Google Reportedly Shelves Multi-year ‘Project Iris’ AR Glasses

Google has reportedly shelved a multi-year project that sought to commercialize an AR headset, known as Project Iris.

According to Business Insider, Google shut down Project Iris earlier this year following mass restructuring, which included layoffs, reshuffles, and the departure of Clay Bavor, Google’s head of AR and VR. The report, which hasn’t been substantiated by Google, cites “three people familiar with the matter.”

According to a report from The Verge earlier this year that first mentioned Project Iris, around 300 people were purportedly working on the headset, which was said to expand by “hundreds more” as production ramped up.

At the time, the prototype was said to be a standalone, ski goggle-like headset providing onboard power, computing, and outward-facing cameras for world sensing capabilities—similar in description and function to headsets like HoloLens or Magic Leap. Project Iris was said to ship as early as 2024.

Two unnamed Google employees told Business Insider the company could actually resurrect Project Iris at some point, as teams experimenting with AR tech haven’t been completely disbanded. Still, it seems its Samsung XR headset partnership and AR software development has become the main focus.

Samsung Future, Daydream Past

With its own in-house hardware allegedly no longer in the picture, moving forward Google is set to focus on the software side of AR, which also includes an Android XR platform it could license to OEM partners. Google is now developing such a platform for Samsung’s upcoming XR headset announced in February, as well as an alleged “micro XR” platform for XR glasses, which is said to use a prototyping platform known internally as “Betty.”

Google is pretty well known for shelving projects all the time for a variety of reasons, so it’s not a big surprise that an expensive hardware project is getting iced during an economic downturn. It’s also possible the company saw the writing on the wall from its earlier VR hardware projects, which were early to the competition, but not persistent enough to stick around.

In 2016, the company’s Daydream VR platform was positioned to compete with Meta’s (then Facebook’s) own mobile VR offering, Samsung Gear VR. Headed by Bavor, the company looked to replicate Samsung/Meta’s strategy of certifying smartphones to work with a dedicated Daydream View headset shell and controller. Google certified a wide swath of smartphones to work on Daydream, including Pixel, LG, Asus, Huawei, and even a number of Gear VR-compatible Samsung phones.

And Google’s ambitions were, let’s say, very big. At its I/O 2016 unveiling, senior product manager Brahim Elbouchikhi said on stage that Google intended to capture “hundreds of millions of users using Daydream devices.” No modern VR headset platform has reached that number of users even today, with Meta likely leading with the sale of nearly 20 million Quest headsets between 2019 and early 2023.

Lenovo Mirage Solo | Photo by Road to VR

Despite big ambitions to own the space early on, Gear VR became the clear winner in the nascent mobile VR market. Undeterred, Google broadened its horizons in 2017 to open its Daydream platform to one of the first truly standalone VR headsets—or rather a single standalone headset—the Lenovo Mirage Solo standalone, which awkwardly mashed up 6DOF positional tracking with a single 3DOF controller. Lenovo Mirage Solo was a real head-scratcher, as its room-scale content was hobbled by a single remote-style controller, which critically wasn’t tracked in 3D space.

In the end, Google shuttered the entire Daydream platform in 2019 because it couldn’t attract enough developer support. On the outside, that makes it seem like Google lost the VR race entirely, but a majority of standalone headsets on the market today run on top of a modified version of Android. Granted, that standalone VR content revenue isn’t flowing into Google’s coffers since it doesn’t control the individual storefronts like it might with a VR version of Google Play.

But that could change with its new Samsung/Qualcomm partnership, representing a fresh opportunity for Google to finally stake a claim in the mounting mixed reality (MR) race.

MR Headsets Walk, AR Headsets Run

MR headsets are virtual reality headsets that use color passthrough cameras to offer up an augmented reality view, letting you do VR things like play games in a fully immersive environment in addition to using passthrough to shoot zombies in your living room, or watch a giant virtual TV in your real-life bathroom (for optimal user comfort).

It’s still early days for MR headsets. While devices like Meta Quest Pro ($1,000) and Apple’s recently unveiled Vision Pro ($3,500) are likely to appeal to prosumers and enterprise due to their high price points, there’s a mounting battle for consumer eyeballs too. Provided that still-under-wraps Samsung XR headset can land at a digestible price for consumers, its brand name cache and patented global reach may serve up strong competition to Meta’s upcoming Quest 3 MR headset, due in September at $500.

