It's an ad: "I wrote this because it was the most effective way I could think of to reach out to those exceptional people and get them to consider whether Oculus Research might be the most exciting, fulfilling, interesting place for them to spend the next however many years."
Might be good for them to spell out their product plans in that case. From an outsider's perspective, places like Microsoft would seem far better suited for AR researchers, given that they've been researching it for at least 15 years and have a product ready to go.
They have tons of money, they know that AR will be an important battleground, and AR is related to VR.
They would be incredibly foolish NOT to at least try to get into AR.
Beyond Pokémon Go of course, which was something of a rarity.
I just can't think of compelling use cases, and no one has ever showed one to me that has impressed.
Mine craft on your coffee table? I think it's a silly curiosity. I want to get OUT of my lounge room when gaming, not be stuck in it ... MOVE YOUR DIRTY COFFEE CUPS OFF THE TABLE I WANT TO PLAY MINECRAFT ON IT... no one will ever say.
Also your arguments are based on your limited experience. No one has actually experienced the full extent of AR to qualify to be able to say it's not going to be important. This includes even those who are actively working on AR.
Most interesting technologies came out of nowhere, so by definition it is natural that you think it's not gonna work, and that's fine. But again, that doesn't make AR unimportant.
Whether you want it or not, it IS coming, and people will experiment with building different products (not just the lame apps you're imagining). If at least one of them sticks, then that's a good start.
But even if we don't go there, it's so obvious that once the technology gets to the point where the UX is so seamless, it will change the way we live our lives. Of course that's not gonna happen with toys like ARKit on iPhone, but when it becomes hands-free (through glasses or likes) it will make a big difference.
Now whether we'll get there in the next decade or not nobody knows, but once we DO get there it's not going to be what you're imagining right now in 2017.
but of course thats not the limit. AR includes input. whether it's some breakthrough camera tech that can track my fingers or a glove or rings bring able to manipulate objects in 3D with my hands is a 3x to 20x boost in production speed for 3d design including objects, architecture, movie and game assets, etc. That in itself is low hanging fruit and could open 3d design to so many more people than the months of blender/Maya/3dsmax training currently required.
assuming input works pen tablets are no longer needed. want to draw in 2d, project a piece of paper on the surface in front of you and a pen in your hand and you start drawing. any child growing up with such tech would probably never use paper.
that again is practically low hanging fruit.
there lots more ARish ideas. car navigation that paints on the road (though I guess I don't need that for self driving cars). look down a road see what's in every store
I'm sure there are tons of applications we haven't even thought of but any of the above would be enough for me
I'm probably on the opposite side then. I worry that AR will be so appealing that people will willingly give away their last shred of privacy.
Yet another screen doesn't excite me.
Can't see how going from so-so handheld devices to something that is in your line of sight when needed and adapts to current context is a bad thing compared to what we have (not that I'm assuming the end products will necessarily be well made, but that goes for everything).
Luckily, there's more to this world than Pokémon.
The likes of Upskill[1] and Realwear[2] have been selling AR to industrial customers for ages. They have clients like Boeing who use it to enable their engineers to access data in context in the field. It's not quite 'project a realistic 3D image in space' AR, but it's more AR in the 'Google Glass' sense. It's very much real, and there definitely are use cases that people will pay decent money for.
That doesn't mean it's going to be a huge industry and we'll all be wearing headsets in a few years, but it definitely means there is a use for it. And perhaps someone will invent a killer application that does mean everyone will want it. You never know. It happened with smart phones.
[1] https://upskill.io/ [2] https://realwear.com/products/hmt-1/
AR is way more technically challenging but the payoff IF you pull it off is not even comparable to HUDs like google glass and the examples you mentioned.
AR actually "augments" your reality, for example it makes you believe some "thing" that's not actually there IS at that spot.
HUD is just information display and it doesn't have to fix whatever it's displaying at a certain point.
That's just a few examples, we'll get much more use cases when it begins to be used, but there is definitely a lot of potential.
Playing Minecraft (and regular gaming in general) is not a good use case, I'll give you that.
This is how real AR prototypes look in practical applications:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBzIKZqEGwI
IMO this is going to be huge, and I can't wait to have it in a HUD format instead of having to hold a phone or a tablet in front of you.
In terms of AR only things, I feel like Ingress is the direction AR games will go, with phones as a window into another world, and I've had lots of fun with the measuring apps which came out with arkit(my favourite is called Cubit, if you have an iOS 11 device).
Of course there will be niche games that let you interact with the real world, just like how Nintendo Wii discovered its niche, but most likely games will take place in VR.
Another reason AR doesn't make sense for a game: People don't want to walk around when they want to play games. VR lets you walk around without you actually walking around. All you need to do is twiddle your fingers around. Nobody wants to pour in work just to play games (With exception of the niche games like Nintendo Wii types as I mentioned above)
I agree though that they will not dominate VR - real-world constraints are mostly arbitrary restrictions that rarely add anything to the fun, so most games will happily do without them.
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[0] - arguably, beyond AR, to make it happen we need advances in geometry sensing and mesh networking; the ridiculous trend of pushing everything through the cloud is not helping.
And sorry but I don't think workplace safety training makes and entire industry and justification for the technology. One use case? Two? Any? Nothing.
I don't get why they'd start competing against Microsoft when they're already being dominated in their own VR niche.
It almost looks concerning.
There is also a lot of overlap with how to design UX and controls, but that is mostly a problem for the app developers.
I agree with the sentiment of your statement though. There is a lot less overlap than most people seem to believe.
That's an interesting interpretation which doesn't seem to be backed by reality.
That aside: It's a research team. They think AR will overtake VR some time in the future, so they research on it.
Vive is massively outselling the Rift. Considering Oculus were first to market (in the sense that the dev kits were openly sold), and considering that they ostensibly have the backing of Facebook, that seems like a bad sign.
And given this, it's concerning (to me) that they're now seemingly shifting resources to AR.
And as I said before, AR and VR's uses don't overlap. So it isn't like they need to get a foothold in AR to stay relevant.
Oculus doesn't have to make money immediately since they're backed by Facebook, which is a huge leverage.
Also even if Vive IS outselling Rift right now, doesn't mean Rift is doomed at all. For now it's enough for them to be in the market and look for opportunities since NONE of the VR companies are turning out to be the next big thing, yet.
I'm sure there will come a point when VR will grow extremely fast, but VR itself as an industry is not growing too fast anyway.
In this climate it's best to hunker down and do research instead of trying to sell as many devices as possible, so I think they're doing the right thing.