Apple Glasses have a neat feature PSVR should steal

Apple Glasses
An unofficial design of how the Apple Glasses might look. (Image credit: Martin Hajek/iDropNews)

Sony’s PSVR system is one of the most accessible VR headsets around, but this new potential Apple Glasses feature could show Sony how it's really done. 

A patent filed by Apple (via 91mobiles), and published by the USPTO on Feb. 27, shows us a potential future feature for the long-rumored Apple Glasses AR system: automatic fitting. 

As the text of the patent details, the headset would contain the necessary electronics to sense where the right-eye and left-eye models in the device were located. It could then be compared with the position of the user’s nose and adjusted accordingly to ensure the user was comfortable and getting an optimal virtual reality experience.

Apple Glasses

An illustration of the patent, showing the two lenses with sensors around the area that would rest on the user's nose. (Image credit: Apple/USPTO)

The degree of automation that could be used is fully explored through the document. It ranges from a user performing manual adjustments to the fully self-fitting system we described above, which would also read the distance between the wearer’s pupils to further fine tune its position.

The sensors themselves could be mounted on flexible circuits too, meaning that the parts that need to look at your eyes or rest on your nose wouldn’t feel too heavy or uncomfortable despite its sophisticated functionality.

Patents don’t necessarily turn into real products, and if they do it could take a few years to get there. The technology described in this particular patent sounds plausible, but making it of a high-enough quality for the notoriously fussy Apple may take some time, particularly since it doesn’t have any VR headset on the market yet.

But if you’re a PS4 owner and want to enhance your gaming experience, then the PSVR headset does a great job even without needing to steal Apple’s new patent. It’s well priced, easy to set up and has plenty of compatible and VR-specific games for you to try out, which it often comes bundled with for an ideal VR starter kit.

Richard Priday
Assistant Phones Editor

Richard is based in London, covering news, reviews and how-tos for phones, tablets, gaming, and whatever else people need advice on. Following on from his MA in Magazine Journalism at the University of Sheffield, he's also written for WIRED U.K., The Register and Creative Bloq. When not at work, he's likely thinking about how to brew the perfect cup of specialty coffee.