Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that the looks of the future and says
Speaker 1: I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was a lie.
Speaker 1: It's actually raining right now. But hey, what what do
Speaker 1: we care, right? I mean, we're just talking about the
Speaker 1: future here. Someday it's not going to be raining. Hypothetically. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I was actually thinking while looking out in
Speaker 1: the rain. I was thinking to myself, I want to
Speaker 1: pick up something to eat on the way home, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to go too far. And actually, uh,
Speaker 1: somehow I've forgotten everything that happens to be near us.
Speaker 1: I don't remember a single restaurant that's within walking distance.
Speaker 1: If only I had some way of being able to
Speaker 1: look at the world around me and get information layered
Speaker 1: on top of what I could see, so that I
Speaker 1: could actually make a decision to go someplace nearby and
Speaker 1: pick things up, that would be an awesome, awesome reality.
Speaker 1: So like you look down the street and all these
Speaker 1: buildings pop up with a little digital signs of over
Speaker 1: them and say eat here, this is good, or the
Speaker 1: buildings are there, but the digital signs pop up. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: lets me know, like, hey, that building happens to have
Speaker 1: a bakery in it, and that building over there happens
Speaker 1: to have a another bakery in it. We got a
Speaker 1: lot of bakeries near our office. But yeah, so we're talking,
Speaker 1: of course, about augmented reality. I then realized that this
Speaker 1: is actually a thing, and it's been around for a while,
Speaker 1: and but the neat thing about augmented reality is really
Speaker 1: the promise that it has the potential that it has
Speaker 1: to truly make our world a really interesting place beyond
Speaker 1: what it already is. But before we get into all
Speaker 1: of that, we've got a lot more stuff we've got
Speaker 1: to cover first. Yeah, so what is augmented reality. It's
Speaker 1: not like a muscle building supplement you take. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not some sort of you're not gonna
Speaker 1: go find that over at the vitamin shoppy shoppy yeah, ohpees, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: augmented reality. Okay, So think about it like this. This
Speaker 1: is a cool way to imagine the kinds of environments
Speaker 1: we can inhabit with our brains. So there is reality, right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's that's you and me and the objects
Speaker 1: in front of us, as long as we're not secretly
Speaker 1: living in the matrix, the world as we perceive it
Speaker 1: to be. Keeping in mind, of course, that our experience
Speaker 1: of the universe is limited somewhat by the ability of
Speaker 1: our senses to pick up on things and intern with them,
Speaker 1: and it's all relatively individual in that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: two people looking at the same thing are not really
Speaker 1: looking at the same thing there, you know. But we're
Speaker 1: not going to get too far by that. But I
Speaker 1: think we can, as the three of us are sitting
Speaker 1: here in front of microphones that I think we can
Speaker 1: all agree with this, and that there's the fourth person
Speaker 1: who is uh in think in sinister silence, existentially speaking,
Speaker 1: I'm in Tahiti right now. So okay, well I hear
Speaker 1: it's a magical place. Okay. Well, you know, the funny
Speaker 1: thing is, even if we are living in the matrix,
Speaker 1: we've still basically we'd have to call this reality because
Speaker 1: it's our base level of experience exactly, even if we're
Speaker 1: in a computer simulation. To us, this is reality, okay.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, on the other end
Speaker 1: of say this scale you've got, you've got virtual reality.
Speaker 1: So that's you put on a helmet and suddenly you're
Speaker 1: moving around in a completely simulated environment that's made up
Speaker 1: out of computer data and has no bearing on the
Speaker 1: actual world. It's just supplied for your brain, you'lid or etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of you've got, you are able to still
Speaker 1: obey usually some sort of semblance of the laws of physics,
Speaker 1: because that makes it easier for you to adjust to
Speaker 1: a virtual reality. So in other words, when you move forward,
Speaker 1: you go forward. When you move backward, you go backward.
Speaker 1: I mean you can always well that's up to the
Speaker 1: hardware in the software. Yeah, but in order to in
Speaker 1: order for you to feel in a like you're in
Speaker 1: a really immersive environment, generally speaking, it has to obey
Speaker 1: certain rules consistently. Otherwise it just ends up being this
Speaker 1: kind of mess. Yeah, okay, But say you've got a
Speaker 1: spectrum with reality at one end and virtual reality on
Speaker 1: the other. What's in the middle. Well, you've got two
Speaker 1: different options, right, You've got actually you might say that
Speaker 1: you have more than two should spectrum. We should call
Speaker 1: this a field, and it's a field that in the
Speaker 1: field is known as mixed reality, right, So closer to
Speaker 1: virtual reality, for example, you have you might have mixed virtuality,
Speaker 1: augmented virtuality. Yeah, so that way you would have like
Speaker 1: a virtual environment where you would also incorporate something or
Speaker 1: some things that were real objects or people. So here's
Speaker 1: an example. Let's say that all of us end up
Speaker 1: making World of Warcraft characters and we all log on.
Speaker 1: We've also modified World of Warcraft so that instead of
Speaker 1: the head of the cartoonish character, it's actually showing a
Speaker 1: live feed of a webcam that's facing us. So each
Speaker 1: of our characters has our respective heads on that character
Speaker 1: and in real time. So when you see my character
Speaker 1: walking around, it's a video image of my head on
Speaker 1: top of this character's body, and the video images in
Speaker 1: real time it's what I'm actually doing. So if I'm
Speaker 1: looking off to the side because my dog is making noise,
Speaker 1: my character is actually looking off to the side. That
Speaker 1: would be this mixed reality here, this actual augmented virtuality,
Speaker 1: and that we have brought some of reality into a
Speaker 1: virtual environment. The virtual environment is dominant, but there's something
Speaker 1: from the physical world in right, Joe, you and I
Speaker 1: were talking about this last week with them or or
Speaker 1: in a recent podcast at any great one about virtual reality,
Speaker 1: right right, some some futuristic virtual reality reality game starting
Speaker 1: to incorporate you know, like maybe like an actual ball
Speaker 1: that you could incorporate into you virtual or even say
Speaker 1: when we talked about Project hollow Deck, you might in
Speaker 1: some ways. And what that was was it was sort
Speaker 1: of a free play space that would use cameras and
Speaker 1: virtual reality headsets and controllers to put your real body
Speaker 1: um and track your real movements and put you sort
Speaker 1: of in a virtual environment as you see it through
Speaker 1: your headset, but you're really moving around and you know,
Speaker 1: say ten foot by ten foot kind of space, right,
Speaker 1: you could you could say that's virtual reality, but you
Speaker 1: might more accurately say that's augmented virtuality because it's a
Speaker 1: mostly virtual environment, but it's sort of putting your real
Speaker 1: physical movements in there that that's the data. So you
Speaker 1: could actually even have physical objects within that that room
Speaker 1: that you are in that are represented within the virtual
Speaker 1: world as some sort of virtual since some kind of
Speaker 1: skin over at sure, um. But at the towards the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum, you have something that's closer
Speaker 1: to real reality, and that's augmented reality. And this is
Speaker 1: that idea of overlaying reality with some sort of either
Speaker 1: graphics or digital interface something where we're letting the digital
Speaker 1: world marry with the physical world some kind of information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so how does this work, um in practice? Well, imagine,
Speaker 1: just for one example, you hold up your smartphone and
Speaker 1: you aim it around the world, and the things you
Speaker 1: aim it at show up on the screen. But they
Speaker 1: don't just show up on the screen as a photograph
Speaker 1: of you. They show up also annotated with data. And
Speaker 1: that data comes from the software on your phone, and uh,
Speaker 1: or at least it that that it may even come
Speaker 1: from some other source, but it's fed through via signals
Speaker 1: and your phone is interpreting that. Yeah, it actually means
Speaker 1: that it could be an extremely powerful tool. And we've
Speaker 1: already seen lots of different applications of augmented reality. I
Speaker 1: thought i'd go a little bit into kind of the
Speaker 1: uh the well first before we get into the history
Speaker 1: of it. I think it might be fun to actually
Speaker 1: talk about the way science fiction has depicted augmented reality.
