Augmented reality when? We asked Magic Leap, Facebook, Google, and more
[Over a dozen short interviews in this article.]
THE FUTURE OF COMPUTERS IS SPATIAL
There’s no question that some serious technical challenges stand in the way of developing a pair of XR glasses that are stylish enough that you’d want to wear them for extended periods in public. The components needed to put enough computing power into a small space on a person’s face—and keep it all cool—just isn’t yet ready for prime time. Tech companies still struggle to deliver graphics at the kind of resolution the human eye is capable of seeing, to extend the field of view to something approaching the eye’s natural field of view, and to create eye tracking that follows the human gaze accurately. From a consumer point of view, the mixed reality experiences I’ve seen so far feel like works in progress.
Plenty of XR content–the experiences–will have to be available, too, including games and other entertainment. And there’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Software developers don’t want to invest big dollars in creating XR experiences until they see that the hardware is selling but that people won’t want the hardware until there are plenty of games and entertainment to play on it.
These issues will be worked out. The days of squinting into a little black rectangle and pecking at apps are probably numbered. Will it be some form of XR glasses that liberate us from that paradigm? Maybe. Or, as Camera IQ’s Allison Wood suggests, XR may show up in a variety of devices.
It may come down to a question of how truly important digital content is to living life productively and enjoyably—and how much control companies give consumers over that content. Will people really want digital layers and holograms to be showing up in their worldview all day? If they’re OK with that in XR glasses then will they be equally comfortable with it in something like AR contact lenses? How about just jacking the digital content right into the optical nerve? How close is too close?
It’ll be consumers that decide these things over time. The people and companies above, and others like them, will have to listen closely to successfully navigate the technological shift over the next decade.
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90315733/augmented-reality-when-we-asked-magic-leap-facebook-google-and-more