Facebook Plans Augmented-Reality Sunglasses with fashion eye-wear maker EssilorLuxottica.   The new smart glasses could hit retail as early as 2021 according to the company’s annoucnements at its recent Facebook Connect conference.  The smart glasses will connect by wireless (Bluetooth?) to a nearby mobile phone and project an image of a mobile screen on the lenses.

To help Facebook in developing the augmented features for these smart glasses, Facebook employees will wear “Project Aria” eyeglasses in public starting this month.   While this eye-wear does not have augmented reality features (and are not available now for the public), these devices allow for capturing video, audio, eye-tracking and location data to be used in designing features for the smart eye-wear.

The many free-room location-based entertainment (“LBE”) companies coming to retail have been anticipating the arrival of quality “smart” eye-wear enhanced with augmented-reality capabilities.   Such smart eye-wear will allow all manner of immersive A/R experience and advertising for consumers.  As well, the A/R eye-wear will be able to deliver heads-up displays of local environmental and incoming communications updates in the same way that Air Force fighter pilots view such information on their cockpit windows.

A full review of the announcement of Facebook plans for augmented-reality sunglasses, is available at Mobile Marketer:  Facebook plans to sell AR-equipped smart glasses from Ray-Ban