
Facebook's Bet on an Augmented Reality Future - prostoalex
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/03/08/inside-facebooks-bet-on-an-augmented-reality-future/#5575cacb4d56
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seibelj
AR / VR has been the biggest bust of all tech buzz words in the last decade.
The hardware is currently too expensive and awkward for normal use, and the
only thing that captured the public's imagination was Pokemon Go, which was
ultimately a summer fad. Snapchat Spectacles was a flop.

I think AR will be a game changer, but honestly it's still a long ways out,
maybe another decade even.

~~~
ngokevin
It was overhyped, as with any new technology, but hardware always gets cheaper
and better fast. Not close to mainstream right now, it's still very early
adopter mode. But prices of Rift/Vive have about halved in the last year, and
headsets trending wireless. Many that do have those headsets though, swear by
them.

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loggedinmyphone
_hardware always gets cheaper and better fast_

This is an article of faith taken for granted by software people, but keep in
mind this had only been happening because of specific improvements to wafer
process technology. It's not a guaranteed trend.

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api
A pair of glasses that shape your reality according to the desires of a
marketing company. No thanks.

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retrocryptid
so sure. oculus is cool.

i even know a few people working there; they're smart dudes.

but.

they're being managed by an organization whose ops group can't remember to
renew certs and whose marketing group thinks it's cool to demo first person
shooters at NRA events the day after a mass shooting where you play the part
of a deranged mass shooter killing random people on a train platform.

as smart as the tech guys are, the organizational + business guys aren't
really the sharpest tools in the drawer.

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askafriend
I'm sure you had a valuable point to make but the blatant inaccuracy in your
comment distracts from any effectiveness your point may have had.

* It was a game killing random robots, not people.

* It wasn't an NRA event, it was CPAC where the NRA was one of many presenters.

* It was not the day after, it was a week after.

You could argue that these are minor errors, but that's not the point. You've
already tarnished your credibility so it's hard to take anything else you
retort with at face value.

It's unfortunate because I think you had a decent point about optics.

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mediocrejoker
The "person" in "first person shooter" refers to the narrative perspective of
the player (ie. first person, third person) and not the species that is being
"shot at"

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monktastic1
FWIW:

> where you play the part of a deranged mass shooter killing random _people_
> on a train platform

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tritium
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have some really limited applications.
There are maybe 5 or 6 silver bullet consumer ideas I can think of, but
they’re such prohibitively expensive concepts that I can’t think of a way to
bring these ideas to a wide audience to distribute costs, such that mass
appeal gains realistic traction toward high adoption and growth potential.

In fact, these ideas might only make sense under circumstances where there is
literally _nothing_ to do for really, _really_ long periods of time, waiting
around in tight quarters until you’re able to unbuckle and move freely. In
other words during space travel.

I hope that’s where this is going. Any other setting or context for
application of such technologies doesn’t make any normal amount of sense. And
this fits, since space travel isn’t exactly normal yet.

My intuition tells me Carmack and Zuckerburg have discussed this WRT rocket
ships and outer space. And that combination of subject matter, legitimate
credibility, intellect and wealth is the only thing that makes sense, to
justify such a bet.

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onion2k
_just about every technology giant is racing to build AR functionality into
their products and ecosystems_

If there's anything that'll kill AR before it's really had a chance it's a
million different APIs that aren't compatible with each other, leading to
developers choosing to support different platforms and users not knowing which
one is actually suitable for them.

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roymurdock
Keep your eye on Unity. It's bridging that gap and becoming the go-to AR dev
tool that supports most of the leading hardware platforms. Wouldn't be
surprised to see Microsoft (or another big AR player) acquire it - I'm sure a
lot of companies are eyeing it hard atm.

As for what could kill AR "before its had its chance" (AR has actually been
around for a long, long time) - lack of wearable hardware. AR apps on
phones/ipads/handheld devices are nice, and getting better all the time, but
generally don't have the potential to increase productivity to the extent that
hands free glasses/headset can. Wearable hardware needs to get more powerful,
less intrusive, and have better/ubiquitous connection (more bandwidth than
current cellular, potentially 5G could solve this issue).

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mtgx
_Now_ we're starting to get some clues for the real reason Facebook wants
everyone to give it the facial biometric profile. AR is not the only reason,
but it's probably up there with the main ones. I doubt security (the only
reason they've given so far for collecting facial biometrics) is even in the
top 5.

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908087
So once everyone is walking around with cameras on their faces feeding data
back to Facebook/Google/whoever 24/7 and running facial recognition on
everyone in sight, how are those of us who object supposed to opt out of the
privacy policies of those companies? "Just stop leaving your house"?

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deltron3030
They should launch some lightweight AR glasses for developers, extending
laptops with virtual screens, basically like additional monitors for laptops
over an USB-C dongle. They (FB) have already a good standing among web and
mobile developers, why not try it with hardware too.

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cycrutchfield
Is it just me or is this entire article essentially just breathlessly raving
about Facebook copying everything that Snapchat has done for years?

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michaelbuckbee
I feel like the article doesn't hit upon the number one reason big companies
like FB and Google are investing literally billions in mixed reality systems.
That right now they are the most likely thing to evolve into what replaces
smartphones.

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seren
Also contextual Augmented reality Ads could be a thing.

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rabidrat
Hasn't anyone seen Black Mirror?

