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The problem is that AR can't make things dark. You can add light, but you can't take it away without blocking whatever you're looking at. Whether that's an ext

The problem is that AR can't make things dark. You can add light, but you can't take it away without blocking whatever you're looking at. Whether that's an extremely serious hindrance to the AR movement remains to be seen. Adding text overlays would be most of the benefit of AR, but there might be optical reasons why you can't just block out some light and then overlay text in a readable way. It might turn out that AR only works well at night, when it's dark.

tintor 9y ago
It can make things dark. Have you seen the dimming windows in 787?
- fossuser 9y ago
  That's not good enough to work. For a more complete answer: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar-anytime-soon/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
- cc439 9y ago
  Then you can't see what's in front of you. Take away the "R" in "AR" and all you've done is stuck another screen in front of your face, albeit much closer than any previous technology.
finnh 9y ago
People say this all time, but I'm unconvinced. Your AR glasses can have two layers: * a transparent-or-black layer, whose only point is to block out the real world when necessary * the actual additive display layer, which either operates on top of a transparent pixel or a black one, if it's better to draw it that way.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Nope, I thought so too, but you can't. When the transparent-or-black layer activates, you end up with a blurry blob of black, not a sharp one. That means the best you can do is sort of muddy the image, not block it. It's the same reason you can't see scratches in glasses -- it gets blurred because your eyes' focal plane is in the distance. Or more precisely: You could do this, but it's probably not going to have the results you wanted. The effect has a good chance of being too distracting to be practical. But it's hard to know without trying it.
  - finnh 9y ago
    Good analogy w/r/t scratches in glass ... but if that's a solvable problem for what you want to show (the additive layer), it seems like it should also be a solvable problem for the subtractive layer (?)
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      It might be interesting to get a pair of glasses, put some black tape on the lenses and see what it might look like in practice. You could get some partially transparent tape to simulate what AR would end up doing. It seems like an experiment worth doing. If you put your finger up to your eye and close the other, then focus on your laptop screen, you can see the blurry edge of your finger interfere with whatever you're looking at. But that's opaque -- it's hard to know what a partially-transparent blob might look like, or how much of an impact it'd have.
shpx 9y ago
"We made black with light." - Rony Abovitz (founder of Magic Leap) Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136110

tintor 9y ago

It can make things dark. Have you seen the dimming windows in 787?

fossuser 9y ago
That's not good enough to work. For a more complete answer: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar-anytime-soon/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
cc439 9y ago
Then you can't see what's in front of you. Take away the "R" in "AR" and all you've done is stuck another screen in front of your face, albeit much closer than any previous technology.

finnh 9y ago

People say this all time, but I'm unconvinced. Your AR glasses can have two layers: * a transparent-or-black layer, whose only point is to block out the real world when necessary * the actual additive display layer, which either operates on top of a transparent pixel or a black one, if it's better to draw it that way.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Nope, I thought so too, but you can't. When the transparent-or-black layer activates, you end up with a blurry blob of black, not a sharp one. That means the best you can do is sort of muddy the image, not block it. It's the same reason you can't see scratches in glasses -- it gets blurred because your eyes' focal plane is in the distance. Or more precisely: You could do this, but it's probably not going to have the results you wanted. The effect has a good chance of being too distracting to be practical. But it's hard to know without trying it.
- finnh 9y ago
  Good analogy w/r/t scratches in glass ... but if that's a solvable problem for what you want to show (the additive layer), it seems like it should also be a solvable problem for the subtractive layer (?)
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    It might be interesting to get a pair of glasses, put some black tape on the lenses and see what it might look like in practice. You could get some partially transparent tape to simulate what AR would end up doing. It seems like an experiment worth doing. If you put your finger up to your eye and close the other, then focus on your laptop screen, you can see the blurry edge of your finger interfere with whatever you're looking at. But that's opaque -- it's hard to know what a partially-transparent blob might look like, or how much of an impact it'd have.

shpx 9y ago

"We made black with light." - Rony Abovitz (founder of Magic Leap) Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136110