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.

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.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • xyzs

    Every time there is a tease with 10 percent visible that let people think it’s gonna looks like next gen glasses with amazing waveguides, it ends ups being a bulky limited FOV birdbath/planar waveguide second layer. But let’s see…

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    • Innovation Investor

      With what I have seen from Vuzix, I’d like to hope we are finally past this point throughout the AR industry. It seems MicroLED projection w/ waveguides is the holy grail and that has been prototyped for a couple years, at least. Fingers crossed

  • Toothlover

    meh

  • Beyond the useless photo, is there really any great point to Pokemon on a AR Headset that costs more then used car? It’s a technically achievement virtually NOBODY will ever see. It’s little more then a PR stunt for hardware that’s years from consumer level.

  • The day of the Enlightened draws near…

  • gothicvillas

    Is Pokemon still a thing? Meh

  • With the acquisition of 6d.ai, I bet that either this one or the next one will be 6dof