Augmented reality media hype is spiking right now because of the global popularity of Nintendo’s Pokémon Go. If you’re looking at augmented reality as a new medium for entertainment, your zeitgeist may have begun.
But if you’re like me, trying to sift through speculation and find practical engineering applications for augmented reality and virtual reality, then Pokémon Go is only interesting because it is popularizing a technology and adding “augmented reality” to the popular vernacular. The current swoon doesn’t revolve around a headset like Microsoft HoloLens or DAQRI—which are more promising in terms of engineering applications like visualization, training, maintenance and simulation.
In the context of putting the popularity of Pokémon Go into perspective, I read an Engadget article that mentioned Google is working on a new mixed reality headset. And no, it’s not Google Glass 2.0 for its enterprise reboot. But then, I started thinking about people’s reaction to Google Glass.
I don’t need to remind most readers about how off-putting Google Glass was when it first came out. It offered early adopters a status symbol that few others had access to because of its price and availability. The feeling that many people had when talking to someone or encountering someone with Google Glass was a strange kind of disgust.
It was almost like people felt that the normal, accepted role of glasses as a way to augment and correct vision had been violated by Silicon Valley in general, and Google in particular. The cultural cost of Google Glass to Google’s reputation was greater than pretty much any other product the company has ever created, invested heavily in and then shelved either permanently or for a period of time.
According to the report, the mixed reality device Google is working on doesn’t need a computer or phone to power it. It has a display screen, has more augmented reality features than virtual reality, is not focused so much on gaming and is important to Google’s future plans.
This is speculation, but I think Google is planning on competing with Microsoft HoloLens to create a standardized holographic operating system for mixed reality devices. Think about how integral smartphones are to the current boom of popularity that augmented reality is experiencing. Google created the popular Google Cardboard for iOS- and Android-powered phones at the same time that the Windows phone and Windows Mobile 10 completely flopped. Microsoft announced plans to build a standard OS for holographic computing and demonstrated integration with a third-party device, the HTC Vive, at Computex Taipei this year.
Step back and look at Google’s reaction to Facebook’s investment in Oculus Rift technology. Whether it was an unhealthy reaction or a well-thought-out decision, Google invested $500 million in Florida-based mixed reality startup Magic Leap. What kind of OS is Magic Leap going to run? With Google onboard, there is a strong possibility of creating an Android-based competitor to Windows Holographic OS. The third massive investment in Magic Leap came from Alibaba, which poured $700 million dollars into the company. Alibaba and Google were at loggerheads with each other over Android’s complete dominance in China as the most popular smartphone OS. Alibaba’s smartphone has maybe one percent of its own country’s market, and Google has around 70 percent.
If Magic Leap is creating a hit product but Microsoft is already trying to make a “Windows 95” of the mixed reality headset market by creating the hopeful universal standard Windows Holographic OS, then Google’s supposed mixed reality headset could be an attempt to work on its own Android-based universal OS for a Magic Leap product that nobody knows much about.