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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

I was hoping that Apple would be making AR spectacles, and not a VR headset.

I was really excited by the possibilities of Google's Glass and really disappointed when they killed it off.

I want a HUD in my glasses. I want to read text messages and get navigation directions without having to look down at a screen.

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I used Google Glass in person for about 10 minutes, and after so much oh-ing and awing over the tech, for me it was pretty disappointing to experience. It felt like I was using a cheap Android system from 2012 overlayed onto reality and, uh, it wasn't that great. That being said, I only got to see a few basic apps in action, and maybe I didn't get the full tour of the hardware's abilities.

Personally, I think that VR will win out, even for AR applications (or maybe my semantics are incorrect). I can imagine a VR system that uses external cameras to mimic a person's natural field of view and overlays additional information in the process of displaying it. It seems like a more available route to a fully immersive "augmented reality" than the current glasses based prototypes.

> It felt like I was using a cheap Android system from 2012 overlayed onto reality and, uh, it wasn't that great.

Considering that Google Glass was created in 2013 with hardware smaller than a phone, thats actually exactly what they made! After Google Glass got canned, all of the talented engineers went to different projects. I assume their enterprise version is basically the same 2013 glass.

Judging any bleeding edge tech by its first prototype is not particularly useful. The point is not what Google Glass was, but what could've become with steady improvements.

VR cannot replace AR anytime soon due to some obvious safety issues. At the moment they are and will remain separate things IMO

You're looking for a Hololens 2 like device, maybe HL3 will get there. HL2 is quite good imho, I've browsed HN while drinking coffee on the balcony. It occludes based on the environment (i.e. you can't see objects through walls)

To get this you need outward facing cameras, which people will balk at for privacy.

Honestly, I think the bulk of the benefit of Google Glass can be had with a smartwatch. Its not like Glass was able to do any AR or scene detection.

That’s not true at all, off the top of my head there was:

-WordLens, which could translate and overlay text in different languages

-Star Chart, which overlayed the name of the star/planet/constellation you were looking at

-Don’t remember the name of the app, but it would tell you the color hex code of whatever you focused the lens on

Several others that I can’t think of. I agree that a smart watch overlaps in terms of notifications but the glass absolutely did AR and scene detection that put it on another level.

The display did not augment reality, it was simply a small display in your view. It also did not spatially scan but it did know your rough location and where north was.

It did things a smartphone could do but much worse. It's main advantage over a phone was that it was always on and didn't need a hand to hold it, which are key benefits of a smart watch.

Ok but if you are looking through that small display and you are seeing digital labels placed on real items that you are looking at, how is that not augmented reality?

Like I said, there’s definitely overlap but you’re way underselling some key features. Smartwatch also can’t take a photo of whatever you’re looking at simply by winking.

>how is that not augmented reality

Again, if that's how you want to define augmented reality then we already did it much better on phones.

A smart watch achieves the goal of a passive HUD better than Glass did.

Whats left is a head mounted camera and I don't find that very compelling. The tradeoff between wearing glasses and having a much worse camera vs not having to use your hands to shoot a photo was not good enough in that device.

I mean, you're free to like it. You have to admit that its not just me who thought Glass did not have enough compelling features. Hasn't the market spoken for Glass?

I wouldn’t say the market has spoken for glass. It was underpowered, expensive, and ahead of its time (not to mention stigmatized socially). Kinda like saying the market had spoken for the iPad because the Newton wasn’t successful.

I agree that a smartwatch is a better passive HUD (although it is not really “heads up”...), but there was certainly more functionality in the glass than passive HUD + head mounted camera.

I’m curious if you bought one?

>I’m curious if you bought one?

Indeed I did.

Yes, it'd be great if they could somehow solve all the engineering problems with AR headsets and bring something usable to market. It'd also be great if they could make batteries that are 10 times as energy dense and processors that don't produce waste heat.

They can make an amazing VR headset right now, a comparable AR headset is many many years if not decades away.

Google glass and some other products do this already. Although products like glass and Hololens (and Apples new headset, apparently) are all targeted at enterprise, not consumer, there's nothing stopping individuals from buying them

I myself heard those would be explicitly VR glasses, though transparent, but without any "mixed reality" type fluff.

with 8k in each eye and passthrough cameras these will probably feel like glasses.

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