2 ms·

flat-screen AR on phones and tablets, absolutely. It's just about impossible to design a good experience that takes advantage of the technology without too much

flat-screen AR on phones and tablets, absolutely. It's just about impossible to design a good experience that takes advantage of the technology without too much compromise. Headsets, I think the current devices are just a preview. I'm skeptical that transparent displays are strictly necessary for AR headsets, and I have seen some industry speculation that the HoloLens 2 is probably at the limit of what can be done with waveguide displays. Unfortunately, waveguide displays are just about the best sort of transparent display tech available for this particular use case, so we need to either shift to pass-through-camera displays or invent a whole new display technology. I'm betting more on pass-through. I think the tech is already available, what is at issue is decades of software cruft in modern operating systems making low latency through put too difficult to achieve.

TuringTest 7y ago
> so we need to either shift to pass-through-camera displays or invent a whole new display technology. Did you miss the recent Five Tilt Kikstarter?[1] It is a new display technology, that I'm eager to try next summer if they manage to deliver. It needs a reflective screen somewhere in the room, so it won't work as mobile; but for anything room based (games, teaching and office stuff) it gets a lot of bullent points right, and I think it could replace a lot of use cases for VR as well. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-tabletop-gaming https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-ta...
- moron4hire 7y ago
  Tilt Five. No, I didn't miss it, I even backed it and am very excited for it. But it's the retroreflective mat system is not scalable to "wherever you go in the world".
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    You made me think of portable reflective whiteboards, with foldable stands... :-P
OnlineGladiator 7y ago
This is focused entirely on the technology though. What are the applications that make it useful? I already feel like my phone is giving me sensory overload - I really don't want anything remotely resembling a HUD while I walk around. I'm not convinced it would make for better videogames or regular day-to-day computing, either. I am guessing there are uses for it in industry, although I'm not sure where it would find the best product-market fit.
- lwansbrough 7y ago
  Well first off I'll say if your phone is giving you sensory overload, some sort of AR device is not gonna be something for you. A futuristic AR device that would work seamlessly would truly "disappear" into the environment. No HUD necessarily (at least in terms of what Google Glass was trying to accomplish) but imagine if people, places and things could register actions in the real world, sort of like "Press X to open door" in a video game. Imagine a sort of DNS-type registry for registering ownership of physical space tied to geospatial mapping data. When you walk into such a space, your AR device could unobtrusively indicate that there is something interactive where you are, and who owns it/what it is. Perhaps your city owns public basketball courts. They could register a virtual fence around it and when you're on the court you're presented with the option to start basketball stats tracking and a tutorial with a pro from the city's NBA team. Or something more commercial could be: you walk into Starbucks and your drink is ordered for you automatically and you can see the estimated wait time. These aren't some sort of experience designed for entertainment value, they're truly small improvements which augment your life. Your choice whether or not you think such a thing would be necessary or good for you, but a lot of it already exists with phones. AR used this way would simply make phones obsolete.
- moron4hire 7y ago
  I did an experiment where I tried to use the HoloLens as a "general purpose computer", replacing my desktop for a few days. Obviously, the processing power wasn't up to the task. It was a bit like trying to go back to an 800x600 CRT for work. But the HoloLens is a 3.5 year old AR headset by now. What I did get out of it was a glimpse into what "could" be, for some value of "AR headset". First of all, I wasn't tied to a table. These days I don't have a desktop anymore, but even my laptop is basically unusable without a table, especially for the work I do, where I basically require the use of a mouse. Second, I wasn't limited to my one display. I could put windows anywhere. If you take the virtual desktop concept, and throw it away, scoffing at is as a child's toy, you might get the idea. I kept Twitter hanging out on the front of my refrigerator. I only checked it when I got up to take a drink. I kept my email sitting over to the right of me. It was never directly in my field of view, close enough to be convenient to check, and never hidden behind other windows or minimized away to require hunting for it in an ALT+Tab view. Third, the system remembered the location of all of my apps between sessions. They became more like appliances in my mind than windows on a screen. The physicality of it, and the recall of it, surprisingly made it more enjoyable to use. Fourth, the voice assistant was significantly easier to use, now that it was running from a microphone sitting right next to my face, rather than one sitting right next to my GPU fans. I found I started voice commands for basic tasks like opening and closing different applications. Finally, when I was done, I could just take it off. There is no omnipresent display to wake up and show you a notification icon. There's no need to keep a dedicated space for it. I started viewing my desktop like a garden plow: a big piece of equipment that needed space (which was certainly at a premium for me at that time) and required a lot of manhandling to use well. Application-wise, I think it's hard to really describe what is "good" about AR. Either you talk about existing apps, in which case people say "yeah, but I can do that on my computer now". Or you talk about potential apps, which is too abstract for people. Try going back to the early 80s and explain to an MS-DOS power user that they'll be using exclusively GUI systems in less than 20 years. Because of the way it blends into life, I think AR has the potential to improve the overall computing experience for anyone who already uses computers. The potential is to replace your laptop AND your smartphone, not to be a device in addition to them.

