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Comment by baldfat | Hacker News Reader

I am still not sold on VR, but I feel that AR (Augmented Reality) really is the future.

1) AR seems to help in real world situations vs VR which actually makes you feel vulnerable due to lack of vision and impaired hearing of what is around you.

2) VR also has the issue with physical issues with nausea and 10% of people with lazy eyes or other optical issues that make them unable to see 3D clearly.

3) Star Trek Holosuite is AR and that is my dream one day.

4) If Wii motion controls didn't continue their popularity how will making a helmet make that physical exertion more appealing?

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But AR requires several technological leaps beyond VR in terms of transparent screens and location tracking. So I'd expect to see usable VR headsets to appear in homes a generation two before AR ones.

I mean, the HoloLens is additive. That means if you want to show a dark object in a room with white walls, you cant.

> I mean, the HoloLens is additive. That means if you want to show a dark object in a room with white walls, you cant.

You sure? Do you have a source you can cite?

https://twitter.com/akipman/status/595028946720137216

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...

I'm kind of delighted that the author of that article, Michael Abrash, worked at Microsoft (twice), at Valve, and is now at Oculus.

Most of the journalists w/ first person demos have given relatively poor descriptions, but Oliver Kreylos a UC Davis VR researcher recently published a very in-depth review of his experience w/ the Hololens hardware, including his observations on FOV, occlusion, etc: http://doc-ok.org/?p=1223

Hololens hands on show it to be a ready product. It doesn't require any breakthroughs.

One reviewer was shocked at how opaque the holograms were. I think the situation you're describing with a black object has already been solved:

>What did surprise me, though, was how little opacity there was to the holograms. I expected them to look somewhat transparent, with the background shining through. That really wasn’t the case, though. They looked really solid and there was almost no transparency.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/30/hololens-is-real/

The tech industry has been investing and buying AR companies left and right. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davealtavilla/2015/05/30/apple-f...

There is a lot of money in the AR space right now, and the different technologies for AR right now take several different approaches.

1) CastAR (Eye Glasses that reflect back light to the viewer) looks really promissing: http://castar.com/ I seriously could see this taking over monitors for some people for computing especially if there is security or privacy issues.

2) Magic Leap (Sounds like Science Fiction, have little faith in their promis right now) Beams light into your eye in a way that won't make you sick or give you a head ache. Serious technology problem with silicon photonics production that has stumped Intel right now http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538146/magic-leap-needs...

3) Microsoft Future Vision 2011 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 Uses glasses to overlay a translation on signs (Traditional idea of glasses with transparent display) I find this to be a decade away easily.

4) Contact lens (Super cool idea not sure how many of us will drop a contact into our eyes) Not only AR but the ability to measure sugar levels for diabetics. http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/25/the-future-of-augmented-re...

5) AR looks to have a $120 Billion dollar projection and VR has a $30 Billion dollar projections http://fortune.com/2015/04/25/augmented-reality-virtual-real...

Magic Leap, however, is apparently not exclusively additive

I wonder why we need transparent screens though. I see AR as a subset of VR, not a superset of it. Once you've solved the field-of-view, screen resolution and (I'd also argue) dynamic range/colour accuracy of VR, you add a front-facing, wide-FOV stereo camera to it and there you have it, AR with the dark object problem already solved for you.

Transparent screens are definitely the way forward, but don't discount the possibilities of camera-to-screen passthrough within Gen 1 VR devices. Ultimately the distinction between AR and VR is going to dissolve to the point where it's just different ends of a spectrum -- add enough objects and backgrounds to the real world, and you get a virtual world.

AR and VR serve different goals. In this page they mention presence, which is basically the internal lizard-brain feeling of being somewhere else. Presence is what makes VR something unique, different, and powerful. AR doesn't provide presence.

I think AR is infinitely more practical for practical things but ultimately less useful as an entertainment medium. And the holosuite is just as much VR as it is AR.

I agree with your view that AR is more the long-term future of all this tech. However, I would disagree that VR isn't going to be a big thing in the short to medium term.

