Snap, the company behind Snapchat, has announced the launch of the fifth generation of its ‘Spectacles’ augmented reality (AR) glasses. These new see-through, standalone AR glasses are designed to allow users to interact with ‘Lenses’ and experience their surroundings in innovative ways alongside friends.
The latest version of Spectacles is powered by Snap OS, an operating system developed to facilitate natural interactions with the environment. The glasses are currently available through Snap’s Spectacles Developer Program.
“Spectacles are the culmination of a decade of research and development aimed at creating hardware that transcends traditional screens and fosters real-world connections,” Snap explained.
The new Spectacles feature impressive hardware specifications. Weighing only 226 grams—less than half the weight of a typical VR headset—they include four cameras that support the Snap Spatial Engine and enable smooth hand tracking.
At the core of the glasses is Snap’s proprietary Optical Engine, which utilizes Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors and advanced waveguides. These technologies work together to produce vibrant, sharp images with a 46-degree diagonal field of view and a resolution of 37 pixels per degree.
The glasses operate on a dual system-on-a-chip architecture, employing two Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. This design allows for more immersive experiences while minimizing power consumption, providing up to 45 minutes of continuous standalone use.
Snap OS, the custom operating system powering the Spectacles, features an interface that can be navigated using hand gestures and voice commands. The Snap Spatial Engine is capable of understanding the surrounding environment, allowing Lenses to appear realistically in three dimensions with a motion-to-photon latency of just 13 milliseconds.
Snap is encouraging more developers to adopt Spectacles by introducing them with “no developer tax.” The company has also rolled out new tools to streamline the process of building and sharing Lenses.
The revamped Lens Studio 5.0 serves as a development environment that allows developers to quickly deploy projects to Spectacles. Additionally, the new Spectacles Interaction Kit makes it easier to create intuitive Lenses without requiring custom interaction systems to be developed from scratch.
The updated Lens Studio now supports TypeScript and JavaScript and includes enhanced version control tools for team collaboration. SnapML enables developers to integrate custom machine learning models directly into Lenses for tasks such as object identification, tracking, and augmentation.
Snap has also partnered with OpenAI to incorporate cloud-hosted multimodal AI models into Spectacles, providing developers with tools to enhance contextual understanding in their experiences.
The Spectacles Developer Program is available in the US for $99 per month, requiring a one-year commitment. This subscription grants access to Spectacles hardware and includes support from Snap to help developers bring their projects to life.
Several notable partners are already utilizing Lens Studio and Snap OS to create new Lenses for Spectacles. For example, LEGO Group has launched BRICKTACULAR, an interactive AR game that can be controlled using hand gestures and voice commands. ILM Immersive, Lucasfilm’s interactive studio, is developing experiences themed around Star Wars, while Niantic is bringing popular titles like Peridot and Scaniverse to the platform.
Snap’s latest offerings aim to advance the integration of digital experiences with the physical world. However, the overall success of Spectacles and Snap OS will largely depend on the creativity and innovation of the developer community.