Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcomed up. Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks of the future says, ever since I
Speaker 1: was younger, I was into video games. I'm Lauren buck
Speaker 1: Obama and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to
Speaker 1: be revisiting a topic that we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before. But I felt like we were due for
Speaker 1: an update. Yeah, because those back in when we talked
Speaker 1: about the first time, December, which is late in the year,
Speaker 1: was like all the way in December. I think there's
Speaker 1: a few months after December. There's no February. The topic
Speaker 1: today is going to be virtual reality. Oh shoot, because
Speaker 1: I looked at virtual realty, oh, like like like lands
Speaker 1: you would buy in in in like some city or something.
Speaker 1: Oh that that wouldn't be a bad topic in itself. Actually,
Speaker 1: maybe some uses of virtual reality in the future will
Speaker 1: involve selling homes at low, low prices. Yeah, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure they will actually, so Okay, So in this original
Speaker 1: episode in we went really deep into the history of
Speaker 1: virtual reality, including a lot of uses outside of the
Speaker 1: gaming industry, like an therapy and training program stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That history, as far as we know, has not changed.
Speaker 1: As long as no little police call boxes with a
Speaker 1: defective chameleon device have landed somewhere in the past and
Speaker 1: messed things up. I'm pretty sure all the VR news
Speaker 1: are fixed points in time. I'm pretty sure they are.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless we're dealing with one of those like
Speaker 1: Bahnstein Bear issues, that thing is still messing me up. Man.
Speaker 1: All right, well, that's that's fair. I'm more of a
Speaker 1: Weeping Angels kind of guy myself. But yeah, so we
Speaker 1: wanted to to revisit this specifically because VR was one
Speaker 1: of those things that went through an incredibly rough patch
Speaker 1: shortly after the term got popularized. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that's because versions of it were being brought, would you say,
Speaker 1: to market I don't know, at least to consumer experience
Speaker 1: in a way. Even if people weren't buying things to
Speaker 1: keep in their homes, people were going to malls and
Speaker 1: shows and stuff like that where they can get into
Speaker 1: some kind of virtual reality experience. And it was underwhelming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the expectations did not meet. Uh, we're not met,
Speaker 1: I should say, especially based upon the amazing depictions we
Speaker 1: got from Hollywood like lawnmower Man, you know, phenomenal depictions
Speaker 1: of VR experience, Yes, exactly, but but certainly lanmore Man
Speaker 1: is less nauseating than some of these early virtual reality headsets.
Speaker 1: For you, I can speak from experience because we're talking
Speaker 1: about the nineties, right, Yeah. I think I actually said
Speaker 1: this in our In fact, I'm sure I said it
Speaker 1: in our episode, which I did not go back and
Speaker 1: listen to. But I am. I can't imagine that I
Speaker 1: would have let a VR discussion go by without talking
Speaker 1: about my personal experience of playing Dactyl Nightmare or whatever
Speaker 1: it was, or Dactyl Terror, the polygon pterodactyl game that
Speaker 1: was a VR game. They used to showcase it in
Speaker 1: a mall that's not too far from where we are now.
Speaker 1: And I would go to this mall and spend five
Speaker 1: of my heart earned dollars to spend five minutes feeling
Speaker 1: very sick in this very primitive yeah, which vaguely pterodactyl
Speaker 1: shaped polygons. Yeah, coming after me. It was not as
Speaker 1: as awesome, like I could see the potential even then,
Speaker 1: Like the head tracking software was amazing, the idea that
Speaker 1: I could turn my head in real life and my
Speaker 1: view in the virtual world would change as a result
Speaker 1: of that. It was a cool idea. The latency issue
Speaker 1: was terrible because that's what starts to create that feeling
Speaker 1: of being nauseated, right, and that this is the problem
Speaker 1: where the the hardware can't quite keep up. It's not
Speaker 1: able to serve images to your eyes at just the
Speaker 1: right speed to match how you're turning your head, so
Speaker 1: instead there's this kind of dragging FCT that's swimmy kind
Speaker 1: of feel. Now that was the case back in the nineties. Uh,
Speaker 1: Today we have much more powerful processors, including video processors
Speaker 1: graphics processors, where we've managed to and by we, I
Speaker 1: mean people who actually work on this stuff, have managed
Speaker 1: to reduce that latency to a point where it is
Speaker 1: not really detectable by humans and and we're surprisingly good
Speaker 1: at noticing that. So that was a big challenge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was the news that we were reacting to
Speaker 1: when we talked about this and when we sort of
Speaker 1: asked the questions, after so many bad incarnations over the years,
Speaker 1: is virtual reality just dead forever? Or can can it
Speaker 1: really come back? And can new innovations in VR make
Speaker 1: the technology more attractive? And even thing that will become
Speaker 1: the new way to have you know, virtual, immersive or
Speaker 1: gaming experiences. Right, could this potentially be the replacement of
Speaker 1: your traditional console or gaming PC. And there have been
Speaker 1: some interesting developments on that question already. I've seen some
Speaker 1: tech journalists calling twenty sixteen the year of VR. Understandable
Speaker 1: that may be that may be premature, since we've only
Speaker 1: made it a little bit into twenty sixteen, but they
Speaker 1: might have a good reason for doing that. Because I
Speaker 1: want to report on some survey results from the Game
Speaker 1: Developers Conference State of the Industry Survey for sixteen, which
Speaker 1: came out January sixteen, and it's based on feedback from
Speaker 1: more than two thousand game developers who were attendees of
Speaker 1: this conference, and they said, in the past year, the
Speaker 1: percent of participating game developers working on VR projects has
Speaker 1: more than doubled. So in seven percent of game developers
Speaker 1: were working on virtual reality in two sixteen, sixteen percent.
Speaker 1: We're right. So this also reminds us that doubling is
Speaker 1: not necessarily a huge number if you're starting with a
Speaker 1: relatively small one, but still significant. So I'm actually surprised
Speaker 1: that it's that low, honestly, just because VR is one
Speaker 1: of those things that has so much buzz behind it,
Speaker 1: even even considering the multiple delays we have seen, or
Speaker 1: at least the perceived delays we have seen in the
Speaker 1: release schedule for the hardware. Like some of the biggest
Speaker 1: names in VR hardware as of the recording of this
Speaker 1: podcast have yet to come out, but they're scheduled to
Speaker 1: come out this year. Well, it seems like a big
Speaker 1: gamble now because there really are I think there's only
Speaker 1: one major VR headset available for the consumer right now,
Speaker 1: isn't there. Well, yeah, and even then it's one that
Speaker 1: considered actually VR. Yeah, we'll get into that later. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a thing where you don't already
Speaker 1: have that pretty dependable delivery methods. So if you're developing
Speaker 1: a game for the Xbox or the PlayStation, you've already
Speaker 1: got a base number of people who have this console
Speaker 1: in their homes, and you can depend on some subset
Speaker 1: of them to download it or buy it in the
Speaker 1: store and pay for your product. With VR, we don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have a whole lot of people
Speaker 1: with VR headsets in their houses. You have to you
Speaker 1: have to create the market first and then sell to
Speaker 1: that market. Yeah, so it is a gamble and you
Speaker 1: so you can see why it would be slow to
Speaker 1: pick up. But these numbers are making it look like
Speaker 1: more and more people are making this gamble and saying
Speaker 1: where we think VR is the future. And that lines
Speaker 1: up with other numbers from this survey. For example, cent
Speaker 1: of developers said that their next game project will incorporate
Speaker 1: virtual reality, and that was up from six percent who
Speaker 1: said this last year. This one is promising. Seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of respondents held the opinion that quote VR slash
Speaker 1: a R is a long term sustainable business to be
Speaker 1: in a R of course, being augmented reality. The difference
Speaker 1: with virtual reality and augmented reality is with augmented reality,
Speaker 1: you are looking at the real world through whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might be through a transparent screen, or it might
Speaker 1: be through a display that has a camera mounted on
Speaker 1: the other side, so that you're getting a video feed
Speaker 1: of the world around you. And on top of that
Speaker 1: you have some sort of digital information that is overlaid
Speaker 1: on on the real world. Yeah, so virtual reality is
Speaker 1: all fake stuff. Augmented reality is real world plus fake stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: more or less. Yes, um, I'll agree to that. And
Speaker 1: and now, of course part of the problem with that
Speaker 1: question is that by grouping both VR and A are together,
Speaker 1: it may be that some of them have very strong
Speaker 1: opinions on one and opposite opinions of the other. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, I made that note that, Um, we'll
Speaker 1: have to take that kind of prediction with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt because we don't know, you know, maybe they
Speaker 1: meant that, Oh, some people think a R is going
Speaker 1: to be really big. Yeah. But and another one along
Speaker 1: these lines is the question to game developers, how soon
Speaker 1: will VR slash a R devices surpass the consumer adoption
Speaker 1: rate of game consoles in which is about so, how
Speaker 1: soon are they going to be bigger than game consoles are? Now?
