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Adjusting to Google Glass May Be Hard
New submitter fluxgate writes "Steve Mann (whom you might know for his having pioneered wearable computing as a grad student at MIT back in the 1990s) writes in IEEE Spectrum magazine about his decades of experience with computerized eyeware. His article warns that Google Glass hasn't been properly engineered to avoid creating disorientating effects and significant eyestrain. While it's hard to imagine that Google has missed something fundamental here, Mann convincingly describes why Google Glass users might experience serious problems. Quoting: 'The very first wearable computer system I put together showed me real-time video on a helmet-mounted display. The camera was situated close to one eye, but it didn’t have quite the same viewpoint. The slight misalignment seemed unimportant at the time, but it produced some strange and unpleasant results. And those troubling effects persisted long after I took the gear off. That’s because my brain had adjusted to an unnatural view, so it took a while to readjust to normal vision. ... Google Glass and several similarly configured systems now in development suffer from another problem I learned about 30 years ago that arises from the basic asymmetry of their designs, in which the wearer views the display through only one eye. These systems all contain lenses that make the display appear to hover in space, farther away than it really is. That’s because the human eye can’t focus on something that’s only a couple of centimeters away, so an optical correction is needed. But what Google and other companies are doing—using fixed-focus lenses to make the display appear farther away—is not good.'"
So, what's his view on POV porn on these devices?
Come on! You know you're getting these just for that!
The other uses are just rationalizations!
A mugger attractant that's more visible than white Apple earphones.
From CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/25/tech/innovation/google-glass-privacy-andrew-keen
#ifihadglass ... might be the end of privacy as we knew it. Does anyone doubt this will be used as yet another way for Google to harvest our data?
Reminds me of when I was a kid and I heard about this guy who, as an experiment, wore a pair of glasses that inverted what he saw. After a while (weeks, I think), his brain adjusted by flipping the image upright. When he stopped wearing the glasses, it took some time for his vision to return to normal.
[citation needed]
He's probably right but the fact you look like a penis and people will assume you're recording them and get pissed is reason enough it'll fail even if google wants to rip on their own mobile OS and call it emasculating.
They should attach a little handle to the nose bridge so people can easily adjust the fixed focus lenses.
People will still flock to it. Then, others will capitalise on treating the ailments caused by the optional eye-wear.
Reminds me of an expiremt where we wore glasses upside down for 4days, then took them off and normal vision was flipped.
"But what Google and other companies are doing—using fixed-focus lenses to make the display appear farther away—is not good."
Clearly people have put a lot of time and money into this, what's stopping them from compensating for this in some way?
the Nintendo Virtualboy.
You heard it here first.
with You Could Be Mine blasting on my headphones and saying "Jarvis bring up Scarlett Johansson naked....enhance"
Hard to imagine Google missing something fundamental? No it's not. Sure, Google's business is powered by search, but consider the age of the papers they'd have had to read to know about Steve Mann's work. 30 years? The engineers fooling with Google Glass are younger than the papers in question. :P Which means they suffer from that peculiar brand of cognitive myopia that afflicts their whole generation: if it's not digital, it doesn't exist.
Those papers are no doubt available solely in dead tree form. Or possibly they're available through Excelsior in a crappy scanned form for outrageous fees, which again, these young engineers aren't going to even consider. Who pays for digital information like that? Nobody. (If you're a Google engineer, that's what you think.)
In any case, it wouldn't be the first time a wheel was reinvented badly when it came to electronic gadgets. Between engineering arrogance (nobody could possibly have thought of this brilliant idea before I did) and corporate policy (by all that's holy, do NOT do a patent search on the subject), it happens frequently. Nor is that likely to stop any time soon. Google's stated goal of cataloging all the world's information is a long way from being achieved, especially when there are plenty of forces trying to prevent the digitization of that information.
The word is disorenting, I have been reliably informated. Your misuse of suffixes must be cessated and desistated, or your poetic license will be cancellated. Although "(dis)orientation," "information," "cessation," and "cancellation" are verbs, the corresponding verbs are "(dis)orient," "inform," "cease," and "cancel" -- no "-ate" at the end.
Well, it would have shown up i the testing; which they have done a lot of.
Maybe it's better to say:
I find it hard to believe a company that has tested this device wouldn't have had this problem reported to them?
