I doubt Apple would plan meetings around CES. If they want to meet with a company, the company would host them or put people on a plane to Curpertino.
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Apple Reportedly Met With Potential Suppliers of Augmented Reality Glasses at CES 2018
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Apple doesn’t typically do this. They provide the tools and rely on the developer community to come up with ways to utilize new features.
My wife ordered a pair of glasses online using an App that measured her face and allowed her to choose frames that would fit. And when they arrived, guess what? They fit perfectly.
I’ve fooled around with the IKEA App, and though it’s prety basic right now the potential is huge. I predict you’ll be able to buy shoes, clothes, furniture/appliances
A few years ago I saw a very early AR concept for teaching surgery to medical students. It involved more than just visual AR, but haptic interfaces that included scalpels and other tools a surgeon would use. When the haptic scalpel was used to create an incision in an AR body it would generate force feedback to the student. Try to cut into tendons, bones, etc. within the AR model and the scalpel becomes more and more difficult to push, just as it would in the real world. The end goal is to be able to provide an environment that's realistic when teaching surgery without the constant need for medical cadavers, etc. Given what I saw of that demonstration I'm 100% convinced we'll eventually see the ability of medical students, and even experienced surgeons, using AR to learn new surgical techniques without the need for cadavers, etc.
I see the potential for AR, but we are pretty far off I believe. Probably 5 years before anything I'd be interested in,.
I could easily AR being used for a lot of things.
- Imaging a MacBook, without a display. The display would be on the glasses. Much lighter and adapting to lighting conditions.
- My car has a heads up display. It shows my speed, the speed limit, and navigation information like with of the 3 lanes I need to be in and distance I have to get into that lane. It is great. I hardly ever look down at the dash.
- And I would love to have instructions on how to get around when walking in a new city.
- And we could have smaller phones since we would not need big displays.
- ...
I would love to see these for home use for games and such... but if you are referring to people walking around in public with something like Google glass, I agree... no way.
You just helped me win a bet. I bet another forum member that the two things mentioned regarding AR would be the IKEA app and the Warby Parker app. Pokemon Go was the 3rd runner up choice. I don't say that to poke fun at your anecdotes. I say it as testimony of there really ain't nothing going on with AR in the consumer space.
I mentioned earlier that I could see the possibilities of AR/mixed reality in commercial/industrial applications, which is what you're describing. So on that we agree. I'm guessing our opinions differ when it comes to the consumer market.
VR does require a lot of GPU power ( I don't think 'ridiculous amount of processing power' is the right term). There is nothing wrong with this. VR at the moment is best suited towards non mobile setups, again, nothing wrong with this.
VR on mobile will get better. From your comment, you focus on mobile only - which maybe is not the right application for VR at this stage, or perhaps ever. Why are you trying to shoehorn VR into a mobile use-case, when it isn't appropriate?
VR has been around for a while, but the technology hasn't been there to make a good. That technology is now here.
Don't compare AR setups ( i.e., mobile ) to VR setups ( better on computers, rather than mobile platforms) - you can't compare the two like this. AR is more suited towards mobile uses, VR, at this point, isn't.
Mobility and location isn't particularly relevant for VR.
VR allows you to interact with a virtual world
AR allows you to interact with our physical world, augmented in some way
Two different things, two different use cases, and hardware setups will be different.
VR on mobile will get better. From your comment, you focus on mobile only - which maybe is not the right application for VR at this stage, or perhaps ever. Why are you trying to shoehorn VR into a mobile use-case, when it isn't appropriate?
VR has been around for a while, but the technology hasn't been there to make a good. That technology is now here.
Don't compare AR setups ( i.e., mobile ) to VR setups ( better on computers, rather than mobile platforms) - you can't compare the two like this. AR is more suited towards mobile uses, VR, at this point, isn't.
Mobility and location isn't particularly relevant for VR.
VR allows you to interact with a virtual world
AR allows you to interact with our physical world, augmented in some way
Two different things, two different use cases, and hardware setups will be different.
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Over in AR there really seems to be two tracks. One Google Glass 2 and some others where you have something relatively small or close to sunglasses but can't display too much in field of view / quality (lots of business uses for this Google is being quite successful in this space). The 2nd track can be shown by Magic Leap and Microsoft's Hololens where you basically have as much hardware as VR to get a really quality visual experience for the user - but not very usable in public.
It'll be interesting to see where Apple goes on this - if anywhere (they have a big history of testing things out and seeing they're not good enough and dumping them in the trash before release). The real good experience would seem to demand an almost VR like solution but that isn't a plausible everyday walking around piece of hardware. Time will tell.
It'll be interesting to see where Apple goes on this - if anywhere (they have a big history of testing things out and seeing they're not good enough and dumping them in the trash before release). The real good experience would seem to demand an almost VR like solution but that isn't a plausible everyday walking around piece of hardware. Time will tell.
