
Meta (YC S13), The Crazy AR Glasses That Aim To Do What Google Glass Can’t - L4mppu
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/09/meta-the-ar-glasses-that-aim-to-be-what-google-glass-is-not-go-up-for-pre-order/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
======
m_ke
Did anyone see actual demos of this thing in action? Meron came to my computer
vision class this spring at CU and didn't have anything to show other than the
CGI demo that has been up for over a year. The newer videos are also mostly
just renderings and the only working examples that were posted are around 10
seconds long.

I wish them the best of luck but it seems to me like they're really
overselling themselves.

~~~
mikemoka
looks like they invited the reddit co-founder to test them actually:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv7nSng0yD8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv7nSng0yD8)

~~~
pud
That video of the Reddit co-founder struggling to use the product & struggling
to say something good about it made me cringe a little.

They should work on a better testimonial video.

~~~
ehsanu1
You make it sound worse than it is. Maybe it's just me, but he seemed to have
some positive things to say during the actual demo. Just seems slightly staged
at the end there is all. As for struggling to use the app, we don't all expect
an early prototype + third-party app to have perfect usability.

Of course, this testimonial pales in comparison to, say, the Oculus Rift
kickstarter video. But that product was further along at that point, and
solving an easier problem.

Edit: Actually, I take that back. I didn't realize this was featured on their
home page, which definitely should have a better testimonial. At least it
reflects the reality of the tech at this point, setting the right expectations
hopefully (in contrast to their main video).

~~~
msutherl
The real kicker is how deluded the founders are about their idea. The
sculpting app, for instance, is an awful idea. Sculpting in air doesn't work –
it's a fundamental limitation of the model – there's no tactile or force
feedback – not something that will improve with the technology. Demoing with
this app shows they don't understand the nature of the technology they're
developing. I would give them a pass, but, later on in the video, the guy with
the beard says "so you can imagine a surface on every wall, like Gmail,
Facebook, or whatever". This not only unimaginative, but wrongheaded. A
moments thought reveals that this idea makes no sense.

This video is brogrammer culture at its worst.

~~~
jcrites
There are technologies being developed to simulate a feeling of touch in the
air: [http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/21/siggraph-disney-
research-...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/21/siggraph-disney-research-
aireal-haptic-feedback/)

"AIREAL pumps out tight vortices of air to simulate tactility in three
dimensional space. The idea is to give touchless experiences like motion
control a form of physical interaction, offering the end user a more natural
response through, well, touch."

It looks like Aireal can only create a pulsing sensation, which will still be
insufficient for sculpting, and I imagine it is a weak sensation in the first
place, but I am still interested to see how these technologies improve over
time.

------
tyre
Look like a great idea and technological advancement, but the biggest thing
holding back Google Glass is not that it lacks feature X.

Glass will be held back because most people don't want to look like geeks.
Meta's next design looks like it's from an 80's Sci-Fi movie. I'm not trying
to be an asshole, but there is no way I could take someone seriously wearing
those things.

~~~
smtddr
Ya know, I'm more or less with you and I am a Google fanboy.

The 2 things that Glass will have to overcome:

1)The not-so-fashionable look. I'm sure this'll be corrected in the future.

2) The way people feel about a device that may or may not be recording them at
any given moment. Let's not even mention anything about a red light glowing
during recording because we know that'll be hacked out. Google Glass will be
able to record you without you knowing, period. People will simply have to
accept that or the product will fail or get banned in so many places it'll
almost be not worth owning at all unless you're a hardcore geek. Then of
course someone does some super slick mod where Glass just looks like any
ordinary pair of glasses; then mass paranoia breaks out and either people get
over it or any glasses are banned. ;)

Mind you this paranoia will be happening despite the fact we've had wearable
hidden HiRes cameras smaller'ish than a penny for over a decade already...
[http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/product/b-w+indoor+high+re...](http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/product/b-w+indoor+high+res+low+light+square+camera+with+pinhole+cone+lens.do?sortby=bestSellersAscend&from=fn)

~~~
jrockway
_The way people feel about a device that may or may not be recording them at
any given moment._

It's pretty difficult to go out in public without being recorded. Security
cameras are ubiquitous.

