Side note, props to Snap for being honest about this in their marketing material. For example, the FOV is noticeably limited in this video[1]. Lots of companies tend to dishonestly crop the image or blow up the augmentation so the FOV looks larger.
[1] - https://twitter.com/Spectacles/status/1395439601590833156
That struck me too – I don't think I've ever seen marketing for an AR headset where I came away thinking "that's probably what it really looks like" until this. Not only have they not exaggerated the FOV, they also haven't fudged their compositing to give the impression that the optics are somehow able to add shadows or otherwise obscure the background.
The HoloLens and Magic Leap promo material was absurdly misleading in this respect - IRL the viewports feel tiny and the image is dim and low resolution. I'd be hesitant to call them outright lies... if they were anything but obvious, outright lies.
Or just potentially not look ridiculous - or if ridiculous, at least an admirable ridiculousness.
The most brilliant 'AR' concepts I've seen are the mesh of highest form of a mature technology with a dash of new software and most directed intent -- aka Voice Home Assistants, DynamicLand, iBeacons/AirTags, Whole Foods eink displays, Projection Mapping, Google's recent 'be there project' for example.
Those concepts are going to gel together inside someone's mobile platform API (iOS or Android) and become AR without glasses - and be more compelling than wearing a display.
I'm firmly in the camp that displays will be nice, but not must haves for AR.
In terms of process, Snap has during the past 12 months made a sustained and well-funded push for racial and gender equality, and that should help a lot to make nepotism impossible in the new process. Here's an important example of Snap's racial equality initiatives: https://www.axios.com/snapchat-cameras-overhaul-racism-6a01b...
Another example, which is not featured in the press but I am very proud of, is that the computer-generated voice we used in the Spectacles V4 out-of-box experience tutorial is a gender-neutral voice. We did this as the start of a journey of attempting to convince the software industry to stop making A.I. assistants be female so often. Having female A.I. assistants perpetuates the gender wage gap by creating the idea that assistant jobs are a women's role. This is a big issue that needs to be tackled and I'm proud to have helped with it in a small way. If anyone reading this works on Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or Google Assistant, please consider asking your management to adopt gender-neutral voice technology.
Here is UNESCO imploring companies to do this: https://en.unesco.org/EQUALS/voice-assistants
"[UNESCO] advises companies and governments to, among other actions: end the practice of making digital assistants female by default; explore the feasibility of developing a neutral machine gender for voice assistants that is neither male nor female"
I knew vaguely that it was connected to the idea of being aware of social justice issues, but it became clear that what he was really interested in was whether I held the same set of naive, self-righteous, straw-man ideals that are so regularly pilloried in conservative media and labeled as "woke" culture.
For a group that claims to hate identity politics, the right sure is quick to slap labels on everyone and put us against each other.
I'm not overly sensitive either, I've been grilled and had tough interviews before at FAANG companies with no problem. They were something else. They also totally ghosted (hah) me when I requested feedback on the interview. Truly horrible experience.
The candidate called me several months later asking if we had any openings. He and several of his coworkers were spontaneously laid off, presumably before his stock vesting cliff as well. I remember thinking he seemed awfully dejected on the phone call, a stark contrast to how upbeat he had been earlier.
As with any company, YMMV. That experience stuck with me, though.
Hope the eventual goal is to make these more appealing. I'd rather not everyone around me know these are what they really are.
Deep links:
Fitness: https://youtu.be/trd2LT8-G3Y
Travel: https://youtu.be/bzTfMoyBdlM
Learning dance moves: https://storage.googleapis.com/spectacles-v3/NzVlNzU3OWQtY2U...
3D paint: https://storage.googleapis.com/spectacles-v3/NzVlNzU3OWQtY2U...
I don't want to learn to dance while standing distracted next to the edge of a cliff.
It can alert you whether the person is not comfortable or very attracted to you. Some people like to miss these subtle cues.
You can combine this AR technology with Deep Learning technology such as Pose Tracker.
https://blog.tensorflow.org/2021/05/next-generation-pose-det...
Would that appease you?
Construction - Show size/length of objects, show if object is level, highlight location of needed tool.
Navigation - Show arrow on top of uber/lyft, show directions. Show restaurant cleanliness score and rating.
Food safety - Show how long food has been out of fridge
Social - remind you of a persons name
There was an MIT startup years ago, based on the observation that for some (impaired?) population, when glasses flashed a name, if it was correct, name recall improved, but if it was wrong, there was no negative impact. So low-accuracy recognition was ok.
https://docs.projectnorthstar.org/getting-started/faq
100 deg FOV, as many functions / connectivity features as a HoloLens 2, now that’s awesome. You can bypass the virtue signaling, limited app ecosystem, and high price tag and build whatever you’d like.