Speaker 1: When when are we going to see a VR headset
Speaker 1: get greater sales than a PS four or an Xbox
Speaker 1: one or whatever the equivalent is, which which they're saying
Speaker 1: is a is a base level of the population of
Speaker 1: about Yeah, so a hilarious group said oh, it'll happen
Speaker 1: by that was one percent of respondence. That is incredibly aggressive.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a small but mighty group. You have
Speaker 1: to admire their optimism. Yeah, forty four percent said this
Speaker 1: would happen by six and fifty four percent, so a
Speaker 1: majority said it would happen. By said they thought it
Speaker 1: would never happen. That you're never going to have VR
Speaker 1: a R becoming more popular than game console. And if
Speaker 1: you add all those numbers up and you say, wait,
Speaker 1: that's more than hundred percent, you can remember that that's
Speaker 1: say it happens by essentially includes and the one percent
Speaker 1: who said by well, I think it will happen, but
Speaker 1: not like we have totally surpassed it and we've gone
Speaker 1: to it. The next thing. No, no, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: yet again invoking tardist base. Gotcha, gotcha. So the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me is that it's by six still seems
Speaker 1: I guess pessimistic is the best word for it, because
Speaker 1: you think that's ten years out. So you're saying that
Speaker 1: less than half of them thought that even in ten
Speaker 1: years the technology would be not just mature enough, but
Speaker 1: priced at a level where it would sell greater than
Speaker 1: whatever the comparable console of the time would be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that is talking about exceeding console performance. Sure, And
Speaker 1: also you're to be fair asking a potentially biased group
Speaker 1: of humans are employees of the game industry, and these
Speaker 1: are the people who know what they're talking about, but
Speaker 1: it also their future kind of depends on the answer.
Speaker 1: There's also there's also a weird shift right now. I'm
Speaker 1: not weird. There is a shift right now where for
Speaker 1: a while we saw console gaming being really dominant in
Speaker 1: the industry, and now it's another PC centric population. I
Speaker 1: would say, like, I mean, I still know lots of
Speaker 1: dedicated console gamers. That's the way they game and that's
Speaker 1: all they do. But PC gaming has experienced a real
Speaker 1: renaissance over the last five years. I would say absolutely.
Speaker 1: If you had asked me when the Xbox had been
Speaker 1: out for a few months that the first Xbox that
Speaker 1: I would have said that PC gaming would never make
Speaker 1: a comeback the way that it has well, And it's
Speaker 1: one of the you know, I think it's a cycle.
Speaker 1: We are a pendulum at least right where you see
Speaker 1: it swing one way versus the other. Where. If you
Speaker 1: get to a point where the consoles are sophisticated enough
Speaker 1: where you're getting of satisfying gaming experience from them, uh,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to worry about upgrading them constantly
Speaker 1: so that you can keep up with the latest games,
Speaker 1: then it makes sense that there's a move to the consoles.
Speaker 1: But then when you get to a point where PC
Speaker 1: performance has reached a level where you're not outstripping it
Speaker 1: as quickly, it's also not as difficult to upgrade as
Speaker 1: it used to be, and you're getting incredible delivery systems.
Speaker 1: The Steam delivery system has done wonders for the PC
Speaker 1: gaming community. Uh that you can see why this pendulum
Speaker 1: swings each way. So that's probably also a factor. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just that will ease overtake consoles, it's framing
Speaker 1: that in if you already have a bias against consoles
Speaker 1: because you developed for the PC and you think that's
Speaker 1: the future of gaming, that might also guide your response
Speaker 1: to a question like this on the survey. Absolutely okay,
Speaker 1: but so that was with forty of households that last
Speaker 1: survey question. What about a slightly more more modest proposal. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: like the idea that vr A R hardware will be
Speaker 1: in ten per cent of US households, when did they
Speaker 1: that would happen? Well, thirty eight percent said by it
Speaker 1: would be there in ten percent of US households. Eighty
Speaker 1: six percent said it would be there by and nine
Speaker 1: percent said and never gonna happen, and we'll we'll have
Speaker 1: more to say about this, because it may very well
Speaker 1: be the VR becomes one of those things that is
Speaker 1: a is a sort of a niche technology for a
Speaker 1: slice of the gamer population, or really the computer population,
Speaker 1: computing population, because it's not just for the purpose of
Speaker 1: using in gaming. But yeah, I agree with especially the
Speaker 1: six percent by saying at least ten percent of households
Speaker 1: in in the US will own some form of VR headset.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty realistic. But you've actually you've used
Speaker 1: an Oculus rift, haven't you. I have, I've almost almost
Speaker 1: recovered from it. Yeah, to be fair, it was an
Speaker 1: older one. Yes, the Oculus dev Kid. Yes, the dev
Speaker 1: kid I used was version one. It wasn't even version two.
Speaker 1: Version two was the one that had uh the reference
Speaker 1: dots on the outside and used an external camera to
Speaker 1: help get better external tracking of the device. Um, the
Speaker 1: one I used did not have that, so it's really
Speaker 1: just the head trackers that were relying upon the accelerometers
Speaker 1: in the heads of itself. It was still a little
Speaker 1: bit Yeah, I may have mentioned. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I had used it when we did our first episode,
Speaker 1: but when I did try it out. The demo I
Speaker 1: used was just walking around, virtually walking around a villa,
Speaker 1: like an Italian villa. There's a lovely little seaside villa
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm walking around. I got so motion sick.
Speaker 1: And then my friend who owns the Oculus he works
Speaker 1: for Google, said, all right, you're ready to try the
Speaker 1: spaceship game. Heck, no, I do not want to cover
Speaker 1: your keyboard and vomit is what I said to him,
Speaker 1: And he thought, thanks me for the thoughtful reply, And
Speaker 1: then we just played the Spacecraft game without using the
Speaker 1: VR version. Yeah, well, I think we should take a
Speaker 1: look at the lay of the land as things are
Speaker 1: today with the big players in in virtual reality, like
Speaker 1: what's out there right now, what's and what's on the horizon? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when we did this, it really was basically just
Speaker 1: the Oculus rift on the horizon, and there were kind
Speaker 1: of like some independent developers working on a few things,
Speaker 1: and there were some rumors that a few people be
Speaker 1: getting into some things, like there was there was the
Speaker 1: mention of a Sony Morpheus, but no one really had
Speaker 1: any information about that. That, by the way, has totally
Speaker 1: changed names at this point. Yeah, now it's the Neo,
Speaker 1: it's the blue pill. Uh and and there were a
Speaker 1: couple of others as well. But yeah, the some of
Speaker 1: the big names that people are really anticipating this year
Speaker 1: and even really been talked about back at least not
Speaker 1: in wide circles. Sure, sure, so okay. So, so the
Speaker 1: only product that we can really reliably talk about because
Speaker 1: it has already come to commercial market is Samsung's Gear VR.
Speaker 1: And unlike the other products that we will talk about,
Speaker 1: this isn't something that you connect to anything as powerful
Speaker 1: as a game console or a desktop computer. It runs
Speaker 1: off of a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, off of one of
Speaker 1: four models. Specifically, you just you just snap your phone
Speaker 1: into this headset and it goes, well, it doesn't. It's well,
Speaker 1: it's not quite that simple, but yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: it's a headset you snap your phone in, and there
Speaker 1: are Android platform apps that you can install to work
Speaker 1: with a base Oculus app that will allow you to
Speaker 1: play games, explore virtual environments, you know that sort of thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: Samsung developed the headset in collaboration with the folks at Oculus,
Speaker 1: the makers of the Rift. So the headset itself contains
Speaker 1: a proximity sensor that detects when it's being worn, which
Speaker 1: most phones actually have, Like they know if you're holding
Speaker 1: your phone up to your head. So if you ever
Speaker 1: have noticed that the light on your smartphone has dimmed
Speaker 1: just as you're putting it up to your cheek, that's
Speaker 1: the proximity sensor saying all right, there, Jonathan's putting his
Speaker 1: phone up to his big fat head. I don't have
Speaker 1: to have the screen on anymore. It makes it really
Speaker 1: hard to dial numbers with your cheekbones. I don't have
Speaker 1: well defined cheekbones, so I just find that offensive. I'm
Speaker 1: sure Benndet Cumberback is mad every day every day. It
Speaker 1: also has a few more sensors. Okay, so what else
Speaker 1: does it go? Yeah, it's got an accelerometer in there,
Speaker 1: a girometer, and a geomagnetic field sensor. Yeah yeah, that
Speaker 1: that one can help determine the device's position relative to
Speaker 1: magnetic north, which apparently is a thing that a lot
Speaker 1: of mobile devices do and I just haven't heard of
Speaker 1: it before. Essentially essentially a digital compass. Yeah yeah, I
Speaker 1: just think that's great anyway. So yeah, in order to
Speaker 1: interact with with whatever virtual VI you're in, you can
Speaker 1: move your head and then either a swiper clicker both
Speaker 1: using the four directional touch pad that's on the right
Speaker 1: side of the headset. Yeah. I saw a video review
Speaker 1: of this with a writer from The Verge where she
Speaker 1: was trying this out in public. Like she was like, well,
Speaker 1: I do most of my mobile gaming on you know,
Speaker 1: on the subway or public transportation or something, so I
Speaker 1: want to see how well it works on those things.
