Hacker News Reader

> The giant touch screen panel in a Tesla is the main reason I would never get one.

For me, the interesting part about owing a Tesla is the realization of just how badly designed traditional cars are. Dedicated tactile controls are better in an automotive context for fiddling while driving, and the Model 3 implements almost everything necessary while driving as physical controls.

The two things that I fiddle with while driving that don't have physical controls are the stereo and windshield wipers. The stereo has a physical volume and tracking controls, I don't think a physical interface for any other part of the stereo would be much better than the touch screen. Windshield wipers should have a physical interface, in the Model 3's auto mode is great 99% of the time but when it isn't it's too hard to manually adjust and when you need to adjust wipers is precisely the wrong time to be fiddling.

I actually want every single thing as a button, knob, slider or a toggle. All 80 of them. I understand that I am in the minority, just stating my personal opinion.

I don't think people realize how amazing it would be to flip off a clunking toggle switch to turn on Bluetooth.

It is fricking glorious. IMO, hardware controls > software controls. Big time and $$$.

All monitors today have no dedicated buttons for switching input sources. Instead we have a d-pad nipple that takes 20 seconds to pop up a menu, then dig into the menu shortcuts (thank god!) and then having to select input source.

Humans have regressed hard in last 30 years in terms of UX/UI.

The BENQ monitor I bought a few years ago had capacitive buttons. It started flickering and the warranty replacement was a newer model. I was happy to see that they had switched back to physical buttons.

That said, the OSD interface has nothing on the decade-old Dell that sits next to it, which even has the option to flip the interface for ease of use in portrait mode which is how I have it set up.

I don't know, I think the controls [0] on my car (VW Golf 2017, <20k new) are pretty close to perfection.

Physical buttons or dials for everything except for infotainment settings, but minimal with no clutter. Steering wheel input for cruise control/audio/wipers and the heads up display, while the climate controls are dead simple and easy to work without looking down. Infotainment has both touch and a context sensitive dial. Everything is grouped contextually and I never have to look away from the road.

I was especially impressed that a single dial (left, next to the lights) dims _every_ light in the entire cabin to the same brightness, across many different subsystems. Great design shields the driver from the complexity of the system.

[0]: https://i.imgur.com/wiqfh1w.jpg

That's a beautiful UI for a car, I also love BMWs (E90-F30) models before the latest 2019 redesign. 2012-2019 BMW 3 series is a perfection in UI design IMO.

The car I drive has the same problem as that image: undifferentiated buttons to control the AC. I want to turn on the windscreen defogger (or whatever it's called). Now which button is it, oops, now I have to look down cause I can't remember nor can I locate it by touch if I did.

On the golf it's not a button but a dial (furthest right).

I leave it on Defog most of the time (straight up) and change from there without needing to look. If I'm unsure a quick glance tells me the angle and I can make the adjustment without having my eyes on it.

Over the last couple of years, I found the combination of physical controls for driving-essential functions and voice control (e.g. CarPlay; I don't like the manufacturer solutions as much) for convenience functions quite effective.

My Samsung 3D television was awesome for playing PC video games on. The big downside was that playing PC games on a large television wasn't the most ergonomic experience. (And for movies, none of the streaming services offer 3D content.)

I wish smaller 3D computer monitors had caught on. At least VR headsets are still going strong and are even more immersive.

Actually there's at least one streaming service that does 3D: Vudu. https://www.vudu.com/content/movies/movieslist?FEATURE=3D

I have no experience with their 3d, only their HD (they call it HDX because marketing) which is perfectly fine for a streaming service.

Xfininty used to have 3d on demand as well. I have a 3d tv from 2012 and love it. It also has an interesting feature where it can interpolate 2d => 3d which depending on the content works very well, or is a complete mess.

I have used Vudu for 3D streaming and it worked perfectly.

Unfortunately, not every device supports Vudu's 3D!

The important ones, PS3 and PS4, do however.

They are both cool for short term use, but I've yet to see a shutter glass/etc implementation that is synced well enough to the screen and blocks 100% of the light to avoid ghosting.

VR googles have their own issues, because the lenses never seem to be perfectly in focus, and the resolution isn't high enough directly into the glasses.

In both cases you can choose to ignore the problems for a while, but at least in my case the eye strain builds up enough I doubt I could deal with it for even 4 hours a day on a regular basis.

> They are both cool for short term use, but I've yet to see a shutter glass/etc implementation that is synced well enough to the screen and blocks 100% of the light to avoid ghosting.

