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Comment by phn | Hacker News Reader

I think that AR (think magic leap) is going to be much bigger, at least in the short term.

VR is like the desktop. It will have its uses, sure, but you'll be tied to your desk/room. Gaming will probably still be the most popular VR application.

Your AR glasses will be your smartphone, on you the entire time, and you won't even need to reach for your pocket.

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Indeed, I think AR glasses will replace at least the display portion of smartphones. If I had to guess, the progression would go something like this: Initially, it will be glasses connected to the smartphone. Then, glasses connected to a watch-like device. Finally, just the glasses.

I touched on this before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12104656. Imagine waiting in an airport and browsing instagram or watching videos on a relatively large, private display via glasses. The tiny, visible-by-others smartphone display would look very primitive in comparison.

Hm, I think it's the opposite. VR big in the short term; AR big in the long term. I do agree that when talking about smartphone applications, as in the blog post, those will need to be AR not VR.

Google Glass was squashed right? And Hololens is focused on business use cases first. I don't see it becoming consumer focused for some time. VR is amazing _today_ and has a massive gaming audience. The business applications of AR, while high impact/potential, are a much smaller audience.

I think that VR, unless much more advanced (e.g. expand to other senses besides vision and hearing) will have trouble catching on besides gaming and maybe some business applications. And even so, I have my doubts.

And I think Google Glass was dropped because the tech wasn't there yet. It was a small square on the corner of your vision instead of a "depth aware" overlay.

i see no reason why AR cant be merged with VR, although maybe that is because i dont have a clue about how either works

I think there's a bit too much exuberance around VR and AR at the moment. I can imagine a future where fully immersive AR is technically possible, but no one uses it because it's annoying or inconvenient. Sort of like how video calls are possible now but most people just text.

The convenience factor is being completely ignored by the enthusiasts. There is absolutely no plausible day to day use case for VR like there was for something like a smart phone.

VR games are the same sort of short term gimmicks that failed with the Wii and Kinect. The technology is amazing, it's just not very useful.

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