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Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

For me, the killer app for VR is actually AR.

I want to be able to put on a pair of glasses and pull up a 3D diagrammatic overlay of anything I'm trying to fix around the house or in my car, complete with tutorials. If I'm in a hardware store, I want to be able to say what it is that I want and have a path to it highlighted. I want to be able to turn a depressing walk in a crummy downtown neighbourhood into a relaxing walk in the forest. I want to be able to stroll along in that forest talking to someone as though they were walking right next to me even though they are very far away.

This stuff is, technically, not that far off. I just hope a company that respects user privacy gets there first.

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Yeah, AR is definitely the killer app for me — though the implementation might end up being like Apple’s AR-through-VR.

Games like Horizon Zero Dawn or Cyberpunk 2077 have diegetic AR HUDs that highlight some of the stuff you could do, and I’ve definitely felt the desire to have some of those features available IRL.

> I want to be able to turn a depressing walk in a crummy downtown neighbourhood into a relaxing walk in the forest

I cannot wait to get mugged by the gingerbread man

Do you know the mugging man?

The mugging man?

The mugging man.

Do I know the mugging man... Who preys on Drury Lane?

It's a but further off than you might think. Even the Vision Pro is on the border of acceptability for working and reading in, and that's literally the bleeding edge of miniturized display technology. Going from a traditional flat panel display to a waveguide and projectors with an optically transparent display is a MASSIVE endeavor, at this point is essentially limited by physics (bound by current research) let alone issues with heat, battery life etc.

The AR products that eventuallg spur mass adoption are almost guaranteed to be backed by billion dollar investments, with the expectation of more user data than ever before.

By your own logic if the Vision Pro is on the border of acceptability, and it's here, now, is it really going to be THAT long? To get to the endgame, sure, but things are only getting better and cheaper, and what intermediate steps will cross that threshold? Yes it takes a long time for the Meta glasses category to fully merge with the Vision Pro category, but moving either one just a little bit towards the other will be incredibly useful and accelerate the process. Also, regarding the "bleeding edge" comment, obviously that's true in many respects, but iirc there ARE a few industrial headsets out there that, for way more money, beat it on some isolated core specs like panel and passthrough resolution (who knows about overall quality; I suspect the Vision Pro is better or equal with lower specs per Apple's MO). There are also other other form factors developing right now, like I suspect that it won't be long before we see some very compelling version of the minimal Bigscreen VR style goggles with the addition of cameras tethered to a Steamdeck-type device that you can hide in a bag (if not pocket).

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