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This article overlooks a critical difference between these two markets: AR is a much more complex and difficult software engineering problem than VR. The founda
by jandrewrogers 7y ago
This article overlooks a critical difference between these two markets: AR is a much more complex and difficult software engineering problem than VR. The foundational spatial computing technology and infrastructure required to make non-trivial AR applications work well does not exist, and the level of expertise and effort to build it is very high. The article was written a few years ago but this is broadly recognized as a significant hurdle today by companies making serious investments in AR.
If a startup ultimately wins the AR race it will be because they cornered the market in spatial computing expertise and are extremely well-funded. There is already not enough of this core expertise for the existing big tech companies with AR programs to all build viable teams, which bids up the price of that expertise, never mind enough to go around for a dozen startups.
As a consequence, I expect AR to be something like a winner-take-all market relatively early on.
- gizmo686 7y agoThe difficulties you sight are all at the low level of platform development. The company that can create a viable AR platform will likely not have the expertise to create content, so I expect to see the platform to be open to indie creators early on in its lifetime. In fact, I can imagine a future where this company decides that any consumer facing product is not their cup of tea, and sells/licenses chips/lenses/software/patents/etc to consumer facing companies that put the final product together.
- jandrewrogers 7y agoI think this is broadly correct. The open question is how much of the revenue/profit in that market can such a platform capture. There is enormous revenue potential from such a platform that doesn't involve AR per se.
- vonnik 7y agothere's significant movement in the platforms, fwiw. 6d is one example. https://www.6d.ai/ https://www.6d.ai/
- mwfunk 7y agoAgreed. I'm not 100% sure about the winner-take-all aspect, but to make a serious AR product you essentially have to do all the work required to make a serious VR product, then add a whole lot of inherently fragile complexity on top of that.
- rocqua 7y agoI always figured that AR had much less of a latency problem. Because you still retain the actual world as a visual the mismatch between inertial and visual movements is less bad. This means less nausea, better balance for users, and a much less visceral impact of glitches.
- Retric 7y agoI think it’s the other way, with AR your virtual objects that interact with the environment are going to float around independent of the background unless you have extremely low latency rendering. At a guess people would find this both distracting and quickly get sick. It’s only safe if all your doing is displaying a virtual clock floating around or whatever.
- im3w1l 7y agoGive me a floating HUD please! And I don't just want a clock, I want a calendar and a map please. And that's just the lowest common denominator stuff. I imagine different groups could use other stuff. Maybe blood sugar for diabetes sufferers? Maybe some stuff that integrates with sports/games?
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoI want ad block for billboards and street ads.
- keenmaster 7y agoOr propaganda block for countries with dictators. Usually their face is plastered everywhere to remind everyone of their benevolent master.
- monsieurbanana 7y agoBut... on what? Something a la google glasses?
- meheleventyone 7y ago
- sansnomme 7y agoWhat about Snapchat?