LAS VEGAS — Of all the problems with Google Glass, the biggest one was social acceptance. No matter what they did for you, the device simply looked too dorky for the vast majority of the public to consider wearing.

But what if it had looked almost exactly like a regular pair of glasses? That’s the dream of the entire smart-glass category, and companies like ODG and Vuzix have been working toward the goal for years. There’s been progress, but there hasn’t been a smart-glass concept that addresses what consumers ostensibly want: A device that looks like a regular pair of glasses.

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That means it needs to be compact. It also needs to accommodate different frames. And it needs to allow for prescription lenses.

Carl Zeiss — the age-old German company whose optics are found in countless camera lenses — believes it’s cracked (see what I did there?) the problem of building practical, consumer-friendly smart glasses. It’s developed a smart-glass optical unit that can be built into what looks like a normal lens.

A 3D-printed prototype pair of smart glasses with the Carl Zeiss optical system. Image: Liz Pierson/Mashable

“For us it’s a mandatory condition that it has to look like a normal pair of glasses," says Kai Jens Ströder, director of business development for the Smart Optics division of Zeiss Group. "With this technology, you can enable a very small optical system, which is very light, in a curved design.”

The optical unit isn't totally invisible. The module, which adds just 5 grams to the lens, looks like a dark triangle on its side, but it all but disappears when housed in a dark-colored frame. The Fresnel optical waveguide, which is built into the lens itself, also makes the glass look more like a bifocal than a normal lens. But compared to Google Glass – or virtually any smart-glass product, really – the Zeiss lens is about 100 times more normal.

To be clear, Carl Zeiss is an optics company, not a gadget company; it doesn’t build smart glasses, just the optical unit. But it showed me some 3D-printed prototypes, some working and some not, that incorporate the tech. While the virtual display wasn't the brightest or sharpest I've seen (issues the company says it will fine-tune in the coming months), it works: I was able to see icons and text from an app running on the glasses (controlled via smartphone). And thanks to the waveguide tech, none of that is visible to the people around you.

A big advantage the Zeiss lens has is users will be able to tailor it to an individual’s prescription. It’s not as convenient as going to LensCrafters – you’ll need to send the prescription to Carl Zeiss and they’ll make the lens to order – but at least it’s an option.

The Carl Zeiss smarglass lens projects images via waveguide, so they're visible to the wearer and no one else. Image: Liz Pierson/Mashable

"We have a curved lens, so it can be used with a prescription," says Ströder. "The process to bring in the prescription, from the point of view of the technology, it’s much more complicated than a normal lens. But from the sales process, it’s the same – you just send in your prescription."

Even though Carl Zeiss has only just developed the tech, and there’s no guarantee smart-glass manufacturers will use it, the promise it holds for consumer smart glasses is exciting. Augmented-reality devices like Epson’s Moverio smart glasses and Microsoft HoloLens are compelling products, but no one in their right mind would ever wear in a social setting.

With the Zeiss lens system, all that changes. Suddenly smart glasses look like actual glasses, with no one the wiser that the object on your head is a sophisticated piece of technology, capable of bringing you alerts, information and entertainment to your eyes instantly. That’s a wearable future we’d all like to see.

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