What They Say
There was lots of speculation before this week’s Apple WWDC event about support for AR and any news or hints about the expected upcoming Apple AR/VR headset. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo tweeted that he believes that it will be Q2 2023 before the device arrives because of disruption to the development process caused by the Shanghai lockdown. However there were some developments. Apple announced a new version of the ARKit that adds support for 4K video and simultaneous access to front and back cameras on iPhones and iPads.
It also announced the RoomPlan interface can be used to create room layouts in 3D using lidar and cameras on more recent devices. There is an impressive demo of the system mapping a room here.
What We Think
The delays are as expected, really. 2023 it (probably) is. I’m not sure that we reported a couple of weeks ago that there has been speculation about why the headset is said to have three displays. The third one has been rumoured to be expected to be called into action to show the wearer’s eyes in a passthrough AR configuration. Technically, that makes a lot of sense, but I wonder how many high spending Apple customers are going to want to wear something like that! (BR)
