One of our early looked at AR used specialized eyeglasses. Here is more on this approach, though I think that smartphones will make this easier to deliver, at least in the short run. AR Eyewear to come? Opinion below: ' ... Eyeglasses, as we know them today, have been around for about 800 years, give or take. In-eye lenses, for just over a hundred and modern contact lens for about 50. In our time of exponential technological advancement I don’t expect to wait half a century for this technology to mature, but we’re going to see augmented reality optics in a form-factor similar to eyeglasses long before we’re placing them directly onto our cornea.
I do, however, believe that the “through the looking glass” trend of AR applications for mobile devices that are coming on the market today will be a short lived, stop-gap solution until the adoption of AR eyewear. If mobile AR indeed takes off (and I believe it will), people will quickly tire of holding their smartphones out in front of their faces. This will ultimately lead to interesting partnerships between fashion eyewear manufactures and consumer electronics companies, not unlike the partnership between Nike and Apple in the personal fitness electronics space. For now we have several electronic manufactures, many who are most use to dealing with military clients, doing their best to design consumer focussed video eyewear. With mixed results.... '
