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Comment by vunderba | Hacker News Reader

Although this is only tangential, the untapped potential for AR (once the price comes down) in education is absolutely fantastic.

Everything from:

- overlaying explanations, diagrams, realtime simulated current flows onto circuit boards as you are looking at them

- appliance / home repair

- juggling/sleight of hand - its significantly easier to learn these kinds of skills from a human (or in this case a virtual human) so that your angle is the same instead of a video where its reversed

- artistry - place a model of something in the center of your living room, and sketch on a canvas from it as you walk around it

And these are just a few things I came up with based on my own personal hobbies. Everyone who worships at the proverbial alter of Apollo will likely have their own wishlist.

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> Although this is only tangential, the untapped potential for AR (once the price comes down) in education is absolutely fantastic.

I'm highly, highly skeptical. There is a lot of evidence that people (especially children) learn much better through low tech approaches than higher tech ones (I'm pretty sure there was an article on HN recently comparing how kids learned when reading paper books compared to screens).

At that point if you can understand context and overlay relevant information, it’s not education, it’s augmentation.

As usual the answer is probably "it depends"

Old school pen and paper and physical books tap into tactile learning. Even writing on my tablet isn't as good as just scribbling on some scratch so I'm definitely team analogue.

But its hard to not get excited for the prospect of being able to bring stuff like the dinosaurs and space to life for kids.

AR wouldn't completely replace regular forms of learning but it does AUGMENT them very well. There are VR chemistry and anatomy programs that are amazing. Being able to scale a 3D model up and down in size is amazing.

Ya I would love to see the studies and know exactly how they are gauging such things. I can say that my children have learned all sorts of things they would have never learned without technology. I honestly think it more has to do with what they are pushed to do on said technology. Yes your kid watching 8 hours of prank videos is stupid. But I make mine watch things like how to draw and they draw along with it, they have improved so much as artists. I have loaded up videos on how to do certain math that I had forgotten over the years and they are able to see someone explain how to go through the steps. With out that they would be stuck waiting on the teacher and the limited time between all students.

Even something like obd2 readers is tech honestly. The other day I took my 8 year old out to my car as it was not running right. I showed him how to use the reader. Then showed that my car had a p0304 code. I told him that is a misfire cylinder 4. Then showed him how to open hood and where my coils are and how the car had 4 cylinders. Then explained why cars misfire and that often it can just be the coils so test those first. Explained how we could swap coil 3 and 4 and check the code again. We did that and when I plugged reader back in the code was now p0303. My kid immediately yelled the coil is bad! Because he knew that since the code moved when we moved the coil that is the problem. All that said I do think yes tech can absolutely be used to improve learning in some situations. The obd2 reader is a bit basic yes but if we had AR I can think of dozens or hundreds of applications we could make from it. If I could afford it I would use it with my kids.

Would be great to see some citations. I'm particularly interested to know the kind of tech we are talking about here. If it's PPT and the likes then I tend to agree. If we are talking about tools like geogebra [1] where students can manipulate and play around then I'll be extremely surprised.

[1] https://www.geogebra.org

It’s far more situational than that. Yes, ebooks by themselves aren’t as good as physical books, but there are plenty of studies showing positive effects of multimedia tools in various subjects.

I don’t think AR is going to teach kids to read, but augmenting instruction in things like the trades, sciences, and sports all seem likely to have strong benefits. Experiential educational opportunities like museums and historical sites also seem like likely targets.

A good analogue is video. Video can be a great tool in certain subjects- I still swear everything I know about protein synthesis is from a video in college- but it is generally used as an secondary rather than a primary tool.

The video is from the 1970s and protein synthesis is explained through interpretative dance and and poetry. Its truly amazing https://youtu.be/u9dhO0iCLww?si=lTO95vbysVTB6DLa

On top of that, someone needs to create the content. That's very expensive, and there's not a lot of return for it (in the school sector at least; there are undoubtedly specific higher education use cases that are warranted).

