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China’s Nreal raises $15M to shrink augmented headsets to size of sunglasses
- mindgam3 8y agoUnfortunately, they still look too dorky to wear in public. All the tech gadgetry in the world won’t make a successful product if they don’t solve the fashion problem first.
- stcredzero 8y agowon’t make a successful product if they don’t solve the fashion problem first How about Daft Punk inspired Sci-fi helmet? Lots of job site functionality could make use of hard hat plus safety goggles aesthetics. Welder's masks?
- mindgam3 8y agoSuccessful consumer product, which is what they are going for according to the article
- stcredzero 8y agoThere are a lot of people very serious about their job, who put aesthetics and even comfort on a lower priority. Maybe consumer is the wrong segment?
- ColanR 8y agoLove the idea, so long as the implementation is legal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_laws
- TomMarius 8y agoIf it is not then the law is the problem (thankfully I'm from one of the countries where such ban would be against the constitution).
- stcredzero 8y agoIntent is key. I would be for an extension of anti-gang laws based on intent and patterns of behavior.
- stcredzero 8y agoWell, if the purpose of the device is to protect the wearer on a jobsite while providing rapid access to information, that's fine. If the purpose of the device is to enable group criminal activity with the benefit of anonymity, then I'm fine with that being outlawed. Let's look across world history at people who have used masks to conceal their identity while breaking the law -- especially those whose activities impinged upon politics. Overall, it's pretty skeezy. Even the ones who are still held as heroes in their culture's histories strike me as a bit skeezy. One pattern that seems to differentiate masked heroes from masked villains, is that the heroes generally hold to strict codes of justice, conduct, and decorum. The villains are often foul mouthed and readily reveal bitterness and hate and commit arbitrary destruction and violence. Sometimes, groups start out fitting the former description, then devolve into the latter.
- coenhyde 8y agoProbably but are we in a position to judge the fashion worthiness of this product to the Chinese market? I'm sure someone here is, but i'm not.
- nradov 8y agoThey should target industrial and military users first. Those buyers don't care about aesthetics. Imagine how useful AR goggles could be for maintenance technicians. Pull up diagnostic codes, schematics, and instructional videos while you've got your hands full working on a broken jet engine.
- josephpmay 8y agoFor those usecases you don’t need (or want) a glassed form factor. https://www.mirareality.com https://www.mirareality.com
- ValleyOfTheMtns 8y agoThey still look absolutely ridiculous. The way they hover above the nose just looks silly. It feels like these types of glasses suffer from an effect similar to the uncanny valley. They either need to look EXACTLY like a normal pair of sunglasses, or embrace what they are and make them look very different from sunglasses. Looking sort of like sunglasses, but not being quite right, I think has the inverse effect of getting them to "blend in". Aesthetics aside, I think the reduction in size and weight is impressive.
- stcredzero 8y agoThey still look absolutely ridiculous. The way they hover above the nose just looks silly...They either need to look EXACTLY like a normal pair of sunglasses, or embrace what they are and make them look very different from sunglasses. They should've gone for full-on 50's bottle bottom nerd glasses. Maybe take a cue from Brutalism, Frida Kahlo, and EletroBOOM and branched out with it's own pseudo monobrow aesthetic. (Is it just me, or do a lot of Brutalist buildings seem to be trying to convey an abstract sort of monobrow look?)
- andyidsinga 8y agoOh! nice touch with the ElectroBOOM reference - love that channel.
- kibibu 8y agoSnap tried this. It did not go very well
- moccachino 8y agoSnap's glasses were a fundamentally useless product. Augmented reality glasses could be quite useful.
- newsbinator 8y ago> The only irritating part was I started to feel the weight of the specs on my nose bridge a few minutes into my session. Xu assured me that what I tried on was a prototype and that an assortment of nose pads and lenses for different facial features will be available. Although we'll have to see it to believe it.
- b_tterc_p 8y agoAm I reading the first two paragraphs correctly as the founder was a former magic leap engineer? Based on what they have said in the article, it sounds a little too good to be true. $1k price tag, lightweight, and good resolution? Maybe someone more familiar with this line of hardware can chime in on plausibility?