Not that any company is perfect, nor that spending more means it won't be flawed, but It's not a small problem to have detected.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Isn't it?
Sounds like this guy spent thirty years of his life discovering problems, and failing to figure out solutions.
In what testing? The testing conducted exclusively by Google, and a hand-picked bunch of people who lined up eagerly to suck their cock and pay $1500 for the privilege of an Alpha-quality device?
Yeah, I'm sure those people are likely to have: 1) Used it out and around long enough to have actually identified problems with it; 2) the balls to tell the emperor he has no clothes.
They lined up to PAY GOOGLE for the privilege of being testers.
That's pretty much a guarantee you're going to get your dick sucked in any review.
TFA:
The Target Acquisition and Designation Sights, Pilot Night Vision System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Acquisition_and_Designation_System,_Pilot_Night_Vision_System) for the AH-64 uses a single eye piece. So it seems like this type of thing can and has been done (and this one is pretty cool, it tracks the head movements of the pilot and points the 50 caliber cannon where he/she looks). The single eye piece doesn't seem to cause problems for the pilots that use these systems. Not saying I am interested in Google Glass, but they should have been able to figure out the problem discussed in the TFA.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I don't know, some of us are very sensitive to these sorts of things, while others not so much.
People still think I'm making stuff up when I say "shakey cam movies make me vomit", or Portal 2 for that matter. Most people have absolutely no problems, a few feel mildly queasy. But some of us get physically ill. Shakey cam movies continue, and don't announce themselves as such until AFTER they've taken your money, and some video game companies still restrict FOV options or don't provide ways of disabling "head bob", and other disorienting effects. They simply don't believe there's a problem, and their testers aren't picking up (perhaps being desensitized to it from long hours anyway).
I don't think they missed anything "fundamental", but it would not surprise me at all if they missed something significant but outside their test group.
I doubt it....
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
And those troubling effects persisted long after I took the gear off. That’s because my brain had adjusted to an unnatural view, so it took a while to readjust to normal vision.
Hey, I'd rather have the direct neural link too. But seriously? Whoever manages to come up with a truly viable wearable "augmented reality" system wins. Why the hell would I want to take it off?
Let my brain adjust to having my left higher and further to the left! If I really need to react on a moment's notice to a loss of the HUD image - I'll close one eye.
I think everyone would have more confidence if they, you know, brought in the pioneer in augmented reality to help develop the first large scale consumer augmented reality device.
...writing out millions of checks for 1 dollar and nine cents! I see history may repeat itself.
Having used one, this guy's just flat-out wrong. More than likely he's trying to push his own solutions and wants to tear down the competition.
So what's supposed to happen when my eye is already malfunctioning and i need glasses anyway? Can i adjust the focal point? How does it compensate for any cylindrical adjustments i might need? Does this work when it projects through my glasses? As an already hipster-before-it-was-hip, wearing glasses because I need to see sharp, i've never seen any of these questions answered... Will I feel disabled because I can't see what's projected by google glasses?
Quack damn you!
such colorful language... Is that you Linus ;-)
But this post should be modded up. I cannot play 3D games, the physics is completely wrong for me. 5-10 minutes, and I get serious headache and nausea.
Technology isn't for the dummies. This kind of thing won't be difficult for the tech savvy and intelligent to adapt to. Sorry, maybe I'm just a little irate with all the lowest common denominator compromises lately. I just wish there were more intelligent folks so we could fully utilize technology without having to dumb it down for the LCDs.
Judging by the PR page (third image from bottom), the GG can have your conventional lenses attached. But it looks like you can't wear regular glasses and Glass, so you'd need to get your Glass customised with your lenses. [Obligatory "Yo dawg..." taken as read.]
However, in some of the early demos, the display itself can be removed from its own frame and attached to any suitable pair of glasses, with the display sitting just in front of your normal lens. Ie, the included frame is just for people who don't wear glasses. So we may be in luck, we might be able to buy the display without the expensive custom frame. But it's interesting/creepy that in all current PR images (I mean all of them) none of the Glass users wear glasses.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
It's another massive failure of Google (viz Wave)
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It doesn't matter. We have TWO articles on Slashdot in the last couple hours about people re-engineering the wheel and ignoring everything that came before. All these hotshot idiots with their attempts to get into orbit "their own way" are no different than Google Glass doing it "their own way" and ignoring all prior art, prior study, and prior expertise.
