The makers of the prescription lenses for now-defunct Google Glass have taken the initiative to provide Snapchat Spectacles owners with special lenses. You can now customise your Snapchat Spectacles with the extra power lens starting at $99 and all the way up to $199 depending on your preferences.
NY-based lens manufacturer Rochester Optical has designed lenses for AR and VR devices such as Microsoft HoloLens, Google Glass and others, which means your Snapchat Spectacles are in safe hands. If you wish to get your pair of smart eyewear fitted with prescription lenses, ship them to Rochester Optical.
Since the Snapchat Spectacles have a unique, retro design with round lenses, it is a challenging task to accommodate customised lenses. But Rochester Optical, using its "latest optical equipment with 5-axis edging machinery, digital free-form surfacing equipment, and in-house AR coating," can overcome any design challenges.
The prescription lenses can cost almost as much as the spectacles or even more. For a $130 Snapchat Spectacle, one must spend $99 for a standard single vision lens, $149 for high-index lens and $199 for photochromic or polarised lenses.
The turnaround time to complete an order is 2-3 days in addition to 1-day shipping. This excludes the time it would take for you to ship the wearable to Rochester Optical.
"We've been working with heads-up displays for a long time, and Spectacles are just a form of smart glasses without the heads-up-display. We already cut similar notches in lenses for Google Glass to accommodate the HUD, so cutting rounded notches in the lens corners to work around the Spectacle cameras is very similar," Patrick Ho, CEO of Rochester Optical, said in a statement.
Anyone who has tried purchasing Snapchat Spectacles would know that it is not as easy as it would seem. They are available in limited quantities in select places and are selling like hot cakes. One can try grabbing the wearable from a Snapbot vending machine at a pop-up store in NYC or other temporary locations in LA.
