5 ms·

Optical AR is a dead end. Passthrough AR with VR goggles and 8K cameras on the outside will be the way that wins.

by bajook 5y ago

kguttag 5y ago
If you are talking for many "game playing" applications you may be correct. But it be ridiculous to thing that people are going to be going out in public with a VR headset with cameras (known as Passthrough AR). On top of a number of human factor issues, it would dangerously block a person's view of the real world.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  Just crank the FoV slider up to maximum.
valine 5y ago
No one wants to wear a headset if it makes them look stupid. If AR glasses are a dead end then mass adoption of AR outside of gaming/enterprise is likely DOA.
- zhoujianfu 5y ago
  Last time I went skiing I noticed ski goggles kind of look cool, and are the perfect form factor for pass through ar. I think that’ll be the form it finally takes when Apple makes it cool.
  - smilespray 5y ago
    Show up to your next work meeting wearing ski goggles and report back to us.
    - zhoujianfu 5y ago
      AFTER the Apple ads..
  - prawn 5y ago
    I've always thought the winning format would be akin to ski goggles as well. If Apple does it well, I can see it becoming popular.
- hyperhopper 5y ago
  Bluetooth headphones were "stupid looking" and endlessly mocked. Now airpods are in vogue. Social perceptions easily change, especially when there are billions of dollars invested in making them change.
  - bri3d 5y ago
    Hmm, I don't think so. I do think the AirPods metaphor is good but for the exact opposite reason: AirPods were the first "true wireless" stereo earbuds on the market with both a working microphone and reasonably good pairing and activation capability (at least with iPhones). Previous Bluetooth headsets were either mono, for phone calls only, which quickly and probably correctly got associated with obnoxious salespeople yelling about deals in airports, or connected stereo affairs, which were generally strange looking and unwieldy. And the 2 or 3 "true wireless" offerings on the market ahead of Apple were hampered by hobbyist quality and poor Bluetooth behavior. AirPods offered a meaningful and substantially improved utility over their predecessors - not just a glossy style or some kind of marketing driven social change. In this same way, true augmented AR offers genuine advantages over passthrough AR, in terms of comfort, safety, and utility. If the technology can be made to work augmented AR is likely to win over any kind of passthrough AR for reasons of utility, not just fashion.
    - skeletal88 5y ago
      What are you talking about? Good Bluetooth headphones had existed long before apple did something.
      - bri3d 5y ago
        headphones != earbuds
  - valine 5y ago
    Airpods were one of the first truely wireless earbuds from a well known company. They were successful because of their looks, not in spite of them. Before airpods wireless earbuds looked like this: https://www.lg.com/us/bluetooth-headsets-headphones/lg-HBS-730-tone-plus https://www.lg.com/us/bluetooth-headsets-headphones/lg-HBS-7...
- hindsightbias 5y ago
  Apple is great at many things, but exceptional at fashion.
twoodfin 5y ago
Absolutely. When you look at the compromises involved with optical using today’s technology, the rumors of Apple pursuing passthrough for their first set of goggles make perfect sense.
Aeolun 5y ago
I wouldn’t have believed this until I used the Oculus Quest. But now it seems fairly possible.
Miraste 5y ago
This seems like a tech-community-only opinion to me, the same thinking that is currently killing Magic Leap. If you want to build a mass-market AR headset, you should have one priority: make it look like glasses. People like eye contact. People don’t like looking like alien telemetry pods are eating their eyeballs. Once you have that, then you can worry about things like resolution, fov, and color reproduction. The only companies I’ve seen understand this are Snap and Amazon, with the caveat that they forgot to make the glasses do anything useful. I suspect this is why Apple is having such a hard time with their headsets. Above all else, Apple doesn’t release products that are dorky.
- bajook 5y ago
  I don't think there is a market for AR on a consumer's face except like a side display like Google Glass. I think the market for AR is in industrial operations, military, etc. where people won't care what they look like.
  - indigochill 5y ago
    Besides which, the military is historically a leader in tech that sometimes makes its way back to the civilian world. Notably, the internet was originally ARPANET, funded by the DoD, and the TCP/IP protocol was designed with military considerations in mind (e.g. designing a protocol that would be resilient to failures in parts of the network). A company that secures a steady contract delivering AR equipment to the military will then have the runway to polish the packaging until it's palatable for consumers.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    I want product reviews as I look at items on shelves in stores, without holding my phone in front of my face the whole time.
    - Someone 5y ago
      Many people already more or less have that: Amazon.com, at home on their couch. I wonder whether there still will be stores selling things you want to spend time to choose between options by the time that tech exists.
numpad0 5y ago
Why not just put up a head tracking 3DTV at that point? Only caveat is it'll look like a window to VR rather than an overlay to real world, but from psychological standpoint it might favorably communicates that the local and remote is physically separate with a substance inbetween.
Sosh101 5y ago
And what about seeing peoples' expressions? Optical AR is an order of magnitude more likely to be acceptable in a social situation.
- picsao 5y ago
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
> Passthrough AR with VR goggles and 8K cameras on the outside will be the way that wins None of the big companies are interested in what that would be though. They want the equivalent of the next smartphone revolution so it needs to be like a pair of glasses.
johnyzee 5y ago
Why not just augmented glasses? I mean with a transparent display that is just a display, showing the time and notifications in one corner. A larger view if pulled up through a menu. I bet they could make them look very slick, since the hardware requirements would so much less arduous. There was a set of 'augmented' bicycle glasses here on HN some months ago and they honestly looked pretty compelling.