My school got a lot of computers from the "make poor areas great again" social programme. The teachers had no idea how to use them, and the computers went unused until we got a batch of new ones and the old ones were just recycled.

One teacher put the extra effort to actually use the equipment. The plan failed miserably. The core of the issue was that getting a bunch of teenagers to learn things they don't want to learn requires divine intervention, not a single underqualified teacher on a mission because all the qualified ones have better career options than working themselves to death for what amounts to one and a half minimum wages in a trenchcoat but no government will put serious investment into education because such projects span multiple elections.

I saw the unreal 5 engine demo the other day and it was showing the BMW digital twin and how they could select individual parts and remove them from the car. I thought how unreal would that be to be able to see exactly how you do mechanical work on your car before going out and doing it. This could be a huge learning advancement being able to visualize every singe component and digital tutorials on how to do it. Anyways check out the video I linked the time it shows the BMW https://youtu.be/WpnYqJsh-Dc?si=wHXz5A-pkOtGDDFV&t=392

You’d probably like to see JigSpace on the Vision Pro

https://youtu.be/Cw9_Ywnsdcw?si=pLT2uttXCDJEA3MX

> I thought how unreal would that be to be able to see exactly how you do mechanical work on your car before going out and doing it.

You don’t need augmented reality for that, Haynes manuals still exist, or you can just google it, there’s also stuff like Alldata…

IMHO simulations in VR&AR are overrated since they are extremely shallow, a simple video is good enough. I don't think that there's much value in deep diving into simulation graphics.

On the other hand, enhancing reality for enhanced awareness and data is something I think is very promising. We already do it all the time, putting light indicators or feeling the heat are things people are used to do to monitor and understand systems. Imagine how useful would be to integrate proper sensors and device connections? They are doing it for fighter pilots but why don't do it when we deal with any kind of machinery?

Certain sports also lend themselves incredibly well to it

Motorsport simulations and golf come to mind

Not just for leisure but a serious aspect of professional practice

Visually reinforcing the difference between a 0.1 second window for motorsport, or thumb sized threshold for a golf chip or putt, for example.

Who's going to do all this highly-detailed work and who's going to pay for it? I can imagine low-quality feints in this direction, but not the revolution you're describing.

I've not had a qualified technicoan pull out a manual ot diagram to fix an appliance even tough this scenario of AR for this usecase was one of the OGs in the 80s.

I once had to learn to juggle for a stage play. I could have sat though a hundred fancy presentations on how to do it, and fail abysmally as it is all about feeling and timing, things that are even sabotaged by AR latency.

Artistry? Now there's the real AR market. Not the Metropolitan paint stroker kind, but the one that usually ends in Hub.

You're not wrong, but that's a rather bleak outlook.

I can only speak anecdotally, but there have been dozens of times where I've had to fix something and I had to constantly go back-and-forth to a corresponding tech manual PDF scrolling up and down through hundreds of pages, makes AR very worthwhile to me.

For juggling I was referring to people who essentially can already juggle and want to learn new patterns. It's always going to be more difficult if you lack the requisite fundamental basic hand eye coordination and timing to be able to juggle at all.

The latency aspect is interesting, but if you've ever played or had any experience with video games, particularly rhythm games, such as DDR, you'll know that the human brain is highly adaptable and able to recognize and compensate for latency. Additionally, latency isn't really a thing in juggling where it's not necessarily about the split second reflexes, it's about pattern recognition, your hands are usually already in the approximate right place for the ball to fall into the hands.

I also think there's a great space for progressive desensitization to help treat phobias with AR since you can effectively conjure anything at any level of sensitivity.

I guess, as is almost always the case - those with inherent curiosity will be able to take full advantage of these types of tools. But I'd like to think that it might inspire people to try new things.

And honestly if pornography drives mass adoption which results in corresponding advancements and lowering the price, then I'm OK with that deal.

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