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Ask HN: What Happened to SixthSense by Pranav Misty

31 points by redbell ↗ HN
Let's face it.. it was a thing, a mind-blowing concept that makes you feel like you are dreaming while watching his presentation. It was truly "ahead of its time" back then.. However, at present time, with the buzz around VR-AR and recently, this "metaverse" thing, I didn't arrive to any mentions of the SixthSense or its creator, so I was wondering for a quite time now whether the idea was acquired by an AR-VR company or Pranav got hired, for this specific project, by a tech company.

For those landed here by curiosity, welcome to SixthSense, watch now https://youtu.be/YrtANPtnhyg

15 comments

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newsoul
I think he worked for Samsung : https://www.pranavmistry.com/
redbell
Oh, thank you! So it appears that he worked there for 9 years and was in the hardware field with exposure to VR.. really interesting.
ctoth
Ha! I e-mailed this guy back in 2009 to talk about the potential of the tech for blind users (sixth sense could be a fifth for the blind) and he never got back to me. Haven't thought about this in years. Thanks OP!
IshKebab
I suspect it was one of those tech demos that actually doesn't really work in reality.

Nobody wants a camera & projector attached to their head. Gesture based interfaces are universally terrible, even if they look cool in films. You probably underestimate how much you move your head around while looking at things. Projectors don't work well in daylight. Etc. Etc.

Cool tech demo though.

redbell
Yes, I totally agree, but I was thinking that they would overcome these limitations with the advance of [VR/AR] hardware manufacturing, especially sensors. The problem was, as @PH01 noted, it was [all] fake, so nothing you can do to improve something that does not exist, similar to a startup/indie hacker idea that didn't find its Product/Market fit yet.
PH01
The SixthSense talk and the associated hype in 2009 was terrible. It was impossible to convince the majority that the cuts of demos in the TED talk were effectively choreographed set pieces, even though many scenes required tech which didn’t work like that.

The whole thing was hyped as “open” and liberating. Nothing was released until the hype died down (2011). What was released was not even close to the talk, it gained no traction and never iterated past v0.1.

SixthSense was a prime example of deliberate misinformation coming from academia. MIT Media Lab won a huge number of awards, Mistry was touted as a genius, and then absolutely nothing happened.

redbell
I thought something similar to this but not exactly like you described it.

Initially, I had the impression that this "SixthSense" phenomenon was one of those concepts tagged as "Fake It Until You Make It", but apparently, it was not. Probably, there was no PoC, just some cinematic-video "montage" to create a buzz around it, then soon, it evaporated.

IMHO, a close comparison to this in recent years is probably "Theranos" & "Nikola", where they created the buzz, in fact, a lot of hype for something that did not exist in the first place.