September 2024, Snap Inc. unveiled a series of developments poised to reshape its engagement with creators and users alike. The event, which brought together Snapchatters, developers, partners, and advertisers, was headlined by an array of technological advancements and strategic partnerships aimed at enhancing the platform's creative ecosystem. Evan Spiegel, Snap's CEO, opened the summit by reflecting on Snapchat's substantial growth. "We feel incredibly fortunate to serve over 850 million Snapchatters around the world, including the 100 million who have joined us since our last Partner Summit," he said. Spiegel highlighted Snapchat's role in improving user wellbeing and reinforcing relationships, underscoring the platform's unique position in fostering personal connections through its features. His comments set the tone for a day of announcements that underscore Snapchat's commitment to creativity and innovation. Spectacles 5.0: A leap in AR technology The summit's most anticipated announcement was the introduction of Spectacles 5.0, Snap's latest generation of augmented reality (AR) glasses. These see-through, standalone devices are designed to enhance users' interactive experiences by enabling them to use Lenses and share moments with friends in novel ways. Powered by Snap OS, the new Spectacles offer advanced functionalities through hands and voice navigation. The Spectacles feature cutting-edge Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors and waveguides, delivering vibrant, sharp images regardless of lighting conditions. The dual Snapdragon processors embedded within the Spectacles ensure efficient performance by distributing computational tasks and reducing power consumption, thus improving heat dissipation. This architectural innovation allows for up to 45 minutes of continuous standalone operation. According to Ceci Mourkogiannis, Snap's vice president of product, the development of these glasses reflects the company's understanding of users' core needs -- communication, photography, and entertainment. "That's why we recently began testing Simple Snapchat, focusing on these primary functions," Mourkogiannis explained. "We're not just bringing AI to the camera -- we are bringing it to memories too." Expanding creativity with AI and developer tools In a move to bolster its support for developers, Snap has partnered with OpenAI to provide access to sophisticated multimodal large language models. This collaboration aims to enable developers to create Lenses that recognise objects and provide contextual information, broadening the scope of interactive experiences available on the platform. The newly enhanced Lens Studio 5.0, coupled with the Spectacles Interaction Kit, simplifies the development process by allowing creators to deploy their projects to Spectacles with ease. This updated toolset is designed to reduce the complexities associated with creating interactive Lenses, thus encouraging more innovative contributions from the AR community. Brooke Berry, Snap's head of creator development, highlighted the rapid growth in content creation on Snapchat. "The number of creators posting publicly has more than tripled over the past year," Berry noted. This surge in activity is supported by the introduction of new features within the GenAI Suite in Lens Studio, including Animation Blending, Body Morph, and Icon Generation. These tools are set to facilitate faster and more creative content production, with future support for text-based animation generation and Video to 3D Gaussian Splats. Strengthening the creator economy Snapchat's commitment to its creator community was further underscored by the expansion of its Spectacles Developer Program, which is now available to developers in the U.S. for $99 per month with a one-year commitment. Notable AR developers and teams, such as the LEGO Group, ILM Immersive, Niantic, and Wabisabi Games, are already utilising the new tools to innovate with Spectacles. The summit also addressed the growing need for authentic brand partnerships. "Our Snap Star Collab Studio helps accelerate partnerships between creators and brands," Berry stated. "We're continuing to make it easier for professional creators to get discovered." New self-serve tools will allow creators to present their engagement and demographic data directly to advertisers, facilitating more meaningful collaborations. With over 850 million users worldwide and a significant presence among 13-34-year-olds, Snapchat remains a powerful platform for both content creators and brands. As Spiegel and Berry's comments indicate, Snap is positioning itself as a leader in integrating advanced technology with creative expression. The introduction of Spectacles 5.0 and enhancements in AR development tools reflect Snap's strategic focus on fostering an ecosystem where creativity thrives and user experiences are continually enriched. As Snapchat continues to evolve, the latest advancements unveiled at the Snap Partner Summit were meant to underscore the company's commitment to pushing the boundaries of digital interaction. For content creators, these developments offer opportunities to innovate and connect with audiences, marking newer ways to boost their engagement on the platform.

