Wow. Something seems to have really changed at Meta in the last few years. I really thought the company had run out of innovation juice during its peak evangelism of "the metaverse." And I know I wasn't alone in that sentiment. But they continue to impress across the board.
I mean. The #1 web framework is made by Meta... (React is one of the all time top repositories on GitHub) But that aside, the real issue is when they try to force users of unrelated products into Facebook. I'll likely never buy a Meta device because they bothered to try at all.
For instance, the media never seemed to get the point of Horizon Worlds in that if VR content is going to be like the web, there has to be authoring tools that make it possible for the ordinary Joe to make content. The persona I think of is the owner of a few Thai restaurants who is very savvy about SEO and SMO and developing relationships with DoorDash and such. That person has to see the value of having a VR or AR presence that is greater than the cost of developing.
Horizon Worlds fell down in many ways not least in making you create everything with computational solid geometry and not letting you import image, video and 3d assets. Sorry but McDonalds has to put the Coca-Cola logo on the side of the drink cups. One trouble is the size of those assets has to be managed so that you don’t overload the rendering engine or the comm link. Another is that people are going to make worlds stuffed with porno images or theaters where you can watch pirated movies. As it is their authoring tools aren’t that good, people who know how to author 3-d content can’t use the tools and processes that are good at, and your world can only be so big.
There are many good games that are developed with the expensive processes used to make 3d games and a huge number of Horizon Worlds competitors, I am sure Meta wants to see one succeed but it is not an easy problem.
I like my MQ3 but for entertainment it competes with other options (sure it was fun to watch the last Star Wars movie in 3D and I like VR games but normal video and video games is hard to beat) and for creative work it is the same: in theory I could publish my stereograms in VR with A-Frame but there are so many other projects to work on.
A preference for 1950s Buddy Holly glasses would be a fashion choice, because such glasses are rare today. It loses all of that appeal and becomes a commodity when it's the only choice for a product category.
"I think we still have some room to grow there in terms of aesthetic for the majority though."
So does Meta and it's the reason they aren't actually releasing this as a product. They just showed us where they're at and gave us an idea on where they want to go in the next few years.
"the look and feel of a regular pair of glasses" is... one way to describe it. They look totally goofy. But the tech seems amazing, assuming those videos actually reflect reality (which is hard to say, since this is not a real product, just a prototype announcement).
"the look and feel of a regular pair of glasses... as depicted on any cartoon caricature of a nerd". It's really impressive if they fit that much into the frame, but they're thick.
I hate to knock the design when the tech is so cool but it seems like this would be exactly the occasion to go for a futuristic cyberpunk-visor look, as opposed to dork glasses.
Say what you want about Zuckerberg. But once again you have witnessed the heavy investment in reality labs to create a new XR glasses platform that potentially ticks all the boxes that will take consumer XR glasses mainstream:
* Looks very cool and more natural. (In comparison, look at Snap XR Glasses)
* No wires sticking out.
* Not a huge VR headset.
* Can see what you see through the lenses for XR capabilities.
* Controllable through eyes, hands and neural interface to cover almost all scenarios without looking awkward in public.
* Integrates with an existing app ecosystem.
Orion is very promising and appears to be in the lead for mainstream XR glasses so far.
In general, it appears that everyone here misjudged and betted against Meta and Zuck when they were at $93 with calls for Zuck to be 'fired' when the stock crashed. [0] Now the stock is at all time highs.
Remember. They didn't even mention Threads. At all. It is another way for them to monetize that if they want to.
That is true founder mode and the death of Meta Platforms Inc. has been absolutely exaggerated.
I agree, founder mode in SV doesn't seem to be much more than creating something with good UX and proceeding to ruin it by attempting to turn it into a "platform".
The "doesn't look too dorky" benchmark for me is the XReal Air line. They're a few years old now, and they aren't exactly AR glasses in the same way, but you'd expect the headline of this iteration of tech to be better looking. Not worse.
I wonder what's actually in the frames. You wouldn't put bulk there if you had any other choice.
XReals have no battery or standalone function and top out at 50 degrees or so field of view. So the fact Orion is doing all of those function at 70 degrees, self powered and wireless is stunning.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're on par. You'd expect a 2024 device to be a functional step up from a 2022 device. I'm just surprised by how much less slick they look, given the comparator.
This is the form factor that I always wanted from HoloLens (which I own). The release is very light on details of field of view and resolution (other than "best ever" puffery), that's where we'll get a better sense of actual use cases. The ball game shown looked very rudimentary in terms of only taking place in a small directly-in-front-of-user sense. This is also where HoloLens games fell flat -- you'd turn your head slightly to the left or right, and suddenly key game elements would vanish.
Edit -- the home page says 70-degree FoV. Not bad, better than HoloLens (45-degree FoV if I recall), but perhaps not enough to turn your head to the person next to you while still having game elements persist in vision
I tried out the first gen version at a meetup and it was really nifty (the latency was fantastic), but I just couldn't work out what anyone would use it for in real life, it seemed too limited to be useful.
They only say "holographic." Based on other products/projects (Intel's Vaunt), I assume projectors/lasers are on the sides, and a holographic reflector is on the back surface of the lens.
[The display] features Micro LED projectors inside the frame that beam graphics in front of your eyes via waveguides in the lenses. These lenses are made of silicon carbide, not plastic or glass. Meta picked silicon carbide for its durability, light weight, and ultrahigh index of refraction, which allows light beamed in from the projectors to fill more of your vision.
Through careful dispersion control in the excited propagation and diffraction modes, we design and implement our high-resolution full-color prototype, via the combination of analytical–numerical simulations, nanofabrication and device measurements... Our MOE waveguide utilizes only a single glass layer for the whole RGB spectrum, reducing unwanted diffraction and with higher efficiency. Our single-layer implementation also brings compactness and lightweight operation, while simplifying the MOE fabrication and yield.
Sooo this layman is reading it as "used fancy ML workflows to fabricate extremely precise hologram guides." Pretty damn impressive and exciting! It's a good day/year/millennium to be nerd, no doubt about it.
I bought a pair of glasses last week that look exactly like the 60's photo, but with a brown frame. Wasn't familiar with GI Glasses before, I just think that design looks cool.
That's how fashion works. If someone is indifferent about what you wear today then expect them to be indifferent about it in 5-10 years too. But if someone makes fun of it today expect it to be fashionable within 10 years.
I hate owning too many socks so I would wear "long" socks with everything, including shorts. I would also tuck my trousers into my socks when cycling. This was considered a massive faux pas 10 years ago. Guess what the youth do today? Yep, long socks are in!
Wanna see the first prototypes for mobile phones? And even then it's really good compared to a Quest, but def. not good enough if you're going to wear this on the daily
My dad ran a hospital and literally had one of these things: https://hips.hearstapps.com/autoweek/assets/s3fs-public/IMG_... - Things seem to move so quickly these days I'd guess the Orion things will be reasonable to buy in 6/7 years. Getting old sucks!
The benefit of a mobile phone was extremely obvious to everyone as soon as you said what it was.
I've been reading about AR for years and I still have no idea how, if at all, I would use it. Never really come across a use case that's compelling for me. Getting WhatsApp messages without taking my phone out of my pocket feels like the opposite to the direction I'd like to move in.
You could have things overlaid on top of real life content in order to provide you assistance, hands free. For example, think about GPS turn by turn navigation while walking or having a recipe displayed while cooking it.
The problem is that people would really dislike that. It's even satirized in Snow Crash in an extremely unflattering portrayal of the kind of person who would routinely do this.
>I've been reading about AR for years and I still have no idea how, if at all, I would use it.
I do: to display a moving map from Google Maps while cycling. It'd be incredibly handy for navigation in a city. Everyone these days uses a navigation app in their car to navigate (esp. to unfamiliar destinations), but how do you do that on a bicycle? You can get one of those phone mounts for your handlebars, but it's really clunky, and difficult (or impossible) to see in bright sunlight. Plus, in my experience, phones tended to fall out of them, as it was hard to find a mount that would fit a modern-size (read: large) phone; they seem to all be designed with 2010-model phones in mind.
Ok, I looked this up but there's a big problem here: it only works with certain phone models (and requires using their case). There is a "universal" option which basically glues a part to your existing phone or case, but this only works on certain case materials, and rubber isn't one of them (so no Otterboxes allowed). (Also, no polypropylene, polyethylene, or silicone.) So it might or might not work, depending on your phone and case.
But it doesn't solve the visibility problem: good luck seeing your screen in direct sunlight. And also the problem where you have to look down at your handlebards, refocus your eyes for close-up vision (this is really bad if you're over ~40 due to presbyopia), and try to make out the info on the screen, and not get hit by a car or run into a pedestrian or other road hazard. If you're navigating inside a dense city, this sounds positively dangerous. AR glasses would fix all of this.
Well, it works well for my phone.
I don't have a big problem with seeing the screen in sunlight.
Looking down is definitely an issue, but not for simply following a route. In fact, for turn by turn nav, I prefer audio. And no, I'm not interested in your opinions about the safety of that :)
AR glasses might work better, but they'd introduce other issues, like conflicting with sunglasses and helmet. Plus a huge expense. I suspect for me even if I owned such a thing I would rarely use it for this case.
>AR glasses might work better, but they'd introduce other issues, like conflicting with sunglasses and helmet.
Well ideally, the AR glasses would double as sunglasses (perhaps photochromic so you can use them at night too). And if they had the same size frames as regular sunglasses (and not these huge clunky ones seen on the prototype), then they wouldn't interfere with your helmet any more than regular sunglasses.
