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Comment by ExitPlatosCave | Hacker News Reader

This changes everything!

I would find it interesting to see how a layer on top of reality would allow non-technical people to perform technical tasks.

For example I don't know a lot about car engines. I can imagine being guided through minor repairs by utilizing these types of overlays.

I can imagine this kind of overlay system also to provide a big boost in diagnosis for problems and systems such as car engines or even medical diagnosis.

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You basically described the Hololens concept from years ago. What changed? This feels like old territory and the excitement doesn’t feel justified.

Edited.

It's a HN guideline not to accuse others of shilling without evidence. (It's such a common pattern that it makes for boring reading, among other reasons.)

It a practice platform for when the tech catches up with the dream. Anyone who isn’t excited by augmented reality tech is just.... I dunno... bored of life?

Its also a great chance, to virtualize large swathes of the "non-touch" economy - and thus be another step stone to a carbon reduced world. No need for a plastic gnome on the front lawn, just place it. No need for birthday deco, just place it in virt, no need for other deco, just place it in virt. No need for a fancy car display, just use virt-hud, with a basic-backup.

> Anyone who isn’t excited by augmented reality tech is just.... I dunno... bored of life?

I want invisible technology, the one that does everything and I don’t have to interact with it.

I am waiting for AR lenses.

>Anyone who isn’t excited by augmented reality tech is just.... I dunno... bored of life?

lol isn't this just the most ironic claim? i'm not excited by augmented reality exactly because i'm not bored with life (i.e. unaugmented reality).

I’m not excited for AR at all. Conversely, I’m extremely excited for VR and have only become more so after getting my first headset (Quest 2 primarily used with SteamVR).

Possibly this is not a great analogy but if there was just one car company in the world for example Ford, I don't think cars would be as versatile or as commonly adopted.

Therefore I'm seeing any progress on the part of multiple companies signaling that this is more than just a one-off.

Another example would be the very early handheld iPad predecessors (Palm Pilot). Look like nothing was going to happen there. But after several failures it started to take hold.

> What changed?

Hololens price is $3,500 where as Quest 2 price is 300$. Quest 2 has the potential to become a mainstream device with that price.

Okay that's a perspective I can understand a little better. Making AR more accessible by using cheaper VR technology to implement it seems like a good reason to be interested.

I'm still not seeing the excitement as a consumer because the apps aren't there yet. From a development perspective it also just feels… iterative.

>I'm still not seeing the excitement as a consumer because the apps aren't there yet.

Why would the apps ever be there if the hardware isn't? Wouldn't that statement be like complaining "the apps aren't there yet" for the iPhone 1 or Android launch? We know how that movie plays out.

>From a development perspective it also just feels… iterative.

But "iterative" is generally by far the most important part of technical success where mainstream adoption is required to get the most out of it. Nobody builds Rome in a day, it takes years reaching a critical mass of iterative improvements.

Incrementalism is the name of the game.

Cheaper, better devices... about an order of magnitude here. A larger user base, by more than that. A better understanding of UX paradigms. ETC.

The majority of successful products of the last generation were conceptualized and attempted during the dotcom, circa 95-00. Smartphones, social media, online dating, ecommerce, travel, cloud computing.... The user base, infrastructure, technology, culture and such just weren't there yet.

If you wrote off everything that was attempted but failed to catch fire in the 90s, you would have written off almost every tech product created since.

I’m a fan of the potential of these technologies, but I’m guessing that sadly FB’s subsidised/closed VR/AR systems will have a ‘hidden’ (& frankly creepy) cost that is unfortunately characteristic of their business model: https://itif.org/publications/2021/03/04/balancing-user-priv... https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/publications/reimagining-... https://www.reedsmith.com/-/media/files/perspectives/2017/06... [pdf]

Fundamentally different devices.

The Hololens is a waveguide display with a very small FOV. It's also 10x the price.

Hololens (and most other AR headsets) is an additive display on a transparent waveguide. The Quest2 is passthrough video on a full face LCD.

The display technologies are fundamentally different. HL is additive so you can't show blacks. You have to make due with tricking the eye with grays. Its a lot harder to get realistic lighting on objects. The FOV on the Quest2 is much better.

The Quest2 is a couple SOC generations ahead of the HL2.

The Quest2 has a much bigger install base.

The Quest2 is 1/10th the price.

I find it hard to imagine to use the current bw only and grainy cameras of e.g. the quest 2 for such tasks, it really doesnt feel natural. But might be easy to improve this in future generation hardware

Feels like a test. I think it’s a solid bet Quest 3 will have better cameras!

I'm sure they chose the ones used for better CV tracking & properties, especially in low light etc, but could be easy to add a pair of true-color ones, especially for passthrough. Just checked again and the main issue IMO currently is the low framerate / blur when using it. The movement of the hands e.g. is quite uncomfortable this way.

It works if the "AR" is just using the real world as a kind of backdrop and not the main visual elememt.

If you are using it the other way around as a kind of real world view with only a few AR elements on top it gets old pretty quicklY

It’s hard to see why VR headsets with pass-through would win out over AR headsets (like the Hololens) in the long term for such uses. But I suppose if you need something right now, VR would be more available and cheaper.

AFAIK, AR headsets are still additive displays, ie. no way of displaying black. That’s the only advantage I see in using VR headsets for AR

Also waveguides have other limitations, like image fidelity, FoV, needing darker environments and significant display artifacts.

One reason is that with hololens / magic leap you can’t create black. The display is like a ‘screen’ layer in photoshop and can only add additional light, so you can’t get great contrast and anything you add to the scene has a ghost-like quality.

All those demos you’ve seen of AR glasses making screens on a wall are faked. Magic leap paid a special effects house to make a lot of their ‘real’ demos.

Also - field of view. Magic leap has an AWFUL field of view.

I think it's interesting to think about adding elements to what we experience in reality via AR.

Versus importing elements from reality into a VR experience.

Based on your comments I would say one of the big advantages of importing from reality into VR would be to be able to move around without colliding into physical objects in the real world.

That would be really cool. Like a game that had virtual objects but in the same places as the physical world, but hey don’t need to be the same thing.

Long term I think the idea of a computer almost permanently between us and our number one most trusted sensory organ is a fast recipe for Utopia / Dystopia.

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