Speaker 1: Apparently there is a problem if you're playing a game
Speaker 1: or something that tracks your your head motion when you're
Speaker 1: going around curves. So like if you if your car turns,
Speaker 1: or if you go around a curve in the subway,
Speaker 1: it will interpret that as you turning your head. I'll
Speaker 1: just imagine trying to play a VR game aboard a
Speaker 1: moving platform would make me feel motion sickness way faster. Well,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. You wouldn't be getting the external stimuli of
Speaker 1: It's not like reading a book in a car because
Speaker 1: your your field of natural vision is totally blocked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what when you're looking at a virtual world and
Speaker 1: let's say you're standing still while you're playing the game,
Speaker 1: but you're moving in relation to you know, you're in
Speaker 1: a train. That's moving your inner ear is still doing
Speaker 1: a thing. Your your brain is probably just saying, like, guys,
Speaker 1: something is wrong. I'm just going to send a message
Speaker 1: down to Mr Tummy to evacuate and then everything's gonna
Speaker 1: be cool. Yeah, right, And and this is the kind
Speaker 1: of problem that wouldn't happen probably with most of the
Speaker 1: other devices we're going to talk about, because those have
Speaker 1: full blown positional tracking um, which reduces some of that issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one does not. Also, it's it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: that the interface is largely a kind of a touch
Speaker 1: directional pad that's on the device itself. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like it's an external control, although
Speaker 1: I would imagine you get cyclops reaching up to our
Speaker 1: jority kind of Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
Speaker 1: Those were exactly the two example is that come to
Speaker 1: mind when I think of this, the idea of lifting
Speaker 1: the hand up to the temple and adjusting something. But
Speaker 1: also I would imagine in the future you could probably
Speaker 1: create some functionality with Bluetooth enabled control. So they already have.
Speaker 1: Actually there's uh, the the only one that I've read
Speaker 1: about being available at the moment is that there's a
Speaker 1: controller that Microsoft uses for for other Windows and Android
Speaker 1: based systems. It's Bluetooth. It's you know, like a like
Speaker 1: a console gaming controller. So it's not it's not anything
Speaker 1: too fancy, but yeah, you can. They caused like seventy
Speaker 1: bucks retail and and they're they're compatible with some of
Speaker 1: the games. It's interesting because this this particular approach, this
Speaker 1: particular device, once you set aside the price of the phone,
Speaker 1: like if you already own the phone, then you're not
Speaker 1: talking about the cost of it. But it's funny because
Speaker 1: then the controller costs almost as much as what this
Speaker 1: device does. Yeah. Yeah, the price tag on the system
Speaker 1: right now is here in the United States, it's it's
Speaker 1: a little bit, well, it's it's about equivalent in the
Speaker 1: other places. In about that one. And I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of if it was available throughout the European
Speaker 1: Union or not. It's that that was the pause. I
Speaker 1: know what the UK is called. Um but yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: uh so that's a bonus because certainly a lot of
Speaker 1: the other systems that are out there are way more expensive.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about one of them this well one more
Speaker 1: one more thing are actually two more quick things, um
Speaker 1: that reviewers have been talking about they really appreciate that
Speaker 1: it's mobile, that it's a truly mobile device. You're not
Speaker 1: tethered to anything, so you have a much better freedom
Speaker 1: of motion, which you can use at your own peril, because,
Speaker 1: of course, if you're exploring a virtual world, you have
Speaker 1: to remember that things like tables are still present in
Speaker 1: your own world. Subway tracks, subway tracks, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: still run into all of these cooligans aboard the train. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were also saying that it's the
Speaker 1: kind of system that's best used with independent headphones because it,
Speaker 1: you know, just the sound out of your smartphone, as
Speaker 1: lovely as it maybe, and these are modern times, uh,
Speaker 1: it is, Yeah, not not as immersive. You're not very directional.
Speaker 1: Like you, you couldn't tell where the sound is coming
Speaker 1: from necessarily. I mean, you know what's coming from the phone.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you don't know what direction relative to
Speaker 1: where you were looking, it's coming from. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: the other obvious thing is that the device and the
Speaker 1: screen resolution are only ever going to be as powerful
Speaker 1: as the smartphone that you possess, right, And also the
Speaker 1: smartphone is essentially dividing the display into two Right, you're
Speaker 1: getting one image for the left eye, one image for
Speaker 1: the right eye, and so that also, you know, is limited.
Speaker 1: Your resolution is limited by the size of the division,
Speaker 1: which also is a factor when we talk about Google Cardboard,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to a little bit later in this episode.
Speaker 1: But yeah, some of the some of the big, powerful,
Speaker 1: impressive ones. Yeah, so the big one, the big guy
Speaker 1: I think that most people are familiar with, although I
Speaker 1: would argue is not necessarily. The one that's gonna win
Speaker 1: over the most converts is the Oculus Rift. This was
Speaker 1: a project that's been around for years. We talked about it,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. In so, it's a head mold display has
Speaker 1: head tracking technology that again you know the basic premises,
Speaker 1: that tracks the motion of your head so that it
Speaker 1: can reflect your change in perspective within the game you're playing.
Speaker 1: So that way, you know, if you're looking straight ahead
Speaker 1: and you have one view, you turn your physical head
Speaker 1: to the left, your perspective changes as if your virtual
Speaker 1: character has turned his or her head to the left,
Speaker 1: and um same you know, basic idea of any VR headset.
Speaker 1: It also connects to a computer, unlike the Samsung Gear
Speaker 1: that we just mentioned, so in this case you you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just have the Oculus by itself. You have
Speaker 1: to have it paired with a computer and uh and
Speaker 1: not um so weak computer either. It needs to be
Speaker 1: a fairly beefy machine to be able to run the
Speaker 1: Oculus rift at at a good clip. Um. Also, this
Speaker 1: is a company that was purchased by Facebook, and when
Speaker 1: that happened a lot of people who had been supporting
Speaker 1: Oculus cried out in anguish, very much like all the
Speaker 1: people on Alderan, just as the death Star targeted it.
Speaker 1: Obi Wan felt the pain of all the Oculus backers.
Speaker 1: When Facebook made this, there was a huge disturbance in
Speaker 1: before ye who is in this case? Would this be
Speaker 1: Jaron Lanier? I'm just gonna say possibly, because I mean
Speaker 1: that's the guy who popularized the term virtual reality or
Speaker 1: possibly coined it even he isn't sure, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: the Oculus headset has some other bells and whistles that
Speaker 1: give it some cool features beyond just the regular head tracking.
Speaker 1: First of all, it has positional audio, so you get
Speaker 1: these headpunds that come with it. Um and sound will
Speaker 1: appear to come from specific directions, so if you hear
Speaker 1: something coming from your left and you look to your left,
Speaker 1: you you should be able to see whatever virtual thing
Speaker 1: is making that noise. Uh. Elso's positional tracking. External positional tracking.
Speaker 1: This is what I was talking about before with the
Speaker 1: second Developer Kit, where it had the reference points UH.
Speaker 1: In this case, you have a camera pointed back that
Speaker 1: can tell the orientation of the headset, not just when
Speaker 1: it's moving. So one of the things that these head
Speaker 1: tracking systems are really good at is determining when you're
Speaker 1: looking left, right, up, or down. They're not necessarily as
Speaker 1: good if you were to tilt your head to the
Speaker 1: left or right so that you were getting sort of
Speaker 1: a diagonal view, but with external tracking you can do that.
Speaker 1: You could even do things a little more extreme. So
Speaker 1: for example, let's say you walk up to a virtual
Speaker 1: table within a game and you decide you want to
Speaker 1: look underneath at the underside of that table. So you
Speaker 1: squat down in real life and you tilt your head
Speaker 1: up as if you're looking underneath this table. With something
Speaker 1: like this, you could actually get the result in the game,
Speaker 1: assuming that people had programmed programmer program and it maybe
Speaker 1: that you see a secret message under that table, like dude,
Speaker 1: you've got too much spare time in your hands or something.
Speaker 1: Um but the idea being that you it gives you
Speaker 1: a lot more flexibility in in the way that you
Speaker 1: interact with the virtual world, which at least in theory,
Speaker 1: creates your sense of immersion when you are in there.
