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AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform: Call It Mirrorworld
- dwighttk 8y ago" To recreate a map that is as big as the globe—in 3D, no less—you need to photograph all places and things from every possible angle, all the time, which means you need to have a planet full of cameras that are always on." And I'm sure that won't have any security issues
- goldfeld 8y agoSecurity issues are our chaos ally, whereas Political issues are what make such a thought stupid.
- taneq 8y agoWhy will AR require a persistent full-scale model of the globe? Isn't the whole point of AR that it takes the existing environment, generates a local map on the fly, and overlays something useful on it? My 2025-model AR sunglasses don't need to know nor care what shape the Arc de Triomphe is, they just need to know the names of the people in my field of view[1], or where the walls and floor of my house are, or maybe the next 500m of the road I'm driving on. [1] This is my dearest hope for AR, that someday all the people around me will have MMO-style nameplates, because I have many strengths but remembering the names of people I've just met is not one of them.
- fsloth 8y ago"Why will AR require a persistent full-scale model of the globe?" The 'Mirrorworld' described here is not just an AR application. It's an indexable, queryable database of "everything" that is built. Don't think about nameplates above people. Think about service crews coming to inspect the local sewer network, who get an "xray" view of the pipes running under the street.
- jstanley 8y agoThat "xray view" could actually be created from the cameras that were worn by the service crew that installed the pipes in the first place. That way it could be accurate even if the pipe maps aren't, and e.g. it might be able to warn about other nearby pipes that aren't present on the map.
- taneq 8y agoThat's pretty cool and all, but that's not "AR" (although it could be used for it). AR : Mirrorworld :: The Internet : Google Maps
- ramblerman 8y agoYou don't get to choose the definition. Mirrorworld is just one usage of AR. AR is augmented reality and the pipes example is a great example of that.
- neuronic 8y ago> someday all the people around me will have MMO-style nameplates No, thank you, kind user. Just because you are unable to remember the names of relevant people around you, there is no particular reason why anyone sensible should agree to have personal data be transmitted to random people around them at all times. Such name identification on the fly then contributes to a (still fictional for the public) global real time people location service. Great, because 5 people are in line-of-sight of George McGeorgeface he is now confirmed to be at the dildo store in downtown Nairobi although he claimed to be sick for work, thank you face recognition APIs! It's bad enough that we get tracked and screwed for ad data nowadays which just happens to not even stay in the ad space.....
- hmhrex 8y agoYou bring up some good points, but I would be happy with having that info for people in my Contacts list. I would see it like this, each user has an id, and I would be able to tie that id to a name. And it would only be visible if they were in eye-sight.
- sharcerer 8y agoTo circumvent this, I think it would be great if user had to option to make a geofence. Like they could enable their Contact details being detected in a Conference/Meetup? networking event,as the person himself/herself will benefit from this. Then, outside a particular location your ID gets locked down sort of like location based -Smart Lock in smartphones.
- jayd16 8y agoAlmost certainly this is already possible with Facebook's graph and the current state of facial recognition in photos.
- Kiro 8y agoSpeak for yourself. I would permit and embrace it.
- taneq 8y agoWoah, OK, we clearly picture this service working very differently. I'm not asking for everyone to be geotagged in some publicly accessible database. Ew. I just want locally running facial recognition paired with speech-to-text which is smart enough to recognize introductions, so that when five people introduce themselves to me in quick succession after I stumble off a red-eye flight, and then three weeks later one of them comes up to me acting like they know me, I have some chance of knowing who the hell they are.
- SirHound 8y agoI always think the next surfing experience (dialling through radio frequencies, surfing the early web, etc) will be dialling/browsing between "mirrorworlds". I doubt there'll be one. Although the fear is we're already being segmented into alternative realities. Imagine the ramifications we're already experiencing in that kind of context.
- mncharity 8y agoThat might make for interesting project (individual or community). Photoshopping AR vignettes for peoples' various passions. Sort of speculative storyboarding and market exploration for future apps. For a user with a passion for fashion, what might a nifty AR future expert experience look like? Heads-up tooling for where their head is at as they walk down the street. Collaborative tooling for their interactions with friends of similar interests, while walking and retrospectively. What about for software, or for startups? The AR vignettes I've seen have been generic. Refrigerator contents, street navigation, business travel, etc[1]. Broadly accessible, but most of it mundane. Not targeted, not trying to inspire individuals with "O.M.G. Want future now.". Sort of like demos of Unreal VR Editor[2] for game devs, or EXA[3] for bands, or PRIMITIVE[4] for software devs. But synthetic, rather than app demos. [1] HYPER-REALITY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs [2] Unreal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKO9fEjNiio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKO9fEjNiio [3] EXA twinkle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB22jF9cRko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB22jF9cRko , multiplayer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdZsUZGuCeI&t=9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdZsUZGuCeI&t=9 [4] Java https://www.viveport.com/apps/675c92c6-7df2-4ee3-b919-1bfbb6e5e8cc/Primitive/ https://www.viveport.com/apps/675c92c6-7df2-4ee3-b919-1bfbb6...