I've never seen this on a monitor/display either. But I have an Epson projector from 2013/2014 that uses shutter glasses and does block 100% of the opposite eyes image. Because it's not a screen, it doesn't have to blank the image between frames, it just completely stops sending light from that frame.

> Does anyone use their 3D glasses that used to ship with "3D TVs" circa 2013? My Samsung TV came with a pair of active 3D glasses that were collecting dust. On the other hand we've had adoption of touch screens on handheld devices, it almost swooped the entire mobile market between 2007-2012 after iPhone's introduction. But the same thing didn't happen with Keyboard + Mouse input on a desktop computer. Infact, the market just exploded with new mechanical keyboard aficionados sometime around 2010, I still remember hanging out on geekhack a decade ago and now mechanical keyboards are everywhere.

Glasses based 3D sucks. People who don't wear glasses don't want to wear glasses and find them unconfortable. People who do wear glasses don't want to wear two pairs of glasses and find it uncomfortable. Active shutter glasses give some people headaches from the flickering. If I could get perscription lenses with polarization for my TV's passive 3d, I might play with it... But I watched like one 3d blu-ray with the glasses and that's good enough for me. This display looks interesting because the viewer doesn't have to wear anything, but we'll see.

Touchscreens on mobile works because it's cheaper to build than a number pad, and way cheaper than a keyboard, it's cheaper to extend the touch screen so they don't use any real buttons on the front of most androids. The flexibility is helpful for text input.

A basic keyboard for a computer is $10 at retail because there is no size constraint making things expensive. Even a $10 keyboard has better user feedback than a touchscreen, but a computer sized touchscreen is going to cost more than $10. Plus, ergonomics. Touchpads could overtake mice, maybe, but desktop is being vastly overtaken by mobile, so it barely matters.

> Touchscreens on mobile works because it's cheaper to build than a number pad, and way cheaper than a keyboard, it's cheaper to extend the touch screen so they don't use any real buttons on the front of most androids. The flexibility is helpful for text input.

Consumers didn't flock to a more expensive phone (the iPhone in 2007) because it was cheaper to make (it wasn't). They did so because the touchscreen enabled new forms of interaction not yet possible, enabling full-screen games, photo viewing/shooting, and web browsing to name a few.

It was cheaper to make the iPhone with a touch screen, than it would have been to make it with a slide out keyboard. While the iPhone has a big market share in the US and a few other high income countries, touchscreen phones have taken over in almost all markets, even inexpensive phones, because they're cheaper to make, if you've already got a large enough screen and a fast enough processor in the phone for other reasons. You can still make a cost constrained phone where buttons is a better choice, but a cost constrained android isn't that much more expensive in absolute dollars, and provides so much more functionality so it only makes sense for the most cost constrained buyers, or those who eschew a smartphone for other reasons.

Biggest problem with TV 3D is the lack of content. If vast majority of content is not 3D, and the stuff that gets produced is usually done digitally and not through proper 3d cameras, it fizzles out as a gimmick.

This type of holographic display will have a similar issue, but it may be saved by the fact that it can be very impressive as a display in commercial uses.

Touchscreen just enabled another method of interacting with web and applications, method that was already present via use of mouses on PC. It did not depend on massive adoption by TV and movie industry with little benefit for them.

They have content - CT scan, Kinect and modern smartphones equipped with depth sensors.

Start with medical applications, expand to luxury video chats. Screen is only part of technology - it requires beefy GeForce RTX 2080 TI. Or, looking from another perspective, some potential customers already own $1500 worth of required equipment. Regular 8k displays are no cheap either.

Notebooks and smartphones had a long run before universal success. Lets see in ten years.

>Another thing is that people don't take ergonomics into account. Pretty much any sci-fi movie has people moving their arms about to interact with content. That would never take off in real life.

Why do you believe this to be the case? I've been having a blast with the (fully wireless) Oculus Quest, especially games like Racket NX which involve constant swinging of arms (you're playing tennis, basically).

I think people haven’t really updated their opinion of VR since the Quest came on the scene. VR will almost certainly never be as big as Mobile is now. But the Quest is a fantastic experience and lives well past the point where VR novelty has worn off. It’s the social experience and portability that does it. Sports, as you say, in particular are good here. I’ve been playing Echo Arena for a few weeks, now, and far from the novelty wearing off, I’m actually enjoying it more and more. Maybe it has something to do with the sense of presence and—dare I say—intimacy you get playing a multiplayer contact team sport when we’re all supposed to be self-isolating.

