Speaker 1: Technology with Tech Stuff from Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I love technology.
Speaker 1: That's what this show is all about, exploring the world
Speaker 1: of tech, learning how it works, learning how it affects
Speaker 1: our culture and our society, how it changes us, how
Speaker 1: we change it. It's kind of a big old love
Speaker 1: in of tech and squishy feelings. And today it doesn't
Speaker 1: get any squishy here because we're talking about virtual reality
Speaker 1: and augmented reality, a very squishy subject as it turns out,
Speaker 1: because it's a definition that continuously changes. And we've explored
Speaker 1: topics like augmented reality and virtual reality many many times
Speaker 1: over the course of this show. You can find lots
Speaker 1: of different episodes where we've covered the the subject, and
Speaker 1: these days the two techn oologies tend to get categorized
Speaker 1: together in a bigger bucket that is called mixed or
Speaker 1: sometimes merged reality. And you could think of mixed reality
Speaker 1: kind of like a spectrum. So on one end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum you have near total virtual environments, so almost
Speaker 1: everything that you would experience under this area would be
Speaker 1: created by a computer. You would be viewing it, likely
Speaker 1: through some sort of head mounted display. There'd be some
Speaker 1: sort of interface that you would use in order to
Speaker 1: have your physical interactions in the real space translated into
Speaker 1: the virtual space. But everything you are experiencing ideally would
Speaker 1: be created by computer. The ultimate version of this, of course,
Speaker 1: would be the Holia Deck from Star Trek the next generation.
Speaker 1: You would never really want to use the Holia Deck
Speaker 1: because at least once a season that thing goes crazy
Speaker 1: and tries to kill everybody aboard the ship, and yet
Speaker 1: they keep using it. We'll talk more about Star Trek
Speaker 1: technology soon, but not in this episode but in another one.
Speaker 1: But that would be the ultimate representation a world where
Speaker 1: everything is computer generated. Everything you can taste, touch, smell,
Speaker 1: see here, everything comes from a computer. These days, we
Speaker 1: don't really have anything that generates all of that kind
Speaker 1: of sensory data. Typically, the data that does get generated
Speaker 1: involves your vision and your hearing and uh you know.
Speaker 1: You might go to a specialized VR experience that incorporates
Speaker 1: other elements. Let's say that you go to one where
Speaker 1: you are going to uh go through like a virtual
Speaker 1: firefighting experience. They might use heaters to generate enough heat
Speaker 1: to make it feel like you're actually passing close by
Speaker 1: flames that sort of thing, but you know, typically at home,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna do that, and you probably shouldn't for
Speaker 1: fear of burning down your house. Now, on the other
Speaker 1: end of that spectrum, you have almost everything rooted in
Speaker 1: a physical world. You just have some digital information overlaid
Speaker 1: on top of that physical world in some way. It
Speaker 1: may be overlaid visually, so you might be wearing special
Speaker 1: glasses or a headset, and through that headset you're looking
Speaker 1: at the world around you, but there's also like a
Speaker 1: heads up display style overlay on top of it. Or
Speaker 1: it could be audio. It could be that you're looking
Speaker 1: at something and then an audio accused in the system
Speaker 1: you're using that you are interested in that thing, and
Speaker 1: it starts to play audio. It could be all sorts
Speaker 1: of different things. It really just has to be computer
Speaker 1: generated information sent to you to augment your experience, thus
Speaker 1: the augmented reality. Both of these kind of fall in
Speaker 1: that spectrum where on one end you've got mostly the
Speaker 1: physical world with some virtual elements, and on the other
Speaker 1: end you've got mostly virtual world, perhaps with some physical elements.
Speaker 1: All of that falls into mixed reality, which can be
Speaker 1: anywhere along that spectrum, and you might end up having
Speaker 1: a largely virtual world and physical objects that you use
Speaker 1: in the real world that are then mapped to the
Speaker 1: virtual world. So, for example, you might have a real
Speaker 1: set of table and chairs in the room that you
Speaker 1: are currently in. You're wearing a headmounted display, so you
Speaker 1: can see a virtual set of table and chairs in
Speaker 1: front of you, and it turns out that they're mapped
Speaker 1: to the actual physical table and chairs that are in
Speaker 1: the real space, which means that you could actually go
Speaker 1: and sit down at that table because you have a
Speaker 1: real chair and table inside the room that you are
Speaker 1: currently in, your body is currently in, and the experience
Speaker 1: of your physical body and the experience of your virtual
Speaker 1: representation can be analogous. Uh. That obviously doesn't happen with
Speaker 1: most implementations of virtual reality today. There's definitely some research
Speaker 1: and development labs that are doing that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: but typically if you're going out and buying a VR set,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, you're not getting something quite as
Speaker 1: d as that, generally speaking, but it does fall into
Speaker 1: that category of mixed reality. So it describes not just
Speaker 1: the headset, not just the philosophy, but some of those
Speaker 1: supplemental technologies we've seen rise up since the renewed push
Speaker 1: to make VR and A are a consumer technology. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are lots of different control systems. There's that interactive
Speaker 1: object approach I was talking about, and things along those
Speaker 1: lines that all fall into this category. But the question remains,
Speaker 1: is it actually ready to blossom as a consumer technology?