Speaker 1: Also later on in this year, the year recording this is,
Speaker 1: if you are in fact listening to this in some
Speaker 1: other year, Hello from the past. Oculus will release some
Speaker 1: more controls, physical controls to go along with the headset
Speaker 1: there called Oculus Touch. I believe uh these will help
Speaker 1: create an even deeper sense of immersion so that you
Speaker 1: can interact with the virtual worlds in a way that's
Speaker 1: a little more natural than holding a video game controller. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I think I've already seen that some of some of
Speaker 1: these things have been demoed, like it's a thing you
Speaker 1: put around your wrists or something that tracks the motions
Speaker 1: of your hands. There are some third party ones that
Speaker 1: have been shown off, and some and some different concepts
Speaker 1: that have been shown off that won't necessarily make their
Speaker 1: way into a consumer products. Some of them might, some
Speaker 1: of them might not, but the there have certainly been
Speaker 1: several different interfaces that have been experimented with and demoed
Speaker 1: to kind of give an idea of what it might
Speaker 1: be like to interact with this technology. And the whole
Speaker 1: goal of this is to try and remove some of
Speaker 1: those barriers that the gamers would feel, or just customers
Speaker 1: would feel when using this technology, so that they feel
Speaker 1: like they really are a part of this virtual world.
Speaker 1: You know, the more stuff that we have to do
Speaker 1: to accommodate the virtual world, the less likely will feel
Speaker 1: like we're actually there. So if you have to hold
Speaker 1: a video game controller while you're walking around a video
Speaker 1: game world, it may be that you always feel like
Speaker 1: you're playing a game. Whereas if you're able to create
Speaker 1: an interface that is largely invisible, like you're not actually
Speaker 1: holding a device in your hands, whether it's just your
Speaker 1: control or you've got some sort of glove device on
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be, then you're more likely to
Speaker 1: feel like you are actually in that virtual environment. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not just playing a video game and you happen
Speaker 1: to be wearing the screen instead of looking at it.
Speaker 1: And this was this, this whole project started off as
Speaker 1: a crowdfunding campaign. It wasn't originally just you know, a
Speaker 1: company coming out with a product. This was this is
Speaker 1: a true start up. Yeah, well, it's easy to forget now.
Speaker 1: The Oculus was a Kickstarter baby, Yeah, good old Palmer
Speaker 1: coming up with this idea and saying, hey, originally this
Speaker 1: was just gonna be about provide kits to people VR
Speaker 1: kits for them to put together themselves. But it got
Speaker 1: so much early attention, and it really it hits so
Speaker 1: much success that it then went on to become beyond
Speaker 1: just a kit, to let's create a finished product, to
Speaker 1: the point where you get folks who were coming over
Speaker 1: from Valve and saying, maybe this is something I want
Speaker 1: to work on instead to Facebook acquiring the company. So
Speaker 1: it was on the business side, something that was rapidly successful,
Speaker 1: even though we had not yet seen to date, as
Speaker 1: we record this, we have not yet seen a consumer product.
Speaker 1: Um probably one of the most anticipated pieces of hardware
Speaker 1: in sixteen from a gamer perspective, I what else is
Speaker 1: competing with it? Other VR headsets may in a moment,
Speaker 1: I think I've read that the Oculus is still the
Speaker 1: most popular platform with VR game developers. It wouldn't surprise
Speaker 1: me simply because it's the dev kit has been out
Speaker 1: for so long that a lot of people have had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to think about how they would design an
Speaker 1: experience that would be fun and immersive when wearing an
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift. Uh, they got a pretty good head start.
Speaker 1: The downside of that is that gamers have been waiting
Speaker 1: for it for a few years. Again, I've had all
Speaker 1: all of that media attention drama up. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: question is by the time it comes out will one
Speaker 1: will gamers still care and to will it live up
Speaker 1: to the hype? Part of the problem, maybe not problem.
Speaker 1: One challenge that they face is the fact that making
Speaker 1: this technology isn't cheap and it doesn't look like it's
Speaker 1: going to be sold as a loss leader type of peripheral,
Speaker 1: at least not initially. Keep in mind that any young
Speaker 1: technology when it comes out as a consumer product for
Speaker 1: the first time, tends to be mega expensive. I remember
Speaker 1: when CD players came out and they were like hundreds
Speaker 1: of dollars for a CD player. Well, you're you're really
Speaker 1: paying for the development at that point, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in this case, uh, we've we now know how
Speaker 1: much the Oculus Rift costs because pre orders opened up
Speaker 1: in January and it costs five hundred dollars, which is
Speaker 1: more than any of the current video game consolets. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people kind of not more than the
Speaker 1: computer it would take to run the Oculus Room. This
Speaker 1: is true. Yeah, if you wanted to, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out how much the computer would cost, well,
Speaker 1: tech Radar uh kind of did uh you know, back
Speaker 1: of the napkins sort of of calculation, and they estimate
Speaker 1: which side of the napkin is the front, the part
Speaker 1: that you put your mouth on when you ring, when
Speaker 1: you and then you turn the napkin face down. You
Speaker 1: don't want to look at the stuff that had been
Speaker 1: clear on the ranch, right, Uh? Never right on the ranch, man,
Speaker 1: That's that's leisure time when you're on the ranch. They
Speaker 1: estimate it would cost about one thousand, thirty dollars. That's
Speaker 1: in addition to the six hundred dollar Oculus Rift headsets.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about a six dollar investment assuming you
Speaker 1: don't already have a computer capable of running at the
Speaker 1: specs that are recommended for the Oculus Rift. Now, I
Speaker 1: I wonder, oh man, this is probably going to create
Speaker 1: a whole genre of hilarious YouTube videos of people trying
Speaker 1: to run Oculus Rift on the computers that are extremely
Speaker 1: underpowered to do so. It makes me think of the
Speaker 1: videos we saw when Tesla released the driver assist autonomous mode,
Speaker 1: where people like one of the things that says, hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't meant for you to take your hands off
Speaker 1: the wheel and just lean back and act like the
Speaker 1: car can take you there, which is exactly what everyone did,
Speaker 1: and they shot videos of it, and then you know
Speaker 1: when when accidents happened, they were like, well, the technology
Speaker 1: is not ready, idiot. It says, right there, do not
Speaker 1: do the thing the thing you just did. Why is
Speaker 1: it that when we tell people not to do something,
Speaker 1: the first thing they go out and do is that thing.
Speaker 1: And not only do they do that thing, they video
Speaker 1: themselves doing that thing. I mean, I wonder if it
Speaker 1: will have fail safes built in to detect like, hey,
Speaker 1: the computer you're trying to use to run this thing
Speaker 1: on is gonna make you sick and maybe you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do it. I think it'd just be funny if it
Speaker 1: just starts running like you know, an eight bit version
Speaker 1: of of of Donkey Kong, or or a Galagha or
Speaker 1: something like that immersive Gala. I'm on board. So also
Speaker 1: that sixteen hundred dollars I mentioned doesn't include the touch
Speaker 1: controllers that will come out later in However, if you're
Speaker 1: wondering is this going to be a barrier? Is this
Speaker 1: going to truly kill the oculus before I can ever
Speaker 1: have any success? It depends upon whom you ask. Because
Speaker 1: c nets Jeffrey Morrison wrote that the demonstrations he had
Speaker 1: experienced had convinced him C hundred dollars was worth it was.
Speaker 1: It's totally worth that price. It is it is an
Speaker 1: experience that is so compelling. Six hundred dollars is not
Speaker 1: a problem. Now. Granted, keep me mind, six hundred dollars
Speaker 1: is not a problem for people who have six hundred
Speaker 1: dollars to spend on a computer peripheral, right, I assumed, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And other people have said, including they're a writer for
Speaker 1: The Verge has said that this suggests that VR may
Speaker 1: remain a luxury technology, something that only a niche is
Speaker 1: able to afford and enjoy, and therefore it will never
Speaker 1: really blossom because the market won't be big enough to
Speaker 1: support the amount of development you would want for a
Speaker 1: really robust world, like a library, a real library of
Speaker 1: games and experiences. Well, I imagine that'd be the case
Speaker 1: early on. But I mean again, I don't see why
Speaker 1: you couldn't think that at some point VR hardware will
Speaker 1: will be a loss leader technology. Just what consoles are
Speaker 1: You know, you've got people developing games for them, and
Speaker 1: they're going to make money back on those games, as
Speaker 1: long as you have a way of making money back
Speaker 1: on those games, right like if you if you have
Speaker 1: it where there's some sort of licensing fee in order
Speaker 1: to be able to use that technology, because if it's
Speaker 1: not your company that's developing the games, you have to
Speaker 1: find some other way of of monetizing that, right Otherwise,
Speaker 1: otherwise you made the hardware, but other people are making
Speaker 1: the software that runs on it. Um another. And if
Speaker 1: that's the case, if all you're doing is making the
Speaker 1: hardware and you're not making the software, it can't be
Speaker 1: a loss leader. It's just a loss because you're you
Speaker 1: don't have anything else to sell. So it's definitely one
Speaker 1: of those things that still a question mark. Uh. My
Speaker 1: hope is that it would be like other consumer technologies
Speaker 1: that we mentioned before, where the initial price is relatively high,
Speaker 1: but then we see it decrease over time and more
Speaker 1: people can adopt it, and so you have, you have
Speaker 1: like that long tail, right, you've got the early adopters
Speaker 1: who have the cash to spend on this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, just think how cheap virtual boys are now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's not talk about that at any rate. At any rate,
Speaker 1: So that that's the big daddy is the Oculus Rift.
