4 ms·

I get the idea, but why would you extend your laptop screen with this? Considering there's no VR or AR type tracking, as soon as you look at your laptop it woul

I get the idea, but why would you extend your laptop screen with this? Considering there's no VR or AR type tracking, as soon as you look at your laptop it would be obstructed by the second screen. Granting you no real benefits. Edit: Apparently there's an accelerometer which can activate a screen when you look up vs looking down. But seems like that'd be clunky.

Theodores 4y ago
This is a product that has been invented before. The original Virtual IO glasses of the late 90's were a consumer product that was riding the Virtuality hype that was in vogue at the time. They failed in the marketplace, however, I remember meeting the rep and what he had to say. I was absolutely smitten by the product and 'knew it was the future' even though that video was somewhat VGA, so not even SD resolution. It was in 'stereo' unlike Virtuality, which relied on novelty to give the impression of 3D. The use case apart from immersive gaming was just so you could watch TV whilst doing tasks such as washing dishes or making dinner. From what I remember there was a means of seeing the world around you, either out the bottom or with transparency in the image. I can't quite remember. There was composite video as an input, which was in a cheaper variant of the product which had no head tracking, it really was just for watching video. This was in the late 90's when the big new thing was DVD, however, there were two competing formats. Some products such as the Virtual IO glasses were waiting in the wings for this market to take off, at a point in time where zero DVDs had been sold. Games did need to be written for it and I think the trick was interlacing, half the VGA went to one eye and half to the other. It would be up to the developer to write the rest. At the time Windows 95 was new and DirectX plus OpenGL as we know it on Windows was in version 0.1.0 with games being DOS. As you can imagine, this 'watch a soap opera whilst doing the washing up' market with an imagined vast mass of Americans ready to by the product never happened. Price was perceived as the problem to adoption, hence the Virtual IO product tried to address that by being competitively priced, with the 'TV watching' cheapo version available too. The product was compelling but the imagined mass market was never there. If you want to do stuff in the kitchen and have the TV on then you just put a TV in the kitchen. You don't think 'oh, I must get that expensive headset to watch TV whilst I am preparing dinner'. Another factor that is overlooked is that people have traditionally been adverse to wanting to be seen wearing a VR headset. There is that matter of losing peripheral vision and security, you are not going to wear anything that blinds you on the subway journey home. Second to that, and not appreciated by some, is that a lot of people put a great deal of effort into their appearance - make up is a thing - and being out and about is about seeing as well as being seen. Times have changed, but even still, Google misjudged this aspect. Imagine if you had a VR/AR headset that had week long battery, infinite resolution, zero latency tracking and only cost $50. Would your sister, mum or dad be wearing them? Or would they just be checking their phone every ten minutes? They probably would not have the use case of boring household chores as microwave ready meals, dishwashing machines and food delivery services have solved that problem for those that need it.

Theodores 4y ago

This is a product that has been invented before. The original Virtual IO glasses of the late 90's were a consumer product that was riding the Virtuality hype that was in vogue at the time. They failed in the marketplace, however, I remember meeting the rep and what he had to say. I was absolutely smitten by the product and 'knew it was the future' even though that video was somewhat VGA, so not even SD resolution. It was in 'stereo' unlike Virtuality, which relied on novelty to give the impression of 3D. The use case apart from immersive gaming was just so you could watch TV whilst doing tasks such as washing dishes or making dinner. From what I remember there was a means of seeing the world around you, either out the bottom or with transparency in the image. I can't quite remember. There was composite video as an input, which was in a cheaper variant of the product which had no head tracking, it really was just for watching video. This was in the late 90's when the big new thing was DVD, however, there were two competing formats. Some products such as the Virtual IO glasses were waiting in the wings for this market to take off, at a point in time where zero DVDs had been sold. Games did need to be written for it and I think the trick was interlacing, half the VGA went to one eye and half to the other. It would be up to the developer to write the rest. At the time Windows 95 was new and DirectX plus OpenGL as we know it on Windows was in version 0.1.0 with games being DOS. As you can imagine, this 'watch a soap opera whilst doing the washing up' market with an imagined vast mass of Americans ready to by the product never happened. Price was perceived as the problem to adoption, hence the Virtual IO product tried to address that by being competitively priced, with the 'TV watching' cheapo version available too. The product was compelling but the imagined mass market was never there. If you want to do stuff in the kitchen and have the TV on then you just put a TV in the kitchen. You don't think 'oh, I must get that expensive headset to watch TV whilst I am preparing dinner'. Another factor that is overlooked is that people have traditionally been adverse to wanting to be seen wearing a VR headset. There is that matter of losing peripheral vision and security, you are not going to wear anything that blinds you on the subway journey home. Second to that, and not appreciated by some, is that a lot of people put a great deal of effort into their appearance - make up is a thing - and being out and about is about seeing as well as being seen. Times have changed, but even still, Google misjudged this aspect. Imagine if you had a VR/AR headset that had week long battery, infinite resolution, zero latency tracking and only cost $50. Would your sister, mum or dad be wearing them? Or would they just be checking their phone every ten minutes? They probably would not have the use case of boring household chores as microwave ready meals, dishwashing machines and food delivery services have solved that problem for those that need it.