Speaker 1: Is VR and a R is mixed reality for that matter,
Speaker 1: ready to become something that goes beyond just being interesting
Speaker 1: or gimmicky and become a common piece of of consumer tech,
Speaker 1: something analogous to a computer or a tablet or a smartphone,
Speaker 1: something that a lot of people would end up adopting
Speaker 1: and using a regular basis. Because we've had the same
Speaker 1: question before and the answer has turned out to be no,
Speaker 1: or at least no, not right now. You might remember
Speaker 1: back in the if you're old enough, that virtual reality
Speaker 1: was becoming a really big buzzword around the mid nineties
Speaker 1: and there was this real push toward developing VR experiences.
Speaker 1: Hollywood was taking a stab at imagining what that would mean,
Speaker 1: and often they would create stories in which you had
Speaker 1: characters entering computer generated worlds where everything was so realistic
Speaker 1: that you could actually be directly affected by that computer
Speaker 1: generated world. In other words, that whole idea of if
Speaker 1: you die in the matrix, you die in real life.
Speaker 1: That was a very common theme in those early VR
Speaker 1: movie days. Uh. Of course, the reality of VR was
Speaker 1: a world away from what was being depicted in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: even given the primitive computer generated graphics of Hollywood at
Speaker 1: that time, which are pretty sad. If you go back
Speaker 1: and watch movies from the nineteen nineties that were very
Speaker 1: heavy on computer generated graphics, you start to wonder why
Speaker 1: anyone ever thought it was cool. But that's mostly from retrospect, obviously,
Speaker 1: because things have improved so much in the years since then.
Speaker 1: But as a consumer, it was incredibly disheartening to see
Speaker 1: the reality of virtual reality versus the way it was
Speaker 1: depicted in popular culture. You would go to, perhaps, say,
Speaker 1: a an arcade that would have a VR set up.
Speaker 1: There was one here in Georgia. It was actually at
Speaker 1: Gwynette Place Mall. I'll never forget because I would spend
Speaker 1: five of my hard earned dollars to spend a few
Speaker 1: minutes in this experience, which involved you climbing onto a
Speaker 1: pedestal that had a raised little bar, kind of semicircular
Speaker 1: bar around you that would keep you from falling off
Speaker 1: said pedestal. They would lower an enormous headset onto you,
Speaker 1: and the headset itself was suspended by cables from the
Speaker 1: ceiling because it was too heavy for you to wear
Speaker 1: as an independent headmelon display. This was much much bigger
Speaker 1: and more bulky than anything you would find on the
Speaker 1: market today. And then they would switch it on and
Speaker 1: you would be transported to a wonderful world of primitive polygons.
Speaker 1: The probably the the the big title that everyone encountered
Speaker 1: at some point or another in those days, if you
Speaker 1: were interested in VR, was Dactyl Nightmare. I think it
Speaker 1: was called Dactyal mindmare. Is either Dactyal Nightmare Dactyal terror.
Speaker 1: It's not in my notes, but I do have distinct
Speaker 1: memories of experiencing, or perhaps enduring is a better word,
Speaker 1: this particular program and the way it worked was it
Speaker 1: was a multiplayer game, had various platforms. You can move around,
Speaker 1: and you would use a controller too to move forward
Speaker 1: or backward, or left or right. Your point of view
Speaker 1: was controlled by wherever your head was looking, but you're
Speaker 1: a rule. Movement was controlled by a controller you held
Speaker 1: in your hands, so you didn't walk forward you just
Speaker 1: used your you know, thumbstick or whatever in order to
Speaker 1: move your character forward. And it was a multiplayer game
Speaker 1: where you were pitted against up to three other players.
Speaker 1: I think I think it linked for play, at least
Speaker 1: the version I played, I think it linked four players together.
Speaker 1: And you had a primitive looking little stick in your
Speaker 1: virtual world in front of you. So if you held
Speaker 1: your hands out in front of you, you could see
Speaker 1: this primitive looking little stick with a little cube at
Speaker 1: the end of it that was actually a gun and
Speaker 1: a bullet, and you would fire the gun and the
Speaker 1: little cube would go flying at a less than bullet
Speaker 1: speed velocity toward whatever you're aiming at. And you were
Speaker 1: trying to take out your opponents. You're trying to score
Speaker 1: as many points, essentially a deathmatch, trying to score as
Speaker 1: many points against your opponents as you could. Meanwhile, a
Speaker 1: pterodactyl made out of as many as perhaps six triangles
Speaker 1: would be flying overhead and trying to pick you up
Speaker 1: and drop you, uh them where else on the map,
Speaker 1: presumably to your death. And um. It was an interesting experience.
