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I think there are two fundamental reasons it's "janky": 1. It's version 1. 2. It's an interface that nobody's used before. Neither of these is a mark again

by 13of40 11y ago

I think there are two fundamental reasons it's "janky": 1. It's version 1. 2. It's an interface that nobody's used before. Neither of these is a mark against the technology. Go ask a caveman to use a version 1 iPhone, and see if he falls in love with it or just trash-talks it on an internet forum.

usrusr 11y ago
But the iPhone did not require you to "step inside" of it. There's a whole world of difference in the threshold for "good enough" between a device you hold in your hand and one that you put on your head, overlaying your whole view. With a smartphone, you can still go all xkcd:303 during periods of waiting. Head mounted? Not so sure that works out well. That being said, maybe the hololens can be good enough nonetheless, because interaction latency is separate from pose/presentation latency and the latter is certainly far more make-or-break. I suspect that the main achievement (or magic sauce) of the hololens is strict separation between position-finding plus persective-correct content rendering (which both together are quite high-latency, relatively speaking) on one hand and the final push to the actual framebuffer on the other, where a last corrective shift(/and maybe rotate(/and even more maybe zoom)) correction can be applied independently. The latter would be very low latency, based on the difference between camera frame at the beginning of the rendering process and most recent camera frame. This would be closely related (if not derived from) software-based shake reduction in cameras, which in turn might be traced back to the algorithms used in optical mice (which lack rotation/zoom).
- daveguy 11y ago
  I agree that the interface is much more important with this, where you are immersed, than iPhone where you can step away easily. The adjustments people made to iPhone were getting used to a non-textile keyboard and finding other controls on the screen -- but those controls worked well. Shake reduction could probably help significantly. Definitely some sort of stabilization in the representation between you and your cursor. I'm not sure if position finding for the head is very separate from rendering, just because it is so smooth when he moves. I think head positioning is very separate from gesture positioning -- which is why cursors are jumpy. Maybe 13of40 is right on getting used to the interface -- maybe the user is holding his hand out too straight, not straight enough or something to that effect, but that still seems more of an interface problem than user problem. I do wish it was priced closer to oculus. At that oculus pricing I would probably get one, but at 4x it seems not quite there (interface and lacking apps). 13of40 - I think it is more "version 1" issues with the shake and a lack of the best human-to-computer interface rather than an "interface that nobody's used". Put-that-there[0] is an interface from the early 1980's that seems like it would do well to reduce the janky interactions. Speech recognition probably isn't quite where it needs to be for a generic setup (as opposed to the structured setup of put-that-there). Like I said, the computer to human side -- rendering virtual objects over a real field -- is beautiful. The quirks with incomplete map information aren't too distracting because we are good at filling in the gaps. The human to computer side needs work because it takes 30s to do a simple resizing operation. If you could say "make that screen 90 percent of my field of view" at any time the vid author wouldn't be complaining that getting too close causes clipping of his field of view. [0]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pr2KIPQOKE http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pr2KIPQOKE
- jameshart 11y ago
  I don't think there's a different level of 'good enough' required here - it's just that we're so early in the development of AR UI that we don't yet know what good enough will look like. The iPhone was the first touch interface that was low enough latency to feel like you were touching and sliding the images around behind the screen. Making those scroll and pinch-to-zoom interactions feel right was critical to its success. Certainly right now these Hololens interactions are not as slick and gratifying as flick-scrolling was in the original mobile Safari. And Apple and other manufacturers have now spent years optimizing screens to make the image seem closer to the surface of the glass and playing with varying success with haptics and pressure sensing and so on.
  - usrusr 11y ago
    But people had phones before the iPhone, and they were sluggish as well. Jumping from keypad to touchscreen was a jump large enough to to be botchable (as a few attempts before the iPhone had clearly shown), but tiny nonetheless compared to the jump to a large HMD (from what exactly, btw?). There is no way to casually use the hololens like you might occasionally use a laptop sitting on the side of a paper-centric desk without going fully electronic, it's pretty much an all or nothing commitment. Nobody would tie a contraption like that to their head to use it just for a fraction of the tasks at hand.