- yoodenvranx 8y agoThis will bring up very interesting questions about who owns real-life property in AR: In the real world: Burger King is not allowed to enter a McDonalds property and plaster their ads all over the place! But what about AR? Let's assume there is a really popular AR app and it supports placing ads in certain spaces. Would BK allowed to place virtual ads on real-world McDonalds property? Or would McDonalds have grounds for suing because their real-world property extends into AR?
- sologoub 8y agoThis could be a relevant take for US: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ca4af3d4-867a-4537-9c13-0dd0b96c0aea https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ca4af3d4-867a... In your specific example, McDonalds might have both copyright and trademark, or even the publicity claims - design of the restaurant, arches and the recognizable nature of the brand all are very unique. Placing BK logos over them would be valuable because it’s McDonalds.
- yoodenvranx 8y agoWhat about the situation where I don't like my neighbor and I put an ugly virtual sculpture on their property? Nothing insulting or offensive, just something ugly. Should the neighbor have any rights over their virtual AR property?
- vmednis 8y agoI personally don't see this becoming a problem. At least the way I have imagined AR being. The way I hope to see it is that all the different features are apps that you can either enable or disable and then the AR platform (e.g. the OS on your headset) just mixes them all together. So for example there could be an app for placing sculptures anywhere and it becomes a matter of that apps policy. If you don't like an app that lets you place sculptures anywhere just don't install it and use the one that ties in with property register. And so on. This would also reduce the BK Ads in MCDs example to what we have today. It's not illegal to show BK Ads on peoples phones while they are in MCDs.
- eckza 8y agoRay Kurzweil, is that you?
- Agebor 8y agoClose, it's Kevin Kelly
- infiniverse 8y agoRelevant to what we're building: https://www.infiniverse.net/ https://www.infiniverse.net/
- andrewmcwatters 8y agoImmediately checked out when it mentioned blockchain.
- infiniverse 8y agoI'm sorry that some people have such negative connotations towards that word, though I can understand to an extent. We're certainly going to make this as easy as possible to use rather than targeting just blockchain enthusiasts. Perhaps in the future we'll rebrand our website to not focus on the blockchain aspect as much.
- ganzuul 8y agoIf you don't use open standards you'll look like a pyramid scheme.
- infiniverse 8y agoCould you elaborate, what possibly looks like a pyramid scheme?
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago"...Next Big Ad Platform" What could possibly go wrong?
- jazzyjackson 8y agoI would love it if we could regulate advertisements to only exist in AR space.
- CM30 8y agoHow about an AR ad blocker for real life? Removes bilboards, commercials, branding and ads from real life spaces and publications. It'd also be interesting to replace ads with other stuff in general. Imagine being able to replace a print ad with a random article from the publication's website, or a TV commercial with a YouTube video in your subscriptions list.
- darod 8y agoMost of these "twins" have already been created. The majority of all components for cars, buildings, tech, etc have CAD and 3D models before even being manufactured so it's just a matter of the creators open sourcing a public version.
- b_tterc_p 8y agoCities should proactively legislate that ad platforms must lease geographic coordinates for ads that are tied to specific places from them. And businesses should get ready to optimize it for social and financial objectives.
- ajlburke 8y agoI've done some work in "parallel worlds" overlaid on top of the real one by latitude/longitude, using the cool "ARCL" library - and the biggest headache I've found for location-based AR (instead of the type that just scans the room or a table) is that even little variations in GPS positioning can really interfere with the experience. The first time you see virtual objects linked to a real-world place, it's magical - but that magic quickly goes away when everything suddenly shifts 10 (or 50) meters to the east because your device got updated GPS info. I've become much more aware of how much "cheating" happens in driving / map apps to cover up these hiccups - ever take an exit and your map still shows you driving down the highway for a while? That kind of cheating probably won't work in an AR space. This is technology that will no doubt improve, but it's definitely one of those "final 5% is 50% of the work" nuisances where just a small amount of inaccuracy can wreck the illusion.
- fsloth 8y agoYeah, GPS alone is not enough. This product uses an auxiliary GNSS antenna and software to provide centimeter level precision: https://sitevision.trimble.com/ https://sitevision.trimble.com/
- ajlburke 8y agoThat's very cool - thanks for sharing!