TuringTest 7y ago

> so we need to either shift to pass-through-camera displays or invent a whole new display technology. Did you miss the recent Five Tilt Kikstarter?[1] It is a new display technology, that I'm eager to try next summer if they manage to deliver. It needs a reflective screen somewhere in the room, so it won't work as mobile; but for anything room based (games, teaching and office stuff) it gets a lot of bullent points right, and I think it could replace a lot of use cases for VR as well. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-tabletop-gaming https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-ta...

moron4hire 7y ago
Tilt Five. No, I didn't miss it, I even backed it and am very excited for it. But it's the retroreflective mat system is not scalable to "wherever you go in the world".
- TuringTest 7y ago
  You made me think of portable reflective whiteboards, with foldable stands... :-P

OnlineGladiator 7y ago

This is focused entirely on the technology though. What are the applications that make it useful? I already feel like my phone is giving me sensory overload - I really don't want anything remotely resembling a HUD while I walk around. I'm not convinced it would make for better videogames or regular day-to-day computing, either. I am guessing there are uses for it in industry, although I'm not sure where it would find the best product-market fit.

lwansbrough 7y ago
Well first off I'll say if your phone is giving you sensory overload, some sort of AR device is not gonna be something for you. A futuristic AR device that would work seamlessly would truly "disappear" into the environment. No HUD necessarily (at least in terms of what Google Glass was trying to accomplish) but imagine if people, places and things could register actions in the real world, sort of like "Press X to open door" in a video game. Imagine a sort of DNS-type registry for registering ownership of physical space tied to geospatial mapping data. When you walk into such a space, your AR device could unobtrusively indicate that there is something interactive where you are, and who owns it/what it is. Perhaps your city owns public basketball courts. They could register a virtual fence around it and when you're on the court you're presented with the option to start basketball stats tracking and a tutorial with a pro from the city's NBA team. Or something more commercial could be: you walk into Starbucks and your drink is ordered for you automatically and you can see the estimated wait time. These aren't some sort of experience designed for entertainment value, they're truly small improvements which augment your life. Your choice whether or not you think such a thing would be necessary or good for you, but a lot of it already exists with phones. AR used this way would simply make phones obsolete.
moron4hire 7y ago
I did an experiment where I tried to use the HoloLens as a "general purpose computer", replacing my desktop for a few days. Obviously, the processing power wasn't up to the task. It was a bit like trying to go back to an 800x600 CRT for work. But the HoloLens is a 3.5 year old AR headset by now. What I did get out of it was a glimpse into what "could" be, for some value of "AR headset". First of all, I wasn't tied to a table. These days I don't have a desktop anymore, but even my laptop is basically unusable without a table, especially for the work I do, where I basically require the use of a mouse. Second, I wasn't limited to my one display. I could put windows anywhere. If you take the virtual desktop concept, and throw it away, scoffing at is as a child's toy, you might get the idea. I kept Twitter hanging out on the front of my refrigerator. I only checked it when I got up to take a drink. I kept my email sitting over to the right of me. It was never directly in my field of view, close enough to be convenient to check, and never hidden behind other windows or minimized away to require hunting for it in an ALT+Tab view. Third, the system remembered the location of all of my apps between sessions. They became more like appliances in my mind than windows on a screen. The physicality of it, and the recall of it, surprisingly made it more enjoyable to use. Fourth, the voice assistant was significantly easier to use, now that it was running from a microphone sitting right next to my face, rather than one sitting right next to my GPU fans. I found I started voice commands for basic tasks like opening and closing different applications. Finally, when I was done, I could just take it off. There is no omnipresent display to wake up and show you a notification icon. There's no need to keep a dedicated space for it. I started viewing my desktop like a garden plow: a big piece of equipment that needed space (which was certainly at a premium for me at that time) and required a lot of manhandling to use well. Application-wise, I think it's hard to really describe what is "good" about AR. Either you talk about existing apps, in which case people say "yeah, but I can do that on my computer now". Or you talk about potential apps, which is too abstract for people. Try going back to the early 80s and explain to an MS-DOS power user that they'll be using exclusively GUI systems in less than 20 years. Because of the way it blends into life, I think AR has the potential to improve the overall computing experience for anyone who already uses computers. The potential is to replace your laptop AND your smartphone, not to be a device in addition to them.