
An engineer replaced four monitors with Meta glasses - stesch
http://www.businessinsider.de/meta-glasses-could-be-future-of-work-2016-2?r=US&IR=T
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TrevorJ
Article is really thin on details, I'm skeptical. Last I checked, pixel
density was still a big issue with HMD's and text. Contrast, as well is a
problem with AR style HMD's.

I'd love it if the tech really was there though, it would be awesome. I
actually think using some flavor of DLP tech and a foveated display with eye
tracking might allow for phenomenal pixel density, wonder if anyone is working
on that yet.

~~~
mappu
SMI are working on fundamental technology for foveated displays with eye
tracking. There's also an HMD from FOVE on Kickstarter that intends to ship to
backers in "Fall 2016".

John Carmack suggested on Twitter that foveated rendering won't be a
performance win until a few more generations, when higher-resolution panels
are more commonplace. Right now the necessary tracking and layering could
actually reduce performance compared to rendering the full scene.

~~~
knughit
There are applications where high resolution is interesting but high frequency
is not.

~~~
mappu
High refresh rate is mandatory to reduce nausea.

~~~
wlesieutre
Additionally, every time you move your eyes, the high-detail area has to shift
with them. If you did foveated rendering without low latency and high refresh
rate, you're going to get visible pop-in of render detail levels.

Haven't tried it, but I'd hazard a guess that it would be really
uncomfortable.

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mappu
I've used [http://vrdesktop.net/](http://vrdesktop.net/) with the Oculus DK2,
but, the resolution was still a little low for getting real work done. I'm
skeptical that this HMD would have better resolution/tracking than Oculus.

I'm hopeful the CV1 will make it at least bearable, because there are so many
possible benefits (custom environments, isolating distractions, privacy, ...)

You could add multiple virtual monitors as long as Windows believes they exist
(there is [http://virtualmonitor.github.io/](http://virtualmonitor.github.io/)
for XPDM, but i'm not sure how well that would work nowadays).

~~~
imaginenore
Nope, the resolution is still way too low, the FOV is too big. We need
something like 4K per eye for it to become comfortable.

And even that won't even get close to 3 physical monitors in terms of
resolution, simple because the geometric transforms kill your perfect pixels.

~~~
mappu
_> And even that won't even get close to 3 physical monitors in terms of
resolution, simple because the geometric transforms kill your perfect pixels._

I have 3 physical monitors at $DAYJOB and i don't think i see 1:1 pixels on
all three simultaneously - certainly i do for the monitor i'm focusing on, but
less so on the others, or maybe only peripheral changes. So i think the HMD
could get by with a slightly reduced resolution as long as the FOV
accommodated peripheral vision.

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bitwize
Not interested. Not until they fix the eyehurt problem. AR glasses have this
problem wherein they don't detect where your eyes are or should be focusing.
So they throw an image up at some default focal depth, and if that image
happens to overlay some of my surroundings at a different focal depth, then my
eyes' focusing muscles start "hunting" and that can lead to significant
eyestrain.

I experienced this while trying out some state-of-the-art Sony goggles one of
their sales reps was demoing at my workplace.

~~~
josephpmay
It's called the vergence-accommodation conflict. And I've solved it (you'll
have to wait awhile to hear about that).

But it's not actually as big of a deal as it sounds, at least for most people.
Crosstalk is a more common source of eyestrain and luckily easy to fix.

~~~
techdragon
I want to slap people like you.

I don't mention half the crap I've "solved" in various handwritten pages and
folios over the years, why?

Because I have not solved anything till Joe Average can just get it tomorrow
on Amazon Prime or instantly via some web page. It's rude to be a tease.

~~~
josephpmay
I apologize for the inappropriateness of my comment. It's something my team is
actively prototyping, but we haven't yet patented it.

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iamleppert
This is one of those things you do because it sounds cool and then you go back
to getting actual work done with your real world monitors.

~~~
dexterdog
For now, but this is the future of HD computer displays.

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angrydev
The title should read 'A Meta engineer replaces four monitors with Meta
glasses'

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Kenji
I remain sceptical about how ergonomic this is. I also wonder how much
processing power they need to run this in real-time. Such virtual reality
simulations are often still somewhat computationally expensive and
sophisticated. But it actually looks quite exciting.

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mgberlin
For me, a non-gamer, this is the killer app for any of the new head-mounted
displays. I've been waiting for years for some sort of goggles I can plug into
my dev machine, put on to block out all visual distractions, and get work
done.

~~~
reustle
Putting on goggles to block out all visual distractions? An office with a door
does this pretty well too.

