Google shows new AR glasses, VR headset at TED

• Google also displayed a forthcoming mixed reality headset along the lines of Apple's Vision Pro in demos at the TED Conference in Vancouver.

Driving the news: Android XR head Shahram Izadi and a colleague showed the glasses, which look similar to a standard pair of specs, performing live translation from Farsi to English, scanning a book and performing other tasks.

• "These glasses work with your phone, streaming back and forth, allowing the glasses to be very lightweight and access all of your phone apps," Izadi said.

Izadi also showed a preview of an immersive mixed reality headset being built with Samsung that bears a striking resemblance to Apple Vision Pro and uses pass-through video to allow the real and digital worlds to merge.

• In that demo, Google showed the ability to overlay multiple windows, see an immersive view of Cape Town South Africa and play a 360-degree video of snowboarding.
• Samsung showed a preview of that headset, codenamed Project Moohan, at its Unpacked event in January.

• A Google representative was not immediately available to offer further details.

The big picture: Meta showed off a similar concept last year with its Orion glasses.

• Demos such as Google's and Meta's prove the technology has been miniaturized enough to make augmented reality inside glasses a technical possibility.

What's next: The next key will be figuring out how to improve battery life and getting the cost down.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to remove a reference to Google's TED demonstration as being its first of this prototype.