These Goggles Give You A HUD While You Swim | Screen Rant
In what can only be described as a pretty awesome breakthrough for swimmers, new high-tech swimming goggles from FORM offer an augmented reality heads-up display to track time, speed and pace while underwater. Technology and sports have enjoyed a fruitful relationship together, with more and more sports teams and authorities seeing the benefit of adding technological breakthroughs to their respective athlete's arsenals. For example, many of the world's largest sports clubs employ the use of Catapult, a sports vest that tracks one's pace, intensity, and speed. Athletes using wearable technology have seen improvements up to 26 percent in certain metrics.
Augmented reality has been a great way to change how users interact with the world around them ever since Google utilized it to great success in the Google Glass. Sure, Google Glass died a slow and painful death, but it showed that the technology has promise, and it can provide users with a wealth of information without requiring that they look at a screen. It was only a matter of time before such technology saw its use in the sporting field, as it's obvious the benefits smart glasses can bring to a variety of sports like archery, golf, or skiing.
The FORM smart swimming goggles give wearers workout instructions while they are underwater, in real-time. The goggles list a head-spinning amount of data for professional and amateur swimmers including stroke rate, calories burned, heart rate, and several more. The goggles can be synced to smartwatches, which already give users a deep dive into their bodily metrics, and provide extended breakdowns of workouts via the FORM Swim smartphone app.
The FORM swim goggles have an overwhelmingly positive history of reviews. One user, a triathlete, notes that the info the goggles provided managed to shave 15 seconds off of her overall pace. Many users compliment the application as well, noting that seeing the total distance swam makes for quite the motivational tool. However, some less flattering reviews noted that the display can hamper your vision, potentially leading to collisions or disorientation. They also bemoaned the confusing physical buttons that seemingly change up the entire HUD.
Despite a few harsh critics, the goggles have gained a lot of popularity among swimmers. Many reviews compliment the swimming goggles' comfort and their ability to provide give up-to-date information that helps improve swimming form. The app comes with hundreds of guided workouts for users to do to either keep fit or improve their athletic abilities. The use of augmented reality appears to have helped many on their road to becoming better swimmers. The FORM smart swimming oggles are available for $199 on Amazon.
Next: Google Glass: What Happened To The Futuristic Smart Glasses?
Source: FORM Swim