[HN Gopher] New Snap Spectacles Feature Augmented Reality Display
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New Snap Spectacles Feature Augmented Reality Display
Author : upwardbound
Score : 81 points
Date : 2021-05-20 18:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spectacles.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spectacles.com)
| hanniabu wrote:
| Had no idea this was still a thing, I thought they abandoned it
| after the first release.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Props for not hiding the FoV of the glasses, its just front and
| center on the page, unlike other AR companies.
| rbanffy wrote:
| When I saw the hololens videos, I assumed they were doing some
| clever oclusion with, perhaps, LCD shutters to hide what the AR
| object would prevent you from seeing.
|
| Not only the FoV, it was a total disappointment.
| boringg wrote:
| I feel like this is one of those technologies that over the next
| decade will finally be accepted into the public domain as it gets
| more compact and real use cases present themselves. It's like the
| early days of DSLR to some degree.
| upwardbound wrote:
| From the website: 26.3 degree diagonal field of view (stereo).
| Display brightness up to 2,000 nits. I worked on these but am not
| allowed to say anything other than citing public sources.
| slg wrote:
| It is good to see the brightness improving, but as someone who
| has played around with some AR devices I think AR is still
| waiting for the FOV to take a leap forward before these have
| mainstream appeal. It is just so unnatural when objects
| disappear from view if you aren't looking directly at them.
| This isn't as big of a problem in VR when your peripheral
| vision is just black and therefore your mind can easily learn
| to ignore it. You still see the world normally with AR and
| therefore are constantly reminded of the areas in your vision
| that won't see the augmentations.
|
| 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
| Groxx wrote:
| Yeah, that video looks _very_ representative of what I 'd
| expect, from trying a few AR platforms.
|
| The HoloLens and Magic Leap promos were 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.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| > It is good to see the brightness improving, but as someone
| who has played around with some AR devices I think AR is
| still waiting for the FOV to take a leap forward before these
| have mainstream appeal.
|
| 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.
| willidiots wrote:
| As a former Glass user, agreed on the need for FOV. While
| amazing, current AR doesn't feel like "augmented reality", it
| feels like "tiny transparent phone screen in your eye".
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Most HN folks interested in hacking on an AR platform will be
| happy to know there's a far more capable open source software
| and hardware platform:
|
| 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.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Why do they need to look so rectangular and retro (and not in a
| good way)? Is it due to the hardware & circuitry inside?
|
| Hope the eventual goal is to make these more appealing. I'd
| rather not everyone around me know these are what they really
| are.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Great question. Today's waveguide technology requires flat
| glass. (This is public information - Karl Guttag's blog
| covers the topic very well). Product designers have to either
| make the glasses flat (like Spectacles V4) or make the
| glasses much bulkier to hide the flat waveguides (like the
| front of Magic Leap). If added bulk were just a question of
| size, maybe that wouldn't be such an issue, but for a head-
| worn product every single gram of mass is important to
| optimize away.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Can you say anything about potential applications? What do you
| think will be the killer app for this?
| jedmeyers wrote:
| Catching pokemon with those should be fun.
| pkaye wrote:
| I have hearing aids and know how bad they can be in noisy
| environments. I wish there were glasses that captioned what
| it heard to assist in comprehension. Might be useful for
| those whose hearing loss progressed a lot. The only caution
| is one must not rely on them too much or your listening
| skills will degrade.
| swiley wrote:
| being able to position X11 (or wayland, I don't care really)
| windows in space and not have to deal with monitors would
| sell them for me.
| jayd16 wrote:
| You can do this on some of the VR and AR headsets already.
| The resolution is just almost but not quite good enough.
| Its getting there though.
| jeffbee wrote:
| What would be _any_ app for this? It 's not immediately
| apparent why anyone would want this.
| stevewodil wrote:
| Turn by turn navigation that shows you the path to follow
| in AR that's overlaid on the real road. No more missing
| your exit, no more not being exactly sure which turn it
| wants you to take, etc.
|
| Would that appease you?
| gotostatement wrote:
| sounds dangerous to wear AR glasses while driving
| gotostatement wrote:
| lol only on hacker news would this statement be
| controversial
| sixothree wrote:
| Sounds like a lack of imagination.
