How are we fitting an advanced tablet-like user experience in a pair of glasses? It’s not a mystery—the Lucyd smartphone app will do all the work. Think of Lucyd Lens as your new touchscreen, and your phone is the computer tower. You may have read some about Lucyd’s hardware or blockchain, but here’s a bit about the software that will make the Lucyd dream a reality.
The Lucyd smartphone app will allow the Lens to connect to the Internet. In early versions of Lens, the glasses themselves will not be cellular-enabled, relying on the user’s smartphone for connectivity. Also in the early models, all of the processing power of the Lucyd AR interface will come from the smartphone. Lucyd apps will require roughly the same processing power as normal smartphone apps at first, but have displays and control schemes optimized for the Lens.
We are designing the initial Lucyd smartphone companion app to have the following features:
- Receive real-time user input from the smartglasses, including voice data, button presses, finger tracking input, and various other data streams dependent on app and device functionality.
- Present responsive textures, video, images, sound and app interfaces in real-time, broadcasted as a complete formatted HD video/audio stream to be displayed on the glasses, for a tablet-like experience in AR.
- Relay smartphone vitals such as battery and connection strength to the Lucyd interface.
- Immediately open calls, emails and notifications that would appear on the smartphone in the glasses themselves. The user can then engage calls and SMS messages in basic text and calling apps.
- Have little to no interactivity on the smartphone itself, unless the Lens is having trouble booting. All normal interactivity takes place in the Lucyd interface.
- Have an in-Lucyd wizard to transfer content from old platforms to Lucyd.
- Essentially act as the operating system for the Lens, running the Lucyd AR interface, performing all computing functions. Conceptually the Lens is the monitor, speakers, and keyboard, while the Lucyd app and smartphone are the tower.
- The Lucyd AR interface (codename: Logyc) will be roughly similar to a tablet interface, but with graphics and textures expanded and optimized for AR. In the same way that Android powers tablets, Logyc will power Lucyd, and its “motherboard” will be your smartphone.
- Have native support for AR firmware, apps and content that provide critical functionality for the glasses, such as a notepad, a speech-to-text engine, finger tracking input, a phone app, an email app and a web browser. Native support for existing apps such as Whatsapp and Spotify will also be vital to the user experience and are planned for early versions.
- Enables the in-Lens Lucyd Lab AR storefront, where new apps and media can be downloaded. Purchases in the Lab store will be via the LCD token, with possible support for fiat as well.
In sum, the Lucyd app will do most of the work to make the Lucyd Lens user experience possible. In order to make a high-quality, seamless AR experience with our current level of technology, Lucyd will be dependent on a smartphone. But perhaps in the future, the Lens will stand alone.