Speaker 1: It was fun. It was not terribly immersive because the
Speaker 1: graphics were so unrealistic. It was immersive in the sense
Speaker 1: that you got the feeling that wherever you were looking
Speaker 1: really was your point of view. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of cool. But because of the limitations of the technology,
Speaker 1: the limitations of the graphics, the fact that it was
Speaker 1: this very bulky system that you could never completely ignore
Speaker 1: all of those different factors meant that you never could
Speaker 1: really lose yourself in that experience. And it's experiences like
Speaker 1: that that caused people to become disenchanted with the concept
Speaker 1: of virtual reality. And when they realized that it just
Speaker 1: wasn't where they thought it should be based upon what
Speaker 1: they were given to think of, they began to reject
Speaker 1: virtual reality. The buzz really faded pretty quickly from the
Speaker 1: whole concept, and from that point forward, at least for
Speaker 1: the next decade or so, uh, the people who are
Speaker 1: working in the fields of virtual reality as well as
Speaker 1: augmented reality found themselves struggling for funding. It was really
Speaker 1: difficult to get money to continue their research and development
Speaker 1: because there was such a there's the bubble of interest
Speaker 1: had deflated so rapidly. It really collapsed essentially, and the
Speaker 1: disciplines took a really big step backward, and so development
Speaker 1: was proceeding much more slowly, and most of the advances
Speaker 1: were happening in labs where people had very specific use
Speaker 1: cases for virtual reality. So, for example, it's been used
Speaker 1: extensively in immersion therapy to help people deal with various
Speaker 1: types of anxieties and phobias, because it turns out that
Speaker 1: a virtual experience, even one with relatively primitive graphics, can
Speaker 1: inspire the same sort of physical reactions that we experience
Speaker 1: when we encounter something that causes us stress in the
Speaker 1: real world. So let's say you're afraid of heights, and
Speaker 1: you try on a virtual experience that smulates being at
Speaker 1: the edge of a very tall surface, like perhaps at
Speaker 1: the edge of the building, you might actually start to
Speaker 1: feel your body react as if you were really in
Speaker 1: that location, even if the graphics are more cartoony. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be photo realistic for this to work.
Speaker 1: So people who would suffer from the fear of falling
Speaker 1: from a great height would actually start to have that
Speaker 1: same physical reaction, and psychologists and psychiatrists could use this
Speaker 1: to help people get more accustomed to the feelings and
Speaker 1: to be able to control them and to be able
Speaker 1: to deal with them in a constructive way as opposed
Speaker 1: to being paralyzed by them with a phobia, and you
Speaker 1: would know ultimately during this process that you were safe.
Speaker 1: You're inside a room, inside a lab, You're nowhere close
Speaker 1: to the edge of anything. You're not going to fall,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get hurt. So rationally you would
Speaker 1: be able to hold that onto that thought and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't go into a full panic, hopefully, But even if
Speaker 1: you did go into a full panic, it was very
Speaker 1: easy to turn the system off, remove it, and then
Speaker 1: to re ground yourself. And it was a way to
Speaker 1: create this therapeutic approach to exposing somebody to the stimuli
Speaker 1: that would set them off and become better at coping
Speaker 1: with that situation so that they could then ultimately move
Speaker 1: about in the real world and not have that affect them. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a very powerful statement to say that virtual reality
Speaker 1: could allow you to do this, even when the graphics
Speaker 1: are not that terribly powerful. So you did see a
Speaker 1: lot of various approaches using technology in that way, whether
Speaker 1: it was with phobias or anxieties or post traumatic stress syndrome.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing really kind of interesting and cool,
Speaker 1: but removed from the mainstream public's consciousness. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: consumer technology anymore. So VR did continue to advance, but
Speaker 1: it was within the specific implementations, and this was more
Speaker 1: or less the way things went for at least ten years.
Speaker 1: Then fairly recently, within the last five or six years,
Speaker 1: you started seeing devices like the Oculus Rift and the
Speaker 1: HTC Vibe come out in an attempt to bring VR
Speaker 1: back to the consumer space. A lot of things had
Speaker 1: changed since the nineteen nineties. Moore's law had continued to
Speaker 1: hold sway, and now we had computers that were much
Speaker 1: more capable of generating and processing graphics at a high level,
Speaker 1: a high refresh rate, high level resolution. UH. The technology
Speaker 1: for tracking had become much cheaper, mostly because of smartphones.