|
| 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
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Do you understand why anyone would use existing Snapchat
| filters? If not, then of course you wouldn't understand the
| Spectacles.
| [deleted]
| upwardbound wrote:
| This page has several videos of potential applications:
| https://www.spectacles.com/creators
|
| Deep links:
|
| Fitness: https://youtu.be/trd2LT8-G3Y
|
| Travel: https://youtu.be/bzTfMoyBdlM
|
| Learning dance moves: https://storage.googleapis.com/spectacl
| es-v3/NzVlNzU3OWQtY2U...
|
| 3D paint: https://storage.googleapis.com/spectacles-v3/NzVlNz
| U3OWQtY2U...
| noja wrote:
| Interesting how all these example videos are outside, but I
| can't see that really happening: outside are other people
| to bump into, surfaces to pay attention to, hazards.
|
| I don't want to learn to dance while standing distracted
| next to the edge of a cliff.
| orangepanda wrote:
| Good that you can still see the edge of a cliff then, no?
| noja wrote:
| Ideal.
| langitbiru wrote:
| Conversation helper. Imagine you talk to a person. It can
| give you a list of ice breakers to open up the conversation
| based on the person's appearance and surroundings.
|
| 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...
| upwardbound wrote:
| Although I can only speak for myself and not for Snap, I
| would discourage these ideas. I think these ideas are a
| violation of the privacy rights of the person you are
| looking at. If I were on the Lens review team I would
| reject these lenses.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Has any improvement been made on your guys approach to
| application processes? My experience with "Yellow LA" was such
| utter unprofessional, nepotistic, myopic, self aggrandizing
| bullshit. What is the compelling reason to revisit that for
| allocating commodity electronics?
| upwardbound wrote:
| That sucks, I'm sorry to hear that. If it helps, the people
| reviewing these applications are different than the Yellow
| people, and are really nice. Also there are more of these
| glasses to go around than there are Yellow spots.
|
| 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"
| digitalsin wrote:
| Well I'm glad the woke virtue signaling has been built into
| the price and doesn't cost extra.
|
| "The camera is, in fact, racist,.." -Snap engineer Bertrand
| Saint-Preux
|
| Seriously???
|
| Also, I find female voices more soothing. My wife on the
| other hand prefers male voices in a Scottish accent with
| her digital assistants. She doesn't now associate male
| scots with _just_ being an assistant. For crying out loud
| it 's just a damn preference.
| Seanambers wrote:
| Ssshh.. You can't say that on HN. You might anger the
| WOKE mob!
| rbanffy wrote:
| They match the Tesla Cybertruck's style perfectly
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Most HN folks interested in hacking on an AR platform will be
| happy to know there's a far more capable open source software and
| hardware platform:
|
| 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.
| unixhero wrote:
| I for one miss the wonky yellow first design iteration.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| What? You don't like the McFlurry-spoons-taped-to-head look?
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| I second this. These look like you just left a 3d ride at an
| amusement park and forgot to take off the glasses.
| lesinski wrote:
| Their first design was trend-setting in eyewear. This one looks
| like it's behind the curve.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Ok, I am gonna say it out loud: This is nice and all. Great
| hardware work for sure. But: This is not going to work
| commercially. Watch the twitter videos and you'll know why [1].
| It's all nice and shiny, but it has no utility whatsoever. People
| will get bored after day 2.
|
| And then, 3-5 years from now Apple will come in with their
| iGlasses and everyone will absolutely love them. Because they
| will integrate them deeply in their ecosystem and have some real
| use-cases.
|
| These look more like a Proof of Concept.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/Spectacles/status/1395442287367266304?s=...
| upwardbound wrote:
| If Apple copies anything from us, I hope they copy this:
|
| 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"
| jeffgreco wrote:
| iOS offers the choice between male and female assistant
| voices and has removed a default.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/22364180/how-to-change-siri-
| voice-i...
| mrandish wrote:
| Someday consumer grade mobile voice assistants will be
| feature complete and bulletproof enough that adding a gender-
| neutral voice will be the highest user value feature to
| invest limited development resources into.
|
| Based on my recent experience trying to support my elderly
| mother's desire to "talk to her phone to do things", that day
| is not imminent.
