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Comment by wepple | Hacker News Reader

> but can't do that yet because its not possible.

Huh? Why not?

Because the central limitation is still mass; a friction-fit frame light enough to sit on your face all day without fatigue is the market expectation for eyewear, and devices generally require parts which weigh more than glasses.

They already exist. Glasses used to have heavy (at high prescription numbers) glass elements instead of plastic. HUD glasses can already fall in that weight envelope, with better weight distribution.

HUD sure, but they are dumb displays, with no useful machine perception services (ie world locked rendering.)

Basically you have about 130mw power budget. You need to do position, display, sound output, transcription, etc.

https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/software/musing-on-openais-d... << an explanation here

World locked rendering isn't a requirement for smartglasses. Some existing ones in glasses for factor do have more limited visual positioning systems. In more obtrusive formfactors they have positioning suitable for world locked.

Of world locked rendering is just a huge waste of power at this point.

for assistant glasses to be useful, you need to know who, what, when, where for each operation that the user cares about. In the experiements that I ran, that took about 35 watts continuous on the headset (using a jetson) and at least 2 big GPU machines in the backend. This was in 2024, so perhaps its not quite as heavy now. but its nowhere near 130mw

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