AR glasses are here: Snap launches spectacles at LA summit and its own OS to power it - Times of India

LOS ANGELES: In one of the biggest tech launches this year, American multimedia company Snap Inc introduced its new cutting-edge AR (augmented reality) spectacles together with its new OS, which powers these see-through glasses. The fifth generation Snap spectacles, which the company says weigh 226 gram, sit lightly on the eyes and behave like usual glasses till you power it up and it conjures a screen that lets you have fun or get creative with a range of lenses. With big tech seeing the virtues of AR glasses, which are different from the opaque and chunkier VR headsets, Snap is first off the blocks in this new class of wearables. Meta is believed to be poised to introduce its own AR glasses too. The Snap spectacles, which are a standalone device and can be operated by pinch gestures of your right hand and a virtual console that opens on your left palm, work by projecting an overlapping AR image on your view and so don't cut you off from reality. For example, if you are sitting in your living room, you can play a game of virtual chess on your real table wearing the spectacles - lifting pieces with pinch gestures and making your moves on the virtual board - while sipping on a (real) cup of coffee. The table, the chess board and pieces and the cup of coffee - you see all three clearly. Snap described the spectacles as "the result of a decade of research and development to introduce hardware that breaks the bounds of screens and brings people together in the real world". The spectacles can also be paired with a phone through Snap's 'Spectacles' app, which lets one use the phone as a game controller and also mirror the phone screen. The 'spectator mode' feature allows group activity with the spectacles. For example, two players can play that game of chess if both are wearing the spectacles. The new AR glasses were launched by Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel at the Santa Monica-based company's main annual event, Snap Partner Summit, at the Barker Hangar in Los Angeles. "Tech can be way better than it is today. We can't be bound by screens forever. We need something more intuitive, more human," Spiegel said. Snap also announced a partnership with OpenAI that will open up artificial intelligence models to lens developers using the new AR glasses. As Spiegel put it, "no tech event in 2024 is complete without an OpenAI partnership". Like image-generating AI tools, its Easy Lens can do the same to instantly generate lenses. At the summit, the company also announced Lego Games launching 'Bricktacular' for the spectacles, a partnership with Niantic, and a Star Wars Galaxy experience being crafted by ILM Immersive, Lucasfilm's interactive studi0. The spectacles, the company said, will be available for now only to lens developers, including those from India, working with Snap for a $99 monthly subscription. Features The Snap AR glasses are equipped with four cameras that power Snap Spatial Engine and enable hand tracking. The Optical Engine has been designed to enable a see-through AR display. The glasses work through liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors that create vivid images and have waveguides that make it possible to see the images created by the LCoS projector without the need for calibrations or custom fittings. They have a 13 millisecond motion-to-photon latency that give, the company said, "incredible accuracy, integrating them naturally into your environment". The Optical Engine delivers a 46-degree diagonal field of view with a 37 pixel per degree resolution - similar to a 100-inch display which is 10 feet away. The glasses tint automatically based on surrounding light and work indoor and outdoor. The dual system-on-a-chip architecture with two Snapdragon processors splits the compute workload on the spectacles while titanium vapour chambers dissipate heat. The company announced a runtime on a single charge of up to 45 minutes. "We want to be the most developer-friendly platform in the world and empower developers to invest in building amazing lenses," the company said in a statement, while announcing that the spectacles would have no developer tax and would give developers new ways to build and share lenses. "Instead of a complicated compiling process, the newly rebuilt Lens Studio 5.0 lets developers quickly push their project to spectacles," it said. Simplified Snapchat Snap also announced at the summit it is testing "a new and simplified Snapchat that organises the app around communicating with friends, using the camera, and watching snaps from friends and the broader Snapchat community, including creators and publishers". "We've been working on unifying Stories and Spotlight for some time. Now, with this new and simplified design, Snapchatters will have a more personal and relevant viewing experience," it said.

