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by dataviz1000 1597 days ago
Do you think if they focused on creating a monochrome AR display first for applications in engineering and medicine it would have been adopted creating a path for the company to later research and develop a multicolor device?

Seems like they lost. Wouldn't it have been better to start simple? They never released a MVP.
2 comments
kguttag 1597 days ago
I don't think the issue is color. Their original product was trying to differentiate on Vergence Accommodation Conflict (VAC) and did a poor job of it. They were also going after the consumer with a product that was always going to be way too expensive for consumers with an image quality that was going to be too poor. They also made what I think is a bad set of trade-offs in terms of ergonomics and human factors.

The problem with medicine is that is it a tiny market. You can't justify the type of money they were trying to raise for that market. Under Abovitz, they were always a swing for the fences company.

All the above said, nobody I know of is making money selling AR headsets today. They are either subsidized by VC or other investment money or by big companies funding R&D efforts. The market is not other product areas where you can make money with an MVP and grow the product.

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dataviz1000 1597 days ago
I vaguely remember Rony and friends reversing the concept of the endoscope product they developed prior to have the moving fiber optic strand project light into the side of a lens which would channel the light and reflect it into eyes instead of capturing light and projecting it onto a light sensor in the case of the endoscope. Everything they did had fiber optic strands for RGB on that original idea. Having one color would have been an easier place to start. Nonetheless, it seems like they had other more difficult unrelated problems such as Vergence Accommodation Conflict.
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nine_k 1597 days ago
There used to be a number of good monochrome AR projectors for industrial and military use last few years.

They look pretty unlike a sleek consumer device, and are expensive, say, $1000 for just the display. For a business, it's peanuts; for a consumer and even prosumer device, it's a pretty significant sum, for a monochrome display not good for gaming.

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