Google’s Project Glass comes to life, sort of

We’ve covered the Google Glasses (or Project Glass as Google so lovingly calls it) pretty extensively and as exciting as it is, it seems one DIY fan has managed to whip up a pair for himself.

Crafty genius Will Powell sliced himself a pair of 80s style Google Glasses and the results are pretty spectacular.

The tools: nothing more than Vuzix glasses, HD web cameras, Dragon Naturally Speaking for the vocal recognition bit and a custom UI written in Adobe Air. The video speaks volumes of Powell’s success.

The design is shockingly close to what Google envisions for its Glasses. Powell delivers instructions to the mic, which replicates the Google Glasses UI on screen. He updates his status, shares a picture he took on Google+ Circles, actually uses Google+ Circles and checks the weather.

The setup is pretty cumbersome, and currently looks more like a throwback to a bad 80s sci-fi film, rather than the gleaming future Google has planned for us.

It’s not what Google has planned for us though. The UI doesn’t hover in real time, but exists via two webcams which create a stereoscopic 3D effect which is fed into Powell’s Vuzix glasses.

Powell’s a smart man, and has spent much of his development time working on Kinect gesture control projects and augmented reality systems. Then again, it only took one genius to create a vision of the future, compared to the team of thousands working at the big G.