Apple Event: "view the AR experience" | Hacker News Reader

Apple Event: "view the AR experience"

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47 pointstosh43 comments

I don't see AR taking off any time soon, even if the "end state" success makes a lot of sense.

For those who haven't seen it, check out Mario Kart Home Circuit. You control a physical toy kart with your switch on a track arranged in your physical home. The kart has a camera on it. You watch the screen, not the kart, because the screen has a bunch of digital component happening too, like AI drivers and powerups. There's cool stuff like how picking up a digital mushroom results in a real world speed boost. It's super fun looking. Definitely just a toy, but I think this is closer to a successful model of AR than most of the stuff people have made so far. Looking at stuff through a phone like a window is a terrible UI. Glasses are hard to make comfy, fashionable, and practical. Nintendo's big brain moment here is that the AR parts aren't where you're physically looking and I think that's really clever.

I would 1000% agree with you had I not actually worn a Google Glass for a few weeks. Don't get me wrong -- there was so much wrong with it, but after a few days it was noticeable how freeing it was to not be looking down at my phone all the time (and I'm sure I've done that more and more since then). Even just a simple use-case where AR is used as a phone that you can wear on your head would be a significant leap forward. Again, if I hadn't tried it I would've sworn what I'm saying is nonsense, but ever since I gave it a go with the Glass I've just been yearning for the possibility of goggles-based phones, and good AR and a few other things are all that stand in the way of that

How do you see AR playing out in terms of the distraction factor? I find that having such easy access to a phone makes me so much more distracted, which in turn affects my ability to focus, to read, to be present. I’m really curious to see where AR goes but I’m also really getting into the whole screen/life balance thing.

I think AR is actually the key to this not being a distraction. The thing about glass is that the display was fixed in your field of view, so it had to at once be sorta tucked away in the corner AND also present all at once. Compelling AR could solve this in a very compelling way, where you can now pin fully digital things to your physical world, and deal with that "distraction" that way. For example, I'm watching a re-run of the Formula 1 race as background noise now on one of my monitors, but its taking real estate that could be used for working. With a really good AR phone solution, I could just pin it as a big screen TV on my wall. it'll at once be more present but less of a "distraction"

I'm conflicted, it's true that glass like products are less distracting yet the constant information overlay with life is probably gonna change things a lot.

I agree, but that's where AR can really shine. With glass, constantly having it in your face was the only option. With advanced AR, things could easily be pinned to the world to allow you far more control and greater context over what you see and when. I think it may prove to give us more control and freedom over these things, not less. On my phone, for instance, I have no choice but to watch something but also be bombarded with notification messages from all sorts of things I don't care about -- in an AR phone-like environment, you could more elegantly segregate these things, and ultimately potentially allow the user greater control over their consumption of content.

I kinda disagree. The simple notion that I'm near a connected modem alters my brain (I'm not exaggerating for once).

I guess I would ask if the things you're mentioning are AR, or are they just useful alerts in front of your eye. Does it require a camera?

I believe limited AR experience can be achieved right now with any modern smartphone. For example overlaying wine online prices and ratings. Another great app would be augmented map that shows house numbers and street names.

> Another great app would be augmented map that shows house numbers and street names.

That reminds me of an AR experience I thought would be nice: when you're interested in renting or buying a home, being able to walk around a neighborhood and see AR overlays with prices, stats, and interior photos of the available homes. Basically an AR version of Zillow, Redfin, etc.

It can be done. It's just not comfortable to do, not especially fast, and drains battery. The google translate app that lets you translate pictures of text is a cool example of this. Very cool, but I wasn't exactly inclined to pull it out every time I saw some text while traveling.

I don’t see for what audience that would be a great app.

The questions most, if not all, drivers want to answer are “Should I drive into this street?” and “Where should I stop?”.

Street names and house numbers only answer such questions indirectly. Arrows and a marker “target reached” answer them much better.

It's probably going to take off in cars. Mercedes is including AR features in the new S-class, which is generally where they test new tech before introducing it in their cheaper models. BMW and Audi will likely soon follow.

That's where AR will shine. Having AR built-in to every window in a car will allow everything from safer driving directions to targeted advertising and real time environment beautification. Random roadside billboards will be replaced with extremely relevant targeted ads(gas ads when you need gas) and sprawling homeless encampments will be transformed into beautiful make-believe landscapes according to preselected themes. Things like crash avoidance will become more interactive with preemptive crash avoidance maneuvers being displayed in the driver's normal field of view.

Sounds like a really cool product. Kind of surprised I haven't heard of it

I agree with you completely that too much of the AR industry is focused on the surface detail of AR being "graphics in your field of view". That can be a component of augmenting ones reality, but it's by far not the only way.

I mostly work on VR projects these days (I'm building a social meeting space for taking foreign language lessons in simulated iso-immersion scenarios), but previously I had done a lot of work in AR, specifically in industrial training scenarios. We had a really, really mediocre product until I went out on a limb and put a ton of effort into a voice interface in parallel to the normal graphical interface. It felt like the app "opened up".

It fit so naturally to be interacting with the application through audio, keeping your visual system and physical hands free for the repair job you were doing. It makes sense when I describe it that way, but there was a lot of push-back at the time against going out on any limbs like that (super-bad corporate culture).

I went out on another limb and dug up my old database app skills and integrated it with an ERP system another group in the company had been developing on top of SAP. Again, it felt like another gigantic leap for the application. It was no longer just this graphics demo of looking at an air compressor and seeing animations of blow-up deconstructions of it and became this whole system for querying information about the particular equipment you were looking at. I even mocked up ordering parts for the unit.

