
AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform: Call It Mirrorworld - longdefeat
https://www.wired.com/story/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platform/
======
ajlburke
I've done some work in "parallel worlds" overlaid on top of the real one by
latitude/longitude, using the cool "ARCL" library - and the biggest headache
I've found for location-based AR (instead of the type that just scans the room
or a table) is that even little variations in GPS positioning can really
interfere with the experience.

The first time you see virtual objects linked to a real-world place, it's
magical - but that magic quickly goes away when everything suddenly shifts 10
(or 50) meters to the east because your device got updated GPS info.

I've become much more aware of how much "cheating" happens in driving / map
apps to cover up these hiccups - ever take an exit and your map still shows
you driving down the highway for a while? That kind of cheating probably won't
work in an AR space.

This is technology that will no doubt improve, but it's definitely one of
those "final 5% is 50% of the work" nuisances where just a small amount of
inaccuracy can wreck the illusion.

~~~
fsloth
Yeah, GPS alone is not enough.

This product uses an auxiliary GNSS antenna and software to provide centimeter
level precision:
[https://sitevision.trimble.com/](https://sitevision.trimble.com/)

~~~
halbritt
This doesn't really make sense. GNSS is simply a reference to a receiver's
ability to access any navigation constellation, that is, GPS, plus GLONASS,
Beidou, and Galileo, operated by Russia, China, and the EU respectively.

Just about any modern GPS receiver in a dedicated device has this capability.
This may not be the case for mobile devices for cost reasons. The Ublox
NEO-M8N, for example can concurrently receive signals from 3 GNSS
constellations and has a single unit price around $15.

The thing is, all those satellites don't necessarily help precision as they
tend to cover different geographic regions. There aren't a lot of Beidou sats
passing over the US, for example.

What does help are augmentation services like WAAS, SBAS, or EGNOS which
provide regional GPS correction data originating from known, fixed points in
the region.

Differential GPS works similarly and can offer greater precision, but requires
a different receiver in a whole other part of the RF spectrum.

Finally, all this precision comes at a cost, that being time. If you want
centimeter level accuracy it can take a fair bit of time to get a good fix. In
my experience, a couple minutes with a good modern receiver.

------
z2
There was an anime series called Dennou Coil from 2007, that explored a lot of
these themes, based on a world with a very detailed AR model of reality. Being
a TV show, it had lots of anthropomorphism, but it asked questions such as,
what if self-driving cars relied only on this modeled mirror world, even for
real time information? What happens with power dynamics when when an
authoritarian corporation owns the mirror world? How do assets age and become
dilapidated if they are virtual?

~~~
trothamel
I was going to post this, but you beat me too it. One thing I remember was how
drab the real world was, because all signage and art had migrated to AR.

~~~
mjevans
That's actually a feature.

------
yoodenvranx
This will bring up very interesting questions about who owns real-life
property in AR:

In the real world: Burger King is not allowed to enter a McDonalds property
and plaster their ads all over the place!

But what about AR? Let's assume there is a really popular AR app and it
supports placing ads in certain spaces. Would BK allowed to place virtual ads
on real-world McDonalds property? Or would McDonalds have grounds for suing
because their real-world property extends into AR?

~~~
swalsh
Can I load a banner ad from McDonalds on a webpage from my phone if I'm in BK?
I don't think legislation that might prevent that would be reasonable. Just
because this is projected onto the real world doesn't make it different.
They're both layers in digital space.

The only entity that has jurisdiction over that particular digital space is
the app itself, so they get to make the rules.

