Meta unveils next version of augmented reality glasses for $3k
spaceglasses.com
spaceglasses.com
Your use-case for AR is a ghostly 5FPS replica of my laptop or phone that I can vaguely gesture at? Tracing in the air to lathe a rocket hull will bring me closer to the world? Meta has access to non-rendered pages of app icons inside the iOS sandbox? "ROCKET COMPLETED"? "500+ Meta Applications in development"?
They say this is real footage, and have a big red "BUY NOW" button. What target audience is this supposed to convince?
[1]best guess
I found this early demo based on the Oculus Rift to be a bit more promising, even though it's currently far, far rougher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA
That Oculus demo looks great! See, there's an honest video you can actually believe. Promising for sure.
It's more likely that immersion will be broken by perceptible latency.
This _really_ bugs me. It's pretty clear that the UI is simulated footage _maybe_ recorded through some strange projection system, so that they can claim it is real -- but only by a technicality.
It's one thing to promise a delivery date based on a simulated product, that could be passed off as wishful thinking. To claim that something is real footage, under a technicality, is dishonest. It's especially sad, coming from a YC company.
Id love to be proven wrong, but as this clearly isn't real footage, lets see what comes out of it.
If the price drops enough: Dennō Coil.
I'm on a Retina 15" MBP – a laptop that their target demographic will be using – and I can barely make it through the site to try to piece together information about their product.
Am I supposed to scrounge up an external mouse with a scroll wheel and be impressed by the CSS3 transitions? I'm seeing this more and more and I'm really confused how something like this makes it through QA.
I've seen weird scrolling used reasonably well when most of the content is text, but in this case it really should just be a video.
Stop doing this, people. It's a horrible idea.
Hopefully they're less tolerant of poor framerates in their actual product, which sounds very exciting.
My attention is directed toward the Oculus Rift. I own the dev kit and have been following Oculus VR closely. Save your VR/AR gadget money for their consumer release if you want something that lives up to the hype and delivers on its promises.
Anyways, that was a crazy ship date they were never going to meet, even if their CAD had been completely 100% finalized and locked, it would have taken them that long just to make the tooling, let alone manufacture a run of parts. Maybe next time they hire 25 people at least one of them should know manufacturing.
They were crazy to announce such an early ship date. Maybe none of those 25 people know about manufacturing...
Apple's genius in their early iphone commercials was showing the product as it was seamlessly integrated into our daily lives.(1)
Email, video, maps, real internet on the go. As soon as you saw the commercial you knew you were going to buy one because you knew how it would benefit you.
I have yet to have that sort of connection with any sort of wearable AR device.
If the device was only a few hundred dollars to purchase then the marketing video might have had some merit. But at 3k, you're selling to people who want to know how it really performs, and what technical trickery Mann might have introduced to make it an exciting human-machine interface.
I ask because it seems contrary to the importance of solving a problem. With SpaceGlasses, the users run around deciding how the product can enrich their lives. Seems pretty odd.
I've found that with lots of successful tech products, I've been able to pretty quickly see the how I could use it in my everyday life. The iPhone is the classic example, but even search, email, Facebook. I don't really see that here. I'm pretty young though, so my experience is really limited. Also, I realize my personal experience doesn't make for a very strong argument. Still, it's a pretty terrible pitch.
Does this mean 1280x720 for each display, or combined? That's a bit vague. Still, this is quite neat; the resolution was what made me not back their first Kickstarter. Maybe this is worth throwing a couple grand into, to see what comes out.
They're going to have to show much less marketing hype and much more practical use. Especially for a $3000 pre-order.
(Don't get me wrong -- they look cool and I'd love to try it out. And there might be a business, here. But it reminds me of the Segway: Touted as the revolutionizer of cities, but in the end something with limited utility once the hype-wave settled.)
Add in ear buds that can open a valve (rather than be removed) and you could do all sorts of things. Virtually furnished rooms, watching virtual displays in any position, any angle, etc. TVs and monitors could well become obsolete if the resolution is enough to simulate them.
I wonder if it would even be possible to set your goggles to show other wearers in your home and office as though they weren't wearing theirs, even if they were. Some sort of internal eye-tracking could potentially simulate their eyes realistically enough if the uncanny valley could be surpassed.
Okay, I have a display on my head that is aware of the world around me, with perfect latency and extreme accuracy (still two of the biggest unsolved problems, but let's assume).
I'm walking around on the street. What would this thing be doing? I'm cooking dinner. What would it be showing me? I'm hanging out with my friends. What would...?
There are certainly a lot of niche, professional uses: technicians and engineers can get information hands-free while on all fours or strung up on a high pole. Realtors can use it to show prospective tenants virtual layouts (as you brought up). Professional drivers can use it to get dispatches without taking their eyes off the road.
None of this particularly compels the everyman to wear one regularly. What does it do for the average joe, in their average joe lives?
Watching TV while lying in bed or anywhere.
When driving, traffic alerts or directions overlaid on the road in a way that wasn't too distracting. Shop numbers superimposed on the road so you needn't study signs for inconsistent numbering.
Gaming applications are obvious and will be an early driver.
Until they're available as contact lenses, I don't think people would wear them all day, but certainly multiple times per day once they're streamlined and improved.
Id love my virtual AR 70 inch high res computer display though, so i hope they succeed ;)
Personally I could do without all that - I just want a really nice looking virtual 2D screen projected in front of me so I can finally ditch my fixed-in-place monitor.
The site feels desperate for sales. Preventing the chat box from continuously popping up and killing the "BUY NOW" video overlays would be a big help.
But not at that price point.
And not with that pitch.
(I otherwise share your disdain for the rocket engine ra-ra on their sales site.)