Speaker 1: The version I always think of, UM, I think of
Speaker 1: Minority Report. That's a big one where you've got and
Speaker 1: they do everything right, don't they. That's like the best
Speaker 1: movie for realistic sci fi. Yeah. I personally love how
Speaker 1: how they are incredibly consistent with applying the rules of
Speaker 1: logic of their universe despite lots of plot holes. It
Speaker 1: co if only it could have been a better movie.
Speaker 1: If only, if only they actually could have been consistent
Speaker 1: with their rules. Oh yeah, I'm not saying the pre
Speaker 1: crime is necessarily feasible, but all of the sort of
Speaker 1: consumer technology in the movie is pretty smart and and
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuffy they created was you know,
Speaker 1: they were looking at things that were coming out of
Speaker 1: M I T at the time and saying, well, let's
Speaker 1: extend this and imagine what this would look like in
Speaker 1: twenty more years. So let's go from the prototype version
Speaker 1: of this technology and say what would it be like
Speaker 1: as a mature technology. And that's kind of where they
Speaker 1: got their start. Okay, so what is there augmented reality? Look,
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of the same kind of stuff we're
Speaker 1: talking about here where you get that overlay. In this case,
Speaker 1: it's also tied to your identity. So when you are
Speaker 1: walking around the world, it can the world itself can
Speaker 1: react to you, kind of like our Internet of things discussion,
Speaker 1: but in a way where it's giving you information about
Speaker 1: your environment that's tailored not just to the environment but
Speaker 1: to your personal preferences and needs. Now there are other examples.
Speaker 1: I just started watching a show that's been on the
Speaker 1: air for a while, Continuum, and in that you have
Speaker 1: a character who is from the future who gets sent
Speaker 1: back to present day what is our present day, and
Speaker 1: she has these essentially cameras for eyes, and she's able
Speaker 1: to have augmented reality features where she can look at
Speaker 1: someone and in her time, she can look at someone
Speaker 1: and use facial recognition software to map that person to
Speaker 1: a specific identity and determine whether or not that person
Speaker 1: is wanted for a crime, because she plays a police officer.
Speaker 1: So that's another example of sci fi. UM. One would
Speaker 1: be in the term dominator movies. That's just what I
Speaker 1: was thinking of. Well, don't let me steal your thunder
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, that's why we can share the
Speaker 1: Terminator thunder um. The moment I thought of was when
Speaker 1: those moments when you see the Terminator's vision he walks
Speaker 1: into the bar and he's sizing up the different bikers
Speaker 1: and he finally sees the one biker where he identifies
Speaker 1: the different body parts for a matching size so he
Speaker 1: can steal his clothes. Right, Um, and that augmented reality
Speaker 1: could really help you quickly identify whose clothes you need
Speaker 1: to steal to match your size appropriate. Right. It's sadly enough,
Speaker 1: I have not seen any apps that have that specific application,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure. But I wanted to talk a bit
Speaker 1: a little, you know now that we've kind of got
Speaker 1: like the here's the science fiction thing, and that's really
Speaker 1: even the science fiction approach is just scratching the surface
Speaker 1: of what augmented reality could possibly do. Right, But where
Speaker 1: did this come from? Well, you know, you have to
Speaker 1: look at a couple of different things before you get
Speaker 1: to where we are with augmented reality. Some some developments
Speaker 1: that were important that kind of set the found nation. So,
Speaker 1: for example, one of the important developments was just the
Speaker 1: development of three D films and three D technology. This
Speaker 1: ability to have some sort of display that could give
Speaker 1: you the illusion of depth, that not only that the
Speaker 1: image that is projected on a flat surface have depth,
Speaker 1: but it could also come toward you. Because most of
Speaker 1: the implementations of I'm in a reality we have are
Speaker 1: either flat text that's displayed on a screen like a
Speaker 1: smartphone or a tablet, or they are something that's displayed
Speaker 1: on a screen that has some sort of three D
Speaker 1: capability like the Nintendo three DS, and I'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in a little bit. Or it's maybe for some
Speaker 1: sort of augmented reality glasses, and that owes a lot
Speaker 1: to those early three D movies. On top of that,
Speaker 1: you've got something that happened back in nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 1: when Morton Hellick said, you know, there's gotta be a
Speaker 1: way to make a more immersive experience to watching a
Speaker 1: film besides just you know, sitting there passively. What if
Speaker 1: I created something called the sensor rama. Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: were talking about that and that with all the air
Speaker 1: and the vibration, the So I think we've visited the
Speaker 1: sense of rama many times, and we should because it's
Speaker 1: really the root of all modern technology that weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: automated cars straight from the censor rama. Nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: was when Professor Ivan Sutherland, I'm sure you spoke of him.
Speaker 1: He was the one who created a head mold displays, right,
Speaker 1: So then you get up to uh, from that early work,
Speaker 1: that's what kind of laid the technical groundwork for augmented reality,
Speaker 1: but real augmented reality is as we understand it today
Speaker 1: kind of dates back to the early nineteen nineties. That's
Speaker 1: when a guy named Tom Coddle had come up with
Speaker 1: a design for Boeing. He was actually reading about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was for for the engineers to help them put
Speaker 1: together wiring. Well, it was really meant for manufacturers and
Speaker 1: machinists to be able to build the stuff that Bowing needed,
Speaker 1: but to be able to see where cables were going
Speaker 1: to go. So the cables had not been laid in
Speaker 1: yet there this is just the manufacturing phase where they're
Speaker 1: actually making the metal components for a Boeing aircraft, for example.
