The advent of mixed reality headsets like HoloLens could mean the end of the PC monitor, as apps jump off of the screen and into the real world. That future is a while off, though, and Samsung’s Monitorless looks like an intriguing stopgap.
The electronics giant revealed this concept today ahead of a showcase at the 2017 Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona next week. Designed by the company’s Creative Lab, Monitorless uses a pair of glasses that connect to your smartphone, which in turn connects to your PC. The glasses can then be used to view the screen on either device as an AR overlay. In theory, you could use the headset to access your PC and smartphone without actually having them right next to you. You can see the headset in a video below.
https://youtu.be/iOgs2Dspbm4
Samsung claims the glasses also have VR functionality. Judging by the end of the video, this simply refers to how much of the real world you can see when using the device; a slider lets them completely black out the surrounding world (noted as VR), while moving further towards the AR end brings the world back into view and makes the display transparent.
It is certainly an interesting concept, though we’ll have to go hands-on with it ourselves to determine just how useful it could be. There’s no word on when the headset could be made available, nor how much it would cost.
Samsung has additional projects it is planning to show at MWC. They include Relúmĭno, a visual aid application for Gear VR which claims to allow the near blind and visually impaired to read books and watch TV “with new levels of clarity.” VuildUs, meanwhile, is another VR app that allows home buyers to see what furniture might look like in rooms before they actually put anything in them. It uses a depth camera combined with a Gear VR to offer an accurate depiction of what you could fit where. Finally, TraVRer is another 360 degree video platform that allows you to visit destinations and plan out a holiday before you go, or revisit it when you get back.
