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by raesene4 3903 days ago
I'm not sure the narrow field of vision is that important for a dev. kit. The goal is to let people work out how best to produce apps for this kind of interface.

If they can't sort it for consumer release, that's a much bigger issue of course. My guess (and it's just that) would be that they'll be trying to improve field of vision for the consumer release, as from the reviews I read it was the one major negative people cited.
2 comments
lhl 3903 days ago
The reason the narrow FOV is important is because right now, the FOV is so small that you can't see a person's hands and face simultaneously at a comfortable conversation distance. There's a huge number of applications where you won't know the suitability, or even be able to visualize/test if it'll work well w/o knowing a target FOV for a consumer revision.
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boost_ 3903 days ago
well i would be more inclined to agree if they didn't announce their product with full view (at least 120ยบ) capability.

i mean, we all saw the videos from the announcement, and the "live" demos. and that was just pure lies no matter how you want to paint them.

also even if they didn't lie, don't we need the dev kit to have the same full capabilities as the final product? would you acquire an early dev kit for some new console, only to find out that it has less ram, gpu and/or cpu than the final product? how can we actually test it fully?

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pmelendez 3903 days ago
> would you acquire an early dev kit for some new console, only to find out that it has less ram, gpu and/or cpu than the final product? how can we actually test it fully?

I guess for MS is important to have a good portfolio of apps before the product is launched to the public. This class of unpolished dev kits are not unheard in MS world, Do you remember when the dev kits for the XBox were Apple Power Macs?

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boost_ 3903 days ago
they were, but the hardware was the same was it not?
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pmelendez 3903 days ago
Not really, just the processor was the same, but it was the best they could do in a short time.
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raesene4 3903 days ago
oh sure, in an ideal world the dev kit would have all the capabilities of the live consumer device.

But when you're developing a new category of device, that's not always possible.

For a very related example, look at the Oculus Rift approach to VR. they've been iterating on developer kits slowly improving the hardware while letting people feel out how to use that class of device.

Ultimately it'll be down to individual dev. houses whether it makes sense for them to invest at this stage, or wait till it's closer to consumer launch

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lukeschlather 3903 days ago
> only to find out that it has less ram, gpu and/or cpu than the final product?

That doesn't sound like a problem. Now if it turns out it is less powerful than the final product, that would be a serious issue.

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