Think Twice Before Buying or Using Meta's Ray-Bans

eff.org

19 points·hn_acker··5 comments

Think twice before you start building AR/VR wearables. I never understand the obsession of people thinking AR/VR interface is the future. They are fun for certain cases like games and movies, but they offer the worst UX to interact with the digital world (Probably the worst in the history of digital devices). The gesture navigation will never meet the level of convenience and precision that mouse and touch screen interfaces offer.

I thought the AR UI in "Rainbow's End"[1] made more sense than hand gestures: with digital clothing, all of our movements become controls. And we each train our inputs according to our own slight tweaks and movements. Also, pretty sure this book was a big impetus for Google, Meta, etc to get started with AR, drones, and self-driving cars.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End_(Vinge_novel)

They're a perpetual zombie sci-fi product category like flying cars.

The obsession may be a memetic contagion of utopian, cult-like thinking.

In reality, there are few real use-cases for VR and AR hasn't (yet?) but hasn't been made practical enough to overcome their limitations. Both AR and VR devices are still generally unwieldy and impractical even with the latest generation of miniaturization. Modern VR still generally takes over complete visual input (with a few pass through options) and typically has to be used in a static, controlled environment.

Think Twice Before Using Meta

Whoa, easy there, EFF. Let's begin with "think" and build from that.

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