Hacker News Reader

Comment by lalc | Hacker News Reader

I'm writing a middlebrow (lowbrow, really) dismissal because this actually deserves it. This is... shamelessly phony. "Your laptop is now a hologram"?[1] Do I have to 3D scan my laptop in? Are they going to mind-upload my Intel CPU to the cloud while they're at it?

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] http://i.imgur.com/unxD96I.jpg

View on HN

Is that pocket computer required? If so, seems strange to access your virtual phone through a phone-sized pocket computer. I can appreciate that virtual screens will eventually be a selling point, but not maintaining the idea of a virtual phone and laptop.

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

Yeah, virtual phone and virtual laptop seem ridiculous when you have an AR headset. There's even a virtual laptop keyboard... how could the glasses possibly detect your typing?

That Oculus demo looks great! See, there's an honest video you can actually believe. Promising for sure.

do you suppose your proprioception might get out of whack if it's even slightly miscalibrated?

I believe proprioception is resilient to minor offsets or miscalibration, as I've seen such illusions at science exhibits--false hands that you're tricked into thinking is your own. And the STEM system (absolute body position tracking) apparently is high-precision.

It's more likely that immersion will be broken by perceptible latency.

> They say this is real footage

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.

"Your laptop is now a hologram" refers to the fact[1] that you won't need a physical machine (aside from the Intel i5 cpu in your pocket). The keyboard is virtual, and the monitor is virtual. Everything else is physical but it's tiny.

[1]best guess

Then leave the laptop out of it. Seems pointless retaining the laptop form factor for this, even to demonstrate the concept to an audience.

Agreed, it looks ridiculous having the full enclosure of the laptop (or phone) rendered and floating in front of you when you could just have the screen and keys separate from each other and independently movable.

A virtual laptop is unconstrained by weight requirements, need to stow easily on an aircraft, etc but no way should the display top 15"!

that claim is ridiculous. How do they plan to mirror your smartphone and pc ? Something like VNC maybe, which will at least require a rooted/jailbroken phone. And why a virtual 11 inch form factor ?

Id love to be proven wrong, but as this clearly isn't real footage, lets see what comes out of it.

Why? Because it looks cool for a demo. It can be real footage without being a useful app.

let them push the envelope dude

Reply on news.ycombinator.com