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HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

190 points by pdnell 4y ago

gernb 4y ago
I saw a bunch of these types of things at a Japanese gadget show in 2018. One interesting idea that one had colored rings to wear. The colors made it easier to do finger motion tracking.
TheRealNGenius 4y ago
[dead]
icelancer 4y ago
Really interesting setup. Can see quite a few industry-specific applications for this in my area where we'd consider Google Glass but is simply too closed down / too expensive at the moment. Hope it does well, but I can't really look into it until they open the SDK. The "curated partners" thing doesn't inspire much confidence.
r00fus 4y ago
Two thoughts 1. The dork factor is still in play here. I don't see this being popular by any means, so there needs to be a killer app. 2. I need to see a nice AR game like Pokemon GO integrated with this. I imagine that's the first/best killer app.
- madrox 4y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but I think we all forget how much we looked like dorks out playing pokemon go. The difference was we were dorks in large groups. If you and a friend are doing this together, you're no longer a dork. You're going your own way. This is where I think Glass got it wrong. They made it feel exclusive when they should've been giving them away.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    Looking at your phone is a thing that everyone does, including the coolest people you know. Just looking at your phone is socially acceptable. Waving a stick around and shouting fireball while wearing a goofy headset is, at present, still unacceptable.
    - jesuscript 4y ago
      This is not the form factor that will change the paradigm. The smartphone was. I agree with you that if you had your face slammed against a Gameboy as an adult in the 90s, people would have judged you. That changed real fast, but it had to be the right product/form. Whoever gets the AR glasses that look like glasses out first wins the game.
    - libraryatnight 4y ago
      Pokemon Go players don't look like normal people looking at their phones. They look weird, all grouped up ignoring each other.I happened upon some sort of event that attracted like 30 of them and it was unsettling - some people had 2 phones and it was silent except the sound of tapping. After watching the HoloKit press, though, I should be thankful for silent and grouped up as opposed to running around in a crowded area being an annoying jackass.
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
      When I worked in San Jose every workday morning I waited at the bus stop with other employees (generally no one I knew however) waiting for the Corporate Bus to arrive. Invariably everyone was engaged with their phones except me. I guess I'm old — I haven't found anything interesting on my phone to look at when I just want to pass the time. I guess I mention this because I suspect that without phones, we might have chatted with one another, got to know one another while we waited for the bus to arrive. Oh well.
      - r00fus 4y ago
        > without phones, we might have chatted with one another, got to know one another while we waited If I'm an employee on a company bus, I'm just as likely to be a (mostly) silent meeting attendee on a status meeting as listening to an audiobook or podcast. Sometimes I've done this and just communicated via meeting chat to give feedback/add to meeting discussion. Without phones, I'd probably be WFH so I could attend the meeting.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    An AR set that comes in pairs could be neat. Plus they could come ready out-of-the-box to interact with each other.
- eric-hu 4y ago
  I can see the killer app being something practical, like being able to look at a recipe and watch a video for food prep while I’m doing food prep. Or being able to look at an engine bay and diagnose am issue and see parts identified as I look and point at them.
  - accrual 4y ago
    I was thinking about that too. Imagine having image recognition within the headset or glasses which can draw boxes around items and match them against a global database. One could be walking around and see something interesting, then press a button or say a phrase to query it for information right in your glasses. A lot of infrastructure and data would be needed before it reaches a critical mass and mass adoption follows. The more people using it, the more data there is in the system, the more people want to use it. Another really great feature would be captions for conversations going on around you - a big help for the hearing impaired, and maybe even helpful to ordinary people to keep better track of the conversation flow.
    - eric-hu 4y ago
      The captions idea sounds really useful. I've used live captions during Google Meet calls and having a ~1 second visible history of live conversation is indeed really helpful for conversation flow. Having that in real life conversations would really be something.
- irjustin 4y ago
  If Pokemon GO had this during its hay-day the dork factor would have been socially acceptable. The number of people from young kids to grandmas running around in groups was _insanely_ cool to see. I'm sad there simply wasn't enough content to keep it up the drive. I wanted to do missions/dungeon crawls/talk to NPCs etc. This would have made the go experience 100x more fun... can you imagine a Charizard standing on top of my local mall?! omg. All of us using our captures to take over an objective. We're nearly there.
- jjfoooo4 4y ago
  Is Pokemon GO still popular? My impression is that it was a fad that came and went.
- gernb 4y ago
  In fall 1999 the wife of one of my co-workers call me and 4 other co-workers all dorks because we were using cell phones. Now I'm sure she's more addicted to her's than her husband.
madrox 4y ago