Speaker 1: But there are other players. There's another big daddy, I think, so, well,
Speaker 1: there's a couple I would argue, but Sony's PlayStation VR
Speaker 1: is a is a definite big one, and it has
Speaker 1: a huge advantage over the Oculus Rift in that you
Speaker 1: already have an established base of gamers who would be
Speaker 1: capable of using this technology because it's compatible with the
Speaker 1: PS four. So this is a peripheral for the PlayStation four,
Speaker 1: And unlike the Oculus Rift, where even if you're a
Speaker 1: PC gamer you may not have a machine capable of
Speaker 1: supporting the Oculus you know your audience in this case, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've already got an established base, and granted only a
Speaker 1: percentage of that base is likely to go into the
Speaker 1: VR world, but you still know they're they're right kind
Speaker 1: of games they buy, You know how much money they're
Speaker 1: willing to spend. You don't have to convince them to
Speaker 1: buy a new machine because they already have a machine
Speaker 1: that works with and uh, there are some downsides to this, obviously.
Speaker 1: PC is one of those things where over time you
Speaker 1: can upgrade it or you can buy a new one,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be more powerful and the games
Speaker 1: can therefore take advantage of that increase in power, whereas
Speaker 1: with the console you have a cap, a hard cap
Speaker 1: of how much power it can put out. Well a
Speaker 1: few exceptions where occasionally you'll get a console where there'll
Speaker 1: be some way of upgrading it, but that doesn't happen frequently. Yeah. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: these days you've got like memory chips and stuff that
Speaker 1: you can add in. Yeah, and sometimes sometimes there's a
Speaker 1: firmware upgrade or something. But sure, sure, but but for
Speaker 1: the most part, your processors are going to remain your
Speaker 1: processes from the life of the product, which is what
Speaker 1: is it these days, five to seven years. They the
Speaker 1: goal usually Sony aims for is ten years. That's what
Speaker 1: they wanted for the p S three, So the PS
Speaker 1: four and Xbox one I think are both they were
Speaker 1: they were trying to future prove them as much as
Speaker 1: possible so that more money could be made along the
Speaker 1: game's side, and you don't have to go and launch
Speaker 1: a new console and completely negate all the stuff you've
Speaker 1: already made. Also, it would be compatible with Sony's move controllers.
Speaker 1: Those are those little wands that have the balls on
Speaker 1: the end with a led inside that can change different colors,
Speaker 1: So you could use a couple of those along with
Speaker 1: the headset to interact with the virtual world. They could
Speaker 1: be like, you know, there could be guns. They could
Speaker 1: be a sword, they could be a light saver. Uh,
Speaker 1: I really want to really want to cool Star Wars
Speaker 1: virtual reality, like because they'd be huge crab claws that
Speaker 1: could be they could be you know, a paintbrush. That
Speaker 1: could be a mop. It could be pretty much anything.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, I need to go start a savings account.
Speaker 1: Hatchet guys. Yeah, uh yeah, it could be. It could
Speaker 1: be any number of things. It could be you know, uh, spaghetti.
Speaker 1: It could just be a lot of spaghetti. That's what
Speaker 1: your hands are. I would play that. I would play
Speaker 1: that My Hands are Spaghetti game every day I have.
Speaker 1: I have often played it, usually whenever I don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with something. This is a great idea. It's
Speaker 1: a franchise of games where we have to do things
Speaker 1: like you have to defuse a bomb, but your hands
Speaker 1: are spaghetti. You laugh. But there is the game Octo Dad,
Speaker 1: which is essentially that, right, Octodad is not that different
Speaker 1: from the concept of my hands are spaghetti. You also
Speaker 1: have to prevent the chief from finding out that you're spaghetti.
Speaker 1: If if any of you make a game in which
Speaker 1: the character's hands are spaghetti, I want credit at least
Speaker 1: I want to at least based on an idea by
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Uh So it can also work along with
Speaker 1: the PlayStation camera, which not everyone has, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was one of those add ons that you could
Speaker 1: get with the PS four, but the camera could allow
Speaker 1: for some of that positional tracking that we talked about
Speaker 1: with the Oculus as well, the same sort of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of my favorite demos that I got to
Speaker 1: see was something called Job Simulator. So you're laughing at
Speaker 1: at spaghetti hands Johnson. Latter was the funniest video I've
Speaker 1: watched today, and I've watched a lot of them. So
Speaker 1: Job Simulator starts off where you're in like a cubicle
Speaker 1: that is absolutely lousy with stuff like coffee mug and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, books and binders and staplers, and there's like
Speaker 1: a copy right there in a terminal. You're supposed to
Speaker 1: be playing an office drone in twenty uh. The person
Speaker 1: who wrote up the little description said, I assume you're
Speaker 1: you're doing jobs that are too menial even for a robot.
Speaker 1: And as it starts, like all the all the person
Speaker 1: does is start picking up everything in the little cubicle
Speaker 1: and just throwing it across the office. Like there's a
Speaker 1: point where they pick up the coffee mug, pour creamer
Speaker 1: into the coffee, tilt the coffee mug back as if
Speaker 1: they're drinking, and you hear like a glug glug glug
Speaker 1: noise as soon as it's empty, throws it across the screen,
Speaker 1: then like grabs two staples and starts firing staples like
Speaker 1: like they're like John Wu style all over the place.
Speaker 1: It was phenomenal. I was immediately like, well, this is
Speaker 1: like goat simulator. It's one of those games where you
Speaker 1: you can't really see yourself playing it for a really
Speaker 1: long time, but you can see yourself laughing your butt
Speaker 1: off for a good like ten fifteen minutes with your
Speaker 1: friends while watching someone just go eight inside an office.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure that I have a
Speaker 1: top limit on how much I like to throw things. Also,
Speaker 1: I guess it helps when you think, like, if you've
Speaker 1: had a really bad day at work, you can exactly
Speaker 1: out in the virtual world and just totally trash your workstation.
Speaker 1: Um oh yeah, yeah, if you could build your own
Speaker 1: workstation like I, I do not know exactly what levels
Speaker 1: you can do. Also, in the demo, there's one point
Speaker 1: where they put a red swing line stapler in the
Speaker 1: copier and start making copies of it while also destroying
Speaker 1: and throwing things everywhere else in the office. I'll show
Speaker 1: you the video after this is done, because it is hilarious. Excellent. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's not it. There there other there's other hardware on
Speaker 1: the way, right. Yeah, let's let's wrap this up with
Speaker 1: a couple more quick descriptions. So this, this is one
Speaker 1: that I think is a real contender. The HTC Vibe,
Speaker 1: the Home Man Vibe. I was calling it viv A yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand, and a lot of people are like, is
Speaker 1: it viv Is it vibe? Well, when they were first
Speaker 1: talking about they had read dash Vibe, which tells me
Speaker 1: that it's going to be five. But I've heard of
Speaker 1: people say Viv as well. I've never heard Viva until today,
Speaker 1: but congratulations. Oh no, I guess it would be v
Speaker 1: I don't know, like like vive Le France. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: understand yet that well, it makes sense, but it is
Speaker 1: the Vibe as far as I am aware. So HTC
Speaker 1: Vibe is coming out with another dev kit version before
Speaker 1: it comes out with a consumer product version. The dev
Speaker 1: kit version is going to be the Vibe pre This
Speaker 1: is the headset that is backed by Valve, which is
Speaker 1: the company that that does the Steam platform for game
Speaker 1: district you should game playing computer PC game PC gamers
Speaker 1: and a really well known name in PC gaming. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the consumer version of it is scheduled for
Speaker 1: release in April. We still don't have a price as
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast, but we can assume
Speaker 1: that it's going to be probably not dissimilar to Oculus Rifts,
Speaker 1: somewhere in that range. Like it would shock me if
Speaker 1: it's less than five dollars, It would not surprise me
Speaker 1: if it's six hundred or thereabouts. But this one's got
Speaker 1: a got a different camera set up, right, It's got
Speaker 1: an outward facing camera. Yeah, the So a previous def
Speaker 1: kit version used external cameras that were attached to your
Speaker 1: computer to map the room you're in. The idea being
Speaker 1: that you would be able to use the physical dimensions
Speaker 1: of your room to wander around inside, and the the
Speaker 1: system would protect you from walking face first into a
Speaker 1: wall by alerting you that you were getting close to
Speaker 1: the wall. It would show like a little grid, kind
Speaker 1: of like the hollow deck in Star Trek Shimmer. Similar
Speaker 1: to that, it would show you that to let you
Speaker 1: know you're getting close to an obstacle, so you should
Speaker 1: stop moving forward or you're going to injure yourself. The
Speaker 1: most recent version, instead of using those external cameras, uses
Speaker 1: a forward facing camera on the or i guess rear
Speaker 1: facing camera really rear facing camera on the device, where
Speaker 1: it's it's facing outward into the world, and it can
Speaker 1: detect when you're getting close to an obstacle. So if
Speaker 1: you're walking close to a wall in a real physical space,
Speaker 1: you get the virtual alert so that you don't slam
Speaker 1: your face into it. Now, this gives you a lot
Speaker 1: more flexibility. You can move around in an actual physical
Speaker 1: space and have those motions translated into in game actions
Speaker 1: or in world actions if it's not a game. Um,
Speaker 1: and so it's not just holding a controller and pressing
Speaker 1: forward to make your character walk, you could actually do
Speaker 1: some walking. Now, I think most of us probably don't
Speaker 1: have an enormous room we can dedicate to this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So it creates some channel inges to create
Speaker 1: a game where you know you're doing this sort of
Speaker 1: action where it's not just gimmicky, where you're not just
Speaker 1: like dodging a dodgeball or something. Yeah, I mean you've
Speaker 1: got to kick someone that you live with out of
Speaker 1: your house. You've got to empty their room out right.
