When Google introduced the Google Glass, one of the major objections was their appearance. With detractors calling them ‘clunky’ and ‘dorky’ and other unflattering epithets. Though technology has moved on, the aesthetics of augmented reality (AR) headwear is still a problem for many people. Microsoft is seeking to tackle this problem with its new prototype AR glasses.

Unveiled with surprisingly little fanfare was a prototype of a new design of AR glasses that look much like an ordinary pair of black, thick-framed eye glasses, a far cry from the high-tech but bulky appearance of the HoloLens.

The prototype design formed part of a paper written by Microsoft researchers Andrew Maimone, Andreas Georgiou and Joel Kollin which describes a technique called digital holography which is used in the prototype. The researchers are expected to talk about their work in more detail at the Siggraph conference in Los Angeles in August 2017.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” the researches wrote as part of their paper, “We show various capabilities of near-eye holographic displays (wide field of view, compact form factors, multi-focus, etc.) but we have not yet achieved all these capabilities in a single device.”

The device may never be mass-produced as it is still an early prototype, and is lacking in several advanced features that are starting to become standard among AR and virtual reality (VR) devices, such as head tracking. Even so, the work on this prototype could form the basis of some new development in the field of wearable AR technology.

VRFocus will bring you further new on Microsoft’s AR and Vr projects as it becomes available.