This is doing all the right things and I think I'll get one, though I think their product videos are doing a disservice showing people playing in crowded areas. Show people playing in parks surrounded by people bored on picnic blankets. If it's in a crowded area, show assisted navigation. We'll know they're onto something if people are messing with these in Dolores Park when the weather turns nice in April.
jesuscript 4y ago
Form factor for AR is literally like nuclear fusion at the moment. I don’t know when they are going to get it looking like normal fucking glasses, but until then, no one is going outside with this shit. They have to pivot this soon enough to a cheap at-home AR thingy. VR headsets are getting smaller at least: https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex I would suspect Apple will never release something that isn’t as small as that.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  VR is, IMHO, a fundamentally flawed concept. To immerse yourself, you need to block out your peripheral vision and everything else. The average, casual user isn't going to do that on a regular basis. It's not something you can do with kids around if you need to keep an eye on them, unlike a book or a TV show or even a game on your phone or laptop. Fundamentally, immersion is a selling point to a very specific audience, and a major drawback to everyone else.
  - jesuscript 4y ago
    The average user wont do it because there is still physical barriers. The headsets are too heavy still, and outside of the Quest2, they are usually tethered. It’s not a casual experience yet because even putting the headset on is not a casual matter. You have to fuck with the strap to get a nice aligned view, constantly adjust the visor, scratching your nose or adjusting your glasses requires fumbling around. It’s not as simple as picking up your phone, or … well, it’s not as simple as putting on glasses.
    - gernb 4y ago
      and yet people ride bikes, mountain climb, ski, surf, all things that requires equipment and setup time.
      - lmm 4y ago
        Other than casual utility cycling (which doesn't require expensive equipment or setup time), people don't do those things casually. Most people don't do them at all, or do them occasionally on a dedicated holiday for doing that. People who are really into them do them a lot, but even those people generally do them on dedicated trips.
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manscrober 4y ago
This is the first ever AR product/page that made me actually want to buy the thing
- w-ll 4y ago
  /s
- TylerE 4y ago
  I couldn’t get over the repeated used of “multiplayers” as a singular noun. Terrible writing.
0_throwaway_000 4y ago
Did they need to change my mouse cursor to show me their product? That really confused me.
- deleted 4y ago
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- o_m 4y ago
  You are probably not the target audience if that confuses you. Modern "zoomer" design takes a lot of inspiration from geocities and the webdesign that was popular before they were born.
  - altacc 4y ago
    I knew keeping all my old dHTML scripts from the 00s would pay off eventually!
codesnik 4y ago
it seems they really wanted for iphone to think that it in the correct position, like if it was in the user hand. Otherwise placing phone horizontally, flipping image and using some kind of periscope for the camera would make a more compact and much less "dorky" looking device. Is it supposed to run existing iphone AR apps too?
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > seems they really wanted for iphone to think that it in the correct position I think they have this shape since it’s quite simple optics to have the iPhone screen be a “reflection” on the glasses while you can still see straight out through it. Kinda like looking out a window at night and seeing both your reflection and the outside at once.
- notnotjake 4y ago
  Existing AR apps lack stereoscopic support and lack interaction model needed for this. But wouldn't be hard to add support for this. Basically just a presentation and UI level change.
xwdv 4y ago
I predict the first successful AR product for mass market consumers will be simple glasses that block real world ads with basic rectangles or pixelation.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  Your own personalized moments in time play back at Times Square. Or subtlety getting me to learn Spanish by injecting it on things… actually hang on while I parent that last one.
redorb 4y ago
I'll say for $129 it looks better than magic leap, unless they faked it too.
bitlax 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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mrbuttons454 4y ago
Bringing <marquee> back, I love it.
samstave 4y ago
one interesting 'hack' that could be done with an AR headset's output would be its ability to project onto a film which is on the inside of a windscreen, and interacting with the OBD (or whatever the EVs have) and giving a HUD of the available data it received. This would allow using a [PI/Whatever] to interact with the systems avail to the OBD, slurp that and display onto the HUD-film on the windscreen... With the ability to display HUD info in even the most analog of vehicles... (I havent figured out how to make the HUD cheap or safe based on this comment - but in higher-end options, flex OLED film layers on the glass... or a small projector which simply projects onto a semi-opaque area in the lower-center section of the vehicle, with a simple device, pico projector (with a BRIGHT light) onto a smei-opaque sticker above the dash. Full screen HUD integration is cool, but expensive. but we have all the tools and resources to make this happen.... Just make sure that Apple 'iWindscreen/shield' never makes it into the wild.... run the PI in the machine, and track your bullshit in a new way (as tied in with vid cams...) but thats just me and my what ifs...
system2 4y ago
