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Interview On The AR Show Podcast
Jason McDowall asked me to be one of his first interviews for his new “The AR Show Podcast.” Jason asked many excellent questions covering my history in the electronics industry in part 1. In the upcoming part 2 of the interview, we will get into more direct discussions of AR including Magic Leap.
Jason has a B.S. and MS. Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, co-found three companies and worked as the director/VP/Head of Product at a couple of others. He is actively involved with an AR related startup that is currently in stealth mode. In between, he got his MBA and served in the U.S. Airforce. So he is not just some fan of AR, he understands technology.
If you are interested in AR, I think you will find this podcast interesting. I would recommend checking it out the show, and if you like it, it would help to subscribe, rate and review.
Below are some links to The AR Show Podcast:
Link To Show Notes on the Interview with Karl Guttag
Link to the iTunes page for The AR Show
Teaser – AR Camera-Man-Stand
I have been busy with some consulting and working on an article series I plan on calling “The Magic Leap Experience.” I will be reporting and demonstrating what is is like to wear the Magic Leap headset. I have made a 3-D printed model of the Magic Leap One “view simulator” based on the patent drawing and videos. The model lens barrels that give the same view of the real-world as the Magic Leap One with darkening lenses that block about the same amount of light.
It turns out it can be tricky to get a “through the lens” view of an AR headset. To do it well you need all the controls of the DLSR camera and interchangeable lenses. A standard, Digital SLR or even most of the mirrorless DSLR-like cameras are too big to fit unless you can rip the headset apart which often is not possible. I found that a Micro Four Thirds (MFT) would just fit with the camera turned sideways.
I 3-D printed a camera stand complete with nose, ears and the back of the head in anatomically correct positions and design to hold the camera so the stand could wear the headset. Below is my AR Camera-Man-Stand wearing the Magic Leap One view simulator.
Ooooh, the camera-man stand is a great idea! I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with it. I’m going to check out the podcast tonight, but it sounds very promising. I’ve lesrned so much about the reality of AR on this site, and it can only be a good thing to have you reach an even broader audience.
I finally finished all three podcasts. They were really fascinating and very enlightening, especially as its nicely placed into historical technological context.
As an engineer, you often recognise the dissonance between technological reality (or possibility), latent customer need as yet unmet by products/services and overwhelmingly negative commentary (from the media, vox pop, or threatened competition). Your example of the early days of personal computing was a good one. Do you have any other examples of (emerging) technologies that you think today’s pundits have gotten pretty much wrong?
Also, I think the 3D print you did for the Magic Leap One is fantastic. I look forward to your piece on human factors!
As an alternative idea (too late now) – it would probably be easier to design and print a minimalistic version specifically for the camera (no headband, monocular) that couples directly to the camera lens.
What focal length are you going to be using to simulate human eye’s FoV? Also, it might be worth noting that some elements will not be accurate even with a very close approximation of human eye FoV, as the actual focal length (and so, the perspective compression) will be different.