I've met Steve Mann. He's misunderstood, horribly geeky and incredibly brilliant. I was shocked that Google hadn't consulted with him first before they decided to chunk together their own wearable HUD. Mann has been doing this for longer than Google has existed. He is a walking laboratory and he knows, from experience, what the fuck he is talking about.
I'm sure Von Braun is laughing from his grave at these space jockeys, saying "You did WHAT?" Similarly Mann is shaking his head at Google.
It will be the next segway.!
So... Steve Mann - a guy who's known for having pioneered the idea of "wearable computing," and had researched extensively in this field, says "They missed some things and it's going to cause some problems."
J. Random Fuckstick (submitter) responds with, "It's hard to imagine that Google has missed something fundamental here."
Do we really need to suck google's dick THAT badly, that we can't possibly criticize their products by pointing out the design flaws that will cause problems?
Jesus christ.
Merely posing a statement in favor of Google's (rather fucking well-established) design team is now suddenly sucking Google's dick?
Jesus Christ, I'd hate to think what sexual innuendo's you'd pin on him if he downright called Mann a fucking liar...
I don't know, some of us are very sensitive to these sorts of things, while others not so much.
People still think I'm making stuff up when I say "shakey cam movies make me vomit", or Portal 2 for that matter. Most people have absolutely no problems, a few feel mildly queasy. But some of us get physically ill. Shakey cam movies continue, and don't announce themselves as such until AFTER they've taken your money, and some video game companies still restrict FOV options or don't provide ways of disabling "head bob", and other disorienting effects. They simply don't believe there's a problem, and their testers aren't picking up (perhaps being desensitized to it from long hours anyway).
I don't think they missed anything "fundamental", but it would not surprise me at all if they missed something significant but outside their test group.
My sympathies for your condition (and I mean that), but you now KNOW about this flaw, so they'll be no "taking" of your money as if you didn't have a clue. That being said, If you still hand it to them, I doubt my sympathy will remain intact. You of all people should know by now that companies do not make products that cater to 100% of humans. This unfortunately, is likely going to be one of them. But you probably knew that simply by looking at it from day one, knowing your particular quirks.
Guys, guys, please use the correct term: Jesus G. Christ. Otherwise, you'll have to hand in your google fanboi card at the entrance.
No, saying "Google's design is nice," or "I think it sounds like a cool project," is perfectly reasonable.
Dismissing the quite-reasonable points of the guy who more or less invented the product category to which your device belongs with a blithe, "i'm sure GOOGLE couldn't have missed anything!" is "sucking Google's dick."
It'd be like me deciding to implement some sorting algorithms, and Don Knuth saying, "Well, the way you've implemented those is pretty inefficient," and me responding to that criticism with, "Dude, I've written some enterprise business software. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have missed anything."
When an expert in the specific field is telling you "you overlooked some stuff, and it's gonna cause you some issues," only a fool ignores that feedback, or dismisses it because "I heard the people at Google were super smart. That guy is probably just jealous."
Have you read the fucking article?? The problem is eye-strain, and its effects are probably not recognizable in the short term.
RTFA, idiot:
"Using lenses in this way forces one eye to remain focused at some set distance while the focus of the other eye shifts according to whatever the wearer is looking at, near or far. Doing this leads to severe eyestrain, which again can be harmful, especially to children."
This http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301145/ is a great documentary about Steve Mann and his early, but advanced for the time, eyeglasses which already did a lot of what Google has tried to prototype. But the documentary has disappeared. It is not for sale, no longer showing at festivals, and not available to download or torrent. Has anyone kept a copy of this very interesting documentary?
I find it hard to believe a company that has tested this device wouldn't have had this problem reported to them?
How many years did it take to create 3D movie glasses that didn't give a sizable proportion of people headaches.
Well, lets see. They started doing mass market 3D movies in the 1950s. And despite stepwise improvements since then, 60 years later, 3D glasses still give a sizable proportion of people headaches.
Of course Google Glass is going to give people headaches. For similar reasons: If the focus and parallax of your two eyes don't match, you'll get headaches. Or at least a lot of people will.
