Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

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Sure, but that's still all just UI. You can build all of those things on a 2D screen. If you build a Unity 3D app, you get to choose to build for whatever platform if it's Windows or Android or VR rig. In fact, I have done the 3d furniture simulator thing for a furniture retailer but it was all just done on screens. I've also done a load of work in AR with both handheld and headset devices. We had clients who desperately wanted a cool AR experience and we spent many weeks and months brainstorming things we could do and really just came up with fluff. We looked at everything in the market, talked to manufacturers, did some experiments with users. Nobody came up with anything compelling. We built some cool novelty experiences, but nothing anyone would pay money for. I can believe that a massive (and it has to be like 10X current gen) improvement in resolution and refresh rate will make the experience smooth enough to be a complimentary technology for some niches.

A smartphone is merely a dumbphone with better UI. Look how transformative that was.

None of these things are achievable in the same way with a 2D screen because by definition a 2D screen lacks the ability to literally display along the Z axis. Our minds perceive in 3D, not 2D. A 2D screen literally provides less information about distance and location to the senses. Moreover, a 2D screen has a complete inability to create the feeling of presence, something that is new to AR/VR.

Actually, to act as if the feeling of presence is not new, despite you apparently having used a headset, seems bizarre to the point of incomprehensibility. Use VR porn and tell me that’s not a completely new, compelling experience. I’m addicted to it — it’s like I’m literally having sex. Honestly, your rejection of presence as revolutionary means I don’t actually think it’s possible to get anywhere with this discussion.

Lastly, your difficulties developing something compelling with AR is not a sufficient argument that nothing compelling can ever be achieved with it.

I'll add to this that having subtitles next to the person one is speaking to is completely transformative for hearing-impaired people. The only way you could replicate this with a 2D screen is by having them either (a) avert eye contact to look down at a phone, which prevents them from being engaged with the person, or (b) hold up a phone camera to someone's face, which is obviously significantly more cumbersome and socially awkward than wearing some glasses (and please try to imagine the future of AR headsets that are becoming increasingly compact like sunglasses, not a bulky existing Hololens headset).

So, take that idea. It's not a novelty experience. It's not fluff. It significantly improves the lives of hearing-impaired people.

Did you even come up with this idea? If so, why were you not able to create it? Have you considered that perhaps it was due to the fact that something like this is extremely difficult to develop and can't be done by a regular team over a period of 'months'? Have you considered that AR/VR isn't just going to be made transformative within a <1 year time period of you getting your hands on it?

On the other hand, if you didn't even come up with such a practically beneficial idea as this (or were unable to see how life-changingly useful it'd be for the hearing-impaired), then the issue with all of your ideas being "fluff" was not due to the technology at hand.

This even sparks my imagination further. Right now, if someone yells at a hearing-impaired person from behind, they have no immediate way of knowing (any phone-based solution is not going to give quick information about the direction of the yell when it's in-pocket). On the other hand, an AR headset will be able to immediately inform that person that a loud voice has come from exactly the direction it is pointing to, because it can literally show an arrow in their visual sight. That is so goddamn exciting and useful. And I simply can't comprehend how you cannot see it.

Believe it or not, overlayed closed captions was one the first things I came up with. It's also not that hard to do with commodity voice and face recognition. We did a POC just on a 2d phone screen in like a week. Trying to capture multiple people speaking at once is way beyond the capability of any retail headset and would require an elaborate 3d microphone array and noise filtering to pinpoint where a voice is coming from. Ours worked pretty well sitting across a table, but would struggle mightily trying to hear something across any distance in a noisy room.

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