Back a few years ago, I had built an "industrial equipment guided-repair" app for the Microsoft HoloLens. We decked out an air compressor with with IoT-enabled sensors for various things (the specifics don't matter as it was just a demo, but it was stuff like temperature, vibration, etc.). The app used 3D object recognition and overlayed live sensor data, graphs of historic data, disassembly explosion animations, and step-by-step guides for performing maintenance (e.g. replacing air filters, lubricating components).
It was such a great use case for AR. The app even won a few small awards.
Then the word came from on high that we needed to redo everything on the iPad. Ultimately, it came down to the parent company of the company I worked for having Microsoft as an auditing client and Apple as a technology partner. So we weren't "allowed" to have a relationship with Microsoft (even though one of the point of not being directly in the parent company was to shield us from those conflict of interest concerns) and we were being directed to demonstrate a relationship with Apple.
Switching to having the tablet in one hand and trying to do things with the air compressor with the other was hot garbage. We had a thing that was glitzy and fun and and useful and then completely threw away every bit of substance in the app.
I tried so many different input modalities with the iPad to try to salvage some semblence of usefulness out of it, including camera-based hand-tracking. You could basically only comfortably view data. Any level of interaction directly with the machine was gone. Worst of all, people concurrently using the app from different devices kept running into each other because they were so tunnel-visioned by the tablet.
I don't think I've ever been so professionally disappointed in my career.
For other people, you probably won’t have to do as much work since this is already built into Meta’s Quest platform (https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/19/23031996/meta-quest-vr-ar...), and I’m assuming that Apple’s upcoming Reality OS will have this baked in as well.
Did Google cancel their AR framework? I thought they had a publicly released AR library on Android already.
So I'm a minor contributor to the posted project. And my personal opinion is that phone AR and headset AR will be completely different use cases.
Phones are everywhere because they fit in your pocket. Headsets never will, so will be specialty hardware. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll be normal to walk around with headsets everywhere, but I just can't see it happening.
Phone AR is technologically worse, and the version we released today is performance-wise not as good as the version with extra hardware we released 3 years ago. But it's slowly improving, and convenient form factors often beat more cumbersome devices over the long term, e.g. phones vs desktops. So I they can exist side-by-side, but headsets will be only used in some scenarios, while phones will be used by everyone.
> convenient form factors often beat more cumbersome devices over the long term
You worked on this so know more than me. As a user, I'd find it very cumbersome to hold my phone constantly for AR. I would much prefer glasses if they're comfortable and look normal.
It's definitely a consideration. The way I think of AR is:
AR/VR headset = desktop
AR glasses (2025+) = laptop
phone AR = phone
So phone AR has ergonomic challenges kind of like the small screen and slow speeds that smartphones had when they first came out. You'd use phone AR to throw a pokeball outside, or use phone AR to touch up your virtual makeup / decor for AR selfies like you do with phone selfies (which are similarly ergonomically challenging). When AR glasses become an everyday thing, they'll be the workhorses and you'll take it around with you while traveling or for work. Finally, for dedicated production tasks, you'll get your AR/VR headsets and use it in pre-specified locations.
It was such a great use case for AR. The app even won a few small awards.
Then the word came from on high that we needed to redo everything on the iPad. Ultimately, it came down to the parent company of the company I worked for having Microsoft as an auditing client and Apple as a technology partner. So we weren't "allowed" to have a relationship with Microsoft (even though one of the point of not being directly in the parent company was to shield us from those conflict of interest concerns) and we were being directed to demonstrate a relationship with Apple.
Switching to having the tablet in one hand and trying to do things with the air compressor with the other was hot garbage. We had a thing that was glitzy and fun and and useful and then completely threw away every bit of substance in the app.
I tried so many different input modalities with the iPad to try to salvage some semblence of usefulness out of it, including camera-based hand-tracking. You could basically only comfortably view data. Any level of interaction directly with the machine was gone. Worst of all, people concurrently using the app from different devices kept running into each other because they were so tunnel-visioned by the tablet.
I don't think I've ever been so professionally disappointed in my career.