
Meta unveils next version of augmented reality glasses for $3k  - sxp
https://www.spaceglasses.com/
======
lalc
I'm writing a middlebrow (lowbrow, really) dismissal because this actually
deserves it. This is... shamelessly phony. "Your laptop is now a hologram"?[1]
Do I have to 3D scan my laptop in? Are they going to mind-upload my Intel CPU
to the cloud while they're at it?

Your use-case for AR is a ghostly 5FPS replica of my laptop or phone that I
can vaguely gesture at? Tracing in the air to lathe a rocket hull will bring
me closer to the world? Meta has access to non-rendered pages of app icons
inside the iOS sandbox? "ROCKET COMPLETED"? "500+ Meta Applications in
development"?

They say this is real footage, and have a big red "BUY NOW" button. What
target audience is this supposed to convince?

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/unxD96I.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/unxD96I.jpg)

~~~
prawn
Is that pocket computer required? If so, seems strange to access your virtual
phone through a phone-sized pocket computer. I can appreciate that virtual
screens will eventually be a selling point, but not maintaining the idea of a
virtual phone and laptop.

I found this early demo based on the Oculus Rift to be a bit more promising,
even though it's currently far, far rougher:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA)

~~~
dnautics
do you suppose your proprioception might get out of whack if it's even
slightly miscalibrated?

~~~
lalc
I believe proprioception is resilient to minor offsets or miscalibration, as
I've seen such illusions at science exhibits--false hands that you're tricked
into thinking is your own. And the STEM system (absolute body position
tracking) apparently is high-precision.

It's more likely that immersion will be broken by perceptible latency.

------
julianpye
AR stereoscopic see-through displays are complex, difficult tech. This has
nothing to do with Google Glass which is closer to being an aside information
display. Sony has the most IPR and expertise in the field when it comes to
displays that create a 3D augmented experience for both eyes. They have
examined this field for ages and had a hard time to discover application
fields. Meta hopefully cracks this nut and delivers a development program that
brings stereoscopic AR to the next level. But as someone who managed an AR
portable display team in this field for VF, I see it as a steep challenge.

~~~
radley
Curious to know more about what Sony's doing.

If the price drops enough: Dennō Coil.

~~~
venus
Glad to see someone else here has seen Dennou Coil - IMO it should be required
viewing for anyone interested in AR! It's not perfect, but has some
fascinating ideas about where AR could go.

------
Whitespace
I'm sorry to have to say it here on HN, but this wannabe apple.com spin-shit-
in-3d-when-you-scroll crap is completely unusable.

I'm on a Retina 15" MBP – a laptop that their target demographic will be using
– and I can barely make it through the site to try to piece together
information about their product.

Am I supposed to scrounge up an external mouse with a scroll wheel and be
impressed by the CSS3 transitions? I'm seeing this more and more and I'm
really confused how something like this makes it through QA.

~~~
bede
The site is remarkable, but undoes so much of its developers' hard work
through its sluggishness. My maxed-out Haswell 15" hit 9fps during rapid
scrolling in Chrome (FPS counted by dev tools).

Hopefully they're less tolerant of poor framerates in their actual product,
which sounds very exciting.

~~~
cbhl
I fear for the people who use these devices in production. IIRC, over-eye VR
displays cause nausea even with a relatively low latency (~20 ms[citation
needed]), which was one of the reasons why Glass went for the "above the field
of view and on one eye" approach. I'm not even sure if it's possible for
consumer hardware available today to process/draw fast enough to make users
not nauseous, wearable form factor or otherwise.

------
tree6014
I don't usually get angry just from seeing a product promo. But, this has done
it. Note that the glasses are stationary for all but one shot where the
movement is slow and linear and it still shows tracking error. If it's not
ready, it's not ready. They should have kept their reputation in tact and
tried again in a few years rather than trying to sell a bad prototype under a
false banner.

My attention is directed toward the Oculus Rift. I own the dev kit and have
been following Oculus VR closely. Save your VR/AR gadget money for their
consumer release if you want something that lives up to the hype and delivers
on its promises.

------
2013throwaway
Didn't their website used to say shipping November 2013? What happened to the
people who ordered with that promise?

Anyways, that was a crazy ship date they were never going to meet, even if
their CAD had been completely 100% finalized and locked, it would have taken
them that long just to make the tooling, let alone manufacture a run of parts.
Maybe next time they hire 25 people at least one of them should know
manufacturing.

------
goldenkey
Pre-order now, aka fund us, because all we have is an idea and some Tony Stark
marketing videos.

~~~
smallegan
META is a Y-combinator backed company and they have a team of 25 people
working on this and have already shown prototypes to many major tech sites.

~~~
goldenkey
So that makes it okay to show a product so-far-bluffed that it will never
exist? Get real. The video is the antithesis of honest marketing, it's pure
hype.

