Sony announced pre-order of its SmartEyeglass Developer Edition in February, 2015 while Google published the Google Glass several years ago and kept updating (though just in January Google halted sales of Glass). Here is my comparison between the two glasses:

Spec Comparison

* may not be the latest model.

Comments

I don’t like either one since I am near-sighted.

Right now, both eyeglasses won’t work for users already wearing glasses

SmartEyeglass has a wider field of view than Google Glass but no registration.

Google glass related research has been initialized for a few years in the HCI field. The vital problem is most easy research problems for application and psychology have already been (some sort of) carried out. However, hard problems remain for registration and tracking on such a small device and encountering the sophisticated real world.

In Sony’s trailer video, they introduced several use scenarios. However, the augmented navigation has been proposed 20 years ago. But the real application is still not satisfactory. What’s wrong with current industrial product?

I think computing power is of extremely significance to head-mounted displays. Without it, we can never do alpha-blending, ghosting effect, registration and tracking. The information is shown all the time but disturbs the users a lot. That is why I think Nvidia’s VR glasses might be a success. But still both industry and academia needs an AR one to explore more possibilities.

Reference

• http://developer.sonymobile.com/products/smarteyeglass/specifications/#seg-header
• https://support.google.com/glass/answer/3064128?hl=en
• http://www.gizmag.com/sony-ar-wearable-smart-eyeglass-developer-edition/36220/