Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) hosted its 43rd annual general meeting (AGM) on Wednesday. At the event, which was held virtually for the first time in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the company launched the Jio Glass.
Jio Glass is a mixed reality (MR)-based holographic lens system that enables users to perform various tasks such as host conference calls, share and view presentations and hold discussions among other things.
Design wise, Jio Glass comes with a plastic frame that has a camera in the front between the two lenses. At the back it has a small platform at the back that will presumably provide the MR capabilities and speakers and battery on sides in its two legs. The device weighs is just 75 grams and it comes with a cable that can be attached to the company’s newly launched MR glasses and a smartphone for providing internet connectivity. Overall, the design looks is quite similar to the Bose Frames that were launched in India last year.
In terms of features, Jio Glass comes with a personalised audio system and the company says that it supports all standard audio formats. It offers HD quality video and at the moment it supports more than 25 apps.
As far as the functioning is concerned, users can make holographic video calls with colleagues who can join in their 3D avatar and in regular video calling format. Once users join in a call, they can share and view presentations on a large virtual screen. An interesting aspect of this use case is that Jio Glass users can use voice commands for calling individuals. During the demo, RIL’s President Kiran Thomas called Akash Ambani simply by saying, “Hello Jio, please call Akash.” While it isn’t clear, presumably the company is using some kind of virtual assistant, like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, for providing this functionality.
Apart from everyday office work, Jio Glass can also be used for conducting virtual classes that will be held over Jio’s MR cloud. “Jio Glass is making teachers and students come together in 3D virtual rooms and conduct holographic classes through our Jio Mixed Reality cloud in real-time. With JioGlass, the traditional way of learning Geography will now be History,” Thomas said at the AGM.
Now comes the pricing. Reliance Jio hasn’t revealed the pricing or the availability of its Jio Glass yet. We also don’t know anything about its battery capacity. It is expected that we will get more details about the Jio Glass when it is ready for a wider public rollout.
