Apple AR headset, new Mac Pro and more expected in 2022

AppleInsider

Apple's 2022 product may include the company's next big thing, with a new Mac Pro, Apple's AR and VR headset, and an iPad Pro with wireless charging all expected to debut.

As 2021 draws to a close, the rumor mill turns towards 2022, offering expectations of what Apple will reveal and show to the public in the year ahead. According to one report, 2022 is the year that Apple will finally introduce its AR headset.

In Sunday's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman proposes what he believes Apple will be bringing out in 2022, following what he describes as a "modest year for Apple product releases."

Among the new products brought up by Gurman is Apple's AR headset, an often-rumored piece of hardware. While Gurman doesn't really break new ground with the report, he does seemingly give credence to other claims about the device.

"Gaming should be a strong focus of the machine," he says, before mentioning its use of multiple processors, a cooling system, high-resolution displays, and its own App Store. "Look for Apple to position the device as a dream for game developers."

Apple is also anticipated to work with media partners to create VR media, and to include a "VR FaceTime-like experience" using the headset.

Gurman's other expected product launches seems to be quite pedestrian and guessable, such as updates to the iPad line including a renewed iPad Pro with wireless charging. In June, reports pointed to a "glass sandwich" design for the iPad Pro that would enable wireless charging to occur.

There are also suggestions about an iPhone SE with 5G connectivity, the usual iPhone 14 refresh, three Apple Watch models including a new SE and a ruggedized version, and revised AirPods Pro. On the Mac side, a major MacBook Air revamp with M2 is expected, along with updates to the Mac mini, a larger iMac, and a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon.

Read on AppleInsider

OutdoorAppDeveloper

Hopefully the main focus of Apple's AR glasses will not not be games. The real value of AR glasses is that they can give the user augmented intelligence. Using AI and computational vision, AR glasses could give you a better understanding of the world around you. A simple example would be the ability to zoom in to see distant objects. Computer vision has exceeded the ability of human eyesight for quite a while now. Glasses that let you see in the dark, find objects you are looking for, look around corners or behind solid objects would quickly become essential items. Tagging of objects and locations becomes possible as well. You could select Yelp reviews and see what people are saying about a restaurant you are looking at. You could select a nature channel and see information about each plant or animal you can see. Like all new technology, AR will have its down sides as well. It is not clear how you build AR glasses without some kind of camera built in and walking around with an always on camera is still not socially acceptable.

mcdave

AR shows promise but I think there are some nerdy leaps involved. The idea of FaceTiming an avatar rather than the actual person isn’t progress will likely be rejected by the masses.
Either way, Apple needs to get its 3D graphics incredibly power efficient or its going nowhere.

Marvin

AppleInsider said:

Mark Gurman proposes what he believes Apple will be bringing out in 2022, following what he describes as a "modest year for Apple product releases."

Completely upending one of Apple's biggest product categories and effectively forcing one of the world's leading chip manufacturers into using one of their competitors to try and catch up isn't exactly modest. Everything can be disappointing in fantasy world though.

AppleInsider said:

Gurman doesn't really break new ground with the report

Almost as if he doesn't know anything about what's going on.

AppleInsider said:

"Gaming should be a strong focus of the machine," he says, before mentioning its use of multiple processors, a cooling system, high-resolution displays, and its own App Store. "Look for Apple to position the device as a dream for game developers."

Apple is also anticipated to work with media partners to create VR media, and to include a "VR FaceTime-like experience" using the headset.

For mainstream use, movies offer a big opportunity here. VR gaming is still quite a small market due to the hardware price but there is potential to expand it.

Offering people the ability to have a virtual cinema screen in their own home has a huge appeal and it's 3D. Disney movies are almost all CGI so they can have kids watching the movies and the characters can hop out of the screen and walk around them. With LIDAR tracking on the front, they can track the wearer's hands so they could make a movie like Peter Pan and the Tinkerbell character flies out of the screen and lands on the hands of one of the kids.



Horror movies can have hands grabbing at the viewer from over their shoulder. Alien movies can fill the floor with fog or have the alien crawling over the ceiling.

Combined with spatial audio, it can offer a very immersive experience and with Apple TV+, Apple has the means to distribute movies that use its capabilities best.

