
A hacker creates his own version of Google Project Glass - celebration
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/04/10/think-googles-project-glass-is-sci-fi-this-developer-hacked-it-together-with-existing-parts/?awesm=tnw.to_1DzFX&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=Think%20Googles%20Project%20Glass%20is%20sci-fi?%20This%20developer%20hacked%20it%20together%20with%20existing%20parts
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jgrahamc
I certainly don't want to bad mouth a guy who builds something cool, but
there's a significant difference between this and Project Glass. He states in
his blog post (<http://www.willpowell.co.uk/blog/?p=210>) _The Vuzix glasses
are driven by stereoscopic feeds, which are fed by the HD cameras._

What he's seeing is coming through the cameras. He's not looking at reality
with an overlaid display. The glasses he is using are not see-through, they
are displays. That's a very different experience from augmented reality and
reduces your viewing to HD quality.

That also explains why at the beginning of the video we see him put on the
glasses and there's no transition to seeing what he sees through them.

~~~
bayleo
This got me thinking about whether "fly-by-wire" vision will ever be viable
(or preferable) to human vision and how various sight impairments would be
dealt with using such a system. Certainly myopia would be a trivial fix since
the image could be placed directly in front of the eye, but how would you
correct for hyperopia without a convex lens between the eye and the display?

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seanp2k2
>"without a convex lens between the eye and the display"

I hardly see that as even a problem :)

prescription displays? Sounds like a big profit winner.

~~~
ra5cal
Now that's a great idea for us vision-impaired geeks; reason enough to own a
pair

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shazow
One of the professors in my school, Steve Mann[1], is notorious for working on
wearable computing devices for three decades now. There's a small group of
niche hackers[2] who are into this kind of thing, but it's definitely not a
new phenomenon.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann>

[2] <http://www.wearcam.org/computing.html/>

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amelim
Thad Starner, shown in [2] is actually a member of the team working on Project
Glass.

<http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~thad/>

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soupboy
I actually saw Thad in school walking around with his "glass". The Google
version looks way better and a lot less geekier (and less creepier) than the
thing he used to wear to say the least.

~~~
timdorr
Thad's been walking about Georgia Tech and other places with a wearable
computer since 1993. I remember how big his previous version was, but the
current version isn't too bad:

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sqPHIOY4PBQ/TTtAjzFy6TI/AAAAAAAAAv...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sqPHIOY4PBQ/TTtAjzFy6TI/AAAAAAAAAvE/eAluKqtj9m8/s1600/Starner+2+-+500px.jpg)

[http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/Resources/Pictures/tha...](http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/Resources/Pictures/thad_starner.jpg)

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zacharyvoase
I'd love it if, instead of 'close menu', you just said 'thanks' to finalize an
action and leave the current context (or hide the entire UI). That seems more
natural; it's what I'd do in person if I asked someone for the weather or the
time.

~~~
BigTigger
But then if you're in a discussion with someone and say thanks to them at the
end wouldn't it annoy you when it closed the menu item you were in?

I think they're trying to ensure the phrases don't cross over with regularly
used phrases

~~~
megablast
Well, in just the same way you could be in a restaurant, and have finished
ordering food.

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stevenkovar
The marvel of what Google is trying to accomplish is in making the product
small and consumable, which is a challenge the article doesn't address in its
'David vs. Goliath' language. It takes a lot of effort to keep size, capacity,
and power consumption in mind for a product with more mass appeal—not to
mention the UX and style elements involved.

~~~
korussian
Exactly this. Everything needed for iPhone/iPad already existed off-the-shelf
years prior as well. It takes a lot of oomph to condense all that into a
beautiful little device that doesn't suck during real life day-to-day use.

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nextparadigms
I still think Google made a big mistake showcasing their product a year
earlier. It reminds me of when they showed ChromeOS one and a half years
before it actually launched. What's the point of doing that? Sure you might
get some benefit from the feedback, but I believe the disadvantages of showing
it so much earlier are much bigger than the benefits.

And user feedback doesn't even mean that much when you're trying to build an
entirely new product category (ok, maybe the basic idea existed for a long
time, but I think we can all agree their concept of the AR glasses is a lot
more modern and practical, and might actually turn into a popular commercial
product if they do it right).

~~~
ctdonath
Apple understands this, not showing a new product or concept until it is
either unavoidable or available. What the Glass video shows is an idea whose
time has come: all the pieces are ready, just needs someone to fuse it all
together in a robust affordable manner which - and here's the hard part - will
behave the way people will want it to when they see it done right. Having
released the video prematurely, everyone will be jumping on the concept trying
to beat Google to the punch (hey, all the pieces are out there ready to
assemble); question is who is the precognitive telepath able to grok what
users will want when they're given what they say they want.

