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Projectors can't block out the background entirely either, and they're in very wide use. We get around that by projecting onto flat, solid-color areas. As long

Projectors can't block out the background entirely either, and they're in very wide use. We get around that by projecting onto flat, solid-color areas. As long as you understand that to use your "monitor", you need to be staring at a semi-smooth solid color area, it should work. If I moved my monitor out of the way, I'd be staring at a white wall. That doesn't need to be completely blacked out before displaying something else unless I was working on photo/video editing or design work where colors actually mattered.

ch4s3 9y ago
Well sure, you could stare at a blank wall with a bulky headset on, but why not just have a monitor? Also the parent comment didn't seem to be talking about staring at a blank wall. I just don't see how this could be better than an nice wide monitor.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Well sure, you could stare at a tiny monitor, but why not just have a headset that turns all of your available wall space into one massive screen? Let's take one use case I've seen quite often: someone has three cubicle walls around them, and only uses one 21" wide section of it. Maybe two 21" wide sections, or one 27" wide section if they're lucky. The person has a chair that swivels 360 degrees. Nothing says "a nice wide monitor" more than a display area that's 20 feet wide by three feet tall.
  - ch4s3 9y ago
    Think of ergonomics though. Can you comfortably read something 5 or 6 feet away that's in 16pt font? Can you find text on a surface that large easily? I'd be willing to guess people can't do that. Otherwise projectors would be more common displays.
    - freehunter 9y ago
      You make a great point, no software in the history of ever has had any ability to change the size of the font or to scale the display size. I completely forgot that humans need to hold their heads perfectly still at a perfectly measured distance from their screen in order to function.
      - ch4s3 9y ago
        If you need giant font and to move around a lot, then what's the point? Do you really want to more a round a ton while trying to type? I still think this is worse than a monitor in almost every way.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    It depends on the distance from the user
  - rtkwe 9y ago
    To provide a good high resolution in that area though is going to require much better screens in our VR/AR headsets than we currently have with a corresponding bump in rendering power. With VR the best resolution you can conceivably have is to fill the whole FOV with a monitor which gives you the resolution of the internal screens. This ignores problems like screen door and lens distortion that is going to reduce the usable area and worst of all who's monitor takes up the ~100 degrees of FOV a current headset gives, there's loads of stuff around so what you're used to seeing will require probably 4-8k+ per eye.
nradov 9y ago
Most office workers don't have a large, flat, solid, dark colored wall to look at. The reality of most office environments is that we're looking at co-workers, furniture, plants, windows, artwork, small cubicle walls, etc. If you have to rearrange offices to make AR usable then what's the point? Just give everyone a physical monitor. They're cheap. I doubt that white walls will work well for AR backgrounds because it's additive light. There won't be enough contrast to make reading comfortable.
- freehunter 9y ago
  I'll admit that it wouldn't work for offices with the open floorplan nonsense where across the table is another human face staring back at you, but in my experience as a consultant visiting dozens of different IT offices around the US every year, most office workers I meet are in cubicles where it's trivial to hang a black piece of paper up with some thumbtacks. Might not work for everyone, but it'd work for some people, which is quite often the case with basically every product that exists anywhere.
  - ch4s3 9y ago
    Maybe, just maybe it would work for people with ample wall space, in an environment with stable lighting, and good viewing distances. But how is it better than a monitor? How do you show your screen to another person? Do the economics makes sense at all? could the resolution and refresh rate be high enough? Again, what does it give you that a really large monitor doesn't do better for less money?
    - freehunter 9y ago
      Man HN always has a hard-on for "I can come up with one use case where it doesn't work, so therefore it will never work and everyone who wants it is stupid". It's ridiculous. Stop it. You don't want it. Fine. Some people do. That's also fine. Why can people on this site never understand that? And how often do people here say "no one will ever want product X" and then the very next headline is "Product X is top selling gadget of the year"? Sometimes I want to lean back in my chair and look upward but still continue working. I can't do that with a monitor. I could with a head-mounted display. How the fuck does that hurt you in any way?

ch4s3 9y ago

Well sure, you could stare at a blank wall with a bulky headset on, but why not just have a monitor? Also the parent comment didn't seem to be talking about staring at a blank wall. I just don't see how this could be better than an nice wide monitor.

freehunter 9y ago
Well sure, you could stare at a tiny monitor, but why not just have a headset that turns all of your available wall space into one massive screen? Let's take one use case I've seen quite often: someone has three cubicle walls around them, and only uses one 21" wide section of it. Maybe two 21" wide sections, or one 27" wide section if they're lucky. The person has a chair that swivels 360 degrees. Nothing says "a nice wide monitor" more than a display area that's 20 feet wide by three feet tall.
- ch4s3 9y ago
  Think of ergonomics though. Can you comfortably read something 5 or 6 feet away that's in 16pt font? Can you find text on a surface that large easily? I'd be willing to guess people can't do that. Otherwise projectors would be more common displays.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    You make a great point, no software in the history of ever has had any ability to change the size of the font or to scale the display size. I completely forgot that humans need to hold their heads perfectly still at a perfectly measured distance from their screen in order to function.
    - ch4s3 9y ago
      If you need giant font and to move around a lot, then what's the point? Do you really want to more a round a ton while trying to type? I still think this is worse than a monitor in almost every way.
- grogenaut 9y ago
  It depends on the distance from the user
- rtkwe 9y ago
  To provide a good high resolution in that area though is going to require much better screens in our VR/AR headsets than we currently have with a corresponding bump in rendering power. With VR the best resolution you can conceivably have is to fill the whole FOV with a monitor which gives you the resolution of the internal screens. This ignores problems like screen door and lens distortion that is going to reduce the usable area and worst of all who's monitor takes up the ~100 degrees of FOV a current headset gives, there's loads of stuff around so what you're used to seeing will require probably 4-8k+ per eye.

nradov 9y ago

Most office workers don't have a large, flat, solid, dark colored wall to look at. The reality of most office environments is that we're looking at co-workers, furniture, plants, windows, artwork, small cubicle walls, etc. If you have to rearrange offices to make AR usable then what's the point? Just give everyone a physical monitor. They're cheap. I doubt that white walls will work well for AR backgrounds because it's additive light. There won't be enough contrast to make reading comfortable.

freehunter 9y ago
I'll admit that it wouldn't work for offices with the open floorplan nonsense where across the table is another human face staring back at you, but in my experience as a consultant visiting dozens of different IT offices around the US every year, most office workers I meet are in cubicles where it's trivial to hang a black piece of paper up with some thumbtacks. Might not work for everyone, but it'd work for some people, which is quite often the case with basically every product that exists anywhere.
- ch4s3 9y ago
  Maybe, just maybe it would work for people with ample wall space, in an environment with stable lighting, and good viewing distances. But how is it better than a monitor? How do you show your screen to another person? Do the economics makes sense at all? could the resolution and refresh rate be high enough? Again, what does it give you that a really large monitor doesn't do better for less money?
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Man HN always has a hard-on for "I can come up with one use case where it doesn't work, so therefore it will never work and everyone who wants it is stupid". It's ridiculous. Stop it. You don't want it. Fine. Some people do. That's also fine. Why can people on this site never understand that? And how often do people here say "no one will ever want product X" and then the very next headline is "Product X is top selling gadget of the year"? Sometimes I want to lean back in my chair and look upward but still continue working. I can't do that with a monitor. I could with a head-mounted display. How the fuck does that hurt you in any way?