Optical AR is a dead end. Passthrough AR with VR goggles and 8K cameras on the outside will be the way that wins.

by bajook 5y ago

Optical AR is a dead end. Passthrough AR with VR goggles and 8K cameras on the outside will be the way that wins.

If you are talking for many "game playing" applications you may be correct. But it be ridiculous to thing that people are going to be going out in public with a VR headset with cameras (known as Passthrough AR). On top of a number of human factor issues, it would dangerously block a person's view of the real world.

Paradigma11 5y ago
Just crank the FoV slider up to maximum.

valine 5y ago

No one wants to wear a headset if it makes them look stupid. If AR glasses are a dead end then mass adoption of AR outside of gaming/enterprise is likely DOA.

zhoujianfu 5y ago
Last time I went skiing I noticed ski goggles kind of look cool, and are the perfect form factor for pass through ar. I think that’ll be the form it finally takes when Apple makes it cool.
- smilespray 5y ago
  Show up to your next work meeting wearing ski goggles and report back to us.
  - zhoujianfu 5y ago
    AFTER the Apple ads..
- prawn 5y ago
  I've always thought the winning format would be akin to ski goggles as well. If Apple does it well, I can see it becoming popular.
hyperhopper 5y ago
Bluetooth headphones were "stupid looking" and endlessly mocked. Now airpods are in vogue. Social perceptions easily change, especially when there are billions of dollars invested in making them change.
- bri3d 5y ago
  Hmm, I don't think so. I do think the AirPods metaphor is good but for the exact opposite reason: AirPods were the first "true wireless" stereo earbuds on the market with both a working microphone and reasonably good pairing and activation capability (at least with iPhones). Previous Bluetooth headsets were either mono, for phone calls only, which quickly and probably correctly got associated with obnoxious salespeople yelling about deals in airports, or connected stereo affairs, which were generally strange looking and unwieldy. And the 2 or 3 "true wireless" offerings on the market ahead of Apple were hampered by hobbyist quality and poor Bluetooth behavior. AirPods offered a meaningful and substantially improved utility over their predecessors - not just a glossy style or some kind of marketing driven social change. In this same way, true augmented AR offers genuine advantages over passthrough AR, in terms of comfort, safety, and utility. If the technology can be made to work augmented AR is likely to win over any kind of passthrough AR for reasons of utility, not just fashion.
  - skeletal88 5y ago
    What are you talking about? Good Bluetooth headphones had existed long before apple did something.
    - bri3d 5y ago
      headphones != earbuds
- valine 5y ago
  Airpods were one of the first truely wireless earbuds from a well known company. They were successful because of their looks, not in spite of them. Before airpods wireless earbuds looked like this: https://www.lg.com/us/bluetooth-headsets-headphones/lg-HBS-730-tone-plus https://www.lg.com/us/bluetooth-headsets-headphones/lg-HBS-7...
hindsightbias 5y ago
Apple is great at many things, but exceptional at fashion.

twoodfin 5y ago

Absolutely. When you look at the compromises involved with optical using today’s technology, the rumors of Apple pursuing passthrough for their first set of goggles make perfect sense.

Aeolun 5y ago

I wouldn’t have believed this until I used the Oculus Quest. But now it seems fairly possible.

Miraste 5y ago

This seems like a tech-community-only opinion to me, the same thinking that is currently killing Magic Leap. If you want to build a mass-market AR headset, you should have one priority: make it look like glasses. People like eye contact. People don’t like looking like alien telemetry pods are eating their eyeballs. Once you have that, then you can worry about things like resolution, fov, and color reproduction. The only companies I’ve seen understand this are Snap and Amazon, with the caveat that they forgot to make the glasses do anything useful. I suspect this is why Apple is having such a hard time with their headsets. Above all else, Apple doesn’t release products that are dorky.

bajook 5y ago
I don't think there is a market for AR on a consumer's face except like a side display like Google Glass. I think the market for AR is in industrial operations, military, etc. where people won't care what they look like.
- indigochill 5y ago
  Besides which, the military is historically a leader in tech that sometimes makes its way back to the civilian world. Notably, the internet was originally ARPANET, funded by the DoD, and the TCP/IP protocol was designed with military considerations in mind (e.g. designing a protocol that would be resilient to failures in parts of the network). A company that secures a steady contract delivering AR equipment to the military will then have the runway to polish the packaging until it's palatable for consumers.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  I want product reviews as I look at items on shelves in stores, without holding my phone in front of my face the whole time.
  - Someone 5y ago
    Many people already more or less have that: Amazon.com, at home on their couch. I wonder whether there still will be stores selling things you want to spend time to choose between options by the time that tech exists.

numpad0 5y ago

Why not just put up a head tracking 3DTV at that point? Only caveat is it'll look like a window to VR rather than an overlay to real world, but from psychological standpoint it might favorably communicates that the local and remote is physically separate with a substance inbetween.

Sosh101 5y ago

And what about seeing peoples' expressions? Optical AR is an order of magnitude more likely to be acceptable in a social situation.

picsao 5y ago

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

> Passthrough AR with VR goggles and 8K cameras on the outside will be the way that wins None of the big companies are interested in what that would be though. They want the equivalent of the next smartphone revolution so it needs to be like a pair of glasses.

johnyzee 5y ago

Why not just augmented glasses? I mean with a transparent display that is just a display, showing the time and notifications in one corner. A larger view if pulled up through a menu. I bet they could make them look very slick, since the hardware requirements would so much less arduous. There was a set of 'augmented' bicycle glasses here on HN some months ago and they honestly looked pretty compelling.