Speaker 1: The smartphone market had created this need for sensors that
Speaker 1: were really small and very versatile. So you know, the
Speaker 1: iPhone has that feature, as do love smartphones today, of
Speaker 1: being able to flip from landscape to portrait mode depending
Speaker 1: upon how you're holding the phone, whether it's horizontal or vertical. Well,
Speaker 1: those same sensors can be used in virtual reality gear
Speaker 1: and they're very small and they're relatively inexpensive because of
Speaker 1: mass production. So we started seeing other industries grow, and
Speaker 1: then the VR world began to repurpose some of the
Speaker 1: technology from those industries and use them specifically in VR hardware,
Speaker 1: and as a result, they meant that they didn't have
Speaker 1: to develop all of that themselves, and it brought the
Speaker 1: cost of of of research and development down and ultimately
Speaker 1: ultimately the cost of the actual products once they were
Speaker 1: ready to ship to the consumer, because if they if
Speaker 1: VR specialists had had to build everything from the ground up,
Speaker 1: VR sets would be way more expensive than they are now.
Speaker 1: They're still expensive, don't get me wrong. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that problem in just a little bit. So Oculus and
Speaker 1: HDC Vibe they come out. They're trying really hard to
Speaker 1: make VR become a thing like it could have been
Speaker 1: in the nineties if it weren't for the fact that
Speaker 1: the reality was so far behind where our perception was.
Speaker 1: They obviously still have some hurdles. Meanwhile, recently, actually Microsoft
Speaker 1: announced a platform called hollow Lens, and they were looking
Speaker 1: at getting into the augmented reality space, so a headset
Speaker 1: that would actually overlay information on top of the real
Speaker 1: world around you, as opposed to replacing the real world.
Speaker 1: And obviously hollow Lens is just one example. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of augmented reality applications out there for various types
Speaker 1: of devices, but hollow lens was something that Microsoft developed
Speaker 1: that was intended to be an augmented reality headset and
Speaker 1: the UH. Since then, Microsoft has said that it's not
Speaker 1: going to be its own consumer product. It was more
Speaker 1: meant as a platform for developers to use in order
Speaker 1: to develop augmented reality experiences, which then would be incorporated
Speaker 1: into future products. It would not be a hollow lens
Speaker 1: that you would go out and buy. It would be
Speaker 1: something else, UH, which is kind of a shame. I
Speaker 1: never got a chance to try a hollow lens. I
Speaker 1: know they still exist, but I've never been able to
Speaker 1: to try one on. I really hope one day to
Speaker 1: change that and get an experience with a hollow lens.
Speaker 1: So today I want to look at the technologies and
Speaker 1: approaches companies are unleashing in an effort to get VR,
Speaker 1: a R and mixed reality off the ground again, because
Speaker 1: for a while it looked like there was the possibility
Speaker 1: that just like in the nineties when VR died, we
Speaker 1: could see the same thing happened today. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that there's actually several reasons. There's the fact that
Speaker 1: it's expensive, it's a fractured landscape. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of different options out there, and they're not all equal. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a perceived lack of content. So you could get
Speaker 1: the hardware, but then you wouldn't have a whole lot
Speaker 1: to do with it, because until recently, there just weren't
Speaker 1: as many experiences out there that you could point to
Speaker 1: and say, this is the reason you have to have
Speaker 1: this kind of technology. They're just there weren't enough titles.
Speaker 1: Whether it was an experience or a game or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, there just wasn't enough there.
