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Comment by SirensOfTitan | Hacker News Reader

The Economist published a decent look into the tech of augmented reality a couple weeks ago. They asserted two main ideas, both of which I agree with. AR will:

1. Not achieve a form factor acceptable to the general consumer for a while.

2. Be more immediately useful to companies looking to improve worker productivity (like on assembly lines), where form factor is a lesser concern.

As a consequence of (1), we will probably start seeing more robust applications of AR tech using the smart phone and camera (like Pokemon GO and Snapchat filters) before we see any reasonable hardware device.

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I completely agree with point 2, and see it validated in what CTO/CIO types are paying attention to. I will further that by saying that there are tangible benefits in commercial cases that are better than the ones in the consumer space. Consumers have TVs, consoles, and computers. Businesses are looking now for transformative tech to replace systems that are much older and more outdated.

For the enterprise case, AR capabilities on the phone are a great and cheap place to start in order to get a HUD view around them. Kludgy solutions like reading QR codes also work fine for their expected use cases - i.e. reading machine states, maintenance records, etc. These solutions solve a mobile interface problem that helps align information retrieval with the context of being out the field looking at a physical object.

My personal favorite AR application would be drone operation, though. AR goggle can do two things. They can assist the Remote pilot in command in maintaining a computer aided visual line of sight to the drone. (circling it in red, in your field of view, for example). It also can provide a HUD of the drone's status (battery, altitude, attitude, settings, perceived wind speed, etc.), and finally it can allow you to view an overlay of FPV from the drone to aid in your both maintaining direct LOS to meet Part 107 requirements, and also to ensure that the pilot can be inspecting, aiming, orienting and piloting the drone successfully by relying of FPV input.

Those capabilities don't quite exist yet, but I wouldn't doubt that it will be my first AR use case.

Though industrial applications 'seem' like a natural choice, it's a really tough market.

Mostly because the numbers just are not there.

Specific industries will want specific versions, specific apps - and without the scale ... it's hard to make money.

And although it may 'seem' rational to want to production line workers into a HUD ... the actual, tangible and measurably improvement in productivity may not be that much. Today, if workers need 'data on the fly' they can ref their tablet or mobile. Does a HUD really make such a huge difference that it's worth the cost? That's a real question.

So - I think you're right, essentially about the application opportunities, but the business case is really hard for that. The numbers just don't work out very well.

Yeah, this seems like a concern.

Already the biggest data/reality hurdle is not visualization but record accuracy - Amazon pickers get quick-and-easy guides to where products are, but face massive delays when something is mislabeled and they have to scan every item in the bin they're directed to.

Fancy HUD systems may be worthwhile for a handful of high-end industrial tasks that value time very highly and can justify custom purchases (power plants?), but for most applications boosting accuracy and system usability sounds better than investing in new methods of data access.

I agree; one counter example is that AR might be the catalyst for improvement of an antique process. The Arizona Public Utilities commission (disclosure, my company helped them with this initiative) has replaced paper processes with AR on phones + QR codes. The real value is probably in converting an antique paper-based process with a database, but the AR proved to be the defining interface for their field workers.

You're correct about it being a tough market, but you (and your commenters) wrong about nearly everything else. It's tough because industrial giants are slow moving, and very particular about certain hard things (reliability and being real, mostly) that are actually hard. To contrast, media companies are fast moving and very particular about expensive things (art and design), but are bloody cheap and don't mind smoke-and-mirrors. This is why consumer AR is hard, but industrial AR is "easier".

Source: Early Daqri employee (when marketing apps were the thing), and industrial solutions architect at the same while they had any. (No longer work there)

There is a bejeebus amount of money in the industrial sector for these kinds of solutions, although at first glance it might not be clearly "AR", although you would use pretty much exactly the same technology.

First up - although there's not a lot of information, the information that IS present is staggeringly decisive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-qJ6U-ixX0&feature=youtu.be... http://www.recode.net/2015/6/8/11563374/boeing-says-augmente...

TL;DR - ~70% time spend with <10% errors made on a first-time assembly task, when using AR instructions vs classic instructions. Gains are (mostly) kept even if you stop using AR on subsequent assemblies.

Second up -

My favorite anecdote from a boss, about building satellites: Once, while building this $100m+ object, they got to the end and found a left over bolt. They then had to spend a giant chunk of money taking the thing back apart, first to find where that bolt was supposed to go (and put it there), and then to prove that nothing else was missing.

If you're doing AR-instructions, not only are you (probably) not going to make that mistake in the first place (>90% error reduction), but you're going to have video records (ideally already in a reality-capture format, rather than just raw feeds) to review instead of an expensive disassembly, to prove nothing else is wrong.

This mistake was worth tens of millions, and mistakes of this cost-magnitude are so common they're part of the costing structure. You expect them.

As a counter examples to my points, we once looked at document pick-and-place for a document storage company. The value they'd get from the AR, after development and equipment costs were factored in, just didn't make sense. Another company wanted to use AR tech as a replacement for existing industrial quality checks (parts fly by on a conveyer, how do you know if they'd been made correctly?). AFAIK, what they wanted to do is still basically impossible. Finally, there was an ongoing debate as to whether it'd make sense for people building buildings to use industrial AR (everyone? only managers / shift leads / etc?). AFAIK, there are still issues with making that happen, although people are making solid progress.

Finally, you're forgetting about the value of a hands-free display; which is an AR headset minus the computer vision; if you've ever spent time in a facility (which is so totally awesome and I miss those trips) it's pretty clear why that's valuable.

So you're right about a couple of things - it's still hard, and you still have to run the numbers to see if makes sense for your situation (or which people in your situation) - but you're essentially wrong about the application opportunities, and the numbers usually work out amazingly well.