Make it $29 I'd give it a try. From the looks of it, HoloKit is just a piece of plastic with optics and some app designed for its use.
- dvh 4y ago
  You can buy $8 VR goggles on AliExpress.
  - dymk 4y ago
    I can get novelty glasses that make a Santa shaped halo around lights for $1
notnotjake 4y ago
I find this product fascinating. The design looks ugly, but I can see how they got there. Mixing the real world and iPhone display in the way they are is super interesting. As is the decision to leave the edge of iPhone for touch input. Also interesting to see them leveraging Apple technologies so heavily. I can't really see this gaining any real market, but I like some of these design choices.
- tjmc 4y ago
  Agreed. Looks like they're using a half silvered mirror for the real world pass-through which was a technique used by early arcade games like Space Invaders that projected black and white graphics over a painted background.
diego_moita 4y ago
Worth remembering that both Google Glass and Microsoft Hololens found a very niche market on training and technical assistance on industrial machines maintenance. They never got a real foothold on games, though.
fareesh 4y ago
Will the Larp market respond
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Ha ha, all I could think of was "Darkon" after watching their intro.
peterept 4y ago
Not a very original or clever form factor. At least design it more like the Mira Prism (https://www.mirareality.com/ https://www.mirareality.com/) where the phone position is closer to your head and have a large open FOV. I get that they want to expose the phones back camera for tracking - but use some fancy mirrors or something? Ultimately this is very google cardboard like and passive so $129 is quite expensive. I built a fun toy like this in the early 2000’s for $10 using foam board and a $5 sheet of teleprompter glass. Ultimately anything like this has failed to capture the market because people just don’t want to have their phones out of reach and/or risk their battery using the camera/tracking.
causality0 4y ago
$129 for fucking Apple Cardboard. That's hilarious. At least when Google sold you a plastic box they only charged you a couple of tenners.
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walrus01 4y ago
If I wanted to strap a heavy awkward thing to the front of my face I'd just buy a PVS-14 gen3 tube night vision monocular and a bump helmet.
pprotas 4y ago
What can you do with this? The videos just show people throwing random glitter around
partiallypro 4y ago
It feels like AR hasn't really gotten much more advanced in the past decade. This looks like a HoloLens demo from 7 years ago. Feels like the whole space has stagnated. I know Apple plans to release something soon, but will it really be a big leap? I'm not so sure. Obviously, the M chips will help it, but it still has some fundamental flaws as an idea. Though I find it more exciting than VR.
jimmySixDOF 4y ago
This is a reasonably slick cross between Google Cardboard and Leap Motion's project Nortstar. Not my thing but it's an interesting approach. https://docs.projectnorthstar.org/ https://docs.projectnorthstar.org/
tluyben2 4y ago
Is this kind of plastic phone holder always the first step for something breaks into the market? VR had that everywhere after the Oculus Rift dev came out and things were hyped up; I picked some up at the airport because there were huge stacks of them next to the cash register. It was very fiddly to get your phone in without pressing all buttons and messing it up so you had to take it out because you cannot configure it while in the holder. Which brings me to the biggest issue; input. Speech is often awful as input, especially when in public or noisy environments (no, airpods pro don't filter out noise nearly well enough). It's ok for casual things like checking the weather or replying 'yeah thanks' to an email, but for actual work, speech sucks. Now most people won't be doing that anyway, so who cares? I care and I know many other people I know do; even as the input for phones, so that's a large enough group to warrant experimentation. I experimented with a one hand chording keyboard and it works well; it doesn't take a lot of time to learn, it is quite fast, especially mixed with speech input (create long text with speech and fix it with the chording keyboard for instance) and it seems perfect for AR; if only the the little joystick and a few buttons makes a massive difference over the clunky speech/pointing interfaces. I just wish there were more options; the one that's there (Twiddler) is too expensive. I'm now trying to work with a split keyboard as input, but the problem really is that those have no pointer. Otherwise it's really quite great (if you don't care how it looks of course, but it's early days), because if you touch type, it's not slower than when you are sat down, almost immediately after trying it (they are qwerty). While there are many companies experimenting with input for AR/VR, and I have tried all publicly available demos/releases of such input, it's all clunky and slow. Touchscreen and speech are faster, but nothing beats a keyboard and a mouse; I think a lot more research could be spent on that, but as most people will be using devices (including computers with keyboards and mice) for consumption only, there is no financial incentive?
Havoc 4y ago
Significant risk of phone theft in major cities but otherwise looks decent
mikelovenotwar 4y ago
Something else for people to avoid when walking, people wildly flailing their arms to dodge something in AR.
royletron 4y ago
I feel for the poor souls who were accidentally captured on the recordings - they don't look too pleased. I do worry that one of my kids is going to get trampled by an adult who can't see because he's too busy slaying a dragon. We have already had a lot of near misses with people on e-scooters!
ClassyJacket 4y ago
