Google: Here’s What Our Sci-Fi Glasses Look Like

We’re more than a quarter of the way through 2012, and as you may have noticed, we have failed to acquire silver jumpsuits or jetpacks. In fact, aside from that headset in your ear, smartphone in your pocket and tablet in your purse, everything is looking quite boringly un-futuristic.

But if Google has its way, we will start wearing some very science fiction-like glasses by year’s end.

The search giant’s research arm launched a Google+ page Wednesday for Project Glass, its augmented reality glasses project. The page revealed that Google researchers have started testing the glasses, with an Android-run heads-up display, that the New York Times suggested Google will start to sell this year for roughly the cost of a regular smartphone.

[Update: a Google spokesperson has indicated to Mashable that the company selling the glasses this year would be "extremely unlikely."]

The page also contains one of those “here’s what the future will look like” videos, to explain the concept better than words can. Check it out:

Cleverly, the video’s first-person point of view dodges one of the main problems with the glasses — that you may look kind of dumb wearing them. The pictures shared on the page all show largely glass-free frames with what appears to be a projector on one side.

Think of a kind of monocular Geordi LaForge, and you’re almost there.