~~~
b_tterc_p
Not the same thing if the ad space is tied to geographic coordinates and
services by a few major ad providers. Geographic ad placement could be huge.
Especially “this is cheaper on amazon” ads.

~~~
swalsh
What if google used location services to detect I was in a burger king, and
showed me sponsored ads on the top of my search page on my phone, and
McDonalds happened to be the highest bidder. I don't think the trigger for the
ads change things.

------
rafiki6
How far away is the hardware? I think AR is truly the next evolution in human-
computer interaction, but every time I explore the hardware it still seems
like an entirely immature area. We haven't even really reached the "Palm
Pilot" stage as I like to call it. In that stage the Hardware and Software are
production ready and usable but only power users are truly interested in it.
There's HoloLens, there's Google's attempts, there's those glasses by that
company called North. All of those are nowhere near mainstream ready. There's
heads up displays which are interesting and I think have lots of
opportunities. I think realistically we need a proper set of glasses with a
solid brain-computer interface in order for AR to take off and become a
mainstream. I personally don't want to try interacting with a pair of smart
glasses using a hand-held controller or some motion detection sensors.

~~~
ganzuul
I'd guesstimate that it is tied with 60GHz femotcells and ISPs. Graphics at
4K+ resolution and 120Hz+ refresh rates does not seem viable for many years on
mobile platforms, but indoor positioning and high-bandwidth streaming provided
by a device that takes the place of your WAN/LAN router could possibly work.
Time-sharing high-end GPUs could also be quite economical, and give ISPs yet
another revenue stream.

All the infrastructure needed for this already exist in a form which offers
barely adequate performance. Good performance should be just a generation or
two away, and then things should get interesting.

------
taneq
Why will AR require a persistent full-scale model of the globe? Isn't the
whole point of AR that it takes the existing environment, generates a local
map on the fly, and overlays something useful on it? My 2025-model AR
sunglasses don't need to know nor care what shape the Arc de Triomphe is, they
just need to know the names of the people in my field of view[1], or where the
walls and floor of my house are, or maybe the next 500m of the road I'm
driving on.

[1] This is my dearest hope for AR, that someday all the people around me will
have MMO-style nameplates, because I have many strengths but remembering the
names of people I've just met is _not_ one of them.

~~~
neuronic
> someday all the people around me will have MMO-style nameplates

No, thank you, kind user. Just because you are unable to remember the names of
relevant people around you, there is no particular reason why anyone sensible
should agree to have personal data be transmitted to random people around them
at all times.

Such name identification on the fly then contributes to a (still fictional for
the public) global real time people location service. Great, because 5 people
are in line-of-sight of George McGeorgeface he is now confirmed to be at the
dildo store in downtown Nairobi although he claimed to be sick for work, thank
you face recognition APIs!

It's bad enough that we get tracked and screwed for ad data nowadays which
just happens to not even stay in the ad space.....

~~~
taneq
Woah, OK, we clearly picture this service working very differently. I'm not
asking for everyone to be geotagged in some publicly accessible database. Ew.
I just want locally running facial recognition paired with speech-to-text
which is smart enough to recognize introductions, so that when five people
introduce themselves to me in quick succession after I stumble off a red-eye
flight, and then three weeks later one of them comes up to me acting like they
know me, I have some chance of knowing who the hell they are.

~~~
flycaliguy
It’s amazing how much anxiety this would remove from my life. A very
significant amount, like, I’m ready for this now please.

------
Tepix
We already have some of these mirror worlds. The AR game Ingress and Pokemon
Go are two well-known examples.

Which leads me to my next prediciton: There will not be a singular
mirrorworld. There will be many. It would undoubtedly be cool if there is a
"standard" mirrorworld that people refer to (just like they refer to sited on
the one and only internet) unless some big entity creates something compelling
early on (think Wikipedia) and has a big first-mover advantage I don't see it
happening.

~~~
Bartweiss
> _some big entity creates something compelling early on (think Wikipedia)_

Good example; if there's going to be a 'shared' mirrorworld it probably can't
be an end in itself the way games are.

It would have to be at least one of informative (about the real world), social
(so your network is all there), or common-ground experience (like watching
popular shows and sports playoffs). And since 'informative' is fungible, it
might not suffice unless there's a clear leader.