by 13of40 11y ago

usrusr 11y ago

But the iPhone did not require you to "step inside" of it. There's a whole world of difference in the threshold for "good enough" between a device you hold in your hand and one that you put on your head, overlaying your whole view. With a smartphone, you can still go all xkcd:303 during periods of waiting. Head mounted? Not so sure that works out well. That being said, maybe the hololens can be good enough nonetheless, because interaction latency is separate from pose/presentation latency and the latter is certainly far more make-or-break. I suspect that the main achievement (or magic sauce) of the hololens is strict separation between position-finding plus persective-correct content rendering (which both together are quite high-latency, relatively speaking) on one hand and the final push to the actual framebuffer on the other, where a last corrective shift(/and maybe rotate(/and even more maybe zoom)) correction can be applied independently. The latter would be very low latency, based on the difference between camera frame at the beginning of the rendering process and most recent camera frame. This would be closely related (if not derived from) software-based shake reduction in cameras, which in turn might be traced back to the algorithms used in optical mice (which lack rotation/zoom).

daveguy 11y ago
I agree that the interface is much more important with this, where you are immersed, than iPhone where you can step away easily. The adjustments people made to iPhone were getting used to a non-textile keyboard and finding other controls on the screen -- but those controls worked well. Shake reduction could probably help significantly. Definitely some sort of stabilization in the representation between you and your cursor. I'm not sure if position finding for the head is very separate from rendering, just because it is so smooth when he moves. I think head positioning is very separate from gesture positioning -- which is why cursors are jumpy. Maybe 13of40 is right on getting used to the interface -- maybe the user is holding his hand out too straight, not straight enough or something to that effect, but that still seems more of an interface problem than user problem. I do wish it was priced closer to oculus. At that oculus pricing I would probably get one, but at 4x it seems not quite there (interface and lacking apps). 13of40 - I think it is more "version 1" issues with the shake and a lack of the best human-to-computer interface rather than an "interface that nobody's used". Put-that-there[0] is an interface from the early 1980's that seems like it would do well to reduce the janky interactions. Speech recognition probably isn't quite where it needs to be for a generic setup (as opposed to the structured setup of put-that-there). Like I said, the computer to human side -- rendering virtual objects over a real field -- is beautiful. The quirks with incomplete map information aren't too distracting because we are good at filling in the gaps. The human to computer side needs work because it takes 30s to do a simple resizing operation. If you could say "make that screen 90 percent of my field of view" at any time the vid author wouldn't be complaining that getting too close causes clipping of his field of view. [0]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pr2KIPQOKE http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pr2KIPQOKE
jameshart 11y ago
I don't think there's a different level of 'good enough' required here - it's just that we're so early in the development of AR UI that we don't yet know what good enough will look like. The iPhone was the first touch interface that was low enough latency to feel like you were touching and sliding the images around behind the screen. Making those scroll and pinch-to-zoom interactions feel right was critical to its success. Certainly right now these Hololens interactions are not as slick and gratifying as flick-scrolling was in the original mobile Safari. And Apple and other manufacturers have now spent years optimizing screens to make the image seem closer to the surface of the glass and playing with varying success with haptics and pressure sensing and so on.
- usrusr 11y ago
  But people had phones before the iPhone, and they were sluggish as well. Jumping from keypad to touchscreen was a jump large enough to to be botchable (as a few attempts before the iPhone had clearly shown), but tiny nonetheless compared to the jump to a large HMD (from what exactly, btw?). There is no way to casually use the hololens like you might occasionally use a laptop sitting on the side of a paper-centric desk without going fully electronic, it's pretty much an all or nothing commitment. Nobody would tie a contraption like that to their head to use it just for a fraction of the tasks at hand.