Snap debuts true AR glasses that show the potential (and limitations) of AR

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  Spectacles worn by Snap content-creation partner Leighton McDonald. [credit: Snap ]

Snap Inc., the company best known for the popular Snapchat social camera app, has announced its first pair of augmented reality glasses that most people would agree actually qualify as real AR glasses. Like previous glasses the company has produced, they are called Spectacles.

Spectacles will not be available to buy as a mass-market consumer product—at least not in the immediately foreseeable future. Instead, Snap is seeding units to developers and content creators so the glasses can be used to create new experiences and filters. These creators will build these with Lens Studio, a Snapchat-specific tool that is already widely in use.

Spectacles enable new ways to view and create Snapchat Lenses, which are generally simple augmented reality filters that Snapchat users apply to the videos they send each other.