The camera was situated close to one eye, but it didnâ(TM)t have quite the same viewpoint.
But I don't think that Glass is meant to be an AR system. It's a display in the corner of your vision, so it can't overlay things on the center of your vision (as was made clear in the latest 'preview' video).
It's this misunderstanding that might kill Glass, people have unrealistic expectations.
Google have been testing it internally for a long time, and judging by their other products they seem to be quite good at it. You would think that the developers getting headaches and eye strain constantly would be a pretty big and impossible to ignore problem.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mann has written papers and I'm sure they must have read them. He isn't the only expert in the world, so presumably they hired some other people who know about this stuff.
Bottom line is that so far no-one has reported having issues with glass, but we won't really know until lots of people have them on for extended periods.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Considering his main complaint is about replacing the users vision with that from a camera is moot I think it's fair to say that the skepticism is well placed.
Google Glass doesn't have a complete AR viewfinder. It's screen is only in the corner of your eye, so you don't have to look at it unless you want to.
And testing the effect he describes doesn't take any fancy equipment either. Just try walking around by looking through the viewfinder of your smartphone or compact camera. Even that is quite disorienting.
I wonder how different the Glass experience will be for those of us who have atypical vision. I can see fine, but I focus with one eye at a time. I had surgery on both eyes for strabismus as a child. Now you can't tell that my eyes are slightly out of alignment unless you get close and are very observant, or I get tired and they start going off in different directions on their own :)
Anyway, this has caused issues for me when trying to use binoculars (I just end up using them one-eyed like a spyglass). If I had the Glass interface on my non-dominant eye it's quite possible I could walk around and not even notice the interface until I make the effort to bring it into focus.
Makes me wish I had the 1500 to become an early adopter and report on it.
...he sure has a sticky "memory buffer":
From the current article:
"The impact and fall injured my leg and also broke my wearable computing system, which normally overwrites its memory buffers and doesn’t permanently record images. But as a result of the damage, it retained pictures of the car’s license plate and driver, who was later identified and arrested thanks to this record of the incident."
From his blog, in relation to an incident at McDonalds (http://eyetap.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/unanswered-letter-to-mcdonalds-head-of.html)
"With all the video surveillance cameras that you have in your establishment you should be able to do better than merely "witness statements" as the only evidence to stand against the solid evidence that your employees generated in my wearable computing system by damaging it and thus preventing it from overwriting its circular buffer"
I know that I won't pay money for shakey cam movies and I avoid certain 3D game genres (like FPS, which is a lot of games). However I do not know what will upset me until it does, or someone else with similar issues warns me.
Do I sink quite a bit on google glass, w/o knowing if it makes me sick? Probably not, and this article helps me want to steer clear of it unless/until they fix the problem.
Sure you can't cater to 100% of anyone, and if it's expensive to do so I understand. It may be a long time before I can use this product. Or else man up and see if I can desensitize myself by repeated exposure and a lot of hurling. But some things are easy to do and should be done, ramps aren't much more expensive than stairs just to go up a curb. Shakey cam is an example of something mind bogglingly stupid, we "invented" this recently for some film-school theory bullshit. Most movies are properly shot, just a few do this to be cutesy. Similarly it is not hard to have an FOV adjuster or to disable head-bob (which itself is something we invent for false "authenticity").
I don't think there's anything wrong with one expert telling people they're doing it wrong. Maybe his proposal is not easy to implement, but I hear tell Google has a lot of good engineers. Engineers hear "problem" and want to fix them. Only the MBA types put their head in the sand and hide, hoping to make a quick buck and retire to a private island.
Unless you happen to work for Google, I really don't think you're in the position to comment on their usability work. Google developers versus the everyday consumer have VERY different needs and ideas on what is comfortable, functional and acceptable. Being so close to a project will blind you to some very obvious issues, so it's not surprising that something would slip.
[citation provided]
George Stratton did an experiment on perceptual adaptation in the 1980's.
This differs completely from the adaptation of expectation that takes place when lens of propaganda driven public education is promoted, a priori, then erased over time by continual exposure to reality. You don't just wake up one day and figure out that the American Dream should be referred to as the Grand Illusion. It takes much longer to figure out that your government, and other 'fiduciaries', might not be up to the task of reflecting your expectations. Your intellectual habits suffer from confirmation bias .