>In fact, for turn by turn nav, I prefer audio. And no, I'm not interested in your opinions about the safety of that :)
Well I'm going to give it to you anyway :-) I've tried audio for turn-by-turn nav, and it really sucks. Not because of safety, but just because it doesn't work well. It's hard to hear if it's noisy, it doesn't tell which road to turn on correctly, etc. I guess if you're in some rural area and there's only one turn visible in the next kilometer, it's fine, but I live in Tokyo and roads here are tiny (1 car wide at best in many places) and close together, so when it says "turn right", that doesn't really tell me much. It also doesn't help much because nav usually wants to direct me on main roads instead of side roads, but side roads are much better for cycling: on main roads, you either ride with traffic and get hit by trucks, or you ride on the sidewalk and dodge pedestrians going in and out of storefronts (the latter is preferred by almost all cyclists here). But on the side roads, you can avoid most of this. The problem, however, is that many side roads don't go far before they're blocked by a park or a train line or something else. A moving map would show you the road layout so you can choose for yourself a convenient route, and also be able to make quick decisions for alternate routes in case you miss a turn or just want to ride a different way for some reason. On top of all that, the audio is just plain loud and annoying and rude to all the pedestrians nearby, and makes me feel embarrassed.
Peak Design has, in my opinion, a better solution than quadmount - it mounts securely (magnet + slot) and keeps the ability to wirelessly charge. Do have to use their case though, but it's a very attractive case. I use it in conjunction with the Trek BellBeats and I'm satisfied.
> The benefit of a mobile phone was extremely obvious to everyone as soon as you said what it was.
I would say the same about AR. I'm surprised by your comment. Lately I've been using it a lot when shopping for furnitures (to place the furniture in my space and see how it fits, amazon and a bunch of furniture places let you do that).
It still seems like an improvement though. They could be mistaken for very unfashionable glasses. That’s so much closer to what people want, than Apple or Microsoft’s headsets.
Actually it is a little bit annoying, people might actually get away with wearing these things, which means Facebook spyware might be entering everyday life. I’m glad I’m too old for parties.
The problem is that these companies keep wanting to put processing in the glasses. The glasses should only have the minimum circuitry to send, receive and render very high definition video. All the processing should be done in another device (like the arm band) that is carried nearby (like the wireless microphones they use in TV or concerts: https://www.amazon.com.mx/UHF-Wireless-Microphone-System-Kit... ). That way you are not CPU constrained.
I would say have a "cache level" like combination:
* very low/few computation done at the glasses level
* medium computation done at the brick unit level
* hard/intensive computation done in the cloud.
Is it feasible to do wireless transmission of video at extremely low latency?
Wireless microphones are not a good comparison because they are probably analog, but even if they are digital a few dozen milliseconds of delay is going to be imperceptible for audio in a way that video is not.
> The problem is that these companies keep wanting to put processing in the glasses.
I agree. The obvious choice is to offload to our insanely powerful phones. Unfortunately WiFi is too disruptive on mobile OSs and raw Bluetooth is.. well does that even need an explanation? Apple are probably the only ones who could deliver a seamless high bandwidth link and decent pairing, atm. But they spent their prototype-billions on a headset instead.
On the other hand though.. do we really need to run multiple cameras and a realtime image processing pipeline to say that the cacao on your countertop is, in fact, cacao? These AR “experiences” make cool demos, but once the novelty wears off, nobody wants to play planetarium or anatomy class for hours a day.
Note that without the whole AR part of it, there’s still some really cool hardware for all kinds of purposes. That can be really handy when you want or need both hands free. For instance POV video for say sports, HUD and voice interface for eg cycling, maybe watching videos while working, anything requiring gloves (cold, wet hands, gardening) todo-list in the corner of eye when shopping, etc etc. You could reduce form factor and increase battery time significantly, even if you keep accelerometer, gyro, projector, light sensor, cameras etc. But for some reason, utility is not even a priority with these companies.
Yeah, I know but with a puck, which isn’t feasible for consumer. A phone already has sufficient compute, but Apple and Google would need to provide/open up radio- and pairing protocols.
I understand your position. It's the architecture that a lot of players in the space (e.g. Qualcomm) are doubling down on --- and it seems intuitively obvious that we should tether smart glasses to ubiquitous phones.
The problem is that by doing so we make glasses secondary, auxiliary devices. You wouldn't leave your house without your phone, but if you forget your tethered glasses, well, no big deal.
The only way we move past phone as personal computing form factor is making alternatives standalone devices. If you could do everything you do on your phone, but on glasses, you might drop the phone habit. If you can't drop the phone habit, and there are only so many things you can take with you when you leave your house, AR glasses will always be an afterthought.
Thick rims like those are considered high fashion right now. It's the opposite of goofy and says a lot about the audience here that you're all oblivious to this fact.
There's a reason they call it high fashion and not just fashion. But granted, maybe theres some billionaire bubble that's in on the joke and loves the look of this.
Modern men’s clothing often originated as work clothing (e.g. jeans) or military clothing (e.g. chinos), or something with practical use (ties stopped you spilling food on your shirt).
>... and says a lot about the audience here that you're all oblivious to this fact.
What does it say beyond, "This person doesn't pay attention to high fashion", and why does it feel like you're judging people for that? Who cares if people aren't into it? To my mind, your comment says a lot more about you than what ignorance to high fashion says about others.
It's obviously fine not to be into fashion, but if you're not, you shouldn't go around making judgment calls or confidently and incorrectly saying people wouldn't wear something for fashion reasons. It’s revealing in the sense that it shows how narrow-minded we can be, judging everything based on our own perspective and assuming it applies to everyone.
All OP said was that they found them goofy looking. Whether or not you're into high fashion doesn't change the fact that taste is entirely subjective and everyone who finds them too thick, or goofy looking, is more than welcome to that opinion. Doesn't make them out of touch or narrow minded at all.
And please, look at all of Meta's own comments on the size of this prototype - it's obvious that the size isn't because it's "in" in high fashion, but because that's the smallest they could reasonably get it.
Wow, that's quite some chip on your shoulder. You're managing to project things on to my post that I didn't say, at all.
Literally all I said was I thought they were large and goofy looking. I didn't say anything about people wearing, or not wearing them, or anything about whether they were fashionable or not. You've taken my post, read things I didn't say, made up stuff, and then judged me for it.
The first iphones and ipods were stunning for their time; they changed the industry and people would wait for hours on end in line at stores. It seems like a reach to compare these glasses to that.
I'm not comparing actual devices. I'm comparing how large they were when they were first released. The original iPod and iPhones were bricks compared to what the latest/last versions and it didn't have a touch screen and cameras.
The point is, the size of new technology tend to shrink fast.
The original iPod might have been a brick compared to the iPod nano, but it still wasn't that big. I don't think many people today would be upset to carry an original iPod. It was much smaller than the discman sized devices it was competing with.
The original iPhone was one of the smallest iPhones ever made. It did nothing but get bigger over time. If you want to compare the modern smart phone to a Zack Morris phone, or the bag phones that came before it, that would be a better way to go if the argument is size reduction over time.
True! But society can move backwards sometimes, todays smartphones are growing and and each generation of BEV gets heavier!
Something in the collective unconscious is screaming "put the biggest brick you can make in my hand and give me a main battle tank to go to TJ's." and industry is happy to oblige!
Maybe wearing a gigantic ugly thing on your face that beeps and has flashing lights isn't such a far step
They are as small as the technology can be made today. Meta knows that they are still too big. Zuckerberg said on stage that they will attempt to miniaturize them further and this is not a consumer product today.
Making them as small as they are is an incredible feat actually. They are better than Hololens in every respect and Hololens is absolutely massive in comparison. There are at least 5 cameras, two HD projectors, an IMU, microphones and speakers in this thing plus the chips and batteries to run them all continuously for two hours.
Now that you mention it I can see from Prada's side they need to get out ahead of the clunky AR goggle game and make it a fashion statement and meet the technology in the middle once it's miniaturized a little more
Meta's got the RayBans colab but they're gonna need the Prada colab if they want to sell at 5 kilobucks
I was an early adopter of the Galaxy Note which looked outlandishly large and goofy, back when people still spoke in awe of how Jobs made the 3.5" iPhone to fit the human hand naturally and no other form factor could possibly be right.
Fast forward today and nearly every phone looks like a galaxy note. Turns out when the utility is there, people will adapt.
Those of us with larger hands are happy with larger phones with bigger screens.
But even people I know with smaller hands generally prefer larger phones, probably for the same reason most PC computer users prefer larger monitors rather than the 14" monitors of yesteryear.
> to fit the human hand naturally and no other form factor could possibly be right.
I still think this is correct. "Features" like Reachability, and even Screen Time, are software solutions to hardware problems.
I don't think people would be as addicted to their smartphones if they stayed small. At that size, they were more of a tool, and a means to get something done when away from a proper computer. As the size increased, it became mobile-first, doom scrolling entered the picture, and people started asking if phones were bad of our mental health.
Sure, but if a phone is your primary computing device, as it is for more than half the world's population, it makes sense for it to get bigger as well.
It's because the lenses aren't transparent OLED displays like the ones LG is making. The images on the "screens" are literally being projected by small projectors fitted into the frame onto the lenses.
I don't know, right now I'm more interested in the capabilities of these glasses. But the video showing people's reactions to using them... That's what seemed a bit strange to me. Or you sat "goofy".
That's why this AR sunglasses bid is absolutely the wrong move.
Someone needs a lesson about the uncanny valley. Short story: unless you are all the way at the top go down, not up. Lean into the goofiness that your limitations demand. Make a decent new thing, not a strange old thing.
I genuinely don't think it's possible to do worse than the digital-eye passthrough on Vision Pro. Nothing will ever be a funnier waste of money than that feature, especially in hardware that consumers were expected to want to buy.
