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1. tjs8rj+(OP)[view] [source] 2021-10-12 18:51:25
Coolest one I’ve seen is VR workspaces. Buying a $5k setup per head where they can work from space or the Grand Canyon with unlimited monitors, sit/stand/lay down, software upgrades (only a few pieces of hardware to replace), virtual meetings, building and modeling anything they want, etc

It’s still kinda clunky now, but the tech will get better. That’s a money saver (and a big improvement) with the main barriers being tech and familiarity, and those just come with time. Very bullish on that

replies(2): >>smolde+F >>Tarrag+w6
2. smolde+F[view] [source] 2021-10-12 18:54:01
>>tjs8rj+(OP)
I dunno, I still can't quite see the potential of that. And even if they did get it working perfectly, then they're following in the footsteps of other people who've already done this on headsets that are a fraction of the price (like Immersed or Virtual Desktop).

Even if they do manage to create mind-blowing hardware, they aren't exactly cornering a market here.

replies(1): >>snek_c+Hy
3. Tarrag+w6[view] [source] 2021-10-12 19:25:14
>>tjs8rj+(OP)
There are hardware limits that will make this less compelling than you imagine. I'll give 3 reasons.

Note: Magic Leap specs are from a quick google search and may be out of date. Even improved they'll have the same issues to a slightly lesser degree.

First - field of view: The horizontal field of Magic Leap is 40 degrees. My primary monitor, a 16x9 32" monitor at about 3 feet from my eyes, is 42 degrees. So this can't even show me 100% of that, and definitely can't show me a second monitor in my peripheral vision.

Field of view is hard to improve as the optics are really close to your eyes and being head worn have limits of size and weight.

Second - Resolution: The magic leap resolution is apparently 1280x960, significantly less than 1080p. That's not even close to the 4K monitor I'm typing this on. That low resolution has to cover the entire area of my monitor. More if I want to stretch the field of wider.

Picture yourself programming on a 1280x960 32" monitor. Just to see I set my system that way for a minute. PIXELS EVERYWHERE! Also, now I need to reset all my carefully curated windows.

It's hard to improve resolution. The displays are very small to keep size and weight down. HMD displays are generally about the highest of DPI that can be built.

Third - Brightness: You can't draw black on a see-through HMD, all you can do is make the existing world brighter. The lenses are too close to the eye to be able to do any kind of masking or blocking of the ambient light.

So your display system won't be able to show much of an image over bright area; the text is either white over world color or background colored in a white field. It's not good for reading text and almost illegible at typical sizes in office lighting.

You can't improve brightness easily. These tiny displays make a lot of heat right near your head. Making them brighter means bigger heatsinks, taking weight and size, and more power with requires bigger batteries or shorter run time.

You can kinda cheat one a little with dark sunglass lenses to make the whole world darker. Or you can go to VR and just block the whole world and draw your interface over a video stream. The second option isn't really compelling because it for AR demos like Magic Leap shows.

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4. snek_c+Hy[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-10-12 22:13:47
>>smolde+F
AR seems to me like one of those technologies that people keep claiming is definitely going to be "the future" even though the use cases are dubious.
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