Very interested in this. Tho I feel a bit sad as I had an idea for this precise product years ago and built some crappy cardboard prototypes but never quite got it far enough along to make anything of it. Understanding optics was something I got stuck on. The "damn, that could've been me if I'd worked harder" feeling stings. Congratulations to the team. If and when they release an Android version I'll buy one straight away. Juding by the comments they should perhaps market this more for home use and less for out in public. Still, I think this has the potential to be definitely very fun and possibly very useful.
josephpmay 4y ago
We originally launched the Mira Prism in this market in 2017 before pivoting to enterprise. https://www.mirareality.com/ https://www.mirareality.com/ It looks like they have much better software than we had at launch, though. The experience for phone-based headsets is really pretty good. The issue is that it’s a really hard sell for consumers at that price point for seemingly a piece of plastic, and the price point is necessary for the optics unless you have massive volume. The other issue is of course the bulky form factor.
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
[dead]
elzbardico 4y ago
Looks cool. But iPhones are fucking heavy
rednerrus 4y ago
The literal LARPing as the selling point might not be it. It seems pretty impolite to be LARPing in a busy train station.
pdnell 4y ago
HoloKit, originally a Google Cardboard-like AR device for the iPhone, has been relaunched as a more premium $150 iPhone accessory. Unfortunately no SDK available anymore (for now at least). Looks interesting. Has anyone here tried it?
- bee_rider 4y ago
  How could there be no SDK? Do they expect people to pay $150 for the handful of apps they’ve written?
- thinkling 4y ago
  > HoloKit, originally a Google Cardboard-like AR device for the iPhone, has been relaunched Is it more than a premium version of Google Cardboard? I can't tell. The "Technical Specs" mention "optical lenses" but otherwise mention no hardware details--well, other than the bring-your-own items (iPhone, Airpods, Apple Watch)...
  - bitL 4y ago
    It looks exactly like those under $20 VR kits for phones. My guess is that the added value is in the app if it can overlay VR on top of the realtime video from iPhone cameras.
    - prox 4y ago
      Must be since it doesn’t support Ipads (now that must be a big headset!)
    - mkl 4y ago
      No, it's quite different from those, and it's not overlaying VR on top of camera video. You're looking at the real world through a diagonal window, and the phone screen is reflecting off that same window so you see it overlaid on your direct view of the world.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Is it more than a premium version of Google Cardboard? Cardboard is VR, not AR.
surprisetalk 4y ago
I absolutely adore the touch interface on the hanging lip of the phone! Spectator mode was also an incredible idea. Kudos to HoloKit's design team!
psychomugs 4y ago
I'm mildly bullish on AR, especially compared to the escapism offered by VR; thanks for sharing as I'll be keeping an eye on this space.
nmfisher 4y ago
Does this have an embedded microphone for audio input? I quickly skimmed the tech specs and it looks like the answer is "no" (presumably if you want that, the intention is that you use AirPods/some other Bluetooth input device).
- zamadatix 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if it just fell back to the iPhone itself when you didn't have AirPods. It'd be a pretty crap audio experience (both input and output) in comparison though.
  - nmfisher 4y ago
    It's difficult to gauge from the photos but I was thinking that the phone is seated too far from the mouth for reliable audio input (it certainly feels like I have to raise my voice, if not shout, whenever I'm talking to someone with the phone that far away from me).
    - zamadatix 4y ago
      Even when in speakerphone (i.e. not trying to filter out far away sounds)? ~1 foot isn't all that far away.
stranded22 4y ago
I am way more interested in a digital world being overlaid on the real world - augmenting rather than escaping. I’m not sure if I’d like to walk around the streets wearing them though - would be incredibly annoying to other people and a risk of being stolen.
- deleted 4y ago
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- smoldesu 4y ago
  Honestly, I've seen less compelling AR applications than I've seen VR ones. Between Windows Mixed Reality, Pokemon Go and the AR Lowe's app, there's not really a whole lot of compelling AR use-cases. VR at least has an entertainment niche, which gave us the likes of Beat Saber, Half Life: Alyx and an IMAX experience in the comfort of your sofa. Neither one seems poised to succeed IMO, but the push for AR adoption seems to be a top-down decision, not one driven by profound demand.
  - verdverm 4y ago
    AR has some very compelling use cases in medicine and manufacturing. There is also the idea of using AR instead of a physical monitor that may lead to drastic adoption. While the Hololens 2 is expensive, FOV limited, and clunky, the user experience is absolutely incredible. They are the only good smart-glasses like experience I know of right now. They show you what a world is like when the smartphone escapes the little box we carry around. The hard part of AR is the shared experience part. It's close to creating a cross-platform MMO game.
  - jnsie 4y ago
    I'll keep saying this until it happens...the biggest AR use case, for me, is replacing the television. The fact that we all have giant boxes as the centerpiece of our main rooms is something unnatural that we take for granted. I'm not sure how far AR devices that allows for social viewing of television content are away, but I feel in my bones that it will happen and when it does children of that generation will be confused as to what a television was and why it was needed.

