My predictions for augmented reality in 2021

Two days ago, I’ve given you my predictions for virtual reality in 2021 (read it, in case you missed it). Now it’s time to make some forecasts about its companion technology, that is augmented reality! Will this finally be the year when we’ll all wear the eyePhone in our eyes?

(PS Before we start, if you find this kind of posts useful, consider making a small donation on my Patreon page!)

2021 is going to be an interesting year for AR

This won’t be the year of AR: exactly as I said for virtual reality, let’s not hype the technology and think that this is the year when mainstream adoption of wearable AR glasses is going to happen. The moment we all dream of, that is when we all will wear AR glasses all day, is several years away: 5 years if you are very optimistic, 15 years if you are pessimistic, most probably something in between.

But at the same time, we have to remember that AR has shown to be a very versatile technology, and it can run on many devices: smartglasses, AR glasses, holographic displays, and even smartphones. Exactly as VR, it has both consumer and enterprise applications. So, it is complicated to state if and when “AR will become mainstream”: what do we mean by “mainstream”? If we talk about compatible devices, we all have a smartphone that can do AR, we all have watched on some social media short video selfies with some AR effects on. Can this count as AR having become mainstream? Or is it just a talk about glasses? Or doesn’t it count because they are just little social stunts? The answer is not so trivial.

As a long-time AR enthusiast, and one of the first to have tried Google Glass in Italy, I have to admit that I will consider AR mainstream only when it will be on glasses that we will wear all day, when we’ll live in a completely shared mixed reality world (the AR Cloud). I’m a techie, and I dream of this future when AR will express its full potential. I can safely say that “true AR is not mainstream”, because how we intend AR to be is not there. But if I have to look at the numbers, some kind of AR is already mainstream: yes, the smartphone doesn’t provide immersive AR and people using it maybe don’t even know that it is called AR (maybe they call it just “filters”), but it is anyway augmented reality and it is of very common use now.

This commercial video about Google Glasses led me to immersive realities.

We can safely say that “2020 was the year of AR”, that is when the use of AR on the smartphone has exploded, because of Instagram and Snap, but also because of the pandemic that has forced companies to release many try-before-you-buy augmented solutions. And this year, we’ll see further growth of this trend, which has still a big untapped potential: many new items to try-before-you-buy, new features available for filters, new popular ecosystems (like WeChat) that are going to adopt it properly. Phone AR will be always more popular.

Regarding the glasses, I have not big hopes for true AR glasses, but I think that thanks to Facebook and Apple, finally we’ll have some important smartglasses entering the market, making the mainstream think about wearing something on their face to enjoy notifications from the phone. It will be the beginning of the race that will lead to true AR glasses being released in 1-2 years. In this sense, 2021 will be a very important year, because we’ll start seeing how the mainstream is interested in wearing electronic glasses on their face. I can’t wait for this to happen.

Smartphone AR is on the rise

New Snapchat’s full-body filters (Image from AR Post)

As I said in the introductory paragraph, smartphone-based AR is already very popular. New filters on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok are created every day, and there are already talented people that earn enough to live by just creating (and selling) them.

Filters are the most famous use of AR, and they let many people express their creativity. All social companies are now competing on who can offer the best tools to create them: the one having the lead is currently Snapchat (that has been the first startup believing in augmentations), which has already implemented full-body filters, and location-based filters, where you can augment certain landmarks of various cities. Instagram has a very popular creation tool called SparkAR, which can be easily used by all creators without knowing how to code, and has seen a spike in usage in 2020. Facebook has announced at Facebook Connect that “Today, Spark AR is the largest platform for mobile AR, with more than 400,000 creators from 190 countries, who have published over 1.2 million AR effects on Facebook and Instagram. And in just the last three months, more than 150 accounts have seen their effects generate more than 1 billion views”. These are impressive numbers. TikTok has arrived late to the AR party, but it already offers intriguing features, and the LiDAR-powered filter for New Year’s Eve is nothing less than beautiful. WeChat has shown some sort of possibilities for filters, but it is lagging behind: I bet that in 2021, they will add full support for AR, enabling a billion people more in using AR every day.