Apple Vision Pro | Image courtesy Apple

Price speculation aside, the companies that launch MR headsets today will be better positioned to launch all-day AR headsets in the future. Platform holders like Meta are using their MR headsets today as test beds to see what AR content consumers find most compelling. Apple will be doing just that when it launches Vision Pro in 2024 at arguably an even deeper level, as the Cupertino tech giant seems to be deemphasizing VR stuff entirely.

Whatever the case, Google’s decision to reportedly shelve Project Iris means it’ll be more reliant on OEMs in the near term, and its first volley with that Android-supported Samsung XR headset will reveal the size of its ambitions. It’s a strategy that could work out in its favor as it critically gauges when, if ever to resurrect its own Google-built AR glasses.

Google Discontinues Glass Enterprise Edition Smartglasses

Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, the company’s work-focused version of its iconic but once maligned smartglasses, is being discontinued.

Google says in a device support FAQ that, starting March 15th, it will no longer sell Glass Enterprise 2, adding that it will only support the device until September 15th, 2023.

While the company says it’s not pushing out any more software for Glass Enterprise Edition after that date, however its most recent system images will remain publicly available until at least April 1st, 2024.

Launched in 2017, Google Glass for enterprise was a revival of sorts, as the company had ceased production of the storied device in 2015.

Google Glass Explorer Edition | Image courtesy Alphabet

Starting in 2012, the company was hoping to seed the device among prosumers with its Glass Explorer Editions, although public backlash spawned the term “glasshole,” putting a severe dent in Google’s ambitions to launch a more consumer-focused version of the device.

Google hasn’t explained why it’s killing off Glass for enterprise. In response to PC Mag, a Google spokesperson left this comment:

“For years, we’ve been building AR into many Google products and we’ll continue to look at ways to bring new, innovative AR experiences across our product portfolio.”

To be fair, Google probably has bigger fish to fry, and the aging smartglasses platform may well be replaced sooner rather than later. Google said last summer it would be conducting real world tests of its early AR prototypes, emphasizing things like real-time translation and AR turn-by-turn navigation.

There’s also the issue of emerging competition. Apple’s upcoming mixed reality (MR) headset is rumored to arrive sometime in mid-2023, while Meta is prepping multiple generations of its MR Quest headsets.

Granted, these MR headsets probably won’t be the model workhorses, although many companies see MR headsets as a steppingstone in preparation for the sort of all-day AR glasses industry is hoping to commercialize in the near future.

– – — – –

To be clear, Google Glass is a style of smartglass(es) and not an AR device as such; Glass provides a single heads-up display (HUD) that doesn’t place digital imagery naturally in the user’s perceived environment, like with HoloLens 2 or Magic Leap 2, but rather flatly projects the sort of useful information you might also see on a smartwatch. You can learn more about the differences between AR headsets and smartglasses here.

Google Acquires MicroLED Startup Raxium to Bolster AR Ambitions

Google is adding to its portfolio of XR microdisplay designs and talent, as the company announced it’s acquired microLED (µLED) designer Raxium.

The acquisition was previously reported by The Information in March, however now Google has confirmed in a blog post that it has indeed acquired Raxium, a five-year old startup building microdisplays for use in AR and VR headsets.

The Information’s report held Raxium was sold to Google for $1 billion, however official details of the acquisition are still murky. Google says Raxium will join its Devices & Services team, which is tasked with development of Google’s consumer devices.

Image courtesy Raxium, Google

It’s thought that Raxium will allow for Google to create lighter, cheaper displays for its upcoming AR devices. While conventional Super AMOLEDs found in smartphones measure around 50 µm per pixel, Raxium says it’s shrunk its microdisplays to feature µLED measuring 3.5 µm per pixel. The company claims its technology has led to an efficiency “5X greater than the previously published world record.”

“The team at Raxium has spent five years creating miniaturized, cost-effective and energy efficient high-resolution displays that have laid the foundation for future display technologies. Raxium’s technical expertise in this area will play a key role as we continue to invest in our hardware efforts,” says Rick Osterloh, senior VP of Google’s Devices & Services team.

Google is undoubtedly gearing up to release XR headsets of some type in the future, which may compete with devices from Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Snap. In 2020, Google acquired North, a Canada-based company known for creating unobtrusive prescription-compatible smartglasses—a sight more stylish than Google Glass. Check out our primer on the difference between smartglasses and AR headsets to learn more.

Earlier this year Google snapped up Bernard Kress, principal optical architect on the Microsoft HoloLens team. Kress is now the Director of XR Engineering at Google Labs, an internal XR division founded late last year. According to previous reports, Google Labs is currently working on an AR headset, code named Project Iris, which is rumored to ship sometime in 2024.