190 points by pdnell 4y ago

I saw a bunch of these types of things at a Japanese gadget show in 2018. One interesting idea that one had colored rings to wear. The colors made it easier to do finger motion tracking.

TheRealNGenius 4y ago

[dead]

icelancer 4y ago

Really interesting setup. Can see quite a few industry-specific applications for this in my area where we'd consider Google Glass but is simply too closed down / too expensive at the moment. Hope it does well, but I can't really look into it until they open the SDK. The "curated partners" thing doesn't inspire much confidence.

r00fus 4y ago

Two thoughts 1. The dork factor is still in play here. I don't see this being popular by any means, so there needs to be a killer app. 2. I need to see a nice AR game like Pokemon GO integrated with this. I imagine that's the first/best killer app.

madrox 4y ago
I get where you're coming from, but I think we all forget how much we looked like dorks out playing pokemon go. The difference was we were dorks in large groups. If you and a friend are doing this together, you're no longer a dork. You're going your own way. This is where I think Glass got it wrong. They made it feel exclusive when they should've been giving them away.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  Looking at your phone is a thing that everyone does, including the coolest people you know. Just looking at your phone is socially acceptable. Waving a stick around and shouting fireball while wearing a goofy headset is, at present, still unacceptable.
  - jesuscript 4y ago
    This is not the form factor that will change the paradigm. The smartphone was. I agree with you that if you had your face slammed against a Gameboy as an adult in the 90s, people would have judged you. That changed real fast, but it had to be the right product/form. Whoever gets the AR glasses that look like glasses out first wins the game.
  - libraryatnight 4y ago
    Pokemon Go players don't look like normal people looking at their phones. They look weird, all grouped up ignoring each other.I happened upon some sort of event that attracted like 30 of them and it was unsettling - some people had 2 phones and it was silent except the sound of tapping. After watching the HoloKit press, though, I should be thankful for silent and grouped up as opposed to running around in a crowded area being an annoying jackass.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    When I worked in San Jose every workday morning I waited at the bus stop with other employees (generally no one I knew however) waiting for the Corporate Bus to arrive. Invariably everyone was engaged with their phones except me. I guess I'm old — I haven't found anything interesting on my phone to look at when I just want to pass the time. I guess I mention this because I suspect that without phones, we might have chatted with one another, got to know one another while we waited for the bus to arrive. Oh well.
    - r00fus 4y ago
      > without phones, we might have chatted with one another, got to know one another while we waited If I'm an employee on a company bus, I'm just as likely to be a (mostly) silent meeting attendee on a status meeting as listening to an audiobook or podcast. Sometimes I've done this and just communicated via meeting chat to give feedback/add to meeting discussion. Without phones, I'd probably be WFH so I could attend the meeting.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  An AR set that comes in pairs could be neat. Plus they could come ready out-of-the-box to interact with each other.
eric-hu 4y ago
I can see the killer app being something practical, like being able to look at a recipe and watch a video for food prep while I’m doing food prep. Or being able to look at an engine bay and diagnose am issue and see parts identified as I look and point at them.
- accrual 4y ago
  I was thinking about that too. Imagine having image recognition within the headset or glasses which can draw boxes around items and match them against a global database. One could be walking around and see something interesting, then press a button or say a phrase to query it for information right in your glasses. A lot of infrastructure and data would be needed before it reaches a critical mass and mass adoption follows. The more people using it, the more data there is in the system, the more people want to use it. Another really great feature would be captions for conversations going on around you - a big help for the hearing impaired, and maybe even helpful to ordinary people to keep better track of the conversation flow.
  - eric-hu 4y ago
    The captions idea sounds really useful. I've used live captions during Google Meet calls and having a ~1 second visible history of live conversation is indeed really helpful for conversation flow. Having that in real life conversations would really be something.
irjustin 4y ago
If Pokemon GO had this during its hay-day the dork factor would have been socially acceptable. The number of people from young kids to grandmas running around in groups was _insanely_ cool to see. I'm sad there simply wasn't enough content to keep it up the drive. I wanted to do missions/dungeon crawls/talk to NPCs etc. This would have made the go experience 100x more fun... can you imagine a Charizard standing on top of my local mall?! omg. All of us using our captures to take over an objective. We're nearly there.
jjfoooo4 4y ago
Is Pokemon GO still popular? My impression is that it was a fad that came and went.
gernb 4y ago
In fall 1999 the wife of one of my co-workers call me and 4 other co-workers all dorks because we were using cell phones. Now I'm sure she's more addicted to her's than her husband.

madrox 4y ago

This is doing all the right things and I think I'll get one, though I think their product videos are doing a disservice showing people playing in crowded areas. Show people playing in parks surrounded by people bored on picnic blankets. If it's in a crowded area, show assisted navigation. We'll know they're onto something if people are messing with these in Dolores Park when the weather turns nice in April.