The main, enduring dimension VR adds to gaming IMHO is physical exertion (and this aspect is only really engaging with a standing experience... and then only enjoyable if wireless). I feel much better physically after the light exercise of half an hour of Quest gaming than I do after half an hour playing some PC first person shooter.

> Does anyone use their 3D glasses that used to ship with "3D TVs" circa 2013?

No, but I still do use them on my projector. It seems that 3D became pretty popular with the home theater market, who buys more expensive technology than average consumers. This is why most good projectors these days still support 3D, while almost all regular TV's do not.

Are there aftermarket glasses I can use with my 3D tv to improve the experience?

Yes, but it can only go so far. Only certain glasses are compatible with certain devices. The cheap Chinese glasses I bought for my projector are absolutely phenomenal though.

All of your examples seem to indicate products marketed to the consumer where it seems like Looking Glass is targeting the enterprise.

Google Glass sort of failed in the consumer sense but eventually has some adoption in the Enterprise space.

I work in high volume manufacturing factory. AR has literally become the buzzword cliche that keeps popping up over and over.

I have serious doubts about AR use in things like assembly instructions. Turns out, it is probably ok for training but if you do a task 30 times, your brain develops a memory for how to do it and you don't need to wear AR glasses. For maintenance techs, which is how Google Glass is marketed, it is too much of a hassle to put on the glasses, have a software team write the application and maintain it and then after spending $200k on this boondoggle AR project, what is the ROI? I really don't see it as of any value... maybe there is a positive ROI for airplane maintenance.

I am really not convinced. It looks like a solution in search of a problem. Are there any AR goggles used in manufacturing industry on a mass scale?

A friend of mine is developing https://www.firefightervr.de/ and they seem to be doing quite well using VR for training.

I can see why this would be useful than reading a 400 page instructions. This is simulation and it adds value during training.

As I said, there are edge cases where AR/VR makes a lot of sense. HUDs in fighter jets for example are tremendously useful. But my complain is mostly about people wanting to jam some new tech in, take on a lot of tech debt, spend $$$ in a fortune 500 company only to find that there is no real problem to be solved.

Should we spend $120k consulting with a software company to develop an iPad based checklist? Not to mention yearly maintenance of that codebase. Printed paper + pen works just fine in 90% of the cases for 99.99% less cost! You have to ask - how many people are going through this "old school" paper trail? 100? 1000? 10 million? I've seen AR in manufacturing roadmap slides where there are like 13 workers and they are all with 25+ years of experience and the management wants to do their AR boondoggle. Frustrating.

Glass was never a consumer product. It was only publicly released as a dev kit.

That thing is the natural continuation of 1960’s-era oscilloscopes. Those steeped in the industry find it familiar.

A bit puzzling that you criticize all from ancient knob proliferation to a single large flat screen. Only alternative is small screens with deep menus, it’s own he11.

What was wrong with every control having a dedicated button?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Iran_Air...

Nothing, as long as you have the space to put them somewhere sensible.

If you have just as many controls, you're faced with the same amount of mental space, and when that mental space no longer corresponds to physical space, seems like it just gets more difficult.

Those cockpits look intimidating to people who haven't been trained to fly those planes. But here's the thing, non-pilots can't fly glass cockpit planes either. The complexity is unavoidable.

To a certain level this is true and important when dealing with situations where someone making the wrong decision can have dire consequences. The comparison breaks down though when the added complexity only serves to increase the amount of control over processes which are meant to be accessible to casual users and experts alike, e.g. an audio-producing device offering a simple volume control to the casual user with an option to access a multi-band parametric equalizer to those who want or need to have more control over the device.

Modern oscilloscopes still are largely driven by buttons and knobs.

That's changing rapidly.

3D glasses were really cool actually to experience CGI in. It was actually possible to enjoy that content together in the living room unlike VR content when you are expected to sit in the same space with boxes on your head

> Unfortunately, people like Elon Musk are hell bent on horrible UI/UX depicted in their favorite sci-fi movies and shoehorning it into Space craft (dragon capsule has all touch screen interface with literally no buttons). Elon's vision about UI/UX is misguided through movies, it is embarrassing.

My, just today there was a piece about SpaceX I watched on the noon news and I noticed that as well. I was amazed, I refused to believe it was true until I looked it up. How could anyone possible think about touch-only interfaces and sci-fi aesthetics in such a critical piece of equipment. It's already preposterous (and dangerous) that they do it on cars, but in a space-ship! that's another level.

I am a big fan of 3D and still use my 3D TV. You can also view 3D blu rays in VR. That generation of technology wasn't great for a lot of people, or extended use, unfortunately.