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Comment by m0nty | Hacker News Reader

I was going to start a new search engine, but Yahoo had already done that. I was going to create a new webmail service, but Hotmail was so good. Then I thought of producing a kind of souped-up forum system, but that one had been done to death as well.

Then I saw Google, Gmail and Facebook, and realised it wasn't the ideas so much as the execution ;)

My Big Idea (as I've said before) involves VR goggles which you can hook up to the net to see computer-generated images in real contexts. Or you could reverse the polarity and visit anywhere in the world from the comfort of your armchair, using computer-generated landscapes. In 10 or 20 years, the line between real and virtual will be so blurred that nobody thinks about it.

[Before anyone gets too involved in this: http://www.faqs.org/docs/jargon/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html]

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It's not really an idea, if you don't have an idea for a feasible way to implement it (feasible as in consumer friendly, of course you could put 10 pounds VR-helmets on people's heads).

Although admittedly, it depends on the context. It is not an idea in the context of "doable in hardware in the near future", but it could be an idea for a science fiction movie or book.

"It's not really an idea, if you don't have an idea for a feasible way to implement it"

OK, so you agree with me that the execution is the important thing? Excellent ;)

GPS, wearable computers, wi-fi, lightweight VR goggles, etc, make this very "do-able" for the right technical talent. Admittedly, that means I wouldn't have a whelk's chance in a super-nova, but some of you kids are surely in with a chance?

Of course execution is excellent, but what I am saying your idea is not an executable idea (in my opinion). If lightweight VR goggles and low-voltage mobile graphics processors become available next month (or already are), you could jump from behind a corner and shout "here, I am the first to make good use of it and make the land-grab for this technology".

I just don't agree that all ideas fall into the non-executable category. I have lots of unexecuted ideas, but for most of them I already know how I could implement them (ie for web apps). I consider that execution plan a part of the idea. It is way different from saying "hey, I have an idea, let's create a spaceship with anti-gravity drive, or hey, let's create a perpeteum-mobile".

If you seriously think that technology for your idea is already within reach, I'd say go for it. It could be the future - who wants to carry around bricks with tiny displays forever?

A variant of your idea would be to show things on the screens of the "bricks". Ie a mobile phone with camera and GPS might be able to recognise what it is looking at and at least display some additional information for the item.

Actually it is already a good business to create goggles as you describe for industry use. For example I think airplane engineers use them when they repair some parts of the airplane, and the device shows them required parts in context.

What I think is not yet feasible to make a device that is unintrusive enough to be wearable all the time in daily life.

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=artoolkit&search... for some neat demos of OSS software to overlay computer graphics on real targets

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