jesuscript 4y ago

Form factor for AR is literally like nuclear fusion at the moment. I don’t know when they are going to get it looking like normal fucking glasses, but until then, no one is going outside with this shit. They have to pivot this soon enough to a cheap at-home AR thingy. VR headsets are getting smaller at least: https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex I would suspect Apple will never release something that isn’t as small as that.

zdragnar 4y ago
VR is, IMHO, a fundamentally flawed concept. To immerse yourself, you need to block out your peripheral vision and everything else. The average, casual user isn't going to do that on a regular basis. It's not something you can do with kids around if you need to keep an eye on them, unlike a book or a TV show or even a game on your phone or laptop. Fundamentally, immersion is a selling point to a very specific audience, and a major drawback to everyone else.
- jesuscript 4y ago
  The average user wont do it because there is still physical barriers. The headsets are too heavy still, and outside of the Quest2, they are usually tethered. It’s not a casual experience yet because even putting the headset on is not a casual matter. You have to fuck with the strap to get a nice aligned view, constantly adjust the visor, scratching your nose or adjusting your glasses requires fumbling around. It’s not as simple as picking up your phone, or … well, it’s not as simple as putting on glasses.
  - gernb 4y ago
    and yet people ride bikes, mountain climb, ski, surf, all things that requires equipment and setup time.
    - lmm 4y ago
      Other than casual utility cycling (which doesn't require expensive equipment or setup time), people don't do those things casually. Most people don't do them at all, or do them occasionally on a dedicated holiday for doing that. People who are really into them do them a lot, but even those people generally do them on dedicated trips.

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manscrober 4y ago

This is the first ever AR product/page that made me actually want to buy the thing

w-ll 4y ago
/s
TylerE 4y ago
I couldn’t get over the repeated used of “multiplayers” as a singular noun. Terrible writing.

0_throwaway_000 4y ago

Did they need to change my mouse cursor to show me their product? That really confused me.

deleted 4y ago
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o_m 4y ago
You are probably not the target audience if that confuses you. Modern "zoomer" design takes a lot of inspiration from geocities and the webdesign that was popular before they were born.
- altacc 4y ago
  I knew keeping all my old dHTML scripts from the 00s would pay off eventually!

codesnik 4y ago

it seems they really wanted for iphone to think that it in the correct position, like if it was in the user hand. Otherwise placing phone horizontally, flipping image and using some kind of periscope for the camera would make a more compact and much less "dorky" looking device. Is it supposed to run existing iphone AR apps too?

vineyardmike 4y ago
> seems they really wanted for iphone to think that it in the correct position I think they have this shape since it’s quite simple optics to have the iPhone screen be a “reflection” on the glasses while you can still see straight out through it. Kinda like looking out a window at night and seeing both your reflection and the outside at once.
notnotjake 4y ago
Existing AR apps lack stereoscopic support and lack interaction model needed for this. But wouldn't be hard to add support for this. Basically just a presentation and UI level change.

xwdv 4y ago

I predict the first successful AR product for mass market consumers will be simple glasses that block real world ads with basic rectangles or pixelation.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Your own personalized moments in time play back at Times Square. Or subtlety getting me to learn Spanish by injecting it on things… actually hang on while I parent that last one.

redorb 4y ago

I'll say for $129 it looks better than magic leap, unless they faked it too.

bitlax 4y ago

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mrbuttons454 4y ago

Bringing <marquee> back, I love it.

samstave 4y ago

one interesting 'hack' that could be done with an AR headset's output would be its ability to project onto a film which is on the inside of a windscreen, and interacting with the OBD (or whatever the EVs have) and giving a HUD of the available data it received. This would allow using a [PI/Whatever] to interact with the systems avail to the OBD, slurp that and display onto the HUD-film on the windscreen... With the ability to display HUD info in even the most analog of vehicles... (I havent figured out how to make the HUD cheap or safe based on this comment - but in higher-end options, flex OLED film layers on the glass... or a small projector which simply projects onto a semi-opaque area in the lower-center section of the vehicle, with a simple device, pico projector (with a BRIGHT light) onto a smei-opaque sticker above the dash. Full screen HUD integration is cool, but expensive. but we have all the tools and resources to make this happen.... Just make sure that Apple 'iWindscreen/shield' never makes it into the wild.... run the PI in the machine, and track your bullshit in a new way (as tied in with vid cams...) but thats just me and my what ifs...

system2 4y ago

Make it $29 I'd give it a try. From the looks of it, HoloKit is just a piece of plastic with optics and some app designed for its use.

