It's wild the lengths Facebook engineers will go to find new ways to show you inane ads about tat: This time, AR... Facebook has outlined what it believes will be the future of online interaction – and it’s a device that will sit on your wrist and act as a next-generation mouse. In a blog post covering the work that the social media giant’s Reality Labs carries out, Facebook “unpacks” the “10-year vision of a contextually-aware, AI-powered …
I came here to say pretty much exactly that. Basically any agency other than the individual's own free will. Do I want every waking moment of my life turned into a nightmarish version of a Facebook live feed, which is constantly trying to direct and influence every interaction, movement and thought I have? No, no I don't. Or for the Aussie translation; Facebook can Get F*****.
I hope the seamless combination of AR and the resl world includes lamp posts, pedestrians and furniture to name just a few obstacles to individual progress.
Wrist Action ™ Feacebook's trademark?
I wonder what the price will be? Higher the most people will think, that's for sure.
This conference paper is ridiculously cool, and the optical sensor they use (with great success), a MAX30105 only costs about a tenner (I've just ordered one to play with for integrating into VR with Unity).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589631932631X
The Traveller role-playing game has had various types of holographic and holo-dynamic control interfaces since the days before Star Wars got renamed "A New Hope"...
Can Marc Miller and friends claim prior art and offer to licence it to Facebook for some eye-watering sum?
Holographic interfaces have been a popular idea for a while, as have a variety of similar schemes that involve waving various parts of your body around at transparent or event entirely invisible controls. Douglas Adams already pointed out what a terrible idea this is back in 1978. Nothing anyone has come up with since them makes any effort to actually address the problems of a control system that just interprets your body movements directly rather than waiting for an intentional activation.
I'm going to ignore the Facebook problem and dive to the heart of the issue with these kinds of projects. Whether it's Google Glass, Magic Leap, an Intel prototype or whatever Apple / Facebook come out with all these projects have one major failing - they require you to wear glasses all the time.
In the summer I wear shades but otherwise I don't wear glasses and I have no interest in wearing glasses. For people who do wear glasses will it be possible to get prescription frames? And how much more expensive will that be? What about dark lenses for me in summer?
If an article about AR glasses includes a byline pic I can tell from the start if the journo will like them - hacks who wear glasses love the things, those who don't... don't. Similarly it always seems the project team all wear glasses so no-one realises that most people won't want to wear them.
Are you on your phone "all the time"? Do you watch TV "all the time"? Why would AR require that? You'll wear the glasses when you want to use and interact with AR, not all the time.
Perhaps you might wear them while driving/walking in an unfamiliar area so it can overlay directions/landmarks on your view. Maybe while hiking they could identify trees, warn about rocks that look loose or something, who knows. While running/biking (here's where the dark glasses come in to play) it could overlay information about speed, mileage, HR, etc.
When you are in a restaurant having dinner with friends, why would you want to be wearing AR glasses, unless you are a wannabe glasshole or their even worse cousin the "social media influencer who takes pictures of their dishes before they eat". If you are washing the car, driving to mom's house, picking up a pizza on the way home from work, watching a movie, etc. why would you want to be wearing AR glasses? Just because Google tried to push the idea of "always on" glasses doesn't mean that's what real people want.
Now true Facebook/Google/Amazon would want to encourage you to wear their AR glasses all the time, so they can identify brands you have at home and show you ads "looks like you're almost out of Pringles, do you want to order more?" or when it spies a craft beer in your hand in a bar send you ads encouraging you to order Google IPA in your next round.
You both are making good points. The basic problem on glasses is going to be what it has always been, vanity. People generally don't want to wear glasses, which is why to a large extent, the contact industry has been going strong for years. If people can be conditioned to think they look better with these things on their faces, as most people do with sunglasses, then perhaps this will have some success. I expect what will be most likely to happen is that the design will be a bit of an origami, where they can fold down flat like today's phones, but then change so that they can be used as glasses when desired.
Buy several pairs of AR glasses and wearing them in front of each other.
When the Facebook glasses show you an ad for a beer, then the Google glasses underneath them see you are looking at a beer and offer you a different beer.
Then your second pair of Facebook glasses underneath the Google glasses sees the beer the Google glasses were offering and shows you another beer, which the Google glasses see on the first pair of Facebook glasses...
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