Tens Of Thousands Use Meta Glasses For Vision Assistance, With Be My Eyes Founder Hans Jørgen Wiberg
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Meta finds itself in its latest media firestorm with reports of people harassing others while capturing videos with AI glasses. In response, Meta says it’ll effectively de-platform its own hardware product from people tampering with the device to remove the white recording notification light. Reportedly, the company sent out cease-and-desist letters to groups offering that modification as a service. The founder of Be My Eyes, Hans Jørgen Wiberg, expresses both anger and sadness about people using the glasses this way because he’s a member of a group with a very different use for Meta’s glasses. Tens of thousands of people who are blind or have low vision use the Meta glasses to make video calls to sighted volunteers around the world. The volunteers look through the camera on the glasses and answer questions about what they see. “Even my wife said, don’t wear those glasses if you don’t use them. And I was like, ‘Okay.’ Two weeks ago I would never think about not wearing them,” Wiberg said. “Now I put them in my pocket and then when I need them, I take them out and put them on…I should not have to do that. That is simply wrong.” I connected with Wiberg in Denmark using the podcasting platform Riverside to record a conversation about Be My Eyes. I recommend pairing this conversation with the recent one talking with CNET gadget expert Scott Stein in which he advised not accusing strangers of being perverts for simply wearing the glasses. The two conversations make for a deep dive into the way social norms are being changed by Meta’s glasses. I personally stopped wearing Meta glasses in public due to their ability to make others uncomfortable. During the conversation with Wiberg I shared the fact that, when I did wear them, I very quickly started practicing a new bit of social etiquette by placing them on the top of my head when entering a public restroom. Wiberg suggests similar etiquette would apply to blind people facing the need for a public restroom. Simply asking someone there for assistance or feeling the way around the room should be the standard, he says. The example highlights a difficult reality about computerized glasses. There’s a future where a locally running AI assistant can successfully answer the request “help me find the restroom” with zero Internet access. In such a scenario would a white light be needed at all when locally analyzing what’s seen by the glasses’ sensors against the device’s training, successfully directing a person step by step to a urinal or toilet without the Internet? Such an automated use would be very similar to the simple sensors already present in the bathroom for identifying when someone puts their hands under a faucet or automatically flushing a toilet when they leave the stall. What I’m highlighting here is one of the reasons I lost interest in Meta’s glasses. Meta changed the entire product category from being centered on the cameras to being centered on artificial intelligence. Instead of personally taking photos and videos of my walks through Central Park, I had the feeling of capturing imagery to train Meta’s AI. Once AI is trained properly, there may be a future where these kinds of camera glasses don’t allow users to capture videos and photos at all to avoid any misuse by individuals, while simultaneously allowing uses like the path to the bathroom provided through offline automation. In this hypothetical future, when automation takes the place of an interaction between two people grounded in empathy, what do humans lose? “I have never done anything wrong and I have no intentions of doing something wrong. Of course, also blind people can do stupid stuff,” Wiberg says. “That’s not what I’m saying. But at least we have a very good reason to use those glasses to understand our surroundings and we should never think twice about putting those glasses on. But I totally understand why people don’t want to be approached by people who maybe don’t even know what a white cane is, or anything
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I finally became a paid subscriber to The Verge after reading a thoughtful piece titled “Can VR glasses save VR?” based on Sean Hollister’s time with the Meta VR Glasses at the recent developer conference. Here’s the bit that pushed me over the edge as Hollister breaks down the difference between transparent AR optics and VR optics with passthrough video: Virtual objects can seem ghostly unless you activate electrochromic lenses, which turn the clear lenses dark at the push of a button, blocking your view of the world. Even then, you can see games, movies, and virtual desktops far better in a VR headset, where virtual light and real light don’t have to compete. You see the real world through what’s called “passthrough vision” — a live camera feed — with virtual objects realistically appearing at the correct depth and blocking real-life