Another comment on Meta advertising and marketing: I, and everyone else I know, do not want to live in world Meta advertises. It’s awkward, sterile, and not believable. Even the images in this article have the “Meta flavour” which I find very offputting. Their video marketing is even worse.
Contrast with Apple, who do this perfectly.
I’m convinced that this is impacting their sales. The Meta Portal was an excellent product for example, but the marketing was dreadful, so it flopped.
Still kinda dorky looking but 10x better than what Snap unveiled last week.[^1] Software looks miles ahead of the AR glasses competition as well. Nice job FB engineers...keep cooking!
I was going to say that Snap's offering was probably cheaper or designed for mass marketing because their page looks like something you could actually buy.
But that isn't the case! Snap will only rent them to you at $1200/year [0], can't imagine what the BOM is like for either of these products.
don't know about spectacles but the verge's article about it quote someone saying it's about 10k to make this:
> As Meta’s executives retell it, the decision to shelve Orion mostly came down to the device’s astronomical cost to build, which is in the ballpark of $10,000 per unit. Most of that cost is due to how difficult and expensive it is to reliably manufacture the silicon carbide lenses. When it started designing Orion, Meta expected the material to become more commonly used across the industry and therefore cheaper, but that didn’t happen.
It says something that sony has the ability to fail like that and continue. Just like FB failed at the metaverse after doubling and tripling down about how it was the future of the company before it just kinda stopped talking about it.
Companies with this much cash can take risks and fail with little to no concequences, smaller companies cannot and thus often choose not compete or just HOPE that they get bought by one of these near monopolies.
Using caps doesn’t make this affirmation any more true.
While you’re correct that it does massively help, money is only a resource, which you can use to trade for a lot of things, but there are people, things and abstract concepts that money can’t buy.
Money buys recovery from failure, which is a double-edged sword. It doesn't buy the ability to learn the right lessons, and eventually the money teaches that failure doesn't really matter, because there's always another chance to get it right.
Which is why it is probably better to be just constrained enough financially that your first attempt really matters to your bottom line, but have enough to be able to pull it off.
Sure, but it's a factor and it's not like Snap is doing great otherwise.
Startups have less money, but invent new fields because of the differentiated advantage that comes from being smaller and faster (among other things). This is Snap competing in the same arena against Zuckerberg who is a lot better capitalized and better at it.
It'd be one thing to do if Snap was otherwise firing on all cylinders and trying to expand into the platform of the future, but it seems like they never recovered from Apple's ATT and are blowing money on passion projects that are not competitive.
What do I know? I'm just an outsider, but I'd buy Meta and sell Snap. If you disagree, the other direction is probably a lot more profitable if you're right.
Aesthetically I prefer the visor look of the HoloLens.
However if you want to appeal to people outside a work environment something that looks like actual glasses is the way forwards. This looks like it still has a couple of years until it reaches that goal, but it seems like Zuckerberg's ambition towards XR will pay off eventually
Boy, not from the outside, though. There was a guy wearing one on my last flight and it’s ugly and it’s super weird to see someone “doing stuff”. All the hand waving and stuff. I can’t imagine wearing one in public. But I’m old
The Apple Vision Pro front screen feels like an initial clunky attempt at trying to make this easier by giving an obvious indicator when somebody is off in their own world vs actually looking at you... though as UX design it's a good 10 years ahead of the hardware, since nobody's ever going to be casually wearing AVP in a coffee shop.
VRChat, of all things, has some interesting experimentation going on in this space. For example, there are avatars that will link up with your other SteamVR apps to show a placeholder screen or other indicator on the avatar when you have an overlay floating window active that's totally separate from VRChat.
Snap's device doesn't need a separate compute device, and I'm sure it's pretty trivial to make it smaller with such. So I would not judge based on this.
And anyway, I'm very glad to see Meta pushing towards AR, this is the good example of a company with bold vision.
The thickness is only part of the design, and the only justifiable part of it. The actual design is far more reminiscent of a cheap children’s toy than a high-end “revolutionary” piece of tech.
I think that chunkiness is kind of an aesthetic that's in right now actually, if you look at a lot of popular media there's definitely some "birth control glasses" that are considered on trend.
That being said I'm about the furthest thing from a fashion critic - only Kirkland Signature touches this body.
They innovate to infiltrate. 20ish years ago Steve Mann was beat up for invading people's comfort zone with AR glasses, then Google's AR users were "glassholes," now Meta is trying to make it cool. As much as I think AI is valuable, I hope they fail. The act of holding up a smartphone is much more explicit to signal to others they're about to lose all privacy to a centralized company. I don't think Quest is that innovative either, it's mostly first person shooters.
Where does Meta actually talk about things that could really be called "cool" at a society level? Or is it all just empty hype along the lines of Facebook being exploitation of social networking.
It depends on your definition of privacy. There's a lot of people who would argue that you don't have a right to privacy in a public setting. And there's a lot of nuance here depending on the state (assuming US).
I'm not a fan of the data being in the hands of a large corporation, but I AM a fan of more video recordings that are not government owned (cough London, Beijing, etc) that helps shine one more light of accountability on the "powers that be".
In all seriousness, your point about Beijing and London makes sense - the horse has bolted on public filming, so every citizen having an always-on camera is probably the best and most likely outcome.
The idea of having no privacy in public doesn't extend to every cause and creeper creating their own spy system. They are rarely going to focus on useful 'powers that be' issues. They are going to be all about asymmetrical exploitation. If this is let go, anyone with minimal skills and intent will be fully weaponized, some will organize as they do now for lulz or outright malicious activities like doxxing and blackmail, but amplified and "accepted" (without critique, just "cool" innovation for infiltration), and this will be another unrelenting assault on society.
There's no good normal from some people being able to deeply track some other people using all the tools available. It should be strictly forbidden for individuals and corporations to collect and organize this information, and use by government should be strictly limited.
On the other hand, it should be perfectly normal and good for individuals to deeply track companies and governments as bodies. The lack of a society wide focus on this aspect is quite troubling.
I'm in my house. Hopefully nobody is recording me there. My smartwatch tracks those things but in theory it should not be sharing that with the manufacturer.
They flooded the headset market by selling subsidized hardware at a massive loss for years which aggressively redirected funding away from abitious, interesting projects utilizing desktop levels of compute (next-gen 3D modeling and sculpting, architecture, fluid simulation) to Beat Saber level mobile game shovelware that has to be able to run on a cell phone
The vast majority of Quest users would never have invested in a high spec PC and Valve Index (which was like $1000 at the time), set it up with sensors and fiddled about with software to get it work. Mobile-quality gaming (Beat Saber) and professional applications are completely different markets and for the most part Quest just commoditized VR for people without the money or the means.
And you can literally use it with a PC via wifi or a cable.
Ya I don't know why they don't make the specs looks like normal specs. For example the master stroke of the Tesla Model S was to make it look like a normal car. The same with these devices. If they look normal and work differently they will get far more users.
Still looks ugly. The Ray Band was a success due to the aesthetic appeal of sunglass users (aviators, beach jocks look cool).
Pushing normal glasses without making the subject look like dorks (nerds are unattractive) or "glassholes" (Google glass tech bros) will be a challenge.
For #4, I don’t think scaling should be a major issue as the tooling industry has been manufacturing at scale for decades now. The only real difference is the customer
I think the requirements at the semi level are quite different than what the tooling industry will be able to produce. The silicon carbide layer thickness probably needs to be controlled at least to the 10 nm level and the film quality will need to be quite high for optical applications. There is some use of silicon carbide in semi in high power electronics, but I don't know how well that transfers to optical quality either.
Everyone was crapping on Zuck for his pivot from FB to Meta, and I was generally in the minority for supporting it. I even bought a quest 3, even though I refuse to use instagram. This turnaround for the company has been legendary. I think there’s something to say on “betting on people”. I didn’t believe in Meta or the technology, necessarily - for some reason, I believed in Zuck. He was willing to put his entire empire on this massive bet and stuck it out, despite the backlash and negative PR
If they stopped forward investment today, Reality Labs would be profitable just selling Quest hardware and software and Meta Ray Bans. The reason it loses money hand over fist is because they are not nearly done yet with where they want the tech to be.
Revenue was cited at around $1bn for Q4 last year in their financial reports and about $2b full year [0]. I have to believe they could easily run the division at break even on $1-2b per year if they were not investing heavily in R&D on future devices and services.
> While Orion won’t make its way into the hands of consumers
harumph. This tech is cool, but there's a worrying trend of important tech companies creating larger than life PR announcements without anything I can actually get my hands/eyes on
Well, the announcement is necessary because Snap has a similar product that's out now, and ostensibly Google is making one also. Apple probably will be 2-3 years behind perfecting their version, as is their MO.
It also invigorates current devs for Quest by showing them what their apps could run on in the future
> This tech is cool, but there's a worrying trend of important tech companies creating larger than life PR announcements without anything I can actually get my hands/eyes on
Funny thing is a company called Micronics actually recently launched an actual Kickstarter campaign for something they planned to ship to consumers, then they decided to sell to some enterprise company instead and cancel the campaign.
So even stuff that was advertised as for consumers isn't safe from never actually happening
Glasses that let you record people without their awareness / consent?
Downright creepy
I think the best play here would be to release them without any camera functionality at all, or the connotations will be that weird, sweaty guy that no one wants to sit next to on the subway (see: Google Glass).
well they're not going to be sold to consumers (apparently they cost like 10k-ish to make)...but i'm curious how they'd do motion tracking without cameras though...
they have two tiny insects inside the device that are attracted and trying to bite the pupil in your eyes, by measuring their orientation they can figure out where you're looking
I think they mean the cameras shouldn't be available in user-space / app-space. But I still bet there would be some sort of jailbreak tutorial available a couple days after the retail launch.
