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Certainly, it's early stages, which is why we (Mozilla Research / Emerging Technologies) are investing in it. We're seeing a lot of industrial use of AR in man

Certainly, it's early stages, which is why we (Mozilla Research / Emerging Technologies) are investing in it. We're seeing a lot of industrial use of AR in manufacturing and industrial settings, though consumer use is still less common. If you have't come across it, this HBR article is one of the best public materials: https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-reality https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-realit... VR is certainly still emerging as a platform and trying to get out of its hardcore gaming and training/corporate silos. We really believe from early user data and some more advanced markets (e.g., China) that standalone VR headsets and great cross-platform social experiences will help it reach more users. All that said: I don't personally know what the "instagram of VR" will be, though I certainly wish I did :-)

wpietri 9y ago
I get why people are excited, and maybe these technologies really will go somewhere this time. But the first commercial AR systems are 25 years old [1], and VR had a wave of popularity in the 90s as well . [2] The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate. But that's the very thing we should be questioning. I note that pretty much anything 3D has a long history of being heralded as the "early stages" of a revolution that never came. The most obvious example here is 3D video. We're at the tail end of a boom in 3D movies, a technology that now only gets applied to certain high-priced, effects-heavy blockbusters, and could well vanish. There was an even shorter 3D TV boom. [3] And of course there was the 50s boom in anaglyph (aka colored glasses) 3D. [4] But previous to that there was the ViewMaster, which was imagined to have all sorts of potential. In WW II, the US military bought 100,000 viewers because they thought the magic of 3D would be better for training soldiers. [5] And this history goes back to at least the Brewster Stereoscope, which sold 250,000 units in the 1850s, and was also expected to be revolutionary. [6] Given the many waves of hype in this era, I think we should be careful of thinking that we are on the path to some sort of destiny. Smart people have been fooled before. It's perfectly possible that this will be just another hype cycle whose main result is a bunch of dusty old hardware in the junk shops of 2050. [1] http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php [2] https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ [3] https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-falls-down-dead/ https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(1952%E2%80%931954) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(... [5] http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-u-s-military-buy-millions-of-viewmaster-reels-during-world-war-ii/ http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereoscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereosco...
- larsberg 9y ago
  Yes, we're definitely familiar! We have people on the team who have been involved in the area since the first commercial AR systems, and a substantial portion of the team (including myself) lived through the previous era of VRML and VR hype. Eyes are definitely wide open!
- staticassertion 9y ago
  Comparing VR today, in a world where portable devices dominate, to VR even a decade ago, in a world where cell phones were only just starting to be commonplace, seems really useless. The world is an extremely different place. This is, in my opinion, still very early days - by which I mean that we are still in an exploratory phase. We've never been closer to having the technology necessary for it to take off - resolution was always one huge blocker, portability, weight, 'culture' in terms of computing being something everyone has access to, GPU power, battery, etc.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    I'm not really comparing VR. I'm comparing the hype of VR. Because 20 years ago there were plenty of smart people just as confident that it was on the edge of becoming a giant thing. As far as taking off, we might be close, and we might be far. It's tautological to argue that VR is coming soon because we're close to the level of technology that means VR is coming soon. And it may never take off. Maybe we'll get to a particular level of technology where everybody is wowed by the tech but in day-to-day use nobody actually cares. That has happened over and over again with 3D technologies. We are definitely in an exploratory phase, but a great number of explorations don't end up going anywhere interesting.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate." I'd suggest domination is not a prerequisite for success. Let's imagine a scenario where only 5% of the world population uses VR or AR on a regular basis. That's still a market of millions of people, but it's not at the level of world domination. Not every new technology has to replace the one before, it's far more common for old and new technologies to co-exist.
rocky1138 9y ago
It may not be Instagram-level successful, but BigScreen really impressed me. Sitting on a virtual balcony, overlooking a huge city while having multiple desktops scaled to different sizes showed me the direction that productive desktops will be heading in the next 10-15 years. I can see myself developing software in VR using virtual monitors rather than in my office with real monitors in the mid-term future. The #1 problem with this vision is the resolution of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. I haven't tried the HTC Vive Pro yet, but I'd say it's got to be about twice the resolution of the HTC Vive before I'll be able to actually use BigScreen the way it's meant to be used. Once that happens, all bets are off.
- bitL 9y ago
  You'd need to reduce the weight of VR/AR glasses to that of regular glasses, i.e. <100g. Clunky heavy headsets stand no chance for professional use, fatigues sets in after 1 hour and gets worse every day of wearing it.
  - rocky1138 9y ago
    I think that's subjective. The Vive has been pretty good for me over the long term usage.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    You can already get close to this with near eye light field displays[1], but the resolution suffers massively. As a bonus though, it can correct for a glasses prescription in software. 1: http://research.nvidia.com/publication/near-eye-light-field-displays-0 http://research.nvidia.com/publication/near-eye-light-field-...
  - ghthor 9y ago
    The vive fatigue is due to the non solid headmount. A PSVR style headmount like the Revive makes it infinitely less fatiguing as it no longer is supported by your face, instead it's held up by your spine and the deep muscles of the neck and upper back.

