Karl Guttag

Let's imagine you aspire to 1080p. AR glasses can more or less provide that as a 4 m screen at 2 m distance, with pov angles similar to a laptop screen. With head tracking, that can be a 1080p portal into a larger workspace. For 1:1 realistic motion, notice how far you have to move your head to point your nose at imaginary laptop screens above or to the side of your real one. Unrealistic motion[1] can reduce that, but I don't know if it's available off-the-shelf.

VR headsets trade pixel density for FOV. An Apple Vision Pro has a PPD similar to AR glasses in the center, but that's ~halved by the time you reach the edge of a 4 m 1080p screen at ~30 deg from center[2]. That blur makes eye motion across the screen less available. Try using a laptop screen while keeping your nose pointed at your focus. Head motion gives you greater apparent resolution by temporal supersampling - someone else will have to weigh in with Vision Pro experience.

Giant floating monitors may have been technically possible in non-glasses non-VR HMDs for a few years now. We're mostly limited by pixels-per-degree, and that by panel resolution, rather than optics. There have repeatedly been 2x or more higher res panels available in the sizes used in HMDs. But the HMD market is VR games, which wants large FOV for immersion, is cost sensitive, has optics limitations, and needs higher frame rates, which with GPU and bandwidth limitations (and eye tracking unavailable), makes resolution a "you couldn't use it…

The "About" link on the upper left of the site's homepage goes here: https://kguttag.com/about-karl-guttag/

But I found his blog a couple years ago and have been reading it ever since. Karl follows VR/AR display tech obsessively, goes to all the shows/conferences and talks with all the companies - then does highly technical, in-depth write-ups of what's new and notable - which often includes his unvarnished opinions. His blog is read by basically everyone in the industry, so all the companies give him briefings and demos despite the fact he'll call it like he sees it. Which is why he's pretty much my go to source when any new VR/AR display tech gets announced.

Even more valuable to me, he'll mention when companies are lagging or falling short of expectations and he'll even speculate about where things could (or should) go. His blog is basically like having a buddy who's an expert industry insider who'll tell you what he really thinks over a beer - which is pretty invaluable if you're someone who's interested and technical but doesn't follow this space that closely. That doesn't mean Karl's opinion is always correct but it is certainly well-informed and usually supported with technical data - although he did say this post was just a quick note that a video was leaked. He'll probably have a real post after it's announced and a deep dive once he gets his hands on one.

Interesting fact: Karl's career was as a chip architect. He designed key parts of the the Texas Instruments…

Has anyone posted a deep dive yet on pinning down which exact waveguide design is being used and which exact projector (based on past papers, M&A activity, key hires, etc.)? I'm surprised Karl Guttag hasn't published anything yet about either Orion or Spectacles 24. https://kguttag.com/ His blog is normally the definitive source for reverse-engineering AR optics systems from public information. Maybe someone posted a deep dive on Reddit or something ?

I'll post links here that could serve as a starting point:

- The microLED display panel vendor is likely to be Plessey: https://www.uploadvr.com/facebook-plessey-microled-deal/

- The waveguides are likely being produced "directly" by a contract manufacturer working under the direction of Meta's in-house team, and reporting appears to confirm that Meta is procuring the raw materials directly: "The silicon carbide waveguides are also proving challenging to procure. The material can deliver a wider field of view than the glass waveguides used in current transparent AR headsets, but it is also incredibly expensive. Further, Ma's report explained that because the material is used in military radars and sensors, the US government imposes strict export controls on it. That means glasses using it will have to be assembled inside the US, significantly raising the production cost, despite most of the manufacturing and components coming from China and Taiwan." …

Paid PR piece, anyone? And still the writer is reaching so far they're going all the way around the world back into their own ass trying to praise this thing.

<rant> I'm so fucking done with MagicLeap. Their head conman CEO, who is, absolutely and by all accounts, an absolutely fantastic showman and salesman, has taken so much money and so much hype that it's not going to end well.

Pretty much EVERYONE who has tried the magic leap headset has basically said 'meh'. It blocks around 85% of the incoming light [1], for fuck's sake. That's the first of a very long list of 'meh'.

Why am I so pissed off about this? Because it's going to crash the AR industry (already on its knees because of an overhyped VR industry) and set it back years. Already, and for years now, no one wants to invest in an AR hardware startup because "how could you possibly beat Magic Leap?

Fuck those guys. And the dumb investors who let themselves be fondled into throwing billions? Shame on you!
</rant>

The same thing happened to lightfield imaging with Lytro (who took "only" a few hundred million in comparison). Lightfield imaging has been stagnant ever since they took too much money and sucked all the oxygen out of an entire industry.

[1] https://www.kguttag.com/2018/09/26/magic-leap-review-part-1-the-terrible-view-through-diffraction-gratings/

AR -- headsets are too expensive but nowhere near good enough. See

https://kguttag.com/

VR -- the hardware is fine for sedentary activities. if you want to get up and walk around the problems get big. tracking is one thing, but you have to make the whole environment safe (no tripping on couches, pets, etc.)

I would love to rent out an old big box store and turn it into a "VR park" where people would play physically intense games like laser tag. You have to worry about people crashing into structural supports, taking hard falls wearing $3000 worth of gear, running past barriers you enforce with the VR system, etc.

What holds up VR now is that the software is not that compelling. VR games aren't really better than regular video games. The best applications so far are "watch a movie in an imaginary movie theater", "use your computer in an environment with many virtual screens".

????

the hype was around their fiber scanning display patents, they were showing investors a totally new technology that projects images into your eyeballs. There are numerous articles describing the patented pie-in-the-sky vs the state-of-the-art, just one example here: [0]

> They don’t even have an decent brightness control of the pixels and didn’t even attempt to show color reproduction (requiring extremely precise laser control). Yes the images are old, but there are a series of extremely hard problems outlined above that are likely not solvable which is likely why we have not seen any better pictures of an FSD from ANYONE (ML or others) in the last 7 years.

Magic Leap was unable to improve and miniaturize this technology - its a dead end - so they ended up using the same tech as everyone else

[0] https://kguttag.com/2016/11/28/magic-leap-no-fiber-scan-display-fsd/