If they do it like their current Ray Ban glasses, there's an LED on the front that lights up when it's recording. People will no doubt disable it though.
you can't disable it, and it doesn't really matter anyway because nobody seems to notice it. I have videos of all my friends the first time I run into them using the glasses, and none of them realize that I'm recording them unless I stare at them for long enough without moving.
This particular LED not only emits light but works in reverse as well: it functions as an ambient light sensor. Recording is paused if the LED and camera inputs have a significant difference in detected light levels.
Its one thing to record in public, another to stick a camera in someone's face.
I did wear the Wayfarers around and only one person commented on them (a hotel manager who recognized them while checking me in) but I definitely didn't feel comfortable just taking pictures of people without their knowing, ended up returning them because I never got a picture worth sharing anyway.
Besides, if there wasn't stigma they wouldn't have to make it so stealthy.
I wear my Meta glasses all the time and use them to record all the time. It's fine, you're already surrounded by people who brandish their phones to record everything.
it's better with glasses actually as you have to stare at what you're recording (whereas hidden cameras and phones can record without you realizing that)
No, it isn't. That gives the social cue "I am watching you". It explicitly, intentionally avoids giving the cue "I am recording you". It is misleading. Yes, there are other ways to mislead. That doesn't excuse this one.
I don't think that makes a difference. I realize since you wear these things it is in your interest to make it seem like that people caring about privacy is living in past, but it really is creepy and if I saw someone wearing these in public I would not be thinking the world of them. YMMV.
I do not think it is a safe assumption that everyone who thinks those glasses are a creepy invasion of privacy are exactly the people who you will never see again.
Why not? I was replying specifically to your context.
>if I saw someone wearing these in public
If you specifically, who I don't know and likely never will saw me wearing something like this in public and did not approve, my care factor would be nil is what I meant.
If I was to wear these in a less public setting, where perhaps I have to interact with you on a regular basis, sure, my opinion may be different.
My apologies if I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
That's not to say I would wear something like this or use it, but if it's what comes to pass, eh.
> I think the best play here would be to release them without any camera functionality at all, or the connotations will be that weird, sweaty guy that no one wants to sit next to on the subway (see: Google Glass).
Sergey Brin sitting sad in the corner after reading this
There's dozens of different styles of camera glasses available on Amazon today for a fraction of the price, with completely concealed cameras. I think that train left the station years ago.
> Glasses that let you record people without their awareness / consent?
Thats basically all cameras. AR is coming, whether meta makes it work or not.
There are ways around this, but they either require a massive public backlash, or actual regulation that requires explicit and provable permission before non-anonymised pictures/captures can be taken.
From using various VR systems, a hololens, and reading reviews of the vision pro I really feel like hand gestures are a bad way to interact with AR systems. They might work in a pinch (heh) but some sort of small controller that can act as a pointer and has a button or two is superior in every way.
It's interesting that meta went through the effort of bundling an accessory but stuck with hand gestures anyway.
I agree, and I also think that walking around to items positioned statically in space is a really dumb way to do embodied computing. I mean if an app is associated with your kitchen fridge or whatever fine, pin it to your kitchen fridge, but if I'm going to be enveloped in an omnidirectional high def display, I want a way to bring the windows to me, not have to move my body to different windows.
Anyway, Logitech made an awesome little handheld keyboard for home theater PCs, called DiNovo Mini HTPC, I was able to pair it with Vision Pro.
That’s a great little keyboard, it reminds me of early smartphone keyboards in a good way.
I wonder if Apple decided against a controller in order to allow third party solutions to flourish . They can take their time and see what people gravitate towards.
Most of these products arnted aimed at consumers, but industrial tech. While the critque is great for enthusiasts, it makes no sense for what this type of industrial use will occur.
Hololens and Glass got relegated to industrial use. Pretty certain Meta would rather cross the chasm and get to everyday consumers, but the tech and use case doesn't cut it for that yet, which is why they aren't going to sell these until it's more of a home run. Seemed like they even had a subtle dig at Apple for pushing to get high end AR into the hands of consumers prematurely.
Uses: Being able to physically walk around a life-sized 3d model of an engine, human body, etc.
2. Tying AR to a point relative to the user
Uses: Heads-up Display notifications, virtual screens, etc.
These things are not mutually exclusive.
Even once you've placed a "AR object" at some static absolute location, I'm sure you can scroll through the list of active processes similar at any time, and snap it back to your body.
As somebody who hates the sedentary aspect of software engineering, I messed around with a friend's Apple Vision Pro and fell in love with the spatial computing aspect. I do a great deal of pacing when working through problems, and the ability to physically move around multiple virtualized workspaces was really engaging.
I have Xreal glasses, and it's handy to be able to pin a window to a physical spot (well, direction in this case). I used that feature to have basically a virtual TV on my laundry room wall while I watched a video on how to fix my dryer as I was fixing it. But if I'm playing a game or watching other content, I don't want to have to focus on a single spot, so I have the window always in front of my face.
I disagree. Physical activity enhances mental well-being and the quality of cognition. A system that allows one to design their workspace with regular movement in mind is going to be a boon for people who are usually chained to a desk for purely virtual work, forced to navigate cramped UI with their finger. Say I'm editing a video; you're telling me my media bin could be a literal bin a few steps away, allowing me to physically separate my "media selection" task from my "cutting and moving clips" task? Knowing that this kind of encapsulation helps to improve focus, and the movement would help with circulation and stress? Sign me up.
Imho hand gestures are the best way to interact with XR.
If your only experience is the HoloLens, you’re roughly a decade out of date with how well it can work today.
There’s also not been much until the Vision Pro that combines eye tracking with hand tracking which is what’s really needed.
You should really try the Vision Pro, because it really does move hand tracking to the point where it’s the best primary interaction method. Controllers might be good for some stuff , in the way an Apple Pencil is, but most interactions do not need it.
Hand tracking has also been pretty great on the Quest for some time now. I've got the first-gen one, and you can very comfortably type/navigate the UI with no controllers.
I'll have to dig mine out of the box and try it again, version 1 of the os basically had one gesture which was click. I hate the gaze and click interface, it works OK for Netflix but invariably I would fall back to using the trackpad on my MacBook to actually do any work.
I did buy a Vision Pro, but it's a nearly unusable device and outside of fora, I've never met anyone whose had a positive experience, so I suspect even among Vision Pro users, it's a minority opinion.
Hand tracking is not a feasible input method for routine computing.
Why do you need a controller for any of that? Those are all point and click, with low precision and large hitboxes. Which is perfect for eye+hand. Almost every review says hand+eye is greatly intuitive, almost every user in the Vision Pro communities as well. Even Meta are using hands+eyes as the way forward.
What exactly are you missing that a controller gives you for those tasks?
6dof input from hand gestures is a killer feature but it has to be rock solid. So far only controllers can do it but it's getting much better every year.
Haptic feedback, discrete buttons and precise analog input from controllers are also very important. The downside of controllers is that your hands are full and it's just not feasible for an all day wearable.
Hopefully someone figures out a good compromise be it rings or gloves or whatever.
The haptic feedback you get from touching your thumb and forefinger to simulate a click is actually better than a button because it feels more organic and natural.
Where it falls apart is not being able to feel yourself touching objects which nothing other than a full glove is going to be able to simulate. Controllers and rings provide no benefit over Apple's approach.
> Controllers and rings provide no benefit over Apple's approach.
When I touch a good quality button, I can feel the actuation point, and it's the same every time - I can learn to tell reliably whether I've pressed it or not.
When I touch my thumb and forefinger for a camera, I can't reliably tell what point it'll get detected as touching, because it isn't the same point each time.
As a result, I have to hold them together until I'm sure it's registered.
As a user, knowing unambiguously whether you've activated a control or not is a huge advantage for controllers & buttons.
It sounds like the wrist strap thing will have haptic feedback for when the gestures get registered, so you'll at least know when that happens. It sounds like that might actually make it better than the annoying capacitive buttons that's popular these days with no feedback…
Where do you figure? Last I checked mushy, organic keyboards are not preferred.
I mean, it's just laughable to suggest that inpu work just as well on the AVP. People are not using the virtual keyboard if a real one is available. Gamers want clicky buttons too.
There are clear benefits and disadvantages of each setup.
> Controllers and rings provide no benefit over Apple's approach.
This is the problem with fanboi-ism... the hyperbole is so clearly false. Let me list the ways that controllers are better:
- Typing/Chording
- Cheaper
- More efficient, no cameras pointing at things the user can't see. No continuous video processing.
- No dead zones where the camera can't see.
- Accuracy. For all but a few camera angles, Apple has to guess when you're fingers make contact. it works best with bigger movements, but the bigger the movement, the longer that movement takes. There's a reason no big-name competitive games have been ported over.
- Actual haptic feedback. Play Horizon: Forbidden West on PS5 to understand just what haptics can communicate to you... it's so much more than tapping your fingers together.
Apple's approach is amazing, and it's good for the use cases that Apple tells you are important... but there's so much more than that. You're doing a disservice to Apple by going full fanboi.
Users can just connect a ps5 controller to the Vision Pro, of course it's an extra expense but for Vision Pro buyers that's pretty much insignificant.
And all the sensors, cameras and superfast processing will still be needed for that immerse quasi AR simulated experience, so there are no cost savings there.
> The haptic feedback you get from touching your thumb and forefinger to simulate a click is actually better than a button because it feels more organic and natural.