Speaker 1: But by putting on these headsets, they could take a
Speaker 1: look at the uh, the stuff that was in process
Speaker 1: of being manufactured, and see where the cables were going
Speaker 1: to go, to make sure that they were allowing enough
Speaker 1: clearance and creating the right type of framework to support
Speaker 1: the cables so that the finished product would actually work
Speaker 1: the way it was supposed to. And it meant that
Speaker 1: they didn't have to constantly consult a manual or call
Speaker 1: up one of the engineers who had designed the thing
Speaker 1: and say, all right, you know, I'm trying to build
Speaker 1: this thing due to your specifications, but I can't see
Speaker 1: where it's gonna go because it's not there yet. So
Speaker 1: this was kind of a way of getting around that,
Speaker 1: and he has been said to essentially have coined the
Speaker 1: term augmented reality. Uh In lb Rosenberg worked on a
Speaker 1: user directed system for the United States Air Force called
Speaker 1: Virtual Fixtures that was also an early example of augmented reality,
Speaker 1: and a trio named Blair McIntyre. Stephen Finer, and Dorrie
Speaker 1: Seligman wrote a paper about a head meld display and
Speaker 1: a program that you could use when you were working
Speaker 1: with a particular type of printer. They called it Karma,
Speaker 1: which was knowledge based augmented reality for maintenance assistance. The
Speaker 1: idea being that, all right, you know, these printers are
Speaker 1: starting to get a little complicated, and sometimes your average
Speaker 1: office worker doesn't know how to load the paper incorrectly
Speaker 1: or a clear paper jam, And by using this sort
Speaker 1: of head meld display and looking at the printer itself,
Speaker 1: they could be guided to using this without having to
Speaker 1: consult a manual, which does not necessarily lend itself to
Speaker 1: a an easy translation of actual actionable things you can do,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, most of the manuals that I've seen
Speaker 1: are really cryptic. Yeah, well, they have an augmented reality
Speaker 1: guide on how to smash your printer to pieces. No,
Speaker 1: there was no office space app at that point, but
Speaker 1: I think you know, probably would at one point say
Speaker 1: have you tried turning it off and on again? But really,
Speaker 1: if they could overlay a video of the computer just
Speaker 1: just exploding spontaneously, that would I would buy. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: think we see how the technophobes in the room feel
Speaker 1: about this now that augmented reality really got a big boost,
Speaker 1: Like in these early nineties, it was pretty much the
Speaker 1: domain of research facilities some universities. No one outside of
Speaker 1: those worlds really had access to any of this. I
Speaker 1: really cared about it because this was the same time
Speaker 1: when the initial virtual reality revolution was taking place and
Speaker 1: then kind of collapsed in on itself. Talked about that.
Speaker 1: So this this uh also affected augmented reality because it's
Speaker 1: a related field. Well. In the late nineties nineties, uh
Speaker 1: Hirokazu Kato produced an a R toolkit called a R Toolkit,
Speaker 1: which that included a tracking system and included source code
Speaker 1: that people could use and and camera calibration code that
Speaker 1: would allow people to use headsets and various operating systems
Speaker 1: to create an augmented reality system that had real time
Speaker 1: tracking and incorporated in it, which really is what made
Speaker 1: it truly useful and not to be too obvious, but
Speaker 1: just if y when we say a are that stands
Speaker 1: for reality. So that's kind of the lowdown on the
Speaker 1: basic UM way that or you know, how augmented reality
Speaker 1: developed Since those late ninety nineties, a lot of different
Speaker 1: applications came out, but again, the really early ones were
Speaker 1: pretty much restricted to engineering schools, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the revolution of the smartphone really started
Speaker 1: seeing them come out. Yeah, I was about to say
Speaker 1: that that since um, since you know, head mounted displays
Speaker 1: are still very expensive and very temperamental. Um, we don't
Speaker 1: really have a good cheap product like that out yet.
Speaker 1: We're waiting on the Oculus Rift. But then then Oculus Rift,
Speaker 1: you can't see through it. It's a monitor had a
Speaker 1: camera U live live video feed, in which case you
Speaker 1: could argue whether that was augmented reality or more virtual
Speaker 1: reality because you're seeing an actual camera feed as opposed
Speaker 1: to UH, an optical view, like like a lens that's clear. Um. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: I guess something like Google Glass or um. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's a couple other consumer products out there, and
Speaker 1: most of these are very limited, like you were saying that,
Speaker 1: they don't really have a lot of augmented reality uh functionality.
Speaker 1: Yet the thing about them is that obviously their main
Speaker 1: future application I think is augmented It would be hard
Speaker 1: to argue against that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, but
Speaker 1: you know, until we come up with that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: We've got smart watches and smartphones and uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: video applications like the like that game I have Judgment
Speaker 1: that came out for the PS three back in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, UM, which was a sort of augmented reality
Speaker 1: Magic the Gathering. It was made by Wizards of the Coast.
Speaker 1: And so you had a gaming mat and you had
Speaker 1: collectible cards and uh, and you play it on this
Speaker 1: mat and you pointed the PlayStation I at it and
Speaker 1: up on the video screen. You know, your little characters
Speaker 1: would come out with the cards and move around and
Speaker 1: do acky stuff. What this reminds me of and it
Speaker 1: is kind of another example of augmented reality that comes
Speaker 1: from science fiction is the Star Wars Hollow chess game
Speaker 1: that's very much kind of augmented reality because the chess
Speaker 1: pieces themselves moved around on a physical board, and there
Speaker 1: was an actual board there, but the pieces were virtual representations.
Speaker 1: Now in that case, we're also talking about holograms. And
Speaker 1: if you really want to hear us talking about holograms,
Speaker 1: just go back like forty episodes or something. So there's
Speaker 1: still all kinds of questions about what we will eventually
Speaker 1: be able to do in terms of holographic projection. But
Speaker 1: one thing we do know we can certainly do is
Speaker 1: mess with screens. You know, take a photo of the
Speaker 1: world or a lens view of the world and add
Speaker 1: overlay data on a screen that's flat in front of
Speaker 1: your eyes. Yes, absolutely, And and also artists and and
Speaker 1: museums have been really interested in this for for several
Speaker 1: years now. Back in two five as an art installation
Speaker 1: in Mexico City where um kids could put on these
Speaker 1: kind of simple smocks or little pieces of headgear and
Speaker 1: stand in front of a video assisted mirror and and
Speaker 1: it would overlay images of elaborate costumes depending on which
Speaker 1: little clothing markers they had put on. Stuff like that
Speaker 1: and you know, and and also of course museums have
Speaker 1: stuff like self guided audio tours that you can pick
Speaker 1: up a little MP three player and take it around
Speaker 1: with you. But a lot of them are experimenting with
Speaker 1: different ways to to give people apps on their smartphones
Speaker 1: or or eventually on something like Google Glass that they
Speaker 1: can walk around and and find out more information about
Speaker 1: all the cool stuff there see. That would be great.
