Olympus Corporation has just announced their wearable display prototype to use in-the-wild. This is very similar to “Project Glass” – a research and development program by Google to create a reality head mounted display.

Olympus’s device is called “MEG4.0”. Project Glass and MEG4.0 are very similar in design. They both offer a light weight pair of glasses, which allow you to access your smartphone from your head.

However, Mat Smith of Engadget pointed out some differences between the two:

“Unlike Project Glass, the MEG4.0 isn’t a standalone structure and needs a glasses frame to hang on, although the sub-30g unit shouldn’t tax it too much. The QVGA (320 x 240) display can connect to devices through Bluetooth 2.1, with Olympus pointing to a smartphone hook-up to provide both the processing power and internet connectivity — which sounds different to what we’re expecting from Google’s effort. The current prototype can squeeze out eight hours of intermittent use, or two hours of non-stop projection.”

Olympus hasn’t announced a launch date or any pricing information yet. It will be interesting to see how these two in-the-wild devices fair against one another once launched.