Where did you experience this? My only experience is with the Apple Vision Pro and it failed like half the time
Isn't haptic feedback supposed to mean that you feel something as feedback that an action happened? If so, then this would be more like haptic feedforward. Apple vision reacts because you feel something, and that sounds as reliable as it probably is.
Apple doesn't react because you feel something. Apple estimates, based on the kinematics it recreates from it's camera feed, when something happens. It is NOT looking for a visual gap between fingers to disappear, as this would require an exactly correct camera angle.
I guess you get the natural haptic, but the feedback is visual/audio (happens in software). In any case the link between haptic and visual/audio action is kinda broken on the vision pro
the reason is that it is camera based, unlike Orion. And this is why people describe Orion as magical, whereas nobody talks about the hand gestures of the Apple Vision Pro (but people do talk about the eye tracking of the AVP as magical)
My killer feature will be a keyboard (/mouse) in a wristband(s), which comes along with, or nearby 6dof (also worthy, but not a personal grail).
Electromyography is an awesome technology, among other reasons, because it can (or will) detect neural signals below the activation (movement) threshold, meaning you should be able to train yourself to type without moving your fingers. A viable way to thought control without the invasive aspects of other approaches.
Back in the nineties, I said the computer user fifty years from then would look like a hippy. Headband (neural interface), sunglasses (I thought monitor, but AR is cooler), and a crystal around their neck (optical computer, maybe a miss, we'll see what the next decade brings, a slab in a pocket will do for now). Given my zero trust of end stage capitalism near my noggin, wristbands are an excellent transitional, as long as they're local (or can be made so, happy jail breaking)
Unless EMG signal processing has had some breakthrough in the past 10 years, it is not a very precise interaction mode. I worked in a lab developing it for quadriplegics to use with the muscle on their temple (we tested above the thumb as well). You can get rough 2-axis control with some practice, but that's with an adhesive EMG pad. Can a wrist band get a clean signal?
For typing, I'd expect you need to combine with eye tracking. So you're back to the Vision Pro UI.
On its own, EMG makes a good button, I'd expect. Maybe 1-axis control.
Thanks for the reality check. Wait some more, use voice for now, is what I hear... Although a decade is a long time in signal processing and Meta has dumped a boatload of cash into this.
No 6dof either ?
Sorry for using you as the 'say something wrong, get corrected' research method, but kudos for jumping in. ;}
Kind of a pointless comment to make if you haven't actually tried the Vision Pro.
Its interface is unlike anything else and really can only be experienced in person. The ability to simply glance at UI controls and slightly move your head whilst resting on your leg really does feel like magic.
And the UI is built around it so if you are looking for example at a sidebar it will lock you into choosing the options unless you substantially look away. This makes using it much easier and faster than a controller.
yeah. Call me oldskool but I still think a small controller with laser pointer is optimal.
You can move the point at least as fast as your eyes and a button press will be faster and more accurate than pinch, and no occlusion. Plus more buttons gives you additional actions for the same onscreen target.
I think the Quest/Index/etc. controllers are a far better form factor than a cylindrical tube, for this use case. But then I also think we should be adding XBox controller input to CAD applications and such, so maybe I am the weird one. We should get over the idea that gamepad = unprofessional, because these are seriously engineer, ergonomic, highly sensitive input devices.
If all you wanted was a pointing device to make selections on a 2D gui interface, then the laser pointer form factor would be better. But I’m going to be an old fart and ask why are you doing this in AR then? Just use a screen. I’m more interested in the different human interface possibilities that are opened up by tactile input and 3D visual controls.
We should be using index controllers to build “grabby” UIs. I’m curious what this could turn into. It opens up a whole new human computer interface medium for intrinsically spatial applications, just like a good stylus on a tablet opened up creative use cases.
A controller with a laser pointer might be good, but not optimal.
For a pointing device, moving a stylus on a small graphic tablet (in relative mode, i.e. like a mouse, not in absolute mode), in order to position a visible cursor on a target, is both faster and more precise and also much more comfortable than pointing forward with a laser pointer or an equivalent device.
When you are not at a desk, perhaps one can make a pointing device with a stylus that you hold like for writing and you point downwards, but the relative movements of the stylus are used to control a visible cursor that is in front of you, or in any other direction. That would still be much better than a pointing device that forces you to point in the real direction of the target.
Especially when only the relative movements are of interest, it is easy to measure the 3D orientation of a stylus with a combined accelerometer/magnetometer sensor.
while I agree, you also just don't have a choice as otherwise you force the user to carry a controller with them all the time (and even then the experience sucks because you have to take out/reach for your controller every time you want to usei t)
Traditional personal computers have both a keyboard and a mouse / trackpad. Game controllers have both joysticks and buttons.
While analog manipulation devices (mice, trackpads, joysticks, the 3D controllers) are good at physically precise manipulation and navigation, keys and buttons are good at symbolic / textual entry and logical / symbolic navigation with comparatively very low effort and high speed.
When VR / AR acquires a fast and low-effort symbolic input mode, comparable in efficiency to a keyboard, and it becomes possible to build highly productive interfaces driven by it, like Vim and MS Excel are driven by the keyboard, many interesting developments will happen.
It depends why you think hand gestures are bad. The wrist babd is detecting brain waves and allows for hand gestures while the hands are out of the field of view of the cameras.
The EMG wrist band is the most exciting part of this release, IMO. That strikes me as a great solve that pushes into software a lot of hard problems that were solved with hardware previously.
The Vision Pro uses optical sensors for hand tracking, so if your hands aren't visible to the device it obviously can't track them. Electromyography solves that problem, and I could imagine Apple integrating some variant of this in a future Apple Watch, and just falling back to optical sensors if you don't own one.
Yeah it is surprising because it seems like a relatively obvious solution. The Watch doesn't use electromyography though [1], it looks like it currently uses "the accelerometer, gyroscope, and optical heart sensor with a new machine learning algorithm." I wonder how accurate that is compared to the EMG solution Meta is using.
Many conversations you will have when you wear smart glasses (I wear meta's ray bans often since October) is people's concerns..oh u are filming me and I don't know ..stuff to that extent.
> The company that looks most poised to capitalize on a product like this is still Apple.
It's also possible they don't ever put out an offering in this form factor. They never released a dual screen phone. They never released a touchscreen laptop. This might be one of those things they just don't touch.
Also, I wonder if they'll have a tough time filling the form factor with stuff to do. The lack of apps was a huge reason the APV flopped, while Meta has a large headstart in making it possible for devs to build for their device, even those without exp in spatial dev / game dev / etc.
> It's also possible they don't ever put out an offering in this form factor
Couldn't disagree more, if it was possible to bet on this I would bet all my money that they do release something like this. It'll probably be called the Vision Air or something. I don't remember which article it was, but there are reports that Tim Cook only agreed to fund and ship the Vision Pro because he was told that the same tech will be put into glasses in a few years.
I'll gladly take that bet. Apple is known to be very conservative with hardware form factors, and the AVP was a huge risk for them, and a departure from their previous ways of working that they'll be reluctant to return to after its failure.
If there is a secure/verified way to take the bet I will gladly put some money up! So if Apple sells an eyeglass-like form factor AR product, then I win right? I guess we need a deadline? 2040?
The 100 degree field of view in the AVP is noticeable because it is a VR headsets. Most VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 have greater field of view than the AVP, which is why the 100 degree is so noticeable.
AVP is AR. They made a big deal of being able to place windows all around and above your workspace, but taking advantage of this requires large head movements.
I had a Quest2 but sold it years ago. I'm not comparing AVP to any previous VR experiences, I don't even remember what the FOV felt like.
Not the same thing. AVP uses passthrough video, which is subject to the same field of view as the virtual content. These glasses are actually glasses, so the real world has an "unlimited" field of view -- only virtual content exists in the 70 degree FoV.
You can emulate this on the Vision Pro by removing the light seal entirely. It makes a dramatic difference, but also makes it impossible to use virtual environments or any immersive experiences.
Is that true? Last time I was reading about holographic lenses, it was a flat white laser backlight fed into a waveguide (the hologram part), and filtered through an LCD. An actual LED projector would have darker darks, but I would much rather have a higher resolution..
It's definitely helpful to hear about the waveguide production problems. Obviously, that's going to be the greatest hurdle; after all, they are manufacturing a completely unique object with very small feature sizes.
While I understand that this is a prototype, it's unfortunate that they've outlined no specs of any kind. How long is the battery life, how heavy are they, what's the resolution, field of view, etc? As is, it's impossible to really say if this is a dud or a truly remarkable piece of tech.
How many more millions are these companies going to flush down the toilet before they get it through their heads that normal people do not like wearing technology on their face? 3D TVs failed. VR gaming failed. Even Apple isn't really pulling off AR. They test and develop these products on their techie early adopter employees and are shocked shocked shocked when normal people who care what they look like aren't willing to look like an idiot in front of their friends.
It may be niche, but it's not a failure to me and I appreciate the market. Most of my gaming is in VR and has been for years. I treat it like my steering wheel and pedals or anything else. I have a dedicated room for VR/my simrig.
For the market that want's it, it works incredibly well. Could be better, but I get being a niche developments are going to come slowly. I'm in the lucky minority I suppose in that I have no issue using it. None, not so much as a hint of nausea even far back as the original devkits. I slip the headset on in under 5 seconds, I play for anywhere from 15 minutes into the hours and I slip it off again in the same amount of time. I understand not everyone is willing to entertain that, but it's no skin off my nose. It's still one of the LESS involved hobbies I have in terms of effort honestly.
I'm probably more willing to entertain wearing technology on my face because i'm a motorcyclist and my headsets are sure as all get out lighter than my helmet is. And then after the helmet I gotta get into my personal oven aka leathers etc etc. So im probably just used to engaging in less passive activities requiring more than the bare minium I suppose. Different strokes for all us different folks I suppose.