This trend will continue in 2021: the new LiDAR sensor, which is rumored to be installed in all future iPhones, will for sure be copied also by Android phones (Samsung?) and I can expect more realistic filters with depth occlusion to come soon. Multiple bodies and various objects will be able to be augmented. It will be possible to add some avatar of ourselves in the filters. Always more locations will be able to be augmented, and not only some experimental ones: location-based filters will also be shareable with friends, in the sense that people could see some places in AR as some friends (or artists) have modified them. Do you remember the balloon dog in Central Park by Snap? Imagine if everyone could modify every place as they want and then make other people see it. Snap has already made an experiment about this in Canary Street, and I think we’ll see this trend going on in 2021. And yes, if someone of you has thought “that’s AR Cloud”… well, I had the same thought.

But AR in 2021 won’t only be about creativity. Given that the pandemic will last all year probably, shops will have to improve their digital presence, and big brands should be able to promote themselves without relying on physical exhibitions. So I expect a big explosion of try-before-you-buy solutions, for makeup, shoes, jewelry, glasses, home appliances, furniture, and whatever object may come to your mind. All the big e-commerce websites will try to implement something of this kind. Filters will be also used for marketing, to promote brands and products. Some companies will also explore the option of remote assistance to customers through AR, helping them in solving little problems with their home appliances with a technician connected remotely. AR will be implemented in everything that can be able to connect a brand to a person at home.

What will see a decreasing trend is everything that is about people going outside. Minecraft Earth was a game that had the potential of competing with Pokemon Go, but its shutdown has been announced some weeks ago because the lockdown has hurt its launch and adoption. Google has added some nice AR features to Maps, but they seem more like an experiment to see how it goes than a full launch. I read always less about AR experiences in-stores and as Tom Emrich highlights, indoor AR geolocation services, which were expected to be a big trend this year, have almost disappeared. The only big name surviving in this field is Pokemon Go, but just because it has changed how the game works and it has already a very large and passionate userbase.

Sounded good. Didn’t work (Image by Microsoft)

Smartphone-based AR is here to stay. It’s funny that I say this because I have never been a believer in the technology… and in a certain sense, I was correct. I can’t think about an AR-app that is actually popular: many have tried to make AR games, AR educational experiences, AR sports… but they all ended up being tech demos or gimmicks. The usability of smartphone-based AR is terrible because it forces you to watch AR through a screen while you have your hands occupied, and so all those applications that have been thought of as “enabled by AR” are just unusable on a phone. But AR has succeeded as support for already existing apps, like social media (filters), e-commerce (try-before-you-buy), navigation (AR map directions), and so on. So there are no popular “AR apps”, but there are many popular “apps that use AR”. This is another reminder to me that when developing a product I shouldn’t think about technology as a goal, but just as a means.

Facebook and Apple will jumpstart the smartglasses ecosystem

It is not a mystery: Facebook is going to launch this year a smartglass able to show you some notifications from your phone, made in collaboration with Luxottica. And probably, Apple will do something similar, either this year or the next one. This will start the smartglasses battle, the first one of the AR wars.

Most probably, Facebook will launch its device first: it is crucial for Zuck to be the first one in the market because he knows that when Apple will arrive, it will be too disruptive and it will eclipse whoever will launch later. I expect the smartglasses from Facebook, first of all, to be Facebook-branded (so, goodbye Oculus), to be very stylish (remember that Luxottica is the leading company for glasses and sunglasses), and to be able to connect to the smartphone without a tether. Vuzix has just launched its new smartglasses that connect to the phone via Bluetooth and I think that Facebook, which is much bigger than Vuzix, has already the technology to do that, too. They will provide simple notifications, the possibility to listen to music via integrated speakers, answer the calls in a smart way and have some integrated services with Facebook (like easy sharing of messages on your diary). Maybe they’ll feature a camera to record social moments like Snap spectacles, maybe not to not scare people. For sure, Facebook will repeat a bazillion times that they care about privacy and I think that in the beginning, this will be mostly true: we have seen with Oculus how Facebook takes its time and boils its users slowly like the famous frog, adding over time features to get more data for targeted ads. I imagine these glasses to make a big hype inside the XR communities, I guess most of us will buy them, but I’m not so convinced about the mainstream public. Considering the terrible sales performances of Snap Spectacles, I think the news will arrive on all main tech magazines, but the sales of these glasses won’t be spectacular. And for Facebook, this will be ok, since this will be its first product just to test the waters.

