Get navigation, ambient temperature, and speed data in your vision like the Terminator.
If you’ve ever been riding your motorcycle and thought it’d be cool to have a Terminator-like head-up display, giving you vehicle and navigation data, BMW has just the thing for you. They’re called the BMW ConnectedRide Smartglasses—smart sunglasses with a head-up display (HUD) built into the right lens.
For a smart pair of glasses, with a HUD built in, they aren’t too clunky looking. They’re obviously a bit thicker than a normal pair of glasses but they look pretty sleek, all things considered. Admittedly, they don’t have a camera built in, like Google Glass, and they only need to house a small lithium-ion battery pack and a tiny HUD projector.
The display is pretty small but it’s surprisingly comprehensive. Its shows outside temperature, speed, speed limit, gear, and turn-by-turn navigation. With the latter, users can choose either a simplified arrow or a detailed navigation screen with street names and exact directions. According to BMW, a full battery charge will last ten hours, which is more than enough for a day’s worth of riding.
BMW says that these glasses can be made to fit a variety of different head and helmet shapes, which is said to make them comfortable enough to wear for a full day. The pair also comes with two different lenses. One of which is 85 percent transparent and is designed to be used with helmets that have tinted sun visors. While the other lens is tinted, turning these into sunglasses. Prescription lenses can be fitted via an optician with an RX adapter.
These smart glasses connect to your smartphone and the BMW Motorrad app, which is how they get their data. You can control the settings and position of the HUD through either the app or handlebar controls.
BMW will offer these glasses in two different sizes—medium and large—for different pupil distances. No pricing is released just yet but these glasses should go on sale in the United States later this year.
I want to make some sort of joke about these being ridiculous but isn’t this exactly the sort of tech we all wanted as kids? Who didn’t want cyborg-like vision in real time? Being BMW, they’re probably going to be absurdly expensive and somehow leak oil within the first six months of ownership but they’re still kind of cool.
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