Any questions? Happy to answer what I think I'm allowed to.

They have had these kinds of things, in more basic form for quite a long time. There's no need to have MagicLeap style realism to realize 'possible industrial gains' - and yet there aren't any such companies doing an IPO soon.

Google was keen on using Google glass for all sorts of relevant things, and so far, they've failed.

In the first link, I see someone saying 'this could be huge'. Emphasis on 'could'.

The second link is similar. Some nice feasibility/test studies. Have they made a purchase order yet? No? Why not?

Is anyone using this in production yet? No?

"It's tough because industrial giants are slow moving, and very particular about certain hard things"

Yes, exactly. Slow moving, very specific - and even then, the number of such workers is not that big. If Airbus and Boeing both make orders for 50K units each, that's still not enough to make a company work - and those would be the biggest clients imaginable.

i.e. bad business. They're not going to get a $5 Billion dollar valuation by selling to these clients, at least not for a very long time.

I have consulted two of the (I guess) "big names" in AR here in Germany and I can basically confirm point 2. AR agencies struggle to get any hold in any market. While they (legitimately) try (and technically succeed) to innovate and automate, AR is far from being a thing accepted by the average consumer. People don't use QR codes anymore, they certainly won't load yet another app and scan your marker.

(Intermission: Unless "they" is Chinese. While pitching the tech in front of a Chinese delegation, the audience went quite literally wild. The enthusiasm about gimmick-y tech radiated by Chinese business (wo)men is the exact opposite of the stone-cold non-interest of Germans)

Where ARA shine however is, as you predicted, industrial tech. The implementations I witnessed were used by Airbus, Siemens, Bosch, Audi et al. for exactly two purposes:

1. Assembly line education or 2. Massive scale marketing (in a physical sense) like projecting actual buildings for architects

At least this is my experience.

Microsoft's HoloLens has an acceptable form factor. They crammed an incredible amount of electronics into a reasonably lightweight self-contained headset. Cordless, even. It's nowhere near as clunky as the HTC Vibe, Oculus Rift, or the 1990s stuff. The field of view is too narrow, but maybe that can be fixed.

There's still no killer app for AR, but that may be a price point problem. If the HoloLens was cheap enough for Pokemon Go, it would sell quite well.

VR may be stuck in the FPS game niche forever.

Yeah, the HoloLens form factor currently is great. Had a chance to try it a few weeks ago.... When it becomes available to consumers, I'd definitely pick it over Vive or Oculus for gaming applications.

The wires on the current VR setups are a nightmare, as is the requirement for a $2K PC setup.

You can probably get away with a $1k PC build these days, and the HoloLens itself is pretty expensive now as a devkit ($3k IIRC).

The HoloLens is great, but it doesn't really seem to be designed for gaming. Games are cool to demo in AR, but less practical I feel, given the requirement of meshing with the real world. Meanwhile, gaming in VR is taking off decently, and the FOV in the current generation of VR devices is much better than what the HoloLens has, and that's a pretty big deal for gaming.

Also, wireless is almost here for VR headsets: http://www.roadtovr.com/tpcast-wireless-vr-htc-vive-relased-...

The wires are annoying I agree, but not really a "nightmare".

Also, as far as the $1k-2k PC thing goes, I think that a lot of people (especially early adopters) will already have a decent PC so the cost of a nice GPU instead of a more modest one is a lot less than the cost of a whole computer.

That was my experience when messing with the Rift dev unit I got a couple years ago. It was more an excuse to buy a new video card than a need for a whole new computer.

I'm not sure most consumers would agree. Fashion-conscious people (read: a large part of consumer society) likely still wouldn't wear it. It is too bulky and obvious still. Even Google Glass was too much.

I increasingly feel like it will take a fashion-forward approach like Apple and Snapchat have done in their respective areas to make these devices hip enough to truly gain mass market acceptance.

The HoloLens doesn't seem like a device you'd be wearing out and about on city streets. Seems more like something you'd be wearing at home in your living room by yourself or with friends, or at work as part of your business process, not something you'd wear on your face going out to a bar to meet a date.

Sure it's bulky and obvious, but it can also be very cool. https://imgur.com/PEZ9LtJ Well you might need to be an astronaut to pull off this look :)

It shouldn't be marketed as a lifestyle device of any kind. It's a tool. It's a toy. There's just no way to pass it off as something a millenial might wear walking down the street to look cool.

I think a similar thing is applicable to self driving cars regarding 2) - we will likely see self driving commercial trucks on dedicated lanes much before we reach the "self driving cars available to anyone at anytime" future so many (including myself) dream of.

> self driving commercial trucks on dedicated lanes

It takes forever to get new HOV lanes added to big interstates - I somehow doubt that 'dedicated' lanes are going to appear faster than self-driving tech takes hold.

Would it be so crazy that the HOV lanes would just become self driving lanes?

Yes. It was a good article.

It also made the point that in addition to specific issues around form factor (i.e. size/weight/looks), AR in glasses brings with it the whole social acceptance factor. This can be ameliorated to some degree with decreased size and less obtrusive design but there will still be the potential for a "Glasshole" factor in a consumer environment until/unless societal expectations change.

Someone taking pictures of you and having data displayed in real-time is just not something most people would be comfortable with today.

The article was also more generally bullish on AR than VR. Which seems right. Even given another generation or two of development, VR seems like a niche for hard-core gamers and maybe a few other uses.

Link: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2171601...

(2) seems to be also true for VR. Business people when introduced to the current VR hardware often react enthusiastically and easily figure out compelling applications of VR technology to their businesses.

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