Facebook makes an important step on the way to the release of its first AR headset, as the company has signed an exclusive agreement with British manufacturer of AR displays Plessey supply the company microLED displays.
“We decided to work with Facebook to help them realize their vision of the next computing platform-oriented people,” Pressey said in a press statement . “Under the new commercial agreement, our activity for the production of LEDs will be used to help prototype of Facebook and the development of new technologies for potential use in space AR / VR”.
In the message The Information alleges, citing two people familiar with the matter, that Apple was interested in the acquisition of Plessey. However, Facebook’s decision not to hold direct acquisition, but instead to choose an exclusive license agreement was reportedly made in order to avoid what could cause “intense oversight by regulators”.
They say that this commercial agreement will allow to implement Facebook displays AR in a few years.
Facebook recently acquired Scape Technologies, a London-based startup specializing in the creation of a positioning system based on computer vision, which should accurately determine the location of any camera device with greater accuracy than GPS.
They say that the Plessey microLED displays combine the pixel arrays of RGB very high-density high-performance CMOS boards to create a so-called “image sources with very high brightness, low power consumption and high frame rate” for AR and VR headsets.
Vuzix, a manufacturer of smart glasses and AR headsets concluded a similar agreement with Plessey in the past year, which at that time was said to have simplified the existing optical system AR sources of red, green, and blue light, replacing it with one a self-illuminating display, which is integrated microoptical elements. At the time the agreement Vuzix sought to use the Plessey displays, to reduce the size and weight of their headsets.
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