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HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

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

#41

Post by a4isms »

actinium226 wrote: post #38
trzy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. VR immersion is fundamentally broken anyway due to the locomotion problem. You can walk freely in your play area but it's always too small compared to typical game world size. So you end up being able to look around, duck, and dodge, but if you want to take a step forward, you need to remember to twiddle a joystick instead. It's a lot of cognitive load and discomfort for very little benefit. Flat games fe…

Some games compromise on this by having the character sitting in the pilot's seat of a ship or a mech, making the interaction with the joystick make sense. I haven't tried them, but it seems like a good way to go, particularly for a game with fighter jets or something like that.

I’m aware of several flight simulators that support VR headsets. For those who don’t get queasy using VR in a simulated aircraft, it is an excellent benefit:

In real life, many tasks like flying the landing pattern or joining a busy area of lift require constantly scanning both the instrument panel and outside the plane, at various angles.

If you use a standard monitor, you’re teaching your hands to push buttons that switch the direction of view. If you use VR, you teach yourself to look around with your head.

If you are flying for the purpose of training yourself to fly in real life, or practising skills you’ll use in a real aircraft, the latter is -referanke, all other things being equal.

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

#42

Post by thinkling »

pdnell wrote: post #2

HoloKit, originally a Google Cardboard-like AR device for the iPhone, has been relaunched as a more premium $150 iPhone accessory. Unfortunately no SDK available anymore (for now at least). Looks interesting. Has anyone here tried it?

> HoloKit, originally a Google Cardboard-like AR device for the iPhone, has been relaunched

Is it more than a premium version of Google Cardboard? I can't tell. The "Technical Specs" mention "optical lenses" but otherwise mention no hardware details--well, other than the bring-your-own items (iPhone, Airpods, Apple Watch)...

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

#43

Post by codesnik »

it seems they really wanted for iphone to think that it in the correct position, like if it was in the user hand. Otherwise placing phone horizontally, flipping image and using some kind of periscope for the camera would make a more compact and much less "dorky" looking device.

Is it supposed to run existing iphone AR apps too?

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

#44

Post by GauntletWizard »

trzy wrote: post #32
zdragnar wrote: post #25

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…

100% agree. VR immersion is fundamentally broken anyway due to the locomotion problem. You can walk freely in your play area but it's always too small compared to typical game world size. So you end up being able to look around, duck, and dodge, but if you want to take a step forward, you need to remember to twiddle a joystick instead. It's a lot of cognitive load and discomfort for very little benefit. Flat games fe…

Plenty of games work at room scale, with foot locomotion in a small area. Beat saber, for example, is great and needs only a few feet of standing area, but there's also a ton of escape room games that work that way.

Don't discount teleportation based locomotion, either. You don't need to walk everywhere, and moving between rooms by fade-out works pretty well.

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

#45

Post by accrual »

trzy wrote: post #32
zdragnar wrote: post #25

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…

100% agree. VR immersion is fundamentally broken anyway due to the locomotion problem. You can walk freely in your play area but it's always too small compared to typical game world size. So you end up being able to look around, duck, and dodge, but if you want to take a step forward, you need to remember to twiddle a joystick instead. It's a lot of cognitive load and discomfort for very little benefit. Flat games fe…

Regarding using a joystick to move around in VR, in my experience I wasn't very inconvenienced by it. I travelled immense distances in a variety of worlds and am glad to have not actually had to walk that far. I also found a preference for the original Vive's trackpads for movement over the Index's more conventional stick movement. The pad just felt more intuitive.

Walking around with 1:1 between VR and real space is indeed pretty cool, but I wouldn't want to do it full time in all games.

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

#46

Post by bredren »

jesuscript wrote: post #19

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…

Accounts of the work suggest ski goggle like size for the first release.

But, form factor and weight are just some of the things that influence customer experience.

Apple’s other efforts, such as retinal authentication and automatic, motor-driven pupil distance adjustment remove other points of friction that interfere with enjoyment.

Apple identifies many rough edges in HW and SW that hold back a category.

Then it makes difficult compromises, sanding down a combination of them enough to meet release consideration.

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

#47

Post by vineyardmike »

codesnik wrote: post #43

it seems they really wanted for iphone to think that it in the correct position, like if it was in the user hand. Otherwise placing phone horizontally, flipping image and using some kind of periscope for the camera would make a more compact and much less "dorky" looking device. Is it supposed to run existing iphone AR apps too?

> seems they really wanted for iphone to think that it in the correct position

I think they have this shape since it’s quite simple optics to have the iPhone screen be a “reflection” on the glasses while you can still see straight out through it. Kinda like looking out a window at night and seeing both your reflection and the outside at once.

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

#48

Post by abirch »

accrual wrote: post #33
zdragnar wrote: post #25

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…

> To immerse yourself, you need to block out your peripheral vision and everything else. But what if that's what I want? I want VR so I can experience totally different worlds fully as if I was there. I can do that safely from my living room. I want AR so I can live the cyberpunk dream of seeing data and other extra info overlaid on top of my normal vision while out in public. I don't think either concept is flawed,…

I want VR so that I can have 8 different monitors and even more desktops. I want this at work so I can have different remote sessions up and just look right to see the current metrics, left for slack and email, vs code central...

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

#49

Post by verdverm »

smoldesu wrote: post #24
stranded22 wrote: post #7

I am way more interested in a digital world being overlaid on the real world - augmenting rather than escaping. I’m not sure if I’d like to walk around the streets wearing them though - would be incredibly annoying to other people and a risk of being stolen.

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…

AR has some very compelling use cases in medicine and manufacturing. There is also the idea of using AR instead of a physical monitor that may lead to drastic adoption. While the Hololens 2 is expensive, FOV limited, and clunky, the user experience is absolutely incredible. They are the only good smart-glasses like experience I know of right now. They show you what a world is like when the smartphone escapes the little box we carry around.

The hard part of AR is the shared experience part. It's close to creating a cross-platform MMO game.

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

#50

Post by carbocation »

a4isms wrote: post #41
actinium226 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some games compromise on this by having the character sitting in the pilot's seat of a ship or a mech, making the interaction with the joystick make sense. I haven't tried them, but it seems like a good way to go, particularly for a game with fighter jets or something like that.

I’m aware of several flight simulators that support VR headsets. For those who don’t get queasy using VR in a simulated aircraft, it is an excellent benefit: In real life, many tasks like flying the landing pattern or joining a busy area of lift require constantly scanning both the instrument panel and outside the plane, at various angles. If you use a standard monitor, you’re teaching your hands to push buttons that…

> the latter is -referanke, all other things being equal.

Based on the letters, I think "-referanke" is a typo for "preferable." Out of curiosity, do you type the 'b' key with your right hand?

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