Apple Reportedly Terminates AR Glasses Following Jony Ive’s Departure

Apple has reportedly terminated, or at least postponed, its work on the rumored Apple AR glasses, especially now that designer Jony Ives has left the Cupertino tech giant.

According to a report from DigiTimes (via iPhoneHacks), Apple has temporarily stopped working on its rumored AR glasses. The team that was said to be working on the device was believed to have been disbanded last May, and reassigned to other unspecified projects.

Of course, the news might not be surprising when we realize that Apple’s key designer has left the company to start his own firm, but the news, however, comes as a surprise considering previous reports outlining Apple’s plans for the said device. Earlier, the International Business Times reported on a few things that seemed to indicate Apple’s AR glasses was already in the works.

First, Apple’s interest in the AR scene is made even more obvious by the recently released ARKit 3, which enables compatible iPhones and iPads to do things using augmented reality. ARKit 3 allows users to create AR-enhanced videos without the need for a chroma key background or a green screen.

ARKit 3 also gives compatible iDevices motion capture capabilities that can be used in a variety of applications. One such application is gaming, and this is best seen in the Minecraft Earth demo Apple and Mojang showed at the recent WWDC. The demo can be seen below:

Second, a pair of patents showed Apple’s plans for an AR device that will give users “believable” views of virtual objects, as well as one that will be able to keep track of a user’s gaze to give him a better view of what he’s looking at.

The first patent, “Stereoscopic rendering of virtual 3D objects,” describes a method that would allow the AR device to produce a more realistic view of a virtual object. This AR device will be able to produce two equirectangular representations --one for the left and one for the right eye-- to give wearers a more realistic view of a certain virtual object on display.

The second patent for a so-called “Foveated Display” describes how an eye-tracking system monitors where the wearer’s eyes are looking at, then relays the information to the AR device which, in turn, will optimize rendering at the exact location where the wearer is looking.