Snap unveils fifth Gen AR glasses Spectacles at Snap Partners Summit 2024

This comes days ahead of rival Meta set to showcase its AR glasses at the Meta Connect conference and Apple Inc having set the stage for its AR glasses that have reportedly been under development.Snap Inc, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, Tuesday announced the fifth generation of its standalone augmented reality (AR) glasses, Spectacles, as the company bolsters its focus on AR technology. The new product was unveiled by the company's founder and CEO Evan Spiegel at the Snap Partners Summit 2024 in Santa Monica, California. Snap's announcement of the next generation Spectacles comes days ahead of rival Meta potentially showcasing its AR glasses at the Meta Connect conference by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. According to technology news publication The Verge, Apple Inc's September 9 announcement of the "Visual Intelligence" feature - that allows users to scan and look up objects around them through the iPhone's camera - also sets the stage for the company's AR glasses, which have reportedly been under development. Moreover, chipmaker Qualcomm has also been working with Samsung and Google to develop mixed-reality glasses. The push for AR devices that bring digital overlays on physical equipment comes as global tech companies hunt for gadgets to eventually replace smartphones. Earlier this month, research firm IDC noted that global shipments for augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets are expected to grow 41.4% in 2025 - led by more affordable devices and the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) features. To be sure, Snap's Spectacles - which were first launched in 2021 - have only been made available to developers, and no plans have been released for the product's general availability. The fifth generation Spectacles have been opened up to developers for a fee of $99 per month with a minimum commitment of one year. The device is powered by a dual system-on-a-chip architecture, and with two Qualcomm Snapdragon processors - the infrastructure splits workload across the two processors. "Our design enables more immersive experiences while reducing power consumption and works alongside titanium vapour chambers to improve heat dissipation. Spectacles deliver up to 45 minutes of continuous standalone runtime," the company said in a statement. In an employee memo posted on Snap's website on September 3, Spiegel had laid out the rationale behind the company investing in research and development (R&D) of the AR glasses. "Despite our extraordinary efforts to make the smartphones we use every day better by introducing vertical video, ephemeral messaging, Stories, Lenses, and more, we continue to bump up against the limitations of screens," he wrote. "Smartphone screens distract us from the real world, require us to use small touchscreens to express ourselves, and aren't designed to be shared with friends. That's why we've been working to build augmented reality glasses for over a decade. Glasses are already worn by billions of people and allow us to interact with the real world using see-through lenses," Spiegel added. Snap investing heavily in AR glasses is also an attempt by the company to corner its share in the advertising market pie in which - by its own admission - it's a late entrant. "Today, the market for augmented reality glasses is nascent. While we continue to differentiate and win share in the highly competitive market for digital advertising, we are investing in creating augmented reality glasses that allow people to interact with computing, the world, and one another in totally new ways," Spiegel had written in the memo. "Unlike in digital advertising, where we were a late entrant in a market with established, scaled players, we are a leader in the market for this new type of glasses and in the development of our augmented reality platform that is already used by hundreds of thousands of developers and hundreds of millions of Snapchatters," he added. (The correspondent is in Santa Monica, California on the invite of Snap)

Snap unveils new Spectacles AR glasses powered by Snap OS

At Snap Partner Summit 2024, Snapchat launched its 5th generation of Spectacles, introducing new see-through AR glasses. These standalone AR glasses allow users to interact with Lenses, experiencing augmented reality (AR) in real life, alongside friends. Spectacles are driven by Snap OS, a new operating system created for seamless interaction with the real world. According to Snap, Spectacles reflect ten years of R&D aimed at breaking screen boundaries and fostering real-world connections. Snap OS is designed for intuitive interaction using hand gestures and voice commands. The Snap Spatial Engine processes the environment to render Lenses in 3D with just 13 milliseconds of motion-to-photon latency, offering lifelike Lens integration. Snap is committed to empowering developers by removing the developer tax and providing new tools, including: Snap is also collaborating with OpenAI to incorporate multimodal AI models into Spectacles, providing more context for what users "see, say, or hear." Several partners are already working with Spectacles to create new AR experiences, such as: Spectacles are available through the Spectacles Developer Program in the U.S. for USD 99 (Rs. 8,290 approx.) per month (one-year commitment), including developer support to bring AR projects to life.

