Benefits of AR from Wall Street Journal

Benefits of AR -- and why business is going to clamor for these?

Save a lot of money with a relatively small investment.

Wall Street Journal

MR. FOWLER: How are businesses using these?

MR. OSTERHOUT: The huge applications that are killers are telemaintenance, telepresence, telerepair. Being able to see anything anywhere and understand what it is.

For example, we were at Pepsi’s headquarters, and Pepsi got a call that their big German facility went down. They have multiple banks of machines, and when one of those machines goes down, it costs $1 million a day.

They had bought glasses, so they told the guys in Germany to turn them on. That allowed Pepsi’s people in the U.S. to see what the engineer in Germany was seeing when he went out on the line to investigate. The guys in the U.S. could say: “What you need to do is reset the breakers. Do this.” They could give instructions because they could see what [the engineer] was seeing halfway around the world in real-time. That’s killer.

Engineering.com -- Understanding Augmented Reality Headsets

A Summary of AR Headsets. Microvision's Nomad was much nicer than the r-7 Display. The language on Magic Leap is interesting, and points toward Microvision, but they may be using a different tech. (there exists an oscillating fiber projector technology, but I'm dubious of its practicality.)

Much more at the source: Engineering.com

Truly Immersive Augmented Reality Requires a Big Headset

One of the most interesting issues with making immersive augmented reality is the amount of physical real estate it requires from the user. There is a direct ratio that requires the amount of optics to increase as the desired display size and field of view increases. With a compact wearable like Google Glass, for example, the widest field of view (FoV) you'll achieve is around 20 to 30 degrees. Google Glass is 13 degrees and something like the Epson MoverioBT-2000 gets up to 23 degrees.

This is basically why headsets yield a more immersive experience.

Name	Google Glass	R-7 Smart Glasses	Vuzix M300	Moverio Pro BT-2000
Company	Google	Osterhaut Design Group	Epson	Epson
Shipping	Discontinued	Yes	Q3 2016	Yes
FoV (degrees)	15	30	20	23
Resolution	640 x 360	1280 x 720	960 x 540	960 x 540
Platform	Android	Android	Android/iOS	Android
Cost	USD$1,500	USD$2,750	USD$1,499	USD$2,999

5) Magic Leap: News of this unicorn startup comes wrapped in mysterious claims of “light-field displays” and “photonic chips” that are threatening to upend everything we know about consumer-oriented headset kits like the Meta 2. This startup is called Magic Leap, and it's raised about $1.5 billion in funding. The funding was led by Google (which many speculate was a response to Facebook's $2 billion purchase of Oculus) on the strength of supposedly ground-breaking technology in which a special light apparatus beams holographic images right onto your eyes.

CES Day 3

It was a short day at CES for me, and I used it to follow up on some things I'd missed.  Half the day was travel, and a large part of Saturday was catching up on sleep, reconnecting with friends and nursing a sore knee.

The Bed Display at SONY.

SONY had a display of MPCL1 in a bed. The bed was a canopy bed, and the MPCL1 was in a tray pointed up at the Canopy. 

I had missed this the previous time through this section of the show, and heard good things, so I returned to see it. I was glad I did.

I stayed by this display for about 45 minutes. It was almost constantly crowded with people, universally smiling and often asking if it's available now, and how they could buy it.

This was an excellent display, and probably the most popular at the display other than the VR Gear (I admit I'm a bit biased)








Augmented reality, the Daqri Helmet & Microvision Nomad

That's the Daqri Helmet in the background. I had a chance to wear and unpowered model. It's quite heavy - more than twice the weight of a normal hard hat. They admitted that field of view is still limited - like a 120" screen at 10 feet -- which actually looks like a laptop screen on your lap. 

It's probably a lot like a hololens that has an incorporated hard-hat. The industrial uses could be incredible.

Daqri Helmet Press Release

Daqri Helmet at LinuxGizmos

The Osterhaut Group   -- The R7 Smart Glasses

I had a chance to try this technology on in a couple of places. Once with a company who was developing it for remote medical help, and with another company that was using it to help people with limited vision. 

The glasses are reputed to be the best, with the largest field of view. 

I had an opportunity to try on the NOMAD in the MicroVision booth -- the field of view is better -- and it's an older system. I was assured that now the resolution is better and the field of vision is wider.

I did miss the BMW AR Helmet, which does look like it may be capable of a wider field of vision. I'll be looking for more on it.

DK50 Augmented Reality Glasses  (50 degree field of view)

Recon Glasses -- a very small screen outside the direct field of view. If you look down and right the small display -- maybe a dozen characters worth or a compass readout

The place was packed with various kinds of augmented reality glasses... From what I've seen MicroVision could make most of them much better than they are. 


The HTC virtual reality headset

I did have an opportunity to try the HTC VR headset. It was a remarkably intense experience.

Remember that this is similar to the Oculus Rift, Sony VR, and Samsung Gear VR. (Notice there's a LOT of competition.) I've tried on the others, except the SONY model. MicroVision isn't in competition with any of these, but I do notice that the market value of Oculus Rift was 2 Billion when Facebook bought the company -- it's not very special compared to PicoP. Still cool though.