To me, the two takeaways were that just putting graphics in the FOV is putting the cart before the horse. If that's all you're doing with your AR app, no integration with real world data, no enhancement of physical capabilities, you're really just making a VR app. And a crappy one, at that, because you're running it in a form factor not meant for VR, either a really narrow-FOV AR headset like the HoloLens (where we originally started with the app, and what I thought was the most useful version), or an equally-narrow FOV iPad that you have to use both hands to hold (which we got pressured into doing by corporate, because... we had some kind of partnership with Apple and not Microsoft).

My app became a showcase piece within the company, on display at our corporate training center (it's a big place). I got laid off for "not being productive".

Really?

AR projected onto your Car's windshield is going to be amazing.

Many Tablet apps are really cool as well.

Car windshields are a good example. It works because you're already looking through the windshield.

I believe tablet apps may be cool. I don't think I believe they're especially successful.

Cars is probably a really good example. I think it would be interesting to be able to see the road I need to turn into or the building I'm looking for or what late I need to be in indicated in some subtle way (subtle so as to hopefully not cause an accident by stealing all my focus).

>I don't see AR taking off any time soon, even if the "end state" success makes a lot of sense.

Replacing (laptop) screens with glasses / virtual desktops would be a big ergonomic win and good start, it could improve existing workflows (enable desktop productivity on mobile).

AR/VR mainstream success is difficult because it doesn't really have mainstream predecessors in the real world like the iPhone had (phones, mp3 players, cameras) that made smartphones a nobrainer purchase. It's predecessors are actually laptops, tablets and computer monitors.

I think we tend to neglect senses other than sight when talking about AR. In my opinion, the Apple Watch (and other smartwatches) are AR devices; tapping my wrist to tell me to turn left is an example of AR behavior.

Touch is much easier than sight, smell, and taste. Sound is an interesting possibility. And yeah -- headphones are an AR device. If your headphones are capable of doing outside noise cancellation, it's not that much further to a set of headphones that can pick out crucial sound and augment appropriately. And of course the classic implementation is museum headphone tours...

I think AR already has taken of. Many modern cars have an AR display that combines a the view from a rear view camera with the projected trajectory of the car.

Some luxury cars have a heads-up display for night vision capabilities.

The best AR may be so subtle that people don’t even realize it is AR.

The kiddos like "The Hungry Caterpillar" but other than that I've not had a single use for AR.

Edit: Yet.

If you like me, don't know how to read a twitter thread:

- Someone found a link and a title that appears to point to an Apple event.

- There is a link to a 3D file: https://apple.com/105/media/us/apple-events/2020/4239dd5f-d9... INTER

- That file can somehow be viewed as AR, as recorded by another user: https://twitter.com/i/status/1303366736855486464

- The actual event is publicized here and not really mentioned in the thread: https://www.apple.com/apple-events/

> (Also neat, I didn't realize the Mac Preview app supported 3d models.)

I had the same pleasant surprise browsing through STL files for 3d printing; it's nice to be able to view them right in the finder.

Preview is one of macOS' best features, IMO. It's so simple and ubiquitous, but it can open practically anything and does a great job of it. Reading a PDF in it is buttery-smooth, you can even do a respectable amount of editing - both PDFs and images - directly within it. It's one of the last great examples of Just Works.

So true! Preview is one of those apps that Just Works™. I recently opened a PDF on a Windows 10 computer and was slightly shocked that a _web browser_ opened up to present the PDF. Being able to easily and quickly annotate a screen shots and photos for documentation is a huge boon, too.

Not to forget how easy it is to edit and annotate the screenshots using Preview in macOS.

I read that as "we are launching a new product and you will be able to see it in 3D at home as soon as it is announced" not "the product is AR". If the product were AR, they would not tell you to "experience" the _new_ AR with old AR (the .usdz file). It'd be like saying "use your SD TV to see how great this HD TV is".

AR will be a paradigm shift, and Apple has to be prepared to adapt its business model accordingly. People will demand significantly more UI/UX customization than with the iPhone, where, conversely, simplicity is demanded.

If I'm going to buy AR glasses that sit on my face all day long, I really don't want to be looking out at the world through a lowest-common-denominator window. Just like my choice of clothes or the stack of books on my bookshelf, my UI/UX has to thoroughly feel like it is a reflection of my preferences. I want every element to be customizable (at least Windows level of customization, but ideally Linux). Otherwise, I will depart the iOS ecosystem.

It does say iOS 12 though, is this old code done for that release and we are finding it out now? If I remember right there was an ARKit update along with iOS 12.

Probably minimum supported iOS version for the AR features.

Its official: https://www.apple.com/apple-events/

The logo looks like a devil fruit.

looks like maybe a twist on the Apple command key symbol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key#Origin_of_the_symb...

Looks like a 3D crossover between the Apple logo and the date of the event. (Click on the graphics on an iPhone or iPad, you‘ll be greeted by an augmented reality view of the logo you can move around.)

Worked on my iPod Touch.

Twitter link says 'this is not available to you'. Location: Romania if Twitter does geographic filtering now.

Weird...anyway, it's a short thread from someone pointing out that there is some AR code in the announcement of next week's Apple event.

If you pull up the events page[1] on a device that supports Universal Scene Description files (like an iOS device), and you tap/click the logo for next week's event, it launches an AR-enabled animation of the logo itself.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/apple-events/

Reload the page. I get that a lot. like every alternate tweet.

From India

Are you logged in? "Coincidentally" Twitter links fail to load for me in at least 50% of the time when I'm not logged in, at least the first time.

I don't even have a twitter account any more, I think. Made one and never used it, and at some point i saw that they're purging inactive accounts so it must be gone.

I'm sure I can live without thread anyway :)

Slightly superfluous 3D AR animation, wonder if this points to new AR hardware (e.g. LiDAR on iPhone Pro)?

Given the social effects of the past two decades of computing, I don't see how anyone could think AR is a good idea.

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