~~~
grepherder
I think your statement is somehow not well thought out, and by "your"
statement I mean "almost everyone's" actually, I just semi-randomly picked out
yours to comment on because it captures my counter-argument well. You're
saying Google released the video prematurely, based on your assumption google
does not want everyone to try beat Google to the punch. It's obvious that
Google is well aware that every piece to realize this tech is out there
already. What I don't understand is how it is not immediately obvious to
everyone that Google wants this idea out there, for people to experiment with
it, for people to share their thoughts about UX concerning such a piece of
technology which is what they really need at this point to develop this
product.

The linked video and the comments it generates are an excellent example of
this.

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overshard
These glasses do look a bit silly with how far they come off his face and the
large microphone hanging down but still, bravo. I love seeing people hack
together things like this that large companies are touting about as the next
big thing yet don't actually release any real evidence that they work.

~~~
stevejabs
At least it is accurate and being built in a day, it's more than sufficient.
There is really no honest truth as to how well Google's device even works.

That being said, this is a perfect example of how Google entirely screwed up
with this. This would have been the ultimate keynote release to Google IO. Not
saying that it won't still be, but now other competitors have a great idea to
build off of. Google should have just been quiet until this product was at
least to a manufacturing stage.

~~~
wickedchicken
I don't know if you knew this, but Google, Inc. isn't Apple, Inc. Two separate
companies! I know it's surprising, it took me a while to figure out myself.
You may be also surprised to know that there are actually more ways to release
products than how Apple does it. In fact, there many ways, each with various
tradeoffs.

~~~
korussian
The Apple way being the one that results in multi-day campouts and kidney
sales. Of course the trade-off to announcing/shipping simultaneously is…?

~~~
wickedchicken
Cost of keeping engineer/supplier secrecy [financial, intellectual, and morale
cost], unable to use real people as beta testers, more difficult to involve
outside research centers, encourages insular culture. "Oh, is that public now?
I don't even know anymore."

In the case of something that has a developer culture around it (say, a chumby
or something) you have a higher number of developers ready to go 'at the
start' since they've had time to think about killer apps.

One could point at how early-stage multiplayer videogames are developed for a
good counterexample.

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JohnLBevan
Awesome effort. I'm a bit concerned that the reporter effectively says "to all
naysayers, Will says it's true so it must be", and am slightly skeptical as
Will hasn't put up information for others to build their own / sourcecode,
which I'd expect unless he plans to sell the product himself. That said I
think I believe this is genuine, and full kudos to the guy for his efforts if
so.

~~~
jonah
I can absolutely see how this is legit. Did you see the AR system he's the
lead developer on? CEO Vision: <http://www.willpowell.co.uk/blog/?p=194>

~~~
JohnLBevan
Agreed; I'm a believer ;)

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AdamFernandez
What he did is very impressive, and I understand he was attempting to
replicate what appeared in the Project Glass video, but why does all the
graphical interaction have to obscure the user's vision (for Project Glass and
his live demo)? The icons layout horizontally too close to the center of your
view. If the whole point is to have this augmented experience, the user still
needs to have a mostly unobstructed view of their surroundings. For the most
part, fake video game HUDs handle this pretty well. Project Glass just has the
interface getting in the way of everything. Why not just sit down somewhere
and use another device at that point? You obviously won't be able to do
anything else. I'm not walking down the street or through a store with a big
icon in the center of my field of vision.

~~~
regularfry
One difference between this and Google Glass is that Glass is monocular.
Unless you're blind in one eye, you will be able to see "through" the
projection.

I also don't think the representation in the Glass demo video is accurate: I'd
expect the images it projects to add to the background rather than replace it
entirely. I don't think they could make an "opaque" projection if they wanted
to.

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sabalaba
As far as the hardware goes, a lot of this stuff is already out there in
different forms: Epson Moverio, Vuzix (as shown in this demo, ...), albiet not
in the form factor that would allow for mass market penetration. That's where
Google, and hopefully Apple & Microsoft, will do well and allow for the app
makers to come in and add value.

That being said, there are still a great deal of Computer Vision problems that
will need to be solved to successfully implement "Strong AR". The video was a
nice proof of concept, but that's what the Google video was too.

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ilaksh
<http://www.vuzix.com/ar/products_star1200.html>

<http://www.vuzix.com/ar/products_wrap920ar.html>

[http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=dragon+natural...](http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=dragon+naturally+speaking&tag=googhydr-20&index=software&hvadid=1109099501&hvpos=1t2&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16698431811539510491&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&ref=pd_sl_ff72u4luz_e)

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gghootch
I wonder if the real-time video was recorded with the AR glasses themselves
and if so if there's similar stutter in what Will Powell sees.

In any case, pretty cool 'prototype'!

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Permit
What? This seems about as legitimate as the guy who built the flying suit. I
would have thought there'd have been more skepticism from HN regarding a
product like this that was built in a day.

At the very least, he puts the glasses on his face, but the camera is filming
from above his head...

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ra5cal
What a really liked about this was the UI, finally an OS that doesn't look
like Windoze, etc

Clean, simple, it just works and flies off the desktop when its not needed.

~~~
josephagoss
Thats the Google Glass os, he just copied that. Its not his own UI.