Or, I suppose, some major power might roll all the popular offerings into
subsections of a top-level experience. It's not that hard to imagine Google or
Apple setting up an AR 'appstore' from which you can open games, information,
and so on. Google Glass was premature, but the idea made some sense as way to
use existing accounts and image analysis abilities.

------
SirHound
I always think the next surfing experience (dialling through radio
frequencies, surfing the early web, etc) will be dialling/browsing between
"mirrorworlds". I doubt there'll be one. Although the fear is we're already
being segmented into alternative realities. Imagine the ramifications we're
already experiencing in that kind of context.

~~~
mncharity
That might make for interesting project (individual or community).
Photoshopping AR vignettes for peoples' various passions. Sort of speculative
storyboarding and market exploration for future apps.

For a user with a passion for fashion, what might a nifty AR future expert
experience look like? Heads-up tooling for where their head is at as they walk
down the street. Collaborative tooling for their interactions with friends of
similar interests, while walking and retrospectively. What about for software,
or for startups?

The AR vignettes I've seen have been generic. Refrigerator contents, street
navigation, business travel, etc[1]. Broadly accessible, but most of it
mundane. Not targeted, not trying to inspire individuals with "O.M.G. Want
future now.".

Sort of like demos of Unreal VR Editor[2] for game devs, or EXA[3] for bands,
or PRIMITIVE[4] for software devs. But synthetic, rather than app demos.

[1] HYPER-REALITY
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)
[2] Unreal
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKO9fEjNiio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKO9fEjNiio)
[3] EXA twinkle
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB22jF9cRko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB22jF9cRko)
, multiplayer
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdZsUZGuCeI&t=9](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdZsUZGuCeI&t=9)
[4] Java
[https://www.viveport.com/apps/675c92c6-7df2-4ee3-b919-1bfbb6...](https://www.viveport.com/apps/675c92c6-7df2-4ee3-b919-1bfbb6e5e8cc/Primitive/)

------
fock
First paragraphs and I just had to think of this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)

------
nategri
Anyone interested in a fully imagined setting where a "mirrorworld" is firmly
in place should check out Verner Vinge's book _Rainbows End_.

------
dwighttk
" To recreate a map that is as big as the globe—in 3D, no less—you need to
photograph all places and things from every possible angle, all the time,
which means you need to have a planet full of cameras that are always on."

And I'm sure that won't have any security issues

~~~
goldfeld
Security issues are our chaos ally, whereas Political issues are what make
such a thought stupid.

------
darod
Most of these "twins" have already been created. The majority of all
components for cars, buildings, tech, etc have CAD and 3D models before even
being manufactured so it's just a matter of the creators open sourcing a
public version.

------
b_tterc_p
Cities should proactively legislate that ad platforms must lease geographic
coordinates for ads that are tied to specific places from them.

And businesses should get ready to optimize it for social and financial
objectives.

------
m3kw9
AR will only work when you have a constant on system. People holding up phones
is more like an experiment than anything useful because of the UX of needing
to hold it up.

------
Animats
Here's what "AR" would look like if it worked. Watch "Hyperreality".[1] Best
depiction of AR so far.

[1] [https://vimeo.com/166807261](https://vimeo.com/166807261)

------
eckza
Ray Kurzweil, is that you?

~~~
Agebor
Close, it's Kevin Kelly

------
TheOtherHobbes
"...Next Big Ad Platform"

What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
jazzyjackson
I would love it if we could regulate advertisements to only exist in AR space.

~~~
CM30
How about an AR ad blocker for real life? Removes bilboards, commercials,
branding and ads from real life spaces and publications.

It'd also be interesting to replace ads with other stuff in general. Imagine
being able to replace a print ad with a random article from the publication's
website, or a TV commercial with a YouTube video in your subscriptions list.

------
infiniverse
Relevant to what we're building:
[https://www.infiniverse.net/](https://www.infiniverse.net/)

~~~
ganzuul
If you don't use open standards you'll look like a pyramid scheme.

~~~
infiniverse
Could you elaborate, what possibly looks like a pyramid scheme?

