I bought those AR cycling glasses that were on HN last month
painandcycling.com
painandcycling.com
He runs and backpacks more in one year than many people do in their lifetimes, which means he gets to observe deterioration quickly, and develop + test opinions very rapidly. Through his blog and reviews, he’s changed my mind on a lot of things that I wouldn’t have questioned otherwise.
The twin “appeals to authority” of experience and conscientiousness, when plainly genuine, are a deservedly powerful thing.
This product reminds me of portable mp3 CD players with anti-skip technology.
It was _good_ but it was missing the mark in so many ways and about to be obliterated by iPod.
I think Engo has a chance to win though, at least for a while. They could release v2 next year with improved hardware and a slightly lower price and cyclists would eat it up.
Meanwhile, Apple is going to release their AR glasses but I don't think the initial version will be rugged enough for sports use. And I imagine they'll be MUCH more than $300.
I know people who choose Garmin watches for those two reasons so they may have picked the right market to address with that compatibility.
> I imagine they'll be MUCH more than $300.
I am guessing they will be priced around $2500-3000.
If that’s the case, the glasses would avoid what would already have been a theoretical $2k Apple monitor. [1]
Given these will also likely offer AR and access to apps and experiences monitors will not, I easily see the price crossing into the 3k territory.
What I’m wondering is if they will integrate audio or it will pair with AirPods. And if they will use motion data from Watch off the bat.
I’m guessing they will pair w airpods and watch. This would push the total cost of the complete system toward the $4k mark depending on what Watch / airpods are used.
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/why-are-5k-monitors-so-...
I’ll be super disappointed if they start trying to charge a monthly sub for their fitness watches.
You shoot through the glasses? At CastAR we shot all our demo through real hardware and I believe Tilt5 is too.
Those bigger cameras used by the press worked fine too even without a jig.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838500
And then rip off other people's work without giving them any credit in your patents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838443
And then sexually harass the very women you employed to solve the endemic "pink/blue problem" and fix the nepotistic sexist bro culture, and rebuff and ignore her advice, and pay her off to keep their mouth shut when she sues you for sexual harassment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838421
And then give the entire AR industry a bad name by not delivering on your outrageously hyped promises, while burning through BILLIONS of dollars and fucking over your foolishly gullible investors.
You could try it by using a DSLR on a stand (stack of books?) hold up the glasses (by hand or whatever), try draping a black cloth over camera and glasses (no elastic or anything, just the cloth — you’re trying to be realistic). See how it looks, and if it looks realistic.
Having seen pictures and then experiencing AR myself (just HoloLens) I feel like honest photoshopping is probably the best we can do. But then that doesn't take into account the actual two-eye experience (maybe even more important in a monocular display), and the effect of movement.
I was doing a little user study recently where I was using HoloLens and the researcher was watching the streaming view. I felt like I had to keep explaining what I was really seeing because the stream felt so inaccurate.
How can you use an image to show the displayed image intersecting or displaying behind a real object? A stereoscopic capture might help, but seeing how things react to head movement is a big part of visual understanding. A short stereoscopic video might give some of that, and yet there is still a difference between watching that video and being the person that moves their head to interrogate the environment.
I sweat an unbelievable amount. This is sorta incredible. But I'm absolutely intrigued despite this. Would definitely need Garmin integration!
What are my hardware options? I'm able to write to any SDK they give, but preferably I'd just ping a website as http or websocket and show the stuff on glasses.
Personally I would find it preferable if I was talking directly to the glasses and did not have to use any cloud service.
Isn't a watch app enough? With some way of telling it to beep when numbers go beyond some threshold?
to me, listening to a podcast while driving is probably augmented reality, and that has nothing to do with driving or the route I'm taking.
this does augment the activity intended.
Less controversially, hearing aids and HDR goggles would also fit the bill.
> Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information
I agree in that there needs to be some interaction between real-world objects and virtual ones to be considered more than a simple HUD.
So, showing a billboard every 100m alongside the road showing your speed, heart rate, etc would be AR (and yes, a hud seems better option for this kind of thing)
At least not in a world marketers haven't completely taken over, where words still have meaning.
Tolkien could have just as easily be writing about today's internet and its disinformation epidemic.
The optics for these things in particular are almost never in the actual lenses, so for AR gadgets you can usually just pop them out and replace them, if you've got a way to source compatible lenses.
[1] https://lcdscreenmfg.com/product/0-39inch-micro-oled-display...
