Apple is working on mixed reality glasses, according to a new report from CNET. The device will be used for both virtual and augmented reality, and if the report is indeed accurate, will contains a pair of 8K displays.
Again, if this is accurate, and that's a big if, the device will be well beyond anything else on the market. If you look at Microsoft's Windows Mixed Reality headsets, those have dual 1440p displays and need to be tethered to a PC. Apple's device is apparently wireless, although does need to connect to a separate device via 60GHz WiGig technology.
But that's still a lot of bandwidth for a wireless connection. Consider that with the Windows Mixed Reality headsets, each lens is 1440x1440, resulting in 2,073,600 pixels per lens, or 4,147,200 pixels total. That's not bad, when you consider that a regular 4K UHD display is about double that. 8K lenses should be 4320x4320 each, 18,662,400 pixels per lens, or 37,324,800 pixels total.
There aren't that many standards out there that can handle that kind of bandwidth, wired or wireless. HDMI 2.1 would be able to do it, but we're talking WiGig here, which in its current iteration, supports data transfer speeds of up to 8Gbps. The report does say that the device will feature a newer iteration of the WiGig standard, 802.11ay, and that it will be finalized in 2019.
Apple's mixed reality headset should be coming in 2020, according to the report. Unfortunately, the device is certainly a major undertaking, so take this report with a grain of salt.
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