Speaker 1: In my case, like I have an office where that's
Speaker 1: where my PC is, and if I put my if
Speaker 1: I made it my gaming PC, which is essentially what
Speaker 1: it is at this point, I'm not using it for
Speaker 1: much else. Um, there's a desk in there, there's a
Speaker 1: couch in that room. There's not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: floor space for me to move around in. So I'd
Speaker 1: be very limited in what I could do. So the
Speaker 1: kind of games I could play would have to be
Speaker 1: pretty limited to I can't imagine playing a big, open
Speaker 1: world sandbox game, right. I couldn't play like a modern
Speaker 1: day legend of Zelda game and and run across high
Speaker 1: Rule because I could only go three steps and then
Speaker 1: I have to stop. Uh. I have seen some interesting
Speaker 1: research in VR outside of this, where there have been
Speaker 1: worlds designed where it gives you very subtle hints to
Speaker 1: turn earn so that you change your pathway you're not
Speaker 1: and it feels like you're walking in a straight line,
Speaker 1: but in reality you're actually walking in a circle. But
Speaker 1: you have to make that a pretty big room so
Speaker 1: that you can make it a big circle because it
Speaker 1: has to be subtle. Sounds like yet another ticket to
Speaker 1: nauseation Land, right, you're just turning in circles and your
Speaker 1: nausea nausea. Yes, uh, I think that's a good word.
Speaker 1: Annaucigation nation. That sounds like a terrible wrestling stable. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, um yeah, So it's it's a cool
Speaker 1: idea though, the idea of actually incorporating your physical surroundings
Speaker 1: so that you can interact with them in a virtual way,
Speaker 1: including things like detecting that there's a chair, a physical
Speaker 1: chair in front of you in the real world and
Speaker 1: presenting a virtual chair in the virtual world and you
Speaker 1: could actually reach out and touch this chair and sit
Speaker 1: down in it because it's really there in your room,
Speaker 1: but it's also there in the virtual reppers station of
Speaker 1: whatever world you are in. That's that's something that this
Speaker 1: system is capable of doing, and I think it's one
Speaker 1: of It's also one of those that well, sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: just imagining. You're running around in sky room and every
Speaker 1: now and then there's an office chair or a treadmill
Speaker 1: or something that should just be a throne. It's just
Speaker 1: a throne that's in the middle of nowhere for no reason,
Speaker 1: but it's shaped exactly like an office chair. It would
Speaker 1: be pretty funny. Yeah, what would be really funny is
Speaker 1: if it's a throne, but you sit in it's actually
Speaker 1: an office chair on casters and you roll it at
Speaker 1: the throne itself just slides across the landscape. That'd be hilarious.
Speaker 1: I would I would watch the YouTube videos that would
Speaker 1: result from that. But would you play it? Probably? I
Speaker 1: gotta be honest. It look skyrom so um but so
Speaker 1: so so this isn't this is similar to augmented reality, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's kind of a it's kind of
Speaker 1: a bridge between augmented reality and virtual reality because the
Speaker 1: world that you are experiencing isn't entirely virtual. It's dependent
Speaker 1: upon the physical space you are in. But it's not
Speaker 1: really augmented either, because you could have a completely virtual
Speaker 1: representation of your environment. It's just incorporating physical elements so
Speaker 1: that you don't break your legs playing. Yeah, the term
Speaker 1: would be it would be the inverse of augmented reality.
Speaker 1: It would be like realized virtuality. What would it be?
Speaker 1: Isn't that a song? But augmented virtuality? Augmented virtuality? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go, There we go. We've invented a whole
Speaker 1: new genre. And and you know, you could also pair
Speaker 1: this with something else, like we've we've seen some interesting
Speaker 1: peripherals that are designed to allow you to run are
Speaker 1: in different directions without actually moving anywhere. So one of
Speaker 1: the ones I talked about it looks kind of like
Speaker 1: you're running in a giant walk. It's it's a hemisphere
Speaker 1: may metal, and you wear these very low friction booties.
Speaker 1: You can run in place, and you're on the pestle
Speaker 1: that actually has a bar around it. So when you
Speaker 1: inevitably if you can only eat it so hard, exactly,
Speaker 1: you can't eat it totally like you're not gonna go.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna go rear end over tea kettle, right,
Speaker 1: You'll just slam your face into you, guys. I can't
Speaker 1: walk on regular fricative surfaces. I haven't seen this in person.
Speaker 1: I heard that it was at c E S, but
Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to go to the VR
Speaker 1: on a R section, which really I'm sad about because
Speaker 1: I wanted to have I wanted to get a chance
Speaker 1: to see because I've seen the pictures of it for years,
Speaker 1: but I've never had the chance to actually experience it
Speaker 1: and see what it was like. There are also other
Speaker 1: peripherroles that are similar to allow you greater amount of
Speaker 1: movement within a physical space to translate that into virtual actions.
Speaker 1: But probably the biggest advantage of the viv Or Vibe
Speaker 1: now i'm doing it, is that it's backed by Valve,
Speaker 1: and because the Steam platform is so popular, has a
Speaker 1: big advantage. Again, You've got a huge known audience, and
Speaker 1: that might make it more a active to A consumers
Speaker 1: and B developers. Yeah, so I think I think that
Speaker 1: one's got and and also I've just seen a lot
Speaker 1: of really positive reviews saying that the experience using HTC
Speaker 1: Vibe feels more immersive than a lot of the competitors,
Speaker 1: although I've seen some really positive stuff about the Sony
Speaker 1: VR headset too, So all of these have had pretty
Speaker 1: enthusiastic reviews about them, even the ones where they like
Speaker 1: here are a couple of things we think need to
Speaker 1: be fixed. But um, but the vibe in particular, I
Speaker 1: think gets a lot of really you know, positive press.
Speaker 1: All right, is that pretty much what's out there right now?
