6 ms·

Where are the hits? - AR powers the world's #1 Photo App (#3 most popular app overall) in Snapchat's filters. - AR is getting its first commercially polished,

Where are the hits? - AR powers the world's #1 Photo App (#3 most popular app overall) in Snapchat's filters. - AR is getting its first commercially polished, OS level set of libraries in the next release from the world's most valuable consumer electronics company in iOS 11. - AR's killer form factor - wearable glasses - is being furiously developed by Google, Apple, SNAP, MSFT, etc, etc and it's going to be weird and fucking wonderful when AR has a truly suitable foundation to build on. So where are the hits? All around us, right in front of us.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
- AR's killer form factor - wearable glasses Unlikely. I've elaborated on this in the past. Basically: You cannot make things dark. You can't use LCD type technology to block part of the lenses for the same reason you can't see scratches on your lenses: you're not focused on your lenses! You're focused in the distance. That means the ideal of having crisp, readable text overlays is mostly a fantasy. You can prove this yourself: get a piece of tape, write some text on it, and put it over your lenses. You can't read the text. You can even use clear tape to simulate what a real overlay would look like. The second problem is power. Oculus makes sense because you're tethered to a high-end workhorse. When you're using glasses, you have neither a video card nor a huge source of power at your disposal. That means battery technology would need to improve by a massive amount just to make the glasses not die within hours. The third issue is target recognition. The real world is instant. That means any overlay you use would need to attain 90FPS to appear seamless. If you're going to do the most basic thing with an AR device -- drawing an arrow on the ground, indicating where to walk, a'la Google Maps -- you'll need to recognize the ground + render the overlay within 11 milliseconds. This might work for a ground-based overlay, since you can assume it's a flat plane in a big city, as long as your gyroscope is accurate enough. But where would you even stick a gyroscope with that kind of precision inside a glasses form factor? The best form factor for this would probably be some kind of "bandana", where the meat of the device sits on the back of your head. That'd look dorky and it'd be uncomfortable, but you might be able to pull it off. The only way this might work is if you use LCD tech to dim the entirety of both lenses enough to then project light on top of them. But again, your focusing out in the distance, so trying to show anything readable (text messages) seems kind of a fantasy. Here's proof: Pull out your phone and hold it up to your eye where lenses of glasses would normally be. I'm not sure if you could even render it in a way that would account for the focus blur.
- jaggederest 9y ago
  You realize that the entire thesis of your statements are given the lie by the fact that Google Cardboard exists, right? It's literally holding the phone up to your face, and using the camera to take photos out the side. I've used it to filter reality "AR" doesn't mean "projecting clear text onto the real world". It means retransmitting the real world from a camera onto an LCD with things added. We literally already have the technology built into phones. You add some lenses and a battery pack and you're good.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    That's hardly going to comfortable to keep your eyes focused on short distance for a long period of time. That's the problem with "holding the phone up to your face".
    - jaggederest 9y ago
      Your eyes are not focused on a short distance. The whole point is that the lenses make it so that your eyes focus to infinity while the device is very close.
- extra88 9y ago
  I have no idea how they work but the Hololens can display text. If you piece of tape thought experiment was relevant it would apply equally to VR headsets but they also provide readable text and other forms of detail.
- tim333 9y ago
  The "crisp, readable text" thing is doable. Just put lenses in front of the text screen to make the focus appear in the distance and combine with incoming light using partially mirrored glass or a prism. Having used the Hololens it actually works quite well. Also in IBMs 17 year old thing https://www.cnet.com/news/computers-off-the-rack-from-ibm/ https://www.cnet.com/news/computers-off-the-rack-from-ibm/

sillysaurus3 9y ago

- AR's killer form factor - wearable glasses Unlikely. I've elaborated on this in the past. Basically: You cannot make things dark. You can't use LCD type technology to block part of the lenses for the same reason you can't see scratches on your lenses: you're not focused on your lenses! You're focused in the distance. That means the ideal of having crisp, readable text overlays is mostly a fantasy. You can prove this yourself: get a piece of tape, write some text on it, and put it over your lenses. You can't read the text. You can even use clear tape to simulate what a real overlay would look like. The second problem is power. Oculus makes sense because you're tethered to a high-end workhorse. When you're using glasses, you have neither a video card nor a huge source of power at your disposal. That means battery technology would need to improve by a massive amount just to make the glasses not die within hours. The third issue is target recognition. The real world is instant. That means any overlay you use would need to attain 90FPS to appear seamless. If you're going to do the most basic thing with an AR device -- drawing an arrow on the ground, indicating where to walk, a'la Google Maps -- you'll need to recognize the ground + render the overlay within 11 milliseconds. This might work for a ground-based overlay, since you can assume it's a flat plane in a big city, as long as your gyroscope is accurate enough. But where would you even stick a gyroscope with that kind of precision inside a glasses form factor? The best form factor for this would probably be some kind of "bandana", where the meat of the device sits on the back of your head. That'd look dorky and it'd be uncomfortable, but you might be able to pull it off. The only way this might work is if you use LCD tech to dim the entirety of both lenses enough to then project light on top of them. But again, your focusing out in the distance, so trying to show anything readable (text messages) seems kind of a fantasy. Here's proof: Pull out your phone and hold it up to your eye where lenses of glasses would normally be. I'm not sure if you could even render it in a way that would account for the focus blur.

jaggederest 9y ago
You realize that the entire thesis of your statements are given the lie by the fact that Google Cardboard exists, right? It's literally holding the phone up to your face, and using the camera to take photos out the side. I've used it to filter reality "AR" doesn't mean "projecting clear text onto the real world". It means retransmitting the real world from a camera onto an LCD with things added. We literally already have the technology built into phones. You add some lenses and a battery pack and you're good.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ekianjo 9y ago
  That's hardly going to comfortable to keep your eyes focused on short distance for a long period of time. That's the problem with "holding the phone up to your face".
  - jaggederest 9y ago
    Your eyes are not focused on a short distance. The whole point is that the lenses make it so that your eyes focus to infinity while the device is very close.
extra88 9y ago
I have no idea how they work but the Hololens can display text. If you piece of tape thought experiment was relevant it would apply equally to VR headsets but they also provide readable text and other forms of detail.
tim333 9y ago
The "crisp, readable text" thing is doable. Just put lenses in front of the text screen to make the focus appear in the distance and combine with incoming light using partially mirrored glass or a prism. Having used the Hololens it actually works quite well. Also in IBMs 17 year old thing https://www.cnet.com/news/computers-off-the-rack-from-ibm/ https://www.cnet.com/news/computers-off-the-rack-from-ibm/