Reminds of the anime Dennou Coil. I hope someday AR becomes boring tech and we'll be able to buy devices from less-sinister companies that won't be monitoring our eye positions and iris dilation in order to manipulate our attention for profit. Better yet, an AR device that integrates with your PC rather than a cloud-based anything.
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[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 530 ms ] threadGenuine question!
For instance, the media never seemed to get the point of Horizon Worlds in that if VR content is going to be like the web, there has to be authoring tools that make it possible for the ordinary Joe to make content. The persona I think of is the owner of a few Thai restaurants who is very savvy about SEO and SMO and developing relationships with DoorDash and such. That person has to see the value of having a VR or AR presence that is greater than the cost of developing.
Horizon Worlds fell down in many ways not least in making you create everything with computational solid geometry and not letting you import image, video and 3d assets. Sorry but McDonalds has to put the Coca-Cola logo on the side of the drink cups. One trouble is the size of those assets has to be managed so that you don’t overload the rendering engine or the comm link. Another is that people are going to make worlds stuffed with porno images or theaters where you can watch pirated movies. As it is their authoring tools aren’t that good, people who know how to author 3-d content can’t use the tools and processes that are good at, and your world can only be so big.
There are many good games that are developed with the expensive processes used to make 3d games and a huge number of Horizon Worlds competitors, I am sure Meta wants to see one succeed but it is not an easy problem.
I like my MQ3 but for entertainment it competes with other options (sure it was fun to watch the last Star Wars movie in 3D and I like VR games but normal video and video games is hard to beat) and for creative work it is the same: in theory I could publish my stereograms in VR with A-Frame but there are so many other projects to work on.
I think we still have some room to grow there in terms of aesthetic for the majority though.
undoubtedly a progressive achievement in the field, despite it all
So does Meta and it's the reason they aren't actually releasing this as a product. They just showed us where they're at and gave us an idea on where they want to go in the next few years.
* Looks very cool and more natural. (In comparison, look at Snap XR Glasses)
* No wires sticking out.
* Not a huge VR headset.
* Can see what you see through the lenses for XR capabilities.
* Controllable through eyes, hands and neural interface to cover almost all scenarios without looking awkward in public.
* Integrates with an existing app ecosystem.
Orion is very promising and appears to be in the lead for mainstream XR glasses so far.
In general, it appears that everyone here misjudged and betted against Meta and Zuck when they were at $93 with calls for Zuck to be 'fired' when the stock crashed. [0] Now the stock is at all time highs.
Remember. They didn't even mention Threads. At all. It is another way for them to monetize that if they want to.
That is true founder mode and the death of Meta Platforms Inc. has been absolutely exaggerated.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36452808
I wonder what's actually in the frames. You wouldn't put bulk there if you had any other choice.
Did they say what it is, specifically?
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
Edit -- the home page says 70-degree FoV. Not bad, better than HoloLens (45-degree FoV if I recall), but perhaps not enough to turn your head to the person next to you while still having game elements persist in vision
I tried out the first gen version at a meetup and it was really nifty (the latency was fantastic), but I just couldn't work out what anyone would use it for in real life, it seemed too limited to be useful.
Reminds me of the old 80's NHS glasses in the UK (which you could get for free if you couldn't afford otherwise).
Or for those of you old enough, Brains from the old Supermarionation versions of the Thunderbird show (https://i2-prod.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/article8451975.ec...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_glasses
I hate owning too many socks so I would wear "long" socks with everything, including shorts. I would also tuck my trousers into my socks when cycling. This was considered a massive faux pas 10 years ago. Guess what the youth do today? Yep, long socks are in!
I've been reading about AR for years and I still have no idea how, if at all, I would use it. Never really come across a use case that's compelling for me. Getting WhatsApp messages without taking my phone out of my pocket feels like the opposite to the direction I'd like to move in.
The second, yeah, maybe, if it was done incredibly well. but marginal benefit over an iPad or similar.
I do: to display a moving map from Google Maps while cycling. It'd be incredibly handy for navigation in a city. Everyone these days uses a navigation app in their car to navigate (esp. to unfamiliar destinations), but how do you do that on a bicycle? You can get one of those phone mounts for your handlebars, but it's really clunky, and difficult (or impossible) to see in bright sunlight. Plus, in my experience, phones tended to fall out of them, as it was hard to find a mount that would fit a modern-size (read: large) phone; they seem to all be designed with 2010-model phones in mind.
But it doesn't solve the visibility problem: good luck seeing your screen in direct sunlight. And also the problem where you have to look down at your handlebards, refocus your eyes for close-up vision (this is really bad if you're over ~40 due to presbyopia), and try to make out the info on the screen, and not get hit by a car or run into a pedestrian or other road hazard. If you're navigating inside a dense city, this sounds positively dangerous. AR glasses would fix all of this.
Looking down is definitely an issue, but not for simply following a route. In fact, for turn by turn nav, I prefer audio. And no, I'm not interested in your opinions about the safety of that :)
AR glasses might work better, but they'd introduce other issues, like conflicting with sunglasses and helmet. Plus a huge expense. I suspect for me even if I owned such a thing I would rarely use it for this case.
Well ideally, the AR glasses would double as sunglasses (perhaps photochromic so you can use them at night too). And if they had the same size frames as regular sunglasses (and not these huge clunky ones seen on the prototype), then they wouldn't interfere with your helmet any more than regular sunglasses.
>In fact, for turn by turn nav, I prefer audio. And no, I'm not interested in your opinions about the safety of that :)
Well I'm going to give it to you anyway :-) I've tried audio for turn-by-turn nav, and it really sucks. Not because of safety, but just because it doesn't work well. It's hard to hear if it's noisy, it doesn't tell which road to turn on correctly, etc. I guess if you're in some rural area and there's only one turn visible in the next kilometer, it's fine, but I live in Tokyo and roads here are tiny (1 car wide at best in many places) and close together, so when it says "turn right", that doesn't really tell me much. It also doesn't help much because nav usually wants to direct me on main roads instead of side roads, but side roads are much better for cycling: on main roads, you either ride with traffic and get hit by trucks, or you ride on the sidewalk and dodge pedestrians going in and out of storefronts (the latter is preferred by almost all cyclists here). But on the side roads, you can avoid most of this. The problem, however, is that many side roads don't go far before they're blocked by a park or a train line or something else. A moving map would show you the road layout so you can choose for yourself a convenient route, and also be able to make quick decisions for alternate routes in case you miss a turn or just want to ride a different way for some reason. On top of all that, the audio is just plain loud and annoying and rude to all the pedestrians nearby, and makes me feel embarrassed.
Peak Design has, in my opinion, a better solution than quadmount - it mounts securely (magnet + slot) and keeps the ability to wirelessly charge. Do have to use their case though, but it's a very attractive case. I use it in conjunction with the Trek BellBeats and I'm satisfied.
I would say the same about AR. I'm surprised by your comment. Lately I've been using it a lot when shopping for furnitures (to place the furniture in my space and see how it fits, amazon and a bunch of furniture places let you do that).
https://img.cohan.dev/qFlL7.jpeg
Actually it is a little bit annoying, people might actually get away with wearing these things, which means Facebook spyware might be entering everyday life. I’m glad I’m too old for parties.
I would say have a "cache level" like combination: * very low/few computation done at the glasses level * medium computation done at the brick unit level * hard/intensive computation done in the cloud.
Wireless microphones are not a good comparison because they are probably analog, but even if they are digital a few dozen milliseconds of delay is going to be imperceptible for audio in a way that video is not.
I agree. The obvious choice is to offload to our insanely powerful phones. Unfortunately WiFi is too disruptive on mobile OSs and raw Bluetooth is.. well does that even need an explanation? Apple are probably the only ones who could deliver a seamless high bandwidth link and decent pairing, atm. But they spent their prototype-billions on a headset instead.
On the other hand though.. do we really need to run multiple cameras and a realtime image processing pipeline to say that the cacao on your countertop is, in fact, cacao? These AR “experiences” make cool demos, but once the novelty wears off, nobody wants to play planetarium or anatomy class for hours a day.
Note that without the whole AR part of it, there’s still some really cool hardware for all kinds of purposes. That can be really handy when you want or need both hands free. For instance POV video for say sports, HUD and voice interface for eg cycling, maybe watching videos while working, anything requiring gloves (cold, wet hands, gardening) todo-list in the corner of eye when shopping, etc etc. You could reduce form factor and increase battery time significantly, even if you keep accelerometer, gyro, projector, light sensor, cameras etc. But for some reason, utility is not even a priority with these companies.
The problem is that by doing so we make glasses secondary, auxiliary devices. You wouldn't leave your house without your phone, but if you forget your tethered glasses, well, no big deal.
The only way we move past phone as personal computing form factor is making alternatives standalone devices. If you could do everything you do on your phone, but on glasses, you might drop the phone habit. If you can't drop the phone habit, and there are only so many things you can take with you when you leave your house, AR glasses will always be an afterthought.
Uh?? Given the size of normal ties, their "use" as a protection for a shirt is dubious!
What does it say beyond, "This person doesn't pay attention to high fashion", and why does it feel like you're judging people for that? Who cares if people aren't into it? To my mind, your comment says a lot more about you than what ignorance to high fashion says about others.
And please, look at all of Meta's own comments on the size of this prototype - it's obvious that the size isn't because it's "in" in high fashion, but because that's the smallest they could reasonably get it.
Literally all I said was I thought they were large and goofy looking. I didn't say anything about people wearing, or not wearing them, or anything about whether they were fashionable or not. You've taken my post, read things I didn't say, made up stuff, and then judged me for it.