For better clarity in bright light and a VR mode, they can use dynamic tinting with electrochromic glass, shown on the following page:

https://www.tuvie.com/dusk-electrochromic-smart-sunglasses-with-dynamic-lenses/

Holographic Facetime is a possibility, this would need the glasses to scan the wearer's face or articulate a face from voice. This has some interesting possibilities as shown in the following video:



You would effectively see a person in the same room. This could be used for remote education and would be a lot more effective trying to do a remote classroom. Remote fitness classes would be better with a full body accessory scanner, possibly an iPhone.

For some people it could replace using an iPad or iPhone like students taking notes in classes. They can have a hardware keyboard and be typing but using the view in the glasses instead of an iPad screen.

entropys

Big difference between a pair of glasses people would be willing to wear and an expensive AR headset.

and games and Apple?

entropys

Oh, as long as the new design MBA has a decent number of ports. No rMB fail.

Detnator

Marvin said:

AppleInsider said:

Mark Gurman proposes what he believes Apple will be bringing out in 2022, following what he describes as a "modest year for Apple product releases."

Completely upending one of Apple's biggest product categories and effectively forcing one of the world's leading chip manufacturers into using one of their competitors to try and catch up isn't exactly modest. Everything can be disappointing in fantasy world though.

AppleInsider said:

Gurman doesn't really break new ground with the report

Almost as if he doesn't know anything about what's going on.

AppleInsider said:

"Gaming should be a strong focus of the machine," he says, before mentioning its use of multiple processors, a cooling system, high-resolution displays, and its own App Store. "Look for Apple to position the device as a dream for game developers."

Apple is also anticipated to work with media partners to create VR media, and to include a "VR FaceTime-like experience" using the headset.

For mainstream use, movies offer a big opportunity here. VR gaming is still quite a small market due to the hardware price but there is potential to expand it.

Offering people the ability to have a virtual cinema screen in their own home has a huge appeal and it's 3D. Disney movies are almost all CGI so they can have kids watching the movies and the characters can hop out of the screen and walk around them. With LIDAR tracking on the front, they can track the wearer's hands so they could make a movie like Peter Pan and the Tinkerbell character flies out of the screen and lands on the hands of one of the kids.



Horror movies can have hands grabbing at the viewer from over their shoulder. Alien movies can fill the floor with fog or have the alien crawling over the ceiling.

Combined with spatial audio, it can offer a very immersive experience and with Apple TV+, Apple has the means to distribute movies that use its capabilities best.

For better clarity in bright light and a VR mode, they can use dynamic tinting with electrochromic glass, shown on the following page:

https://www.tuvie.com/dusk-electrochromic-smart-sunglasses-with-dynamic-lenses/

Holographic Facetime is a possibility, this would need the glasses to scan the wearer's face or articulate a face from voice. This has some interesting possibilities as shown in the following video:



You would effectively see a person in the same room. This could be used for remote education and would be a lot more effective trying to do a remote classroom. Remote fitness classes would be better with a full body accessory scanner, possibly an iPhone.

For some people it could replace using an iPad or iPhone like students taking notes in classes. They can have a hardware keyboard and be typing but using the view in the glasses instead of an iPad screen.

Wonderful to read comments with some vision and insight.  

And now suddenly Apple Arcade, and even more so Apple TV+, take on a whole new dimension. 

Apple is often “late” to the party but it’s because they do things “right”. 

Take Apple’s NFC payments solution for example.  For years some people were complaining that Apple wasn’t offering any kind of NFC payment while Android did.  But Android only half did the job. They provided the hardware and let everyone else try to figure out what to do with it. And so only the geeks used it. 

Apple on the other hand built an entirely comprehensive solution, including the partnerships with all the payment processing and hardware companies so that when they released it, it worked almost everywhere with everything and any idiot can use it.  

Same with iTunes and the Music store.  Other companies tried to do similar things but none of them worked because they only provided half the solution, while Apple created all the partnerships with the labels etc to provide a comprehensive solution that average people could just open and use. 

So, ok, others have created AR and VR headsets, but they’re still pretty niche and have limited use and relatively few people have or use them - because they provide the hardware and limited application and leave it up to devs and users to figure out what to do with it. Meanwhile, Apple is again coming late to the party but when they do come they won’t just provide a “headset”. They will provide a comprehensive solution that includes everything any idiot can buy it, turn it on, and use it. 

Apple TV+ — Apple’s foray into TV steaming, including their own content — now suddenly takes on a whole new dimension. I’ll bet when they release these headsets (AR and VR) there’ll be a whole slew of content in TV+ designed specifically for them released at the same time. Plus no doubt they will have built in many of the ideas suggested above. The idea that we’ll never need physical TVs and computer displays some day because they’re virtual in our glasses, is very appealing, and makes a lot of sense. 