Reports detailing Project Iris maintain a device providing a standalone experience with onboard power, computing, and outward-facing cameras for world sensing capabilities—similar in description and function to headsets like HoloLens or Magic Leap.

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HoloLens Optics Chief Joins Google Amid Reported Push for Upcoming Google AR Headset

Bernard Kress, principal optical architect on Microsoft’s HoloLens team, has left the company to take on the role of Director of XR Engineering at the recently formed Google Labs. A report by The Verge maintains Google is also now gearing up to produce an AR headset that could directly compete with similar offerings from the likes of Apple and Meta.

Before joining Microsoft in 2015, Kress worked as principal optical architect behind Google Glass, the company’s smartglasses that found marked success in the enterprise sector after a rocky reception by consumers in 2013.

At Microsoft, Kress continued his work—principally focused on micro-optics, wafer scale optics, holography and nanophotonics—as partner optical architect on the HoloLens team, overseeing the release of both HoloLens and HoloLens 2.

Now Kress is back at Mountain View working on Google’s next AR headset. According to his LinkedIn, Kress has been leading the Optical Engineering department at Google Labs since November 2021—or right as Google shook things up by creating the AR/VR division.

And there’s no doubts about it: Kress says he’s focusing on creating consumer AR hardware at Google.

Hot on the heels of the strategic hire, a report from The Verge maintains Google is now gearing up to produce its own AR headset, which is allegedly codenamed Project Iris.

According to people familiar with the matter, Project Iris is said to ship sometime in 2024, although that date may simply be wishful thinking given the early stage of the project.

The prototype is said to be ski goggle-esque, providing a standalone experience with onboard power, computing, and outward-facing cameras for world sensing capabilities—similar in description and function to headsets like HoloLens or Magic Leap.

The standalone AR headset is said to use a custom Google processor running on either a version of Android or Google’s own Augmented Reality OS, which according to a recent job listing is currently in development.

Around 300 people are purportedly working on Project Iris, however Google plans to expand by “hundreds more.” Veteran AR/VR Google exec Clay Bavor is heading up the project, reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai.

Bavor is known for his work on Project Starline, an experimental light field display system created to be more natural way of chatting at a distance than conventional video conferencing apps. Bavor also oversaw the 2016 launch of Google’s Daydream VR platform (subsequently abandoned in 2019), and the development of ARCore, the software development kit for smartphone-based AR.

This comes as Apple is supposedly preparing to release a VR headset with passthrough AR capabilities (sometimes called ‘mixed reality), which reports maintain will come at some point in 2023 as a precursor to a dedicated Apple AR headset at some point afterwards.

Meta (formerly Facebook) is also working on its own VR headset with AR passthrough, codenamed Project Cambria, which may be positioned as direct competition to Apple’s own when the time comes.

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Google Building An ‘Augmented Reality OS’ For A New AR Device

Google is hiring in several positions working on an ‘Augmented Reality OS’ for an AR device, as reported by 9 To 5 Google.

There’s a variety of open positions involved in building the software for this AR device, with the listing for Senior Software Developer, Embedded, providing a description of the team working on the OS:

Our team is building the software components that control and manage the hardware on our Augmented Reality (AR) products. These are the software components that run on the AR devices and are the closest to the hardware. As Google adds products to the AR portfolio, the OS Foundations team is the very first software team to work with new hardware.

The full job listing is here. Likewise, postings for Senior Software Engineer, Camera and Senior Software Developer Tech Lead, Input describe building software for an “innovative AR device.” The listings say that this OS team “is the very first software team to work with new hardware.” The nature of this device is unclear, but the operating system and new hardware angle seems to imply a dedicated AR device, such as a headset. Apple is working on a still-unannounced VR/AR mixed reality headset while Meta is preparing a higher end headset code-named Cambria, and we’d expect Google to be very interested in the AR product category.

Mark Lucovsky also revealed that he started a new position at Google this week. Lucovsky previously led the VR/AR operating system effort at Facebook/Meta, where he was reportedly building a new operating system for AR. He also worked as a Microsoft engineer for many years, where he co-developed Windows NT. He will now “lead the Operating System team for Augmented Reality” at Google.

Most of Google’s recent efforts in the VR/AR space focused on the AR — the company has gradually reduced its focus on VR, ending support for Daydream, shutting down Google Poly and open sourcing its art software Tilt Brush. With these new job postings, it seems Google’s focus is likely to remain squarely on AR for the foreseeable future.

