AR vs. VR.
Yes, more on HoloLens. Sorry.
In the tech world there is a bit of a debate on whether or not AR is already dead and that VR is the way to go. And much of that is reflected here. But, at the same time, most of the complaints made around VR are insurmountable and I think kill it off long term for anything but niche markets. In fact, the only way that they could be surpassed is by augmenting your VR experience with reality. Reverse AR I suppose. Funny that the same field basically calling AR dead would effectively rely on it to address most of their own problems.
Don't get me wrong. I get where they are coming from. AR *has* been tried before. But! Not really. Or at least not on this level. Traditional AR has been rather flat HUD's. Giving information that we could get from another device/medium and in a form not really any more useful.
Nokia had one for Lumia phones called City Lens. It would display what was in the camera with markers as you moved the camera telling you in which directions you could find things like restaurants or gas. The problem is, if I can't see the building with my own eyes, I probably need the map anyway to be sure how to get there. It was cool, but it wasn't really useful or valuable. And most examples I saw fell into this same boat.
The Hologram approach is, I would say, an revolutionary step. This is no small iterative evolution of AR and it changes everything. Firstly, it does what Google Glass got right and puts the device right on your head. Having to grab a device with a view port to get that AR experience is the first step in ruining it. The next thing it does is does more than just layer information in a similar form over the world. It manifests that data into your FoV.
To take the City Lens example further. A theoretical example (highly theoretical) would be the ability to "see through" the building in your way or overlay the map directions into your world. Or both.
But that is still pretty boring. To do what City Lens tried to do but better, maybe just start by showing a list of restaurants in the area pre-filtered via voice commands, and maybe to one side of you an actual map with all locations and to the other side a web browser window with the menu. If there are too many you use a gesture (or voice command) to eliminate certain directions in a circle around you and adjust max distance. Once you have the list trimmed down a bit you can select items from the list and automatically update the menu view and highlight the selection on the map so you have a better idea of where it is and what it serves. Once you choose a destination the map shows you directions from your current location and those directions are also overlaid onto the roads to lead you there.
Now, the interesting thing is this though, everyone who has used HoloLens has stated that the holograms can be opaque. So, if the FoV is wide enough... it actually means that you could create a VR world with an AR headset. And, since HoloLens is much better at keeping the projections perfectly inline with the real world, a full FoV HoloLens should do much better with the motion sickness associated with VR. If the external cameras can detect your arms (or even your whole body) your physical form could be perfectly replicated in your VR world.
None of those things in that last paragraph have been shown or even suggested by MS today. But, to me it seems like VR is a subset of AR and not the other way around. It is simply the case of AR where "all of your visible reality is augmented". Frankly, the response of those in the VR industry feels like one of wanton naivety. They invested in their version of VR and don't want to see how this tech is actually what they're missing, or they know what they're missing but are hoping they can ignore it out of existence.
In the tech world there is a bit of a debate on whether or not AR is already dead and that VR is the way to go. And much of that is reflected here. But, at the same time, most of the complaints made around VR are insurmountable and I think kill it off long term for anything but niche markets. In fact, the only way that they could be surpassed is by augmenting your VR experience with reality. Reverse AR I suppose. Funny that the same field basically calling AR dead would effectively rely on it to address most of their own problems.
Don't get me wrong. I get where they are coming from. AR *has* been tried before. But! Not really. Or at least not on this level. Traditional AR has been rather flat HUD's. Giving information that we could get from another device/medium and in a form not really any more useful.
Nokia had one for Lumia phones called City Lens. It would display what was in the camera with markers as you moved the camera telling you in which directions you could find things like restaurants or gas. The problem is, if I can't see the building with my own eyes, I probably need the map anyway to be sure how to get there. It was cool, but it wasn't really useful or valuable. And most examples I saw fell into this same boat.
The Hologram approach is, I would say, an revolutionary step. This is no small iterative evolution of AR and it changes everything. Firstly, it does what Google Glass got right and puts the device right on your head. Having to grab a device with a view port to get that AR experience is the first step in ruining it. The next thing it does is does more than just layer information in a similar form over the world. It manifests that data into your FoV.
To take the City Lens example further. A theoretical example (highly theoretical) would be the ability to "see through" the building in your way or overlay the map directions into your world. Or both.
But that is still pretty boring. To do what City Lens tried to do but better, maybe just start by showing a list of restaurants in the area pre-filtered via voice commands, and maybe to one side of you an actual map with all locations and to the other side a web browser window with the menu. If there are too many you use a gesture (or voice command) to eliminate certain directions in a circle around you and adjust max distance. Once you have the list trimmed down a bit you can select items from the list and automatically update the menu view and highlight the selection on the map so you have a better idea of where it is and what it serves. Once you choose a destination the map shows you directions from your current location and those directions are also overlaid onto the roads to lead you there.
Now, the interesting thing is this though, everyone who has used HoloLens has stated that the holograms can be opaque. So, if the FoV is wide enough... it actually means that you could create a VR world with an AR headset. And, since HoloLens is much better at keeping the projections perfectly inline with the real world, a full FoV HoloLens should do much better with the motion sickness associated with VR. If the external cameras can detect your arms (or even your whole body) your physical form could be perfectly replicated in your VR world.
None of those things in that last paragraph have been shown or even suggested by MS today. But, to me it seems like VR is a subset of AR and not the other way around. It is simply the case of AR where "all of your visible reality is augmented". Frankly, the response of those in the VR industry feels like one of wanton naivety. They invested in their version of VR and don't want to see how this tech is actually what they're missing, or they know what they're missing but are hoping they can ignore it out of existence.
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