Comment by wlesieutre | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wlesieutre | Hacker News Reader

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Magic Leap claims to be able to occlude real-world objects with their AR, not just semi-transparent "hologram" overlays. This is something I'd want to see for myself, but here's what Brian Crecente at Rolling Stone wrote about it:

> Miller wanted to show me one other neat trick. He walked to the far end of the large room and asked me to launch Gimble. The robot obediently appeared in the distance, floating next to Miller. Miller then walked into the same space as the robot and promptly disappeared. Well, mostly disappeared, I could still see his legs jutting out from the bottom of the robot.

> My first reaction was, “Of course that’s what happens.” But then I realized I was seeing a fictional thing created by Magic Leap technology completely obscure a real-world human being. My eyes were seeing two things existing in the same place and had decided that the creation, not the engineer, was the real thing and simply ignored Miller, at least that’s how Abovitz later explained it to me.

If they really have that working, it's a huge advantage over systems like HoloLens.

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-intro...

>>able to occlude real-world objects

Here's an application for drivers and pilots: smart sun-shade to block out bright lights (headlights), sunlight, or glints off surfaces (water).

Based on Magic Leap's explanation, I'm not so sure it would work for that.

> My eyes were seeing two things existing in the same place and had decided that the creation, not the engineer, was the real thing and simply ignored Miller, at least that’s how Abovitz later explained it to me.

That sounds to me like some kind of light-field trickery where it puts an object in front of the background using the light field, but doesn't physically block the light. Instead, your brain processes it out because your visual model of the space has something in front of it.

I'm imagining this works sort of like the effect where you overlay left and right eye images that don't match, your brain sort of fades between the two of them because it can't decide what's there? Except instead of having that disagreement, both of your eyes say "This thing is in front" and that's how you see it"? It's hard to say from the kind of hand-wavey explanation.

If that's the case, I don't know that it would work for really bright glare. Either it might be a strong enough signal to overpower the light field, or the bright light scattering around your eyeball might still cause enough bloom to wash out your vision.

Furthermore, even if the technology DID somehow manage to trick your brain into not acknowledging the glare, the bright light would still be entering your eyes and causing damage to your retinas. It would be similar to the case of somebody who has nerve damage and doesn't feel pain, so they don't know that their hand is resting on a hot stove until they smell burning flesh.

If only we had technology that, when subjected to an electrical field, turned glass from opaque to translucent and were produced in sufficient quantities for applications such as airplane and building windows as to make this technology relatively inexpensive.

Easier said then done, just an LCD won't work for darkening. http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...

The occluder wouldn't be in the same focal plane as the real world objects you are looking at. It'll darken a vague area around the object you want to mask.

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