Google’s New ‘Labs’ Team Brings AR/VR, Project Starline & Area 120 Under a Single Roof

Google is shaking things up with the reorganization of its AR/VR efforts, Project Starline, and Area 120 in-house incubator, dubbing the internal team ‘Google Labs’.

As first reported by TechCrunch, Google is shifting a few of its notable forward-looking projects into a single team and bringing them under the leadership of Google veteran Clay Bavor.

Before taking the reigns of Google Labs, Bavor led the company’s AR/VR team where he oversaw the 2016 launch of its Android-based Daydream VR platform. It was an ambitious undertaking, although it was subsequently abandoned in 2019 due to a disappointing reception to its slot-in smartphone efforts and poor market performance of its 6DOF Daydream headset, Lenovo Mirage Solo. The team also helped develop ARCore, the augmented software development kit that brought smartphone-based AR to millions of Android devices.

More recently, Bavor led Google’s Project Starline, an experimental light field display system that the company envisions as a “magic window” of sorts, allowing far-flung users to speak in a more natural way than video conferencing apps can provide—and all without the need of a headset or special glasses.

Both Project Starline and its AR/VR efforts have a shared lineage within the company, but it seems Google is adding an entrepreneurial flare to Labs with the inclusion of Area 120, the in-house tech incubator that has seen the successful launch of several startups including Threadit, Stack, Adlingo, Gamesnacks, Avera AI, and Orion WiFi.

An no, this doesn’t mean the company is reviving the 2000s-era Google Labs, which was used as a public testbed to demonstrate new projects like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Wave. An internal company memo obtained by TechCrunch states the reorganization is “focused on starting and growing new, forward-looking investment areas across the company.”

“Central to this org is a new team called Labs, focused on extrapolating technology trends and incubating a set of high-potential, long-term projects,” the memo said.

As a result, it appears Area 120 is being elevated with its incorporation into Labs. TechCrunch notes that the incubator was “three layers deep in terms of reporting to Google CEO Sundar Pichai — even though Pichai himself had to sign off on its every exit.”

Google hasn’t officially announced Labs, however the company tacitly confirmed it by acknowledging Bavor’s new title, calling it “an expanded role” that will focus on “long-term technology projects that are in direct support of our core products and businesses.”

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Google Makes ‘Tilt Brush’ Open Source as Active Development Comes to a Halt

Google announced it has stopped active development on Tilt Brush (2016), the company’s VR paint app. All is not lost though. As the team pivots to creating immersive AR experiences, Tilt Brush has officially gone open source, allowing anyone to modify or even clone the app in its entirety.

Even before Google discontinued its home-spun Daydream platform in 2019, it was fairly apparent that the company’s interest in developing both VR hardware and software had substantially waned. At Google I/O earlier that year, Daydream headsets were nowhere to be seen, revealing the company’s rapidly decreasing enthusiasm for the medium.

Fast forward a few months, and now Google is not only shutting down its 3D object platform Poly, which was announced in December, but it’s also stopping all active development on Tilt Brush. In retrospect, Tilt Brush co-creator Patrick Hackett departing Google earlier this month may have been writing on the wall that the VR paint app was on the chopping block.

In a bid to let Tilt Brush live on, the team has released an open source github repo of the app’s code, allowing others to use, distribute, and modify it for use in other projects. The team says in its build guide that while Tilt Brush is a Google trademark, developers are even free to clone it completely as long as they choose a different name.

Now that developers are free to browse, at least one previously planned feature on the to-do list has raised a few eyebrows in the community, namely the missing addition of multiplayer mode.

 

The team says in a Google blogpost that Tilt Brush will “always remain available in digital stores for users with supported VR headsets,” however the move to open source the app will allow “everyone to learn how we built the project, and [encourage] them to take it in directions that are near and dear to them.”

Originally created by indie studio Skillman & Hackett, it wasn’t long before the studio and its impressive 3D art app were snapped up by Google; a 2015 acquisition proceeded the app’s launch on HTC Vive a year later.

Although it eventually went on to launch on all major VR headsets, development noticeably slowed over the past two years, starting back in 2018 when Google was still enthusiastically pushing its Android-based Daydream VR platform.

Tilt Brush’s most recent feature update came in March 2020, which brought to the app a new Camera Path Panel, Sketchfab, and a beta version of Google Drive backup. The app has only had a few bugfixes since then despite releasing concurrently on PSVR.