Concept of a future AR glass by Apple (Image by iDropNews)

I think the launch of Apple glasses will be very different and I agree with Robert Scoble when he says that will be more disruptive. My bet is that Apple will tease its glasses in 2021 and maybe launch them in 2022, or for holidays 2021 (it is just a speculation though, Apple never said it was going to release smartglasses). It will arrive later than Facebook’s one, but the impact will be bigger: everything Apple makes generates a big resonance and I expect memes, reviews, social posts, whatever, happening on the launch day. Magazines will say that “Apple has invented Smartglasses” and after a while, people will be able to actually see and try them whenever they want in the Apple stores. We all know how it is important to try XR to be convinced to buy it, and Apple has the commercial power to make this actually possible... while we have seen the complicated life of Oculus hands-on booths at Best Buy.

When Airpods were launched, they were welcomed by many memes. Now they are a super popular gadget and all Apple competitors have bought them (Image by The Sun)

I’m sure these glasses will have more or less the same features as Facebook glasses and I’m sure that they will be wireless (Apple would never put a terrible wire around its users’ neck). They will be integrated with iTunes and all other Apple services, like Apple Pay. And Apple will just make some cool ads where it will remark the big focus on users’ privacy that it started years ago, and on this, it will completely destroy Facebook, where reputation on privacy has been destroyed some years ago. These glasses will surely be stylish and have a nice UX. Glasses could become a status symbol: people will accept other people wearing cool glasses with an Apple drawn on, exactly as now accept seeing other people with white gadgets in their ears 24 hours a day. I don’t think that Apple glasses will become mainstream, though: Apple doesn’t own the phone market, and these glasses will surely be expensive and with limited features, but I’m sure that all the mainstream audience will know about them, and I’m sure that one day I’ll go out and see someone wearing them on the street.

In this interview, Robert explain why Apple is going to win big in AR

Facebook will launch first, and Apple will crush it soon after. I think that Zuck knows that, but the AR wars have just started and they will be very very long. The awareness created by Apple will actually even facilitate its competitors: many people don’t have an iPhone and/or hate the Apple ecosystem, so they will look for an Android alternative. This can be a good thing for Facebook itself, but also for Snap and Google that in my opinion will try to enter the field soon after or before Apple with its own glasses. Google can count on the acquisition of North, the experience he has matured by producing Google Glass and investing in Magic Leap, and the fact that it owns the most-used mobile operating system. And even if Google harvests data exactly as Facebook, it has been targeted by fewer scandals, so it is a brand people like more. Of course, Microsoft and Amazon are observing the situation: in my opinion, Microsoft will wait a bit, considering its focus on AR enterprise with HoloLens, while Amazon could improve its already existing offering of glasses connected with Alexa. I think in the next 18 months, all big brands will launch their own smartglasses, starting to heat up the AR competition.

What about smaller brands like Vuzix? These companies can’t compete with the tech giants, so either they will be acquired, they will establish partnerships or will retire themselves in some niches (e.g. the enterprise market).

2021 will be a very intriguing year for smartglasses. Prepare your popcorns.

True AR glasses will expand their distributions

I heard you like cats, so here you are a cat inside my Nreal glasses

What about true AR glasses? The ones showing 3D elements in front of the users? Well, I’m not expecting great innovations from them. At CES this year, we had no big announcements about AR glasses, and even the AR glasses announced lately (like the ones from NuEyes and Rokid) are cool, but they are more or less similar to what is already on the market, that is Nreal-like glasses. The technology is not there, and it is not possible to create AR glasses that have a wide FOV and high-resolution visuals. Even the HoloLens 2, considered the top glasses in the industry, have optics that have been completely destroyed by the expert Karl Guttag.

