[HN Gopher] Looking Glass' new lineup includes a $300 phone-size...
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       Looking Glass' new lineup includes a $300 phone-sized holographic
       display
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 38 points
       Date   : 2024-08-15 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | ... can't wait until I get mine.
        
         | clobmclob wrote:
         | Ditto
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | I have to admit though that I am wondering how to make
           | content for it. I have a Lytro Illium which is mostly a white
           | elephant and an Quoocam Ego stereo camera. Maybe I need to
           | synthesize images for it.
        
             | _flux wrote:
             | I have a bunch of stereo 180 degree images I've captured.
             | Too bad there's really no existing work flow for going from
             | those images to something that would be suitable for this.
             | 
             | Of course, any such method would need to come up with data
             | from the thin air, but it seems there are pretty decent
             | algorithms for doing exactly that nowdays.
        
       | stavros wrote:
       | By the way, what happened to that company that raised a few
       | billion and was going to absolutely revolutionize AR for
       | everyone, and had the most amazing demos ever, and their release
       | was just around the corner?
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | There was Magic Leap, they did ship hardware, but it sucked.
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | Ahh, yep! Huh, I wonder how they managed to enchant all those
           | investors with sucky hardware...
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | How does anyone enchant investors? They were early to the
             | table and had amazing demos. In 2014 when I did a few year
             | stint in live action VR, there were already murmurings of
             | Magic Leap being vaporware.
        
               | talldayo wrote:
               | > How does anyone enchant investors?
               | 
               | By imitating Disney, that's how!
               | 
               | But yeah, your impression lines up with what I was
               | hearing 10 years ago too. Magic Leap was leaning waaaaay
               | too hard into a premium market that was too poorly formed
               | to satisfy, with decreasingly valid value prop as the
               | field of VR evolved. Google Glass would bite the bullet,
               | HoloLens found a few government contractors to pick up
               | the bill and surely Vision Pro will peter out with
               | similar slight entrenchment.
               | 
               | Mainstream VR just doesn't make sense, and consumers
               | won't admit it because we're desperate to be wowed. I
               | like my Oculus Quest, but even a perfect version of the
               | headset wouldn't replace my phone or my PC.
        
           | metadat wrote:
           | Are they shuttered yet, or still shambling along?
           | 
           | https://resources.magicleap.com/en-us/careers
           | 
           | Supposedly they have open roles, but it's probably just for
           | show (since displaying 0 openings would be perceived as a
           | negative signal). Archive.org corroborates not much is
           | changing.
           | 
           | https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://resource.
           | ..
        
             | PaulHoule wrote:
             | Still here
             | 
             | https://www.magicleap.com/
             | 
             | and on v2 of the product. If you really want optical AR
             | hardware that's affordable and stylish your best bet is
             | 
             | https://www.xreal.com/
             | 
             | I think they have a great story for "watch TV in AR" but I
             | don't think their story for AR applications is that good.
        
               | kotaKat wrote:
               | Sucks to see all the V1s on eBay that will essentially be
               | a brick at the end of the year, though.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | I thought they were just being coy on naming the Apple
           | VisionPro
        
       | Terr_ wrote:
       | > Looking Glass' new lineup includes
       | 
       | Dangit, I got excited for _System Shock 3_ or a new _Thief_ and
       | now I feel let-down.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Glass_Studios
        
         | leshokunin wrote:
         | Flight Unlimited!
        
       | ipsum2 wrote:
       | Not a true holographic display, it's just lenticular. Same as the
       | Nintendo 3ds that shipped over a decade ago.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | That was back when 3D TVs were a thing.
         | 
         | The market for 3D displays is small, and the market for 3D
         | displays that give up some 2D image quality is very small.
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | The 3DS had a parallax barrier. Personally I got the 3DS
           | around the time that my presbyopia got bad but I thought the
           | images looked really great with my reading glasses.
           | 
           | I was disappointed that they didn't use stereo for _Pokemon
           | Sun and Moon_ but then they would had to have decided if
           | Lusamine 's hair formed a sheet or a cone wheras the
           | animation is strangely ambiguous about the issue as it is.
           | 
           | Most 3D TVs use a high frame rate panel and shutter glasses,
           | somewhat like Lenny Lipton's (Cornell physics grad who wrote
           | the lyrics for _Puff the Magic Dragon_ )
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealD_3D
           | 
           | which uses a double-pumped projector and a device which
           | electrically rotates polarized light on alternate frames so
           | that circular polarized lenses on the glasses work like the
           | shutter glasses. (I'm a little sad that I never got to see
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_3D)
           | 
           | You don't lose quality in principle from this scheme but you
           | do lose brightness and the real answer is "it's complicated"
           | when you change the frame rate.
           | 
           | Most 3D TV however is in a side-by-side format where half of
           | the horizontal frame is used for one eye and the other half
           | is used for the other eye so you really do lose some
           | horizontal resolution.
           | 
           | My best 3D viewer right now is a Meta Quest 3 on which I've
           | watched _Space Station 3D_ and _The Rise of Skywalker_ though
           | sometimes I think about picking up a used 3D TV. If a monitor
           | or TV supports high frame rates you could get 3D for free if
           | it wasn 't for the shutter glasses being rather expensive.
        