| deepakkarki wrote:
| Alternatively if the voice were male you'd have people
| complaining that it reinforces the idea that technology is
| male centric and it further alienates women in tech.
|
| But yeah, I'd love gender neutral voice assistants as well.
| corndoge wrote:
| This is such a weird response to a technical criticism, do
| you have anything to say about anything the parent poster
| said?
| canadianfella wrote:
| What the hell is this?
| ffggvv wrote:
| >> Having female A.I. assistants perpetuates the gender wage
| gap by creating the idea that assistant jobs are a women's
| role.
|
| is there any proof of this or does it just sound true
| therefore its true? Specifically theres two claims here that
| i don't see any data backing up:
|
| 1. Female voices of AI creates the idea that assistants jobs
| are a women's role.
|
| 2. Assistants jobs being perceived as a woman's role somehow
| makes the (nonexistent) wage gap worse. Despite the fact that
| assistants tend to make more money than garbagemen. (a field
| dominated by men)
| robotresearcher wrote:
| There is human factors work on the gender of voice
| interfaces. A notable real world example is the voice that
| firmly proposes 'Pull up!' if you're about to fly into the
| ground in many aircraft.
|
| Wikipedia is missing refs, but here's the entry on choosing
| the gender of this voice
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_warning_system
|
| [edit] originally quoted the first part of the section that
| cited early work finding women's voices to be more
| effective, but later work challenges this finding. I
| removed the quote to avoid implying I believe either way.
| ffggvv wrote:
| thats interesting but nonetheless has no bearing on these
| specific claims. if anything it counters the claims as it
| says a female voice is more authoritative whereas the
| original poster said it makes them seem like an assistant
| or submissive and somehow affects their wages.
|
| also your example is one where they shaped the assistant
| based on the humans perception. whereas the poster is
| claiming the assistant shapes the humans perception.
| [deleted]
| bena wrote:
| It's Google Glass 2.0
| oezi wrote:
| The main thing missing is a way to incorporate any existing
| physical object into the AR scene and accurately identify and
| track parts of it.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It says try it on in-app, I tried it on and they look like those
| UV shades for old ppl that blocks sun from the sides. No one in
| their right minds would wear them in public.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Are you saying old people are not in their right minds? I'd
| argue the opposite with regards to fashion choices, but I don't
| think old people would go for these either.
| tartoran wrote:
| Incidentally I'm only 40 and am often wearing those type of
| shades because my eyes are very sensitive and constant
| squinting gives me migraines. I actually came to like them
| quite a bit and two of my friends got them too, not out of
| need but because they think they look cool so its a very
| subjective thing after all.
| achow wrote:
| These are not for sale.
|
| _These Spectacles, however, aren't ready for the mass market.
| Unlike past models, Snap isn't selling them. Instead, it's
| giving them directly to an undisclosed number of AR effects
| creators through an application program online. (Another
| indication they aren't ready for everyday use: the battery only
| lasts 30 minutes.)_
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/20/22445481/snap-spectacles-...
| jayd16 wrote:
| So is this streaming from your phone? No technical specs on
| compute are listed as far as I can tell.
| upwardbound wrote:
| The compute is built-in. I'm not sure if we've published
| performance specs but if you want you could try to contact one
| of the creators who has them and get them to run some
| benchmarks. For small devices like this one, one of the biggest
| challenges is thermal management, so the performance measured
| for short experiences will likely differ from that which can be
| sustained over a longer time. (Just due to the nature of heat
| transfer - less mass means less heat storage capacity, and less
| surface area means less cooling)
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| They're quite hideous.
| upwardbound wrote:
| article at the verge
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/20/22445481/snap-spectacles-...
| thebigman433 wrote:
| Most exciting thing for me is that they might actually be bright
| enough to use outside. The dim displays of most other headsets is
| one of the worst things about them.
|
| We're still a long way from consumer AR headsets, but I am
| excited for the future of them, and I think these experimental
| devices are still great.
| kevando wrote:
| Finally :D
| js8 wrote:
| I wouldn't use these for AR, but just as a display. It would be
| really nice to be able to just walk or sit or lay in nature, and
| work there, with a combination of AR glasses and chorded
| keyboard. Too bad they killed Google Glass.
