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Comment by yamtaddle | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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