             | talldayo wrote:
             | You probably already have a solution for this, but ALVR is
             | amazing for getting Quest hardware (any of them) to do
             | hardware-accelerated wireless streaming:
             | https://github.com/alvr-org/alvr
             | 
             | The 120hz refresh rate of those newer displays really opens
             | up when you have a proper desktop GPU to drive them. The
             | past few weeks I've been dusting off my Quest 1 with ALVR
             | over USB and it's great. You can have the goofiest setup
             | (NixOS? GNOME Wayland? Nvidia drivers? Come right in!) and
             | it will translate the Quest's built-in tracking into
             | SteamVR with less than a frame of delay.
             | 
             | Gotta love it when that thing you thought was dead is
             | actually pretty usable thanks to sideloading and a
             | hardworking community. If I hadn't just gotten 2 weeks of
             | VTOL VR out of that headset I might have remembered to
             | resent the $400 I spent on it.
        
             | outofpaper wrote:
             | > Most 3D TV however is in a side-by-side format where half
             | of the horizontal frame is used for one eye and the other
             | half is used for the other eye so you really do lose some
             | horizontal resolution.
             | 
             | This is not how 3d TVs work, it's only one of the common
             | ways of storing the files.
             | 
             | More and more of these threads feel like there's posters in
             | here that are LLM hallucinations...
        
         | spondylosaurus wrote:
         | The 3D effects on the 3DS were surprisingly good, imo. On all
         | but the "New" models, the sweet spot for positioning yourself
         | was pretty narrow, but if you were in the sweet spot things
         | looked great.
        
         | gmurphy wrote:
         | To be fair, while it is lenticular, it's a huge upgrade over
         | the 3DS, which only rendered two views (one for each eye) so it
         | only worked from straight on; the Looking Glass display handles
         | a significantly higher number of views (~45?[1]) so you get
         | continual stereo separation and different viewpoints as you
         | rotate the device. Rendering costs are much higher though!
         | 
         | [1] https://docs.lookingglassfactory.com/keyconcepts/how-it-
         | work...
        
       | Apocryphon wrote:
       | It looks great, but didn't Amazon burn through $170 million for
       | their Fire Phones with a 3D effect that consumers simply didn't
       | care for? It's such a cool gimmick that has absolutely no
       | practical use (except on the Nintendo 3DS).
        
         | inanutshellus wrote:
         | Chicken/Egg problem for sure. Niche effect that Amazon had
         | trouble encouraging app makers to build for (lots of effort for
         | no users), and since there were no blockbuster apps, users
         | didn't buy it.
        
       | isk517 wrote:
       | I'm in the planning phase right now of building my own virtual
       | pinball table cabinet, would absolutely love a 3D display like
       | this to install it in. Course spending close to $10,000 just for
       | the display is a bit much so I'm just going to focus on finding a
       | good 120Hz 4K 43" display and use re-render and infinicolor to
       | provide some depth of field.
        
         | nomel wrote:
         | You might be able to DIY this [1]. You can buy lenticular
         | sheets on Alibaba.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20230525193416/http://alumni.med...
        
           | isk517 wrote:
           | Thanks, I'll have to look into that.
        
       | jzemeocala wrote:
       | For a second I thought someone resurrected project looking glass
        
       | tiku wrote:
       | Had an LG Optimus phone with a 3d screen, was a nice gimmick but
       | not really usefull. This will probably end up the same.
        
       | rfwhyte wrote:
       | "The Brooklyn-based startup is making the 32-inch model's price
       | available on request."
       | 
       | What incredibly lazy and feckless journalism. You're writing a
       | bloody article about the thing, request the damn price and
       | publish it.
        
       | matthewfcarlson wrote:
       | I'm curious how the new Looking Glass Go compares to the Looking
       | Glass Portrait (now $199)
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-15 23:01 UTC)