Far be it for us to conjecture what you did this past weekend, but if it’s anywhere along the lines of rappelling down mountain faces, biking across the country or putting out forest fires, the newly released Jet sunglasses from Recon instruments might be for you. Airing on the side of extreme, Recon’s answer to the Google Glass is a souped-up high-performance wearable computer masquerading as sunglasses. The Recon Jet heads-up display (HUD) is a flexible computing platform catering to endurance athletes. As a hybrid of microcomputer and polarized eyewear, the Jet is packed with more sensors and gadgets that you could ever really need… but hey, we know you’re weary of skydiving in your Google Glass, so Recon is here to offer an alternative.
With a dual-core processer and serious firepower on the functionality front, we are interested to see how Jet stands up to its sleeker and more mass-market competitors. With a number of obvious similarities both Google glass and the Recon Jet, one major issue seems to be with safety in terms of populating your field of vision with displays and marketing the glasses as usable in extreme sports—generally a time to try and have as few visual distractions as possible. Both products opted for a right side HUD, however Recon dropped the display to the bottom of your field of vision stating:
First and foremost, we wanted to ensure the user’s safety by making the display completely unobtrusive. When looking straight ahead, you will not even know it’s there. To take in information, you simply glance down, like looking at a dashboard on a car.
Research has shown that looking down is an easier eye movement than looking up. Jet is also designed for outdoor use, where looking up could result in looking directly at the sun, something we want to avoid.
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