They still look absolutely ridiculous. The way they hover above the nose just looks silly.
It feels like these types of glasses suffer from an effect similar to the uncanny valley. They either need to look EXACTLY like a normal pair of sunglasses, or embrace what they are and make them look very different from sunglasses. Looking sort of like sunglasses, but not being quite right, I think has the inverse effect of getting them to "blend in".
Aesthetics aside, I think the reduction in size and weight is impressive.
They still look absolutely ridiculous. The way they hover above the nose just looks silly...They either need to look EXACTLY like a normal pair of sunglasses, or embrace what they are and make them look very different from sunglasses.
They should've gone for full-on 50's bottle bottom nerd glasses. Maybe take a cue from Brutalism, Frida Kahlo, and EletroBOOM and branched out with it's own pseudo monobrow aesthetic. (Is it just me, or do a lot of Brutalist buildings seem to be trying to convey an abstract sort of monobrow look?)
I was just skiing last week and realized the goggles were pretty comfortable... and so huge they could easily store the electronics, batteries, etc... to make pretty good AR devices.
I wonder if in a couple of years everybody will be wearing iGoggles.
This existed: a company called Recon made a HUD built into ski goggles. I have one and it's kinda fun: GPS and altimeter, and connects to your phone for notifications. It didn't sell well though and I think is now discontinued. The company was acquired by IBM.
With 5G on the horizon, it might be time to re-launch such a product. Having the ski route traced out in front of you is not only helpful safety-wise, but could add a social dimension if key stats could be shared live--and visually, calling to mind a video game--between friends (or broader).
As an avid skiier, a route traced out in front of you would absolutely NOT help with safety: more than driving, one needs to be able to see the surface conditions and be aware of obstacles at the edges of one's field of vision. At least until such a time when an AI is able to warn you of loose snow, bumps, ice, and a fallen skiier outside of your field of vision.
I like to see the computer, battery, wifi/cellular radio, etc all be strapped to the my belt rather than next to the eye/brain. It is like installing a tiny microwave oven next to your brain and running it continuously.
Whatever on glass/goggle should just be headup display/maybe small camera with small wire connection.
This reminds me of the last scene of the movie "Thank you for smoking". The tobacco lobbyist was out of job when FDC declared smoking is not safe. He became the lobbyist for the cellular industry.
At that last scene, he was training the Cell phone executive: "Repeat after me: There are no conclusive evident that cell phone usage can cause brain cancer." Since I worked in Nokia at that time, that scene just etches into my mind even after so many years.
I was afraid that 20,30 years from now, some percentage of generate of kids grow up with cell phone next to their head were detected with some brain abnormality. Someone will do an experiment by putting cell phone / wifi next to lab rats and find some correlations between long extend exposure of wifi/cell signals and some kind brain damages.
Wifi/Cellular microwave can't cook turkey with its 1 watts output. But I can certain feel the warm on the side of face/ear next to it for just a few minutes. I definitively WILL NOT do that for an extend period of time.
I asked my family to reduce the bluetooth headset usage although I know for sure BT's power is much lower than wifi. Using wire headset or speaker is much better in my mind.
Have you actually read that paper? Line by line? It's garbage.
The "researchers" bought a cow brain and cut a rectangular slab of it. So far so good. They put the slab in a plexiglas box and waited for it to reach thermal equilibrium with the room and air.
Then then held a cell phone directly against the brain tissue for 15 minutes.
Yes. That's right. They held the phone DIRECTLY AGAINST THE BRAIN.
They have the gall to describe this as being "exactly as a person was communicating with a cell phone." Yes, I always hold my phone directly against my brain tissue.
The effect measured was that the tissue got a fraction of a degree warmer. Of course cell-phones are very warm devices and will warm up any slab of flesh they're resting on.
Did the "researchers" isolate the radio energy by testing again with the phone on airplane mode? Nope. Did they in any way distinguish between radio energy and thermal energy from a battery-operated supercomputer? Nah bro. No discussion of that whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the paper is written like an undergraduate report by somebody who doesn't speak english very well and who doesn't have an editor. How could this be? Well, the paper was published in the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, a publication of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. This journal has an impact factor of 0.98, putting in the bottom third of all journals.
This isn't science in any way, shape or form. It should never be cited by anybody except as an example of a shitty, shitty paper.
I mean, I agree they look ridiculous — but I remember when people wearing Bluetooth headsets looked ridiculous. They were way chunkier than “regular” headphones and made the wearer look like a complete tool. Maybe they still do, but they’re ubiquitous now.
Hell, AirPods looked ridiculous 2 years ago.
So even though I agree with you entirely, I’m prepared to recognize that the world may change around us fairly quickly.
I also thought the same, until I visited NYC last month. People from all walks of life and age were using AirPods and I didn't find it to be sneered as dorky.
> The only irritating part was I started to feel the weight of the specs on my nose bridge a few minutes into my session. Xu assured me that what I tried on was a prototype and that an assortment of nose pads and lenses for different facial features will be available.