Kura and Lynx are the only startups from which I can expect some innovations. Kura has teased a display technology that can give an enormous field of view and those who have tried its prototypes say that it is very interesting. The problem is that going from a bunch of cool prototypes to a product is a very long and difficult road, and honestly, I don’t expect them to launch this year.

Kura Gallium glasses are expected to have an enormous field of view (Image by Kura Technologies)

Lynx, instead, will be on the market soon, and it consists of a passthrough AR glass, that is a visor that lets you see your surroundings in AR, but not thanks to a transparent piece of glass, but with a screen in front of your eyes that shows what you have in front of you. We already had some experiments with passthrough AR, but this is the first standalone AR headset that bets completely on this technology, offering vivid colors and a wide FOV in your AR experiences.

Old render of the Lynx R1 (Image by Lynx, taken from Upload VR)

For the rest, I foresee the launch of some new Nreal Light clones and the actual distribution of these headsets on the market: Nreal has never truly arrived in Europe and the US, and the launch is expected around this spring. NuEyes and Shadow Creator+Photon Lens should do something similar, while I guess that Rokid will focus more on China and Jio Glasses on India.

Someone will try the standalone route like HoloLens and Lynx, but I can imagine that most of these glasses will be all-in-two, that is glasses that work by being tethered to a smartphone via USB-C. All will feature tracking cameras for 6dof, hand tracking, speakers, microphone, and an additional camera to shoot photos and videos. Some will also feature tracked controllers.

Nu Eyes AR glasses. They work by being connected to the smartphone, too (Image by NuEyes)

These devices will appeal to enthusiasts, prosumers, and enterprise customers. They will increase their reach in 2021, and I think that Nreal will also be quite successful in our ecosystem, but they will never appeal to the mainstream because they still have limited usability and have not clear use cases. But among us techies, there will be a good success, and I think that always more companies will investigate them.

Magic Leap will meet its fate

Duck Face, Magic Leap One, and me

What about Magic Leap? The company hyped an AR future, gathered lots of money, delivered a normal AR device, targeted consumers, and crashed. In 2020 its CEO Rony Abovitz, that on one side was the futurist that made all of this possible, and on the other side ideated this bold suicidal strategy of targeting consumers with AR, has stepped down and now the company is in the hands of Peggy Johnson, that has completely changed the strategy and now wants to aim to the enterprise market.

I think that in 2021, we’ll discover if Magic Leap has the potential to return at the top levels of the AR ecosystem or not. Personally, I think not: it has not the money and the expertise to fight the big giants like Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook, so either it starts some strong partnerships, or it reduces its ambitions and become a small enterprise-focused AR company, or it can hope being acquired. But I would be happy to be surprised and see that Magic Leap can thrive again.

I expect Magic Leap in 2021 to create some kind of enterprise software ecosystem, with remote collaboration applications, integrated cloud services, AI services, and such. And maybe tease in the second half of the year the release of a future headset to re-create some hype around the company. It will show us its new roads and new ambitions, and from it, we’ll be able to understand what are the real future perspectives of this company.

Enterprise adoption of AR will be widespread

An enterprise collaborative experience showcased during the launch of HoloLens 2

I know that many of you find the enterprise ecosystem is boring (my friend Louis jokingly says that “B2B” means Boring-To-Boring), but it is where the money is in AR at the moment. After years of POCs and successful use cases published everywhere on the web, I think that all big companies have understood the potential of augmented reality in the production processes: AR makes companies spare time and money. And now that the covid has made travels impossible and has even made people locked down at home, the necessity for remote assistance AR solutions has spiked. So the adoption of AR in the enterprise is already booming and it will continue to grow during 2021. And the most requested systems will be about maintenance, remote assistance, training, and prototyping.

