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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)

#81

Post by moffkalast »

urbandw311er wrote: post #65
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 seems a little unfair to me. In many cases an original idea, regardless of ability to execute, is priceless. I agree that execution is everything in terms of winning, though.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, anything that can be thought of eventually will be. It's no coincidence that new discoveries tend to get made by multiple people on different sides of the planet at roughly the same time once they have access to the same technological starting point to work from. Leibniz and Newton, Wright Brothers and Dumont, Bell Labs and Westinghouse, etc.

This is why patents are harmful imo (without even getting into patent trolls), all they do is restrict the commercialization to the one who was the fastest gun in the west at the patent office and hold back society from developing the technology further because the patentee has no incentive to improve the idea while they enjoy a two decade state sanctioned monopoly.

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

#82

Post by wongarsu »

QuantumG wrote: post #25

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

Meta are the ones putting out lightweight cheap VR headsets. If it turns out we currently need a $3000 device to deliver VR people find acceptable, that is a sign it is "too soon" for mass adoption (still useful for many niche use cases though, like frequent travelers working on a plane or in a train).

In any case, the technology seems pretty close. If it takes another 3-10 years for tech to advance enough Meta is in a great position to execute as we get there.

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

#83

Post by osigurdson »

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.

Google products by launch date:

Search: 1998 Gmail: 2004 Maps: 2005

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

#85

Post by janoc »

boudin wrote: post #74
nottorp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

You are right, of course. I had Meliès in mind, not sure why I wrote Lumiere brothers.

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

#86

Post by booleandilemma »

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.

I think this is the thing people like the guy linking to Google's paper on arxiv.org don't get. OpenAI actually delivered something.

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

#87

Post by vidarh »

nottorp wrote: post #73
vidarh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I worked on devices that didn't need styluses 6 years before the iPhone. They were not unusual at all. What kept people using styluses was that resistive touch is shit and imprecise, and on small screens they were awful to use.

So this boils down to capacitative touch of sufficient quality having gotten cheap enough.

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

#88

Post by nottorp »

vidarh wrote: post #87
nottorp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :)

I worked on devices that didn't need styluses 6 years before the iPhone. They were not unusual at all. What kept people using styluses was that resistive touch is shit and imprecise, and on small screens they were awful to use. So this boils down to capacitative touch of sufficient quality having gotten cheap enough.

Did they offer finger scrolling? PalmOS basically didn't, just because the scroll bars were too thin.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

moffkalast wrote: post #81
urbandw311er wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little unfair to me. In many cases an original idea, regardless of ability to execute, is priceless. I agree that execution is everything in terms of winning, though.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, anything that can be thought of eventually will be. It's no coincidence that new discoveries tend to get made by multiple people on different sides of the planet at roughly the same time once they have access to the same technological starting point to work from. Leibniz and Newton, Wright Brothers and Dumont, Bell Labs and Westinghouse, etc. This is why patents are harmful imo (without even…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by ghaff »

michaelt wrote: post #39
Jensson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most kids had cell phones in mid late nineties where I lived, the phones themselves were cheap but using them were not very cheap, but giving a kid a phone so you could call them if the parent needed seemed popular.

According to [1] (which might be incomplete, IDK) cell phone sales went from 100 million per year in 1997 to 400 million per year in 2000. Subsequently, sales rose to 1.5 billion per year. So when talking about how many people have cell phones, the difference between "mid 90s" and "late 90s" makes a big difference :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph...

I had cell phones from sometime in the probably late 90s but they were only used for specific purposes like if I were meeting up with someone and I wanted them to be able to reach me. I didn't really start using cell phones until I got a Treo in 2006 and then an iPhone maybe a few years later.
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