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Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

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Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#81

Post by ladon86 »

RangerScience wrote: post #80
RangerScience wrote: post #22

I was at Daqri from employee ~12 to ~300. It was a wild ride and I've got some really amazing memories with only a bit of scarring to show for it :) Daqri was really good at recruiting amazing people, and really bad at turning them into a functioning company. Communication between teams (and particularly offices) was really lacking; I remember back when the helmet was built on Android (in LA) and all the vision scien…

PS - I can't actually offer an AMA - there's things I can't or shouldn't talk about - but I am absolutely up for questions :)

Are there any videos of the Two Trees tech, or does that not do it justice?

How far out do you think consumer AR is realistically?

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#82

Post by aimablerex »

RangerScience wrote: post #22

I was at Daqri from employee ~12 to ~300. It was a wild ride and I've got some really amazing memories with only a bit of scarring to show for it :) Daqri was really good at recruiting amazing people, and really bad at turning them into a functioning company. Communication between teams (and particularly offices) was really lacking; I remember back when the helmet was built on Android (in LA) and all the vision scien…

Where do you feel the fault was, wrt communication problems and leadership?

Was it because of incentives being wrong in the company, the wrong people in charge, something else?

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#83

Post by sixstringtheory »

misterprime wrote: post #36
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a disagreement, but I was thinking the other day that the most widespread practical (non entertainment) AR app has got to be backup cameras and displays in cars. Modern ones show both the actual live view + a composited on graphic of where your current backup line will take you based on the tire angle, etc.

I wouldn't have categorized this as AR, but perhaps you're right. Would this instead be called a "heads up display"? I guess not, since it's not something that's shown on the windows you're looking through.

I would agree this is AR. It's similar to the AR introduced in sports broadcasts that overlayed first-down lines or field goal long-distance records onto football fields, hockey puck trails for speed indication, and on and on...

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#84

Post by AndrewKemendo »

It's really important to understand that funding for AR startups cooled off when Apple and Google decided to go hard into it in 2017.

Almost across the board every major VC got spooked, then when Magic Leap turned out to be a turd the bottom fell out.

I firmly believe that Apple and Google successfully took the entirely of the market opportunity for a startup to win the AR game long term.

You could argue why this is good or whatever, but at the end of the day AR isn't going to be the platform a startup could knock FAANG off of their perch, and one or all of them will own the next hardware platform.

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#85

Post by meheleventyone »

findthewords wrote: post #74
meheleventyone wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With sufficiently good cameras you can already pass through video. Setting up boundaries in the Oculus Quest has you do so doing exactly that. The current issues are: * A limited field of view. AR headsets are more limited but don’t interfere as much with normal vision. * Latency of video display causing a noticeable mismatch to head movement. * Shutting the rest of the world out. No one can see your face properly so…

I would like to note that the shortcomings mentioned above can be fixed: - a vr passthrough can achieve a much wider FOV than any ar headset. - latency isssues are debatable, I would say it's a non-issue - eye-tracking and front-facing displays solve gaze opaqueness. we already have cut-out camera holes in consumer grade displays I would say that THE current issues with passthrough vr is solving the convergence issue…

VR pass through can get a wider FOV than an AR display but it still is a lot less wide than natural vision. Which was my point.

Latency issues might be subjective but there are clearly going to be population trends. I imagine these will be very similar to latency trends with VR and as such latency will be a significant issue.

Front facing displays are even weirder than someone with a headset on. I’m confused that anyone thinks sticking a view of someone’s eyes on a flat screen is going to be anything other than weird. It’s diving head first into the uncanny valley.

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#87

Post by AndrewKemendo »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #31
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #14

The most widespread, successful use case AR which I can see currently is AR Filter i.e. snapchat filters and those who copied it. The reason IMO, is most of the users who use snapchat filters wouldn't even know what Augmented Reality is. It is that intuitive use case which can make high-tech get widespread consumer adoption. Looking at the rate at which limited attention, instant gratification apps are conquering mar…

This isn't a disagreement, but I was thinking the other day that the most widespread practical (non entertainment) AR app has got to be backup cameras and displays in cars. Modern ones show both the actual live view + a composited on graphic of where your current backup line will take you based on the tire angle, etc.

This wouldn't fall into the category of AR because the primary defining technologies across AR use cases aren't involved. For example you don't need any kind of SLAM, Visual Odometry or otherwise for backup cameras to work seamlessly. It's not 6DOF. There is no 3D rendering. Camera localization isn't required etc...

So calling this AR means you're casting too wide of a net from a complexity perspective.

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#88

Post by chaostheory »

rococode wrote: post #32

I spent 3 months working on an AR project on the Magic Leap (the best funded AR startup, I think?). My conclusion was that the hardware just isn't there yet. VR tech feels impressive because the hardware works well. AR tech, on the other hand, still feels very much like a prototype, and far from real production use. Some of the main deal-breaker issues are heat, discomfort, dizziness, and software instability (I wrot…

If history is good at predicting the future, I will guess that Microsoft will get it almost right just like with Kinect. Somewhere along the way, it will be mismanaged enough for an Amazon or Google to make a similar system that just works. Hopefully, I'm wrong since Nadella is at the wheel now and he's done things very different from his predecessor.

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#89

Post by fragmede »

prongletown wrote: post #48
nnq wrote: post #41

AR seems like one of those things that needs to be executed "perfectly" to work. VR can benefit a bit from suspension of disbelief etc. ...but with AR the real world is harsh :) But I bet we'll have "the iPhone" of AR doing it right and popping open the market! Someone will sure get lucky betting on it!

Apple has the resources, the install base, and (crucially) the data to make it happen. The "iPhone of AR" is probably going to be an iPhone.

Apple has ARKit on iPhones, and it's usable right now.

Apple has the built-in "measure" app, though that can only measure things on a tabletop, and the Mac Pro table-top demo (https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ in Safari on iOS). The iOS game Egg, Inc. has a mode where you can see your farm projected on top of a nearby surface. It's kind of neat to see the little chickens run around on my kitchen table.

What's holding AR back (on the iPhone) then, is a killer app.

Vuforia Chalk is one for remote support. See what the supportee sees, and point out things, visually, to them. Circle which lever to pull, and using Apple's ARKit[] means the circle stays on the right lever, even when the phone is jostled. It's a cool use case, though their UX is horrible.

IMO the problem is a hand-held smartphone is an awkward AR platform.

[0] Note that there's some vendor lock-in by Apple. The Vuforia Chalk feature I mentioned above is image stabilization and an overlay. Image stabilization (and face detection) is an old problem in computer vision, it's commonly used to add silly hats to faces in video calls.

Re: Another heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down

#90

Post by prongletown »

pradeep_m wrote: post #49
prongletown wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has the resources, the install base, and (crucially) the data to make it happen. The "iPhone of AR" is probably going to be an iPhone.

It always seems like incumbents have it all (resources, distribution, talent, etc) until they don't. For ex, the "iPhone" theoretically should have come from Nokia by that logic. AR particularly requires truly novel innovations for it to work in mass-market. There might be niche-cases that work for AR (studio/arcade games, sports tech) before the mass market use-cases.

Apple is well documented (for it being a secret project) as throwing tons of resources into compelling AR products.

I'm not saying they're going to succeed, but they're certainly trying - unlike Nokia, who was in the middle of a massive internal war over Symbian when the first iPhone hit.

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