My predictions for augmented reality in 2020

After having written my predictions for virtual reality in 2020, let’s see what will be the trends for this year in augmented reality.

Summary

Let me be very honest: I’m not expecting that much from this year in augmented reality. If virtual reality is still in the early stages, augmented reality is even before that, and the technology is growing very slowly. As Karl Guttag and all the other experts say, there are various breakthroughs in optics and other technologies that have to be performed before having mainstream AR, so until this happens, AR will still just be a niche.

I was reading my predictions for 2019 to prepare myself for this article, and to my surprise, I found it incredibly actual. It has not changed that much from when I wrote that article at the beginning of 2019. This shows how the technology is just slowly improving.

The only exception to this slow growth is the mobile AR filters. Thanks to Snapchat and Instagram, and its new tools to create filters, like Spark AR, we’re seeing an explosion of the production of this kind of content, that are a new way for people to express their creativity. Not only that: they are also great to do marketing for a company or a product. This type of content has had an explosive expansion I wasn’t expecting.

Apart from that, this year won’t see many changes on the enterprise side of (HoloLens 2 has launched just one year ago), but it will be a testbed for mobile-connected AR glasses (like nReal) and smarglasses (like North Focals). With the launch of nReal, the first truly consumer-oriented AR glass, we’ll truly understand how people are already interested in this technology. 5G will be great to showcase some AR possibilities of these glasses (e.g. volumetric streaming of people), but due to its low diffusion, it won’t be a game-changer yet. Regarding big brands, I expect Apple and Facebook still to wait a bit before releasing something, while Magic Leap will have to make its move to come out from the quicksands.

These are in my opinion the trends to follow:

• Standalone headsets will bet on the enterprise;
• Phone-connected glasses will have to prove their value to consumers;
• Mobile AR will find more verticals;
• AR Cloud wars will start;
• Mixed-reality headsets will be useful for enterprise use;
• There will be experiments with 5G.

Standalone/All-in-two headsets

The outlook of standalone headsets is one that goes very far in the future. We are all dreaming of the standalone headset that is thin as a pair of sunglasses, that does AR and VR, has 200° FOV, 240Hz framerate and works outdoor and indoor. Maybe with eye-tracking, AI, 5G connection, and a battery that lasts all day. Every year we talk about it coming, and this thought makes us very happy, but let me do a reality check for you: the probability that it is coming in the next years is the same that I’m going to marry Scarlett Johansson in the same timeframe. I mean, I still hope so, but I guess it won’t happen.

Michael Abrash has been very clear on this: such a glass requires technological breakthroughs in so many fields:

• Optics to create such a thin display with a big FOV and high refreshrate;
• Electrics to make a battery that stays in the thin frames of the glasses and that can power all this system for a whole day;
• Imagery to make cameras that are so little and precise that can provide 6DOF tracking while being embedded in these glasses;
• Connectivity to embed the 5G antenna into the glasses and make it stream lots of data with very little latency to make computations in the cloud without frying the brain of the user;
• … and so on.

According to Big Mike, this is going to happen, but probably in the ’30s or even ’40s of this century! So, AR glasses will replace smartphones completely, but it will take at least a decade. So not hold your breath for this… you could suffocate. In the meantime, AR glasses will be an additional accessory of your smartphone, that in the beginning will just give you some more feature, but the more they will go on, the more they will become powerful and will gradually make you leave your smartphone in your pocket… until you will use your smartphone just to power the AR device, and give it 5G connectivity. But this will require 5 years as well, or even more.

Having said this, it is obvious that standalone AR headsets aren’t going anywhere in the consumer market in 2020, also because they are terribly expensive ($2-3000), and they have very limited features (like the tiny window of the FOV of the HoloLens).

But in the enterprise market, these devices have already proven their value: even those limited features are enough to improve the production processes, especially in fields like industrial maintenance, remote assistance or the military. So, I envision the main companies in the field, like Microsoft and Magic Leap, to put their efforts into improving their platform to offer better services to their enterprise customers. Microsoft is already very good at that (Azure is a great platform), while Magic Leap, if it wants to survive, will have to create a new platform from scratch. This means that I’m not expecting many new hardware announcements, but I’m expecting new AR enterprise platforms, applications and solutions. These will come both by hardware providers and external companies (e.g. Vuforia with its Vuforia Studio that lets companies create AR experiences without having to code anything).