Speaker 1: I would love to be able to look at a
Speaker 1: piece of art and not have to hunt down the
Speaker 1: accompanying little um plaque that's next to it. If I could,
Speaker 1: if I could stand back and admire the art, and
Speaker 1: then also have the information come up and then go
Speaker 1: away whenever I wanted it to to, you know, not
Speaker 1: impede my view, that would be amazing. Well, we we
Speaker 1: will talk more about the potential future applications of augmented
Speaker 1: reality towards the end. But one thing that's even cooler
Speaker 1: in that view is that data could be dynamic in
Speaker 1: that sense, Like say you're looking at a painting in
Speaker 1: a museum. Um it couldn't. It could just pop up
Speaker 1: with information about the painting overlaid onto your screen, but
Speaker 1: it could also do more. It could point out specific
Speaker 1: parts of the painting and highlight them and say like, well,
Speaker 1: here's where the artist used this type of shading or
Speaker 1: this type of technique, or this is this is a
Speaker 1: great example. People have questions about what this figure in
Speaker 1: the back represents, and that's something that a plaque on
Speaker 1: the site certainly couldn't do. I would love to have it.
Speaker 1: Well we'll go, I'll say what I would love I've
Speaker 1: been a reality to do. At the end, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little about something about the earlier apps as well.
Speaker 1: Like one that I always think about is Yelp. And
Speaker 1: the reason I think of Yelp is they have that little, uh,
Speaker 1: that little program where you can actually hold your smartphone
Speaker 1: up and it looks takes information from the GPS, the
Speaker 1: comp us, the camera, and then allows you to do
Speaker 1: exactly what I was saying at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: where you want to try and find a specific type
Speaker 1: of business. For me, it's always restaurants. It's the only
Speaker 1: thing I ever use it for. But i might be
Speaker 1: someplace that I'm not familiar with and I'll pull that
Speaker 1: up and then I'll do like a full three degree
Speaker 1: turn to see what restaurants happened to be nearby, and
Speaker 1: I can even take a look at their ratings based
Speaker 1: upon yelps database. But if you like really quickly need uh,
Speaker 1: you know, interior car cleaning and where's the nearest dump. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're still just just for example, No, but but the
Speaker 1: reason why I even bring it up is that's one
Speaker 1: of the earliest smartphone apps to come out that had
Speaker 1: this sort of augmented reality UH feature built into it.
Speaker 1: And this again is still just barely scratching the surface,
Speaker 1: but it was one of those things that that got
Speaker 1: people really excited at the early days of the smartphone revolution.
Speaker 1: I mean keep in mind, at least in the United States,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until we had the iPhone come out in
Speaker 1: two thousands seven that consumers really began to connect with smartphones.
Speaker 1: They just weren't as interested. Otherwise, the smartphone world in
Speaker 1: the United States was pretty much limited to executives people
Speaker 1: who had their various BlackBerry phones. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the iPhone came out that your average consumers really got excited.
Speaker 1: Camera in their phone that could handle right right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the process h Yes, So a lot of the
Speaker 1: UH in my view at least, and and maybe you
Speaker 1: all can correct me. It seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: what's big out there in terms of augmented reality these
Speaker 1: days is geolocation based. It's it's based on you know, well,
Speaker 1: we've got your GPS location here, and we're sort of
Speaker 1: checking you in at this like business establishment or landmark
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, and we have some data associated
Speaker 1: with that. There's a lot of that because but that's
Speaker 1: because of the smartphone. I mean, it works well with
Speaker 1: a smart phonecause the smartphones with you, and it can
Speaker 1: identify where your location is. I mean, it assumes that
Speaker 1: you are where wherever your smartphone happens to be. Another
Speaker 1: one that I guess is probably kind of similar to
Speaker 1: the ELP model, but a little more general, I think,
Speaker 1: is like Wikitude. Yeah, that the mobile browser that is
Speaker 1: meant to be a sort of a geolocation browser. Most
Speaker 1: of the information in there is user generated. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: um an interesting idea. It's the you know, you can
Speaker 1: hold it up and get information about the world around you.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like what you would think of with
Speaker 1: the ultimate augmented reality, like a living encyclopedia. But it's
Speaker 1: it's limited model. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's the
Speaker 1: the potential is amazing, but the actual execution right now
Speaker 1: is limited, just mainly because of the user base. It's
Speaker 1: a limited user base. Not that the user base is bad,
Speaker 1: there just aren't enough of them. Sure, Sure, and there
Speaker 1: there have been around two thousand nine and two thousand
Speaker 1: ten a couple again museums. I get really excited about these.
Speaker 1: UM started linking up their photo archives with like GPS
Speaker 1: smartphone augmented reality apps so that you can be walking
Speaker 1: down the street and uh, and it will pull up,
Speaker 1: Oh this is what this building looked like a century
Speaker 1: ago or two centuries ago, or oh this this guy
Speaker 1: lived here, this is this painting that he did. Um.
Speaker 1: That's kind of kind of stuff. UM. And and these days,
Speaker 1: I think that in combination with all of this really
Speaker 1: awesome GPS technology that they're working with, they're also kind
Speaker 1: of going backwards and starting to starting to work at
Speaker 1: things on on a more micro level of you know,
Speaker 1: getting your your camera and your software to recognize a
Speaker 1: a sign or a person or something like that that
Speaker 1: cannot be geologued. So in other words, it's it's not
Speaker 1: tied down to a location, it's more tied to specific
Speaker 1: objects or people. So for example, if I were to
Speaker 1: have an augmented reality application on my phone and I'm
Speaker 1: shopping for houses, I might be able to hold it
Speaker 1: up and and get a information on the house. Or
Speaker 1: if I'm shopping for some sort of uh specific gift
Speaker 1: for my wife and I've got a whole list of things,
Speaker 1: like it might be able to hold it up in
Speaker 1: a store and start seeing locations for things. Or I
Speaker 1: might even be shopping for I don't know a car,
Speaker 1: and I hold it up and pointed at a car,
Speaker 1: and it tells me all about the car, It gives
Speaker 1: me all the features, it gives me maybe even what
Speaker 1: the the the the suggested prices for it. These are
Speaker 1: all different, just simple applications of augmented reality. I think
Speaker 1: one of my favorite existing augmented reality apps I've seen
Speaker 1: is called Google Sky. Yeah, that's a cool one where
Speaker 1: you essentially you just hold your mobile device up to
Speaker 1: the night sky and it will show you or I
Speaker 1: guess it doesn't have to be at night. You just
Speaker 1: hold it up to the sky and it will show
Speaker 1: you the overlay of constellations, anomical information of what you're
Speaker 1: looking at, which in Atlanta could be like this is
Speaker 1: where the stars would be Yeah, due to all that
Speaker 1: light pollution that's out there. Of course, anyone living in
Speaker 1: a city knows what we're talking about here, but yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like it could be one of those things where
Speaker 1: if you go out to a nice dark area and
Speaker 1: you want to look at the stars, this could actually
Speaker 1: help you envision those constellations you've always heard about but
Speaker 1: perhaps did not quite you know, make them out when
Speaker 1: you look. It's like three dots and and and This
Speaker 1: kind of stuff sounds sounds easy, but when you really
Speaker 1: get into the nitty gritty of of combining all of
Speaker 1: this different data in real time um and and spitting
Speaker 1: out something understandable, it gets it gets really tricky. You know,
Speaker 1: if you ask a camera to recognize a car and
Speaker 1: not the fact that you're reflected in the car, that's sure,
Speaker 1: that's trick. Yeah, And being able to differentiate between things,
Speaker 1: you know, cars that might have fairly subtle differences in
Speaker 1: the various models, so it would be able to even
Speaker 1: pick out what year that particular car model was. I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes you know one model to another, the changes might
Speaker 1: be pretty minor, and things that you know, for the
Speaker 1: average person looking at it wouldn't pick up on me.