And so again it will be a comprehensive solution that suddenly sends this currently niche set of products into major mainstream use, as those other examples did. 

At least that’s my theory.  YMMV. 😉 

DAalseth

I’m not that interested in the AR headset yet. With Apple devices I wait a few iterations before I jump. I started with the iPhone 5C and Apple Watch 6 for example. So, I’ll watch that space a few generations until the early hardware teething problems are sorted out and the software is more robust.

However I want to know more about the 2022 iPad Pro. Sure wireless charging and all glass, everyone is predicting that. But is it getting an M2? Is it coming out in the spring or the fall? 

Japhey

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

Hopefully the main focus of Apple's AR glasses will not not be games. The real value of AR glasses is that they can give the user augmented intelligence. Using AI and computational vision, AR glasses could give you a better understanding of the world around you. A simple example would be the ability to zoom in to see distant objects. Computer vision has exceeded the ability of human eyesight for quite a while now. Glasses that let you see in the dark, find objects you are looking for, look around corners or behind solid objects would quickly become essential items. Tagging of objects and locations becomes possible as well. You could select Yelp reviews and see what people are saying about a restaurant you are looking at. You could select a nature channel and see information about each plant or animal you can see. Like all new technology, AR will have its down sides as well. It is not clear how you build AR glasses without some kind of camera built in and walking around with an always on camera is still not socially acceptable.

I agree with everything you’re saying about the application potential of AR glasses, unfortunately the product you’re describing isn’t expected to be released by Apple until at least 2025. The product that Gurman is predicting for next year is the VR/AR headset. That product will need to have gaming as a central focus in order to appeal to the mainstream customer if it’s ever going to survive. Gaming, along with the VR media and VR FaceTime applications described by Marvin above, are merely the opening salvos as Apple enters this product category. It will grow from there, just like the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods Pro have.  The headsets will be intended to be used in a stationary environment, like the home or office, whereas the glasses you describe will be intended to be worn while out and about in the world. Which, for the record, I can’t wait for either. 

DoctorQ

Except for the last paragraph in the article, I’m not buying any of it simply because the source is Bloomberg.

bobolicious

...I'd wish for a mini max, with GPU aka the M1 MBP along with 2+2 ram and storage slots, and the flexibility to buy OEM Apple blanks that work with T2 type storage security, or generic NVMe now available @ 7GB+ speeds, ideally starting @ $999 like the 2011 mini i7 w/GPU, and also adding a Kensington lock slot, and supported by at least a later than .01 debugged in the wild macOS...

AniMill

VR is the Avatar of hardware: everyone had to see/try it once, then they couldn’t care less. VR imposes the one requirement the users detest: a claustrophobic device that is too unwieldy and limiting in its use. consumers hate using anything that places any physical demand on their operation. TVs are click on and surf, iPhones fit comfortably in your palm,  WATCH is practically invisible on your wrist. I can’t believe Apple would waste any development on a headset VR system — AR is fine because it’s less cumbersome and should be usable anywhere.

Ready Player One level VR ubiquity is far yet into the future, long after old codgers like me are gone. AR is my bet and hope.

michelb76

VR has come a long way thanks to Oculus, but now it's at a technological standstill again. Also, applications beyond gaming are extremely slim. Headsets still very heavy, bulky and uncomfortable for long sessions. AR is cool but the practical, non-dorky hardware isn't here by a long shot, and I suspect won't be here for another 3 years at the least. Curious to see what Apple has been working on though and if it is different from the somewhat cool-looking Facebook glasses or the myriad of existing AR glasses used in factories.

2022 will probably (hopefully) be focused on getting a decent iMac and Mac Mini out the door. Doubt we will be seeing much of a decent Mac Pro yet, maybe a semi-pro model with connected M2's so it's somewhat affordable and then the big one in 2023.

roake

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

Hopefully the main focus of Apple's AR glasses will not not be games. The real value of AR glasses is that they can give the user augmented intelligence. Using AI and computational vision, AR glasses could give you a better understanding of the world around you. A simple example would be the ability to zoom in to see distant objects. Computer vision has exceeded the ability of human eyesight for quite a while now. Glasses that let you see in the dark, find objects you are looking for, look around corners or behind solid objects would quickly become essential items. Tagging of objects and locations becomes possible as well. You could select Yelp reviews and see what people are saying about a restaurant you are looking at. You could select a nature channel and see information about each plant or animal you can see. Like all new technology, AR will have its down sides as well. It is not clear how you build AR glasses without some kind of camera built in and walking around with an always on camera is still not socially acceptable.