It's a completely new medium to a large extent that is still finding its feet. It offers a completely new* experience and developers/artists/storytellers have yet to really tap into what it can do and deliver in terms of feeling and emotion. Everyone is still trying to make old methods suit the new format - you could see this just from the fact that Oculus demo'd a 3rd person game. Once teams start to fully embrace the medium and the hardware has caught up, I honestly believe it will deliver some very innovative and emotional experiences that will lift people out of their real life environment. Its uses will be much more widespread than just gaming - training, relaxation, education, social interaction, etc.

* When I say new I know it's been knocking around for decades, but the tech has only just reached a point where it is somewhat viable.

> I would disagree that VR isn't going to be a big thing in the short to medium term.

I was speaking long term, hence my analogy to Nintendo Wii controllers

I equate VR -> movies and AR -> smartphones.

VR is a medium for immersion but AR really shines as a tool.

I'm with you on your second statement, not on the first.

VR will be clearly more than just movies. And AR is far from just for smartphones. Granted HoloLens isn't ready and might not be that great, but it has so much more potential than just smartphone gimmicks. A good set of AR can completely replace my work setup, I wouldn't have the need for monitors anymore. I'm excited by that idea, a new way to interact with the world.

I don't think you understood his comment so here goes. VR is like going to the movies, where you are focused on a single thing and everything else isn't important. The people beside and behind you are dark and you don't focus on them, you focus on the movie. AR is like using a smart phone, you use it to talk to people, find restaurants and reviews, direct you via a map, tell you about locations around you, so many things can be done with smartphones. AR is that, using the world around you to give you more information.

> AR seems to help in real world situations vs VR which actually makes you feel vulnerable due to lack of vision and impaired hearing of what is around you.

AR is also better suited for games and simulations that have more than a handful of controls. Flight simulation, for example, is next to impossible with an Oculus because it blocks your view of the controllers.

Flying around is fine when you have hands on the stick (or yoke) and throttle. But when you need to operate the landing gear, flaps, lights, radios or navigational instruments, etc you need to find the right button on your controllers or keyboard. That doesn't work with the Oculus.

I'm looking forward to try out the CastAR in the future. It looks like a very nice solution for home cockpit builders.

http://castar.com

Out of curiosity, have you used any of the modern VR headsets (Oculus, Vive, etc)?

One of the really cool applications I've seen for google glass was for a Dr to take notes in an EHR while visiting a patient. Its such a good idea.

There's a lot of enterprise real world useful applications that you get with AR. It lets you be in the real world.

They said the same thing about Surface, and I agreed - Surface seems the ideal device for doctors. Doctors just use paper.

Doctors use something worse than paper called Epic.

I still see palm detection as an unsolved problem. I've tried the latest Surface too.

I agree with your assessment. AR is more ubiquitous VR is more like SecondLife 2.0. Some of the engineering and design outcomes are noteworthy, but that's about it.

Second Life 2.0 doesn't sound very exciting to me. I really see VR as being a short hit and quit activity. Touring some place in VR in the classroom seems great but more than 10 minutes and most will quit whatever the activity is.

I am still willing to give it a try but on the outside looking in I find this as long term success stories as Second Life and the Wii.

I feel VR will be strictly a gaming toy and even then will be something of an eccentric item considering the cost/hassle of it all, not to mention all the side-effects. AR seems promising, and this hands on review has me really interested in Hololens.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/30/hololens-is-real/#.ciyefr:x...

Its crazy that we have a wearable hologram headset that produces real world opaque holograms but no one is really talking about it. Yet an ugly VR black box mounted on your face projecting a cell phone into your eyes somehow gets all the press. If anything, Oculus shows us how gamer-centric the tech press is.

Hololens is pretty much a wearable holodeck. The money I had earmarked for the Vive or Oculus is going to sit in my savings account until the Hololens comes out. I doubt I'm the only one sitting this first round out. AR might just strangle VR in the cradle - and that's a good thing. Let's face it, Oculus didn't firesale itself to the evils of Facebook because it had a bright future. It did so out of desperation.

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