Gadgetory

augmented reality or AR is the technology of projecting images graphics and videos over top of the real world like in the movies and it actually exists today but most of what we have is pretty unimpressive because the holy grail of AR is of course not pointing your phone at stuff and seeing graphics pop up through your phone's camera on your screen that much would be obvious to anyone who's ever tried to do that for longer than a couple of minutes during a stage demo the holy grail is integrating it into something that can be worn comfortably and ideally discreetly but while many companies some working privately like magic leap and others beating a drum about it like Microsoft are pursuing head-mounted a are the current solutions are bulky and very expensive a hololens will set you back three thousand US dollars enter scrappy upstart eyeglass these guys claim that their display tax solves some of the biggest issues with waveguide AR displays and that they can do it at one-tenth of the cost and I'm actually about to get my first taste of their prototype oh do you guys have PIAA yet private Internet access the VPN if you don't we're gonna have it linked below go check it out there our sponsor today before I actually try this thing though let's do a little bit of background who are these guys so Sam UN actually worked at Microsoft from 2012 to 2016 on the original hololens team as a senior hardware engineer so obviously he believes in AR and even hololens to some degree it's an amazing piece of technology that uses cameras to track the environment around the user letting him or her interact with the digital content the problem with it though is that the screen is relatively small with about a 32 degree horizontal field of view not to mention that the color is inaccurate white in particular is very difficult to display and the waveguide type displays that are built into the lenses in front of each eye are about $2,000 total that is 2/3 of the total cost of the base model on the two displays alone so by contrast eyeglass believes that bare tech could get closer to about $10 per eye or 20 bucks 1% of the cost which would make it easier to build an affordable device around it so it uses what's called off-axis imaging instead of putting a light source perpendicular to your eye so you're you're looking into a display directly with a backlight behind it it actually puts the display and the backlight above the eye so you can actually see that if I flip it up like this and then it reflects it off a curved piece of glass this makes it see-through kind of like if you were wearing sunglasses which means that you can see the world around you it also gives you a field of view that is only limited by the size of the lenses so our prototype here apparently offers an 80 degree field of view and it can use either a normal LCD display or even an OLED display or I mean who knows I guess the future display technology's not out of a question ok so this is the part where I finally get to put it on and sounds gonna kind of help me with the demo here so just a normal velcro strap it's very 3d printed at this point guys so we need to be very careful with it okay so it looks like the image is probably about I'd say about ten feet in front of me right now so now when I have content running on it it is obviously a harder to see through it but like I can read my teleprompter right now I can interact with pehle but if I focus on that image that's about twelve feet in front of me things start to kind of fade away so without anything running on it it's about as dark as I'd say my my pretty dark sunglasses it's kind of weird it doesn't because it's like sitting so close to your eyes it doesn't feel like there's two lenses in front of you so right now I can really see the curvature of the glass like I can see a curve to the top of it a curve to the bottom and then it gets kind of like the shape gets kind of cut off here but what's an explained is that really any technology any display technology that relies on a curved piece of glass is going to need processing done ahead of time to kind of pre distort the image so that it ends up having those nice those square corners that you would expect blacks and really dark colors are a little bit tough because those are obviously the display to the best of its ability being off meaning that you see right through it but white is actually surprisingly opaque I mean these are the same challenges that you run into with something like a projector for example that's why a darkroom would be ideal I mean trying this in the dark that would be trippy actually can we kill the lights now that is really cool like if I was on a nighttime flight or something in a dark environment like I could be convinced I'm looking at a really nice projector so there's no reason then that you couldn't have effectively like a ceiling mounted giant display so you guys are quoting this at what about 120 inches at 12 feet ish right osa is probably twice or even even higher Sansa typically out device in term of angular resolution right so I did guess right it is 1080p per eye but we're stretching it over a relatively small area compared to a VR headset so it actually looks pretty fine and it should be noted that eyeglass has no intention of turning this prototype into a fully functional AR headset what they're really focused on is developing the core technology which is projecting the display into the viewers eyes so like on the business side you guys are more looking for partners to take this display tech and then use whatever resolution they want and maybe external tracking cameras if they're into that right or whatever you guys don't care yes you're focused on these displays up here the curvature of the lens and then all the software that goes along with that right one thing I'm also noticing sitting here and using this is that compared to VR even though the image is moving around it's more like a yeah it's more like a virtual screen sitting in front that loser like I'm not getting motion sick right why is that because you can see this so it's another trick of the brain that's helping with motion sickness now you get the best experience actually when even like you stabilize your head on something and the screen is very still because otherwise it's it's pretty easy to get distracted by things the real world moving behind it but whenever you do move you do lose that immersion for a little bit like it's it's not as immersive as VR and I don't I don't foresee a future where it ever would be but even though you lose that immersion a little bit this serves a purpose because it also allows your brain in your eyes to work together to see the objects that are fixed around you and keep you from getting disoriented so so this is a purely 3d printed serves no purpose other than to try the display tank thing in order for me to see the content I have to get about here yeah like if you were watching porn right now I wouldn't know until probably about here that there's like naked bodies that's definitely breasts yeah so from there yes but if I'm any further away I would have to be about here but right now what you're watching at work there wow it looks like she's wearing like part of a trash bag well it's better than the whole trash bag pretty neat though hey actually surprisingly good so I have to get to see what you're watching I have to get about here Colton you wanna try it it's a are interesting okay like it's like a good image - yeah it's a video so yeah wow I can actually see the screen like really well so you could be working while you watch the Victoria's Secret oh this is perfect show that's awesome hey I'm banning these these aren't allowed no it's really cool like I do like the image quality like even compared to something like a goodbye it's Prince kids yeah so the way that they envision people using this is mobile entertainment so you have privacy because nobody can see what you're watching unless they got like right under by your chin and looked up at your displays the ability to have a bigger screen for entertainment on like a train or a bus or the plane so this would be an alternative to listening to podcasts for example before see a use case where you could walk on the street playing games or watching youtube videos but then without your head either buried in a phone or I mean much more danger I've never seen anyone doing this but inside a VR headset I would be super stupid or even just doing chores around the house like watching a movie while you vacuum I do have to say I haven't personally witnessed the demand for these use cases yet in all my travels I have yet to see someone using a VR headset on a plane so they did some studies internally asking people in a double-blind comparison to rate their experience in VR AR and they said that most people preferred AR but I do wonder is that a purely academic question since I haven't yet seen people using either I would like to hear your feedback if you could have a 120 inch screen in a device this size that you could carry around with you would you use it and speaking of things that you might use ting does mobile phone service differently there's no contracts no overage fees or any other carrier nonsense you just pay a fair price for the talk text and data that you end up using each month and with ting if you use less you pay less for example if you're often around Wi-Fi why are you paying for a set monthly data plan ting gives you complete control over your cellphone account so you can set alerts and caps for each device on your account to keep your users in check and you can even disable texting calling or mobile data entirely if you wish nationwide LTE coverage means you'll have great network coverage from coast to coast and almost any phone will work with ting starting with your ancient Motorola RAZR that you've got sitting in your basement for some reason all the way up to 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