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0 pointshnuser1234565y ago0 comments

Define "good AR"? Pokemon Go is nearing its 5th birthday. A VRchat overlay you can use on the street? If you get the Epson AR glasses, combine it with the Quest 2's Snapdragon XR2, and mess around in Unity for a bit, that could be done by the end of the year. Create an app that's killer enough to make up for the bulkiness/inconvenience/price of a version 1 streetwear AR headset and we'll be getting somewhere.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

chipotle_coyote5y ago· 2 in thread

That's fair -- with the caveat that your last sentence is asking for a lot. :) I think Pokemon Go did a great job of being an AR game, although I couldn't help but notice that literally everyone I knew playing it turned off the camera functionality after a few weeks and gave up on the AR overlay part.

I don't know what the "killer app" for AR is really going to be. CityLens and comparable apps like Yelp Monocle on smartphones clearly haven't cut it. (Show of hands: how many people remembered Yelp had an augmented reality mode? I don't think it's there anymore.) I think the big challenge now is thinking of applications that aren't games where using goggles/glasses give you more than incremental improvements over putting the UI on your wrist or in your ear(s).

hprotagonist5y ago

>I don't know what the "killer app" for AR is really going to be.

I wonder if it really is a navigation HUD. For example, i’d love this, with some auditory interface, for things like cycling and motorcycling and also probably normal driving too. Safely presenting salient information in the same depth of focus as the road, and giving me tools to interact with it with voice, would be good AR in those situations, and i’m in them pretty frequently.

Is that a big enough market? Will it inevitably descend into the inverse of They Live?

we’ve given the hardware a shot at least a few times now and wearable glasses tech has not yet been useful. But i can’t think of anything else.

nixpulvis5y ago

They can also just project the image onto your retina directly, but this requires some serious tracking I don't understand or know if it really exists.

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nixpulvis5y ago· 1 in thread

- High resolution

- Low latency, ideally imperceptibly low

- "Delta-zero", meaning the overlaid virtual reality should never drift from reality itself. This is probably theoretically impossible, so let's just be imperceptible here too.

This should boil down to a completely continuous interface over the sensory domains of all humans (other animals?)

For now I assume we are only talking about the visual and audio senses.

All eyes and ears.

hnuser123456OP5y ago

This has been the case in PC VR for years. The Valve Index has a combined 4.6 MP at up to 144hz, with reprojection and motion smoothing so that the image still updates with head movement even if the application hitches. Or now you can get the Vive Pro 2 with 12 MP at 120hz. Or wireless oculus quest 2 with 7 MP at 120hz. The novelty would be a clear screen, or forward facing cameras, and a useful AR overlay.

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