Speaker 1: Or what else? What else do we have? You get
Speaker 1: some VR light stuff, Yeah, kind of like half steps
Speaker 1: towards VR, Like like if you guys have heard of
Speaker 1: Google Cardboard, which is a VR slash, a R platform
Speaker 1: from Google that turns your phone into a headset sort
Speaker 1: of the same sort sort of the same way that
Speaker 1: the Gear VR does, but a little bit more low fi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. It's largely used as an educational tool these days,
Speaker 1: actually to the point where people have talked about using
Speaker 1: it for virtual field trips. So but I mean, which
Speaker 1: makes sense, Like if you're talking about a field trip
Speaker 1: to a place that is too remote for a class
Speaker 1: to go to, for example, if or if your parents
Speaker 1: wouldn't sign the permission slip, well, well I just think,
Speaker 1: like I grew up in rural Georgia. If they gave
Speaker 1: me the opportunity to take a field trip to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Virtually, that would certainly be more realistic in
Speaker 1: the sense of what my school was capable of doing
Speaker 1: than actually busting a whole bunch of potential lawsuits off
Speaker 1: to our nation's capital. And um and so this, you know,
Speaker 1: I can totally see it from that perspective. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it uses your smartphone. The smartphone tends to have, you know,
Speaker 1: a rear facing camera which can take in the scene
Speaker 1: of the external world for the augmented reality purposes um
Speaker 1: VR stuff is pretty simple. The interface tends to be
Speaker 1: based on magnetic interaction, where again it's it's manipulating that
Speaker 1: digital compass where you bring a magnet near the phone
Speaker 1: and because the compass will detect the presence of the magnet,
Speaker 1: that could be a way of putting input into the device. Now,
Speaker 1: they are also capacity of touch surfaces that will interact
Speaker 1: with the screen um and there's usually on the very
Speaker 1: top of the one side of the the cardboard, so
Speaker 1: you you know, it can run your finger across that
Speaker 1: and use that for the input. But again it's it's
Speaker 1: not like an external control that you would use with
Speaker 1: some of these other devices. It does have the wireless
Speaker 1: advantage the gear does. You can walk around and trip
Speaker 1: over lots of things while wearing it. And if you
Speaker 1: wanted to make your own, if you have an Android phone,
Speaker 1: actually it's not even just Android now, Google Cardboard is
Speaker 1: available on other platforms. But if you have a phone
Speaker 1: that's compatible, like of a compatible size, you can get
Speaker 1: the schematics from Google on how to build one yourself,
Speaker 1: or you could order one. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: companies that make kits. Yeah, I mean for for like
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty bucks. It's a pretty cheap. It's it's
Speaker 1: by far the cheapest experience, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are actually made out of cardboard. They really are made
Speaker 1: of cardboard, and some of them are really high quality cardboard.
Speaker 1: But yeah, with the Burger King crown and some tape.
Speaker 1: Some of them are made of more robust materials. Like
Speaker 1: there's some that are clearly made out of plastic or
Speaker 1: other stuff. There's one that looked like a an old stereoscope.
Speaker 1: It was yeah, well yeah, like the like the one
Speaker 1: where you would put a stereoscopic photograph on a little
Speaker 1: platform which would be a certain distance away from your eyes,
Speaker 1: and then you have a viewfinder that would focus the
Speaker 1: lenses on that image so that you get that three
Speaker 1: D effect. So it's like a steampunk version of Google
Speaker 1: Cardboard essentially. That's what it comes down to. It looks
Speaker 1: like it would fit right in with a steampunk world.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, it's very similar again to the gear.
Speaker 1: Uh and there are a few there are a ton
Speaker 1: of other ones too, but yeah, yeah, well and and
Speaker 1: one one thing, one thing before we move away from
Speaker 1: the from the cardboard specific Some critics say that we
Speaker 1: really shouldn't call it VR, particularly because in most of
Speaker 1: the apps that are currently available for it anyway, you're
Speaker 1: you're not controlling the movement of the camera through the environment.
Speaker 1: You're you can control your gaze within the environment. But
Speaker 1: it's more like a movie that's choosing where to take you. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so it's like being on rails you can look anywhere,
Speaker 1: or on a roller coaster. Think of it that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're you're on a roller coaster, which is fun,
Speaker 1: but you have to go the way the roller coaster
Speaker 1: goes or things have gone terribly wrong. Uh, And you
Speaker 1: can look any direction you want as you ride the
Speaker 1: roller coaster, but you're still going in the direction of
Speaker 1: the coaster, same sort of thing, um, which limits the
Speaker 1: feeling of immersion and also interactivity. Obviously. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: also other ones. There's a lot of third party ones,
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, smaller companies that are trying
Speaker 1: to get into the space or trying to take advantage
Speaker 1: of the trend. But for the most part, I would
Speaker 1: argue that they're aiming for the market of parents who
Speaker 1: don't really know what it is their kids want for Christmas,
Speaker 1: so they go out and buy that thing. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, the police station for Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I'm not saying all of them are in that category,
Speaker 1: but a few of them could be. Okay. So that's
Speaker 1: basically what the virtual reality landscape is looking like right now.
Speaker 1: What are we What do you guys think about the future?
Speaker 1: I mean, how how do you guys think this is
Speaker 1: going to shake out? You know, I hate to invoke
Speaker 1: the killer app mindset, but I really do think it's
Speaker 1: the kind of situation where it's going to depend on
Speaker 1: games or experiences or content or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, because no matter how good the hardware is.
Speaker 1: I think it's just not going to take off until
Speaker 1: there are some several pieces of content on this medium
Speaker 1: that people won't stop talking about. I can tell you
Speaker 1: right now what I think a killer app would be,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm being totally serious. I'm not making a
Speaker 1: joke here. I think if someone can make a truly immersive,
Speaker 1: terrifying survival horror game in a virtual reality style where
Speaker 1: you are put in the position of somebody who's in
Speaker 1: like a super creepy house, and it's you have to
Speaker 1: walk around that creepy house by yourself, and you've got
Speaker 1: that positional audio coming into your headphones. Your perspective is
Speaker 1: limited to whichever way you're looking. That's gonna sell systems.
Speaker 1: I would really enjoy that. But I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't even have a good sense, I guess
Speaker 1: of how popular horror games are in general. I just outsiders,
Speaker 1: aren't they. I think I think they're relatively I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you think of things like that, they're Some people have
Speaker 1: sold some copies of Resident Evil, I mean, and there's
Speaker 1: been there's been a real renaissance recently two with things
Speaker 1: like five Nights at Freddie's that's a PC game that
Speaker 1: has gotten insanely popular, and it's a very simple premise,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a survival horror style or Emily wants
Speaker 1: to play. That's another new one that's fantastic. I don't
Speaker 1: even heard of these. I'll talk to you about them
Speaker 1: after the show. They're great. Yeah, okay, well I would
Speaker 1: have I'm my heart rate increased just thinking about like that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that would be for me and
Speaker 1: my old delicate age. I have a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: of I think what the killer app is going to be,
Speaker 1: and it's something I read about earlier today, apparently coming
Speaker 1: to the Oculus rifted and PlayStation VR, Penn and Teller
Speaker 1: present Desert Bus to this time. It's in VR, So
Speaker 1: give a quick give a quick rundown of what Desert
Speaker 1: buses for the people who have not heard about Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I haven't played it. I think you have, so you
Speaker 1: should say what the original Desert Bus is. So, Desert
Speaker 1: Bus was a game that Teller had proposed in a
Speaker 1: Actually it was Penn who proposed it in a one
Speaker 1: of their books a few years ago, several years ago now,
Speaker 1: and the idea they had they actually came out with
Speaker 1: a I think it was for Sega c D. They
Speaker 1: came out with an idea that never actually made it
Speaker 1: to market, but later on was released in bits and pieces.
Speaker 1: One of the games they came up with based upon
Speaker 1: their experiences touring as a as an act, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: what if we made the world's worst video game where
Speaker 1: you are a tour bus driver and you're driving a
Speaker 1: bus from I think it's Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada,
Speaker 1: and you're going along like a desolate highway. There's no traffic.
Speaker 1: You're in a bus that's top speed is fifty five
Speaker 1: miles per hour, might be, but at any rate, any rate,
Speaker 1: it's it's somewhere in that range. The bus always pulls
Speaker 1: a bit to the right, so you have to constantly
Speaker 1: correct for that, and it time passes in real time,
Speaker 1: and it really does take you eight hours to drive
Speaker 1: from Tucson to Las Vegas. And when you can, you can,
Speaker 1: you can pull off to the side of the road,
Speaker 1: but then you you know, you're just sitting there, You're
Speaker 1: not doing anything. It's just times just passing um. But
Speaker 1: you you keep on going and when you get to
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. You get one point and then you turn
Speaker 1: around and you have to head back to Tucson and
Speaker 1: and uh so this has actually been used by a
Speaker 1: couple of Well by One charity group in particular, where
Speaker 1: every year they do a marathon session to try and
Speaker 1: get more points than they did the previous year. And
Speaker 1: it's also every point is eight hours of gameplay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember nothing happening. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: that high. Yeah, but they do. They do rotate out
Speaker 1: people playing, so it's not one person being tortured for
Speaker 1: like days on end, but the eventually the system would overheat.
Speaker 1: They rate Yeah, because a boid the demands on that
Speaker 1: are so high. But yeah, they raise a lot of
Speaker 1: money for charity through through that kind of marathon system.
