Live data from Hacker News

HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

holokit.io

201–210 of 238 posts

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#201
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine that at all. A TV is like a piece of furniture, or a decoration like a painting. As compelling as it is, you can choose to ignore it, make eye contact with and talk to someone else in the room wether the TV is on or not. It's casual. I imagine too what an outrageously high pixel count a VR set would have to have to render a virtual TV with the same resolution as a real one. And even aside from the abo…

> I imagine too what an outrageously high pixel count a VR set would have to have to render a virtual TV with the same resolution as a real one. Yup. It might take decades to get there, but I think we'll get there. > And even aside from the above, I really can't see myself putting something on my face and dropping out of my environ for anything more than about 5 or 10 minutes. It's just weird. I'm envisioning the equ…

I don't think spectacles are equivalent. Spectacles don't block out my surroundings.

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#202
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I told you exactly what my argument was and you refuse to acknowledge it and make up your own instead. I find you frustrating to converse with so I shall exit this conversation. Also, your 5 minute later post-edits are ridiculous. You add completely new sentences.

Since you don't seem to know the book or care to understand my point, I'll keep this post anyway: You don't mainstream technology via your early adopter market. To succeed you need to mature tech and adapt it to a general market. So the fact some rarely-enforced children protection laws or hypothetical cultural parenting rules might hurt VR IF the only market was merely kids in the long run is bad, sure. But that's n…

> (Edit sniping is your problem, my goal isn't to win fast-paced internet arguments but to communicate my points as well as I can)

It is a problem for everyone who reads the comment thread. Please either wait to post long enough re-read and edit, or indicate which sentences have been added later. (Edit: the latter is commonly done like this.)

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#203
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick I think Apple will pull that few are expecting is that their device will be worth wearing powered off

Other than fashion, what possibly positive function could such a device afford? I find it much more likely that they will use external facing screens that recreate the appearance of the wearers face to onlookers and so reduce the perceived anti-social nature of opaque goggles.

The point is that if it is reasonable or maybe even worthwhile to wear when off, then it can support all-day wear (not all day use) given power constraints, which makes it a lifestyle product not a gadget, like a watch. Put it on when you leave in the morning, take it off and put it on the charger at night.

I think it will flip up. They will do what you said but they can only do that for a few hours a day before the battery dies, and worse, if the battery dies, you can’t see anything anymore. So they need a mechanism that lets you keep wearing it when it’s dead. If you have to take it off when the battery is dead, it will end up in the closet next to your other headsets.

I’m guessing they will have a design that is fashionable and comfortable to wear when flipped up and off.

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#204

Form factor for AR is literally like nuclear fusion at the moment. I don’t know when they are going to get it looking like normal fucking glasses, but until then, no one is going outside with this shit. They have to pivot this soon enough to a cheap at-home AR thingy. VR headsets are getting smaller at least: https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex I would suspect Apple will never release something that isn’t as sma…

It's ridiculous! Even more so because the underlying patented materials tech has been timing out on the shelf gathering dust for over a decade.

All companies working in the XR/AR/VR/ghost-in-the-snowcrash-shell-gargoyle space need to do in order to develop something widely accessible/affordable, mass-producible and mass-market adoptable while operating within the constraints of currently viable, high yield, low loss rate fabrication feasible tech is.... shoot for wearable display glasses that are in the product line's slimmest tier simply sunshade size, and at the beefiest, a ski-gogglesque form factor. They do this by stopping trying to jam everything and the GPU-plated kitchen sink into the headset.

Restrict design scope of the HUD-glasses to a binocular retina-or-better-resolution MEMS-based display, and maybe a few small, lightweight multispectral sensors and an accelerometer for environment mapping and multi-axis positioning.

Everything else can be connected via a clipped on snagsafe/magsafe cable from a waist, upper arm or torso wearable primary device unit encompassing main battery, SoC, storage, etc; and this could feasibly be the user's next-gen upgrade smartphone.