dvh 4y ago
You can buy $8 VR goggles on AliExpress.
- dymk 4y ago
  I can get novelty glasses that make a Santa shaped halo around lights for $1

notnotjake 4y ago

I find this product fascinating. The design looks ugly, but I can see how they got there. Mixing the real world and iPhone display in the way they are is super interesting. As is the decision to leave the edge of iPhone for touch input. Also interesting to see them leveraging Apple technologies so heavily. I can't really see this gaining any real market, but I like some of these design choices.

tjmc 4y ago
Agreed. Looks like they're using a half silvered mirror for the real world pass-through which was a technique used by early arcade games like Space Invaders that projected black and white graphics over a painted background.

diego_moita 4y ago

Worth remembering that both Google Glass and Microsoft Hololens found a very niche market on training and technical assistance on industrial machines maintenance. They never got a real foothold on games, though.

fareesh 4y ago

Will the Larp market respond

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Ha ha, all I could think of was "Darkon" after watching their intro.

peterept 4y ago

Not a very original or clever form factor. At least design it more like the Mira Prism (https://www.mirareality.com/ https://www.mirareality.com/) where the phone position is closer to your head and have a large open FOV. I get that they want to expose the phones back camera for tracking - but use some fancy mirrors or something? Ultimately this is very google cardboard like and passive so $129 is quite expensive. I built a fun toy like this in the early 2000’s for $10 using foam board and a $5 sheet of teleprompter glass. Ultimately anything like this has failed to capture the market because people just don’t want to have their phones out of reach and/or risk their battery using the camera/tracking.

causality0 4y ago

$129 for fucking Apple Cardboard. That's hilarious. At least when Google sold you a plastic box they only charged you a couple of tenners.

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walrus01 4y ago

If I wanted to strap a heavy awkward thing to the front of my face I'd just buy a PVS-14 gen3 tube night vision monocular and a bump helmet.

pprotas 4y ago

What can you do with this? The videos just show people throwing random glitter around

partiallypro 4y ago

It feels like AR hasn't really gotten much more advanced in the past decade. This looks like a HoloLens demo from 7 years ago. Feels like the whole space has stagnated. I know Apple plans to release something soon, but will it really be a big leap? I'm not so sure. Obviously, the M chips will help it, but it still has some fundamental flaws as an idea. Though I find it more exciting than VR.

jimmySixDOF 4y ago

This is a reasonably slick cross between Google Cardboard and Leap Motion's project Nortstar. Not my thing but it's an interesting approach. https://docs.projectnorthstar.org/ https://docs.projectnorthstar.org/

tluyben2 4y ago

Is this kind of plastic phone holder always the first step for something breaks into the market? VR had that everywhere after the Oculus Rift dev came out and things were hyped up; I picked some up at the airport because there were huge stacks of them next to the cash register. It was very fiddly to get your phone in without pressing all buttons and messing it up so you had to take it out because you cannot configure it while in the holder. Which brings me to the biggest issue; input. Speech is often awful as input, especially when in public or noisy environments (no, airpods pro don't filter out noise nearly well enough). It's ok for casual things like checking the weather or replying 'yeah thanks' to an email, but for actual work, speech sucks. Now most people won't be doing that anyway, so who cares? I care and I know many other people I know do; even as the input for phones, so that's a large enough group to warrant experimentation. I experimented with a one hand chording keyboard and it works well; it doesn't take a lot of time to learn, it is quite fast, especially mixed with speech input (create long text with speech and fix it with the chording keyboard for instance) and it seems perfect for AR; if only the the little joystick and a few buttons makes a massive difference over the clunky speech/pointing interfaces. I just wish there were more options; the one that's there (Twiddler) is too expensive. I'm now trying to work with a split keyboard as input, but the problem really is that those have no pointer. Otherwise it's really quite great (if you don't care how it looks of course, but it's early days), because if you touch type, it's not slower than when you are sat down, almost immediately after trying it (they are qwerty). While there are many companies experimenting with input for AR/VR, and I have tried all publicly available demos/releases of such input, it's all clunky and slow. Touchscreen and speech are faster, but nothing beats a keyboard and a mouse; I think a lot more research could be spent on that, but as most people will be using devices (including computers with keyboards and mice) for consumption only, there is no financial incentive?

Havoc 4y ago

Significant risk of phone theft in major cities but otherwise looks decent

mikelovenotwar 4y ago

Something else for people to avoid when walking, people wildly flailing their arms to dodge something in AR.

royletron 4y ago

I feel for the poor souls who were accidentally captured on the recordings - they don't look too pleased. I do worry that one of my kids is going to get trampled by an adult who can't see because he's too busy slaying a dragon. We have already had a lot of near misses with people on e-scooters!