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Google Acquires North, the Startup Behind ‘Focals’ Smartglasses

Google today confirmed in a blog post that it’s acquired North, the Canada-based smartglasses maker behind Focals. The acquisition price wasn’t disclosed, however early reports suggested it was around $180 million.

Founded in 2012, North (ex-Thalmic Labs) first set out to create Myo, a gesture-based armband. Pivoting from Myo and rebranding to North in 2018, the company then released Focals, which focused on creating a stylish, unobtrusive pair of prescription-compatible smartglasses.

“Over the last while, it became clear that aligning with Google would significantly advance our shared vision,” North said in a news brief.

The company says that it will be winding down support for its 2018 Focals smartglasses, and that Focals 2.0 is effectively cancelled.

North seems to be making a clean break with its legacy product, Focals 1.0. Starting July 31st, 2020, users won’t able to connect or use Focals or access their North accounts. The Focals app itself is also going to be removed from both Google Play and Apple’s App Store.

SEE ALSO
The Difference Between Smartglasses & AR Glasses, and Why Everyone is Confused

Refunds are being offered, as the company says in an FAQ that “[f]ull refunds will be given for all paid Focals orders starting June 30th, 2020 using the original payment method.”

The acquisition seems to have been a fairly quick deal, as North was talking up Focals 2.0 up until March 2020, advertising its prospective 2020 ship date.

This, you might conclude, may mean that Google is getting ready to completely integrate the IP somehow into its own Google Glass project, which has reemerged to serve the enterprise sector. It may equally as well rebrand Focals 2.0 as a Google device targeted at fashion-conscious consumers.


Is Google heading back into consumer smartglasses territory with its latest acquisition? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Google Acquires North’s Focals Smartglasses Business

Google confirmed it acquired North and its Focals smartglasses platform.

Reports had been circulating in recent days that an acquisition was in the works and now Google formally confirmed the move.

“Today we’re announcing that Google has acquired North, a pioneer in human computer interfaces and smart glasses. They’ve built a strong technology foundation, and we’re excited to have North join us in our broader efforts to build helpful devices and services,” Google’s Senior Vice President of Devices & Service Rick Osterloh wrote in a prepared statement. “We’re building towards a future where helpfulness is all around you, where all your devices just work together and technology fades into the background. We call this ambient computing.”

The team coming on board at Google will stay based in Kitchener-Waterloo Canada, where North is located.

North was formerly known as Thalmic Labs and the group previously made the Myo gesture-based input device that looks vaguely similar to work being done at Crtl Labs, a startup that Facebook acquired last year. It looks like there’s a major gap in tracking robustness between what Facebook acquired in 2019 and what Myo had at launch in 2016 but there’s also a multi-year gap in between the technology developments. Instead of the arm-band, Focals smartglasses became the focus of the work at North.

Focals offered simple notification features similar to a smart watch and a basic display system in a slim pair of glasses. In a statement from the founders of North the company confirmed it would not be shipping the 2.0 version of the glasses.

Google, Apple, Facebook and others continue to build toward a augmented reality platforms but difficult problems need to be solved on a number of fronts before we might see a compelling consumer AR platform emerge in the coming years. Acquiring startups can also have cascading effects on the internal structure and hardware plans at major technology companies, and we’ll be curious to see how North impacts Google’s efforts in AR.

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Google Launches Depth API for ARCore, Increasing Realism And Improving Occlusion

Google announced today that the Depth API is now available for ARCore 1.18 on Android and Unity. The Depth API is meant to improve occlusion and increase realism thanks to new interaction types.

The Depth API was first announced with a preview on the Google developers blog last year. The API allows a device to determine the depth of objects shown on the camera, according to how far or close by they are. In terms of AR, the API helps to significantly improve occlusion, which Google succintly describes as “the ability for digital objects to accurately appear in front of or behind real world objects.”

snapchat hotdog arcore

The example embedded above shows the dancing hotdog filter on Snapchat being accurately occluded by a lounge as the camera moves down. According to Google, another case where the API would be useful is in Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery, as occlusion is vital to the experience — characters can accurately hide behind objects and then provide a jump scare by moving out from behind the real-world object. Niantic showed something similar with Pokemon Go in the past as well.

However, Occlusion is not the only use for the Depth API — Google notes that developers have found many other uses as well, including implementing more realistic physics, better surface interactions, and environmental traversal. For example, the Google Creative Lab experiment ‘Lines of Play’ allows users to build AR domino arrangements that will accurately collide with furniture and walls in the room when the dominoes knocked over.

The Depth API will begin rolling out today. You can read more over on the Google developers blog.

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