There is a perfect use scenario for AR on mobile, albeit in support of a relatively, small population.
Imagine the world of the hearing impaired -- some partially deaf, specially the young, leading to being ostracized either by self, or by peers.
Now imagine AR glasses that provide automated closed captions of speech and surrounding sounds, by homing in on the wearer's focus and filtering the surround.
Parts of the technology are here: speech-to-text, semantic parsing of conversational language, machine learning.
This application would be a lifeline to the very young that suffer from extreme hearing impairment. And it would allow the old to live a life that allows human interaction, without the curse of being isolated by their inability to interact with others.
Just thinking aloud.
Imagine the world of the hearing impaired -- some partially deaf, specially the young, leading to being ostracized either by self, or by peers.
Now imagine AR glasses that provide automated closed captions of speech and surrounding sounds, by homing in on the wearer's focus and filtering the surround.
Parts of the technology are here: speech-to-text, semantic parsing of conversational language, machine learning.
This application would be a lifeline to the very young that suffer from extreme hearing impairment. And it would allow the old to live a life that allows human interaction, without the curse of being isolated by their inability to interact with others.
Just thinking aloud.
I think in a sense consumers can't picture this far ahead of where augmented reality will lead and what uses how they would apply it in their daily lives. Someone else gave the example of how AR could be beneficial for a medical student possibly Augmented reality when practing or training for open surgeries, which is an interesting idea in itself. I'm sure this will be a very complete niche category, but nonetheless, I think I will have it uses once this technology continues to develop.
Oh yea, I think it will be really cool once it arrives, but it needs to be in a package that doesn't look like google glass. It basically needs to be unrecognizable to those around me. I wear glasses so if they can get it to work in the form of my current glasses, sure that'd be great. One day, I'm hoping.
I agree with your comment of clunky looking hardware strapped on to ones' face. when looking at the already in the market clunky VR headsets, I always felt the google glass was a wonderfully designed almost not "in your face" design. But I'm sure it could be done even better.
And now that Apple wants to do something with AR, I think it would be awesome if Apple could design something even subtler than Google Glass like having the display on the glass itself. But privacy concern definitely is something that should be addressed which ultimately became the major reason for shutting down of Google Glass as a product offering.
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I agree with your comment of clunky looking hardware strapped on to ones' face. when looking at the already in the market clunky VR headsets, I always felt the google glass was a wonderfully designed almost not "in your face" design. But I'm sure it could be done even better.
And now that Apple wants to do something with AR, I think it would be awesome if Apple could design something even subtler than Google Glass like having the display on the glass itself. But privacy concern definitely is something that should be addressed which ultimately became the major reason for shutting down of Google Glass as a product offering.
CES is where small companies that otherwise go unnoticed go to get attention.
Plenty of these suppliers are foreign, and in the US on travel visas. You make an informal meeting at CES, and work out the details later.
If Apple talked to anyone. I’d bet my life on this one. Everyone saying AR is still immature needs to take a look at that link.
I think tech companies were just approaching it incorrectly. It took these guys 20 years. Tech companies weren’t even making smartphones then.
AR will eventually replace your phone. It’s like saying the phone won’t replace the computer, when in reality - it did.
"Contact displays" have been in the works for several years.
[doublepost=1515791496][/doublepost]Remember that the tablet computer (smartphone included) format was actually around for many years. I handled one back in the late 1980s. It was featured in "2001" and "Star Trek" (TOS). There were tablet-format Windows computers for years. They went nowhere.
Until Apple made a small, but critical, change to the UI.
They ditched the cursor, and re-imagined the interface as directly touch-centric.
That made all the difference.
AR/VR are similar. We've been trying to make it work for decades (I still have original iGlasses), we've cleared some major hurdles (John Carmack's 20ms movement-to-photon requirement a biggie), but there's still _something_ everyone is missing. Maybe it's a killer app. Maybe it's a biofeedback issue. Maybe it's reconciling the virtual world with the physical one your body is still in (tripping over wires, bumping walls, etc). Maybe it's that facewear is awkwardly shaped. Whatever the issue, it's probably something small ... and when someone figures out what that is, and has the massive budget needed to make a critical mass happen, we'll all be into it.
My phone certainly hasn't replaced my computer. Work, and home usage would be impossible on an iPhone or iPad, for that matter.
You could be 100% right... at some point in the more distant future. You're nowhere close to being right at this point in time or in the very near future. I mean we can "cloud talk" all sorts of future innovations.
AR glasses are an interesting idea. What id love to see is an input mechanism as accurate as multi touch. Perhaps some super accurate computer vision powered sensor, that knows where your hands and fingers are, allowing you to interact with virtual objects / menus with as little latency as there is on an iPhone today.
We only disagree on the time frame. I see it within 5 years.