I think you are looking around you not in front of you. The path now is to a thinner ski goggles looking form factor that supports AR through a passthrough video of where you are but with the ability to turn anything into an iphone or iwatch or 60" TV screen (try carrying that arround in your pocket). Wearing goggles will not be any more inconvenient or disconnecting than pulling out your phone at the table. One Apple leak hinted at an LED outward facing screen so people around you don't feel as strange including you in the conversation. The form factors will iterate towards human centered simplicity just like the possibility space of spatial computing enabled by these devices will iterate towards a more natural interface where information systems will conform to our world as it is in 3D rather than us being forced to deal with them through keyboards and mice and touch screens in our pocket.
But you have to also keep in mind that no one (except maybe Zuckerberg) wants to look stupid. Walking around with ski goggles would look so incredibly stupid to any normal human being, so you'd have to carry the goggles around in a case or a backpack. Even with a device the size of ski goggles (which none of the current tech can even come close to given battery sizes) AR/VR still won't displace cell phones or apple watches.
I don't think the form-factor is something they can iteratively approach for too long, given the absurd amount of investment Meta is already throwing in to building the next generation of still insufficient AR/VR. Investor appetite will not last long enough to realize the pipe-dream.
I think there’s a real issue here, but it’s not looking stupid per se. Facebook and similar addictive products get very very large per-user engagement, and this works because people use their phones while being just enough present in the real world to walk places, ride public transit, drive (!), go to restaurants, go on dates, etc.
For this to work with a device like the Quest, users need to simultaneously be present in the real world and consume content in VR/AR. That could work in pure AR applications (albeit potentially quite awkwardly), but VR might have fairly fundamental issues such as losing the feeling of presence in VR and motion sickness.
VR is neat. AR is neat. Getting people to use VR for 10 hours a day while pretending to do something else may be a challenge.
I still find them mostly a gimmick. They're a very good identifier for yuppie-like people, though, which one could say that it adds to the "stupid-looking" thing.
I don't know how you can possibly believe that. Not only are they (or inspired-by-them products) almost ubiquitous in many areas, people love them and rave about them.
The Airpods (or at least, that product category) are probably the single greatest new product I've used in the last 10 years. And I use a lot of products. They have given me always-available access to audio, easily, whenever I want.
Most probably because we live in different areas and are also part of distinct demographics. I live in Eastern Europe and I don't have that many IT people as close acquaintances and friends, in those circles of mine "always-available access to audio" sounds a little quaint.
"Always-available access to audio" is a fancy way of saying I can listen to Whatsapp messages or watch YouTube videos anytime I want without bother anyone. Not to mention listen to music or audiobooks.
Not sure what sounds quaint about that, it sound to me like how most people I know use their phones. And while I have a lot of people I know in tech, it's by no means everyone I know.
Until recently, I worked with high schoolers. Many of them felt absolutely no social discomfort at wearing earbuds while having a face to face conversations. It wasn’t uncommon for a kid to very quietly listen to music during a conversation. This is AR in a different sense, and I expect the social discomfort of AR glasses/goggles will similarly be generational/cultural and fleeting.
agree. There's a tipping point in utility and then things flip very rapidly. We don't have to reach frameless spectacle level, anything that gets in range will get us to the point where it will suddenly flip.
Its a good question and I don't have any handy answers other than a loose distribution of twitter accounts and subreddits although if you want a single source to plumb through there is an amazing store of knowledge in Voices of VR podcast by Kent Bye [1] run through his archives for a thoughtful discussion of almost any topic in this space.