Do you know what else people find boring in the AR ecosystem? Smartglasses. If I had one euro for every time someone told me “smartglasses are not AR”, now I would be above Elon Musk in the classification of the richest men in the world. Smartglasses are not sexy at all, and more than augment the reality of the user, they just offer useful contextual information. But this kind of glasses are lightweight, reliable and do few things but very well. They are much more affordable than a HoloLens 2. They are the perfect device for the industry, and there also are ruggedized versions for employees that have to work in dangerous environments. I expect these kinds of glasses to still be very used in 2021, and to evolve by becoming always more secure, comfortable, and with a screen that offers always more clear information to its user.

Realwear HMT-1 are one of the most successful smartglasses (Image by RealWear)

I think that in 2021 most enterprise use of AR will come through smartglasses. But bigger companies would also like to work with Hololens 2 and all its related Microsoft cloud services, offering AI, and ML functionalities, not to mention experimental cloud rendering. Microsoft has packaged an amazing software+hardware solution and companies needing a more complex solution than the one offered by smartglasses will surely want to rely on it.

I expect also experiments from companies using glasses from Nreal, Rokid, Magic Leap, NuEyes, 3glasses, and all other AR brands. In general, I expect many solutions to be actually employed, and many new POCs to be created for all the new companies coming now into this field.

VR headsets will add MR features

I think that all the new VR headsets in 2021 will have passthrough AR/MR functionalities. We all know that AR and VR will merge in a single glass sooner or later, and the trend of mixing the two technologies has already started more than one year ago. You all remember that in 2019 my team at New Technology Walkers launched a fitness mixed-reality game for the Vive Focus Plus, a headset that until then was considered only for virtual reality. We are proud to say that we were pioneers (and even released the opensource plugin to that), and now all the market is exactly chasing the same trend.

A frame of HitMotion: since you could see your surroundings, you could play this boxing game in full safety

Facebook is going to release SDK APIs to create passthrough AR apps on the Quest; Lynx R-1 will launch being ready for passthrough AR and VR; Varjo already offers astonishing high-quality passthrough mixed reality with its Varjo XR series; Valve Index has a passthrough mode and using a WebXR trick it is possible to use it for AR; HTC has developed the very smart mixed-reality SRWorks SDK that works on Vive Pro and Cosmos and has teased a faceplate for the Cosmos to do mixed reality called Cosmos XR. All the major vendors are adding mixed reality features to their headsets, so expect all the most important headsets to be ready to offer some kind of primitive mixed reality in the short-term future.

I don’t expect it to be high-quality MR for the consumer headsets, but it will be enough to let developers start experimenting and create a new market around it.

While I was writing this article, I’ve found on Road To VR a new rumor from Bloomberg about the fact that even Apple may be building a headset of this kind: a lightweight VR visor with passthrough AR functionalities that could be released next year. I don’t know if it will be actually shipped, but this is a sign that Apple is internally working also on this possibility.

WebAR will start to exploit its potential

There are vaiours solutions to also export Unity XR projects to the web (Image by Mozilla)

In my previous post, I talked about how WebVR is seriously struggling, and no compelling applications are using it. Regarding WebAR, instead, the situation is very different, and while the technology has not widespread usage, there have already been some interesting uses of it.

This is especially the merit of two frameworks: the opensource AR.js and the commercial-oriented The 8th Wall. AR.js is growing pretty fast and while it is still a bit rough and lacks certain functionalities, it already offers very interesting features while being completely free and opensource. The 8th Wall is probably the top WebAR framework on the market: it has many features, including the tracking of curved surfaces, face filters, etc… all available through ready-to-use templates. Its problem is the price: it is very expensive and it is intended for big corporates. Besides them, there are also other frameworks that can help WebXR developers: some WebXR exporters for Unity projects and also Amazon Sumerian.

Thanks to these two libraries that are continuously being updated, and the strong use cases and famous partners that The 8th Wall is collecting, the WebAR ecosystem is growing.

