While most of the US is a little preoccupied with something else today, Snapchat updated its app to include support for its forthcoming video-capturing glasses, called Spectacles. The update might also be a glimpse into what it’ll be like to record and share videos with the wearables.
The update, first spotted by Mashable, allows someone to theoretically connect a pair of Spectacles to the app via Bluetooth. Snap, the recently formed parent company for Snapchat and Spectacles, hasn’t given any indication when its $130 glasses will be available, and the company declined to comment on its release plans. But it seems that if it’s adding support for the glasses to the app, their release must be round the corner.
As part of the update, Snapchat also released what it’s calling “World Lenses,” which are essentially dynamic filters that make use of a smartphone’s outward-facing camera. Until now, the lenses Snapchat developed were generally intended to be used by the rear-facing camera, to pick up faces and alter them in some way—the new filters overlay effects onto other objects in the world, beyond just faces:
Some of the filters are the same as ones that Snapchat has circulated for its regular lenses in the past:
And others are pretty much just like regular Snapchat filters, where the software is just trying to detect faces:
It’s not clear whether Spectacles will be able to overlay filters as the wearer is looking through them, or whether they’ll have to apply filters on their phones once they’ve recorded a video. Snapchat declined to comment on how World Lenses will work with Spectacles.
Either way, it seems that by introducing filters that look out onto the world, rather than up at our faces, Snapchat is getting its users ready for filtering the world around them with dog ears, oranges, vomiting-rainbow clouds, and anything else the company can think of to overlay onto our lives.