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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

#61

Post by usrusr »

jameshart wrote: post #51
usrusr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nonetheles…

I don't think there's a different level of 'good enough' required here - it's just that we're so early in the development of AR UI that we don't yet know what good enough will look like. The iPhone was the first touch interface that was low enough latency to feel like you were touching and sliding the images around behind the screen. Making those scroll and pinch-to-zoom interactions feel right was critical to its su…

But people had phones before the iPhone, and they were sluggish as well. Jumping from keypad to touchscreen was a jump large enough to to be botchable (as a few attempts before the iPhone had clearly shown), but tiny nonetheless compared to the jump to a large HMD (from what exactly, btw?). There is no way to casually use the hololens like you might occasionally use a laptop sitting on the side of a paper-centric desk without going fully electronic, it's pretty much an all or nothing commitment. Nobody would tie a contraption like that to their head to use it just for a fraction of the tasks at hand.

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

#62

Post by MaggieL »

VonGuard wrote: post #56
spacecity1971 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you've demoed Magic Leap? What differences did you see that would make it a waste of Google's money?

Magic Leap is based on super complex tech that draws images right onto your retina. It's the kind of tech that will take them another couple of years to make small enough to package, and possibly another few years to build the tools to develop for it and to ensure it's not actually blinding people by shining bright lights right into their eye. A friend of mine used it and said Magic Leap, initially, is like trying to…

Um...they didn't "breathe liquid oxygen" in The Abyss...that stuff is instant-frozen cold.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing

I really can't believe that the light level in MagicLeap isn't adjustable to a comfortable level.

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

#63

Post by CyberAngel »

imh wrote: post #59
VonGuard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magic Leap is based on super complex tech that draws images right onto your retina. It's the kind of tech that will take them another couple of years to make small enough to package, and possibly another few years to build the tools to develop for it and to ensure it's not actually blinding people by shining bright lights right into their eye. A friend of mine used it and said Magic Leap, initially, is like trying to…

Magic Leap apparently can draw things at more than one distance from you, unlike the hololens's fixed 2m away. That's a massive difference.

Compared to the HoloLens ... 2 - Yes! There will be HoloLens 2 in the Magic Leap future 2020...???

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

#64

Post by daveguy »

jameshart wrote: post #47
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…

You can't remove reality just by replacing the visual and auditory inputs. Your body still has to exist in the space it's in. AR acknowledges that that reality is still there; VR denies it.

I think YZF's edit is a very good point. VR does not have to deny the reality that is still there. You could include an image of reality within the VR environment. If you stick two video cameras and have a realtime feed to an oculus rift then you would essentially have AR in a VR headset (assuming the video feed is not perceptibly delayed 60-120 Hz refresh or less than 10ms frame-to-frame delay). Then again with AR apparently you can make the image bright enough to occlude reality (however you couldn't have a dark room as the augmented reality). With the inclusion of reality in VR I think you could essentially emulate the hololens and what you could or couldn't do between the two would be blurred.

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

#65

Post by daveguy »

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…

I like this distinction. By this definition something like Amazon Echo would be augmented reality, but the hololens would be virtual reality -- unless everyone is wearing a hololens? Since you mentioned television as an example I guess I understand what you are trying to say. Although I do think that definition adjustment would be a tough sell (TV as AR). That definition certainly works for the most extreme cases of VR and AR -- where VR is jacked into your spinal cord and AR is a true hologram with 3D tactile feedback, but both of those are still science fiction. If you had the star trek holodeck. Would that be VR or AR?

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

#66

Post by Natanael_L »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #53
badsock wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Hololens do that Magic Leap doesn't? Information is very sparse, but I had the impression that the latter is a superset of the former.

It exists and is available to developers?

This one is available too, with 90° FOV: https://www.metavision.com

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

#67

Post by badsock »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #53
badsock wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Hololens do that Magic Leap doesn't? Information is very sparse, but I had the impression that the latter is a superset of the former.

It exists and is available to developers?

First-mover is an advantage, sure, but it hardly means that anyone who isn't first to the gate is wasting their money.

Anyway, I see downthread that VonGuard has made the silly claim that "Hololens can do everything Magic Leap is supposed to do", so I think it's safe to say that the "wasting money" thing is just a throwaway line that's not based on a lot of actual knowledge in the field. I feel kind of trolled.

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

#68

Post by tizzdogg »

VonGuard wrote: post #56
spacecity1971 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you've demoed Magic Leap? What differences did you see that would make it a waste of Google's money?

Magic Leap is based on super complex tech that draws images right onto your retina. It's the kind of tech that will take them another couple of years to make small enough to package, and possibly another few years to build the tools to develop for it and to ensure it's not actually blinding people by shining bright lights right into their eye. A friend of mine used it and said Magic Leap, initially, is like trying to…

I havnt used either, but my impression was that Magic Leap's technology is basically projecting a light field into your eyes, so you eyes can actually focus naturally.. as opposed to looking at an image with fixed focal distance like the hololens. But I'm not super informed about either product so I could be wrong.

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

#69

Post by Natanael_L »

iamleppert wrote: post #55

Once again, nothing at all to do with holography. Its amazing the shameless way tech companies who know better allow their marketers to misappropriate words to promote their parlor tricks. Microsoft is simply using their version of the Oculus with some overcomplicated video rig for AR to do something far from new. Yet another Rube Goldberg machine destined to be a punch line. Real holography doesn't require glasses t…

AR is much less likely to cause nausea, because you still see the real world which your brain will "anchor" to when trying to balance. If the tracking is fast and accurate enough, it won't be a problem.

Your only strong argument is that people don't like to wear glasses, but that could change if it is considered valuable enough. Have you seen the demos of what they can do?

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

#70

Post by Natanael_L »

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…

AR plus opacity to remove the real world world... is to add a plastic cover. You can't add the real world to VR without a camera and latency.

So AR is the superset of VR, where a physical cover makes them identical when it is on.

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