~~~
smtddr
True, but people feel different about an individual they may or may not know
recording them versus a security camera at the Bank. All it will take is one
melodramatic FOX-News piece on TV connecting Glass to cyber-bullies or crime
or some other ThinkOfTheChildren/terrorist nonsense and a bunch of people will
freak out. I don't want it to happen, but I know it will and suddenly Google
will have to explain how it's "Keeping our children & the public safe" or some
other intangible goal.

EDIT: And look at the comment replying me below by user "read" \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6189941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6189941)
. If we have HN-users who already feel like they need to "protect themselves"
against Glass, the general public would be whipped into a frenzy by one
FOXNews report.

~~~
jrockway
_If we have HN-users who already feel like they need to "protect themselves"
against Glass, the general public would be whipped into a frenzy by one
FOXNews report._

I don't think this is true. There is already "revenge porn" and upskirt shots
from cell phones. Nobody has suggested banning cell phone cameras, or even
complained about it in any serious way. (Remeber that law that would require
camera phones to always make a noise? How did that go?
[http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h414/show](http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h414/show).
Out of 435 potentially paranoid Fox-News-loving representatives, he could get
no other sponsor.)

I think the whole Glass camera thing is just people trying to rationalize
their intrinsic dislike for the thing. (It's new. It looks like glasses. I got
made fun of for wearing glasses when I was a kid. They are intrinsically
weird.) You can already surreptitiously record pretty much anything that
happens in public, and people upload the result to Facebook and YouTube
regularly.

------
sgustard
Also this article: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57596204-76/metas-meron-
gr...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57596204-76/metas-meron-gribetz-and-
the-rise-of-the-natural-machine/)

Gribetz and his band of less than 25 employees are ensconced in the Los Altos
mansion, filled with mattresses, cables, and aluminum bins of takeout food ...
"We are hacking 24-7," Gribetz said, "and making less than McDonald's wages."

------
nlh
Awesome awesome awesome. I'm super psyched about this stuff. I'm going to pre-
order a pair.

Anyone (from Meta maybe?) have any details on the SDK? I see "write code in
Unity3D on a Windows PC" from their Kickstarter, but curious if that's the
latest word...

~~~
bensandcastle
All Unity 3D. Thanks for the feedback that you want more detail. We're posting
some app video and a developer section soon.

We make the real world (surfaces/objects/hands) appear as 3D objects inside
Unity. We do the heavy lifting with computer vision and math so you can code
the game as you would any other--the cool bit is the 3D objects correspond to
stuff in the real world. Our number one goal is to be the easiest environment
to dev on.

~~~
Impossible
Seems strange that you don't have C++ SDK as well. Unity3D is great, but what
if someone wants to add support to an existing 3D modeling application? Even
if you're primarily targeting indie game developers, what if I my engine of
choice is UDK instead of Unity3D?

Depending on how you implement your Unity integration it probably wouldn't be
very hard to add support for other code bases, but if you want a lot of
developers making applications for Meta it seems like you'd have more options
available.

~~~
kayoone
Since its a first dev version and aimed at simplicity i understand going with
Unity first. I am sure they will add other technologies at a later stage.

------
lightcatcher
> Tracking blank white objects — be it a piece of paper, or a big blank wall —
> is one of the hardest computer vision challenges around.

Most of what I know about computer vision comes from deep learning approaches,
but tracking a white object doesn't seem like it should be too difficult. Is
tracking a large white object actually "one of the hardest computer vision
challenges", or is this just a garbage quote?

~~~
interpol_p
Tracking within a plain white object is very hard. Plain coloured walls are
featureless, so there's nothing for most algorithms to latch onto.

However, tracking a white object such as a piece of paper sitting on a
contrasting desk is relatively easy. Especially if your algorithm is designed
to handle such a case. You have the easily detectable corners and edges of the
paper, and from that you can infer its transformation. You can also detect its
soft deformation (such as bending or crumpling the paper) if your system is
assuming a piece of paper as the model.

The way some tracking works is to use a corner detector to find "interesting"
features. A naive tracking algorithm will then examine the spatial
neighbourhood of each feature in the next frame in order to find out where it
has moved to.

There are better feature representations (such as SIFT) which define a
"feature" in an image in such a way as to be scale and rotation invariant (you
can match the feature against scaled and transformed versions of itself).
There are also much better ways to track across frames of video data.

Given that Meta has infrared and RGB stereo cameras it has a lot more
information to work with. I hope they can make it work well under all
situations, but I am skeptical.

