Are there other companies making progress in the augmented reality space? I've tried the Hololens v1 and was completely underwhelmed. The field of view is far too small and not impressive or immersive at all. Is the v2 much better? When will we get what Magic Leap was initially promising?
Hololens V2 is still not average-consumer-ready, but it is leaps and bounds closer to it than v1.
I tried both myself, and the biggest improvements in v2, in my opinion, are:
* Field of view. That’s the biggest one, as it felt like just a staring into a small rectangle with v1. With v2, I was actually able to read a NYT article in a web browser rather comfortably, moving the web browser around the room and such, with no significant field of view limitations felt. The limitations are still there, but you rarely ever hit them, while with v1 it was more like “almost the whole time you are using the device”. And it felt really annoying.
* UI/UX. Everything is much more intuitive and smooth to operate. After the initial 5-10 mins, i didnt feel any jankiness and was able to perform all operations with no struggle. Also, v2 works without that annoying clicker/pointer device (that was pretty much a must for v1) rather well, just by tracking hands. And i would say it is even more precise without that device than v1 was WITH the device.
* Ergonomics. The headset is lighter, feels more comfortable, doesn’t require as much fiddling around to get it sit well on your head. The flip up/down visor is such a great quality of life improvement, I am baffled that current consumer VR devices like Oculus or Vive haven’t implemented it. Especially since it would provide way more utility for VR than AR, because VR completely blocks out the real world.
As with all VR/AR products, we feel like we're on the verge of something great within the next 1-2 years and something revolutionary within the next 3-5, but at least now there's Focals https://www.bynorth.com/ and Apple's expected product (hiring posts, acquisitions, and leaks point to a large team at work on something) as well as the Hololens team still iterating, and to me the most interesting stuff is actual software applications. FB/Oculus showed some interesting stuff in their last conference: Work on 'social teleportation' aka scanning the environment and bringing it into mixed reality / VR in order to 'call' someone in mixed reality and teleport to their living room and sit with them in 3D space, better and better face-scanning tech to create digital reproductions of your face with facial expressions mirrored to avatars:
