Why did previous AR-glasses companies fail?

They fail because the user experience is not great and there is no compelling use case that has broad market appeal.

Probably the same reason 3D tv comes and goes every decade or so. Lots of excitement but people end up hating the glasses and it all fades away. It will be back.

Probably all sorts of reasons. Market/problem domain choice, strategy, IP, price, weight are all hard problems and then you get to extremely hard optics issues that require all sorts of tradeoffs.

Solve all that, and then you need to invent a whole new UX paradigm and integrate it with whatever solution it is supposed to solve. Take everything that needed to happen for the iphone and multiply it a few times.

The one I know most about seemed to be corrupt af from top to bottom, including all thru HR, incompetent af at many key upper-level positions, and had the worst culture of any company i've ever been at.

It's actually the experience that, 20+ years into IT, I finally started to believe that 'company culture' could potentially matter at least a little bit -- i.e. maybe it wouldn't make you win, but it could def help you lose.

The product management function, to the extent it existed, was ass. I suspect that was because it wasn't allowed to be run by people who either knew what they were doing, or were actually hired to do it -- not sure tho.

There were other factors too, that almost certainly played an important, potentially deciding, role in the company's fate -- but naming it/them would give it away.

So, any number of factors could have killed the company. imo.

I do remember being on one call where prospects were trying to invest in the company -- it just seemed like the tech, once experienced, could have that effect on some people.

I worked at a Glass startup for a while. Explorer Glass was really underpowered. Then Enterprise 1.0 was released, but still ran an old Glass OS (Android 4.4) and overheated (among other issues). The latest Enterprise 2.0 is really pretty good. But, there is/was no killer app. We tried remote support or medical applications, but few were really interested despite the seeming need for these types of products.

(note: I also worked with ODG, Vuzix and RealWear and demoed the Toshiba product)

Unmatched cost-application(utility)-need = tiny pool of buyers. Some needed it, some could afford it, some had a use for it. Cost was the major hill, lower that hill and more would buy, get it really low and the people that play with things, games etc would buy in. The solution is to make tiers based on computational and software capability, so you would have a broad pyramid of users that could buy a higher view if they had the $$ or needed it?

They weren't any good, and were a solution in search of a problem?

I'm awaiting Apple, they can do it potentially and are working on Apple Glasses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29451731.

probably batteru vs tether.

google glass is the correct way to expect AR to "win" but we are nowhere near the power density.

this time around is no different.

Every VR/AR solution I’ve ever seen has multiple problems.

1. It’s too expensive, even for the cheap ones.

2. It’s slow and performs badly, even for the expensive ones.

3. The display still looks pixelated and not fully immersive. Not even the most expensive ones I’ve ever heard of have solved this problem yet.

4. The ones that tend to do better in regard to multiple factors also tend to be tied to external computer hardware that is connected by a cable, because you still can’t cram all that horsepower into a device small enough to fit on your head.

5. Even if you solve all the above problems, there’s still the human problems.

One of the key human problems is the distance between your pupils. Each human on the planet has a slightly different measure in this regard than every other human, and all software I know of is only capable of handling a certain range of these distances. And there’s a really long tail of people who can’t be properly served by a given program, and even if they can be served by program A, there’s hundreds of other programs they might need/want to run on the system that they may not be well served by.

The other key human problem is the difference between your focal distance versus the angle of convergence for your eyes to meet that focal point.

In the real world, near objects are near, and you have to focus near on them plus you have to converge your eyes more to properly aim them at the focal point for that object. In the real world, far objects are far, and your focal convergence and focal distance likewise work hand-in-hand to be able to see that object clearly.

However, in the fake VR/AR world, your focal distance is always close to your face. Your glasses, or whatever they are, sit right in front of your eyeballs. But those systems still make you change the angle of your focal convergence for near objects versus far objects.

Humans just weren’t designed to have those two systems work independently of each other. It hurts the eyes. It hurts the brain. We have evolved over millions and billions of years to be where we are today, and throughout virtually all of the history of humanity, focal convergence and focal distance have always worked at the same time and in harmony with each other — at least for most of the people who can actually see properly.

Outside of VR/AR, if these two systems don’t work together for you, then you are most likely functionally blind — you can’t properly focus on objects that are near or far, or you can’t properly converge your eyes on objects that are near or far. Or maybe both.

IMO, the disconnect between focal convergence and focal distance is the killer. This is what killed 3D movies, it is what killed 3D TV displays, and it will also kill VR.

However, it might not kill AR, depending on certain implementation details of how the additional objects are overlaid on top of the real world that you can still see through the AR system. I’d keep my eyes open on the AR space, to see if someone can work some real magic.