~~~
lightcatcher
Thank you for the explanation. I was mostly thinking about the case of
tracking something like a piece of paper in front of a wooden desk.

I can see how tracking the scale and orientation of field of view filling
single color objects would be difficult/impossible.

It doesn't seem like these worst case scenarios would come up much in real
world use. It's fairly rare to encounter situations where one's entire field
of view is filled with one (featureless) color. I would image that a wide
field of view for the cameras would help greatly with this problem.

------
jlgreco
Their stylized logo looks like it says "METH".

~~~
AsymetricCom
What's wrong with METH? Ain't nobody going to touch that IP.

~~~
jlgreco
Wearing a computer on you head isn't normal... but on METH^HA it is. :P

------
mikemoka
some other interesting videos about Meta that get more into the details:

[http://www.meta-view.com/](http://www.meta-view.com/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv7nSng0yD8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv7nSng0yD8)

------
imkevinxu
Brilliant and ballsy. It's refreshing to hear a startup go after long epic
visions and to be able to gather so many people to work on it already.

Looking forward to seeing their future

------
EGreg
Are they already out?

Some of the people here saying Meta Glasses look geeky are missing the point.
They can be used at work in a myriad different ways

* previewing 3d printings can be one of them, with Tony Stark-type visualizations more generally

* collaborative games in offices around the world after work, where you can do things like fire projectiles or see the same objects or stats only if you have the glasses on

* metainformation overlaid for visitors to museums etc.

------
solistice
This is really exciting, that someone has turnt this into reality (I was just
daydreaming about it).

The top somewhat reminds me of the kinect, or are you guys using bifocal
vision? If you are using the latter, does it work outside?

I think I'm way to excited about this, and having to wait for a teardown to
find out what tech powers this beast is making me giddy like a 5 year old in a
candy store.

------
coopdog
The lazer tag could be incredibly awesome, since you can actually see all the
lazers coming at you, and with none of the range and safety issues that come
with paintball. You could conceivably play it as a team event in your own
office using just the glasses, or scale up to full real-time war simulation
with the right cameras and software.

------
coffeemug
The concept video looks _awesome_. A few weeks ago I went hiking and thought
to myself "wouldn't it be great if Google Glass had an app that showed me
information about the flora and fauna I'm seeing? Oh wait, it can't yet." It
looks like Meta might be able to.

When looking at new technologies there are always two questions: is it worth
doing and can it be done. The answer to the former is obvious here. I don't
know nearly enough about the state of hardware to make a call about the
latter, but kudos to the team for unabashedly attacking such a huge problem
and trying to make the future happen faster.

~~~
cbr

        wouldn't it be great if Google Glass had an app that
        showed me information about the flora and fauna I'm
        seeing? Oh wait, it can't yet
    

I think Glass could do this, but not as an overlay.

------
shabble
I've been hoping for a long time that Mann's EyeTap stuff could be more widely
available, so here's hoping they deliver something amazing (and maybe
affordable too, in my dreams)

------
verroq
There quite a contrast between HN's reaction now and 3 months ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5726572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5726572)

------
helloTree
I am not sure such glasses will take off. You have always a fucking HUD before
your eyes and I am not sure everybody likes that (I never tried it but I even
do not like normal glasses and prefer contact lenses as I feel more free that
way).

I would appreciate something like a small beamer a lot more where you can
project a UI on a suitable surface (holograms seem to take longer ;) and
control it either by a pointing device or gesture control.

------
7cupsoftea
These guys are from the future.

------
mylorse
Can someone explain to me how these are different than Vuzix, and any other
company after that?:

[http://www.vuzix.com/augmented-reality/](http://www.vuzix.com/augmented-
reality/)

PS and Yes, I understand the advertising potential after GG_AR. Maybe Vuzix
should do the same, like Sony did against Microsoft on the E3 (PS4 vs Xboxone)

------
xianshou
Also, alternative name:

Singularity shades.