Speaker 1: Let's get to that cost issue. So the Oculus Rift
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, retails for four dollars,
Speaker 1: and that includes the headset, some sensors, and the touch
Speaker 1: controls that you would use to move around within a
Speaker 1: virtual experience. The sensors track the movement of infrared LEDs
Speaker 1: that are on the headset itself. This more accurately reflects
Speaker 1: your head movements within a game environment, so as you
Speaker 1: move your head in the real world, it gets reflected
Speaker 1: in the virtual environment. You can use three sensors and
Speaker 1: that will get to three hundred sixty degrees of tracking
Speaker 1: around you. Uh. Though there are some experiences that can
Speaker 1: simulate three D sixty degree tracking using just two sensors,
Speaker 1: but that's not for everything. You would need three sensors
Speaker 1: to achieve that with all the different experiences that Oculus
Speaker 1: works with. The HTC Vive retails for five dollars, so
Speaker 1: it's a hundred dollars more are that includes the headset,
Speaker 1: a couple of base stations, and some controllers. You can
Speaker 1: set up the Vibe to work in a space of
Speaker 1: up to fifteen feet by fifteen feet, and that allows
Speaker 1: you to actually move around inside a physical environment and
Speaker 1: have those movements translate into the virtual world. So whereas
Speaker 1: with the Oculus Rift, you're sitting at a desk typically
Speaker 1: and you're using your point of view. You know, you
Speaker 1: move your head to change your point of view and
Speaker 1: then use controllers to move around and stuff. You might
Speaker 1: stand up for that, but you don't really move around
Speaker 1: very much. HTC Vibe is meant to allow you to
Speaker 1: move within a physical space and actually have that effect
Speaker 1: the way the the experience is playing out that you
Speaker 1: are actually seeing in your headset. Both the Oculus and
Speaker 1: the Vibe also require a fairly decent PC to to run,
Speaker 1: although those requirements have also come down as things have
Speaker 1: become optimized and the technology ends up getting less expensive
Speaker 1: over time. When they first launched the Oculus in the HTC,
Speaker 1: people said that typically you would need to spend around
Speaker 1: a thousand to undred dollars to get a PC that
Speaker 1: was decent enough to run VR experiences and have it
Speaker 1: be a pleasant experience, not something that was frustrating or
Speaker 1: didn't measure up to what your expectations were. Today, it's
Speaker 1: about half that really, according to a lot of sites,
Speaker 1: you could build a basic VR ready computer a gaming
Speaker 1: rig for about six hundred dollars if you wanted to
Speaker 1: make the baseline system. Now. Obviously, the more money you
Speaker 1: can invest in a rig with really good graphics, processing
Speaker 1: and memory, the better your experience will be. But a minimum,
Speaker 1: we're talking about six hundred dollars, and so that means
Speaker 1: your average VR bundle all told. Let's say you don't
Speaker 1: have this computer already, you want to go out and
Speaker 1: buy all this, you're looking at around a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to maybe twelve hundred dollars just to start off, and
Speaker 1: that's around your base level that's total. That's with the
Speaker 1: VR set and the PC to run it off of,
Speaker 1: and it could be much more expensive if you want
Speaker 1: to run it on a real beast of a gaming rig,
Speaker 1: and at that point we're talking about a few thousand
Speaker 1: dollars easy. Uh. So there are other restrictions with those
Speaker 1: particular implementations. Another big one is that you're tethered to
Speaker 1: a PC. And since you're tethered, meaning that you actually
Speaker 1: have a cable running from your headset to the computer,
Speaker 1: you're limited in how far away you can get. Even
Speaker 1: with the HTC vive, you're limited and how far away
Speaker 1: you can get from that base station and still be
Speaker 1: able to uh to have your experience working. And it
Speaker 1: restricts your movement somewhat, especially if you're walking around a
Speaker 1: fifteen by fifteen foot environment. You could get tangled up
Speaker 1: pretty easily in that cable if you're not careful, and
Speaker 1: that will really literally in some cases, cause your virtual
Speaker 1: experience to come crashing down around you. So there are
Speaker 1: other limitations beyond just the cost. But the cost is
Speaker 1: a big one. It's a big barrier to entry for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. It means a people who have
Speaker 1: a lot of disposable income, and they're big tech enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: tend to be your audience. You just it's too expensive
Speaker 1: for your average consumer who's just curious about it to
Speaker 1: get into it. It's it's too big of a financial commitment. Now.
Speaker 1: Not long after Oculus started drumming up excitement, developers for
Speaker 1: smartphones began to create apps and supplemental products to turn
Speaker 1: phones into simple VR or a R headsets. So Google
Speaker 1: launched Cardboard, for example. On Cardboard was kind of a
Speaker 1: platform for apps to turn Android phones into make shift
Speaker 1: VR headsets. You would actually build or order a cardboard
Speaker 1: headset with some lenses, and the lenses would align properly
Speaker 1: so that you could actually get the three D sort
Speaker 1: of effect of virtual reality, and the phone would act
Speaker 1: as both the processor and the screen. You would slip
Speaker 1: that into this cardboard headset and then you would be
Speaker 1: able to look around and have various virtual reality experiences.
Speaker 1: There were interesting, they were fairly limited, but pretty cool
Speaker 1: ideas anyway, And the big draw of that approach was
Speaker 1: that you didn't have to spend nearly so much money
Speaker 1: to have a VR experience. So, in fact, if you
Speaker 1: already had an Android phone capable of supporting cardboard, then
Speaker 1: you're really just talking about twenty dollars or less in
Speaker 1: order to get the stuff you need to either make
Speaker 1: or you're buying a cardboard headset, and that's the that's
Speaker 1: the financial uh investment you have to make, assuming you
Speaker 1: already have the phone. Obviously, if you don't have the phone,
Speaker 1: then you have to add the phone's price in there,
Speaker 1: and that ends up getting you back up in that
Speaker 1: six eight hundred dollar arrange, depending up on the phone.
