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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

#111

Post by nnq »

fragmede wrote: post #89
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.

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 A…

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

...doooh! ARKit might be good, but it needs to be coupled with a google-glass-successor. Imo GG was the "nokia 900" of its era, proof that it can be done and there's sort of a market, but worthless without something to make it worth the inconveniences for regular users.

To be honest I'd bet on a social-media experienced company like Facebook or on whoever does a good job at partnering with a social media giant because the only AR applications I'd imagine compelling enough for "average people" will involve social things, like walking around a bar and seeing fb and twitter and maybe tinder profiles of people around you near their heads like game stats, sourced based on facial recognitions from people who set themselves to "open"... will be creepy beyond belief, but I'd bet on a mix of social, mildly sexual, with a dash of gaming thing, like a mix of tinder and pokemon go. Now, god knows who has the chops to pull that one right without getting it too creepy...

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

#112

Post by rubito »

mdszy wrote: post #12

The company I work for is trialing AR solutions for remote support purposes. We've tried the glasses and customers hate it because it literally makes them motion sick. Our current thing is phone/tablet based where you can basically stream real time video to our support staff and each party can draw on the screen, and whatever they draw stays where it is in physical space. Customers love it, it works great. Nobody wan…

Nice, I developed something similar but for the medical field and HoloLens!

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

#113

Post by acidburnNSA »

RangerScience wrote: post #79
Darkphibre wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen demos of this with Hololens. It really opens up new interactions. Neat stuff. Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Hololens. All opinions my own, etc.

At Daqri we called this "remote expert", and it was always one of the potential products with the highest demand. My favorite use-case is that in nuclear power plants, they have two people do everything - one to do, one to watch (not in a big brother sense, but more in like a pair programming sense), but this means two people in an irradiated environment. With the AR tech, the second person can be in another room. (A…

Were you working with any human factors or related teams in the nuclear industry?

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

#114

Post by dchichkov »

aimablerex wrote: post #82
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?

It didn't look like a particular fault of anyone. Building a viable AR headset is a Tony Stark type of affair. The complexity is on par to AV.

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

#115

Post by RangerScience »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #113
RangerScience wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Daqri we called this "remote expert", and it was always one of the potential products with the highest demand. My favorite use-case is that in nuclear power plants, they have two people do everything - one to do, one to watch (not in a big brother sense, but more in like a pair programming sense), but this means two people in an irradiated environment. With the AR tech, the second person can be in another room. (A…

Were you working with any human factors or related teams in the nuclear industry?

A couple of times, although I don't remember / know if it was "human factors" or otherwise. Both cases were primarily about letting someone see something where it was dangerous to be, although the first was about the head-mounted cameras and the second about the head-mounted displays.

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

#116

Post by RangerScience »

ladon86 wrote: post #81
RangerScience wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't know either way, but, it's supposed to be in every 201x Land Rover, I think? If you see a hologram projected into a car windshield on behalf of the driver, that might be the tech.

3-5 years, would be my optimistic guess? The tech is getting there (Magic Leap and Hololens), but it's not there yet, and it's not going to seriously accelerate until there's a really compelling consumer use-case / app to go with it.

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

#117

Post by RangerScience »

aimablerex wrote: post #82
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?

Senior leadership didn't talk to individual contributors enough. They'd try all sorts of things to set us up for success, but it was generally the wrong thing, or at the wrong time, or the right thing in the wrong way. Re-orgs were really common but really inneffective; I'd find myself on a new team with a new boss and a week later I'd find myself working with the original team and the original boss again, because to do what I needed to do those were the people I needed to work with, not the new team and the new boss. I could generally see what they'd be trying to accomplish with such re-orgs, but not why they thought it would actually accomplish that.

The last re-org I was a part of before I left, our team was dissolved and I was re-assigned to a new boss I'd had a pretty terrible time with in the past to do exactly what I'd been doing on the dissolved team, minus many of the best parts. He was absolutely surprised that I was not excited at this change, and could not answer when I asked what the org change was supposed to fix and/or improve. If they'd actually talked to any of us - including my direct manager at the time - prior to springing the change on us, could've probably gotten us on-board and aligned, but that wasn't a thing that usually happened.

Incentives and having the right people in charge are a structure to facilitate good communication, they are not a surrogate for that communication.

Thanks for the question!

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

#118

Post by xpeon »

mycall wrote: post #103
Robotbeat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. That makes sense. I know some crazy high resolution lightfield cameras exist, but the hardware is so heavy there's no chance of getting it on your head. (In principle you could address this with a huge array of tiny cameras on a headset, I suppose? Like this: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/150421/technology-mobiles-an... or this: https://newsbeezer.com/austriaeng/lg-patent-shows-smartphone... ) Apparently…

Retinal projection work for display tech. https://www.bynorth.com/focals

Pretty cool, but could you project 3d object on these?
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