The point is, the size of new technology tend to shrink fast.
The original iPhone was one of the smallest iPhones ever made. It did nothing but get bigger over time. If you want to compare the modern smart phone to a Zack Morris phone, or the bag phones that came before it, that would be a better way to go if the argument is size reduction over time.
Something in the collective unconscious is screaming "put the biggest brick you can make in my hand and give me a main battle tank to go to TJ's." and industry is happy to oblige!
Maybe wearing a gigantic ugly thing on your face that beeps and has flashing lights isn't such a far step
Making them as small as they are is an incredible feat actually. They are better than Hololens in every respect and Hololens is absolutely massive in comparison. There are at least 5 cameras, two HD projectors, an IMU, microphones and speakers in this thing plus the chips and batteries to run them all continuously for two hours.
Meta's got the RayBans colab but they're gonna need the Prada colab if they want to sell at 5 kilobucks
Fast forward today and nearly every phone looks like a galaxy note. Turns out when the utility is there, people will adapt.
But even people I know with smaller hands generally prefer larger phones, probably for the same reason most PC computer users prefer larger monitors rather than the 14" monitors of yesteryear.
I still think this is correct. "Features" like Reachability, and even Screen Time, are software solutions to hardware problems.
I don't think people would be as addicted to their smartphones if they stayed small. At that size, they were more of a tool, and a means to get something done when away from a proper computer. As the size increased, it became mobile-first, doom scrolling entered the picture, and people started asking if phones were bad of our mental health.
Someone needs a lesson about the uncanny valley. Short story: unless you are all the way at the top go down, not up. Lean into the goofiness that your limitations demand. Make a decent new thing, not a strange old thing.
Contrast with Apple, who do this perfectly.
I’m convinced that this is impacting their sales. The Meta Portal was an excellent product for example, but the marketing was dreadful, so it flopped.
[^1]: https://www.spectacles.com/
But that isn't the case! Snap will only rent them to you at $1200/year [0], can't imagine what the BOM is like for either of these products.
[0] https://www.spectacles.com/lens-studio
> As Meta’s executives retell it, the decision to shelve Orion mostly came down to the device’s astronomical cost to build, which is in the ballpark of $10,000 per unit. Most of that cost is due to how difficult and expensive it is to reliably manufacture the silicon carbide lenses. When it started designing Orion, Meta expected the material to become more commonly used across the industry and therefore cheaper, but that didn’t happen.
Plus Snap's core business is a mess I don't see how they could really compete with Meta on this they'll run out of money first.
It's cool to see Meta's continued work/focus in this space - a polished internal prototype is probably the right place for this hardware.
Snap is worth $20B, Meta is worth $1.5T. No comparison.
It says something that sony has the ability to fail like that and continue. Just like FB failed at the metaverse after doubling and tripling down about how it was the future of the company before it just kinda stopped talking about it.
Companies with this much cash can take risks and fail with little to no concequences, smaller companies cannot and thus often choose not compete or just HOPE that they get bought by one of these near monopolies.
While you’re correct that it does massively help, money is only a resource, which you can use to trade for a lot of things, but there are people, things and abstract concepts that money can’t buy.
Which is why it is probably better to be just constrained enough financially that your first attempt really matters to your bottom line, but have enough to be able to pull it off.
Startups have less money, but invent new fields because of the differentiated advantage that comes from being smaller and faster (among other things). This is Snap competing in the same arena against Zuckerberg who is a lot better capitalized and better at it.
It'd be one thing to do if Snap was otherwise firing on all cylinders and trying to expand into the platform of the future, but it seems like they never recovered from Apple's ATT and are blowing money on passion projects that are not competitive.
What do I know? I'm just an outsider, but I'd buy Meta and sell Snap. If you disagree, the other direction is probably a lot more profitable if you're right.
However if you want to appeal to people outside a work environment something that looks like actual glasses is the way forwards. This looks like it still has a couple of years until it reaches that goal, but it seems like Zuckerberg's ambition towards XR will pay off eventually
VRChat, of all things, has some interesting experimentation going on in this space. For example, there are avatars that will link up with your other SteamVR apps to show a placeholder screen or other indicator on the avatar when you have an overlay floating window active that's totally separate from VRChat.
Exciting work! It seems like the main problems are now in miniaturizing electronics (and not optics) into a Ray-Ban form factor? Super cool.
Neither is Snap's offering. They're renting out Devkits.
With Orion, no devkits publicly available either.
That being said I'm about the furthest thing from a fashion critic - only Kirkland Signature touches this body.
Where does Meta actually talk about things that could really be called "cool" at a society level? Or is it all just empty hype along the lines of Facebook being exploitation of social networking.
If you have a smartwatch, there's a company out there that knows every breath you take, and every move you make.
Might as well get AR in the mix now that we're here. There are lots of pure sci-fi applications that come with smart glasses.
- AR directions
- all sorts of tutorials for things where you work with your hands. Imagine how easy IKEA furniture can be!
- never forget another name
- metadata about spare parts, products, and recipe ingredients as you look at them
- incredible military applications - team awareness, situational map, aiming reticule
I'm not a fan of the data being in the hands of a large corporation, but I AM a fan of more video recordings that are not government owned (cough London, Beijing, etc) that helps shine one more light of accountability on the "powers that be".
In all seriousness, your point about Beijing and London makes sense - the horse has bolted on public filming, so every citizen having an always-on camera is probably the best and most likely outcome.
There's no good normal from some people being able to deeply track some other people using all the tools available. It should be strictly forbidden for individuals and corporations to collect and organize this information, and use by government should be strictly limited.
On the other hand, it should be perfectly normal and good for individuals to deeply track companies and governments as bodies. The lack of a society wide focus on this aspect is quite troubling.
They flooded the headset market by selling subsidized hardware at a massive loss for years which aggressively redirected funding away from abitious, interesting projects utilizing desktop levels of compute (next-gen 3D modeling and sculpting, architecture, fluid simulation) to Beat Saber level mobile game shovelware that has to be able to run on a cell phone
And you can literally use it with a PC via wifi or a cable.
Pushing normal glasses without making the subject look like dorks (nerds are unattractive) or "glassholes" (Google glass tech bros) will be a challenge.
1. wireless data transfer and how that affects the performance
2. EMG: this is alright, but seems to be a bit overhyped
3. MicroLED: clearly the best display technology available, but how close is color display to consumer price levels?
4. silicon carbide: great material, interested in seeing it at scale
5. magnesium frame: super awesome to see this being pushed as wel
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
[0] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
harumph. This tech is cool, but there's a worrying trend of important tech companies creating larger than life PR announcements without anything I can actually get my hands/eyes on
It also invigorates current devs for Quest by showing them what their apps could run on in the future
Funny thing is a company called Micronics actually recently launched an actual Kickstarter campaign for something they planned to ship to consumers, then they decided to sell to some enterprise company instead and cancel the campaign.
So even stuff that was advertised as for consumers isn't safe from never actually happening
Pretty cool
Glasses that let you record people without their awareness / consent?
Downright creepy
I think the best play here would be to release them without any camera functionality at all, or the connotations will be that weird, sweaty guy that no one wants to sit next to on the subway (see: Google Glass).
I think in this instance it's probably "let Meta record people and associate the data to their shadow profiles". Doubly creepy.
You can put a piece of tape over it, fill it with black nail polish, let the smoke out of the LED, or otherwise keep the light from being visible.
Props to Facebook for making it less circumventable.
I did wear the Wayfarers around and only one person commented on them (a hotel manager who recognized them while checking me in) but I definitely didn't feel comfortable just taking pictures of people without their knowing, ended up returning them because I never got a picture worth sharing anyway.
Besides, if there wasn't stigma they wouldn't have to make it so stealthy.
There are few things I could care less about than what some nobody I’ll ever see again thinks.
>if I saw someone wearing these in public
If you specifically, who I don't know and likely never will saw me wearing something like this in public and did not approve, my care factor would be nil is what I meant.
If I was to wear these in a less public setting, where perhaps I have to interact with you on a regular basis, sure, my opinion may be different.
My apologies if I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
That's not to say I would wear something like this or use it, but if it's what comes to pass, eh.
Sergey Brin sitting sad in the corner after reading this
Thats basically all cameras. AR is coming, whether meta makes it work or not.
There are ways around this, but they either require a massive public backlash, or actual regulation that requires explicit and provable permission before non-anonymised pictures/captures can be taken.
I get it, it's icky. I feel the same way. Nevertheless, this is already a thing.
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
Wireless compute puck. 70 degree FOV. Resolution high enough to read text. Wrist band detects hand gestures and will be used in another product.
did meta buy them out?
https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-acquires-ctrl-labs-develop...
I had the first myoband sdk and didn’t work for me. I imagine tech is much improved now
https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/27/ctrl-labs-scoops-up-myo-ar...
Context: I was part of this acquisition, but am no longer at Meta.
It's interesting that meta went through the effort of bundling an accessory but stuck with hand gestures anyway.
Anyway, Logitech made an awesome little handheld keyboard for home theater PCs, called DiNovo Mini HTPC, I was able to pair it with Vision Pro.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/226367904044?_skw=Logitech+DiNovo+M...
I wonder if Apple decided against a controller in order to allow third party solutions to flourish . They can take their time and see what people gravitate towards.
Uses: Being able to physically walk around a life-sized 3d model of an engine, human body, etc.
2. Tying AR to a point relative to the user
Uses: Heads-up Display notifications, virtual screens, etc.
These things are not mutually exclusive.
Even once you've placed a "AR object" at some static absolute location, I'm sure you can scroll through the list of active processes similar at any time, and snap it back to your body.