Speaker 1: But the idea being that if you've already got a
Speaker 1: big installation base, in other words, you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there who have phones that meet the
Speaker 1: minimum requirements for cardboard, it makes it pretty easy to
Speaker 1: distribute an augmented reality or virtual reality experience. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the last I checked cardboards user base was somewhere around
Speaker 1: twenty five million people just for decent But how many
Speaker 1: of those people are actually using cardboard on anything other
Speaker 1: than I want to try it out and then I'll
Speaker 1: never use it again level we don't know. The concept
Speaker 1: evolved into slightly more sophisticated implementations based on this same idea. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you've got the Samsung Gear VR which is
Speaker 1: a headset that relies upon a Samsung Galaxy handset to
Speaker 1: be the processor and display, with the headset itself acting
Speaker 1: as the mount and controller for the system. It's basically
Speaker 1: the same idea as Cardboard, but kind of a step further. Now.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot more to say about Cardboard and
Speaker 1: about the next evolution of Google's ARE strategy and VR strategy,
Speaker 1: as well as some other companies and what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Not to mention get into some of the cool stuff
Speaker 1: that's coming out right now. But before I jump into that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Something
Speaker 1: that an update recently that also has helped kind of
Speaker 1: keep VR alive while while it's trying to find an
Speaker 1: audience is the PlayStation VR system. So Sony launched PlayStation
Speaker 1: VR quite some time ago, and it's kind of again,
Speaker 1: sort of an in between system. It's more capable than
Speaker 1: the smartphone based approaches, but it is less robust than
Speaker 1: some of the ones that hook up to PCs, and
Speaker 1: in fact, some people say that the the tracking software,
Speaker 1: in particular when you're using the the PlayStation camera and
Speaker 1: you're using the move controllers, that there's there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a disconnect there sometimes like it can get
Speaker 1: lost and suddenly, uh, you know, you realize that the
Speaker 1: hands you were using that has a flashlight attached to
Speaker 1: it inside the game is slowly drifting up into the
Speaker 1: right despite the fact that you're holding your hands straight
Speaker 1: out in front of you. And it would be this
Speaker 1: tracking disconnect that would occasionally recorrect itself, but it pulls
Speaker 1: you out of the game because suddenly your body is
Speaker 1: not in the game, your body is not behaving the
Speaker 1: way your body is in real life, and there's that
Speaker 1: part where they just aren't meeting together. It's and it's
Speaker 1: not a great experience. Well Sony has continued to support
Speaker 1: the platform rather than just let it die, which is encouraging.
Speaker 1: It means that the company is really trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that VR gets a good shot. And because so
Speaker 1: many people own a PS four, it's a it's an
Speaker 1: install base that already exists. You don't have to go
Speaker 1: out and buy a new computer to run the PlayStation VR.
Speaker 1: If you have a PS four, you've got the base
Speaker 1: computer necessary to have that experience. So the new version
Speaker 1: of the PlayStation VR, which was announced recently as the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast UH. It has some minor tweaks
Speaker 1: to the design. One of those is that there are
Speaker 1: headphones that are now integrated directly into the headset. Before
Speaker 1: you had to have separate headphones, but now it's all
Speaker 1: part of the same headset um that simplifies cable management.
Speaker 1: There are fewer cables to on around and so you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get as many tangles that way. Also, there's
Speaker 1: an external processor unit box which allows for HDR pass through,
Speaker 1: which makes it more convenient. HDR being high dynamic range.
Speaker 1: It has to do with the display of colors and
Speaker 1: brightness on a screen, but to get more into that
Speaker 1: would be more technical. The important thing to remember is
Speaker 1: that Sony is working hard to try and make sure
Speaker 1: that they give their VR platform the best chance for success,
Speaker 1: which I think is encouraging. Now. Generally speaking, the experiences
Speaker 1: that you have with the Oculus or HTC VIVE or
Speaker 1: comparable headsets are more robust and impressive than the counterparts
Speaker 1: that are smartphone based. There's just a lot more processing
Speaker 1: power their great air capabilities. There are a lot more
Speaker 1: opportunities to incorporate different types of sensors to get more
Speaker 1: precision with the tracking. UH now that's not to say
Speaker 1: the smartphone approach is bad. It's still compelling. It's just
Speaker 1: a little more limited. It's certainly less expensive if you
Speaker 1: already own a smartphone, because then you can just repurpose
Speaker 1: the technology you already have, or you can think of
Speaker 1: it as added value to the technology you already have
Speaker 1: and a new use case for that technology. So it's
Speaker 1: a smartphone that you use for texting, email, taking photos,
Speaker 1: and also having VR or a R experiences. That's really
Speaker 1: compelling because if you already have it, you don't need
Speaker 1: to invest more money into buying a new thing. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: on the a R side, you had a few interesting
Speaker 1: implementations apart from Hollowlands, stuff like Google Glass, which I've
Speaker 1: talked about in the previous episode. It's still technically a thing,
Speaker 1: but it never really managed to become a real consumer product.
