There will never be a "Year of the 3D Glasses"
STOP IT PEOPLE. Just stop the madness.
3D headsets are a stopgap technology. And they will never be anything but.
I finally put my finger on it today while I was thinking about HoloLens and watching a quick video of a person with a 3D headset at a computer.
There are disparate issues with 3D; a holistic one and a more realistic one.
The realistic issue is that 3D headsets immerse just your vision (or maybe vision and audio if all real-world noise is cancelled) but leaves all of your other senses, including most importantly, touch, immersed in a completely separate world. 3D will never feel natural as a result. Most humans beings will simply never be able to trust themselves to be immersed in such a device for long periods of time. It is a gimmick. Like the Nintendo Virtual Boy, or Kinect. They are a transitory tech that is fundamentally guaranteed to be replaced wholesale down the road.
And the worst part is that a viable killer tech is already out. HoloLens.
The holistic issue is that many talk about spatially mapping the real world into the 3D world to combat some of this. This is a holistic issue though because at that point it is augmented reality. And it is a clumsy implementation of AR which wastes cycles rendering the real world to some degree and which, once again, because it is artificially rendered makes it difficult to trust.
So, the one real solution to 3D's biggest problem turns it into a dumbed down HoloLens.
Perhaps somewhere down the road we'll get true sensory immersion in a virtual 3D world. But to get there without "hard" holograms or augmented reality, it means finding a way to decouple our sense from the real world so that we can immerse ourselves fully in a virtual world without needing to worry about molding the fantasy to reality. Or put another way, I need to not be worrying that swinging my virtual sword will result in me destroying my TV or punching my wife in the face.
HoloLens (field of view aside) deals with the holistic problem 3D faces. It can render 3D images, and it addresses your other senses being immersed in reality by simply allowing you to continue to experience reality. The real world is not digitally re-rendered in the display.
It isn't "better" than full sensory immersion however. In fact, I'd call them largely divergent paths. But, there is no technical reason why a more powerful HoloLens headset couldn't do everything a 3D headset could, plus better address the real world when necessary or when it makes sense. In other words, a HoloLens with a "full" FoV could render a complete 3D world over top of the real one, effectively turning it into a traditional 3D headset.
Also, note that I never said VR headset or virtual reality. 3D headsets that don't address the complete immersion experience aren't really presenting you with a complete virtual reality. So, I think the name is today is a bit of a misnomer. Virtual reality is the natural conclusion for 3D tech, we just aren't anywhere near it today. And no tech that resembles what we have today will succeed as a critical piece of mainstream consumer tech. There will never be a "Year of the 3D glasses".
To end, there will probably never be a "year of the HoloLens" either. But, AR inspired by HoloLens might see such a future. Basically, unless Microsoft is willing to re-engineer every new version I don't see them getting a consumer viable product to market fast enough. Iterative design processes are unlikely to get everything like size, weight, battery life and FoV all to appreciable areas before a competitor delivers something based on a brand new architecture which does.
3D headsets are a stopgap technology. And they will never be anything but.
I finally put my finger on it today while I was thinking about HoloLens and watching a quick video of a person with a 3D headset at a computer.
There are disparate issues with 3D; a holistic one and a more realistic one.
The realistic issue is that 3D headsets immerse just your vision (or maybe vision and audio if all real-world noise is cancelled) but leaves all of your other senses, including most importantly, touch, immersed in a completely separate world. 3D will never feel natural as a result. Most humans beings will simply never be able to trust themselves to be immersed in such a device for long periods of time. It is a gimmick. Like the Nintendo Virtual Boy, or Kinect. They are a transitory tech that is fundamentally guaranteed to be replaced wholesale down the road.
And the worst part is that a viable killer tech is already out. HoloLens.
The holistic issue is that many talk about spatially mapping the real world into the 3D world to combat some of this. This is a holistic issue though because at that point it is augmented reality. And it is a clumsy implementation of AR which wastes cycles rendering the real world to some degree and which, once again, because it is artificially rendered makes it difficult to trust.
So, the one real solution to 3D's biggest problem turns it into a dumbed down HoloLens.
Perhaps somewhere down the road we'll get true sensory immersion in a virtual 3D world. But to get there without "hard" holograms or augmented reality, it means finding a way to decouple our sense from the real world so that we can immerse ourselves fully in a virtual world without needing to worry about molding the fantasy to reality. Or put another way, I need to not be worrying that swinging my virtual sword will result in me destroying my TV or punching my wife in the face.
HoloLens (field of view aside) deals with the holistic problem 3D faces. It can render 3D images, and it addresses your other senses being immersed in reality by simply allowing you to continue to experience reality. The real world is not digitally re-rendered in the display.
It isn't "better" than full sensory immersion however. In fact, I'd call them largely divergent paths. But, there is no technical reason why a more powerful HoloLens headset couldn't do everything a 3D headset could, plus better address the real world when necessary or when it makes sense. In other words, a HoloLens with a "full" FoV could render a complete 3D world over top of the real one, effectively turning it into a traditional 3D headset.
Also, note that I never said VR headset or virtual reality. 3D headsets that don't address the complete immersion experience aren't really presenting you with a complete virtual reality. So, I think the name is today is a bit of a misnomer. Virtual reality is the natural conclusion for 3D tech, we just aren't anywhere near it today. And no tech that resembles what we have today will succeed as a critical piece of mainstream consumer tech. There will never be a "Year of the 3D glasses".
To end, there will probably never be a "year of the HoloLens" either. But, AR inspired by HoloLens might see such a future. Basically, unless Microsoft is willing to re-engineer every new version I don't see them getting a consumer viable product to market fast enough. Iterative design processes are unlikely to get everything like size, weight, battery life and FoV all to appreciable areas before a competitor delivers something based on a brand new architecture which does.
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