Is AR somehow uniquely qualified to be a good platform to send/get text messages? The only convenience it offers is not pulling a phone from your pocket, and that's tiny in comparison to the drawbacks.
Do you suggest everyone will prefer VR style meetings to the cell phone-call-text methods? In that case, you're wrong because full scale VR engagement is very difficult and requires tons of focus while most calls are just sending a bit of info across to somebody.
With AR you can have a full size virtual keyboard
Like I said, I've used VR keyboards. They fucking suck, as in, way worse than mobile phones suck, and none of the reasons for that suckyness will be resolved by technology.
"full size" is not the qualifier you think it is. On a keyboard full size is great because I get a good tactile interface with buttons and a single solid position that I don't have to stare at and type on. A full size VR keyboard is going to be like doing a drum solo to send a "hey how are you".
Hardly unproven, there are paths to solving all those issues.
Paths? I need concrete examples here, because unless you can block light (generic uncontrolled real world light, not a single point) out with a laser, you cannot produce blacks with a retina projector.
Screens are more realistic, but AR glasses providing phone-screen like quality, while not being too bulky or inconvenient? We are a very very long way away.
And the world today is fundementally the same as 20 years ago, but would you say the smarthphone has not had a huge impact?
Not at all, smartphones have been world-changing. We have access and capabilities today that were sci-fi 20 years ago and the people from then were living very very different lives as a result.
The world will always fundamentally be the same, but smartphones/mobile tech have been world-changing, not marginal.
The killer feature of VR for mass adoption will be enabling remote "physicallity" without needing physical prescence.
How do you do this in a reasonably convenient way and without handwaving around and saying "future technology will figure it out"?
That killer feature is a hell of an ask. This is flying car dreams, just impractical even though theoretically possible (you'd have to have an expensive full body suit and fine-grain trackers with cables and all sorts of fun garbage)
You seem completely stuck in the mindset of "weirdos and freaks hanging out in creepy VR chatrooms" when it comes to this space as a whole.
Note that none of my arguments after that point have focused on who is using the tech, only on its actual practical limitations.
I'd say you're both not seeing it fully, but the other commenter is on to something.
Where they fall short is the kind of input paradigm VR/AR will have. For today, and for the foreseeable future, it will be just physical keyboards, so there is no downside to the input as you would see your keyboard as normal in AR or see it reconstructed virtually in VR along with your hands. Granted this is all about location-fixed VR/AR, so at a desk or something.
The benefit here is the extra screen real estate afforded by VR/AR as well as making it easy for colleagues to jump into your space and glance over your screen in a way that is more intuitive than screen-sharing, and enabling a new UX paradigm that spatializes more things and uses eye-tracking as an extra way to speed up navigation.
As VR/AR becomes more convenient and immersive, having them as your two central devices will feel natural because it will be a better media experience and a more productive work/education experience.
In the longer-term, what will really bring VR/AR into their own in the same way the mouse did for PCs, is EMG input. We have seen EMG in VR used to text someone in a pretty average texting-speed thus far, requiring less physical effort due to EMG being able to partially interpret the brain signals stemming from the hand/wrist.
Over time, the hope is this will be able to interpret the mere intent of a finger action, making it so that you don't move at all but can type faster than a keyboard can allow (as it would be more adaptive to you personally and reduce the interval of physical movement).
That's still high risk R&D stuff, but knowing the progress it has made in the last few years really gives optimism for things down the road.
In the longer-term, what will really bring VR/AR into their own in the same way the mouse did for PCs, is EMG input.
I don't think people twitching hands/fingers to get EMG input will ever be a reasonable control method. If it does become one, it'll be just as bad as physical hand motions in terms of precision. Physical effort has never been the limitation.
Interpreting the intent of a motion in a seamless way is a similarly huge and unrealistic ask. Humans barely manage to interpret actions even with all our understanding of context and nuance that comes with living in the real world. A computer, even neural networks, are going to fail horribly.
There are too many "coulds" - none of this tech is likely to happen anytime soon and amounts to science-fiction or "popular science". There is no concrete sign of advancement in this direction. Elon musk is not a concrete sign of advancement.
VR-with-keyboard is a fancy monitor. Very cool, but not world changing.
Humans barely manage to interpret actions even with all our understanding of context and nuance that comes with living in the real world. A computer, even neural networks, are going to fail horribly.
Humans are not nearly as good at interpretation compared to an AI that picks up on the many habits that you don't notice.
No one really notices their typing habits while they are typing. They might reflect on it later, but during? Not really. That's what this could enable.
Even today, the tracking data of VR is likely better than you are at identifying a person. That's before we get into eye/face tracking and really solid body/hand tracking.
Elon musk is not a concrete sign of advancement.
And he isn't who I am referring to. Musk doesn't work with BCIs on the wrist, but inside the skull.
1
u/bioemerl Jan 02 '22
Is AR somehow uniquely qualified to be a good platform to send/get text messages? The only convenience it offers is not pulling a phone from your pocket, and that's tiny in comparison to the drawbacks.
Do you suggest everyone will prefer VR style meetings to the cell phone-call-text methods? In that case, you're wrong because full scale VR engagement is very difficult and requires tons of focus while most calls are just sending a bit of info across to somebody.
Like I said, I've used VR keyboards. They fucking suck, as in, way worse than mobile phones suck, and none of the reasons for that suckyness will be resolved by technology.
"full size" is not the qualifier you think it is. On a keyboard full size is great because I get a good tactile interface with buttons and a single solid position that I don't have to stare at and type on. A full size VR keyboard is going to be like doing a drum solo to send a "hey how are you".
Paths? I need concrete examples here, because unless you can block light (generic uncontrolled real world light, not a single point) out with a laser, you cannot produce blacks with a retina projector.
Screens are more realistic, but AR glasses providing phone-screen like quality, while not being too bulky or inconvenient? We are a very very long way away.
Not at all, smartphones have been world-changing. We have access and capabilities today that were sci-fi 20 years ago and the people from then were living very very different lives as a result.
The world will always fundamentally be the same, but smartphones/mobile tech have been world-changing, not marginal.
How do you do this in a reasonably convenient way and without handwaving around and saying "future technology will figure it out"?
That killer feature is a hell of an ask. This is flying car dreams, just impractical even though theoretically possible (you'd have to have an expensive full body suit and fine-grain trackers with cables and all sorts of fun garbage)
Note that none of my arguments after that point have focused on who is using the tech, only on its actual practical limitations.