I’m not sure that means what you think it means.

Your overall points about the technology are valid, and I don’t disagree with them, but let us pay proper respects to human eyesight.
 
Human eyesight is a fantastically incredible mechanism with so much “processing” and “features” that us physicians can only being to fathom it the most basic parts of it.  The eyeball is only a small part of human eyesight.  It lets the light in, and does some simple analog tricks to separate out frequency and different fields of your vision.  It does this by refracting parts of the image onto parts of the retina, with different receptors (many lay people hear about rods and cones, but that’s the tip of the iceberg for “processing” in the eyeball).  The information then gets essential converted to digital.  There are several layers that the image overlays, and different nerve fibers carry this off to different sectors, criss-crossing being the eyes like some complex freeway exchange, and racing through so many ancillary processing systems on their “optic” processing that boggles the mind.  This images can activate thousands of different brain responses before the “seeing” processing in the back part of the brain even takes place, depending on what is coming in through the eye.  While I refer to this as an image, the processing utilizes far more information taken in through the eye than what you may think of as an “image.”   As this information is being processed, it is analyzed for a fantastic amount of information before an image is produced, best we can tell.  These centers can identify basic threats to safety, process your position in 3D space, feeds realtime movement information to your balance centers and separately to your multiple threat systems, depending on what “pre-processing” has so far taking from the input.  All this happens in the more basic centers far before you “see” the images.  There are far too functions here to even brush the surface.  There are many, many thick tomes on the topic that cause sleepless nights to medical students, specialized neurologists, scientists/researchers, and the like.  Those are just basic processing features.  Then, when your brain sends a process image to your higher brain, the spectrum of possibilities of further processing and responses bloom almost into the infinite.  All this happens in the tiniest fraction of time before you even get the chance to consciously register the image.  Eyesight processes longitudinally over time as well, not just “snapshots.”  Eyesight is processing of fluid data streaming in continuously, not just “frames.”  These things are really remarkable, and we barely understand enough to even know that they are there to research.  Human eyesight can process something you have NEVER seen before and stratify a threat level and cross categorize it using so many variables that you can react reasonably to it within a fraction of a second without having a damned clue what it is.

Computerized “vision” is mostly made up of really cool, but really simple tricks that do things like shift wavelengths or simple magnification that allow us to see things that we would not normal register.  This shifted light information is then dumped into the eye for the real processing.  Identification of objects using “machine learning” is another really amazing trick, but isn’t one-millionth as incredible as human eyesight and processing.  The computer’s “sight” is extremely fundamental, and an algorithm essentially pattern-matches something in an image to a known database.  These mechanisms are getting very sophisticated, and they seem like magic to some people.

While I LOVE the things that AR are bringing our way, I would argue that computer vision has not exceeded the ability of human eyesight, and probably never will.  What it will do is augment our vision by dropping some extra data into the eyeball that human eyesight will process.  I think that we will see all the things you discussed coming into play in the very near future, and I’ll be one of the first to get on board, especially if it’s an Apple product that I know will be very well supported.

shareef777

Marvin said:

AppleInsider said:

Mark Gurman proposes what he believes Apple will be bringing out in 2022, following what he describes as a "modest year for Apple product releases."

Completely upending one of Apple's biggest product categories and effectively forcing one of the world's leading chip manufacturers into using one of their competitors to try and catch up isn't exactly modest. Everything can be disappointing in fantasy world though.

AppleInsider said:

Gurman doesn't really break new ground with the report

Almost as if he doesn't know anything about what's going on.

AppleInsider said:

"Gaming should be a strong focus of the machine," he says, before mentioning its use of multiple processors, a cooling system, high-resolution displays, and its own App Store. "Look for Apple to position the device as a dream for game developers."

Apple is also anticipated to work with media partners to create VR media, and to include a "VR FaceTime-like experience" using the headset.

For mainstream use, movies offer a big opportunity here. VR gaming is still quite a small market due to the hardware price but there is potential to expand it.

