Comment by vmednis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vmednis | Hacker News Reader

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I personally don't see this becoming a problem. At least the way I have imagined AR being.

The way I hope to see it is that all the different features are apps that you can either enable or disable and then the AR platform (e.g. the OS on your headset) just mixes them all together. So for example there could be an app for placing sculptures anywhere and it becomes a matter of that apps policy. If you don't like an app that lets you place sculptures anywhere just don't install it and use the one that ties in with property register. And so on.

This would also reduce the BK Ads in MCDs example to what we have today. It's not illegal to show BK Ads on peoples phones while they are in MCDs.

I've wished we had this same concept of OS-provided base layer in other areas as well, where your app provides plugins that could be enabled in the core app. It came to my mind when Apple released their share extension method.

Maps: I use a few apps whose sole purpose is to provide location-based info (eg we have a govt app that gives fuel prices). This could just be a plugin layer that could be enabled in the Maps app. Property searches, your favourite fast food place, etc.

Camera: plugins could provide more effects or manual camera settings control UI, or indeed... AR overlays.

I'm pretty sure that eventually, one "winner" app will appear and grab almost all market share, similar to how Facebook has it for social media.

Not necessary.

I think what allows "winner" apps to exist in modern world is that you can really use only one app at the time. Especially true for Smartphones. The way I hope AR to develop is that all of the small components (the apps) get composited together OS level. So that "winner" platform would be the OS itself.

Albeit, I'm being extremely optimistic here.

I would like for a more decentralized scenario to win, but it seems to me that people tend to gravitate towards centralization. It happened so many times already that it would be surprising if it doesn't happen again.

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