Meta is unveiling its latest AR device, which CEO Meron Gribetz says is taking the industry closer to realizing the long-held dream of layered a virtual world on top of the real one. – Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY

by Marco della Cava, USA TODAY, Excerpt

“Look out at all those desks,” says Gribetz, CEO of augmented reality headset maker Meta. “Within a year or two, I want everyone here to be doing their work using our glasses. The change is coming.”

Hollywood, thanks to prescient science-fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick, has already shown us this version of the future. Think Minority Report, when Tom Cruise dons black gloves to manipulate holographic images floating in front of him. Or Iron Man’s Tony Stark working out his superhero calculus with brisk hand gestures.

While such technology once seemed like fantasy, companies such as Meta – whose sub-$1,000 Meta 2 glasses are available for pre-order today on their website – are demonstrating that our holographic future is tantalizingly closer than we think.

“My prediction is that in five years we’ll be wearing a thin strip of glass over our eyes,” says Gribetz, 30, an Israeli-born entrepreneur who founded Meta in 2013. “The key with AR won’t be the hardware as much as creating a zero learning curve user interface. It’ll be pure intuition. We call it the iOS of the mind.”

The tech spotlight of late seems to be shining primarily on virtual reality, or VR, which provides an otherworldly escape via goggles that block out your surroundings. This year’s coming wave of high-end gear from Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony will only stoke these VR fires.

In contrast, augmented reality, or AR, layers an interactive virtual world on top of what’s around us. Remember Google Glass? That was a $1,500 AR effort that flopped. But Google is going back to the drawing board with a leading investment in secretive AR company Magic Leap just as others push AR forward. Some of its competitors: Microsoft – in the form of its forthcoming HoloLens; Epson, known printers and projectors; and ODG, a San Francisco-based tech company started by longtime inventor Ralph Osterhout.

In fact, AR is expected to dominate the AR/VR market by 2020, taking 75% of an anticipated $120 billion pie, according to industry advisors Digi-Capital.

AR GLASSES FIRST NEED TO SHRINK

Those include not only its form factor – today’s offerings range from chunky glasses designed by ODG and Epson, to visor-like wear from Meta and HoloLens – but also the need to prove what’s being offered is superior to its non-virtual counterparts. In other words, while it might be cool to see a computer monitor hovering in front of you, there’s a question about whether a user really needs that, asks Brian Solis, principal analyst with Altimeter Group.

“Simply replacing use cases that we all are quite happy with right now, like a laptop or tablet or smartphone, isn’t enough,” says Solis. He predicts AR will come into its own around 2020.

“Don’t forget the public reacted badly to people who wore (Google) Glass. In the end, AR has to be something we wear by choice because the benefits are greater than the societal reaction to it.”

In the near term, analysts say AR is likely to rack up a string of small victories in the enterprise space long before any big wins with average consumers.