As we dive into the holiday shopping season, a commercial regarding smart glasses and a game of billiards caught my eye. The commercial shows a woman in a pool hall wearing some stylish Ray-Ban glasses, but not your daddy’s Ray-Bans. She’s playing pool, has a difficult shot to make, and she uses the glasses to help her decide how to wield her pool cue.
This was my cue to ask some questions. What is the latest with these smart glasses? And what does this have to do with enterprise mixed reality? The issue with AR/VR/XR in the past has always been a combination of usability and social acceptance. The use cases for mixed reality in onboarding, training, education, and service have existed for some time. But big, bulky headsets haven’t helped adoption. And sleeker versions, like Google Glass, were often seen as invasive or uncool.
What mixed reality needs is consumerization. The Apple iPhone turned the smartphone into a normal business tool. Dropbox made enterprises pay more attention to cloud storage. The list goes on. Meta partnering with Ray-Ban just might be the consumerization moment that mixed reality needs to become an enterprise mainstay. And it’s a growing market. In our annual survey of tech executives, 25% say they are investigating the potential benefits and risks of fully implementing mixed-reality technology. Furthermore, 19% of large organizations in our sample have VR/AR technology in place.
Collaboration between Meta and Ray-Ban
If you haven’t heard of these Ray-Bay smart glasses, you’re not alone.
Ray-Ban Stories, a collaboration between Meta (formerly Facebook) and Ray-Ban, represents a blend of classic eyewear design and cutting-edge technology. These smart glasses allow users to capture photos and videos, listen to music, take calls, send messages, and interact with social media, all while maintaining a stylish appearance.
Here are the key features:
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- Sleek design: The glasses are designed to look (more or less) like regular sunglasses, with the hope that they blend seamlessly into everyday fashion.
- Camera and video recording: Users can capture photos and videos hands-free, sharing them directly to social media platforms.
- Audio capabilities: Built-in speakers and microphones enable hands-free calls, music listening, and voice commands.
- Touch controls: Intuitive touch controls allow users to navigate menus and settings.
They are primarily designed for consumer use, and in fact, Meta has yet to explicitly state whether it intends to use them as a platform for business applications. However, Ray-Ban Stories could eventually find applications in various business settings, including:
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- Field service: Technicians could use the glasses to access remote assistance, view live video feeds, and overlay digital information on their real-world view.
- Retail: Retail staff could use the glasses to access product information, customer data, and inventory levels, enhancing customer service and efficiency.
- Healthcare: Healthcare professionals could use the glasses for remote consultations, patient record access, and surgical procedures.
However, it is not necessarily important whether Ray-Ban’s exact glasses become an enterprise staple so much as the concept of augmented reality is accepted by a larger market. More robust enterprise models could follow more easily in that setting. And with the growth in AR could come the break that Meta also needs for VR.
When it comes to enterprise use cases, Meta has another, better-known, much more business-minded headset, the Oculus Quest series.
The Oculus Quest series is designed to immerse users in virtual reality experiences. These headsets are bigger than Stories. They are more like big ski goggles. They offer high-resolution displays, advanced tracking systems, and powerful processors to deliver immersive gaming, fitness, training, and other experiences.
Key features include immersive VR experiences, high-resolution displays, advanced motion tracking, wireless operation, and many applications ranging from gaming to manufacturing.
The combination of more user-friendly AR and enterprise-level VR could be what mixed reality needs to crack the mainstream. And it is likely that some of the technology Meta is putting into Stories can be used to make the next Quest lighter, more user-friendly, and therefore, more enterprise-friendly.
Business Use Cases Expanding
In Avasant’s Tech Innovators research program, we cover companies using the Oculus Quest headsets, writing applications for them, or designing device management systems for headsets.
A company called Shokworks is an example. Among its many engagements, it was involved in a V-learning training program in Wales. Shokworks helped build VR training packages for immersive learning and safety-skill space training. Shokworks CEO Alejandro Laplana described one such training program in a data center and, in particular, a data center that caught fire virtually. How did that training work?
“Well, you’re in there,” Laplana said. “It’s virtual reality. You’re wearing an Oculus headset. And you’re actually holding a fire extinguisher, and you’re watching a data center burn live. And you’re reacting to it. You are building that incident response training in real time. And the overall sentiment of workplace safety increased by 20%.”
Another company called ArborXR has a robust device management platform for Oculus headsets and other such devices. ArborXR’s cloud-based device management platform makes it easy to remotely manage XR devices, applications, and the in-headset experience. ArborXR can push updates to devices as they are turned on or upload new content remotely. Updates can also be made when the headsets are plugged in at the end of the day. Controlling the in-headset experience is a priority for ArborXR. ArborXR COO Jordan Willams explained why:
“When you put on a VR headset, you may get bombarded by browsers, settings, and games that you can play and download. We have to fully control and lock down that experience so that when a user puts on a headset, they’re not getting distracted by all of these things. The administrator can fully customize what a user sees and interacts with in the VR headset, and that is completely unique to XR devices. Traditional MDM programs don’t have that. There’s never been a need to build that type of functionality with any other device, and they simply haven’t done it yet. For XR devices, it’s a showstopper. You have to have that functionality.”
Competition and the Future
Meta’s primary competitor in the smart glasses market is Google, which has been working on its own augmented reality glasses for many years, with some memorable (and expensive) hiccups. Other tech giants like Apple and Microsoft are driving hard in the wearable technology space.
Here’s the takeaway: While Ray-Ban Stories may or may not be a revolutionary product, they represent an interesting step forward in the development of stylish and functional wearable technology. As the technology continues to evolve, we can anticipate more innovative and practical smart glasses that seamlessly integrate into our daily lives.
An important aspect to keep in mind is that while Ray-Ban Stories offer a glimpse into the future of wearable technology, they are still in their early stages. The device faces several challenges, including limited battery life, bulky design, and privacy concerns. However, as technology continues to advance, we should expect to see improvements in these areas.
Meta’s vision for the future of wearable technology extends beyond smart glasses. The company is investing heavily in AR and VR technologies, aiming to create immersive digital experiences.
As Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has stated, “We believe that augmented reality will be the next major computing platform, and we’re building the hardware and software to bring it to life.”
The key to all of these mixed reality headsets and glasses is whether developers will continue to build strong products on top of these devices that people and businesses actually like to use on a large scale. Consumerization is the key to bringing developers to these platforms. If that doesn’t happen in bigger numbers, that will give us a good indication of the following: Are these headsets and smart glasses highly niche products with very limited use cases? Or will they eventually be used by a wider audience, like the Apple Watch or the ubiquitous smartphone? And how many years will this take? Watch this space for updates.
By Tom Dunlap