Offering people the ability to have a virtual cinema screen in their own home has a huge appeal and it's 3D. Disney movies are almost all CGI so they can have kids watching the movies and the characters can hop out of the screen and walk around them. With LIDAR tracking on the front, they can track the wearer's hands so they could make a movie like Peter Pan and the Tinkerbell character flies out of the screen and lands on the hands of one of the kids.



Horror movies can have hands grabbing at the viewer from over their shoulder. Alien movies can fill the floor with fog or have the alien crawling over the ceiling.

Combined with spatial audio, it can offer a very immersive experience and with Apple TV+, Apple has the means to distribute movies that use its capabilities best.

For better clarity in bright light and a VR mode, they can use dynamic tinting with electrochromic glass, shown on the following page:

https://www.tuvie.com/dusk-electrochromic-smart-sunglasses-with-dynamic-lenses/

Holographic Facetime is a possibility, this would need the glasses to scan the wearer's face or articulate a face from voice. This has some interesting possibilities as shown in the following video:



You would effectively see a person in the same room. This could be used for remote education and would be a lot more effective trying to do a remote classroom. Remote fitness classes would be better with a full body accessory scanner, possibly an iPhone.

For some people it could replace using an iPad or iPhone like students taking notes in classes. They can have a hardware keyboard and be typing but using the view in the glasses instead of an iPad screen.

None of that is going to happen if the AR headset is anything like the Oculus Quest. It's a relatively cheap device (refurbs can be had for $200), but it's nothing more then a game/toy. I've used it to watch movies and it sucks. The slight inconvenience of 3D glasses that killed off 3D feature for home TVs will completely obliterate any desire for AR devices.

byronl

entropys said:

Big difference between a pair of glasses people would be willing to wear and an expensive AR headset.

and games and Apple?

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/10/29/apple-now-calls-itself-a-gaming-company-fighting-with-microsoft-sony-nintendo/amp/

roundaboutnow

Marvin said:

Holographic Facetime is a possibility, this would need the glasses to scan the wearer's face or articulate a face from voice. This has some interesting possibilities as shown in the following video:



You would effectively see a person in the same room. This could be used for remote education and would be a lot more effective trying to do a remote classroom. Remote fitness classes would be better with a full body accessory scanner, possibly an iPhone.

For some people it could replace using an iPad or iPhone like students taking notes in classes. They can have a hardware keyboard and be typing but using the view in the glasses instead of an iPad screen.

The "PORTL" display is nothing more than a "transparent" LCD -  a conventional LCD panel with the backlight unit (BLU) removed. Best image visibility is when the LCD panel is in front of a very well lit and evenly illuminated box. I've had several of these boxes built for retail applications. What's cool is that you can put actual product inside the box, and then have some interesting "reveals" and informational content on the LCD.

What Nussbaum did was pay attention to how images look best on the transparent LCD, and then optimizing the image capture side with a matching white background. The slight shadow behind the subject adds an extra illusion of depth, but make no mistake--it is not a 3D hologram by any stretch. The effect looks very good IRL, but these videos and photos of the experience make it look much better than it really is. He deserves props for his attention to detail, but it is not as groundbreaking as it seems.

fastasleep

AniMill said:

VR is the Avatar of hardware: everyone had to see/try it once, then they couldn’t care less. VR imposes the one requirement the users detest: a claustrophobic device that is too unwieldy and limiting in its use. consumers hate using anything that places any physical demand on their operation. TVs are click on and surf, iPhones fit comfortably in your palm,  WATCH is practically invisible on your wrist. I can’t believe Apple would waste any development on a headset VR system — AR is fine because it’s less cumbersome and should be usable anywhere.

Ready Player One level VR ubiquity is far yet into the future, long after old codgers like me are gone. AR is my bet and hope.

Yeah right, bet you’ve never given VR a try. Tell that to the millions of PSVR and Oculus and Vive users.

lkrupp

bobolicious said:

...I'd wish for a mini max, with GPU aka the M1 MBP along with 2+2 ram and storage slots, and the flexibility to buy OEM Apple blanks that work with T2 type storage security, or generic NVMe now available @ 7GB+ speeds, ideally starting @ $999 like the 2011 mini i7 w/GPU, and also adding a Kensington lock slot, and supported by at least a later than .01 debugged in the wild macOS...

Whatever you are smoking, stop before your brain melts. It ain’t gonna happen and you know it.

Marvin

shareef777 said:

None of that is going to happen if the AR headset is anything like the Oculus Quest. It's a relatively cheap device (refurbs can be had for $200), but it's nothing more then a game/toy. I've used it to watch movies and it sucks. The slight inconvenience of 3D glasses that killed off 3D feature for home TVs will completely obliterate any desire for AR devices.

