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VR is fail-deadly, AR is fail-safe by design and there's no way of getting around that. When VR fails, it's a black screen covering your head, whereas AR is the

VR is fail-deadly, AR is fail-safe by design and there's no way of getting around that. When VR fails, it's a black screen covering your head, whereas AR is the world around you. There are many circumstances where AR is far better than VR, even with perfect VR

pfranz 6y ago
AR is also much, much harder. Refresh rate doesn't just have to fool your brain, it needs to "stick" to reality. Plus, you're adding environment tracking and integration. If you're using a glasses model, the only techniques I've heard of darken the environment and the CG element lightens things--this makes integration difficult. I imagine you could use some tricks if you did AR with cameras pointing out and displayed them on a screen (this seems to be what the parent is implying), but you go back to "failure" being a black screen. In practice, I haven't seen this be a big deal. The display is black when it is off (like your phone assuming it doesn't put the screen to sleep). If any rendering misses a frame they distort the previous frame in the buffer to match any head movements (in AR likely reintegrate with new footage).
intrasight 6y ago
So you take them off when they fail. And file a bug report.
- t-writescode 6y ago
  I’m imagining a world where they’re so ubiquitous that they’re used when walking or driving, etc, because they provide a HUD. This is far down the line.
  - intrasight 6y ago
    Perhaps not that far. But in that case there will be more regulated testing involved, and the subsystem that feeds the camera to the display would probably be a hardened subsystem running on a separate processor.
    - t-writescode 6y ago
      But at the end of the day, the battery can still die. If your car battery dies, the car doesn't seize up and the brakes don't stop working. The power steering goes away and the power braking, so they're harder to press, but you can still get the job done. Having a curtain come over your eyes is an unacceptable solution.
      - intrasight 6y ago
        Again, you can simply take them off. Perhaps scarier to contemplate is a future humanity that just couldn't cope with real, unfiltered pixels.
        t-writescode 6y ago
        You’re driving 60 miles per hour. In traffic. You suddenly can’t see. How long can you be blind before a crash happens? You’re in an in-danger state. That’s why I said “fail deadly”
        intrasight 6y ago
        Interesting point. But is in any more "in danger" than sneezing - where I loose vision for a couple seconds? It shouldn't take more than a couple seconds to flip up my googles (they should be designed with "flip up" capability anyway). Another point is that we have have self-driving cars before we have such high-quality VR goggles.
        intrasight 6y ago
        Also relevant is the issues they've had getting this right with fighter jet helmets. https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/this-is-the-f-35s-third-generation-super-helmet-1762688547 https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/this-is-the-f-35s-third-ge...

pfranz 6y ago

AR is also much, much harder. Refresh rate doesn't just have to fool your brain, it needs to "stick" to reality. Plus, you're adding environment tracking and integration. If you're using a glasses model, the only techniques I've heard of darken the environment and the CG element lightens things--this makes integration difficult. I imagine you could use some tricks if you did AR with cameras pointing out and displayed them on a screen (this seems to be what the parent is implying), but you go back to "failure" being a black screen. In practice, I haven't seen this be a big deal. The display is black when it is off (like your phone assuming it doesn't put the screen to sleep). If any rendering misses a frame they distort the previous frame in the buffer to match any head movements (in AR likely reintegrate with new footage).

intrasight 6y ago

So you take them off when they fail. And file a bug report.

t-writescode 6y ago
I’m imagining a world where they’re so ubiquitous that they’re used when walking or driving, etc, because they provide a HUD. This is far down the line.
- intrasight 6y ago
  Perhaps not that far. But in that case there will be more regulated testing involved, and the subsystem that feeds the camera to the display would probably be a hardened subsystem running on a separate processor.
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    But at the end of the day, the battery can still die. If your car battery dies, the car doesn't seize up and the brakes don't stop working. The power steering goes away and the power braking, so they're harder to press, but you can still get the job done. Having a curtain come over your eyes is an unacceptable solution.
    - intrasight 6y ago
      Again, you can simply take them off. Perhaps scarier to contemplate is a future humanity that just couldn't cope with real, unfiltered pixels.
      - t-writescode 6y ago
        You’re driving 60 miles per hour. In traffic. You suddenly can’t see. How long can you be blind before a crash happens? You’re in an in-danger state. That’s why I said “fail deadly”
        intrasight 6y ago
        Interesting point. But is in any more "in danger" than sneezing - where I loose vision for a couple seconds? It shouldn't take more than a couple seconds to flip up my googles (they should be designed with "flip up" capability anyway). Another point is that we have have self-driving cars before we have such high-quality VR goggles.
        intrasight 6y ago
        Also relevant is the issues they've had getting this right with fighter jet helmets. https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/this-is-the-f-35s-third-generation-super-helmet-1762688547 https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/this-is-the-f-35s-third-ge...