Speaker 1: Google tried to make that happen and then ultimately made
Speaker 1: the decision that it just wasn't quite ready to be
Speaker 1: a consumer product. So there are some consumers, some crazy
Speaker 1: folks like myself who plopped down the money to buy
Speaker 1: a pair of Google Glass, And yes I did at
Speaker 1: one time own a pair, although technically I didn't own them,
Speaker 1: the company owned them, and I got to use them,
Speaker 1: but the cost of them and the limited use cases,
Speaker 1: I mean, there really weren't a whole lot of things
Speaker 1: you could do with Google Glass when they first came out,
Speaker 1: and meant that it was a tough sell to the
Speaker 1: average person. It became kind of a status symbol among
Speaker 1: tech geeks. But beyond that, you know, I had very
Speaker 1: limited use. The coolest thing you could do with it
Speaker 1: is use your voice to take a photo with your glasses,
Speaker 1: and people thought that was awesome because they felt like
Speaker 1: you were using the future to take their photograph. I
Speaker 1: know because I attended a Dragon Con wearing a set
Speaker 1: of Google Glass and I would ask people in cosplay
Speaker 1: outfits if I could take their photo, and they would
Speaker 1: say yes, And then I would use the phrase, which
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna use because it's the same one that
Speaker 1: will make my phone in my pocket take a picture
Speaker 1: inside my pocket. But I would use that that phrase
Speaker 1: and out loud, just say it out loud, and my
Speaker 1: glasses would take the photo. And so the first image
Speaker 1: I would take of every single cause player was one
Speaker 1: of them looking confused because I had just said out
Speaker 1: loud what I was going to do and then stared
Speaker 1: at them and then they realized what I had done
Speaker 1: and thought it was super cool, and then I would
Speaker 1: have to take a second photo so that there would
Speaker 1: actually be one that was good and not just as
Speaker 1: someone going what uh, fun little tangent, but the point
Speaker 1: being that that a R experience was very limited and
Speaker 1: it just wasn't ready, and so we didn't really ever
Speaker 1: see that become a mature consumer product. There is still
Speaker 1: Google Glass out there. It's being used, uh, mostly in
Speaker 1: manufacturing and other like business to business operations, not so
Speaker 1: much for consumers. Uh. But another limitation of consumer VR
Speaker 1: headsets has been the use case for consumers, they fall
Speaker 1: into what Microsoft refers to as various scales of experiences
Speaker 1: and what what can you do with it? And and
Speaker 1: how limited are you? Like, how restricted are you to
Speaker 1: a specific space? So Microsoft says that you can look
Speaker 1: at VR experiences in terms of the scale they provide.
Speaker 1: A simple VR headset might allow you to change your
Speaker 1: point of view by moving your head left and right,
Speaker 1: so you turn your head left or you turn your
Speaker 1: head right, or you might tilt it up or down,
Speaker 1: and your perspective would change in accordance with that you're
Speaker 1: essentially changing the camera view that you are seeing with
Speaker 1: the displays that are right in front of your eyes.
Speaker 1: But that's about it. That would be like the head
Speaker 1: scale level of VR, and it's also the least immersive
Speaker 1: of the various scales. Other head orientations would not be
Speaker 1: able to be captured with that type of technology necessarily
Speaker 1: just wouldn't have the capability. So if you were to
Speaker 1: tilt your head, not just turn it, but tilted to
Speaker 1: the side while you're turning it, it may not reflect that,
Speaker 1: it may not change that that that plane of view
Speaker 1: with that particular scale. Now, out of all the headsets
Speaker 1: that are out there on the market, none of them
Speaker 1: really fall into that category, except maybe some of the
Speaker 1: smartphone based technology. But the standalone headsets, or or rather
Speaker 1: the dedicated handsets, they're not and alone because they pair
Speaker 1: with a computer. Those dedicated headsets can do more than that.
Speaker 1: That next scale is called desk scale. Again, this is
Speaker 1: according to Microsoft, and in this implementation of VR, the
Speaker 1: headset has other sensors that can track movement and head orientation,
Speaker 1: so that if you tilt your head, your perspective will
Speaker 1: change accordingly. And at that scale you can even lean forward,
Speaker 1: or you can lean back and your point of view
Speaker 1: will change. You'll you'll appear to get closer or further
Speaker 1: away from whatever it is you are looking at within
Speaker 1: the virtual environment. Or you can even bend over and
Speaker 1: look under a virtual object and actually see, Like imagine
Speaker 1: that there's a table in front of you. You could
Speaker 1: squat down and your point of view would go below
Speaker 1: the table. You can even lean forward and look up
Speaker 1: and look under the underside of the table. Maybe you
Speaker 1: see that someone's written something down there, such as tech
Speaker 1: stuff rocks, and you think, wow, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: What an easter egg. Everyone should know that. I don't
Speaker 1: know why they didn't carve it on the top of
Speaker 1: the table. Carve it on the top of the table.
