Apple Will Likely Launch A New Product, The Mixed-Reality Headset

Apple has filed a new patent application for its mixed-reality system, which includes a display to be mounted on the head and a controller to combine virtual reality and augmented reality. According to Variety’s report, the application says that the headset will provide three-dimension virtual views of users' environment that's augmented with virtual content.

The Cupertino-based company was first spotted to be working on a mixed-reality headset dated back April 2018. It is said by the source that the tech giant was developing a headset that could run both VR and AR, featuring an 8K screen for each eye. Codenamed T288, the project is planned to be released next year.

Apple filed the patent application in March this year and it was published on July 18.

The filing indicates that the headset could have left and right screens; light sensors for light info collection such as color, direction, and intensity; eye-tracking sensors; world mapping sensors for tracking location and movement; head pose sensors for tracking user’s motion and orientation; hand sensors for position tracking; lower jaw sensors for expression tracking; left and right cameras; and an inertial measurement unit for augmenting the sensor info.

The company added that the controller would house one processor or more. As stated in the filing, the tech giant will configure the controller to render the user's avatar to display in the three-dimensional virtual view that's based on at least a part of the info gathered by at least one eye-tracking sensor, at least one eyebrow sensor, as well as at least one lower jaw sensor.

According to Apple, the VR system may use liquid crystal on silicon, digital light processing, or LCD technology. It may even use a system of direct retinal projectors which scans right and left images, at the pixel level, to the eyes of the subject.