~~~
mgberlin
And yet that's somehow harder to find than a high resolution, ergonomic, HMD
in the Bay Area.

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al2o3cr
Anybody seen specs for the thing they're demoing in this? The Kickstarter
([https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/551975293/meta-the-
most...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/551975293/meta-the-most-
advanced-augmented-reality-interface/description)) claims 960x540 displays in
each eye, which would make for a jaggy-tastic text rendering experience...

~~~
semiel
That was the previous version of the glasses. These are supposed to be much
better, but we won't see specs until at least Wednesday, when the press
embargo lifts.

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melling
"The keyboard is the only thing I need, except for the glasses."

I think this loses a lot of appeal until we can throw away the keyboard. We
should be able to do better. Hopefully, Google ships this silicon this year:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0)

I'd rather have those monitors and no keyboard.

~~~
Animats
Now that's a step forward. Gloves in VR without force feedback have sucked.
The insight here is that there are new kinds of gestures, such as touching
fingers together and rubbing them sideways. They're able to sense those
gestures with Doppler radar. They probably don't even try to resolve the
gestures into positions; they may just throw a machine learning algorithm at
the problem of recognizing the gestures from the Doppler radar outputs.

This starts to make VR look useful for something other than roller coaster
simulators.

Google has a nice demo of a volume control knob. Will this scale up to a
virtual mix board?

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mchahn
If I understand this correctly you can also see the real world because the
image is overlayed. This would be too distracting for me. The opposite, a pair
of glasses that totally blacked out the rest of the world, would be ideal for
me. Put on some sound-cancelling headphones and I'm in programming heaven.

Related: Some editor users set up their background color as partially
transparent and see other browser windows, etc., behind the text they are
editing. This would drive me crazy, not to mention that my eyes are bad enough
to begin with.

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milesf
Huh. I didn't know Christian Slater owned a tech company :P

[http://i.imgur.com/MREkcju.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/MREkcju.jpg)

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henryslater
It seems weird that he didn't actually log into spotify.

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lololomg
On my X Box I don't care if the image resolution is low cause it doesn't
matter that much for games or video. But for work I need lots of pixels. It's
going to be a few years before that will fit in VR goggles.

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MollyR
Wow if I could use this for coding at work, instead of the using the bad
monitors they have. That would be amazing !

Does anyone know more about this tech?

~~~
8611m
This article is probably referring to Robert Scoble's live stream from Meta's
office, you can see the whole video here. There's an engineer who claims to
have replaced his multi-monitor setup with an AR device by Meta demoed at TED.
The TED video will be released this Wednesday.

Video stream link here:
[https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/101539286551246...](https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/10153928655124655/?pnref=story)

Edited for link.

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michaelbuckbee
There is another teaser video at
[http://www.metavision.com](http://www.metavision.com)

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platz
projecting a flat concept onto a 3d world seems like a category mismatch.

Turning your head is not going to be faster than Meta-Tabbing to another
virtual desktop.

~~~
monsieurbanana
The 3d world doesn't aim to replace the virtual desktops, it aims to replace
the multi-monitors.

~~~
platz
I can think of a few professions that need multi at the same time, but since
yoy can only interact with one at a time, most probably wouldnt be helped by
this, including programmers.

~~~
Stratoscope
Of course you can interact with two monitors at once. I do it every day.

My current standing desk setup is an MBPR15 on top of a wine case on my desk,
with a ViewSonic 24" 4K display to the left, hanging in portrait mode on the
Amazon Basics version of an Ergotron arm. Best dev rig I've ever had!

Quite often I'll put docs and references on the external monitor while I write
code in Visual Studio or IntelliJ on the Mac's display. This works especially
well with the monitor in portrait mode.

Then I leave the mouse cursor over on the external display and use two-finger
scrolling there, while using the keyboard in the editor window.

If this isn't interacting with two monitors at once, I don't know what is. And
it's a huge improvement over a single monitor.

~~~
XorNot
I'm interacting with 3 monitors right now (well, was, then I got distracted
and started reading HN).

I think the more important way to unpack that assertion though, is that if you
watch people studying using pens and paper, almost everyone has a specific way
they end up laying out papers and books on their desk - and the reason we
still do it that way, by and large, is because you get a lot more desk real
estate then you get screen real estate.

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chimitos
I'm a big fan of his making this in Unity

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marcus_holmes
Oculus Vim!

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vernie
Sure he did.

