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.<p>They have to pivot this soon enough to a cheap at-home AR thingy.<p>VR headsets are getting smaller at least:<p><a href="https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex" rel="nofollow">https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex</a><p>I would suspect Apple will never release something that isn’t as small as that.
I am way more interested in a digital world being overlaid on the real world - augmenting rather than escaping.<p>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.
Two thoughts<p>1. The dork factor is still in play here. I don't see this being popular by any means, so there needs to be a killer app.<p>2. I need to see a nice AR game like Pokemon GO integrated with this. I imagine that's the first/best killer app.
I find this product fascinating. The design looks ugly, but I can see how they got there. Mixing the real world and iPhone display in the way they are is super interesting. As is the decision to leave the edge of iPhone for touch input. Also interesting to see them leveraging Apple technologies so heavily. I can't really see this gaining any real market, but I like some of these design choices.
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).<p>Looks interesting. Has anyone here tried it?
I absolutely adore the touch interface on the hanging lip of the phone!<p>Spectator mode was also an incredible idea.<p>Kudos to HoloKit's design team!
I saw a bunch of these types of things at a Japanese gadget show in 2018. One interesting idea that one had colored rings to wear. The colors made it easier to do finger motion tracking.
I predict the first successful AR product for mass market consumers will be simple glasses that block real world ads with basic rectangles or pixelation.
This is doing all the right things and I think I'll get one, though I think their product videos are doing a disservice showing people playing in crowded areas. Show people playing in parks surrounded by people bored on picnic blankets. If it's in a crowded area, show assisted navigation.<p>We'll know they're onto something if people are messing with these in Dolores Park when the weather turns nice in April.
Is this kind of plastic phone holder always the first step for something breaks into the market? VR had that everywhere after the Oculus Rift dev came out and things were hyped up; I picked some up at the airport because there were huge stacks of them next to the cash register. It was very fiddly to get your phone in without pressing all buttons and messing it up so you had to take it out because you cannot configure it while in the holder.<p>Which brings me to the biggest issue; input. Speech is often awful as input, especially when in public or noisy environments (no, airpods pro don't filter out noise nearly well enough). It's ok for casual things like checking the weather or replying 'yeah thanks' to an email, but for actual work, speech sucks. Now most people won't be doing that anyway, so who cares? I care and I know many other people I know do; even as the input for phones, so that's a large enough group to warrant experimentation. I experimented with a one hand chording keyboard and it works well; it doesn't take a lot of time to learn, it is quite fast, especially mixed with speech input (create long text with speech and fix it with the chording keyboard for instance) and it seems perfect for AR; if only the the little joystick and a few buttons makes a massive difference over the clunky speech/pointing interfaces. I just wish there were more options; the one that's there (Twiddler) is too expensive.<p>I'm now trying to work with a split keyboard as input, but the problem really is that those have no pointer. Otherwise it's really quite great (if you don't care how it looks of course, but it's early days), because if you touch type, it's not slower than when you are sat down, almost immediately after trying it (they are qwerty).<p>While there are many companies experimenting with input for AR/VR, and I have tried all publicly available demos/releases of such input, it's all clunky and slow. Touchscreen and speech are faster, but nothing beats a keyboard and a mouse; I think a lot more research could be spent on that, but as most people will be using devices (including computers with keyboards and mice) for consumption only, there is no financial incentive?
Does this have an embedded microphone for audio input? I quickly skimmed the tech specs and it looks like the answer is "no" (presumably if you want that, the intention is that you use AirPods/some other Bluetooth input device).
Very interested in this. Tho I feel a bit sad as I had an idea for this precise product years ago and built some crappy cardboard prototypes but never quite got it far enough along to make anything of it. Understanding optics was something I got stuck on. The "damn, that could've been me if I'd worked harder" feeling stings.<p>Congratulations to the team. If and when they release an Android version I'll buy one straight away.<p>Juding by the comments they should perhaps market this more for home use and less for out in public. Still, I think this has the potential to be definitely very fun and possibly very useful.
We originally launched the Mira Prism in this market in 2017 before pivoting to enterprise. <a href="https://www.mirareality.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mirareality.com/</a><p>It looks like they have much better software than we had at launch, though.<p>The experience for phone-based headsets is really pretty good. The issue is that it’s a really hard sell for consumers at that price point for seemingly a piece of plastic, and the price point is necessary for the optics unless you have massive volume. The other issue is of course the bulky form factor.
Worth remembering that both Google Glass and Microsoft Hololens found a very niche market on training and technical assistance on industrial machines maintenance.<p>They never got a real foothold on games, though.
It feels like AR hasn't really gotten much more advanced in the past decade. This looks like a HoloLens demo from 7 years ago. Feels like the whole space has stagnated. I know Apple plans to release something soon, but will it really be a big leap? I'm not so sure. Obviously, the M chips will help it, but it still has some fundamental flaws as an idea. Though I find it more exciting than VR.
one interesting 'hack' that could be done with an AR headset's output would be its ability to project onto a film which is on the inside of a windscreen, and interacting with the OBD (or whatever the EVs have) and giving a HUD of the available data it received.<p>This would allow using a [PI/Whatever] to interact with the systems avail to the OBD, slurp that and display onto the HUD-film on the windscreen...<p>With the ability to display HUD info in even the most analog of vehicles...<p>(I havent figured out how to make the HUD cheap or safe based on this comment - but in higher-end options, flex OLED film layers on the glass... or a small projector which simply projects onto a semi-opaque area in the lower-center section of the vehicle, with a simple device, pico projector (with a BRIGHT light) onto a smei-opaque sticker above the dash.<p>Full screen HUD integration is cool, but expensive.<p>but we have all the tools and resources to make this happen....<p>Just make sure that Apple 'iWindscreen/shield' never makes it into the wild....<p>run the PI in the machine, and track your bullshit in a new way (as tied in with vid cams...)<p>but thats just me and my what ifs...
Really interesting setup. Can see quite a few industry-specific applications for this in my area where we'd consider Google Glass but is simply too closed down / too expensive at the moment.<p>Hope it does well, but I can't really look into it until they open the SDK. The "curated partners" thing doesn't inspire much confidence.
I feel for the poor souls who were accidentally captured on the recordings - they don't look too pleased. I do worry that one of my kids is going to get trampled by an adult who can't see because he's too busy slaying a dragon. We have already had a lot of near misses with people on e-scooters!
This is a reasonably slick cross between Google Cardboard and Leap Motion's project Nortstar. Not my thing but it's an interesting approach.<p><a href="https://docs.projectnorthstar.org/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.projectnorthstar.org/</a>
Not a very original or clever form factor. At least design it more like the Mira Prism (<a href="https://www.mirareality.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mirareality.com/</a>) where the phone position is closer to your head and have a large open FOV. I get that they want to expose the phones back camera for tracking - but use some fancy mirrors or something?<p>Ultimately this is very google cardboard like and passive so $129 is quite expensive.<p>I built a fun toy like this in the early 2000’s for $10 using foam board and a $5 sheet of teleprompter glass.<p>Ultimately anything like this has failed to capture the market because people just don’t want to have their phones out of reach and/or risk their battery using the camera/tracking.
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.<p>Is it supposed to run existing iphone AR apps too?