objects behind them. This breakdown highlights a conclusion I’ve held closely for a long time about the race to make computerized eyewear. Fundamentally, optics that are transparent show the physical world in higher fidelity at the cost of virtual content appearing ghostly. Meanwhile, opaque optics for virtual reality experiences deliver higher fidelity content at the cost of the physical world appearing dramatically lower fidelity than what your eyes can see directly, using what Hollister calls “passthrough vision”. “I would not say it was always a given that it would move faster, it would get better quickly enough, more quickly, than transparent optics would get better,” Hollister said on the Good VR Podcast. This simple sentence outlines why Magic Leap was able to raise billions for its AR headsets and Microsoft shipped multiple HoloLens generations before that optical pathway faltered. Ultimately, Snap’s Specs at $2200 and Meta VR Glasses at $1300 emerge as the latest examples of these opposing optical paths, with the XREAL Aura powered by Android XR emerging as an intriguing in-between solution. I believe the micro‑OLED panels found in the Meta VR Glasses and Apple Vision Pro put VR on the path to benefitting from economies of scale that will, over time, enable VR to ship with less weight on the head, lower prices, and with the visual quality necessary to jump past our 4K televisions. “3D movies have been a revelation for me on headsets,” Hollister said on the podcast. “Disney’s Moana where…you’re in a normal 2D theater or watching it on your big screen OLED TV, the colors are beautiful. The waters part to let baby Moana scoop up the heart of Te Fiti on the beach. The ocean has entrusted her with this precious jewel that she needs to restore. And so the water scoops out of the way and it’s like there’s this wall of water surrounding her. And that’s really cool, very cool CG. And then you see the same scene in 3D and you’re like, this is not a wall of water. This is a block of water. This is a three-dimensional prism made of water. It is the ocean with life swimming inside of it. And you can see the life swimming…and the depth of that. And this is a kids’ movie that I was really tired of my kids making me watch over and over again. And I’m experiencing it again like I’m seeing it for the first time. And it is incredible.” I recorded a video version of this podcast with Sean Hollister which I’m publishing first to paid YouTube members. In the weeks since recording this episode, I’ve gotten my personal Recreation Room into camera-ready shape and am readying to produce more video content overall. My first paid member happens to also be the person who wrote for Good Virtual Reality about using Vision Pro as a sleep aid, so I’ve published the video version first for him and I encourage you to become a member on YouTube to see it early as well as to receive my upcoming video reports first. I’ve got audio-only chats with Voices of VR’s Kent Bye, Walkabout art director Don Carson, and more coming first in the days ahead to paid subscribers on Substack. As always, thank you for the support.
The Ferryman Collective and Virtual Worlds Company just won an Emmy for their production of Uncanny Alley: A New Day performed inside VRChat. The Good VR Podcast hosted the Ferryman Collective’s Deirdre V. Lyons and Stephen Butchko in the weeks before the awards ceremony and now I’ve spoken with Brendan A. Bradley, who performed as nine different characters in Uncanny Alley: A New Day. “When the metaverse became a company and not a community, that was fundamentally a problem. Because then I can’t go off and build my nerdy theater, and someone else can’t go off and build their business and their interest, and someone can’t start an architecture firm and someone else can’t start a library,” Bradley said on The Good VR Podcast. “Because we’re not building a community and a protocol for everyone to build on top of. We’re trying to limit a storefront of what then goes on the shelves and what doesn’t go on the shelves…that need to transact can often disrupt the techniques that make for best practices, especially in an emerging market and an emerging industry.” Bradley began making VR Theatre in 2020 with Jettison in Mozilla Hubs which was nominated for the Producer Guild of America’s Innovation Award alongside Tender Claws’ run of The Tempest in VR, Alex Coulombe at Agile Lens and the Ferryman Collective’s early work in VRChat. Overall, he’s focused on fostering an ongoing collaborative community of best practices for live performance in XR. “I think that it is always extremely exciting when outsiders value the work that we’re doing…ever. It has been very, very difficult to get people to understand the why of virtual reality. And so the award itself, I think, is a helpful marketing tool…My parents know what an Emmy is. They do not know what an Auggie is. They were very proud of me for both. But they can tell their friends about an Emmy. They couldn’t tell their friends about an Auggie.”
