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- 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 tec
by 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 agoYou 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 agoThat'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 agoYour 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 agoI 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 agoThe "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/
- guycook 9y agoHave you used any optical see-through HMDs? There's heaps, and they all have no problem displaying text. If you look at the spec sheet for the BT-300 for example [0] you'll see "Virtual screen size: 80" support (virtual viewing distance 5m)", or in other words you need to focus your eyes five meters away to see the display sharply, at which point it will appear to take up 80in of diagonal space in the real world (don't know why they mixed the units like this though). I'm pretty sure most people could read text off a 720p 80" screen 5m away. As for not making things dark, yes that's true. You can of course tint the glasses or use an extra layer to darken the outside world, or you can really crank the brightness causes the user's iris to contract creating the impression of higher contrast in the dark regions. Best option is to combine the approaches with a camera observing the environment, which can even be done on a per-pixel basis as in the paper I helped write [1] As for power/performance, it's all a matter of desired form factor. If you don't mind a cable to an arm or hip attached android device, you can have everything you need right now. Alternatively there's the Hololens style huge headset. But if you want slimline glasses yes you'll be waiting a few years. A lot a people are bearish on the future of AR and I can appreciate that viewpoint, but the arguments you've brought for it are at best half true and I hope readers don't see this and think any of these problems are unsolvable (or indeed, haven't already been solved) [0] https://tech.moverio.epson.com/en/bt-300/ https://tech.moverio.epson.com/en/bt-300/ [1] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7523376/ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7523376/
- sillysaurus3 9y agoHere's [1] minus the paywall: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.sci-hub.cc/document/7523376/ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.sci-hub.cc/document/7523376/
- guycook 9y agoWhilst I am certainly supportive of open access science in general, and in the case of my own writing am glad to see it reach a wider audience, I'm surprised by the brazenness of linking to a pirated article whilst in discussion with its author. I don't know whether to be offended or impressed
- joshvm 9y agoMEMS gyroscopes are sub-mm volume now. Whether the accuracy is sufficient or not, I don't know enough to comment. I would guess that probably it is. http://www.mcubemems.com/product/mc7010-9-axis-igyro/ http://www.mcubemems.com/product/mc7010-9-axis-igyro/ (that's 3mm square). Plenty of space on a pair of glasses for a 9 dof IMU. 11 milliseconds on a modern CPU is a long time for image processing. You need a lot of grunt to do it, but it would work. It makes sense that the glasses should just be a dumb screen with some odometry, connected to a much more powerful data source.
- ClassyJacket 9y agoRegarding the battery problem, this is solved right now by having a cable run to your pocket. You can carry a 5000mAh battery in your pocket no problem.
- warcode 9y agoI already carry around my processing unit and battery all the time: my phone. Glasses only need to do the display.
- jp555 9y ago> You cannot make things dark Magic Leap has hinted that their hardware will be able to do this. You assume current LCD tech, but there are NEW things being built.