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Google Open-Sources Cardboard

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Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#61

Post by moron4hire »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #28
ipsum2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was actually the first company to release an AR-capable phone, with depth sensing capabilities, back in 2014[0]. Due to their inability to properly market the device (or maybe the market wasn't ready at the time), they cut back on that division. One of Google's big tactical mistakes, imo. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tango_(platform)#Devices

> One of Google's big tactical mistakes, imo. It's entirely plausible that AR ends up being a dead end. It's 5 years later and still not really a big market.

flat-screen AR on phones and tablets, absolutely. It's just about impossible to design a good experience that takes advantage of the technology without too much compromise.

Headsets, I think the current devices are just a preview. I'm skeptical that transparent displays are strictly necessary for AR headsets, and I have seen some industry speculation that the HoloLens 2 is probably at the limit of what can be done with waveguide displays. Unfortunately, waveguide displays are just about the best sort of transparent display tech available for this particular use case, so we need to either shift to pass-through-camera displays or invent a whole new display technology.

I'm betting more on pass-through. I think the tech is already available, what is at issue is decades of software cruft in modern operating systems making low latency through put too difficult to achieve.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#62

Post by dre54673 »

moron4hire wrote: post #50
dre54673 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience. I bought an Odyssey+ but returned it because I felt motion sick every time I tried it. I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it, but that seems like an easy way to guarantee your product will fail. I had friends try it and they also felt the same way. AR may be a different beast. I don't usually hear people describe it as uncomfortable, mostly just…

> I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it Wheeeeere did you read that?! I've been in the VR industry for the last 6 years and everyone I know vehemently recommends against doing that.

There have been many threads on reddit about this. There aren't that many VR information sources out there so that's where I used to get VR info.

Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment...

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#63

Post by Pxtl »

jimmaswell wrote: post #58
kayoone wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an Oculus Rift devkit and later the full version and loved it, but I actually have doubts about it only being a content problem. VR has some inherent problems (lack of any outside visibility, motion sickness, space restrictions) that are hard to solve and keep many people away from it. For me it only really worked in racing games where i was not moving at all and even then it is quite exhausting.

I don't get why everyone jumped on this idea of VR where you're standing up and moving so much. I'd rather have games just like normal but with a VR headset and KB/M or controller controls.

Afaik that's where most folks suffer extreme motion sickness.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#64

Post by moron4hire »

mbreese wrote: post #30
mwfunk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's the other way around, AR is a special case of VR. To make an AR system, you need to basically do all the work involved in making a VR system, then somehow integrate it with a video feed of the outside world, then convincingly add digital content to that video feed in a way that complies with the real world's geometry, which you have to extrapolate from the video. Basically it's much easier to accurately plac…

That’s why I’d think of VR as a special case of AR. As you said, VR is in many ways is “easier”. So I’d think of VR as a special case of AR where the environment is also computer generated. In other words, moving from VR to AR would require a ton of extra work to integrate the real world. But moving from AR to VR should be much more straightforward, albeit in many ways equally challenging because now you have to worr…

Depends if you're talking from the perspective of the hardware/OS developer, or the application software developer. For the system, AR is definitely harder. For the software developer, AR is "easier", if you're like most developers and are only treating an AR headset as a bad VR headset and just plunking 3D content down in some random place on the user's floor. You don't have to create the environment--the user supplies that. And you user's input modalities are so limited that you don't really have a lot of options on what sort of interactions you can design. For smartphone AR apps, you're basically just making a standard smartphone app that happens to have a 3D view in it. For headset AR apps, you're basically just making the "hunt-and-peck" version of what you could make on modern VR systems with much higher fidelity control systems.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#65

Post by autoexec »

rosybox wrote: post #56
Ajedi32 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Lack of outside visibility seems more like a feature to me than a problem with the medium; the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world and place you in a virtual one. As for motion sickness; with modern headsets that's generally only a problem for games which move the "camera" in ways which don't match your movement in the real world. (Such as racing games.) There's plenty of content a…

> the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention. How many hours of game play do you think the average family person might have available to them where they can just remove themselves from the real world? Given all of VR's problems, the people who will play VR ga…

> Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention.

