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Comment by poisonborz | Hacker News Reader

The worst will be that when somebody, sometimes actually creates an actual immersive small-to-be-worn VR/AR glass - one that will be very much unlike the current generation of headsets - journalists along with these companies will trumpet "this was the idea we had, the product was there but before its time".

No sir. The idea of virtual reality and "holograms" is at least here since the early 20th century. It's just that these people burnt billions of dollars on some tacky tech demos and empty marketing promises, and the industry believed them for years.

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I think we shouldn't underestimate the leaps that have been made in R&D just to improve VR in the past years.

Companies invested billions in tackling all those fundamental technology limitations (reduce motion-to-photon latency, higher refresh-rates, global refresh, lower pixel-persistence,...).

The dilemma is, that in VR everything "sucks" until you achieve presence (the feeling of really being somewhere else) or at least full immersion.

So how do you fund all this development? By releasing iterative products which sadly harm the wide adoption more than they help, because "it still sucks".

At best, VR drove mass-production of necessary technology in other industries (i.e. adoption of >60Hz displays, high-resolution sensors, eye-tracking, OLED, immersive audio,...), which ultimately helps the next entrant to create a more-affordable AR/VR-device.

At the very least, it created IP that this "somebody sometime" will then have to license. I doubt it will be possible to create a new VR-device without the patents of Sony, Microsoft or Samsung.

How much this helps to really innovate is another question, arguably it means Apple is the only new entrant large enough to cross-license and still disrupt...

The problem I have with VR is the space requirements. You have to dedicate pretty much a whole room for VR. Most people don’t just have a room spare to play some slightly more immersive shooter games.

I played about 300 hours of VR, then moved somewhere that didn’t have the space, and I haven’t ever felt the desire to play VR since. Regular PC games are just as fun if not more so.

I doubt that VR will be the disruptive factor for the success of Mixed Reality.

Required physical space and overall utilization are commercially limiting factors, achieving the required level of "presence" (which is beyond immersion) is still a major technical hurdle.

After all, the human brain is preconditioned to detect if something is "off", VR needs to achieve a level of performance that doesn't trigger any of this senses.

AR on the other hand has none of the above limitations. It's comparatively easy to develop a good experience there, and much more simple to develop applications once a strong ecosystem is in place. AND it contributes heavily to the VR-evolution as well.

If XR will disrupt in this "round", expect VR to evolve slowly until AR has appeared and scaled. Without AR fueling it, VR won't be able to accelerate in evolution and affordability.

I’ve still not really seen a single compelling mixed reality product. The google glass was cool but everything it did ended up being put in a smart watch.

> I doubt it will be possible to create a new VR-device without the patents of Sony, Microsoft or Samsung.

It's easy to avoid the patents by waiting for them to expire. This is the traditional way of doing things, and is why there are so many instances of technologies not becoming commonplace until 20 years or so after they are patented.

It might be a stretch to judge "Wait 20 years" as "easy". I doubt that the XR-market will remain dormant for 20 years.

We're still in the competition for the leading XR ecosystem. If a company wants to establish themselves in this space, "just wait" is not an option. Quite the opposite, now there's still a chance to shake-up everything by delivering a strong user-experience

It means in 20 years when the patients expire someone will take another look at it. The only worry is minor modification patients that keep extending the original

> The worst will be that when somebody, sometimes actually creates an actual immersive small-to-be-worn VR/AR glass - one that will be very much unlike the current generation of headsets - journalists along with these companies will trumpet "this was the idea we had, the product was there but before its time".

I had an AR startup in the "pre-Pokemon Go" times (2015). Explaining what we were doing and what AR was capable of became significantly harder after Niantic launched their second game (remember Ingress?).

The main reason was that the definition of AR changed from "augmenting reality" to "3d floaters". It was much easier to work with people who had no prior experience with AR as we didn't have to help them unlearn whatever marketing bullshit they read at the time. Now I think that sound is the most immersive AR platform.

Incidentally, we had a project called Metaverse as well. Let's say it was smaller in scope and much more "boring" though (boring is good, I like boring).

I'm convinced this is why Apple and Microsoft (among others) keep putting money into AR development. It clearly sucks to use right now, so it doesn't make a lot of sense that they're putting significant money into it... but when someone (possibly one of those two companies!) finally puts out AR glasses that aren't awful, they'll be ready.

I remain unsure whether Zuck is running that same playbook, or if he legitimately thought bulky-ass VR goggles were the way of the future and expects to have a smash-hit before marketable AR glasses exist.

I had an inside view of things, but all of the work being done is actually a long term roadmap towards building AR devices that don't suck. There many complicated issues to deal with, including batter life, processing power, input and control, heat management, placement of self and objects in a virtual world, safety, and on and on. That's all on top of figuring out what content is interesting and compelling.

Devices being made by these companies all embody elements of solutions to these challenges, but they all recognize it's a long road, and there's a lot of learning still to be done.

I've never understood why we aren't putting those hard problems into a backpack that you wear and is connected to a very lightweight head device.

Apart from the fact that people might not want it, even technically you might still have latency issues, our eyes are extremely sensitive… also keep in mind: the sensors and displays you need on head might still weigh a lot and consume a lot of power on your head, even if all processing power is relegated to an external unit.

Nobody would buy it. Worst that might fly is a cord going to a phone, and I'm not sure about that.

Apple decided against requiring a separate compute device. Because it sucks that’s why.

Those headsets are bad enough. Having to wear a backpack as well sounds like a nonstarter.

If you are unsure of what Zuck's playbook is, just read it:

* https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-vr-ar-strategy

This is a great document. But it's his 10 year plan from 8 years ago.

I'd love to get insight on how his 10 year plan would look today.

Man all these comments are not going to age well

Why not? Do you think AR-on-a-slab-of-glass is going to become something people actually use, or that VR headsets are going to get way more popular before sleek AR glasses are available? Neither of those things seem likely to me, but maybe I'm wrong. I do think if someone gets AR glasses hardware right, it's gonna be the next "smartphone revolution".

I never used a Google Glass, but it seemed like they got at least part way there -- essentially a light weight hud. I guess that doesn't have to deal with any eye tracking or motion latency. Also don't know if the limited Glass applications / interface just sucked.

Overall it seemed like they weren't too far from {something_useful}.

I think about the same thing. I wonder why they shut down the project. Maybe it wasn’t useful enough, maybe it was harmful to the eyes? Maybe they just couldn’t price down the tech

> ...and the industry believed them for years.

Did they?

From the outset, people pretty unanimously called bullshit on the metaverse and ridiculed Zuckerberg. Facebook's own advertising of the metaverse wasn't even ever designed to attact users, it was very obviously designed to make people think there were revenue sources buried in the multiverse. They never had a product or even a particularly coherent idea for one.

Facebook clearly tried it with a huge amount of money.

I think the illusion was the problem. Suck wanted it to work without realizing his gadget.

I'm much more curious if Tim will really release apples version and if it will burn him.

And I only mean for broad consumer vr/ar not for industry etc.

Forcing a worker to wear a headset is much easier and there are fast financial benefits. Alone when you can train someone virtual before letting them on the real thing.

No computing/tech product actually exists until Apple releases one -- because Apple is the first (and often only) company to get it right.

So it will be with VR.

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