A combination of the Wikitude’s augmented reality software technology and Optinvent’s ORA-S AR glasses hardware offers a truly hands free augmented reality experience. The ORA-S provides a dual display option, allowing users to choose from a fully immersive experience or a support mode, similar to Google Glass. Currently the demo-mockup is bulky and uncomfortable. They are looking to make it thinner and more comfortable. The display can be moved out of the field of view.
The new ORA-S which is currently under development in France and is expected to be available to consumers for around $300 sometime in 2014. It offers users much larger display size that is three times that offered by Google Glass, and also offers a 16:9 aspect ratio and a field of view of 25 degrees.
Shane Walker, an IHS Global Insights analyst, told Ars that his firm is tracking 11 companies (including Google Glass) making a similar type of product.
“Glass will lead the market (and there will be more players before too much longer), but I think there is room for others by targeting certain markets (i.e. Recon’s focus on sports),” he said. “These all utilize similar display technology, except Meta, which introduces embedded vision for gesture recognition. I’d say this is the most unique proposition yet.”
ORA-S’ first developer version, including an SDK, is expected to come out in December 2013 for around $950.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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