As somebody who hates the sedentary aspect of software engineering, I messed around with a friend's Apple Vision Pro and fell in love with the spatial computing aspect. I do a great deal of pacing when working through problems, and the ability to physically move around multiple virtualized workspaces was really engaging.
If your only experience is the HoloLens, you’re roughly a decade out of date with how well it can work today.
There’s also not been much until the Vision Pro that combines eye tracking with hand tracking which is what’s really needed.
You should really try the Vision Pro, because it really does move hand tracking to the point where it’s the best primary interaction method. Controllers might be good for some stuff , in the way an Apple Pencil is, but most interactions do not need it.
It has almost as many gestures as the trackpad or iPhone though. More gestures can be handled app side.
There’s also direct touch of surfaces too.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/23/vision-pro-will-t...
Controllers have their strength for games but most things that people do with their computers are better with hand tracking.
I can only imagine this is an extreme minority view, as hand tracking is next to useless for these tasks, outside of tech demos.
Ofc Vision Pro users are extreme minorities so you are not wrong. But I highly encourage you to try out Vision Pro if you haven't.
Hand tracking is not a feasible input method for routine computing.
What exactly are you missing that a controller gives you for those tasks?
Haptic feedback, discrete buttons and precise analog input from controllers are also very important. The downside of controllers is that your hands are full and it's just not feasible for an all day wearable.
Hopefully someone figures out a good compromise be it rings or gloves or whatever.
Where it falls apart is not being able to feel yourself touching objects which nothing other than a full glove is going to be able to simulate. Controllers and rings provide no benefit over Apple's approach.
When I touch a good quality button, I can feel the actuation point, and it's the same every time - I can learn to tell reliably whether I've pressed it or not.
When I touch my thumb and forefinger for a camera, I can't reliably tell what point it'll get detected as touching, because it isn't the same point each time.
As a result, I have to hold them together until I'm sure it's registered.
As a user, knowing unambiguously whether you've activated a control or not is a huge advantage for controllers & buttons.
I mean, it's just laughable to suggest that inpu work just as well on the AVP. People are not using the virtual keyboard if a real one is available. Gamers want clicky buttons too.
There are clear benefits and disadvantages of each setup.
This is the problem with fanboi-ism... the hyperbole is so clearly false. Let me list the ways that controllers are better: - Typing/Chording - Cheaper - More efficient, no cameras pointing at things the user can't see. No continuous video processing. - No dead zones where the camera can't see. - Accuracy. For all but a few camera angles, Apple has to guess when you're fingers make contact. it works best with bigger movements, but the bigger the movement, the longer that movement takes. There's a reason no big-name competitive games have been ported over. - Actual haptic feedback. Play Horizon: Forbidden West on PS5 to understand just what haptics can communicate to you... it's so much more than tapping your fingers together.
Apple's approach is amazing, and it's good for the use cases that Apple tells you are important... but there's so much more than that. You're doing a disservice to Apple by going full fanboi.
And all the sensors, cameras and superfast processing will still be needed for that immerse quasi AR simulated experience, so there are no cost savings there.
Where did you experience this? My only experience is with the Apple Vision Pro and it failed like half the time
* I pressed my finger
* nothing happened
* it feels broken
the reason is that it is camera based, unlike Orion. And this is why people describe Orion as magical, whereas nobody talks about the hand gestures of the Apple Vision Pro (but people do talk about the eye tracking of the AVP as magical)
Electromyography is an awesome technology, among other reasons, because it can (or will) detect neural signals below the activation (movement) threshold, meaning you should be able to train yourself to type without moving your fingers. A viable way to thought control without the invasive aspects of other approaches.
Back in the nineties, I said the computer user fifty years from then would look like a hippy. Headband (neural interface), sunglasses (I thought monitor, but AR is cooler), and a crystal around their neck (optical computer, maybe a miss, we'll see what the next decade brings, a slab in a pocket will do for now). Given my zero trust of end stage capitalism near my noggin, wristbands are an excellent transitional, as long as they're local (or can be made so, happy jail breaking)
For typing, I'd expect you need to combine with eye tracking. So you're back to the Vision Pro UI.
On its own, EMG makes a good button, I'd expect. Maybe 1-axis control.
No 6dof either ?
Sorry for using you as the 'say something wrong, get corrected' research method, but kudos for jumping in. ;}
Try it out , it’s really neat
Something named after a small rodent that we use already. And a monitor that we use already. Then you are cooking. You've invented the desktop pc.
Its interface is unlike anything else and really can only be experienced in person. The ability to simply glance at UI controls and slightly move your head whilst resting on your leg really does feel like magic.
And the UI is built around it so if you are looking for example at a sidebar it will lock you into choosing the options unless you substantially look away. This makes using it much easier and faster than a controller.
Gaze/click is for interacting with 2D planes.
Hand tracking is for interacting with the 3D world.
You can move the point at least as fast as your eyes and a button press will be faster and more accurate than pinch, and no occlusion. Plus more buttons gives you additional actions for the same onscreen target.
If all you wanted was a pointing device to make selections on a 2D gui interface, then the laser pointer form factor would be better. But I’m going to be an old fart and ask why are you doing this in AR then? Just use a screen. I’m more interested in the different human interface possibilities that are opened up by tactile input and 3D visual controls.
For a pointing device, moving a stylus on a small graphic tablet (in relative mode, i.e. like a mouse, not in absolute mode), in order to position a visible cursor on a target, is both faster and more precise and also much more comfortable than pointing forward with a laser pointer or an equivalent device.
When you are not at a desk, perhaps one can make a pointing device with a stylus that you hold like for writing and you point downwards, but the relative movements of the stylus are used to control a visible cursor that is in front of you, or in any other direction. That would still be much better than a pointing device that forces you to point in the real direction of the target.
Especially when only the relative movements are of interest, it is easy to measure the 3D orientation of a stylus with a combined accelerometer/magnetometer sensor.
While analog manipulation devices (mice, trackpads, joysticks, the 3D controllers) are good at physically precise manipulation and navigation, keys and buttons are good at symbolic / textual entry and logical / symbolic navigation with comparatively very low effort and high speed.
When VR / AR acquires a fast and low-effort symbolic input mode, comparable in efficiency to a keyboard, and it becomes possible to build highly productive interfaces driven by it, like Vim and MS Excel are driven by the keyboard, many interesting developments will happen.
Also the gestures are recognised by something you wear rather than cameras, so I'd expect them to be more reliable.
The Vision Pro uses optical sensors for hand tracking, so if your hands aren't visible to the device it obviously can't track them. Electromyography solves that problem, and I could imagine Apple integrating some variant of this in a future Apple Watch, and just falling back to optical sensors if you don't own one.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/10/apple-watch-double-ta...
Wireless compute puck = iPhone Wrist band = Apple watch (although most people wear it on their non-dominant hand)
From the videos it looks like Meta adopted Apple's UI of a horizontal handle bar underneath a window for interacting with a piece of content.
Considering that the 100 degree field of view of the Apple Vision Pro is already noticeable, 70 degrees seems really limiting.
Facebook seems better aligned in that regards.
Many conversations you will have when you wear smart glasses (I wear meta's ray bans often since October) is people's concerns..oh u are filming me and I don't know ..stuff to that extent.
It's also possible they don't ever put out an offering in this form factor. They never released a dual screen phone. They never released a touchscreen laptop. This might be one of those things they just don't touch.
Also, I wonder if they'll have a tough time filling the form factor with stuff to do. The lack of apps was a huge reason the APV flopped, while Meta has a large headstart in making it possible for devs to build for their device, even those without exp in spatial dev / game dev / etc.
Couldn't disagree more, if it was possible to bet on this I would bet all my money that they do release something like this. It'll probably be called the Vision Air or something. I don't remember which article it was, but there are reports that Tim Cook only agreed to fund and ship the Vision Pro because he was told that the same tech will be put into glasses in a few years.
For an AR headset, 70 degrees is pretty good.
I had a Quest2 but sold it years ago. I'm not comparing AVP to any previous VR experiences, I don't even remember what the FOV felt like.
You can emulate this on the Vision Pro by removing the light seal entirely. It makes a dramatic difference, but also makes it impossible to use virtual environments or any immersive experiences.
Is that true? Last time I was reading about holographic lenses, it was a flat white laser backlight fed into a waveguide (the hologram part), and filtered through an LCD. An actual LED projector would have darker darks, but I would much rather have a higher resolution..
It's definitely helpful to hear about the waveguide production problems. Obviously, that's going to be the greatest hurdle; after all, they are manufacturing a completely unique object with very small feature sizes.
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
It may be niche, but it's not a failure to me and I appreciate the market. Most of my gaming is in VR and has been for years. I treat it like my steering wheel and pedals or anything else. I have a dedicated room for VR/my simrig.
For the market that want's it, it works incredibly well. Could be better, but I get being a niche developments are going to come slowly. I'm in the lucky minority I suppose in that I have no issue using it. None, not so much as a hint of nausea even far back as the original devkits. I slip the headset on in under 5 seconds, I play for anywhere from 15 minutes into the hours and I slip it off again in the same amount of time. I understand not everyone is willing to entertain that, but it's no skin off my nose. It's still one of the LESS involved hobbies I have in terms of effort honestly.
I'm probably more willing to entertain wearing technology on my face because i'm a motorcyclist and my headsets are sure as all get out lighter than my helmet is. And then after the helmet I gotta get into my personal oven aka leathers etc etc. So im probably just used to engaging in less passive activities requiring more than the bare minium I suppose. Different strokes for all us different folks I suppose.
For me, buttery smooth animation and synchronization of the physical and projected world are table stakes.