I know I'm fighting the overwhelming tide here, but what the hell is "mixed reality"? What is "the metaverse"? For that matter what is "artificial intelligence"? Stop trying to dazzle and just use words, if the technology is revolutionary then it will be. An automobile is not the magic carpet, a cell phone is not a soulmate, etc. Otherwise fuck it -- TV is virtual reality, getting high augmented reality, TI-84 calculators are artificial intelligence, libraries are the metaverse, ...
These are not complex or dazzling terms. Artificial intelligence is software that seems intelligent. Virtual reality is a simulated environment that you can immerse yourself in through small screens and head tracking. Mixed reality is virtual reality overlayed on your real environment. See also "augmented reality". The metaverse is the web, but replace websites with 3d environments and add some sort of personal avatar, perhaps with some persistent identity.
People seem to think I have trouble understanding what the terms refer to. That's not my point -- you're right in that they are not complex.
But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking? Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"? A lot of software calculates probabilities over some distribution, why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"? Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"? Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"? Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?
I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it. And I do think in many cases it's meant to be dazzling and marketable rather than mean anything.
> But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?
Because this improves the quality of VR.
> Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"?
It is an extremely limited form of VR.
> why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"?
It is an extremely limited form of AI.
> Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"?
It is an extremely limited form of "self driving". (To be more precise, it's Level 1 self autonomy.)
> Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"
It is an extremely limited form of an agent.
> Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?
They are extremely limited forms of a cloud. (Though I would argue that a cloud needs to be provided by a third party.)
> I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it.
It sounds like you are refusing to understand how experiences fall somewhere on a spectrum. Is me and my friend tossing a ball around in my backyard "baseball"? What if we get 7 more friends and stand on a diamond and run around the bases? If I come back afterwards and say "we played baseball", even though it wasn't an MLB-regulated official game adjudicated by umpires, are you going to get really upset at me and say that I'm lying and I didn't really play "baseball"? The same principle applies to everything else you've listed here.
Limited says you. I'll pick on your example of VR. Tell a blind person that Everquest is a limited form of VR. You've just bought into "progress". These other experiences likely still haven't been beaten when strictly speaking about real depth as opposed to the superficial.
I think asking questions like that for rhetorical effect works in other places, but people here prefer to treat all questions as actual good-faith questions. Even ones that are clearly intended as rhetorical, like yours.
So, I don’t think they are misunderstanding you. It is almost like calling your bluff.
It is an interesting convention.
I don’t dislike these kinds of questions normally. But they do typically lead to a little bit of back and forth. On this site, most interactions are typically only 2-3 posts long. So I think it is better to just state your opinions directly.
> But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?
Because it's supposed to simulate reality -- and it does a great job of it. Everquest on a CRT doesn't simulate reality; it's nothing like reality. As the capability of something increases it becomes something else. Cruise control on a car that is sufficiently able to drive a car eventually becomes autopilot. Your own server isn't a cloud but put a large enough of them acting together in a way where each individual machine is entirely redundant and replaceable is a cloud. These words describe actual things. You are a person but why isn't any random clump of cells a person?
Everything is an evolution and everyone wants to be the next form of that evolution, even if it’s not. Marketing is always going to be one step ahead and once we actually do achieve what the last generation is selling, someone new will be selling you on the next step. Today’s “VR” will look extremely different from 2050 VR. That doesn’t mean today we don’t have some form of VR though. I don’t mind it, it’s a conceptual bucket for today’s expectations. And those of us who keep up with things (like all of us on HN for example) understand one another. What would you recommend we call all these things?
In many cases practitioners already have appropriately non-magical language, for clarity in communication.
*-reality interfaces are "immersive", they don't alter or recreate reality.
What artificial intelligence is is (statistical) "inference".
The cloud are various *-providers, "hosting providers", "storage services", etc. In aggregate, "external" or "3rd party" or "outsourced" (computing) infrastructure.
I said it elsewhere -- what frustrates me is that the rest is marketing, but some engineers are willing to accept and even reproduce it for some reason. When Facebook says they're releasing a new reality development platform for the metaverse though, we should roll our eyes, even if the technology is exciting.
These terms have a way of burning people out. I hesitate to use blockchain and A.I. in the same sentence because that's a sure sign the person doesn't have anything to say.
I hated the terms "blog" and "podcast" when they were new. I thought they were so dumb and unnecessary. But they are useful to describe actual things happening in the real word. This is just how the intersection of words and technology works.
I'm not concerned about trademarks. I'm concerned about what isn't trademarked -- language which instead we are all supposed to adopt and throw around as much as possible. As I said: * reality, AI, cloud, etc.
I get that loosely thrown around buzzwords are annoying, that sentiment I sympathize with, but your examples seem to contain multiple category errors e.g. HUD is a type of AR device, using cloud(noun) is outsourcing(verb) but outsourcing is definitely not appropriate term for cloud tech stacks, and so on.
Digital computer technologies aren't continuously differentiable so made up terms for grouping each distinct tech stacks is unavoidable. AI is linear algebra but grouping up all AI/ML/RL/perceptron into "electronic linear algebra technology" is not helpful.
> why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?
...because that's what it is? surely you understand that the difference between 3D, near-eye displays and traditional 2D screens warrants a different label
What the hell is "cloud computing"? What is "big data"? What is the "Internet of Things" or "SaaS" or "SEO"? For that matter what is "agile development"?
