Orlando Bruno
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2018–2021
2:31 · 1.1M views · Apr 4, 2012
A short 2012 promotional-style video of Google Glass showing what the headset was meant to do. It shows features like map directions and overlays in the wearer's view.
Cited as an example of what Glass promised, for comparison with later AR glasses.
3 comments from Hacker News
I disagree. It was and is an AR product. Re-watch this early promo video: this video There are several clear AR features displayed. There's a location based notification about the subway service upon getting close to the entrance. There's overlaid compass based walking directions. There's GPS based location identification and check-in. AR is more than just computer vision driven overlays. Though that tech wasn't available to be put in a HMD at the time, these GPS driven features absolutely were AR features and the original Glass should rightfully be considered the first AR consumer product. Furthermore, the product still exists as the Enterprise Edition 2 and this current version supports computer vison and object identification applications, further strengthening its AR use cases.
> What I would buy today is glasses that allowed an overlay. Give me a screen and an API and let me tether it to my phone and push pixels and I'd buy that immediately. An overlay was the google glass promise: this video
Google's marketing videos showed things like a full Google Map for directions (example: this video ). I'm not surprised people got confused.