Speaker 1: Maybe a gear head would take one look and say, no,
Speaker 1: I can tell you told obviously that other thing. But
Speaker 1: for those of us who lack that Sherlock holmes s
Speaker 1: ability to stare at a car and know everything about it,
Speaker 1: it would be very useful. Another cool thing I don't
Speaker 1: know if you all know about geogoggle. This one's one
Speaker 1: that I was not familiar with. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's cool all the different things you can do with
Speaker 1: your environment just based on geographical information. So, say you
Speaker 1: want to estimate the distance between you and a distant object,
Speaker 1: Augmented reality could do that, which would be amazing for
Speaker 1: people like me who are notoriously bad at estimating that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I mean, if I look at something
Speaker 1: that's fifty feet away to me, it might as well
Speaker 1: be either five feet in front of me or a
Speaker 1: hundred miles away, because I just couldn't guess the number.
Speaker 1: I'm not, No, I can't. I have practice, see, And
Speaker 1: that's the thing is that if I had that where
Speaker 1: I'm like, I could start to train my mind to
Speaker 1: recognize this. I tend to be very bad with spatial
Speaker 1: relationship type things, not special relationships. I'm awesome at those.
Speaker 1: But spatial relationships I have. It's always been one of
Speaker 1: those things that for me is a little tricky. So
Speaker 1: not to the point where you know, there's a pencil
Speaker 1: across the room and I keep reaching for it as
Speaker 1: if it's right in front of me, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not able to estimate very effectively. Would be useful
Speaker 1: once we master artificial intelligence, though, they could also help
Speaker 1: you estimate the distance in your special relationship. Well, I
Speaker 1: like shoulder to shoulder with all my special relationships. Uh one,
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking about emotional distance. Don't be so obtuse.
Speaker 1: I'm not the alright dating Sam, This sounds like a
Speaker 1: very bad future. Well we're going to get into augmented
Speaker 1: dating in a second. What let's I want? But I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a little bit about the Nintendo three
Speaker 1: D Sefly. So Nintendo three DS, you know, I got
Speaker 1: to take one of those apart as soon as they
Speaker 1: came out, and then I put pictures of it all
Speaker 1: over the Internet of how it was just a bunch
Speaker 1: of pieces and every all the gamers got upset. It
Speaker 1: was a lovely day. But no, it was fun because
Speaker 1: I got to play with it first. Obviously, I played
Speaker 1: a couple of games. Yeah, so anyways, you know, handheld
Speaker 1: mobile gaming device. It has a three D display that
Speaker 1: you can look at without the use of glasses, and
Speaker 1: you could also use these cards that came with the
Speaker 1: game to the game set to do some augmented reality
Speaker 1: type activities. There weren't actual games. It was more like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would play some you would play some games on
Speaker 1: the device and then unlock stuff with your little character.
Speaker 1: But basically you would have a card that would have
Speaker 1: a very simple symbol and color on it, put it
Speaker 1: on the table, hold your your Nintendo three D s
Speaker 1: so that the three D camera is pointed at that card,
Speaker 1: and you're looking at the card through the screen. So
Speaker 1: it's it's obviously the card, and it's on whatever surface
Speaker 1: you put it on, but it's it's the video stream
Speaker 1: team that you're looking at. And then a little three
Speaker 1: D virtual character would pop up on the card and
Speaker 1: wander around or do whatever, depending upon whatever character it was,
Speaker 1: which was really neat you got to you know, it
Speaker 1: looked as if you had Mario walking around on your table,
Speaker 1: playing around, you know, in an actual real environment. Now granted,
Speaker 1: if you looked anywhere other than that screen, you would
Speaker 1: see there's no Mario there. It's not projecting Mario, there's
Speaker 1: no hologram. It's just on the screen. But it was
Speaker 1: a really cool effect and it's something that I have
Speaker 1: seen in other applications. Here in Atlanta, we are very
Speaker 1: close to the campus of Georgia Tech, and there was
Speaker 1: a point where the entire tech stuff, how stuff works,
Speaker 1: and and related families all went down to Georgia Tech
Speaker 1: to go and sit in on a Augmented Reality UH workshop.
Speaker 1: It was a a classroom where the various students have
Speaker 1: been working on augmented reality UM applications and I got
Speaker 1: to go through all of us and see what the
Speaker 1: different teams were working on and get to play with
Speaker 1: it myself, and it was really neat. They were doing
Speaker 1: a lot of same stuff that you were talking about earlier, Lauren,
Speaker 1: where they would have like a a map that would
Speaker 1: be laid out and then you would hold a smartphone
Speaker 1: that was loaded with a specific app and you would
Speaker 1: aim it at the map, and then you would see
Speaker 1: the representation of your characters on that map, and then
Speaker 1: you could control the characters through the through the phone,
Speaker 1: and you're you could see them interact with the other
Speaker 1: characters that were represented by the other players. So obviously
Speaker 1: the first thing that all the cool kids were thinking
Speaker 1: was this is going to make my Saturday afternoon Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragon sessions so much more awesome because we'll all
Speaker 1: just be sitting around and seeing that, you know, Throng
Speaker 1: Guard the Barbarian is truly kicking some cobalt butt. Um,
Speaker 1: the non cool kids totally didn't get it and went
Speaker 1: out smoking. So yeah, their Platins, their rangers anyway, the
Speaker 1: uh yeah, so it was but it was an interesting
Speaker 1: experience to actually see these is that Paladin is Paladin's Paladin.