Three experts joined the Good VR Podcast to discuss their time demoing Meta VR Glasses. Be sure to read and watch Scott Stein at CNET and Norman Chan at Tested for their unique perspectives going hands-on with Meta VR Glasses drawing from decades of experience with consumer technology. The third guest, Alex Coulombe, runs Agile Lens where they work at the intersection of architecture and theatre. You can listen to a previous conversation with Coulombe discussing his focus, as well as episodes with Stein covering the conversation around “pervert glasses” and with Chan for a podcast recorded in a pair of Steam Frames. During the conversation, which is edited down to 1 hour and 12 minutes from a recording in Riverside, we talked about their favorite moments so far from their time in Meta VR Glasses with segments discussing the prospect of protective lens caps, holograms, live sports, games, stereoscopic video, the future of Apple Vision Pro, and the broader future of virtual reality. It’s been a busy couple of weeks with slimmer and lighter devices kicking off a new era for virtual reality. Typically I pull out a couple of notable quotes from my podcast for people who don’t have time to listen to the whole conversation but I feel like this is one you really need to listen to in its full context with the nuance each of these guests brings to the conversation from a limited time testing the hardware. For more from recent Good Virtual Reality: * Steam Frame Review * Meta VR Glasses Change The Conversation * Seniors Socialize In VRChat * Andrew Eiche On AI & The Path To 1 Billion In VR * Tipatat Chennavasin Invests In The Dream Of VR * Steam Frame Arcturus Vision Camera You can donate any amount via Stripe to support my work at Good Virtual Reality. Thank you to my paid Substack subscribers for supporting independent journalism. https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800
A private group operating mainly in VRChat sees hundreds of senior citizens socializing in virtual reality. I spoke with Linda Fisher, one of the organizers of Thrive Pavilion, for a discussion about how older adults are using social VR. We chatted about her experience from Bulletin Board Systems in the 1980s to Oculus Go in 2018 to AltSpace and Horizon Worlds and finally to VRChat today. “I bought five Oculus Gos. And my mother was like 90 at the time. She was in a nursing home. And I would bring the Go to her and put it on her head and we would go into Wander,” Fisher said. “I would take her to places we went to on vacation where she used to go with her company in Florida and to me that was the most mind-blowing thing about VR and the Go was Wander.” There’s a full schedule of activities listed on the Thrive website and anyone age 50+ can join for free. “There’s a lot of challenges for older adults in terms of being out in the world and doing stuff. And we have members who are caregivers for spouses that have immune system issues or are in a long-term care facility. They’re not getting out that much either,” Fisher explained. “But these people have a whole lifetime of experiences. A lot of them are into photography or pottery or crafting. And so our average user has something to offer the group, and the group has something to offer them — intelligent people who have had positions where they were in authority, they ran things, so now they organize. We have these event coordinators who are really spot on…and they can organize people and the average participant is somebody who just wants to have fun. We just get together and play like kids. Like we did when we were twelve. You don’t have to worry about you’re too fat or you’ve got diabetes or you’re in a wheelchair. You’re just enjoying yourself.” You can donate any amount via Stripe to support my work at Good Virtual Reality and thank you to my paid Substack subscribers for supporting independent journalism. https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800
Norman Chan, better known as Norm from Tested, is perhaps the most trusted expert with his videos covering modern consumer hardware. He’s also among a handful of journalists who believed in VR before Mark Zuckerberg showed up to buy Oculus. On Tuesday, we connected from my Steam Frame in New York to his in California using Riverside for a conversation about the latest in virtual reality. Norm has had the Steam Frame since late August while mine arrived on Friday and we’ve each dropped our initial thoughts out onto our respective audiences with Tested’s one-hour-plus video being the most thorough breakdown of the hardware available right now. As Valve readies to ship out the Frame to buyers and Arcturus Industries prepares to give it color passthrough, Meta is preparing what should be the announcement of its next-generation VR glasses. It’s a big time for technological change with some folks likely to experience whiplash as they realize VR is rising from the ashes of 2026 like a phoenix with more comfortable eyewear than ever before transporting people into simulated spaces. Listen now to the conversation with Norm as we cover his first VR experience, his favorite moment of presence, and the persistent belief in this medium. “It still feels like such a frontier,” he said. “But there’s so much technology and so much research and so much effort that’s put into even the experiences that we have that make what we see possible, and feel comfortable and natural. And we take some of that for granted … we’re just discovering these formats and … these trillion-dollar companies are still putting money into it.” September is turning into an incredibly busy month for VR & AR, but I’ve extended an open invitation to Norm as well as CNET’s Scott Stein for a conversation after Meta Connect as we try to digest everything that’s changing in technology. You can donate any amount via Stripe to support my work at Good Virtual Reality and thank you to my paid Substack subscribers for supporting independent journalism. https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800