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Comment by writimov | Hacker News Reader

I've used a Google Glass, Oculus Rift, Cardboard VR systems and seen a demo of Oculus Rift. Is the Lenovo ThinkReality a real competitor? The market hasn't picked up VR for gaming and AR has flopped so far. How about high end systems for engineering and design. There could be a case where engineering speed and collaboration could increase from using a few of these systems at any company doing hardware design.

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I've used the original Hololens and one of the things that stuck with me was how well-polished it was from an OS standpoint. Microsoft has worked hard on Windows Holographic and it shows.

If this device can run Windows Holographic I think this could be really great. Lenovo already works with Microsoft to run it on some of their budget AR headsets but it is unclear to me whether Microsoft will grant them permission to use it on something that's a more direct Hololens competitor. I get the impression that running their own android-based holographic OS will not be the best though.

I was also impressed by the original Hololens. The hardware, however, needs some improvements. The headset was a bit heavy for long term use and the resolution of the AR image was not as good as I had expected. The software and SDK were solid; what stood out to me was the realtime spatial construction of the environment.

I agree. They're supposed to have worked on both in the Hololens 2, but I haven't gotten a chance to try the latest iteration yet.

They probably would, I mean the whole point of Microsoft being in the hardware game is to lift the quality of their hardware partners right?

You're mixing AR and VR into the same bucket when the use cases are fairly different. ThinkReality is a competitor to HoloLens and Magic Leap, both of which (and this, too) are still in the dev kit / proof of concept phase. VR systems work just fine and are technically mass market ready, they just cost too much and the market for people who want to strap a heavy thing onto their face for long periods of time is smaller than a lot people expected.

Headset VR like this is indeed being evaluated mostly for non-consumer applications right now, including manual labor guidance (think mechanics and surgeons), team collaboration, and 3D design, but the price and capabilities are at least a generation away from being appealing to most companies.

I don't think AR has flopped so far, but when it's used well it's not perceived as AR.

For example, my car has a rear camera, which overlays where you are going depending on the position of the steering wheel. This is reality augmented, but since it feels so natural, nobody thinks about this as AR.

I disagree that the steering guide lines on a reverse camera are AR. A key aspect of AR is that it is environment-aware. An image overlaid on a video is not actually aware of “reality” at all.

The lines turning with your steering wheel is slight awareness of the environment, namely the direction your wheels are facing

Some go a bit further and overlay imaginary barriers based on the distance of objects near you: https://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/img/gvHEEq5aZgDanoLARwsAzNN66Qk...

But yeah, in general this application doesn't have the kind of impact people are talking about when they say mainstream AR.

Yeah the steering guides are not really AR but the rectangles that pop up on the thing you’re about to hit and turn colors based on how close your definitely are AR.

I'm not convinced... to me AR is an environment you can interact with or it interacts with the environment. Some lines drawn on a screen. meh

Or you could see it as concrete real world baby step ? It's AR for the car to interact with, through a steering but still interaction.

I, personally, find that more interesting than VR toy/game I've seen so far.

I mean.. technically everything in AR is lines drawn on a screen right?

You’re interacting: you have your controller, the steering wheel, and you are manipulating an object, the car, and the computer inside your car is using sensors to determine how you are performing inside your environment, and providing you with virtual information combined with real world information so you are better equipped to do your job, than without the additional information augmented to you reality.

The head-up display is 1940s tech [0], I don't think we can call it "AR."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display#History

I think VR could take off this year. The Quest and Shadow VR have reasonable price ranges.

AR headsets are still a magnitude too expensive.

Still miles away from mass adoption. VR/AR is at the stage of the Apple Newton and I don't think we're at the iPhone stage yet (in relative terms).

I think Oculus Quest could be the iPhone of VR. Keep in mind that the iPhone gen 1 didn’t sell well at all compared to just about any other iPhone generation.

It’s not about selling well. It’s revolutionizing the field. I don’t think the quest would be considered that.

It’s great and will bring more people to the market but it is still to be seen if that price point for something only a single person can enjoy at a time will be a game changer.

Ok, then by that definition the Oculus Rift is the iPhone of VR.

The iPhone brought mobile internet browsing into mainstream consciousness; we were already addicted to the Internet before it arrived, so it's no wonder that iPhones and smartphones took off.

The Oculus on the other hand has to provide not just good ergonomics, but also content that showcases the hardware well.

I had a Galaxy S7 and GearVR headset in 2016. Some of the games were cool like a TRON-style Pong game, but most of the content was awful, stuff like "explore a famous museum", which was all badly optimized, pixelated 3D video.

Even if Oculus launched with a VR version of a product that's known to be highly sticky engagement wise (e.g Fortnite), I don't know if people would go for it. Fortnite is already on every device anyway, are people really so into it that they want to be fully immersed visually when playing?

I had the impression that the iPhone brought the Internet in general to the masses.

The mobile market is orders of magnitude bigger than the desktop market ever was.

I'd put it closer to the HTC TyTn or first Google phone levels. It's still an enthusiasts thing, and there's no barrier for entry other than knowing what you want.

Once it becomes something that people want without knowing why, then it'll be iPhone level.

Could take off?

It already has. Four of my buddies that play Rocket League almost exclusively have dropped AU$300 on a headset because we showed them Beat Saber at a LAN party, and they haven't stopped playing it since.

VR is growing slowly, but exponentially[0], which is a good sign that the platform is healthy.

[0]https://www.roadtovr.com/monthly-connected-vr-headsets-on-st...

I can't speak for ThinkReality, but HoloLens (2) is definitely not intended to be an Oculus competitor but for industry applications. I'm confident that consumer-grade AR/VR for anything but enthusiasts is at least a couple of device generations away.

AR is essentially in beta. There are no consumer-oriented products and the improvements between generations are huge. Much, much too early to say it has failed.

There are plenty of consumer-oriented products if you count the average phone. iOS and Android have both made big plays around AR. While it's not "goggles AR", it's also seeing a slow but steady adoption by consumers in the boring, but still important to AR handheld way.

You'll see people randomly using the measurement tools and other "boring" AR utilities all the time now, and then there are games like Ingress, Pokémon Go, and the soon to be released Harry Potter AR game, which all have rather large consumer adoption.

AR is getting so prevalent it's already "boring" or just a part of the user experience for consumers. What that means for eventual adoption of "goggles AR" for consumers is an interesting question. It's probably going to come down to form factor preferences and how many people want their main computing device to be in their pocket versus worn on their head, or how easy it is for the device to "flex" between roles as interest/necessary.

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