Never Get CAUGHT Watching Por...
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,207 words · ~11 min read
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augmented reality or ar is the technology of projecting images graphics
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and videos over top of the real world like in the
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movies and it actually exists today
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but most of what we have is pretty
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unimpressive because the holy grail of ar is of course
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not pointing your phone at stuff and seeing
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graphics pop up through your phone's camera on your screen
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that much would be obvious to anyone who's ever tried to do that for longer
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than a couple of minutes during a stage demo the holy grail is integrating it into
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something that can be worn comfortably and ideally discreetly
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but while many companies some working
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privately like magic leap and others beating a drum about it like microsoft
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are pursuing head-mounted ar the current solutions are bulky and very expensive a
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hololens will set you back 3 000 us
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dollars enter scrappy upstart eyeglass
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these guys claim that their display tax solves some of
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the biggest issues with waveguide ar displays and that they can do it at one
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tenth of the cost and i'm actually about to get my first
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taste of their prototype
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do you guys have pia yet private internet access the vpn
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sponsor today
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before i actually try this thing though let's do a little bit of background who
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are these guys so sam ewan actually worked at microsoft
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from 2012 to 2016 on the original
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hololens team as a senior hardware engineer so
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obviously he believes in ar and even hololens to some degree it's an amazing
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piece of technology that uses cameras to track the environment around the user
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letting him or her interact with the digital content
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the problem with it though is that the screen is relatively small with about a
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32 degree horizontal field of view not to mention that the color is inaccurate
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white in particular is very difficult to display and the waveguide type displays
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that are built into the lenses in front of each eye are about two thousand
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dollars total that is two-thirds of the total cost of the base model on the two
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displays alone so by contrast
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eyeglass believes that their tech could get closer to about ten dollars per eye
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or 20 bucks one percent of the cost which would make
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it easier to build an affordable device around it so it uses what's called off
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axis imaging instead of putting a light source perpendicular to your eye so
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you're you're looking into a display directly with a backlight behind it it
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actually puts the display and the backlight above the eye so you can
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actually see that if i flip it up like this and then it reflects it off a
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curved piece of glass this makes it see-through kind of like
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if you were wearing sunglasses which means that you can see the world around
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you it also gives you a field of view that is only limited by the size of the
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lenses so our prototype here apparently offers an 80 degree field of view and it
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can use either a normal lcd display or
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even an OLED display or i mean who knows i guess a future display
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technology is not out of the question okay
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so this is the part where i finally get to put it on and sam's gonna kind of
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help me with the demo here so uh just a normal velcro strap
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it's very 3d printed at this point guys so we need to be very careful with it
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uh okay so did they use what you saw so it looks
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like the image is probably about
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i'd say about 10 feet in front of me right now so now when i have content
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running on it it is obviously a harder to see through
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it but like i can read my teleprompter right now i can interact with pella but
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if i focus on that image that's about 12
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feet in front of me things start to kind of fade away yes so without anything
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running on it it's about as dark as i'd say my my pretty dark sunglasses
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it's kind of weird it doesn't um because it's like sitting so close to your eyes
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it doesn't feel like there's two lenses in front of you so right now i can
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really see the curvature of the glass like i can see a curve to the top of it
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a curve to the bottom and then it gets kind of like the shape gets kind of cut
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off here but what sam explained is that
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really any technology any display technology
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that relies on a curved piece of glass
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is going to need processing done ahead of time to kind of pre-distort the image
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so that it ends up having those nice uh those square
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corners that you would expect blacks and really dark colors are a
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little bit tough because those are obviously the display to the best of its
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ability being off meaning that you see right through it
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but white is actually surprisingly opaque
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i mean these are the same challenges that you run into with something like a
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projector for example that's why a dark room would be ideal i
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mean trying this in the dark that would be trippy actually can we kill the
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lights now that is really cool
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like if i was on a nighttime flight or something
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in a dark environment like i could be convinced i'm looking at
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a really nice projector so there's no reason then
