How might the experience be improved?
Solve all that, and then you need to invent a whole new UX paradigm and integrate it with whatever solution it is supposed to solve. Take everything that needed to happen for the iphone and multiply it a few times.
It's actually the experience that, 20+ years into IT, I finally started to believe that 'company culture' could potentially matter at least a little bit -- i.e. maybe it wouldn't make you win, but it could def help you lose.
The product management function, to the extent it existed, was ass. I suspect that was because it wasn't allowed to be run by people who either knew what they were doing, or were actually hired to do it -- not sure tho.
There were other factors too, that almost certainly played an important, potentially deciding, role in the company's fate -- but naming it/them would give it away.
So, any number of factors could have killed the company. imo.
I do remember being on one call where prospects were trying to invest in the company -- it just seemed like the tech, once experienced, could have that effect on some people.
But for AR companies, more generally, what critical challenges (technical, usability, etc) were they facing, and if only they had surmounted those, they would have brought about AR adoption sooner?
and prob is still not.
looks cool? check.
works well/reliably? uhhhhhh.
some of the problems that Tesla is having with self-driving seem reminiscent of what the AR tech needs to deal with -- just in terms of, the problem space is stubborn -- how to get much more compute power into a much smaller footprint? maybe you can piggyback on a nearby computer/phone, but then you're strapped in -- you need near-real-time communication, so no networking tech except a cable is going to work, so now you're physically bound to a workstation as you try to move around your lab, the worksite, etc.
and Apple/Cook came out and said, basically, VR is nothing, AR is everything. that was good for AR. but did it cause any movement? Snap seemed to get maybe a small lift.
but is anyone actually using AR for anything in production? Maybe the 'advanced forward-looking tech division' of comglomerate 'x' gets a $100M slush fund to go out and buy and play with cool tech each year -- but it never has to use the tech in any meaningful way -- it's already an R&D write-off. prob some medical training folks are using it a bit -- train your biochem/vaccine lab workers -- that's not nothing, but...
the VR space just seems much more mature, and maybe that's because it's just a much easier problem to solve. not sure - not my tech area of expertise.
(note: I also worked with ODG, Vuzix and RealWear and demoed the Toshiba product)
What do you see as a common weakness / deficiency in products from ODG, Vuzix, and RealWear that could sink them by competitors such as HoloLens and Magic Leap? On the other hand, what do they need to beat HoloLens and Magic Leap?
Remote support is really targeted at operations that have a high cost when it's not working (like manufacturing) and have a high degree of sophistication. A lot of times someone might need to drives hours or get on a plane from some other location to address the issue.
There were issues with all the products, but for my money Glass or Realwear was the best solution. Glass if it needs to be easy and Realwear if it needs to be robust. I can be more specific if you like.
Yes, please share specifics. I hope similar mistakes would be avoided time around and not delay AR adoption for another decade.
I'm awaiting Apple, they can do it potentially and are working on Apple Glasses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29451731.
google glass is the correct way to expect AR to "win" but we are nowhere near the power density.
this time around is no different.
Personally, I'd rather have a thin tether wire to a battery in my pants pocket or belt mounted, etc than to have the weight of a battery on my face; but nobody asks me.
[1] At least when I had access to a pre-release one, notifications had to go through the cloud and there was no expectation of timelyness. No direct phone to glass communication (unless you were Google's SMS app)
1. It’s too expensive, even for the cheap ones.
2. It’s slow and performs badly, even for the expensive ones.
3. The display still looks pixelated and not fully immersive. Not even the most expensive ones I’ve ever heard of have solved this problem yet.
4. The ones that tend to do better in regard to multiple factors also tend to be tied to external computer hardware that is connected by a cable, because you still can’t cram all that horsepower into a device small enough to fit on your head.
5. Even if you solve all the above problems, there’s still the human problems.
One of the key human problems is the distance between your pupils. Each human on the planet has a slightly different measure in this regard than every other human, and all software I know of is only capable of handling a certain range of these distances. And there’s a really long tail of people who can’t be properly served by a given program, and even if they can be served by program A, there’s hundreds of other programs they might need/want to run on the system that they may not be well served by.
The other key human problem is the difference between your focal distance versus the angle of convergence for your eyes to meet that focal point.
In the real world, near objects are near, and you have to focus near on them plus you have to converge your eyes more to properly aim them at the focal point for that object. In the real world, far objects are far, and your focal convergence and focal distance likewise work hand-in-hand to be able to see that object clearly.
However, in the fake VR/AR world, your focal distance is always close to your face. Your glasses, or whatever they are, sit right in front of your eyeballs. But those systems still make you change the angle of your focal convergence for near objects versus far objects.
Humans just weren’t designed to have those two systems work independently of each other. It hurts the eyes. It hurts the brain. We have evolved over millions and billions of years to be where we are today, and throughout virtually all of the history of humanity, focal convergence and focal distance have always worked at the same time and in harmony with each other — at least for most of the people who can actually see properly.
Outside of VR/AR, if these two systems don’t work together for you, then you are most likely functionally blind — you can’t properly focus on objects that are near or far, or you can’t properly converge your eyes on objects that are near or far. Or maybe both.
IMO, the disconnect between focal convergence and focal distance is the killer. This is what killed 3D movies, it is what killed 3D TV displays, and it will also kill VR.
However, it might not kill AR, depending on certain implementation details of how the additional objects are overlaid on top of the real world that you can still see through the AR system. I’d keep my eyes open on the AR space, to see if someone can work some real magic.