~~~
smallegan
No it means they probably aren't looking for crowd-funding via pre-orders as
you suggested and they do have more an idea, a working prototype regardless of
how bad it may be is more than an idea.

~~~
goldenkey
Yeah, what happened to the units that were supposed to ship in November 2013?
If you are shipping something almost a year late, you've borrowed those
persons' money incredulously. It's in their right to file a class action
lawsuit for that kind of false marketing.

------
aresant
This pitch struggles more than usual communicating "why" I need this product.

Apple's genius in their early iphone commercials was showing the product as it
was seamlessly integrated into our daily lives.(1)

Email, video, maps, real internet on the go. As soon as you saw the commercial
you knew you were going to buy one because you knew how it would benefit you.

I have yet to have that sort of connection with any sort of wearable AR
device.

(1)
[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4acWkNihaxc](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4acWkNihaxc)

~~~
qq66
How about: your studio apartment feels like a mansion, your hellion offspring
seem like perfect angels, and your car always looks (to you) as if it's just
been detailed?

------
nemo1618
Nice to see that they've got Steve Mann onboard. That inspires a lot more
confidence than flashy marketing videos.

~~~
alwaysinshade
Agreed, it would have been better to have the chief scientist discuss the core
technologies, design and potential applications than watch an Elon Musk/Tony
Stark ripoff drive his Tesla-S home to his sweet pad and knob around with a
CAD model of a rocket via a seemingly non-intuitive interface.

If the device was only a few hundred dollars to purchase then the marketing
video might have had some merit. But at 3k, you're selling to people who want
to know how it really performs, and what technical trickery Mann might have
introduced to make it an exciting human-machine interface.

------
rohunati
Maybe someone here can answer this. Do founders of important technologies
generally have a good idea of the primary use case(s) for their product? Seems
silly to ask, but I posed this very question to Meta, and their answer was
essentially that they are going to "let their users decide that." Three use
cases were listed off, but I didn't find them particularly impressive. What
should be made of this?

I ask because it seems contrary to the importance of solving a problem. With
SpaceGlasses, the users run around deciding how the product can enrich their
lives. Seems pretty odd.

I've found that with lots of successful tech products, I've been able to
pretty quickly see the how I could use it in my everyday life. The iPhone is
the classic example, but even search, email, Facebook. I don't really see that
here. I'm pretty young though, so my experience is really limited. Also, I
realize my personal experience doesn't make for a very strong argument. Still,
it's a pretty terrible pitch.

------
zxcvvcxz
Are there videos of actual first-person (recorded by camera) demos? Correct me
if I'm wrong but I believe the video was all graphic editing and thus not
representative of the device itself. If I were to shell out $3K I'd want to
see actual product demonstrations, which I can't seem to find.

~~~
sanswork
It says right before the demo part that those views were filmed through the
glasses using this
[http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcin...](http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera)
and not cgi.

~~~
maxk42
May I interest you in some swampland in Florida?

~~~
sanswork
If you were going to fake it you'd have less fuzzy washed out images and you'd
probably lower the lag quite a bit.

------
daeken
> 1280x720 pixels for both displays

Does this mean 1280x720 for _each_ display, or combined? That's a bit vague.
Still, this is quite neat; the resolution was what made me not back their
first Kickstarter. Maybe this is worth throwing a couple grand into, to see
what comes out.

~~~
grannyg00se
And at what pixel density? I'd like to know what happens if I take the entire
contents of my 1920x1080 desktop and project it say...4 feet away. Does it
look like crap or not? For some reason in all of their promo material I can't
see a normal looking desktop projected.

They're going to have to show much less marketing hype and much more practical
use. Especially for a $3000 pre-order.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, if it's 1280x720 for your whole field of view, so any reasonable size
rectangle 4 feet away will be a fraction of that resolution - so, forget about
readable text or such.

------
lettergram
Only demo I could find...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rj9nMJq1Vk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rj9nMJq1Vk)

------
riobard
“Mirror All Your Devices“ is just plain stupid. Skeuomorphism in the next
generation.

------
chasing
I do not believe that people in general will be interested in having permanent
digital displays attached directly over their field of vision. Maybe
specialists. Doctors. Mechanics. People who have their hands full but still
need to access informational resources. But for general use, they're just too
distancing. And intimidating, frankly.

(Don't get me wrong -- they look cool and I'd love to try it out. And there
might be a business, here. But it reminds me of the Segway: Touted as the
revolutionizer of cities, but in the end something with limited utility once
the hype-wave settled.)

~~~
prawn
Given high enough resolution and light enough hardware, I can see it
happening. Many already drive or walk outside wearing sunglasses, or wear
glasses for reading. A pair of very light-weight goggles that could switch
quickly from fully opaque display to translucent overlay to what appeared to
be standard vision (but was replicated by cameras) could be useful.