wpietri 9y ago

I get why people are excited, and maybe these technologies really will go somewhere this time. But the first commercial AR systems are 25 years old [1], and VR had a wave of popularity in the 90s as well . [2] The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate. But that's the very thing we should be questioning. I note that pretty much anything 3D has a long history of being heralded as the "early stages" of a revolution that never came. The most obvious example here is 3D video. We're at the tail end of a boom in 3D movies, a technology that now only gets applied to certain high-priced, effects-heavy blockbusters, and could well vanish. There was an even shorter 3D TV boom. [3] And of course there was the 50s boom in anaglyph (aka colored glasses) 3D. [4] But previous to that there was the ViewMaster, which was imagined to have all sorts of potential. In WW II, the US military bought 100,000 viewers because they thought the magic of 3D would be better for training soldiers. [5] And this history goes back to at least the Brewster Stereoscope, which sold 250,000 units in the 1850s, and was also expected to be revolutionary. [6] Given the many waves of hype in this era, I think we should be careful of thinking that we are on the path to some sort of destiny. Smart people have been fooled before. It's perfectly possible that this will be just another hype cycle whose main result is a bunch of dusty old hardware in the junk shops of 2050. [1] http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php [2] https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ [3] https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-falls-down-dead/ https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(1952%E2%80%931954) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(... [5] http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-u-s-military-buy-millions-of-viewmaster-reels-during-world-war-ii/ http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereoscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereosco...

larsberg 9y ago
Yes, we're definitely familiar! We have people on the team who have been involved in the area since the first commercial AR systems, and a substantial portion of the team (including myself) lived through the previous era of VRML and VR hype. Eyes are definitely wide open!
staticassertion 9y ago
Comparing VR today, in a world where portable devices dominate, to VR even a decade ago, in a world where cell phones were only just starting to be commonplace, seems really useless. The world is an extremely different place. This is, in my opinion, still very early days - by which I mean that we are still in an exploratory phase. We've never been closer to having the technology necessary for it to take off - resolution was always one huge blocker, portability, weight, 'culture' in terms of computing being something everyone has access to, GPU power, battery, etc.
- wpietri 9y ago
  I'm not really comparing VR. I'm comparing the hype of VR. Because 20 years ago there were plenty of smart people just as confident that it was on the edge of becoming a giant thing. As far as taking off, we might be close, and we might be far. It's tautological to argue that VR is coming soon because we're close to the level of technology that means VR is coming soon. And it may never take off. Maybe we'll get to a particular level of technology where everybody is wowed by the tech but in day-to-day use nobody actually cares. That has happened over and over again with 3D technologies. We are definitely in an exploratory phase, but a great number of explorations don't end up going anywhere interesting.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate." I'd suggest domination is not a prerequisite for success. Let's imagine a scenario where only 5% of the world population uses VR or AR on a regular basis. That's still a market of millions of people, but it's not at the level of world domination. Not every new technology has to replace the one before, it's far more common for old and new technologies to co-exist.

rocky1138 9y ago

It may not be Instagram-level successful, but BigScreen really impressed me. Sitting on a virtual balcony, overlooking a huge city while having multiple desktops scaled to different sizes showed me the direction that productive desktops will be heading in the next 10-15 years. I can see myself developing software in VR using virtual monitors rather than in my office with real monitors in the mid-term future. The #1 problem with this vision is the resolution of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. I haven't tried the HTC Vive Pro yet, but I'd say it's got to be about twice the resolution of the HTC Vive before I'll be able to actually use BigScreen the way it's meant to be used. Once that happens, all bets are off.

bitL 9y ago
You'd need to reduce the weight of VR/AR glasses to that of regular glasses, i.e. <100g. Clunky heavy headsets stand no chance for professional use, fatigues sets in after 1 hour and gets worse every day of wearing it.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  I think that's subjective. The Vive has been pretty good for me over the long term usage.
- kbenson 9y ago
  You can already get close to this with near eye light field displays[1], but the resolution suffers massively. As a bonus though, it can correct for a glasses prescription in software. 1: http://research.nvidia.com/publication/near-eye-light-field-displays-0 http://research.nvidia.com/publication/near-eye-light-field-...
- ghthor 9y ago
  The vive fatigue is due to the non solid headmount. A PSVR style headmount like the Revive makes it infinitely less fatiguing as it no longer is supported by your face, instead it's held up by your spine and the deep muscles of the neck and upper back.