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Similar to the vision pro the killer app will eventually be AR. Its pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary e

by smeeth 3y ago

Similar to the vision pro the killer app will eventually be AR. Its pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary environments will simply be a better UX than physical monitors. Not sure if Quest 3 is there yet, but they're iterating towards it.

rtkwe 3y ago
There's an underlying issue with the whole AR screen thing. They're heavily limited by the resolution of the screen in the goggles itself. These have a bit over half a 4k display per eye so you can only really have display resolutions of some fraction of that determined by what fraction of the area of a given eye display the fake screen takes up. If you blow it up until you're only looking at a portion of the screen you can have a larger one but then you're stuck to moving your head around to see your whole monitor. It's one of the big issues with the whole AR screen idea we'll need pretty beefy hardware to work around.
audunw 3y ago
> It’s pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary environments will simply be a better UX than physical monitors. Is it? I don’t feel like it’s better right now (I know some people do, but I’m not convinced they’re the majority). Fixing the issues with VR is not trivial. There’s some deep flaws in the optics that we simply don’t know how to solve yet, and the weight needs to go down by a lot. I’m not sure I’d ever be comfortable wearing them more than a couple of hours when they’re entirely closed… but that’s a hard requirement for a good experience. There’s a bunch of hard contradictions in making good VR/AR. Remember that as VR technology improves, so will monitors.
- bionhoward 3y ago
  Couldn’t virtualized monitors be customizable in a declarative way which would enable you to do stuff which would be completely impossible on hardware, though? Imagine i3wm with dynamic virtual hardware, that’s insane, not to mention what kinds of automated monitor setup configuration transitions you could make. AR guy many years from now can instantly try a new 12-monitor setup while our dumb butts wait for 12 expensive things in the mail and then wire them all up. Oh, wouldn’t it be cool to have 16? More waiting. But nobody buys that many monitors. If it was just a number in a text file, people might try out a 16 monitor setup just for no reason. The difference in capability could be massive, to the point we’d be truly amazed to jump into the future of AR. Not to mention the freedom of hands free portability, it could be wizard levels of awesomeness!
  - MBCook 3y ago
    > Couldn’t virtualized monitors be customizable in a declarative way which would enable you to do stuff which would be completely impossible on hardware, though? Imagine i3wm with dynamic virtual hardware, that’s insane, not to mention what kinds of automated monitor setup configuration transitions you could make. Ok. Let’s say that’s done. Is it really that much more useful? It has to be good enough to overcome the friction of having to wear a headset and any limitations that come with it like heat, battery life, weight, resolution, etc. I’m not convinced such a setup would significantly enhance productivity/usability even with hypothetical glasses that do it all, let alone something like a Quest on your head.
abeppu 3y ago
Is that pretty obvious? Better in what contexts? I've seen someone here say that they really liked working with a virtual display from wherever, but the resolution of their whole display was 1080p. As someone who regularly uses dual 4k external monitors plus my laptop, I didn't understand how they could be productive. E.g. I may want to keep a browser with docs and a jupyter notebook of a particular investigation on my left, and an IDE of my repo on my right, plus chat with the colleague I'm working with below on my laptop, and all showing a lot of text or perhaps detailed graphs. If 8k monitors cross my affordability threshold before XR headsets with 4k (per eye) cross my affordability threshold, I would likely switch to more physical-screen pixels than to cut down to just 4k pixels strapped to my face.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Portability is an obvious pros for virtual displays. It can be used on any hotels only with less than 1kg HMD and accessories.
amalcon 3y ago
I agree that's pretty obvious when it gets there. I think we just disagree on how far we are from that point. I think there's essentially no chance that the Quest 3 is good enough, and would put the hypothetical over/under[0] on that happening somewhere around 15-20 years out. The software to take full advantage of it isn't there either, and I don't think it can be meaningfully developed at all until the hardware is a lot closer. [0]- Since we're on HN, I need to say -- this is a figure of speech. I am not offering or soliciting any actual wagers here.

by smeeth 3y ago

rtkwe 3y ago

There's an underlying issue with the whole AR screen thing. They're heavily limited by the resolution of the screen in the goggles itself. These have a bit over half a 4k display per eye so you can only really have display resolutions of some fraction of that determined by what fraction of the area of a given eye display the fake screen takes up. If you blow it up until you're only looking at a portion of the screen you can have a larger one but then you're stuck to moving your head around to see your whole monitor. It's one of the big issues with the whole AR screen idea we'll need pretty beefy hardware to work around.

audunw 3y ago

> It’s pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary environments will simply be a better UX than physical monitors. Is it? I don’t feel like it’s better right now (I know some people do, but I’m not convinced they’re the majority). Fixing the issues with VR is not trivial. There’s some deep flaws in the optics that we simply don’t know how to solve yet, and the weight needs to go down by a lot. I’m not sure I’d ever be comfortable wearing them more than a couple of hours when they’re entirely closed… but that’s a hard requirement for a good experience. There’s a bunch of hard contradictions in making good VR/AR. Remember that as VR technology improves, so will monitors.

bionhoward 3y ago
Couldn’t virtualized monitors be customizable in a declarative way which would enable you to do stuff which would be completely impossible on hardware, though? Imagine i3wm with dynamic virtual hardware, that’s insane, not to mention what kinds of automated monitor setup configuration transitions you could make. AR guy many years from now can instantly try a new 12-monitor setup while our dumb butts wait for 12 expensive things in the mail and then wire them all up. Oh, wouldn’t it be cool to have 16? More waiting. But nobody buys that many monitors. If it was just a number in a text file, people might try out a 16 monitor setup just for no reason. The difference in capability could be massive, to the point we’d be truly amazed to jump into the future of AR. Not to mention the freedom of hands free portability, it could be wizard levels of awesomeness!
- MBCook 3y ago
  > Couldn’t virtualized monitors be customizable in a declarative way which would enable you to do stuff which would be completely impossible on hardware, though? Imagine i3wm with dynamic virtual hardware, that’s insane, not to mention what kinds of automated monitor setup configuration transitions you could make. Ok. Let’s say that’s done. Is it really that much more useful? It has to be good enough to overcome the friction of having to wear a headset and any limitations that come with it like heat, battery life, weight, resolution, etc. I’m not convinced such a setup would significantly enhance productivity/usability even with hypothetical glasses that do it all, let alone something like a Quest on your head.

abeppu 3y ago

Is that pretty obvious? Better in what contexts? I've seen someone here say that they really liked working with a virtual display from wherever, but the resolution of their whole display was 1080p. As someone who regularly uses dual 4k external monitors plus my laptop, I didn't understand how they could be productive. E.g. I may want to keep a browser with docs and a jupyter notebook of a particular investigation on my left, and an IDE of my repo on my right, plus chat with the colleague I'm working with below on my laptop, and all showing a lot of text or perhaps detailed graphs. If 8k monitors cross my affordability threshold before XR headsets with 4k (per eye) cross my affordability threshold, I would likely switch to more physical-screen pixels than to cut down to just 4k pixels strapped to my face.

fomine3 3y ago
Portability is an obvious pros for virtual displays. It can be used on any hotels only with less than 1kg HMD and accessories.

amalcon 3y ago

I agree that's pretty obvious when it gets there. I think we just disagree on how far we are from that point. I think there's essentially no chance that the Quest 3 is good enough, and would put the hypothetical over/under[0] on that happening somewhere around 15-20 years out. The software to take full advantage of it isn't there either, and I don't think it can be meaningfully developed at all until the hardware is a lot closer. [0]- Since we're on HN, I need to say -- this is a figure of speech. I am not offering or soliciting any actual wagers here.