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A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

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Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#71

Post by benob »

s_dev wrote: post #52
sschueller wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prime example is OpenAI. General public thinks they have open some sort of Pandora's box when it has been a long iterative process of which a lot was done by others.

OpenAI made the first AI chat bot product that didn't suck. There is a critical mass of innovation and Open AI got their 9kg of Uranium-235 together first as reflected in the market. The real question isn't why did OpenAI get there first but why Google didn't, they had every advantage.

Google had it in 2015 [1]

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.05869

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#72

Post by nothis »

QuantumG wrote: post #25

It may turn out to still be "too soon" if Meta doesn't up their game.

There was a whole "now we finally have the technology!" push for VR in the late 80s/90s. Google the Forte VFX1, for example. Jaron Lanier made one of the first ever TED Talks in 1990 and it was about how VR will revolutionize everything ( https://youtu.be/lfvOACM-vbE ). It all... "rhymes".

I have this thought that maybe the problem with VR isn't the display technology but the input. Walking forward in a straight line is more or less an unsolvable problem. Motion sickness, the need of a frickin' threadmill, it's just messy. Touch feedback is an unsolvable problem unless you introduce robot gloves that can break your fingers. And then we have the question of use cases. VR solves a very specific spatial problem with an interconnection between perspective and hand movement. Very few problems exist in that space. It sometimes seems like VR creates more problems than it solves, in fact.

I low key believe in AR (although Apple finally played its cards and the result was underwhelming). Something about infinite and freely positioned 3D monitors. But VR? Great for cockpit sims and maybe some very specific professional uses. But useless for 99% of tasks of an average person.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#73

Post by nottorp »

vidarh wrote: post #67
Nevermark wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being usable was largely about timing, though. Most breakthrough inventions, in areas where people fumbled for years or decades, could have been released long before with earlier insight. Maybe not as advanced, but if the right things were done right they still would have been a win. Many of those "right things" were more practicality, psychological, or fit for market, not just waiting around to jump the moment the…

You really underestimate timing here, and I feel overestimate how great the first iPhone and iPad was. They didn't take technical genius. All the elements preceded them. Most of the design preceded thrm. They didn't engineer anything particularly new. The only previously unavailable component they got made was better glass, which was great, but not where the deal breaker was for previous iterations. I find it funny w…

> They didn't take technical genius. All the elements preceded them. Most of the design preceded thrm. They didn't engineer anything particularly new.

Actually the one genius move was doing an 100% touch-with-thumb interface.

They gave up on revenue for replacement styluses though :)

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#74

Post by boudin »

nottorp wrote: post #69
janoc wrote: post #62

The problem is that the guy didn't "invent" anything, more like had a farfetched idea and left all "the practical details" to others to work out. That's like saying that Meliès invented space travel - he too had the idea of flying to the Moon in a gun projectile ... It was only non-functioning mockup, at best, because the vacuum tube electronics of the era was simply incapable of producing a wireless device with thos…

> That's like saying that Lumiere brothers invented space travel - they too had the idea of flying to the Moon in a gun projectile ... Just to nitpick, it was Jules Verne's idea. The Lumieres just put it on screen.

Just to add more nitpick to the nitpicking, it's a Georges Meliès movie: A trip to the moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#75

Post by Nevermark »

vidarh wrote: post #67
Nevermark wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being usable was largely about timing, though. Most breakthrough inventions, in areas where people fumbled for years or decades, could have been released long before with earlier insight. Maybe not as advanced, but if the right things were done right they still would have been a win. Many of those "right things" were more practicality, psychological, or fit for market, not just waiting around to jump the moment the…

You really underestimate timing here, and I feel overestimate how great the first iPhone and iPad was. They didn't take technical genius. All the elements preceded them. Most of the design preceded thrm. They didn't engineer anything particularly new. The only previously unavailable component they got made was better glass, which was great, but not where the deal breaker was for previous iterations. I find it funny w…

> They didn't take technical genius. All the elements preceded them. Most of the design preceded thrm. They didn't engineer anything particularly new.

That sounds quite mediocre! Except where were all these non-geniuses with their just-as-not-new phones putting Microsoft, Palm, Sony, Blackberry, etc., to shame? Most of that was crap in comparison. And despite many (many) revamped product lines (Microsoft!) trying to take smart phones mainstream. (I give the Blackberry kudos for being very good at what it did.)

You are vastly underestimating the value and work of getting lots of details right (so many, and so "unimportant", most people never notice what holds products back), and finding a way to fit it all together in a way that works well.

You know what is true of every breakthrough theorem in math? If you break down the proof, its just made of steps of already known relations. It wouldn't be a proof if it was otherwise. Nothing new.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#77

Post by wongarsu »

s_dev wrote: post #57
fragmede wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because keeping the user on Google, so they don't need to visit the actual page, means that people won't make web pages anymore. that was a real concern.

Steve Jobs always said in Apple if we don't cannibalize our own products someone else will eat them for us. So the answer is Google isn't willing to take risks like it used to.

> Google isn't willing to take risks like it used to

Has Google ever taken a risk that endangered their ad business?

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#78

Post by anonZ3PbJ8FR7Xg »

janoc wrote: post #62

The problem is that the guy didn't "invent" anything, more like had a farfetched idea and left all "the practical details" to others to work out. That's like saying that Meliès invented space travel - he too had the idea of flying to the Moon in a gun projectile ... It was only non-functioning mockup, at best, because the vacuum tube electronics of the era was simply incapable of producing a wireless device with thos…

great lets see what you've invented

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#79

Post by wongarsu »

s_dev wrote: post #64
andruby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My armchair answer to that question is that Google isn’t a product company. They might have had similar or better technical AI capabilities, but they aren’t great at productizing it.

>Google isn’t a product company. I disagree. Google does have great products, Google Maps, Search, GMail etc.

Survivorship bias. Any company that launches as many products as Google has to have a couple good ones by pure chance. And all products you mentioned were created two decades ago, when Google was a very different company.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#80

Post by wongarsu »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #56
s_dev wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI made the first AI chat bot product that didn't suck. There is a critical mass of innovation and Open AI got their 9kg of Uranium-235 together first as reflected in the market. The real question isn't why did OpenAI get there first but why Google didn't, they had every advantage.

> OpenAI made the first AI chat bot product that didn't suck. And let people try it for free . Non-techies were using it and the news was reporting on it. They nailed their launch.

After horrible launches for GPT2, GPT3 and GPT3.5 where most hype and momentum was smothered by a long waitlist. ChatGPT was a 180 degree reversal from their usual release process and an instant hit.
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