The folks at French startup Optinvent think Google Glass doesn't make the grade, and they're doing something about it. In their minds, a small AR screen hovering in the corner of your field of vision doesn't scream futuristic. That's why they're developing the ORA-S, a pair of augmented reality glasses that sport a screen three times larger than the one used by Glass.
Not only is the ORA-S's screen bigger, it's also brighter, higher resolution and positioned right in your field of view. If you think that sounds obtrusive, you might be right, but the sizable screen actually snaps back out of your field of vision when you don't need it. (One caveat to a bigger display: it will only draw more attention to you in public. On the other hand, Google Glass's slim and "small-ish" design is designed to be more approachable compared to the ORA-S. — Deputy Editor.)
As you can see from the image above, the screen is currently connected to a module around the size of a cigarette lighter. Thankfully, that's slated to disappear by the time the ORA-S hits market, because a movable hunk of hardware that big, mounted on one side of your face, has awkward and uncomfortable written all over it. The consumer version, slated to debut next year, promises to be about half the thickness of the current model.
While this year's developer version of the ORA-S is selling for $950, by next year Optinvent hopes to reduce that price to $300, which is just about as cheap as we've seen the AR glasses market go thus far. From the images we've seen, we're not entirely convinced that a big, bulky screen which blinds you to the rest of the world while it's on is where the wearables industry is going, but we'll let you be the judge of that. VIDEO
Wikitude, via Geeky-Gadgets
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