| FreakyT wrote:
| Did you ever use Glass? The display was really too small to get
| work done; I would describe it as identical in functionality to
| a smartwatch, just on your face instead of wrist.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| You can still buy Google Glass, but the Hololens sounds more in
| line with what you're envisioning.
| goodcjw2 wrote:
| How about just using Apple Watch as a display? The display has
| similar size. Maybe being able to have the display already
| there is useful?
| bredren wrote:
| The demo on their page, is this meant to look like a tamagotchi-
| style entertainment distraction? Or are they expecting people to
| use these for real interactions?
|
| I can't understand why a pond and butterfly make sense overlaid
| on a forest.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Here's a video with a better example of it. Doesn't look like a
| pond. Its more like alien flowers or something.
|
| https://twitter.com/i/status/1395439601590833156
| cinntaile wrote:
| This reminded me of a 90s commercial, I think it's the
| colouring?
| moralestapia wrote:
| The cycle of "missed" opportunities.
|
| 1. Competitor A: "The new Spectacles are not for sale. They're
| built for creators looking to push the limits of immersive AR
| experiences."
|
| 2. Competitor B: * actually sells the product *
|
| * time goes by *
|
| 3. Competitor B acquires 80%+ market share while other's "never
| saw it coming".
| upwardbound wrote:
| If anyone wants to, I'd highly encourage you to fill out the
| "Become a Creator" form with the idea of using the glasses to
| operate an "AR space" venue, like those VR spaces where people
| go with their family to play games. You could charge members of
| the public 20 bucks for 20 min of playing games that you make
| and you would be sold out for months because regular people
| don't have many chances to try AR without shelling out
| thousands on a hololens.
| theFak wrote:
| Why is that bad?
| sixothree wrote:
| What would be cool is if they could block out extremely bright
| point lights like oncoming cars or the sun.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| just realized the last part they snuck in there -- These aren't
| for sale, only for 'creators' looking to use them to develop
| 'Lenses' and AR stuff etc. hmph.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Fwiw at least this way if your idea gets approved you don't
| have to pay for the glasses -- much more fair to people
| entering SW development from impoverished backgrounds. To apply
| there's a form at the bottom of the page.
| viccuad wrote:
| you give them your idea and control over it, basically. What
| could go wrong.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Your idea is your personal intellectual property. You can
| even patent it if you want. The only reason for having a
| form at all is to give the limited number of units to the
| people who will really put their heart into making
| something incredible.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >You can even patent it if you want.
|
| No. You cannot patent something that has been publicly
| disclosed.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Which country are you referring to?
|
| In the US you have 1 year.
|
| https://www.patenttrademarkblog.com/inventor-grace-
| period-la....
| moralestapia wrote:
| I didn't knew about that, thanks. In Europe you don't
| have such thing, so you end up w/ a mountain of NDAs (or
| just don't care and cross your fingers).
| [deleted]
| pugworthy wrote:
| I can tell you what I definitely would not be wearing or
| interacting with on the beach or in the forest: these for digital
| distractions and games.
| sva_ wrote:
| It could be interesting to use them for info visualization and
| interaction though. Placing ideas in your surroundings while on
| a nice walk through the forest pondering about something you're
| passionate about sounds pretty intriguing to me.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Agreed. Also just local things like plant info, geology,
| history, trails, etc.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Do these take photos and videos? What does it show in the
| glasses?
| upwardbound wrote:
| it's one of those animated scrolling webpages. Scroll down and
| you can see a simulated view thru the waveguides
| mrfusion wrote:
| Thanks I did see that but I still don't get it. It's like a
| flower and a butterfly? How does that help me achieve my life
| goals?
| upwardbound wrote:
| Oh gotcha. Right now it's a developer platform. It runs any
| JS code + graphics that you write in Lens Studio.
| https://lensstudio.snapchat.com/
|
| In terms of what I personally look forward to the most, I
| can't wait to see what the next generation of kids do with
| it, like the Wozniak era that grew up simultaneously with
| the first personal computers.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Thanks. That makes sense. My life goals will have to
| wait.
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(page generated 2021-05-20 23:01 UTC)