Just use words to describe technology? Every time I want to say "cloud computing" do I have to say "a service where you use the internet to access software, storage, and processing power that's run on a bunch of server located far away in data center that are owned and managed by a company that specializes in providing these services" instead?
In business you would traditionally call that sort of arrangement "outsourcing". The Internet of Things is okay -- it could have been worse, The Omninet or something.
That's the point though. Manufacturing, logistics, payroll, research, advertising, legal services, ... -- outsourcing certain functions to specialist, often (but not always) cheaper or more efficient companies is a typical business practice. The term is broadly applicable and used where ever this is the case. Since there are well-known business and organizational risks associated with outsourcing, it is conspicuous that we "migrate to the cloud" instead.
We outsourced our CRM system last year to a certain company. Or you could say we migrated it to the cloud. Either way we had to audit data policies, establish contracts with them, transfer data to them, ensure the same functionality and workflows were replicated, look at the quality and reliability of their system, assign points of contact, make redundant some roles within our company, etc... Many of the things you allude to are implied by either term.
Time-sharing and remote job entry were also reasonable back in the day. You bought time on a computer to run workloads. I don't think they fit so well with the "cloud computing" model in a modern sense technically, but I do envy them for being descriptive, logical terms that describe what is going on. We got the cloud from Google CEO Eric Schmidt who said to a conference in 2006
> What’s interesting is that there is an emergent new model. I don’t think people have really understood how big this opportunity really is. It starts with the premise that the data services and architecture should be on servers. We call it cloud computing — they should be in a “cloud” somewhere.
. . .
And so what's interesting is that the two – "cloud computing and advertising – go hand-in-hand. There is a new business model that's funding all of the software innovation to allow people to have platform choice, client choice, data architectures that are interesting, solutions that are new – and that's being driven by advertising.
Typically “mixed reality” is used to mean mixing your vision with virtual content. Whereas, “augmented reality” has typically meant displaying a live video feed on a single screen.
They are two quite different experiences and use cases. Once both are common it would make sense to call both augmented reality but I haven’t heard any better terms for describing the difference to people yet.
"Mixed" versus "augmented" reality have no real meaning, which is why there is confusion about which of the two modalities you're referring to.
My question is why avoid the terms overlay, superposition, display and even vision? Why instead purport to have altered reality?
Traditionally in aviation and the military they said "heads up display", because they can't afford to be obtuse. The display allows the pilot literally to keep their head up, instead of pointed down at their instruments. And I'm sure there was no truck for anyone who would have called it mixed or augmented reality.
The term "augmented reality" was coined to refer to see-through heads-up displays. Pilot synthetic vision system HUDs have been referred to as augmented reality for decades.
Best I can tell, mixed reality is augmented reality, but with mixed interaction. You hit the fake ball with a real bat in mixed reality and it bounces off the real wall. Maybe you even feel it hit.
I haven’t yet seen a phone Augmented Reality app described as Mixed Reality. I have seen HoloLens, Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro described as Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality.
I understand. I read Snow Crash. Besides the Metaverse there was also a nuclear powered dog.
My point is this -- by allusion to some concept with which an inventor wishes to form an association in the consumer's mind, their products are to be thought of as something different than they are, something too grand for plain language. This doesn't serve anyone but the inventor.
The "Internet with head-mounted display" is actually pretty cool technology, I'm not against it. My concern is that it shouldn't be sold or even referred to as an alternate form of reality. For the benefit of product sales, or else the egos of certain technologists, language becomes muddied and the very idea about what makes someone "a person" is bastardized. I think this is wrong and very short sighted.
If you use a term like "Virtual Reality" to describe things it eventually just becomes what people describe. Everybody knows what a VR headset is now. Everyone knows what VR is now. That is VR. The allusion is completely gone.
It's like describing snow to someone who has never seen it. No matter what they allusions they have about snow before they see it, once they've seen it, they know that is snow. And everyone they talk to will have the same meaning.
Same with Augmented reality, mixed reality, whatever. Once it becomes mainstream one of these terms will stick and that's just what it will be. Or it'll be so ingrained in the experience that we no longer even use a separate term to describe it.
Mostly games on Oculus. I haven't played online socially, just with friends IRL - one has a really sweet room all set up for VR. Also back in the 90s-00s, on the more primitive arcade systems. I haven't looked at the "metaverse" yet.
It's not like I'm against fun, and if there is more emphasis in the "metaverse" on meaningful social connection, that's good. Games and activities that get you moving around are also a very positive development. Wii was one of my favorite consoles (but was hardly immersive).
My brother is a former pilot and sprung for a full setup so he could play aviation sims. I haven't done a movie yet.
As I said I have nothing against headsets or immersive digital experiences. I do think in this day and age it's worth being more protective of the word "reality", compared to the 90s. Not just in a political sense. The core business of Facebook is advertising and data brokering. I know I might sound like a quack but they really do want to control perception of reality and for us to stare at their screen for as long as possible. Partly because there are ads there, and partly because as we do they stare back at us and take measurements. So that's why I don't accept their "Reality Lab", "The Metaverse", etc. marketing language, and to the extent they control VR it is not VR. They don't want to build the metaverse a la Snow Crash, it will be more like the social -> news feed -> analytica history, plus raking app developers.