~~~
solistice
You scared me for a moment, because that's a mixup of the names of 2 things
I'm working on right now. Geez.

Here, have another: Overlay Optics/Occulars.

~~~
angersock
Mirrorshades is really the only correct answer here.

~~~
solistice
They're not exactly mirroring aynthing though. I'd go with "Awesome", but I'm
not sure whether that describes the product properly.

PS: Random tough, how long will it take the Japanese to create VR Girlfriends
on this thing?

~~~
angersock
I shall create one, and name her Molly (comedy answer, Y.T.).

------
aray
I'm curious how far away the display visually renders? Do you have to focus on
very close objects to see it sharply (and then can't focus on faraway
objects)? Does it rest in a medium-ish focal zone (10-30 ft?)?

I'd love a AR display, but I'm incredulous if it forces me to take my focus
off of anything else.

------
suyash
The SDK works only on PC's as per their tech spec. Wonder if it is all C#
based or some MS technology.

~~~
jdpage
It's Unity 3D, which if I recall correctly uses C# .NET.

~~~
MortenK
Unity3d also supports javascript and boo (some python variant)

------
hendzen
I just took out my credit card and bought a pair. Looking forward to
developing on their platform.

------
foobarbazqux
The technology here is groundbreaking, but personally reality is amazing
enough as it is without augmentation. I honestly can't see myself wanting to
wear any iteration of these glasses in my lifetime, even if they were
undetectable contact lenses.

------
FrankenPC
"You need hungry, imaginative and foolish people in their 20s to do this, and
we have that" \--Article about Meta from USAToday

F'k you ageists... Notice how they need the old guy who invented the AR
concept (Steve Feiner) to give them any credibility.

------
s_q_b
Wow, didn't realize Meta was a YC company. It's a very interesting product.

I watched the demo on Kickstarter. I couldn't put my finger on it, but
something seemed off about the object occlusion. Was that FX or real tech?

~~~
gamegoblin
I get the feeling that reality will not come close to the video.

I'd love to be wrong, but this is usually the case with entirely CGI promo
videos...

~~~
jhull
I worked with Meron on a completely different concept back in college. I moved
on and and I'm not sure if that ever went anywhere, but man, that guy has got
vision and can inspire people. If anyone can pull something like this off, he
can. Or at least, if anyone can convince people he can pull something like
this off, he can. Sometimes the latter can be more valuable.

------
RRRA
If we can get AR with the quality of the occulus rift, gesture control with
very fine precision and an emotiv like layer for added thought interaction,
for 300$, I think we might slowly be getting somewhere...

~~~
chm
Offer me such a controller with multi-platform support and I'd buy it at
<800$. I think that's a good price to pay to add immersion capability to an
Xbox, PC and PlayStation.

And I'm not even a gamer anymore.

------
zxcvvcxz
Awesome! Could anyone explain or provide resources for how the micro projector
technology and virtual screen work? I find that tech simply fascinating.

------
xianshou
Damn...

Where are our flying cars? Who cares. We have Meta glasses.

~~~
gbelote
People are working on it:
[http://www.terrafugia.com/](http://www.terrafugia.com/) :)

------
flgb
What kinds of wireless comms will the device support? The specification only
seems to mention USB and HDMI interfaces?

------
mike_esspe
According to specs, field of view is 23 degrees. Concept video seems to
exaggerate the visible portion of AR.

------
visualR
Is the price of $667 a play on what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak sold the
original Apple I for?

------
bgrub55
Can't wait to see them in action for myself!

------
jermaink
I really like what you created!

------
monsterix
It's very interesting to note that there are many hardware (The serious ones,
remember!) startups in the latest YC portfolio. I think it'd be pretty amazing
to be around such an innovative bunch and do your work, even if one is doing a
just software. :-)

------
hydralist
john carmack is watching gentlemen, get ready for a job offer ;)