Speaker 1: You didn't know. I thought you were making a joke, Lamp. Sorry, well, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we've all learned something today and it's not yet.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was really neat seeing these these projects
Speaker 1: that various students were working on with various approaches to
Speaker 1: augmented reality. I've also seen it used in marketing. I
Speaker 1: go to a lot of big events like CE S
Speaker 1: and E three, and these are places where people will
Speaker 1: often trot out this stuff and and kind of show
Speaker 1: off the potential for it. It's not again, it's not
Speaker 1: something that you often see in practice because it usually
Speaker 1: requires that your audience have a specific type of app
Speaker 1: installed on their mobile device. Right, It's not like it's
Speaker 1: a native feature that's supported by all smartphones. So for
Speaker 1: you to be a marketing person and to try and
Speaker 1: uh can ins your you know, your pretend your your
Speaker 1: customers customers to download an app so that when they
Speaker 1: hold it up to an advertisement, they get this little
Speaker 1: augmented reality experience. That's a big stretch, but it did
Speaker 1: show off some of the really kind of fun ways
Speaker 1: that you could create an augmented reality experience. It's just
Speaker 1: one that I questioned the practicality on because I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure how many people, again, you would convince hey, download
Speaker 1: this app so that way our commercials will be more effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the future of this is really based
Speaker 1: on how much crowd sourcing we we managed to get
Speaker 1: into it, because like like one app that I read
Speaker 1: about UM that I think is still in development. UM
Speaker 1: was something by by company called crowd Optic that that
Speaker 1: that lets you if you if you hold up your phone,
Speaker 1: your phone can this this app can tell you what
Speaker 1: direction a bunch of people are holding their phones in
Speaker 1: in the nearer vicinity, and and then it can go
Speaker 1: in if they also have this app and let you
Speaker 1: look at what pictures and video those people are taking
Speaker 1: with their phones. So it's stuff that people have opted
Speaker 1: in this, so it's not like not like not like
Speaker 1: I just pip my phone out so I could take
Speaker 1: a picture of this special moment that's happening, that's that's
Speaker 1: good for my life, and then realize that, oh, everyone
Speaker 1: around me also saw that special I see. Like it's
Speaker 1: when like Godzilla attacks and there are people a couple
Speaker 1: of blocks over getting video and you don't want to
Speaker 1: get that close. You can you can sponge off of
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Yeah, what meanwhile you're saying or at
Speaker 1: a concert or um, you know, in in another less
Speaker 1: Godzilla situation, maybe maybe maybe you're the Russian village where
Speaker 1: the comet is flying overhead. Yeah, I guess I should
Speaker 1: say media, right, But well, I wanted to follow up
Speaker 1: on your three DS thing, um Nintendo three DS with
Speaker 1: a cool kind of future vision, uh, and I suppose
Speaker 1: we should talk about what are some of the future
Speaker 1: applications of augmented reality that right there? Yet? Um So
Speaker 1: I saw a video the other day that was it
Speaker 1: was linked on Kotaku and it was called a future
Speaker 1: retro Mario three D world. Yeah, I saw that. That
Speaker 1: was great. Yeah, And so it wasn't a real augmented
Speaker 1: reality app. It was just a video like almost almost
Speaker 1: like a concept. But what it was it was sort
Speaker 1: of like it showed what an augmented reality app might
Speaker 1: do in the future, which was it had a little
Speaker 1: Mario sprite scurrying over and your grill. So and in theory,
Speaker 1: like with something like that, if you could make it work,
Speaker 1: you could design your own real world Mario level by
Speaker 1: stagging cardboard boxes or whatever, getting cans of food out,
Speaker 1: and then play the game and try and get Mario
Speaker 1: to actually navigate through this this obstacle course you've created. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's really when I think about it, when you
Speaker 1: think about what's already been done with the connect and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, there's really no reason I can see
Speaker 1: why that shouldn't be doable to have say a Mario
Speaker 1: sprite or whatever kind of protagonist sprite in and maybe
Speaker 1: even enemy sprites and power ups and stuff like that
Speaker 1: appearing overlaid on a landscape that's real three D objects. Now,
Speaker 1: the main things you need to conquer I think is
Speaker 1: you need a very good accurate perception of depth with
Speaker 1: the cameras, which that's why the connect thing would work
Speaker 1: so well. You'd have to have multiple you combine them,
Speaker 1: or or infrared sensing or something like that. But um,
Speaker 1: it also needed to need to be able to tell
Speaker 1: shadows from solids basically, right, So in other words, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a problem where suddenly you can't get across
Speaker 1: part of this because you've got this this wall that
Speaker 1: stretches all the ceiling and it's because the floor lamp
Speaker 1: has got a shadow cast right there. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that'd be really fun, right, you could like
Speaker 1: run Mario over your dog or whatever. I guess the
Speaker 1: seems fun. I don't know. I've been you have to
Speaker 1: try it to find out how fun it is. I've
Speaker 1: been breeding pet turtles just for this purpose. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just well, I don't know what's going to happen yet.
Speaker 1: We haven't built it. I was going to mention there
Speaker 1: is another semi augmented reality game that exists right now
Speaker 1: that I think could really benefit from a full augmented
Speaker 1: reality treatment, and that's Ingress, which is a Google based
Speaker 1: game now as it stands right now. The way it
Speaker 1: works is that you load the game up on your
Speaker 1: smartphone and it gives you like a map view, just
Speaker 1: like it would be a Google Maps view kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But there are points on the map that correspond to
Speaker 1: the game world, uh and in the real world they
Speaker 1: correspond with things that are of cultural or artistic significance. So,
Speaker 1: for example, there is a mural that's painted on underneath
Speaker 1: a bridge near where I live, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the spots. But any like if it's a museum or
Speaker 1: an old theater or whatever, those pop up on the game,
Speaker 1: but they're different from like in the game, they're just
Speaker 1: points of importance where it's kind of like capture the flag.
Speaker 1: You have to go to this section and uh, secure
Speaker 1: it for your team. Now, right now, it's played on
Speaker 1: your smartphone where you look at the little map and
Speaker 1: you go and you push some little buttons and hopefully
Speaker 1: you end up capturing that point for your team. And
Speaker 1: that's about it. But in the future I could see
Speaker 1: this where if you had some sort of augmented reality
Speaker 1: glasses like Google Glass, you might be able to see
Speaker 1: an overlay of these these virtual points that are coinciding
Speaker 1: with the actual real culturally significant areas. That are in
Speaker 1: your in your town, or wherever you happen to be.
Speaker 1: I think that would be really cool because then you
Speaker 1: could experience both worlds at the same time. Right now,
Speaker 1: it feels like two separate experiences. And if you're really
Speaker 1: just interested in the game, you're mostly just running around
Speaker 1: looking at your position on the map, right, Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not really looking at the world around you. But if
Speaker 1: you were able, if you were able to translate this
Speaker 1: to some sort of Google Glass type of experience, you
Speaker 1: could then have the real world experience on top of that.
Speaker 1: And that's where I think augmented reality really is interesting.
Speaker 1: It's when you have this moment where you can appreciate
Speaker 1: what how amazing our real world is by getting more
Speaker 1: information about it than you would have. Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about at least a couple of augmented reality
Speaker 1: futures that I've written about in previous four Thinking episodes.
Speaker 1: So one of them was just augmented reality for social media,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because you you went with it from
Speaker 1: a different perspective than the way I think of it.
Speaker 1: When I hear that phrase, explain what you mean? But okay,
Speaker 1: well what I meant is right now, you can say,
Speaker 1: look at your Facebook news feed, and that's full of
Speaker 1: items that have been um annotated with data by your friends,
Speaker 1: so they've attached a like to it. And now say
Speaker 1: this article from some website or whatever has their like,
Speaker 1: and you can see that, or it has their comment
Speaker 1: on it, or they can share it with their friends. Imagine,
Speaker 1: instead of articles from various websites or images or whatever,
Speaker 1: you're doing this with objects in the real world. So
Speaker 1: you have your social network and you walk through the
Speaker 1: real world, and you can see all the data points
Speaker 1: that your friends or even strangers have left on these objects.