The is a lot of untapped potential, though. According to AR Post, WebAR is the platform with the most potential users out there (there are many WebAR compatible phones), but also the one with the least actual users. So there is a great margin for growth, also considering that it is the AR technology providing the least friction for the user. There is a lot that can be done with WebAR, and I think that in 2021 the WebAR ecosystem will grow. This growth could be even faster if Apple made its iOS browser WebXR compatible.

Analysis of AR platforms: WebAR is the one with the biggest room for growth (Image by AR Post)

I hope that this will happen also because this way my friend Eloi Gerard can have more customers for his virtual concierge operator Anna 🙂

3D Scanning

As my friend Robert Scoble says, “3D Scanning is becoming a commodity”. There are always more smartphone and tablet applications to scan 3D objects and the addition of LiDAR and similar time-of-flight depths sensor has dramatically enhanced the quality of the objects that have been scanned. This video of the app 3d Scanner App by Laan Labs is impressive because it shows how it is possible to obtain the rough 3D mesh of an object in just a matter of seconds.

Scans are still very rough, and to be usable, they require some manual intervention, but they are enough for fast prototyping. We also still don’t know what you can do after you have 3D scanned an object: I mean, if you are a 3D artist or a developer, you can think about many uses, but what about if you are an average user? We still need an ecosystem to be created: Display.Land tried to create a social media where you could share scanned spaces, but the experiment has been ended some months ago. We need to give a purpose to this scanning operation, a purpose that makes it useful for everyone, not only the artists and the developers.

I expect for 2021 many experiments on this sense: 3D scanning will become always more common and more precise, and some companies will start creating solutions to make people employ these 3D objects that have been scanned. I don’t expect a solution to be found this year, though.

AR Cloud

The AR Cloud is the Sacred Graal of augmented reality: a complete solution that lets everyone enjoy everywhere a shared multiplayer AR experience. The AR Cloud has many names like Cyberverse, MirrorWorld, MagicVerse… but the meaning is always the same: the infrastructure that will let us all live in the future in a pervasive shared mixed reality world.

The AR Cloud is not there, and it will need years to come to life. It requires systems that reconstruct the whole 3D map of the world we live it; algorithms to manage and update this digital world; shared anchors at a coarse level (geolocation) and fine level (features tracking); users management; search functionalities to find the elements in the metaverse; and so on. It is a whole solution that requires many subsystems to work perfectly and no company is even close to doing something like that.

Anyway, the AR Cloud is the new goal of all the companies that want to dominate the AR future and many companies have already managed to produce a part of it. Microsoft, for instance, has shared anchors that let more than one user share an AR experience; Niantic, after having acquired 6d.ai, is exploiting Pokemon Go users to create a map of the world; Google is already working on solutions to have search functionalities working with images, 3D models, and all multimedia elements. And so on.

All companies are working piece by piece on building the AR Cloud and I think that in 2021 we’ll see the AR Cloud wars ramping up, with the big companies acquiring interesting startups in the field (like Niantic that has bought 6d.ai) and starting working actively in creating a reconstruction of the mesh of the world exploiting their already existing users (like Niantic that invites Pokemon Users to perform “scanning missions” to earn points). Most probably we’ll also start seeing the results of these AR Cloud developments in some phone AR applications, with some AR filters augmenting locations that will be able to be shared among nearby friends.

But don’t expect the AR Cloud to come soon… it still requires some years to be built.

Privacy in MR will be a big issue

There will be many debates about privacy in AR and also about how the current law adapts to a mixed reality world. These debates have already started, because the day we all live with an AR headset in our head, we’ll need clear regulations about:

  • Which data about what we are doing and what is happening around us the headset can send to the servers of its manufacturers. AR headsets may be very powerful surveillance machines because they can spy on you in whatever you do. This should be regulated;
  • What rights do you have about the augmentations that are around you? Can I put a virtual augmentation of a giant penis that everyone can see in the garden of my neighbor? Because it is his land, not mine, and I couldn’t enter there to put a real statue of a penis (I would receive a big fine), so theoretically I couldn’t put a virtual statue too. But our laws are not ready for this kind of problems, yet.

