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Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

arstechnica.com

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Re: Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

#31

Post by bijection »

YZF wrote: post #22
djrogers wrote: post #14

I believe that this has way more chance to revolutionize human/computer interaction than anything Occulus is doing. Outside of specific areas (like gaming and certain types of video based entertainment), this type of AR/MR is much more useful than Rift style VR. You can interact with others, your environment, and other systems without the isolation or nausea of VR. On top of that, being able to supplement the real wo…

I think these are two fundamentally different things: AR, as would suggest, augments reality. VR however allows for creation of a completely synthetic reality. Reality can then be anything and you're liberated from reality. So fundamentally VR has more potential than AR. Things like nausea may take some time to work out but they're not unsolvable. For example, if the issue is the disconnect between the acceleration/o…

If AR is VR with transparency, wouldn't that mean that AR is a superset of VR, in the same way that RGBA images are a superset of RGB images?

Or looking at it another way, isn't VR just AR with the lights off?

Re: Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

#33

Post by moron4hire »

amelius wrote: post #10

What is the apparent resolution of the browser window shown in the AR world? Is it comparable to conventional screens? Just wondering whether I can replace my monitor by this thing :)

You almost certainly can't, for 2 reasons:

A) almost no software right now is designed properly for VR/AR. The best we can do right now is splat a WIMP interface inside a cylinder centered on you. We haven't figured out or translated much of anything to a VR native interface yet.

B) the resolution-cross-FOV is just too low for current, standard WIMP applications on all current headsets. I think a VR native interface wouldn't have as many problems at the current low resolutions, because the depth gives you more to work with for reconstructing images in your brain as you move around the objects. But again, they are largely missing still.

We'll get there eventually, and I'm banking on sooner rather than later. But as of right now, you won't be using any HMD as a desktop multimonitor replacement for anything other than driving or flight sims.

Re: Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

#34

Post by yazaddaruvala »

bijection wrote: post #31
YZF wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are two fundamentally different things: AR, as would suggest, augments reality. VR however allows for creation of a completely synthetic reality. Reality can then be anything and you're liberated from reality. So fundamentally VR has more potential than AR. Things like nausea may take some time to work out but they're not unsolvable. For example, if the issue is the disconnect between the acceleration/o…

If AR is VR with transparency, wouldn't that mean that AR is a superset of VR, in the same way that RGBA images are a superset of RGB images? Or looking at it another way, isn't VR just AR with the lights off?

Isn't AR just VR with a re-projection of real-time video stream from front mounted cameras?

Re: Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

#35

Post by goldenkey »

Razengan wrote: post #23
YZF wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are two fundamentally different things: AR, as would suggest, augments reality. VR however allows for creation of a completely synthetic reality. Reality can then be anything and you're liberated from reality. So fundamentally VR has more potential than AR. Things like nausea may take some time to work out but they're not unsolvable. For example, if the issue is the disconnect between the acceleration/o…

> So fundamentally VR has more potential than AR. Fundamentally, VR just has a different potential than AR. > Not to mention the need to carry AR with you wherever you go if you want to use it in the "real world", power it, compute, etc. You need to carry the VR headsets and their host-devices with you too. I believe we should clearly delineate the definitions of VR vs AR first. Virtual Reality should be things like…

Thank you for your explanation. It seems like for any renaissance man programmer, either of these areas are ripe for indivuality and invention in terms of new experiences in the form of apps for these vr and ar devices. Thoughts?

And to maybe extend the discussion abit, what about devices that plug right into the centers of consciousness. Is that just more invasive, arguably better AR or is it VR? What do better hearing aids that sample at 10 ghz and connect directly to the nerves instead of hair cells. What are they considered? What about when I pipe my FLAC uncompressed music through the hearing implant -- VR or AR? It seems like the future is a combination of the two in far more complex ratios than just one or the other or split screen. VR probably has limits of perceptiveness if it fails to take model of logical non chaotic reality. It therefore can eventually become an abstraction of an existing event or well..present stimulus. Anyhow, I think the ideas are all really profundo. Looking forward to replies.

[1] https://teddybrain.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/a-brief-review-o...

Re: Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

#36

Post by deanCommie »

VonGuard wrote: post #21

I played with Hololens at Build this week. I believe, after seeing it, using it, and even developing a little with it, that this device is truly revolutionary, and Google is wasting its money in Florida. I shook my head back and forth like a dog trying to dry itself off, and the images I saw barely wiggled. The images are bright enough to completely occlude reality. The software dev stuff is from MS, so it is polishe…

Alexa Skills kit voice recognition configuration is also done by just giving it a String. It's a wonderful time to be working on apps/APIs using voice recognition!

Re: Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

#39

Post by benvan »

personjerry wrote: post #3
onetimePete wrote: post #2

This baby is very hungry. Room decoration - Nom. Gaming Nom. Fashion Industry. Nom. Gadget and Entertainment Industry (TV, Posters). Nom. Advertising Industry - and Self Expression. Nom. Next ten years will be spend with feeding everything to it. He who wraps the last layer around the world, to sell it to the users, makes everything wrapped his organelles over time. Well played Microsoft, well played. If we could dec…

I don't see it. Could you explain some of those industries? And the layers and organelles analogy? Also (and especially) the wifi point, I didn't get how that related at all.

Not sure why onetimePete is being downvoted. Although worded unusually, I concur with his implication - that after some time, advancements in this kind of technology will likely move us towards a ubiquitously augmented world. Although I personally expect we would settle on an open protocol for sharing and receiving public / private augmentations, it makes sense that the organisations who control augmentation technology wield an awful lot of power. Principally, the ability to make the world look, to you, however they want it to... perhaps subtly.

[edit: grammar]

Re: Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution

#40

Post by usrusr »

13of40 wrote: post #15
daveguy wrote: post #4

What I got from the video: The gaphics integration into the real world is phenomenal. If you put a virtual object in a room you can walk around it. If you put something on a wall it stays there no matter where you walk. Unfortunately, the interface -- how you interact with virtual objects -- is completely janky. Awkward pinching gestures to select keys from a floating virtual keyboard. Cursors that are supposed to re…

I think there are two fundamental reasons it's "janky": 1. It's version 1. 2. It's an interface that nobody's used before. Neither of these is a mark against the technology. Go ask a caveman to use a version 1 iPhone, and see if he falls in love with it or just trash-talks it on an internet forum.

But the iPhone did not require you to "step inside" of it. There's a whole world of difference in the threshold for "good enough" between a device you hold in your hand and one that you put on your head, overlaying your whole view. With a smartphone, you can still go all xkcd:303 during periods of waiting. Head mounted? Not so sure that works out well.

That being said, maybe the hololens can be good enough nonetheless, because interaction latency is separate from pose/presentation latency and the latter is certainly far more make-or-break.

I suspect that the main achievement (or magic sauce) of the hololens is strict separation between position-finding plus persective-correct content rendering (which both together are quite high-latency, relatively speaking) on one hand and the final push to the actual framebuffer on the other, where a last corrective shift(/and maybe rotate(/and even more maybe zoom)) correction can be applied independently. The latter would be very low latency, based on the difference between camera frame at the beginning of the rendering process and most recent camera frame. This would be closely related (if not derived from) software-based shake reduction in cameras, which in turn might be traced back to the algorithms used in optical mice (which lack rotation/zoom).

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