ClassyJacket 4y ago

Very interested in this. Tho I feel a bit sad as I had an idea for this precise product years ago and built some crappy cardboard prototypes but never quite got it far enough along to make anything of it. Understanding optics was something I got stuck on. The "damn, that could've been me if I'd worked harder" feeling stings. Congratulations to the team. If and when they release an Android version I'll buy one straight away. Juding by the comments they should perhaps market this more for home use and less for out in public. Still, I think this has the potential to be definitely very fun and possibly very useful.

josephpmay 4y ago

We originally launched the Mira Prism in this market in 2017 before pivoting to enterprise. https://www.mirareality.com/ https://www.mirareality.com/ It looks like they have much better software than we had at launch, though. The experience for phone-based headsets is really pretty good. The issue is that it’s a really hard sell for consumers at that price point for seemingly a piece of plastic, and the price point is necessary for the optics unless you have massive volume. The other issue is of course the bulky form factor.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

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elzbardico 4y ago

Looks cool. But iPhones are fucking heavy

rednerrus 4y ago

The literal LARPing as the selling point might not be it. It seems pretty impolite to be LARPing in a busy train station.

pdnell 4y ago

HoloKit, originally a Google Cardboard-like AR device for the iPhone, has been relaunched as a more premium $150 iPhone accessory. Unfortunately no SDK available anymore (for now at least). Looks interesting. Has anyone here tried it?

bee_rider 4y ago
How could there be no SDK? Do they expect people to pay $150 for the handful of apps they’ve written?
thinkling 4y ago
> HoloKit, originally a Google Cardboard-like AR device for the iPhone, has been relaunched Is it more than a premium version of Google Cardboard? I can't tell. The "Technical Specs" mention "optical lenses" but otherwise mention no hardware details--well, other than the bring-your-own items (iPhone, Airpods, Apple Watch)...
- bitL 4y ago
  It looks exactly like those under $20 VR kits for phones. My guess is that the added value is in the app if it can overlay VR on top of the realtime video from iPhone cameras.
  - prox 4y ago
    Must be since it doesn’t support Ipads (now that must be a big headset!)
  - mkl 4y ago
    No, it's quite different from those, and it's not overlaying VR on top of camera video. You're looking at the real world through a diagonal window, and the phone screen is reflecting off that same window so you see it overlaid on your direct view of the world.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Is it more than a premium version of Google Cardboard? Cardboard is VR, not AR.

surprisetalk 4y ago

I absolutely adore the touch interface on the hanging lip of the phone! Spectator mode was also an incredible idea. Kudos to HoloKit's design team!

psychomugs 4y ago

I'm mildly bullish on AR, especially compared to the escapism offered by VR; thanks for sharing as I'll be keeping an eye on this space.

nmfisher 4y ago

Does this have an embedded microphone for audio input? I quickly skimmed the tech specs and it looks like the answer is "no" (presumably if you want that, the intention is that you use AirPods/some other Bluetooth input device).

zamadatix 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if it just fell back to the iPhone itself when you didn't have AirPods. It'd be a pretty crap audio experience (both input and output) in comparison though.
- nmfisher 4y ago
  It's difficult to gauge from the photos but I was thinking that the phone is seated too far from the mouth for reliable audio input (it certainly feels like I have to raise my voice, if not shout, whenever I'm talking to someone with the phone that far away from me).
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    Even when in speakerphone (i.e. not trying to filter out far away sounds)? ~1 foot isn't all that far away.

stranded22 4y ago

I am way more interested in a digital world being overlaid on the real world - augmenting rather than escaping. I’m not sure if I’d like to walk around the streets wearing them though - would be incredibly annoying to other people and a risk of being stolen.

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smoldesu 4y ago
Honestly, I've seen less compelling AR applications than I've seen VR ones. Between Windows Mixed Reality, Pokemon Go and the AR Lowe's app, there's not really a whole lot of compelling AR use-cases. VR at least has an entertainment niche, which gave us the likes of Beat Saber, Half Life: Alyx and an IMAX experience in the comfort of your sofa. Neither one seems poised to succeed IMO, but the push for AR adoption seems to be a top-down decision, not one driven by profound demand.
- verdverm 4y ago
  AR has some very compelling use cases in medicine and manufacturing. There is also the idea of using AR instead of a physical monitor that may lead to drastic adoption. While the Hololens 2 is expensive, FOV limited, and clunky, the user experience is absolutely incredible. They are the only good smart-glasses like experience I know of right now. They show you what a world is like when the smartphone escapes the little box we carry around. The hard part of AR is the shared experience part. It's close to creating a cross-platform MMO game.
- jnsie 4y ago
  I'll keep saying this until it happens...the biggest AR use case, for me, is replacing the television. The fact that we all have giant boxes as the centerpiece of our main rooms is something unnatural that we take for granted. I'm not sure how far AR devices that allows for social viewing of television content are away, but I feel in my bones that it will happen and when it does children of that generation will be confused as to what a television was and why it was needed.