- halbritt 8y agoThis doesn't really make sense. GNSS is simply a reference to a receiver's ability to access any navigation constellation, that is, GPS, plus GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo, operated by Russia, China, and the EU respectively. Just about any modern GPS receiver in a dedicated device has this capability. This may not be the case for mobile devices for cost reasons. The Ublox NEO-M8N, for example can concurrently receive signals from 3 GNSS constellations and has a single unit price around $15. The thing is, all those satellites don't necessarily help precision as they tend to cover different geographic regions. There aren't a lot of Beidou sats passing over the US, for example. What does help are augmentation services like WAAS, SBAS, or EGNOS which provide regional GPS correction data originating from known, fixed points in the region. Differential GPS works similarly and can offer greater precision, but requires a different receiver in a whole other part of the RF spectrum. Finally, all this precision comes at a cost, that being time. If you want centimeter level accuracy it can take a fair bit of time to get a good fix. In my experience, a couple minutes with a good modern receiver.
- rafiki6 8y agoHow far away is the hardware? I think AR is truly the next evolution in human-computer interaction, but every time I explore the hardware it still seems like an entirely immature area. We haven't even really reached the "Palm Pilot" stage as I like to call it. In that stage the Hardware and Software are production ready and usable but only power users are truly interested in it. There's HoloLens, there's Google's attempts, there's those glasses by that company called North. All of those are nowhere near mainstream ready. There's heads up displays which are interesting and I think have lots of opportunities. I think realistically we need a proper set of glasses with a solid brain-computer interface in order for AR to take off and become a mainstream. I personally don't want to try interacting with a pair of smart glasses using a hand-held controller or some motion detection sensors.
- ganzuul 8y agoI'd guesstimate that it is tied with 60GHz femotcells and ISPs. Graphics at 4K+ resolution and 120Hz+ refresh rates does not seem viable for many years on mobile platforms, but indoor positioning and high-bandwidth streaming provided by a device that takes the place of your WAN/LAN router could possibly work. Time-sharing high-end GPUs could also be quite economical, and give ISPs yet another revenue stream. All the infrastructure needed for this already exist in a form which offers barely adequate performance. Good performance should be just a generation or two away, and then things should get interesting.
- z2 8y agoThere was an anime series called Dennou Coil from 2007, that explored a lot of these themes, based on a world with a very detailed AR model of reality. Being a TV show, it had lots of anthropomorphism, but it asked questions such as, what if self-driving cars relied only on this modeled mirror world, even for real time information? What happens with power dynamics when when an authoritarian corporation owns the mirror world? How do assets age and become dilapidated if they are virtual?
- trothamel 8y agoI was going to post this, but you beat me too it. One thing I remember was how drab the real world was, because all signage and art had migrated to AR.
- mjevans 8y agoThat's actually a feature.
- auiya 8y agoLike this right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
- Tepix 8y agoWe already have some of these mirror worlds. The AR game Ingress and Pokemon Go are two well-known examples. Which leads me to my next prediciton: There will not be a singular mirrorworld. There will be many. It would undoubtedly be cool if there is a "standard" mirrorworld that people refer to (just like they refer to sited on the one and only internet) unless some big entity creates something compelling early on (think Wikipedia) and has a big first-mover advantage I don't see it happening.
- Bartweiss 8y ago> some big entity creates something compelling early on (think Wikipedia) Good example; if there's going to be a 'shared' mirrorworld it probably can't be an end in itself the way games are. It would have to be at least one of informative (about the real world), social (so your network is all there), or common-ground experience (like watching popular shows and sports playoffs). And since 'informative' is fungible, it might not suffice unless there's a clear leader. Or, I suppose, some major power might roll all the popular offerings into subsections of a top-level experience. It's not that hard to imagine Google or Apple setting up an AR 'appstore' from which you can open games, information, and so on. Google Glass was premature, but the idea made some sense as way to use existing accounts and image analysis abilities.
- fock 8y agoFirst paragraphs and I just had to think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
- nategri 8y agoAnyone interested in a fully imagined setting where a "mirrorworld" is firmly in place should check out Verner Vinge's book Rainbows End.
- m3kw9 8y agoAR will only work when you have a constant on system. People holding up phones is more like an experiment than anything useful because of the UX of needing to hold it up.
- Animats 8y agoHere's what "AR" would look like if it worked. Watch "Hyperreality".[1] Best depiction of AR so far. [1] https://vimeo.com/166807261 https://vimeo.com/166807261