I think augmented reality is neat outside of games, or for observational tasks. One of the neatest demos I saw was for obeserving a DOTA map, where you're no longer following a streamers POV but you can walk around the the map and zoom in on the aspects you want to see. Demos where you can have data integrated into your surroundings are also neat - throwing televisions on the wall or pulling up browsers in on windows. But if feels limited in terms of games, confining your play area to a table or a living room. It worked well in "Her", with the game spilling out into the room, but I like full VR more. All of this still feels like it's on the edge of the cyberpunk slippery slope though - with apartments becoming unadorned white boxes with no windows and lamps overhead that pump out artificial sunlight. I'm sure, in the end, the result will be much more human than that.
A recent invention by a noted inventor, 49-year-old scientist Dean Kamen, is generating excitement and mystery. "IT", is so extraordinary, that it has drawn the attention of technology visionaries Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Steve Jobs (Apple) and the investment dollars of pre-eminent Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, and Credit Suisse First Boston, among others. Those who have seen the two prototypes have been variously amazed, delighted, surprised and awestruck. Jeff Bezos is reported to have snorted uncontrollably (his laugh sounds like a pig snorting). Kamen, who was just awarded the National Medal of Technology (the highest such award in the US) has been called "a combination of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison". John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, the noted VC who funded the launch of companies like Sun, Lotus, Compaq and Netscape, says that he had been sure that he wouldn't see the development of anything in his lifetime as important as the World Wide Web - until he saw IT. Another investor, Credit Suisse First Boston, expects Kamen's invention to make more money in its first year than any start-up in history, predicting Kamen will be worth more in five years than Bill Gates. Jobs told Kamen that IT would be as significant as the PC (high praise indeed from Jobs, who feels that he originated the PC).Here is something exciting, that has kept me awake at night, wondering.....
They do the same in LA. They do the same in Seattle. They do the same in San Fran. They're black, and they're all wearing black bicycle helmets, and they're always in the way. I want to go back 16 years and say "Ginger is fat dorks in bicycle helmets that don't speak English riding around your tourist districts clogging up the sidewalks."
At least someone is getting joy out of that revolutionary transportation device! For real, I'd like to try one but I wouldn't want my friends to see me on it. I think when prices come down on AR glasses they'll become pretty common in the home. They'll be like the Wii that I just dug out of the basement to fuck around with. It seems the light of day every few years and than gets packed away again.
I think they're like $40 an hour to rent, dude, and I'll bet none of your friends would recognize you. Google Cardboard is like $20 and nobody cares. VR is a solution looking for a problem and always will be; it takes as its basis of understanding that humans perceive depth perception through binocular vision and we don't. we just don't. Binocular vision gives you depth perception up to the point where two-three inches of parallax accomplishes something; beyond that it's all relational and synthetic from head position. VR has no effective solution to motion parallax and never will.