It’s not really useful for checking while riding though, it’s more along the lines of a data logger. Might be a bit different with a mount for the phone, but I avoid having visible elevtronics while riding.
Also, over the course of a marathon, with my phone GPS, the distance has been up to a mile off. For my last marathon, my watch (w/o Bluetooth on) was only 0.1 miles off.
I’m not sure how much of a problem this is for cycling, given the differences in speed and distance, but for running, it can be quite the problem.
Note: I have the cellular Apple Watch, but I don’t think it uses A-GPS.
The phone and iPad will generally show the path I take relatively accurately, including side of the road, and In some cases lane positioning.
The few times I’ve used the watch on its own(for walks), it’s been significantly worse, with paths going off through nearby houses. Either the frequency of locations is lower, or the accuracy is worse.
I probably wouldn’t get another watch after living with one for a few months. The heart rate is interesting, the apple pay is nice but not that much better than the phone, and sleep tracking is iffy.
This may change if I can get good haptic way finding working, but that’s going to be a Project.
I didn’t really notice the difference and accepted the low GPS quality from my phone until I got the newer watch with the cellular chip. Then I could go for runs with music and GPS without my phone. The difference was amazing. The newer generations of watch are much better. And cellular was better then GPS only, ironically. YMMV - I think a lot depends on where you are and the towers that are nearby.
That said — I’ve also considered just flipping to a Garmin watch. The battery life in my Apple watch isn’t enough to get me through a marathon, tracking GPS while also listening to music (I’m not fast, so ~ 4 hours).
That might explain one of my rides having a spurious "cliff climb" where the altitude went bonkers.
That being said, I lost interest in Strava when they killed the Bluetooth integration with my Wahoo TICKR. That was just another of the incessant reminders of why I can't trust tech companies anymore.
None of the data the glasses display, except for power, are of any real value to the degree that you need to see them constantly. Heartrate is pretty worthless, and I actually often make a point of NOT looking at distance, like on a longer ride - it can make the ride feel like it's dragging out. Especially with an out-in-front computer mount which are very common these days, glancing down at your bike computer really isn't much of a hassle at all.
Consider spending money on things that will make you more likely to ride, such as clothing for different weather conditions - or if by cycling you mean "for transportation", things that will increase the utility of your bike.
If you want really good mapping and routing, check out the Hammerhead Karoo head units, which run Android. Top-notch routing. The garmins are...OK. Garmin's definitely been far too cozy (little serious competition.)
RE Garmin — my first computer was a xoss g+, which was pretty good. And I recently switched to garmin edge 530 because I'm planning to get a power meter soon and I have to say I'm not a big fan — screen quality and navigation are kinda crapy for the amount of money they ask for it.
Heart rate, again, I find more useful for training, but in some cases can indicate fatigue that you may not actually feel in the moment.
It's very easy to make an honest video about what user will actually see, but these companies are not interested in that.
Many people believe that the functionality shown in these videos actually exist.
I agree they're expensive, especially since they aren't self contained like a typical bike head unit is. I keep comparing them to the Form swimming goggles - which are also AR. I feel those are totally worth it. But the Engo's are just a bit too expensive for what you get.
It was visible the whole time though, which was impassible. Like, I TRIED to shake these things off my head going over tree roots, lol
Just really doesn't seem that useful, and reminds me of all the "help cyclists navigate with LED displays" junk. I swear, it's like every industrial designer's right of passage to design some crap accessory to "help" cyclists!
Depending on the speed, or info I’d agree it’s bad for many situations.
But, basically there is an LED screen that brightly “projects” the display onto a mirror. This is, in turn, reflected onto the back of the glass of the glass. You look through it.
In practice, the display you see ends up appearing about 10 feet in front of you as free floating text. Logically, you know the text is actually less then an inch from your eyeball but that doesn’t change how it looks to you visually.
From the front, people looking at you can not tell you aren’t wearing normal glasses. There isn’t any glow or reflection.
The effect is even better with the swimming goggles. It looks like the bubbles (from exhaling) is in between you and the AR text.
Also images are so big that don't fit to my screen.
If it's hard to design (for me it is) just follow proven patterns. Like Medium's style with short lines.
The images are huge, I'll admit. Normally when I post on that site it's ride reports that are only read by my mother so it's heavily photo based. When writing this review I did think I should make a component for smaller images but, honestly, I wasn't expecting this many people to read it.
As for it being hard to design... yeah. This is just a free Jekyll template that I got and then pushed to GitHub Pages. At work I have the benefit of the UX department telling me what to change, lol