Apple might need discovered a wild answer to VR’s prescription lens downside; liquid lenses.
VR headsets and glasses don’t often combine properly. Typically they sit too near your face for glasses to slot in entrance of your eyes, and the options deployed by headset designers are a combined bag – some package deal in non-obligatory spacers that make room for specs just like the Oculus Quest 2, whereas others embrace a prescription lens attachment (however it’s essential purchase lenses for it at an added price) just like the Apple Vision Pro, and some do nothing in any respect.
This has resulted in some glasses wearers feeling like VR isn’t accessible to them, however that may change if Apple’s newest patent involves one in all its headsets.
Based on the patent granted in the US (through Apple Insider) Apple has created a design for an “digital gadget with liquid lenses.” The doc describes a “head-mounted gadget” (feels like a VR headset) with “tunable liquid lenses.” You’ll be able to learn the patent for the total particulars, however the TL;DR is that digital alerts despatched to the lenses will deform the liquid in them and alter the refractive index of the lenses.
This could enable the liquid lenses to right a variety of eyesight points with out the necessity for any equipment. What’s extra, the correction is calibrated by the headset’s eye-tracking system.
Apple’s patent additionally states that it may apply to a “pair of glasses.” We are able to’t learn an excessive amount of into patent wordings, however this might trace on the Apple AR glasses that Apple apparently additionally has in growth.
When will we get liquid lenses?
As with all patents we have to word that there’s no assure that we’ll ever see these liquid lenses seem in an actual headset – one which’s made by Apple or in any other case. Whereas the design exists in idea, it may be lower than sensible so as to add liquid lenses to a commercially out there headset – both from a design or price perspective. Alternatively, Apple may develop a distinct answer to VR’s prescription downside.
What’s extra, even when liquid lenses do seem in an Apple headset you or I may choose up off the shelf there’s no telling when that may occur.
It’s most likely an impossibility for the first-generation Imaginative and prescient Professional to launch in early 2024, and we’d be stunned if it appeared within the second-generation headset that rumors predict will seem someday within the subsequent few years. As a substitute, it appears way more seemingly we’d see liquid lenses within the third-generation mannequin (assuming we see them in any respect) in half a decade or so – as this is able to give Apple loads of time to hone the design.
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