Speaker 1: So a business or storefront, or you know, or a
Speaker 1: geographic location, or a landmark, a public landmark at a
Speaker 1: site of interest, or even I thought about, like sitting
Speaker 1: down in a restaurant and looking at a menu would
Speaker 1: not be cool if you could see what your friends
Speaker 1: had liked on that menu. Sure, yeah, yeah, go like
Speaker 1: try the scallops kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting idea, the idea that you have
Speaker 1: an annotated world around you that you can kind of
Speaker 1: see what your friends liked and didn't like, especially when
Speaker 1: you start comparing your own tastes against your friends and
Speaker 1: maybe you're going to completely against what they said or
Speaker 1: he hated this so I'm gonna love it, or just
Speaker 1: you know, how how cool is that for for going
Speaker 1: places like if you're going to New York City where
Speaker 1: a lot of movies have been filmed, and for example,
Speaker 1: you you're kind of trying to find you know, like
Speaker 1: like where's that firehouse where they filmed Ghostbusters or etcetera.
Speaker 1: Where where where in Central Park was that one scene
Speaker 1: in the Fisher King shot. I was there when they
Speaker 1: showed it, so I could actually take you there, but
Speaker 1: that's okay? Or say, um, what if you are visiting
Speaker 1: a city where you have a friend who lives um
Speaker 1: but you know, maybe your friend is busy and they're
Speaker 1: not around to show you around. You could still see
Speaker 1: all of the places in town where they've left to
Speaker 1: comment and like sure, Now, when I thought of the
Speaker 1: social the social media use of augmented reality, my mind
Speaker 1: went the other way around where I thought of the
Speaker 1: potential And this is something we've seen in science fiction
Speaker 1: as well, where you're able to wear some sort of
Speaker 1: augmented reality headwear, or I guess you could use your smartphone.
Speaker 1: It would be a little less um discreet and and
Speaker 1: look at the people around you and see things like
Speaker 1: maybe you could see their Twitter feed and you could
Speaker 1: read up on what assuming that they have a public
Speaker 1: Twitter feed, you could read some of the tweets they've
Speaker 1: been post, how many friends they have, or even just
Speaker 1: see what kind of what kind of person they are online,
Speaker 1: like what sort of persona do they project when they're online?
Speaker 1: Or maybe even if you have certain kinds of apps,
Speaker 1: see if people have left comments about that specific person.
Speaker 1: So if you are looking at a person and the
Speaker 1: messages just keep popping up like heartbreaker player, jerk face,
Speaker 1: you like, you know what I'm gonna get this guy's
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just not gonna tell. Yeah yeah, so UM, anyway,
Speaker 1: that would explain why people avoid me. But we don't
Speaker 1: have that. I've been in reality yet, so I really
Speaker 1: I don't understand it. Yeah. The other one I thought
Speaker 1: of I sort of I mentioned in our episode about
Speaker 1: the future of travel, um, and it seems sort of
Speaker 1: related to something you talked about, Lauren, which was like
Speaker 1: going through a city and having like, here's what this
Speaker 1: building used to look like. I assumed that that, though,
Speaker 1: is more of kind of a data link like, here's
Speaker 1: a photograph. Um. The idea I had was, well, what
Speaker 1: if say you visit an archaeological site, like the ruins
Speaker 1: of a temple complex or something like that in Egypt
Speaker 1: or anywhere in Rome, Yeah, in anywhere that that used
Speaker 1: to look different? Well, wouldn't it be cool if you
Speaker 1: could walk through the real physical environment but you've got
Speaker 1: your smart glasses on and they're overlaying a virtual completion
Speaker 1: of those ruins that shows you what they would have
Speaker 1: looked like and what I have felt like to have
Speaker 1: walked through this place when it was when it was
Speaker 1: a full right. Right, So you say, you've got the
Speaker 1: ruins of a temple that are just some columns, while
Speaker 1: reaching up from those columns would suddenly be the rest
Speaker 1: of the columns, the entire building to scale from your
Speaker 1: point of view, the plant life that they've done paintings
Speaker 1: of that they know that they know existed, yeah, or
Speaker 1: even the population. Right, there's no reason you couldn't have
Speaker 1: like virtual sprites of human beings dressed as they would
Speaker 1: have been doing what they would have been doing as
Speaker 1: as far as we know, moving around within the environment.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe either actors that they filmed previously or
Speaker 1: right or digital represents. Yeah, would all. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different possibilities there. I think about
Speaker 1: the potential for doing something like visiting the site of
Speaker 1: an old battlefield and being able to actually see how
Speaker 1: that played out, because I mean hit on one that
Speaker 1: I don't want to when you think about it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it would be really I mean, to be a
Speaker 1: really impactful experience in many different ways. What the reason
Speaker 1: why I think about that is that when you read
Speaker 1: history and you're reading the stories about the various conflicts
Speaker 1: that have happened throughout history, you really don't get a
Speaker 1: sense of what was what was it really like? Certainly
Speaker 1: not You don't get the scaled the human factor is
Speaker 1: almost always completely ignored. It's usually very dry facts. Even
Speaker 1: if it's written well, it often is just giving you
Speaker 1: kind of this huge bird's eye view, and it would
Speaker 1: be interesting to see that, you know. It's it's easy
Speaker 1: to tell a story in in you know, hindsight of
Speaker 1: how this general was brilliant because they made this manu ouver,
Speaker 1: But in reality, any of these kind of situations tend
Speaker 1: to be far more messy, complicated, chaotic than any book
Speaker 1: would necessarily let you know, and being able to see
Speaker 1: it and experience it may give you a deeper appreciation
Speaker 1: of actual historical moments, and it wouldn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: just be battles. So when I think about because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of different sites in
Speaker 1: the United States, particularly in the area that we're in
Speaker 1: the eastern side of the United States, where there are
Speaker 1: a lot of Civil War markers, and I always think
Speaker 1: about that. I think, you know, you hear the stories
Speaker 1: and you see maybe the re enactments or whatever, but
Speaker 1: it's still doesn't give you a full appreciation for the
Speaker 1: terrible things that happen. And while I don't want to
Speaker 1: dwell on those things, I think they are important to understand. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just to get a sense of what it
Speaker 1: was like to be on the ground. We we usually
Speaker 1: think of historical events sort of like with a bird's
Speaker 1: eye view, yeah, um, but but to get the feeling
Speaker 1: of like, what would it look like if you're standing
Speaker 1: on the ground here and had this horde, yeah, coming
Speaker 1: towards you. What would it be like if you were
Speaker 1: not only standing there and you had all these people
Speaker 1: around you on various sides, but you were able to
Speaker 1: actually see who those people were now they're now that's heavy,
Speaker 1: But it would be amazing. I mean you said there
Speaker 1: and thing like, well, they'd be like living that Burns
Speaker 1: documentary on the Civil War, you know, and it's it's
Speaker 1: also I mean, this is all really terrific um historical
Speaker 1: and educational kind of stuff. But you know, we can
Speaker 1: also with augmented reality. For example, there there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of buzz last year about the development of airplane
Speaker 1: pilot visors that would let let a pilot sitting in