- lwansbrough 8y agoResolution isn’t as much of a problem if you’re okay with 10fps (for example.) “AR” is a pretty loose term. You definitely won’t be getting HoloLens/ARKit level tracking or 3D rendering in these. Tech just isn’t there yet.
- ericd 8y agoYeah, and looks like they made some of the same design decisions as Magic Leap, such as a hip puck for the computing. I wonder if they're going to get hit with a lawsuit.
- dharma1 8y agohaving a tethered computer/SoC is a pretty obvious choice, given you can't shrink it to fit inside the frame. Doubt that's patentable
- icebraining 8y agoAnd in fact, ARQuake did it first (2000), though it required a whole backpack then: https://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/arquake/ https://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/arquake/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNYfkxqiB6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNYfkxqiB6g
- ericd 8y agoYeah, I generally agree, but it looks like it might clip over the waistband the same way. Not major, and not saying they should be, just looks like more than coincidence. I’m guessing there are also some serious non competes in place on those employees.
- ryanSrich 8y agoWow. Those look super shitty. Sorry, but they do. I really don’t understand the push to make AR “goggles” look like glasses. Either make them look 100% like natural eye/sunglasses such that no one can tell, or don’t even bother getting close. Just embrace it and make them legit goggles of their own. No one is going to wear or buy these just like no one is going to wear or buy magic leap’s terrible product. Having said that, I feel like these companies are getting us started. Once they fail (including magic leap) they should open source everything they’ve done so the next wave can get it right.
- nradov 8y agoI doubt they'll open source anything. When they fail, the investors will sell off the IP to one of the big tech companies so they can add to their defensive patent portfolio.
- jandrese 8y agoI don't know. I think if some fashion designer wanted to push that as a look they could probably make it work. The $1000 price point is a total dealbreaker though. Expectations at that price point are that it is going to work perfectly right out of the box and solve some problems, but these are going to be at best a novelty and probably buggy for at least a couple of iterations. That price point is way too high for something that doesn't work right.
- jake_the_third 8y agoSearched for price the moment I opened the article. $1000 is a tough sell. I bet if they somehow manage to lower it down to around 200, they'll take off regardless of how "dorky" they look.
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoNorth's Focals look much better, but I'm not sure that they enter "augmented reality" territory.
- Uhrheber 8y agoI can't see anything else but photos of ugly sunglasses and a lot of marketing BS. No photos or videos of what the display actually shows.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago> believes the problem with most consumer-facing augmented headsets on the market is their bulky size Problem is the nausea, Virtual reality sickness to be accurate. Addressing the bulk alone wouldn't fix the issue of long term VR use. Audi showcased VR entertainment[1] for passengers, reporters who tried out said the moving vehicle didn't produce motion sickness. Though a moving vehicle for VR wouldn't be the scalable solution, I just want to point out that the motion sickness is a definite inhibitor. [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rce5e7iBjiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rce5e7iBjiU
- Shorel 8y agoI do agree this is a real problem. Related to lag and sensor responsiveness. This is way more important than the external look of the device.
- hadsed 8y agoIs this a problem in AR (as opposed to VR)?
- Abishek_Muthian 8y agoI've seen instances of nausea reported with AR on media, but I haven't tried any AR goggles to having faced it unlike VR.
- v_lisivka 8y agoIf AR image is drawn over captured video — yes. If AR image is projected on transparent screen, like in Aryzon AR headset, — no.
- dmos62 8y agoI was under the impression that this is a fixed a problem. Don't have a source on hand, but US military, one of the first adopters, solved VR sickness by putting in a "virtual nose", i.e. a static nose model that simulates what the eye sees in real-life.
- 8y ago
- Shorel 8y agoDoes everyone here really care that much about how the glasses look like? As long as the features are good, the weight is low, the screen door effect is reduced, the refresh rate is high, the lag is kept at minimum, it will be a good product. These are the important questions. This is hacker news, not fashion news.
- Brotkrumen 8y agoEveryone. If it looks bad, it will remain a niche product. With no adoption past the enthusiasts, the glasses will remain expensive, the dev ecosystem bad, the available software for limited and low quality. You should always care whether your favorite product is sellable to a wide audience.
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- Shorel 8y agoI think probably it is not the look of the device, but the whole idea behind it. People will distrust someone who always has a camera recording their faces, this is a privacy problem. No glasses will be good looking enough for that.
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