Couldn't you make the same argument against headphones in general? Those seem popular enough. I've even known people who used sleep masks and ear plugs when going to bed. Realistically, VR doesn't actually take you anywhere. You're still standing right there, and if a child or spouse needs your attention they can still raise their voice or even just grab you to get it. I don't think the immersiveness itself is much of a problem for most people, although there are certainly times and situations where you wouldn't want that because you need to be more aware of your surroundings.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#66

Post by rocky1138 »

reaperducer wrote: post #40
snowwrestler wrote: post #5

Anyone know what happened to NY Times VR? They shipped Google Carboard to a ton of subscribers, launched an app, had a whole section of their site... it seems to be all gone. They had a great immersive (pun) story about dolphins that I loved to revisit.

It still exists on the NY Times app. Tap the "Sections" tab, then scroll most of the way down and the content under "Immersive (AR/VR)." There's dozens of items in there.

I wonder if this type of content makes it to a library like the rest of newspaper content does, for archival and reference purposes.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#67

Post by moron4hire »

dre54673 wrote: post #62
moron4hire wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it Wheeeeere did you read that?! I've been in the VR industry for the last 6 years and everyone I know vehemently recommends against doing that.

There have been many threads on reddit about this. There aren't that many VR information sources out there so that's where I used to get VR info. Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment...

Oh, /r/Vive and /r/oculus are dumpster fires. I don't know /r/PSVR, but considering what I know of reddit and what passes for "culture" amongst gamers, I expect it's much the same.

Very, very few actual developers in those boards.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#68

Post by OnlineGladiator »

moron4hire wrote: post #61
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of Google's big tactical mistakes, imo. It's entirely plausible that AR ends up being a dead end. It's 5 years later and still not really a big market.

flat-screen AR on phones and tablets, absolutely. It's just about impossible to design a good experience that takes advantage of the technology without too much compromise. Headsets, I think the current devices are just a preview. I'm skeptical that transparent displays are strictly necessary for AR headsets, and I have seen some industry speculation that the HoloLens 2 is probably at the limit of what can be done wi…

This is focused entirely on the technology though. What are the applications that make it useful? I already feel like my phone is giving me sensory overload - I really don't want anything remotely resembling a HUD while I walk around. I'm not convinced it would make for better videogames or regular day-to-day computing, either.

I am guessing there are uses for it in industry, although I'm not sure where it would find the best product-market fit.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#69

Post by moron4hire »

ipsum2 wrote: post #6

For those out of the loop: Google has gradually shut down and in some cases, open sourced their VR projects (Daydream, Mirage, VR180, Seurat, etc) over the last 6-12 months to be more focused on their mobile AR projects (ARCore, Google Streetview AR, Lens, etc). A sad day for VR.

We've basically "known" for over a year that Google has given up on Daydream. The first indication was the 6-dof controllers for the Lenovo Mirage Solo never making it out of devkit status. The second indication was no other 6-dof Daydream headsets getting released. The near complete lack of any mention of VR at the 2018 I/O conference had all but confirmed it at that point, but the final nail in the coffin was probably when Samsung backpedaled on Daydream support with the S10 release, and Google sticking a Snapdragon 670 in the Pixel 3A, with the 835 being basically the "min spec" these days.

Now, the Pixel 4 doesn't have Daydream support at all, and it's got a beefy 855 in it.

Re: Google Open-Sources Cardboard

#70

Post by moron4hire »

drdaeman wrote: post #49
EduardoBautista wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like Apple and Microsoft really nailed with focusing on AR instead of VR.

One thing that immediately comes to mind is that AR doesn't have that in-VR movement problem, that's notoriously hard to solve. And it doesn't require those weird-looking and weird-feeling controllers to interact with the world. So... maybe VR is not yet there, because the hardware does not allow for the full immersion that we unconsciously expect/want from a virtual reality?

It's not hard to solve. We've known the solution for years now. Don't do it.

You can either keep your experience confined to the user's play boundary. You can teleport people to new locations. You can let people walk to the edge of their boundary and use a gesture of some kind (e.g. flicking one of their thumbsticks on their controller) to turn them around to do "redirected walking". You can provide a "strong stomach" mode to walk at constant velocity in the direction the person is looking. Or you can stick the user in a "vehicle" with clear visual cues that they are in said vehicle. And that's it. There is nothing else you can do.

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