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Comment by astrange | Hacker News Reader

Eh, I just mean it's hard to do AR if you're getting paint on the AR camera. I guess you could just keep swapping protective covers.

Although it might not matter - even cracks on a camera lens affect the picture less than you'd think, because they're out of focus.

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Or just wipe it off.

I saw a video of some sort of motocross meet (not familiar with it) and apparently the visors become completely covered with mud, so riders start the race with several clear plastic strips on the visor and they tear one layer off off as needed. (A comment was made that motocross meets are littered with the debris). Probably wouldn’t need to be so dramatic here.

As an alternative - would a headset lite version without the AR work better here? Display needed information on a nearby tablet or large tv while the user wears a headband only.

This is also done in auto racing, particularly endurance racing where you might pick up 4+ hours of bugs and debris on the windshield over a driver stint.

The windshield has a stack of huge stickers on it that get torn away by the pit crew during stops. Apparently you can get stacks up to about 20 layers.

Seems like a reasonable possibility for messy AR applications.

Of course, you have the "pit crew" do this for a reason. Whatever is getting those dirty is likely getting the driver/operator dirty, as well...

I assume some of the things you'd want to wipe off need cleaning agents that would also remove the anti-fingerprint coating. Which I'm assuming exists.

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