Amazon Is Quietly Developing a 'New-To-World' AR Product (protocol.com) 33
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Protocol: Add Amazon to the long list of companies looking to build a more immersive future: The ecommerce giant has been looking to hire a number of people for an unannounced AR/VR product in recent months. Among the roles Amazon is looking to fill are a wide variety of senior positions for computer vision scientists, designers, program managers, product managers, researchers and technologists, suggesting that the company is looking to build out a substantive team. "You will develop an advanced XR research concept into a magical and useful new-to-world consumer product," one of the job listings reads, using the industry shorthand for extended reality, which can encompass both AR and VR. Another job listing describes the initiative related to "XR/AR devices," and states that eventual hires will be part of "a greenfield development effort" that will include "developing code for early prototypes through mass production."
Amazon is looking to hire a UX designer to work on "the core system interface along with end-user applications spanning from multi-modal interfaces to 3D AR entertainment experiences," and suggest that applicants should have the ability to "think spatially, with 3D design experience in motion design, animation [and] AR/VR, games," among other things. Applicants for a senior product manager position are told they should have "experience building deeply technical products, e.g. AI/ML, robotics, games." [...] Interestingly, a number of the job listings describe the project as related to a "magical and useful, new-to-world XR consumer product," suggesting it may be looking to establish a new product category. Others even describe it as a "a new-to-world smart-home product."
Amazon is looking to hire a UX designer to work on "the core system interface along with end-user applications spanning from multi-modal interfaces to 3D AR entertainment experiences," and suggest that applicants should have the ability to "think spatially, with 3D design experience in motion design, animation [and] AR/VR, games," among other things. Applicants for a senior product manager position are told they should have "experience building deeply technical products, e.g. AI/ML, robotics, games." [...] Interestingly, a number of the job listings describe the project as related to a "magical and useful, new-to-world XR consumer product," suggesting it may be looking to establish a new product category. Others even describe it as a "a new-to-world smart-home product."
First VR application (Score:2, Funny)
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Why is "Privacy Door" in quotes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Stop with the new shit (Score:3)
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Bad software devs are primarily interested in creating new things (features, applications, etc.) and don't care much for maintaining stuff that they made previously. If it's not new and shiny, it's not worth their attention.
Good software devs are primarily interested in maintaining existing software (bug fixes, performance improvements, minimizing BC breaks, etc.) and don't care much for new and shiny things.
Guess which type of developer Amazon hires? Guess what type of news generally shows up on /.?
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Phones are already bad enough (Score:3)
Why would I want the internet in my face all day every day? I wouldn't
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Why would I want the internet in my face all day every day? I wouldn't
I feel like that statement is quite ironic since you seem to have gone to the internet to complain about how much you're exposed to the internet.
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It is ironic, and because I use it doesn't mean I have to like it, and I don't want more of it.
Oh, Great. (Score:2)
The one company I trust as little as Facebook with my personal data wants me to carry an active camera—that they control—everywhere I go?
slow clap
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I wish we could learn from past mistakes ... (Score:2)
... and not have Facebook, Apple, Amazon all building their wall gardens of the Metaverse. This should be treated like an iteration of the Internet, not some race for lock-in.
I wish all the technologies leaders could come together and agree that this is a thing that's happening, and come up with a protocol and set of standards. Let the hardware differentiate by capabilities and uses. Want to battle with light sabers? You'll need the hardware that supports that fidelity of movement, and by access to the game
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There's no reason any of these devices can't be software upgraded to work with a new standard. We can go ahead and have multiple iterations before we get there. Nobody who can't afford to waste money on this stuff should be playing early adopter anyway.
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Arguably, this isn't 'a thing that is happening' at all. This is just a thing they really want to happen.
But interest and potential participation of people is extremely low. (And if you think otherwise, it's probably because you're on this site in the first place, and are in your own tech bubble :D
Vision of the future (Score:3)
The elementary school is replaced with a new STEM academy, where all the instruction is done using VR headsets. What it's really doing is training kids for the gamification of work, and preparing them to be drones in the gig economy. Slashdot has already discussed this [slashdot.org].
Alright... I give up. I'm out. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want AR in my life. I don't think the world needs to be any more (dis)connected. I think people are better served talking a walk than strapping on a headset. The world doesn't need higher-resolution, more immersive games. There's nothing to be gained by an improved ability to saturate yourself with your own predetermined ideas.
The technical world increasingly sucks. And this is from a guy who has been extremely technical for over 40 years, ever since I bought my Vic-20 with money I made delivering newspapers.
Get off my lawn. The next $50 I spend will be to replenish my tackle box and renew my fishing license. Spring is here.
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I don't want AR in my life.
Don't... buy it? Its a strange concept I know.
Preemptive (Score:3)
I see this as a preemptive move in reaction to the ongoing efforts of Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, etc. Its possible that some iteration of AR could eventually catch on and take off, these companies want to have some kind of offering and experience with it or be left behind. It is a smart investment.
There are loads of challenges of course, and the hardware seems like the biggest one to me. You will need to make something unobtrusive enough that people are willing to wear it around, but still have lots of compute/visualization power and adequate battery life. AR is way easier to do than VR however, no need for a full-immersion headset.
Maybe the majority of the compute power, battery, and internet connectivity would reside in your cellphone. It would feed some kind of super-small and lightweight face-mounted display or maybe even contact lenses with embedded electronics.
Personally I'd love to work on a project like that. If you are getting paid to think intensively about how things like this could work and have good collaborators, a lot of novel ideas and solution can come up that people would not normally be reaching.
Alternatively... (Score:2)
...You could put down $5 and reserve a Tilt 5 [tiltfive.com] AR system, which has been steadily developed and perfected by a former Valve engineer for the last ten years, and has already started shipping initial units to Kickstarter backers.
It's very clever, actually. Y'know that retro-reflective paint they use on traffic signs that reflects light straight back at you? Tilt 5 uses surfaces made of that material to reflect 3D images projected from the glasses themselves directly back to your eyes. Place a retro-reflec
Just a video game... (Score:2)
Okay, so just hire a bunch of video game developers and make your 3D world. It's just the screen is now on your head and the controls are wireless and in each hand.
That's pretty cool compared to what I grew up on, but once you have multiple monitors or a really large display that takes up a large portion of your view, the headset is just some heavy thing on my head.
I also know I'm not going to be jumping up and down or dancing around for really all that long. It sounds like a great idea for an interactive,
Amazon is looking to hire a UX designer (Score:2)
Oh good. Maybe they can also hire someone to make the AWS Console not be unusable.
AR / VR is the new 3D TV (Score:2)
Every few years, TV manufactures renew their push to get people to buy 3D TVs, calling them the "wave of the future." The problem is, most of us aren't that serious about the realism of what we watch on TV. We get up in the middle of a show and get a snack, or message friends. TV isn't the very center of our lives, so 3D TV just isn't that attractive.
AR / VR takes the 3D concept even farther. Some people will think it's great, some will get addicted. The rest of us just don't care about it very much.
Oh gees. (Score:2)
Do you all remember the Fire Phone? Yes? If so, you can imagine what my opinion will be of any electronic product that Amazon develops.