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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

I think your last sentence is perhaps the most important - timing the "Toys to Big Thing" transition is really hard and leaves a lot of dead companies in its wake. For example, at some point in the future, VR and AR will probably be in this category, but who knows how long it will actually take (basically-modern VR has been around since the 80s!) or what will cause the shift. Meanwhile, VR has left a decades-long trail of dead plans/businesses and AR seems to be doing the same.

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Augmented reality is a great example. Everyone knows that it will become a "Big Thing" in the future. Like why would smartphones be the final form factor of personal computing? Of course there will be something that will dethrone it.

But despite every big company throwing a couple billions at the problem for the last few years (Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of oculus, Google's $500 million investment into Magic Leap, Apple's acquisition of Metaio/ARkit, Microsoft Hololens), all we have are literal toys!

So now you can't talk about AR as a serious subject anymore. People all dismiss it, saying we are still too early. I imagine it's like that for every "toy to big thing" transition.

Remember the PC revolution.

Altair was a toy. Atari 2600 was a toy. TRS-80, Sinclair Spectrum, Apple II — all toys. Amiga was almost not a toy, and Aople Macintosh and IBM PC were mostly not toys anymore.

From there on, businesses started to use massive amounts of PCs, thanks to killer apps like word processors and spreadsheets.

Prices fell, home users took note, and a real explosion began.

It took mere 20 years, say, from 1980 to 2000.

In that 20 years the hardware and software exponentially grew in capacity and decreased greatly in cost. Computers turned into something you’d want in your pocket once they could be unobtrusive enough to be tolerable with you all day.

On that note, who knows what would AR require in order to take off. It probably needs to be something you can get 80% of the killer features without wearing glasses. It also needs to support whatever frames glass wearers want to wear. It might require actual visual implants as I don’t think there’s a way to turn a contact lens into a display.

I've read about contact lenses that used super—tiny LEDs to produce a focused overlay image in the eye.

It of course had a large external induction coil to power it, and very low resolution.

I think there’s a very good chance the smartphone will be the dominant form factor essentially forever. Anything smaller won’t be good for presenting visual information, and when you don’t need it, it isn’t stuck to your face.

Alternatively taking a long view, how many times do you think the dominant form factor of personal computers (in the general sense, including smart phones) will change? Another 3 times, another 5? Every 20 years forever?

The only exception I can think of is a direct neural link, but that’s generations away and even then I’m not entirely convinced. Maybe in the very long term.

> You could use glasses, but not everyone wants to wear them.

What about contact lenses?

Contact lenses are a pita. I suspect it's going to be a smartphone-like form factor combined with a voice UI similar to the movie Her from 2013. Eventually the visuals on the phone screen will be replaced with a neural link. It would make sense if the implant is just a dumb antenna, combined with a removable "earbud" that connects it to the computing device.

We have not conceived useful applications that actually require AR yet. It has to be something requiring immediate feedback - maybe driving a car or piloting a similar vehicle would be such application. Maybe stock market. Or something entirely unforseen, like data analysis or warehousing - using human intelligence better?

Voice is much too slow, as is listening - might as well use the current devices at those speeds.

Computers started with bookkeeping and mass production control. It took quite some time for them to penetrate office market or to (partially) replace the previously used communication tools.

Yes because contacts are an absolute pleasure in comparison to glasses.

You're thinking very small-picture here. Contacts can be improved upon somewhat if we have the technology to make them into full AR screens.

As could glasses, starting with how they're kept on your head and the weight. Just look at how far VR helmets have come, or skiing goggles. There's more that can be done still, but not enough pressure to do it.

Are you being sarcastic? I've been wearing contacts and glasses for nearly 40 years. Contacts are absolutely an absolute pleasure compared to glasses. I only wear glasses when I absolutely have to (i.e., right after I take out my contacts until I have to go to sleep at night and vice versa in the morning). For instance, I hate working out in glasses. They get all foggy and start slipping down my face from the sweat. Doing high intensity sprints in glasses is the worst.

Yes, this is correct.

I don't see how that could physically work. To present a high fidelity bright, clear display has irreducible base power requirements, and I don't see any way to provision that amount of energy in the form factor. Signal reception would also be a problem, and then there's the issue of dealing with thermal losses. Thermodynamics is not our friend, especially for powered devices in physical contact with our eyeballs.

You can't readily "disengage" from contact lenses. Imagine getting hacked and somebody beaming shockporn onto your vision.

I, for one, do not know that AR will become a "Big Thing". It is fine for some applications, but not enough to be Big.

ehhhhh I would disagree with your statement that "basically-modern VR has been around since the 80s." It really seems like this phase of VR really began with the release of the Oculus Rift DK1. Sure there had been earlier prototypes floating around, but they weren't taken seriously.

The game changer between the 80's VR and 10's VR is basically the smartphone. In the old days, folks were hooking up big bulky CRTs to their face. Now we have cheap flat panel displays as a commodity.

But there are still more technical problems to solve before the killer application and corresponding headset will be cheap, useful, and lightweight enough for mass adoption.

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