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that you couldn't have effectively like a ceiling mounted
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giant display so you guys are quoting this at what about
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120 inches at 12 feet ish right
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ours is probably twice or even even
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higher than the tv conveyor device in terms of angular resolution
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right so i did guess right it is 1080p per eye
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but we're stretching it over a relatively small area compared to a vr headset so
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it actually looks pretty fine and
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it should be noted that eyeglass has no intention of turning this prototype into
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a fully functional ar headset what they're really focused on is developing
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the core technology which is projecting
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the display into the viewer's eye so like on the business side
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you guys are more looking for partners to take this display tech and then use
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whatever resolution they want and maybe external tracking cameras if they're
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into that right or whatever you guys don't care yes you're focused on
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these displays up here the curvature of the lens and then all the software that
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goes along with that right interesting
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one thing i'm also noticing sitting here and using this is that compared to vr
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even though the image is moving around it's more like a uh it's more like a
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virtual screen sitting in front that moves like i'm not getting motion sick
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right why is that because you can see this stable
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background so it's another trick of the brain that's helping with motion
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sickness now you get the best ex watching experience actually when even
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like you stabilize your head on something and the screen is very still
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because otherwise it's it's pretty easy to get distracted by things the real
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world moving behind it but whenever you do move you do lose
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that immersion for a little bit like it's it's not as immersive as vr and i
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don't i don't foresee a future where it ever would be
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but even though you lose that immersion a little bit this serves a purpose
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because it also allows your brain and your eyes to work together to see the
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objects that are fixed around you and keep you from getting disoriented
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so so this is a purely 3d printed serves
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no purpose other than to try the display tech
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thing in order for me to see the content i have to get
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it about here yeah like if you were watching porn
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right now i wouldn't know until probably about
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here that there's like naked bodies let's try something here because i have
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actually i have a victoria secretary
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okay let's give it give it a shot can you see the content tell me what's
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happening that's definitely breasts yeah
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so from there yes but if i'm any further away
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i would have to be about here brandon
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what you're watching at work there wow i don't know this is pretty cool though
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what are they wearing what the hell
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it looks like she's wearing like part of a trash like bag
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well it's better than the whole trash bag
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this is cool pretty neat though hey like it's actually surprisingly good so i
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have to get to see what you're watching i have to get about here oh Colton you
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want to try it it's pretty cool i would love to
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it's ar i just want to know i don't want to ruin it whoa
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what do you say hey yo oh hey there how are you doing
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you're very bad interesting okay
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like it's like a good image too yeah it's a video's help yeah wow i can
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actually see the screen like really well so you could be working while you watch
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the victoria secret oh this is perfect show that's awesome hey i'm banning
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these these aren't allowed come on man come on
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no it's really cool like i do like the image quality like even compared to something like a goodbye or whatever
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it's crisp like it's yeah
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so the way that they envision people using this
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is mobile entertainment so you have privacy because nobody can see what
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you're watching unless they got like right under by your chin and looked up
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at your displays the ability to have a bigger screen for
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entertainment on like a train or a bus or the plane so this would be an
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alternative to listening to podcasts for example
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they foresee a use case where you could walk around on the street
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playing games or watching youtube videos but then without your head either buried
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in a phone or i mean much more danger i've never seen anyone doing this but
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inside a vr headset that would be super stupid or even just
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doing chores around the house like uh watching a movie while you vacuum
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i do have to say i haven't personally witnessed the demand for these use cases
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yet in all my travels i have yet to see someone using a vr headset on a plane
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so they they did some studies internally
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asking people in a double-blind comparison
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to rate their experience in vr or ar and
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they said that most people preferred ar but i do wonder is that a purely
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academic question since i haven't yet seen people using either
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i would like to hear your feedback
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if you could have a 120 inch screen in a device this size that you could
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carry around with you would you use it
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