Snap’s latest generation of augmented reality Spectacles have been lambasted by one of the engineers that helped to create them. The glasses, revealed earlier this week, were described as “a disaster” by Sterling Crispin,

Bailenson and other Stanford researchers tested out the Meta Quest 3, a “mixed reality” headset that lets people blend physical and virtual worlds. While the headset is different from AR glasses, the gadget can display real-time video of a user’s surroundings in the physical world.

Snap on Tuesday, September 17, introduced its fifth-generation augmented reality glasses, Spectacles, designed to overlay digital graphics onto the real world. These glasses are currently only accessible to developers who are willing to pay a monthly subscription fee of $99 for a year.

Powering the new Spectacles is the new Snap OS and a pair of Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, which Snap says will split the processing tasks. During the demo, Spiegel also used the glasses to take a video of the crowd, so it appears that these spectacles will maintain some of their original utility.

Snap partnered with chipmaker Qualcomm and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to create the AR Spectacles, which allow users to place digital images and filters onto the real world through the lenses.

Snap Inc. Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel unveiled a new version of the company’s Spectacles smart glasses, revitalizing an effort to build an advanced augmented reality product that may one day replace or rival the smartphone.

Sticking their goal of tech-augmented eyesight, the makers of the popular photo app Snapchat have launched their latest pair of glasses that can superimpose digital objects into real environments. The new generation of "Spectacles" with transparent lenses offers better display quality and faster response times.