Ask HN: Anyone using augmented reality, VR, glasses, helmets etc. in industry?

I've gone down this rabbit hole with customers as a PM still working in the space. Here is what I've learned. The past decade of devices (hololens, realwear, google glass, vuzix, etc) were some combination of way too heavy, expensive, fragile, short battery life, no wifi connectivity, too much UI long to get to point of value and/or simply not useful. That and most customers had a content problem. The AR/VR use in the field typically came down to looking something up in a manual or calling someone. Both easily and perhaps more effectively done on a smartphone. There was an instance where I asked techs why they weren't using the headset for showing what they were seeing in realtime and they said, it's easier to facetime (hard to argue that). The cool AR 3-D demos or overlays rarely worked in the field on real equip or didn't actually convey anything useful (everyone knows the basics of how the machine works). There are training VR use cases (like learning to operate a crane), but once again it's a nice to have supplement and not a replacement. Recent advances with LLMs (specifically voice) + Meta type "glasses form factor" have created intrigue again with innovation centers at large companies. The use case we're currently working on is inspections or filling out forms with audio/videos.

Thanks for your comprehensive response! I've also been watching the field for a while, have done some contracting for others trying to make their own AR devices, and tipped my toes in the water making some basic prototypes myself.

>some combination of way too heavy, expensive, fragile, short battery life, no wifi connectivity, too much UI long to get to point of value and/or simply not useful

Was the screen quality, resolution, visibility in brightness, etc also one of these limiting factors? Or would you say screen quality has gotten reasonable by now?

>The AR/VR use in the field typically came down to looking something up in a manual or calling someone.

That's good to hear as someone interested in the field, I've been skeptical of the fidelity and utility of the fancy augmented 3D overlays.

Ah I see you realized something similar: >The cool AR 3-D demos or overlays rarely worked in the field on real equip or didn't actually convey anything useful (everyone knows the basics of how the machine works).

>Both easily and perhaps more effectively done on a smartphone.

Surely there are some use cases where hands-free operation would be a game changer, but I don't know enough about potential industries where this would be the case.

>The use case we're currently working on is inspections or filling out forms with audio/videos.

That's pretty interesting, do you even need a screen, or just voice? I would think a pretty quick-and-dirty way to do it is to take pdf forms, enumerate (put small numbers) next to every editable field, and then use voice commands like, "write the following in field 3: ...." The purpose of having a screen would be to verify what the LLM + voice is inputting in the form. Then at the end you can tell it to save/submit or whatever.