Niantic, the studio behind the popular Pokémon GO, today teased some kind of see-through headset.
Following a prototype demonstration of Pokémon GO running on HoloLens 2 earlier this month, Niantic CEO John Hanke today showed a teasing glimpse of a see-through headset the company is apparently working on.
Exciting to see the progress we’re making to enable new kinds of devices that leverage our platform… pic.twitter.com/yYglk4q89G
— John Hanke (@johnhanke) March 29, 2023
From the single photo alone, it’s hard to say exactly what we’re looking at. While many will assume an outright AR headset, the device could merely be smartglasses as well.
If this is a proper AR headset (with head-tracking and a reasonably wide field of view) we’re almost certainly looking at some sort of waveguide display, as the kind of bird-bath optics we see in devices like Nreal’s headset would be much bulkier.
However, these could also be simple smartglasses focused on HUD-like functions, with a very small field of view used for basic data display, and without head-tracking.
Further still, it’s entirely possible this device doesn’t have a display at all, and is instead focused on video capture, like Snapchat’s Spectacles.
Only time will tell what Niantic has up their sleeve, but given the detailed rendering and the blatant tease, it seems it won’t be long before we get a full reveal.