As for the hardware side, I don’t expect new players entering this field, if not for some new Chinese competitors of HoloLens. They will probably have worse tracking, but if they cost far less than HoloLens, they could find some customers. One headset of this kind I’m keeping an eye on is RealMax (the one of the header picture), that has a very wide FOV.

The company to keep an eye on is Magic Leap. Last year has finished with Magic Leap being in big financial troubles: the company is burning many millions every month, and the sales of the Magic Leap One, after an interesting start, have stalled. It has assigned its IP property as a collateral to JP Morgan, and this shows that they are seeking money. Now they have finally pivoted to enterprise, after an absurd initial choice of targeting “creators” (whatever this means), but they lag a lot behind Microsoft in this field. Leapcon is coming soon, and there we’ll discover how the company plans to survive: probably they’ll announce the Magic Leap Two and some new services. I hope so because if they don’t steer completely the ship now, also gaining the trust of new investors, the risk is that they sink with a boat full of dreams. I sincerely hope not, because everyone in the field has seen the video of the whale in the gym, and the news of that famous company failing could make investors lose faith in AR, ruining the market for all other AR startups.

In 2019 we’ve already seen that the AR ecosystem can be very harsh, and interesting companies like DAQRI, Meta, ODG and Blippar have crashed bad. Magic Leap should be very careful.

A special mention should be given to smartglasses, those monocles used in industrial settings, like RealWear, Vuzix, etc… These devices, that many people would define as “not AR”, are actually being very successful in the industry, and I envision them continuously growing on the business side and improving the comfort and the quality of the visuals on the technological side. In fact, Vuzix has just announced at CES the first smartglass that uses waveguides to show its images.

The year of phone-connected glasses

While we wait for standalone glasses, as I’ve said, the winning form factor will be the one of light smartglasses connected to the phone. In 2019 we have seen a mild start for this kind of devices, with some headsets launching using this form factor (North Focals, Bose Rondo, Snap Spectaclesetc…), but no one of them actually taking foot. They are cool to try, but still too expensive for the average consumer: in fact, North has stopped the production of the first edition of Focals.

This year we’ll see the launch of nReal, the first truly consumer-oriented AR glass, and it will be very interesting to see what happens. nReal is fashionable, has pretty visuals, and is constructing a very nice ecosystem around its glasses, partnering with many companies like 6d.ai (to improve the tracking), 7Invensun (to add eye tracking), China Unicom (to experiment with 5G), FXG (to have better PR), etc… For the first time, an AR headset is affordable, usable, fashionable and has a nice vision for the future. And it just works with your phone. In fact, nReal has been the best XR gadget of CES 2020 and have seen many clones starting popping out like mushrooms.

In 2020, we will so discover how many people already want AR glasses: the nReal glasses will be a testbed for consumer augmented reality and I guess that Apple, Facebook, Samsung and all the other major companies will be at the window watching what happens so that to decide how to change their plans accordingly to the sales of nReal.

In my opinion, nReal won’t make AR mainstream in 2020. Sorry for the pessimism, but I see some pain points:

• $500 is not that incredibly cheap, also considering the fact that you have to own a new expensive phone;
• I like nReal glasses, but their features are anyway still limited (little FOV, trembling tracking, etc…). Average consumers would find them too limited;
• There are no compelling applications yet. Content is the king, and at the moment there is no content;
• The market is not ready: people don’t understand the value of augmented reality… and when I tell people that one day we’ll all wear AR glasses, they just look at me like a crazy guy.

So, unless nReal finds the killer app in the next months, these glasses will just appeal to techie people like me and will be used for research, experiments, tech demos, etc… I think nReal glasses will be great to democratize AR amongst developers. It will be a great time for us, as when there was the Oculus Share, and every experiment could have big visibility easily. It will be a year of interesting experiments and lots of creativity, and I’m sure that these early-stage ideas will lead to great AR products in the future.

I see nReal glasses also great in enterprise niches, especially marketing: to market a big fashion brand, I would never use HoloLens, that looks like lab glasses, but only nReal, that is fashionable.