Snap unveils latest AR glasses despite ongoing struggles in core ad business

Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., speaks onstage during the Snap Partner Summit 2023 at Barker Hangar on April 19, 2023 in Santa Monica, California. Snap on Tuesday announced the fifth generation of its Spectacles augmented reality glasses that can overlay digital graphics onto the physical world. The latest Spectacles are only available for developers, who must commit to paying $99 a month for one full year if they want to build AR apps for the device. The glasses can produce more compelling digital visuals than the prior version and are built on top of a redesigned software operating system dubbed Snap OS. Additionally, Snap is partnering with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to give developers tools that will allow them to build and port their artificial intelligence features for the smart glasses. Snap's announcement comes days before rival Meta's Connect event, a conference where Facebook's parent typically unveils its latest hardware. Like Meta, Snap has been trying for years to break into consumer hardware. Unlike Meta, Snap's core online advertising business has been struggling. Snap shares fell more than 20% after the company reported its latest quarterly results in August. Investors balked at weaker-than-expected guidance for the third quarter, and the company's revenue for the second quarter trailed analysts' expectations. The previous day Meta reported better-than-expected quarterly results that sent the stock price up 7%. Still, Meta's AR and VR bets continue to rack up losses -- the company's Reality Labs unit posted a $4.5 billion loss in the second quarter. That unit is responsible for the company's Quest virtual reality devices and Ray-Ban smart glasses. Since 2020, Meta has poured more than $63 billion in expenses into its hardware efforts. The company has yet to find meaningful success, but Wall Street has afforded Meta patience with Reality Labs because the company's advertising business is thriving. Meta brought in $131.9 billion in advertising sales for 2023, and reported net income of $39.1 billion for the year. By contrast, Snap recorded $4.6 billion in total revenue and a net loss of $1.3 billion in 2023. "We are at a point where the challenge with Snap is that it is just functioning at a different scale than Meta," said Leo Gebbie, a principal analyst and director at CCS Insight. With Meta selling its Quest VR headsets at a loss in order to lead and influence the overall VR market, Gebbie said he expects the company to follow a similar aggressive pricing strategy if it debuts its own AR device. For Snap to compete, the company's AR device must be "something really impressive" that incorporates the best of its core Snapchat app and appeals to the younger demographic that differentiates it from Meta, he said. Snap doesn't break out financials for its hardware efforts as Meta does, but the company has struggled to find success selling hardware. Snap debuted its first internet-connected Spectacles glasses in 2016, pitching the $130 devices as an easy way for users to capture short, first-person videos that they could post on Snapchat. A year later, Snap disclosed that it wrote down nearly $40 million due to losses from unsold Spectacles, underscoring the challenges it faces selling consumer hardware products. Since then, the company has released other versions of its Spectacles smart glasses, including a version for $380 in 2019. In 2021, it sold a pair of glasses with AR capabilities in limited numbers to developers and creators instead of the general public, making the product more of a prototype requiring further improvement before a wider release. Beyond glasses, Snap said in 2022 that it would stop developing its Pixy flying camera drone just months after it released the $230 gadget. In getting out ahead of Meta with its latest AR glasses, Snap is using a strategy taken by the Facebook parent last summer when CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed details of the company's Quest 3 VR headset a week before Apple announced its much-anticipated Vision Pro VR headset. Much of Meta's AR strategy involves sprinkling some AR features into its Quest-branded VR headsets while simultaneously pushing its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, made in partnership with EssilorLuxottica. The two companies on Tuesday announced that they had extended their partnership to continue developing smart glasses. Although Meta doesn't release sales figures, Zuckerberg has told analysts that its Ray-Ban Meta glasses that went on sale in October "continue to do well and are sold out in many styles and colors, so we're working to make more and release additional styles as quickly as we can." Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has centered the company's hardware efforts around camera technology, which he believes is a natural fit with the core Snapchat app and its 850 million monthly active users. It's unclear how much longer investors will stomach Snap's hardware push. "We have seen the losses on Reality Labs grow quarter by quarter, and investors have indulged this because Meta is making enough profit from its advertising business," Gebbie said. "Snap is hugely more constrained. It's in a position where to meaningfully compete on hardware is going to be incredibly challenging."

Snapchat AR Glasses with Its Own OS: What Can They Do?

The new Snap glasses now feature enhanced AR experiences with better digital graphics. It packs two Snapdragon processors, 37 pixels per degree of resolution, and a diagonal field of view of 46 degrees. The battery life of the AR glasses is long providing up to 45 minutes of watch time in a go. One more advanced feature is the custom proprietary operating system of the company, Snap OS. With incredible capacity and performance, this OS enhances the user experience. Snap has tied up with OpenAI and through this tie-up, the developers have been able to integrate advanced AI features in the glasses. While interacting with the developers, the CEO of Snap, Evan Spiegel said, "We're excited to see what developers create using these new tools, which highlights the enormous prospect in this tie-up.