Speaker 1: But well, anyway, Pendalette says, Desert Bus two is coming,
Speaker 1: So this would mean that you would coming in full
Speaker 1: virtual reality? Would you would have the I talked to
Speaker 1: Joe earlier said this would really be impressive to me
Speaker 1: if you could add in audible but incoherent mumbling, so
Speaker 1: like like the people you are driving or having a conversation, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can't make out what they're saying. You can
Speaker 1: just hear that they're having a conversation, and occasionally someone's
Speaker 1: getting excited about something, but you still can't make out
Speaker 1: what the conversations about. And it'd be even better that
Speaker 1: if you turn around and look behind you, you just
Speaker 1: see a curtain. You can't see into the back of
Speaker 1: the bus about who is talking. All you're looking at
Speaker 1: is just a blank curtain. And then you have to
Speaker 1: just turn back and look at the desolate highway ahead
Speaker 1: of you as you continue your seemingly endless journey. That
Speaker 1: I think would truly bring that experience to life. So
Speaker 1: for you, this is the ultimate future of VR. This
Speaker 1: is what we are going to see in the next
Speaker 1: few years. I think we're gonna see a lot of
Speaker 1: different attempts at using VR. Whether or not they'll be
Speaker 1: successful remains to be seen. But I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of products that are looking at using VR headsets not
Speaker 1: as a means of creating games, but other types of experiences,
Speaker 1: like a really immersive film. One of the products I
Speaker 1: saw at ce S was the three sixty fly camera,
Speaker 1: which is capable of capturing three reads a video. So
Speaker 1: this solves a problem that some filmmakers have encountered where
Speaker 1: they thought, I want to use this VR headset to
Speaker 1: film a scene of some sort in three degrees, so
Speaker 1: that the audience can choose where to look at any
Speaker 1: given moment in the scene and see something different, and
Speaker 1: even have characters surrounding the audience member. You could even
Speaker 1: create such an experience where you are a passive participant
Speaker 1: in this scene. Maybe you are a character within the scene,
Speaker 1: but you you don't have any lines or anything, but
Speaker 1: you you are representing someone who is actually there while
Speaker 1: all this other stuff is going around you. That could
Speaker 1: be a possibility. Um, and this is a camera that
Speaker 1: helps filmmakers who want to make such an experience do that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: filmmaking in that style would be really challenging. I mean
Speaker 1: you have to figure out how to light the scene
Speaker 1: and get the sound and do that without the film
Speaker 1: crew being there, because that would just be weird. Like
Speaker 1: you're looking ahead and you're seeing this amazing scene and
Speaker 1: you turn around and there's the gaffer. You know, you
Speaker 1: could all this problem by having by by that old
Speaker 1: writer's trick of having everything take place on movie sets.
Speaker 1: You could do that. That would that would solve it.
Speaker 1: Where you know, you are maybe sitting in the director's chair,
Speaker 1: and of course then you have an enormous camera blogging
Speaker 1: your view straight ahead, but everything really interesting is going
Speaker 1: on behind you anyway. Now, the question remains, is this
Speaker 1: going to push VR into a must have piece of
Speaker 1: technology that gets wide acceptance or will it just remain
Speaker 1: kind of a gimmick, sort of the way three D
Speaker 1: has been for particularly for the television market, where you know,
Speaker 1: it's usually one of those things that's just an add
Speaker 1: on feature that hardly anyone ever uses. When they get
Speaker 1: their their television that's three D capable, they don't use
Speaker 1: it very much. That's a possible outcome of VR. I
Speaker 1: honestly don't know the answer to that. I hope that
Speaker 1: it becomes a viable piece of technology, but you know,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty big hurdles to overcome in order to
Speaker 1: get there. Yeah, I think that the VR boom is
Speaker 1: going to come, and I do genuinely think it's going
Speaker 1: to come relatively soon. Non entertainment sectors, in uh, stuff
Speaker 1: like sales and marketing and design. Development of that technology
Speaker 1: and the public's comfort with it through those kind of
Speaker 1: channels could then lead to a boom in the entertainment sector.
Speaker 1: But I think that first it's going to be stuff
Speaker 1: that people who like making money can use to make
Speaker 1: more money, which I just honestly don't think gaming is
Speaker 1: going to be the first the first bit that that's
Speaker 1: that that's going to happen in UM for for example,
Speaker 1: UM like in in the United States, UH, we have
Speaker 1: we have a big box chain called Lows that does
Speaker 1: like hardware and appliances and home design stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you know, UM And in a few select stores around
Speaker 1: around the country, they offer what they've called the Hollow Room,
Speaker 1: in which customers can lay out of virtual kitchen or
Speaker 1: bathroom using and in store iPad app and then explore
Speaker 1: their design using a developer level Oculus rift kit, and
Speaker 1: you can then save your design to lose customer website,
Speaker 1: you can export it to a YouTube three sixty video
Speaker 1: so that you can watch it at home on a
Speaker 1: cardboard or something like that. And according to representatives from
Speaker 1: the company that the tool has increased sales in stores
Speaker 1: that have been using it. Interesting, now, this is something
Speaker 1: that I would imagine a are also coming in really
Speaker 1: handy because then you could use that sort of thing
Speaker 1: in your actual home environment and see what those overlays
Speaker 1: look like. Oh exactly. Yeah, Yeah, I think that that
Speaker 1: kind of thing for for the for certain class of
Speaker 1: people is going to be right, because I mean because
Speaker 1: because who has it's the kind of person who has
Speaker 1: enough money to buy a like six hundred dollar headset
Speaker 1: that they then used to contemplate buying what I can
Speaker 1: only imagine is a ludicrously comfortable share. I could just
Speaker 1: imagine this being used for comedic purposes in a in
Speaker 1: a television show or movie in which you have that
Speaker 1: stereotypical scenario where you've got the couple and one of
Speaker 1: them is demanding the other one move a piece of
Speaker 1: furniture to another part of the room in order to
Speaker 1: see if it looks better there, except in this case,
Speaker 1: they're both just wearing headsets like, no, I think I
Speaker 1: liked it better over in the other corner. Can you
Speaker 1: put it back over there? Throws it yeah, like like
Speaker 1: like in like in the job simulator, Yeah yeah, or
Speaker 1: or at that rate, it would solve a lot of
Speaker 1: couple fighting problems in stores for people going like I
Speaker 1: really don't think this color couch is going to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they if they've got a three D rendering of
Speaker 1: their home, then they could see right, and if they
Speaker 1: had any sense of well, if they had sense of taste, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a separate issue. It would not work for me.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, no one has been
Speaker 1: able to market a sense of taste yet. Um. One
Speaker 1: more thing I did want to want to bring up.
Speaker 1: There was a really great piece on c net just
Speaker 1: today about how VR demos are being used this week
Speaker 1: at the National Retail Federation's yearly conference, which they called
Speaker 1: the Big Show, which, having hung out with wrestling people
Speaker 1: too often, reminds me of a whole different, separate issue,
Speaker 1: but is big so for for example, one luxury home
Speaker 1: retailer demoed an app for the gear VR that lets
Speaker 1: you move through a virtual catalog, which sounds so boring
Speaker 1: in one way, but in the other way is probably
Speaker 1: a really clever marketing tool like letting people letting people
Speaker 1: use that kind of thing to spend more of their money.
Speaker 1: Microsoft showed off an app that's that's basically a virtual
Speaker 1: brochure for Virgin Atlantic's upper class flights, which which is
Speaker 1: a whole hilarious thing. There's like guided meditation. I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway, but but yeah, so it's the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that could be used at trade shows to help
Speaker 1: sales reps demonstrate their their products or their product experiences.
Speaker 1: In this sort of case, I could I could see that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, again, anything that makes it easier for you
Speaker 1: to to have people get an idea of what something
Speaker 1: is about, especially something that's so like luxurious and high end,
Speaker 1: trying to convince the people who have the money to
Speaker 1: spend on such things. I could see that being a
Speaker 1: very valuable marketing tool. So that's an interesting of you.
Speaker 1: I know, whether or not that would ever trickle down
Speaker 1: to a more broad base is an interesting thought as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think we will probably revisit this, maybe an early
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, once all these headsets have come out and
Speaker 1: had had some time in the market place to see,
Speaker 1: you know, how things are shaping up, had a holiday season. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a lot of these are coming out
Speaker 1: well ahead of the holiday shopping season, so it's a
Speaker 1: good question to see, like, well, are they going to
Speaker 1: get some early adoption? Will it be very limited? I
Speaker 1: suspect it will be pretty limited at least early on,
Speaker 1: but h and will it live up to the hype? Well,
Speaker 1: people actually think, oh this was worth the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this was really fun. Guys. Uh and you listeners
Speaker 1: out there, what do you think about virtual reality or
Speaker 1: is it something that you're ready for? Is it something
Speaker 1: you have absolutely no interest in. Is it something that
Speaker 1: you've tried and you hope is finally ready. Are you
Speaker 1: old like me and you remember the really bad VR
Speaker 1: from the mid to late nineties. Let us know, and
Speaker 1: let's know if you have any suggestions for future topics
Speaker 1: as well. Email address you can reach us at is
Speaker 1: f W thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. At Twitter
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Speaker 1: and we'll talk to you again virtually. Willison. For more
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