AR is going to become mainstream in some years, and all these things should be regulated now. If we start a serious debate when it is already mainstream, it is already too late. I think in 2021, when Facebook will release its smartglasses, there will be more and more debates in the communities about these concerns. And organizations like XRSI will work even more to try to write possible standards for our AR future.

The web is always ready to make some jokes on Zuck when we’re talking about data gathering (Image from Reddit, showcasing the magazine The Onion)

Personally, I’m pessimistic about it: politics is very slow in catching up with technology, and usually always arrives late and producing absurd results (like the EU Cookie Law). The laws about the ownership of augmentated places should have thought during the mess of Pokemon Go, when Pokemon were generated in every kind of places, even dangerous ones or inaccessible historical ones, but almost no government took action to cope with it.

And regarding privacy, companies like Google and Facebook live by gathering our data: it’s their job. In a recent interview, Andrew Bosworth said that it’s better living in a mixed-reality world with personalized ads I may be interested in than a world with common annoying ads, so he thinks that some data collection around the user is a good thing. This is the view of the company. So, even if Facebook states that it cares a lot about privacy now, it won’t stop collecting data about you. And the same holds for Google. With the mandatory Facebook login on Quest, which had to be accepted by all the users, we have seen that these companies do not care about what we think on the topic and that we can’t hope them to regulate themselves, since data is the new oil. What we need is regulators to write some serious rules on this, but I’m pretty sure this won’t happen in 2021.

Other predictions

Roadmap of the development of Mojo Vision AR contact lenses. I think 2021 is too early for their release (Image by Mojo Vision)

Some other predictions on things that are going to happen in 2021:

  • We’ll have some news about Holographic displays, that is special displays that will be able to showcase 3D elements without needing people to wear glasses. There is a growing interest in this kind of hardware, and the recently successful Kickstarter campaign of The Looking Glass, which has collected more than $2M for a holographic portrait holder, shows this. I don’t expect these to explode, though. They are very expensive, so they’ll remain in the prosumer market;
  • Simple and cheap AR viewers like Mira and Aryzon will still survive in their little niche of makers and educators;
  • Audio AR won’t become a thing soon. We have many people walking around with Airpods constantly in their ears, but this has never been exploited to create true audio augmented reality applications yet. I think audio AR in 2021 will be mostly about notifications to be played to inform the user about something depending on the particular context he is in, and nothing more;
  • We’ll have some news about AR contact lenses (like the ones from the great people at Mojo Vision), but the technology will still be too early stage to exit the lab;
  • Facebook will showcase at its Facebook Stuff amazing R&D stuff it is working on in the AR sector, like how it can map the world around the user, or how it can create even more believable AR visuals or sounds. It will also showcase some use of BCI with AR. This will hype the XR communities about its future AR glasses;
  • AR Cloud rendering is already a thing, and Google and Microsoft have already showcased some samples of its use. I think that in 2021, we’ll see always more examples of this technology. Differently from cloud-rendering VR, cloud-rendering AR can be already available because a bit of latency doesn’t hurt the overall result much because you don’t have motion sickness in AR. So, I expect some experimental use cases already this year.

And that’s it! I hope you have enjoyed this post, and that it has been useful for you to understand what is happening in the augmented reality ecosystem. Of course, take all this article with a giant grain of salt: these are just speculations, and may all be completely wrong. But I hope they will make you think about the future of this amazing technology.

I’m also curious to know: what are your predictions for your future of AR? Let me know in the comments here below!

(PS And if you like these detailed post, subscribe to my newsletter to not miss all future ones!)

Skarredghost: AR/VR developer, startupper, zombie killer. Sometimes I pretend I can blog, but actually I've no idea what I'm doing. I tried to change the world with my startup Immotionar, offering super-awesome full body virtual reality, but now the dream is over. But I'm not giving up: I've started an AR/VR agency called New Technology Walkers with which help you in realizing your XR dreams with our consultancies (Contact us if you need a project done!)
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