Am I reading the first two paragraphs correctly as the founder was a former magic leap engineer?
Based on what they have said in the article, it sounds a little too good to be true. $1k price tag, lightweight, and good resolution? Maybe someone more familiar with this line of hardware can chime in on plausibility?
Yeah, and looks like they made some of the same design decisions as Magic Leap, such as a hip puck for the computing. I wonder if they're going to get hit with a lawsuit.
Yeah, I generally agree, but it looks like it might clip over the waistband the same way. Not major, and not saying they should be, just looks like more than coincidence.
I’m guessing there are also some serious non competes in place on those employees.
I really don’t understand the push to make AR “goggles” look like glasses. Either make them look 100% like natural eye/sunglasses such that no one can tell, or don’t even bother getting close. Just embrace it and make them legit goggles of their own.
No one is going to wear or buy these just like no one is going to wear or buy magic leap’s terrible product.
Having said that, I feel like these companies are getting us started. Once they fail (including magic leap) they should open source everything they’ve done so the next wave can get it right.
I doubt they'll open source anything. When they fail, the investors will sell off the IP to one of the big tech companies so they can add to their defensive patent portfolio.
I don't know. I think if some fashion designer wanted to push that as a look they could probably make it work.
The $1000 price point is a total dealbreaker though. Expectations at that price point are that it is going to work perfectly right out of the box and solve some problems, but these are going to be at best a novelty and probably buggy for at least a couple of iterations. That price point is way too high for something that doesn't work right.
> believes the problem with most consumer-facing augmented headsets on the market is their bulky size
Problem is the nausea, Virtual reality sickness to be accurate.
Addressing the bulk alone wouldn't fix the issue of long term VR use. Audi showcased VR entertainment[1] for passengers, reporters who tried out said the moving vehicle didn't produce motion sickness. Though a moving vehicle for VR wouldn't be the scalable solution, I just want to point out that the motion sickness is a definite inhibitor.
I was under the impression that this is a fixed a problem. Don't have a source on hand, but US military, one of the first adopters, solved VR sickness by putting in a "virtual nose", i.e. a static nose model that simulates what the eye sees in real-life.
I can't speak about fake noses, but from testing with lots of people, VR sickness is generally dependent on your subject and their brain's ability to handle being tossed around between realities. Personally, whenever there is no floor, I get sick fairly quickly. I assume because my mind expects a floor to be there when I look down. Not looking down when I know there is no floor usually helps. Worst case is when the floor is at the level of my knees/stomach, that's an instant VR ending for me. Oddly enough, there are rare exceptions, such as with Cosmic Sugar, I was able to "ignore" my sickness and play around for ~30 minutes, but returning to the normal world, I remained slightly dizzy and felt "off" for the next couple days. The worst offender is when objects fly into my body or head (or as happens with lots of the shitty shovelware indie games which launch you into walls/mountains). After such incidents, I usually need a break between 15 minutes and a full day before I can go back inside.
I doubt adding a virtual nose would fix either of those issues i.e. where the mind isn't able to process what it is seeing.
Unfortunately, they still look too dorky to wear in public. All the tech gadgetry in the world won’t make a successful product if they don’t solve the fashion problem first.
They should target industrial and military users first. Those buyers don't care about aesthetics. Imagine how useful AR goggles could be for maintenance technicians. Pull up diagnostic codes, schematics, and instructional videos while you've got your hands full working on a broken jet engine.
Well, if the purpose of the device is to protect the wearer on a jobsite while providing rapid access to information, that's fine. If the purpose of the device is to enable group criminal activity with the benefit of anonymity, then I'm fine with that being outlawed.
Let's look across world history at people who have used masks to conceal their identity while breaking the law -- especially those whose activities impinged upon politics. Overall, it's pretty skeezy. Even the ones who are still held as heroes in their culture's histories strike me as a bit skeezy.
One pattern that seems to differentiate masked heroes from masked villains, is that the heroes generally hold to strict codes of justice, conduct, and decorum. The villains are often foul mouthed and readily reveal bitterness and hate and commit arbitrary destruction and violence. Sometimes, groups start out fitting the former description, then devolve into the latter.
Does everyone here really care that much about how the glasses look like?
As long as the features are good, the weight is low, the screen door effect is reduced, the refresh rate is high, the lag is kept at minimum, it will be a good product.
These are the important questions. This is hacker news, not fashion news.
Everyone. If it looks bad, it will remain a niche product. With no adoption past the enthusiasts, the glasses will remain expensive, the dev ecosystem bad, the available software for limited and low quality.
You should always care whether your favorite product is sellable to a wide audience.
It feels like these types of glasses suffer from an effect similar to the uncanny valley. They either need to look EXACTLY like a normal pair of sunglasses, or embrace what they are and make them look very different from sunglasses. Looking sort of like sunglasses, but not being quite right, I think has the inverse effect of getting them to "blend in".
Aesthetics aside, I think the reduction in size and weight is impressive.