American multinational company Apple recently filed for a patent for a mixed-reality headset. The MR headset will be a blend of VR and AR and will contain sensors, cameras and body tracking for immersion.
Being called Project:T288, the news was first revealed by media website CNet while confirming a previous report on the same. The headset will reportedly be capable of both Virtual and Augmented Reality and will have an 8K display for each eye. The project is still in development and release is scheduled for the year 2020.
This comes as a confirmation after numerous suspicions that Apple was thinking of investing in Augmented Reality.
Apple started purchasing companies in the AR business in 2015, starting with German startup Metaio, which was working on the same software package as Apple's ARKit. The giant then went on to buy numerous startups invested in vision technology and headsets like SensoMotoric Instruments InVisage Technologies and Regain. Just last year the company bought Akonia Holographics, a startup focused on creating Augmented Reality glasses along with all of its 200 patents.
With the patent-pending for a headset, the company might also try making AR glasses as an accessory to the already successful Apple Watch.
CEO Tim Cook had this to say about AR in February last year: "AR has the ability to amplify human performance instead of isolating humans. So I am a huge, huge believer in AR. We put a lot of energy on AR. We're moving very fast."