Regarding the smartglasses that give you notifications from your phone (like North Focals), I see them appealing for a different kind of customers: people that like technology but also want be fashionable, like for instance startuppers in the Valley. The new model of Focals has just been announced, and they look cooler than ever: yes, they are still expensive, and yes, the features are still limited… but for people that want to be at the cutting edge of technology, they’re good. Again, I expect these gadgets to still be niche in 2020, but let’s see what the market will say.

As for the big names, I expect that Facebook, Apple, and the others will still wait: reports talk about these companies releasing their headsets from 2021 on. But who knows, if smartglasses like Focals would prove to be successful, it is also possible that these major companies will release a device of this kind, just showing the notifications from the phone. This is a rumor surrounding Apple, for instance.

But again, I don’t expect a truly AR headset from a major company this year. For sure they’ll tease something (Facebook could do that at F8… and by the way, I think that its AR glasses won’t have the “Oculus” brand), but a launch will require many years. The only exception may be Samsung, that at CES teased an AR headset to be connected to Galaxy Phone glasses. Will it be a product of this year or only vaporware? I bet on the vaporware, but who knows…

And let’s not forget Tilt Five: the tabletop AR glasses by Jeri Ellsworth are going to be shipped this year after the big success of the Kickstarter campaign. It’s an awesome device, and it will be interesting to see how it will stick with the tabletop games community.

I’ll finish this paragraph talking about Kura. I think that Kura’s announcements have been the new “whale in the gym” of 2019. After the teasing of its 150° FOV glasses, now some people are convinced that we can have perfect AR glasses now. Let me be clear: according to all people that I’ve talked to, this is impossible. And in fact, Kura has some nice prototypes, but not a product yet. The first iteration of a product should be shipped to selected partners only at the end of this year. This means that to have a true product, it will need at least one more year. I wish the best to this company, but I think that to realize its vision it will still require a lot of time.

Mobile AR will find more verticals

Let’s be honest: mobile AR, after having been envisioned as the shangri-la of augmented reality due to its enormous userbase, has showed all its usability issues and has never taken foot. Holding your phone with one hand and looking at a reality mediated by one tiny display is a terrible way of enjoying AR, and for this reason, it has never exploded.

At the same time, I can say that 2019 has been a good year for mobile AR. We have had the launch of a game with high potential like Minecraft Earth, and the announcement of new titles for 2020 like Catan and Hello Kitty AR World, that will attract more people. Niantic and Google releasing their geolocalized AR SDKs have made been possible the birth of new interesting projects. ARKit and ARCore have added new cool features, and 8thWall and AR.js have made AR available also on the web. AR filters in apps like Snapchat and Instagram have proven to be compelling. Google Maps has now AR features. And so on.

What I’m seeing is that probably phone-based AR will never be mainstream per-se, but it will be very useful for specific use-cases. And in 2020 we will see the consolidation of existing use cases and the birth of new ones. AR will be used mostly to increase the functionalities of already existing apps: we’ve seen that some of the top downloaded apps on the iOS store now all integrate augmented reality.

Some of the fields were mobile AR will be used will be:

• Geolocalized AR games: Catan, Pokemon Go, Minecraft Earth, etc…
• Try-on apps: Sephora, Wanna Kicks, etc…
• E-commerce: Ikea place, Amazon, etc…
• Facial filters: Snapchat, Instagram, etc…
• Localization apps: Google Maps AR, etc…
• Marketing experiences: Coca Cola, Burger King, etc…

As you can see, these are mostly little needs for very specific use cases: you wanting to try a product, the marketing stunt of a company, etc… But these little cases are multiplying and this shows how mobile AR is finding many little places where to stay in 2020. Not a big disruptive application, but many little use cases. This is the future that expects mobile AR: a support for already existing apps, that will make people get used to augmented reality, before the switch to the glasses platform.

If you are a creator, I think it is the right time to invest some time to experiment with SparkAR: this platform is proving to be incredibly successful and it is the right time to jump in and create a successful filter and start your career with it. As I’ve said in the introduction, facial filters are the true big successful application of AR in 2019, and the field is exploding. There is the possibility now to jump in and make a dent, so that to be contacted by companies looking for filters for marketing purposes. I think that at the end of 2020, it will be too late to do that because the market will already be overcrowded.

