Since the smart glasses spotlight has shifted away from Google Glass, other companies who are working on bringing heads up wearables to the mainstream are stepping into the space. Google Glass did make a lot of noise and made a hefty portion of the public aware of augmented reality smart glasses and what they can do.

Sony is one of the firms attempting to capitalize with their augmented reality head-gear Sony SmartEyeglass. The company has just launched its developer edition of the smart glasses in ten countries; USA, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Holland and Sweden.

Folks that aren’t affiliated with development probably won’t get too hyped up about the Sony SmartEyeglasses because of their limited functionality, not so trendy aesthetics, and the $840 price tag.

Wearable technology is finding its feet, but whether AR smart glasses are ever going to be on people’s Christmas lists is still about as clear as dishwater. But, i can say that I recently got to try out a few different brands at the wearable technology show in London, and my view is that augmented reality is going to land in a big way, and eyewear is the most logical form of integration.

At the moment smart glasses are clunky in both looks and performance, but the industry is moving forward, and if anyone can name one successful gadget on the planet that didn’t start its life as clunky, then please let us know in the comments box, we’d be very interested to hear!

The aspirations of the companies making smart glasses that I have spoken to all have pretty much the same vision, a pair of light-weight and trendy looking specs or sunglasses that cannot be distinguished from normal brands, but blend holographic images and real-time information into our physical world.

Infinity Augmented Reality is one of the companies that stood out at the recent wearable tech show. It was rather amazing to see a holographic Star Wars fleet hovering around above the table I was looking at, and then a holographic city with a T-rex running around the streets, the Infinity guys said to me “lean forward and take a closer look”, and it was good enough to make me think I was going to bang my head on one of the skyscrapers!

In honesty, it’s so obvious to me that augmented reality is going to literally going to take over the world! I am genuinely not joking! It won’t just be smart glasses, AR apps for smartphones such as Zappar are already getting attention. Let me give you one example of how I see augmented reality going in the future; At the moment if you are doing a tour of the HMS Victory, which was Lord Nelson’s Flagship, you walk around the ship checking out how the sailors used to live on board, the equipment they used, and reading epilogues.

Then you arrive on the upper deck and the exact spot where Nelson was shot, and you read the epilogue “Lord Nelson was shot here!” Well let me tell you that in the future Nelson will freakin be there himself in holographic form!

Another example; Today when you walk past Selfridges to do some window shopping what you see are mannequins. I reckon that augmented reality spells the end for mannequins! In the future, instead of ogling over some plastic doll wearing expensive clothes you will be interacting with a fit holographic model who will try on any outfit you like in any colour or any size! The augmented reality will either be projected onto the window itself, or if you have you’re own AR device you could have the model out on the street!

I mentioned windows, and if augmented reality is coming to glasses it will also come to windows! So for the last AR example from my sci-fi oriented brain; We’ve all seen Jurassic Park! So we’re on a tour bus driving through an AR dinosaur park and the bus has augmented reality windows! Say no more..

Is this far fetched? Yes! Will it happen before 2020? No! But the fact is that AR is going to become the way of life, and I don’t really understand why so many people can’t see it.

Big companies like Sony and others who are developing smart glasses can not only see the behemothic, mammothian potential of AR and how it’s going to encompass the earth, but they also have a tendency of dictating future technologies.

Make no mistake, augmented reality is coming!!