Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses • Hacker News Board

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#481

Post by hadlock » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:08 AM UTC

alexfromapex wrote: post #408

Animats wrote: post #399

Nice hardware. They're down to swim goggle size. Then you see what Facebook wants you to do with it - see screens in front of you all the time. One with Facebook's "Recommended" page, and a video of some talking neckbeard. There's a feeling of "we were promised virtual reality, and all we got was talking heads of influencers." The hardware apparently has GPS, but that's turned off. So, no Pokemon Go yet. Not even Hyp…

It's so sad they felt okay with unveiling these with the horrible aesthetics and no guarantees anywhere in plain sight on privacy.

The press release says "unmistakably a pair of glasses". The fact that you're complaining about the aesthetics and not wether or not they're glasses is a testament to the generational leap they've made here. Apple's VR goggles are glasses with "rendered" external pass through. These actually fit the traditional definition of glasses.

And yeah like in the future, these will shrink in size. Probably by half in five years. Remember in 2018 when we were wondering if we'd ever have the compute available to do "inside out tracking"? Now it's expected as a minimum requirement. How far we've come.

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#482

Post by zmmmmm » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:08 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #41

It's impressive hardware and some nifty demos, but I'm holding fast with AR just being a deadend. No matter how many pixels you can jam into these things, there just isn't a compelling case for using them. Nothing that isn't easier to do with a touchscreen or a keyboard. Those midair gestures just aren't ergonomic. And there's no way to balance the transmissivity of the lenses and the overlayed images without getting…

I'm really curious for people with your point of view, if you could put on glasses like that which actually looked normal and have a 4k monitor in front of you as good as your real monitor - would you not get it purely for that function?

For me this is such a no brainer that I always just wonder how people hold the point of view that they can't see a use for it no matter how good it gets.

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#483

Post by zmmmmm » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:10 AM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #115

jarbus wrote: post #22

Everyone was crapping on Zuck for his pivot from FB to Meta, and I was generally in the minority for supporting it. I even bought a quest 3, even though I refuse to use instagram. This turnaround for the company has been legendary. I think there’s something to say on “betting on people”. I didn’t believe in Meta or the technology, necessarily - for some reason, I believed in Zuck. He was willing to put his entire emp…

Worth pointing out, possibly, that it hasn't actually paid off yet.

If they stopped forward investment today, Reality Labs would be profitable just selling Quest hardware and software and Meta Ray Bans. The reason it loses money hand over fist is because they are not nearly done yet with where they want the tech to be.

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#484

Post by grahamj » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:10 AM UTC

throwitaway1123 wrote: post #475

doctorhandshake wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EMG wrist band is the most exciting part of this release, IMO. That strikes me as a great solve that pushes into software a lot of hard problems that were solved with hardware previously.

That was the part that stood out to me as well after watching The Verge's video: https://youtu.be/mpKKcqWnTus?t=98 The Vision Pro uses optical sensors for hand tracking, so if your hands aren't visible to the device it obviously can't track them. Electromyography solves that problem, and I could imagine Apple integrating some variant of this in a future Apple Watch, and just falling back to optical sensors if you don…

The Watch already supports a pinch gesture so I'm surprised they're not already using it for VP, at least as a backup for occlusion.

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#485

Post by mk_stjames » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:12 AM UTC

mk_stjames wrote: post #472

I just want two to four text lines of 80-characters wide, literally in monochrome if you have to I don't care, and the ability to use it to scroll thru help with speaking in a foreign language / subtitling what I am hearing around me, in a glasses form factor that people don't notice aren't my normal reading glasses. That is it. I have wanted just this, for decades. I have lived a lot of my life in places where I don…

To add to my above- I have spent a lot of time researching AR glasses tech that would allow for this that could potentially be available even as old dev kits to buy, and the tech is out there in a much smaller form factor than what Meta is needing here to get them the full color, high res, 3d display.

To just get floating text, all you need is a micro laser projector in the arm of the glasses pointed at a section of the lens that reflects and focuses the projection onto your retina, at a virtual focus so that it appears in front of you.

Google bought a company that was making a dev kit of these a few years ago (I believe it was called North and the glasses were called Focals). But, as we know, google does this all the time and then kills shit. So I was happy at first because google said they were going to use this to do exactly what I describe above as their first killer app for the glasses. But then... nothing.

Vuzix is another player in the game but with micro-led displays via waveguide instead, and they seem to actually be selling product, but at something like $800 it's just too much to try out just to do my own dev work for.

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#486

Post by phyrex » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:14 AM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #285

phyrex wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening literally right now? https://www.meta.com/connect/

There's a Watch Now button that just brings me to a Facebook page with nothing to watch. Can't watch any of the posted videos without logging into Facebook. I guess they're not trying to win any new converts at this point.

That's not true you can just close the login modal and watch the presentations without logging in

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#487

Post by wslh » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:14 AM UTC

beart wrote: post #459

zmmmmm wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

heh ... i'm frustrated that the schools my kids are going to aren't embracing this tech. the applications in education are absolutely mind blowing.

I was under the impression VR is really bad for kids eyes.

I've had the same concerns about mobile phones, tablets, and computer screens. In fact, mobile phones and tablets seem to have an even greater addiction factor, and their smaller screens could be more harmful due to prolonged close-up use [1].

[1] "Ocular and visual discomfort associated with smartphones, tablets and computers: what we do and do not know" (2019) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=14343924602923438...

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#488

Post by gorjusborg » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:15 AM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #465

alexfromapex wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so sad they felt okay with unveiling these with the horrible aesthetics and no guarantees anywhere in plain sight on privacy.

>no guarantees anywhere in plain sight on privacy Elaborate. Do you mean this with regards to the data that users will generate when using the device? Or the privacy of the people around the wearer?

I could not care less about the the privacy of the weirdos who will try to wear these in public. I care deeply about the further normalization of surveillance capitalism.

I try hard to be kind, but I will have very little patience for any individual who wears always-on cameras that infringe on my privacy. I don't use social media for a reason. Meta just wants to sell surveillance devices so they can collect more data, and will try to convince us it is for our benefit.

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#489

Post by grahamj » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:16 AM UTC

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #293

I met a lady once, we were in a line at DefCon. She worked on these and was quite concerned that they'd end up on the heads of children, feeding content-reaction biometrics about those children to people who would then use that data to manipulate those children in harmful ways. I'm curious if people think that that's worth worrying about, or if the idea of optimizing ad placement based on whether it makes your pupils…

I definitely think that's worth worrying about. Eye tracking too; it's shocking how much can be learned about a person from it.

The chart here is... well, eye opening:

https://newatlas.com/science/science/eye-tracking-privacy/

Re: Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses

#490

Post by kypro » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:19 AM UTC

This is super cool tech! I'm surprised how many people here knocking the glasses for being "too thick" when it's clearly this is a huge improvement on previous attempts at AR like the hololens. And to be honest it looks fairly comparable to some of the "hipster" glasses people willing choose to wear today...

I'd be interesting in knowing what the battery life of this thing is... I get that the compute is being done on the puck, but there seems to be almost no room for battery in those lenses... And even the puck looks small to be honest... Surely no more than a couple of hours of power, likely quite a bit less.

I also wonder what the latency is like between the puck and glasses... Latency is such an important aspect of creating a convincing AR experience and judging by the video the Verge posted it looks like latency is pretty bad. I thought the reason compute for AR/VR is typically done on device is because it's the quickest and most reliable way to do it.