Add in ear buds that can open a valve (rather than be removed) and you could
do all sorts of things. Virtually furnished rooms, watching virtual displays
in any position, any angle, etc. TVs and monitors could well become obsolete
if the resolution is enough to simulate them.

I wonder if it would even be possible to set your goggles to show other
wearers in your home and office as though they weren't wearing theirs, even if
they were. Some sort of internal eye-tracking could potentially simulate their
eyes realistically enough if the uncanny valley could be surpassed.

~~~
potatolicious
I don't doubt the hardware can exist and work well. The question is what is it
for?

Okay, I have a display on my head that is aware of the world around me, with
perfect latency and extreme accuracy (still two of the biggest unsolved
problems, but let's assume).

I'm walking around on the street. What would this thing be doing? I'm cooking
dinner. What would it be showing me? I'm hanging out with my friends. What
would...?

There are certainly a lot of niche, professional uses: technicians and
engineers can get information hands-free while on all fours or strung up on a
high pole. Realtors can use it to show prospective tenants virtual layouts (as
you brought up). Professional drivers can use it to get dispatches without
taking their eyes off the road.

None of this particularly compels the everyman to wear one regularly. What
does it do for the average joe, in their average joe lives?

~~~
prawn
I don't know that people would wear them all the time, but in a kitchen you
could have a recipe HUD or a virtual screen somewhere within glancing distance
for watching news/TV/doco without needing to have a physical screen taking up
space in your kitchen.

Watching TV while lying in bed or anywhere.

When driving, traffic alerts or directions overlaid on the road in a way that
wasn't too distracting. Shop numbers superimposed on the road so you needn't
study signs for inconsistent numbering.

Gaming applications are obvious and will be an early driver.

Until they're available as contact lenses, I don't think people would wear
them all day, but certainly multiple times per day once they're streamlined
and improved.

------
MojoJolo
The price is steep but Steve Mann
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann))
is there chief scientist. I think if anyone we can trust about AR, Steve Mann
is the guy. He's wearing those glasses before it was cool. He got a lot of
experience, and troubles with those glasses (see "steve mann mcdonalds"). He
really know what he's doing.

------
kayoone
I dont think they are doing themselves a favor with a bullshit marketing video
like this. They seem to have a great team but all we have seen from Meta other
than pre-rendered marketing videos has been a bit rough, to put mildly.
Example [1]

Id love my virtual AR 70 inch high res computer display though, so i hope they
succeed ;)

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWPdAhhUWD0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWPdAhhUWD0)

------
beachstartup
sweet. i can't wait to use these things in my $20M mansion in the hollywood
hills to design rocket engines

~~~
prawn
It's funny you should say that because very, very advanced AR goggles could
probably furnish a stark house in a virtual way to be as luxurious as you
wanted. You could put virtual objet d'art on real or virtual shelves. You
could admire a virtual view that simulated the vista from the Hollywood Hills,
etc.

(I otherwise share your disdain for the rocket engine ra-ra on their sales
site.)

------
grannyg00se
This seems cool if you want to hold your hands in front of you and spin things
around in virtual 3D.

Personally I could do without all that - I just want a really nice looking
virtual 2D screen projected in front of me so I can finally ditch my fixed-in-
place monitor.

------
zcase
Visionary, but seemingly impractical. Any way of seeing videos of real use
that isn't spinning rockets around? Not trying to be condescending, but that
seems more marketing than reflective of what people can/will use Meta for.

------
JoshTriplett
Impressively flashy, and nice that it comes with a very flat pocketable
computer, but that aside I'm much more excited about CastAR
([http://technicalillusions.com/](http://technicalillusions.com/) ,
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/casta...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-
the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system) ). HDMI input, camera, sensors, and a
nice RFID system for taggable physical objects and mats.

------
locusm
Is this tech for tech sake that just drains the pockets of early adopters...
Not being snarky, just trying to understand what it solves, ultimately who is
the customer of these types of device?

------
mercnet
As an aerospace engineer I laughed so hard at Rocket Completed. What exactly
is your market? I am confused on why I would use your system to combined two
parts to create my rocket assembly.

------
interpol_p
The chat box is incredibly obnoxious, as is the big red "BUY NOW" button right
on top of the video I am trying to watch in order to _learn about your
product_.

The site feels desperate for sales. Preventing the chat box from continuously
popping up and killing the "BUY NOW" video overlays would be a big help.

------
ch4s3
That chat pop up on the site is super weird. I mean I knew those things
existed, but still.

------
JDDunn9
Easily 5x as useful as Google Glass. Though, still not that useful.

------
aidenn0
Anyone else bothered by calling stereography "a hologram" or is it just me?

------
maaku
This technology will change the world.

But not at that price point.

And not with that pitch.

------
sejje
How programmable is this?

------
btbuildem
this is so retro

