A small team may have just cracked one of the big obstacles facing smart glasses

A small startup in California may have just beat billion-dollar startup Magic Leap to the first public demonstration of technology that integrates graphics into the real world with depth, so your eyes can focus on virtual objects at different distances.Avegant was previously known for Glyph, a pricey pair of headphones that could turn into a personal movie theater thanks to hidden screens in its headband.But on Thursday the startup broke into the augmented reality world with a public demonstration and video of its new opticsprototype. AR is a technology currently trendy with techies that displays digital objects and other information in the real world. The end-game of AR ' or mixed reality, as some in the industry call it ' is a pair of consumer smartglasses.Avegant is claiming what would be a breakthrough in AR optics, one of the core technologies that is limiting AR's market potential at the moment.Avegant says that its prototype displays digitalimages at different focal lengths, more like the real world, which will make AR experiences more compelling and immersive.That's very similar to whatMagic Leap says its still-unreleased and unpublicly demoed headset can do.I haven't tried the engineering prototype yet, but the Verge's Nick Statt and expert optics blogger Karl Guttag were able to. "It was a technology capability demonstrator and on that basis it has succeeded," Guttag wrote.Here's what we know about Avegant's new AR headset:SEE ALSO:Tim Cook laid out the playbook for Apple's next big thingThis is a cosmetic mock-up demonstrating what the technology could look like in a finished form, but there aren't plans to release a product based on this yet.And here's what the current optics prototype looks like. Note that it's wired to a PC ' this isn't portable, yet.And here's what it should be able to do, according to Avegant's renders.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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