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR is, IMHO, a fundamentally flawed concept. To immerse yourself, you need to block out your peripheral vision and everything else. The average, casual user isn't going to do that on a regular basis. It's not something you can do with kids around if you need to keep an eye on them, unlike a book or a TV show or even a game on your phone or laptop. Fundamentally, immersion is a selling point to a very specific audienc…

I've been literally playing Cricket VR for 4 hours everyday since X-Mas. For someone who played college-level cricket, this is a dream come true for me and the sensation of hitting the ball in the middle of the bat is mind blowing. But, here's the kicker. In real world, If I had play 120 pitches (baseball equivalent), I'd have to wait for 4 hours. In VR it could be done in 30 minutes. I've already lost 7 pounds and f…

Yeah glad you’re enjoying vr but as someone that bought a vive in 2016 there is an embarrassing lack of quality software. I just looked at the top games 2023 article and literally every single one has been out for 2 years AND HL:Alyx is still the best / possible the only true ‘AAA’ vr game released to date.

Until the software gets moving with something truly interesting vr is pretty much a gimmick at this point.

I hold out small hope that when Nintendo and maybe Sony get really serious about vr, then we’ll get to some truly fun, unique and new game mechanics / experiences.

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#206
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I've seen less compelling AR applications than I've seen VR ones. Between Windows Mixed Reality, Pokemon Go and the AR Lowe's app, there's not really a whole lot of compelling AR use-cases. VR at least has an entertainment niche, which gave us the likes of Beat Saber, Half Life: Alyx and an IMAX experience in the comfort of your sofa. Neither one seems poised to succeed IMO, but the push for AR adoption see…

I'll keep saying this until it happens...the biggest AR use case, for me, is replacing the television. The fact that we all have giant boxes as the centerpiece of our main rooms is something unnatural that we take for granted. I'm not sure how far AR devices that allows for social viewing of television content are away, but I feel in my bones that it will happen and when it does children of that generation will be co…

> I'll keep saying this until it happens...the biggest AR use case, for me, is replacing the television

Personally I think they'll be replacements for mobile phones. This will only happen if the devices start to become indistinguishable from a normal pair of glasses and allow for prescriptions as well.

Audio will either be through bone conduction or small speakers like how Bose's Audio Glasses [1] do it now (I have a pair of these actually, got them for free at a developer hackathon they hosted once a few years ago, never use them mainly because I don't wear contacts and need prescriptions)

Ideally it could even pick up subvocalization to be able to compose messages in quiet situations without rudely having to speak out loud, if you're the type that cares about that (I certainly do)

We might still need some small handheld device paired with it, maybe it has a simple keyboard on it or maybe just a number pad that also serves as 4-directional buttons for traversing menus and things in your view"

1. https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/frames.html

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if it just fell back to the iPhone itself when you didn't have AirPods. It'd be a pretty crap audio experience (both input and output) in comparison though.

It's difficult to gauge from the photos but I was thinking that the phone is seated too far from the mouth for reliable audio input (it certainly feels like I have to raise my voice, if not shout, whenever I'm talking to someone with the phone that far away from me).

Even when in speakerphone (i.e. not trying to filter out far away sounds)? ~1 foot isn't all that far away.

Re: HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at your phone is a thing that everyone does, including the coolest people you know. Just looking at your phone is socially acceptable. Waving a stick around and shouting fireball while wearing a goofy headset is, at present, still unacceptable.

When I worked in San Jose every workday morning I waited at the bus stop with other employees (generally no one I knew however) waiting for the Corporate Bus to arrive. Invariably everyone was engaged with their phones except me. I guess I'm old — I haven't found anything interesting on my phone to look at when I just want to pass the time. I guess I mention this because I suspect that without phones, we might have c…

> without phones, we might have chatted with one another, got to know one another while we waited

If I'm an employee on a company bus, I'm just as likely to be a (mostly) silent meeting attendee on a status meeting as listening to an audiobook or podcast. Sometimes I've done this and just communicated via meeting chat to give feedback/add to meeting discussion.

Without phones, I'd probably be WFH so I could attend the meeting.

Post reply on HN