AR Cloud wars will start

“AR Cloud” is a term invented by Ori Inbar to indicate a solution to create a digital replica of the world that will allow a mixed reality that will be persistent and shared among all the people. After he had invented the term, many companies had the great idea to come up with other terms to mean the same thing, so that to confuse the ideas to everyone: Cyberverse (Huawei), Magicverse (Magic Leap), Live Maps (Facebook), etc…

This is, of course, the foundation of all our mixed reality future: without an augmented reality that can be shared between all the people of the world and that is persistent and doesn’t vanish after I close the app, AR has very limited scope. And like all foundational technologies, this is a potential gold mine, so all companies are going towards it. Who will own the AR Cloud will own the future of AR, together with lots of data about all the places (and people) of the world.

In 2019, many companies have shown they are working on this, and I think that in 2020 we’ll really start to see the gold rush towards the AR Cloud. We’ll see many platforms coming to light, all competing the one with the others, and probably in 2-3 years we’ll just have few survivors that will become the platforms of the future. 2020 won’t probably the year of the big war, but we’ll start seeing the first true battles.

There are many contestants and among the startups, the most promising one is for sure 6D.ai, that has already released astonishing prototypes, and that has also a very well established name in the industry. But there are also big companies on it, like Facebook (that has announced it is working on it), Google (that already owns the map of the world thanks to Google Maps and is creating sharing anchors with ARCore), Microsoft (that owns great environment understanding algorithms, and has also already released Azure Spatial Anchors that are part of a future AR Cloud), Apple (that has the wonderful ARKit and Apple Maps).

It’s hard to understand who will win: for sure the big companies have a big competitive advantage (they already own the data, the ecosystem, the R&D), but there’s also the possibility for a smart startup to take a slice of the future, maybe in some niche markets… or maybe it can partner (or be acquired) by a big company. In my opinion, in 2020 we’ll mostly see startups showcasing everything they can to get investments, while big companies will just work under the hood and tease something here and there. They have to do everything they can, otherwise, in the long run, the big companies will destroy them, because the odds are all in favor of the major companies.

Mixed-reality headsets will be useful for enterprise use

In my roundup of trends for VR in 2019, I’ve already praised the fact that in 2020 the line between AR and VR headset will blur, thanks to PC MR headsets like Varjo XR-1 and standalone MR headsets based on the Qualcomm XR2 reference design.

You know that I’m a fan of mixed reality, and for this reason, I’ve also developed a fitness MR game for the Vive Focus Plus called HitMotion: Reloaded, made with the other people at NTW. Anyway, I don’t know how much consumers will find compelling these mixed reality features, especially considering that they haven’t found VR compelling yet. But I imagine many cool applications in the enterprise sector.

Varjo has already shown how you could mix a PC VR headset with a mouse and a keyboard to have the office of the future. And Robert Scoble, the very important American tech journalist and analyst, teases big virtual displays as being the first truly compelling MR application for prosumers. You can’t have usable big virtual monitors with current AR glasses (the FOV is too little), but you can have them with VR glasses. The problem is that VR isolates you from the surroundings, so you can’t use your keyboard or talk with your coworkers. The mixed reality on a VR headset solves all these issues.

I see them starting getting traction in enterprise landscapes, and also well considered in creative environments, to produce games or artistic experiences.

5G Experiments

5G will take many years to deploy, given its difficulty of providing long-range antennas (at least for now), so this year it won’t create use cases truly useful for people. It won’t lead to “lightweight AR glasses with all the processing happening in the cloud”, simply because the infrastructure isn’t there.

But phone-connected AR will be useful for some interesting 5G marketing stunts by the carrier providers, and in fact nReal and all its clones have all partnered with Chinese telco companies. We’ll see some interesting tech demos and some little applications. Probably we’ll also start having the first enterprise use cases, in zones already covered by 5G. But don’t expect too much. 5G will become big in some years: the “convergence” of technologies has still to come.

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And that’s it with my predictions! I hope you’ve enjoyed them and if it is the case, please like and share this post! And I’m curious about your opinions as well: how do you forecast AR and VR to be in 2020? Let me know in the comments!

(P.S. If you are also interested in my enterprise AR consultancy services, feel free to contact me now… I will be very happy to help you!)