I don't think Apple will make a VR-like headset, it seems like the kind of product Apple wouldn't make. There are some images here showing how bulky they are:

https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/comment/3345881/#Comment_3345881

I think the closest product to what Apple would make is the Nreal AR glasses:

https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/comment/3348410/#Comment_3348410



That product is on the market already and they discovered 78% of users were watching movies with them and others were developing software with them. They have designed lighter models without the motion tracking for watching movies:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/30/22700782/nreal-air-smart-ar-glasses-release-date-shipping-countries

LG U+ is bundling a model of these with a smartphone as it needs a smartphone to work:

https://www.koreatechtoday.com/lg-uplus-nreal-to-launch-5g-powered-ar-glasses-u-real-glass/

This reminds me of the LG Prada fullscreen touch phone that came out before the iPhone. They clearly had an idea of what to make but no idea of how to make it good. This has a bulky cable connected to the phone and it uses the phone for pointing at things in 3D. It uses plastic clip-ons and the one for VR-mode covers the tracking cameras. This is what Apple says about for every yes there's a thousand no's, these companies never learn. It's easy to imagine an Apple implementation of that kind of wearable and how much better it would be.

The following video shows some views through the glasses. Ideally the image quality would be closer to what's shown at 0:28 than 0:32, which is like a projector screen and this can be done in VR-mode by blocking incoming light behind but would be best done at a more fine-grained level. It does a good job of showing what can be done with over 200" virtual displays anywhere and you could leave virtual displays all around the house and they'd stay in place so a cooking timer and recipe book can sit next to the cooker, a calendar and clock can sit on the wall, a TV can sit in the lounge and bedroom and they just appear in view as you walk around the house. It makes the computer conform to the user's environment.

Detnator said:

Apple on the other hand built an entirely comprehensive solution, including the partnerships with all the payment processing and hardware companies so that when they released it, it worked almost everywhere with everything and any idiot can use it.

Exactly, vertical integration is what Apple does best. They make the platform end-to-end and now have content distribution. Other manufacturers have to play around with 3rd party operating systems and components and don't have the scale to drive 3rd party software development. Apple can have their own arOS and their hardware like the LiDAR scanner is hard for others to get in that form factor.

roundaboutnow said:

The "PORTL" display is nothing more than a "transparent" LCD -  a conventional LCD panel with the backlight unit (BLU) removed. Best image visibility is when the LCD panel is in front of a very well lit and evenly illuminated box. I've had several of these boxes built for retail applications. What's cool is that you can put actual product inside the box, and then have some interesting "reveals" and informational content on the LCD.

What Nussbaum did was pay attention to how images look best on the transparent LCD, and then optimizing the image capture side with a matching white background. The slight shadow behind the subject adds an extra illusion of depth, but make no mistake--it is not a 3D hologram by any stretch. The effect looks very good IRL, but these videos and photos of the experience make it look much better than it really is. He deserves props for his attention to detail, but it is not as groundbreaking as it seems.

For Apple's use case, the full body scanning and projection is more important, the glasses would be the projector instead of the giant vending machine. TED talks, lecturers, webcam performers etc can broadcast to a global audience in 3D with just an iPhone/iPad on one end and AR glasses on the other. Even real-time CGI faces are becoming very realistic and this can either be used Memoji-style or to fill in areas that a projection scanner misses.

Marvin

There was an article about Snap AR glasses today, this is a standalone unit:

https://www.theverge.com/22819963/snap-ar-spectacles-glasses-hands-on-pictures-design-features





That shows it's possible to put the processing and battery in a compact standalone model but the battery life is 30 minutes, partly due to the 2000 nits display to show up in bright light. If glasses can operate on a low power mode when standalone like 0.5W average, they could push a standalone unit to about 4 hours of runtime. Then it would just need a battery tether possibly with a magsafe connection. The Airpods Pro case is 2Wh. That would need to be around 10Wh for AR. Someone could wear that like a necklace/holster/hip attachment and a single wire at the back connects to the glasses for longer battery life. People can buy multiple cases and swap them for all-day battery life.



If they could use a different kind of battery that was fast charging, low capacity, high endurance like a solid state battery, it wouldn't matter so much having short battery life. The standalone runtime would be best around 2 hours+ to work for movies then 2-5 minute charge time.