Speaker 1: the cockpit look down and see the airstrip below him
Speaker 1: or her, or or or look around and be able
Speaker 1: to see, um, you know, how far away that stormfront
Speaker 1: is in the distance, and what speed it's moving at.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many of our listeners have been
Speaker 1: in a cockpit, but the visibility there, the actual visibility
Speaker 1: through the windows, is really limited. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of flementation around you and you rely on
Speaker 1: it heavily. But being able to not have to depend
Speaker 1: on glancing down and looking at that instrumentation having it
Speaker 1: be plastered on your vision would be terrific. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And beyond the usefulness and the educational aspects, there's still
Speaker 1: plenty of ways to use augmented reality that are purely
Speaker 1: for entertainment purposes. I mean, think of all the different
Speaker 1: style games there are that you could play with folks
Speaker 1: if we were all using the same sort of app
Speaker 1: like something along the lines of ingress. Let's say that
Speaker 1: we wanted to play a game where one person is
Speaker 1: playing kind of I don't know if you guys have
Speaker 1: ever played any of those games where you've got everyone's
Speaker 1: playing it that they are all assassins and you have
Speaker 1: a specific target you're supposed to be after. Well, with
Speaker 1: augmented reality, you could end up making a game like
Speaker 1: that way more fun with crazy effects, and it would
Speaker 1: be really neat. Yeah, rather than distributing little bottles of
Speaker 1: for example, food coloring to to have people drop in
Speaker 1: other people's drengths poison, right, Yeah, you could do a
Speaker 1: lot of different little thing things that could be you know,
Speaker 1: potentially hilarious and entertaining. But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different options for that sort of stuff when it comes
Speaker 1: to gaming. And I mean, I think that the game
Speaker 1: applications for augmented reality are going to go a long
Speaker 1: way to enabling other more educational and informative applications. The
Speaker 1: same sort of thing with virtual reality, where they ended
Speaker 1: up appropriating a lot of the technology that was designed
Speaker 1: for video games, because if those markets existed and they
Speaker 1: drove prices down, then this other industry could end up
Speaker 1: using that same technology for a totally different purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these kind of simple I mean, forgive me, game designers
Speaker 1: of augmented reality stuff, what you're doing is not simple.
Speaker 1: But these sort of relatively proof of concept sort of
Speaker 1: games can absolutely lead to I mean, you know, the
Speaker 1: again kind of kitchy but useful, ikea application of being
Speaker 1: able to, you know, hold up your smartphone to your
Speaker 1: apartment and and drop in a couch and see what
Speaker 1: that would look like there. That would be uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a very good example. These are things
Speaker 1: that you know, we're going to be taking for granted
Speaker 1: in another decade. Right This is the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that's already finding its way into our personal electronic devices
Speaker 1: right now, and within a decade we're gonna be like,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was like to have to
Speaker 1: go into a store and just hope that what the
Speaker 1: thing I was looking at was going to fit in
Speaker 1: my decore. Now we're gonna be able to do that
Speaker 1: all the time without ever leaving our home, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of interesting to me, and I
Speaker 1: love all the different ideas, Like you know, I love learning,
Speaker 1: So anything that has augmented reality where it gives me
Speaker 1: the opportunity to get more information about the world around me,
Speaker 1: I think it's phenomenal. I would love to be able
Speaker 1: to go to a location I've never been in and
Speaker 1: have the option to turn this on and off so
Speaker 1: that I could one experience it in first person exactly
Speaker 1: the way I would without any augmented reality at all,
Speaker 1: but also benefit whenever I wanted to from the extra
Speaker 1: information if I wanted to know, you know, how how
Speaker 1: long has that been here? What was the cultural significance
Speaker 1: of the statue that I'm looking at? Maybe it's maybe
Speaker 1: there's a plaque there, but it's written in a language
Speaker 1: I don't understand. It would be really helpful to have
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And I think, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: anytime we talk about this, I just think of all
Speaker 1: those different possible applications, and I love the idea of
Speaker 1: having like a truly uber augmented reality application where you
Speaker 1: can even choose what sort of information is coming to you.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's maybe you're only interested in navigating through the
Speaker 1: modern city and you just want to know where the
Speaker 1: best coffee shop is in your area. Or maybe you
Speaker 1: want to go on a cultural vision and you want
Speaker 1: to see the places that have cultural significance, or maybe
Speaker 1: you're stalking a celebrity and you just gotta know where
Speaker 1: they are going. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it
Speaker 1: sounds like the kind of rabbit holes that you can
Speaker 1: fall through on Wikipedia or on other parts of the
Speaker 1: Internet and and come up like two hours later, kind
Speaker 1: of going like, oh, I'm my back is stiff. I
Speaker 1: guess I haven't blinked. In this case, it'll be like
Speaker 1: I don't know where I am anymore because I'm four
Speaker 1: miles from where I started. But how now, how cool
Speaker 1: is that you've got GPS to lead you back where
Speaker 1: you need to go. Well, I think the coolest thing
Speaker 1: about it is that it could help you know the
Speaker 1: things you didn't even know. We're available to be known
Speaker 1: about the world around you. Your your physical environment is
Speaker 1: full of secrets that you don't even know. You need
Speaker 1: to discover you and and sharing that level of specialization
Speaker 1: that usually only an expert in that field could give
Speaker 1: you being able to walk around with the collected experts
Speaker 1: of the world in your ears. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's absolutely mind blowing ly phenomenal, and I I'm so
Speaker 1: happy that we are able to see the beginning of
Speaker 1: that that fund that era. Really, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: and i'd say going into full swing now, but we'll
Speaker 1: definitely see maturation over the next few years. We're going
Speaker 1: to people are going to come up with applications for
Speaker 1: this that haven't even at all occurred to any of us,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna say, oh, of course, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: Now I didn't think of it before. And then we're
Speaker 1: just going to be completely blown away by the results.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be amazing. I cannot wait. I love this stuff.
Speaker 1: Then again, I'm also one of the owners of Google Glass,
Speaker 1: so I guess that's not to be surprised. Um, although
Speaker 1: we should say Google Glass obviously it's not really augmented
Speaker 1: reality glasses yet. The closest is the maps function that's
Speaker 1: on there, and there are a couple of apps that
Speaker 1: people have been working on but aren't official Google Glass apps.
Speaker 1: But the there's certainly I would argue a tool that
Speaker 1: will be taking full advantage of augmented reality in the
Speaker 1: near future. Yeah, and we're seeing plenty of other competing
Speaker 1: technologies come to market soon. So awesome stuff. Well, let's
Speaker 1: wrap up this discussion. Guys. If you have enjoyed this,
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