These days, it's just not enough to merely look at what's in front of you, technologies now allow us to identify and learn about what's in view.
For its new binoculars, Unistellar has added an Augmented Reality Precision Orientation System. This technology overlays contextual information on the right eyepiece, augmenting the user's natural field of view with useful information on what seen through the optical system.
It's similar to what Swarovski Optik achieved when combining the Merlin Bird ID app with its AX Vision smart binoculars. But Unistellar's companion app goes beyond birds and wildlife, boasting more than a million hills, mountains and peaks as well as hundreds of thousands of trails, shelters, caves, springs and so on. It also works at night, and can identify a thousand astronomical targets (such as nebulae) and 200,000 stars.
The smart system has four modes. During daylight hours, users can overlay a 3D map with landmark highlights, trails, water sources and other points of interest, thanks to the handset's GPS. A Guided Navigation Mode pretty much does what you'd think during the day, but the app also suggests celestial objects of interest at night. A third mode lets a user lock onto a distant object – "be it a camouflaged animal or distant star" – and pass the Envision binoculars to a friend, who will be guided to the locked target to share the discovery. And finally, as you might expect, you can turn the AP off and simply enjoying using the binoculars in the traditional way.
The first Envision binoculars are scheduled to ship late next year, and expected to cost around $1,200. The video below will give you a better understanding...