Speaker 1: Don't don't car unreal tables, only virtual tables, all right,
Speaker 1: But that would be what the basic Oculus Rift could do.
Speaker 1: When it first launched. It had this level of UH interactivity,
Speaker 1: but that was that was the extent of it. That's
Speaker 1: as far as you could go. The next scale up
Speaker 1: would be the room scale, and that's what Microsoft would
Speaker 1: say the HTC Vibe would fall into. So the Vibe
Speaker 1: has those supplemental base camp sensors that often you would
Speaker 1: hear them just called lighthouses, and you would set these
Speaker 1: up to map out the dimensions of a room. You
Speaker 1: would typically put them in opposite corners of a room,
Speaker 1: and they could map out a room as large as
Speaker 1: fifteen feet by fifteen feet or anything smaller than that
Speaker 1: up to a certain amount. And these base camps, they
Speaker 1: were sensors that could detect where the headset was in
Speaker 1: relation to, say, the walls of the room, and it
Speaker 1: meant that you could move around in your physical space,
Speaker 1: and the base camp would allow you to see how
Speaker 1: that movement is translated into the virtual brands. And if
Speaker 1: you got too close to an actual physical wall, it
Speaker 1: would alert you in the virtual experience by having the
Speaker 1: wall in front of you shimmer, or you would see
Speaker 1: something that would indicate, hey, you're getting kind of close
Speaker 1: to the edge. You need to change direction or else
Speaker 1: you're gonna slam face first into this wall that you
Speaker 1: cannot see because you're looking at a display, You're not
Speaker 1: looking at the physical world around you. So it was
Speaker 1: kind of like the Holia deck. If you've ever watched
Speaker 1: Star Trek and you saw whenever the the image was
Speaker 1: flickering and you get that grid pattern of the actual
Speaker 1: Holi deck without any program running. It's kind of like that.
Speaker 1: Typically you get this little display that lets you know, hey,
Speaker 1: you're getting a little too close to the wall. You
Speaker 1: may want to stop this before you end up hurting
Speaker 1: yourself or causing any damage. Now, Microsoft envisions a new scale.
Speaker 1: They call it the world scale. This would allow you
Speaker 1: to move through various physical spaces. You would not be
Speaker 1: limited to a single room necessarily. Uh. You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to designate a specific room in your house for VR
Speaker 1: because the heads that you wear would be able to
Speaker 1: send your environment from the inside out. They call it
Speaker 1: inside out tracking, So it frees you of the need
Speaker 1: for supplemental sensors. You don't need any base camps or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Everything is built into the headset, at
Speaker 1: least for the sensing part of it. It's the philosophy
Speaker 1: that they decided to follow when they launched the mixed
Speaker 1: Reality headset program now uh now. In November, Google then
Speaker 1: unveiled the new initiative called Daydream. Daydream represents a shift
Speaker 1: in Google support of augmented reality and virtual reality functionality.
Speaker 1: So instead of making those features an app level function
Speaker 1: where you would build an app, and the app then
Speaker 1: communicates with the operating system stack and gets the processing
Speaker 1: information it needs and thus translates it into the experience
Speaker 1: that you have. Google said, how about we build some
Speaker 1: of that capability directly into the operating system. That was
Speaker 1: what Daydream does, and it's available on Android builds from
Speaker 1: newgat which is seven point one and later. And that
Speaker 1: means that if you have a Daydream capable phone, it
Speaker 1: has this capability built into the operating system itself. It
Speaker 1: gives deeper or the capability of building deeper, more rich
Speaker 1: augmented reality and virtual reality experiences. They also launched several cases. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they are headsets that are phone cases that you wear,
Speaker 1: and very recently they announced updates to that, and the
Speaker 1: updates I think cost twenty dollars more prepare on the
Speaker 1: low end, so it used to be seventy nine dollars
Speaker 1: now it's for one of these things. But they also
Speaker 1: come in different colors, so if you want to hot
Speaker 1: pink one, you can get one. They're pretty So I'm
Speaker 1: recording this particular episode in early October, and not long
Speaker 1: before I went into the recording booth, Google launched some
Speaker 1: new day dream products, and that includes those headsets I
Speaker 1: was talking about. And Google has consistently earned itself a
Speaker 1: reputation over the past for creating products that were designed
Speaker 1: by and four engineers, which sometimes, at least on casual glance,
Speaker 1: seems to go hand in hand with a certain lack
Speaker 1: of aesthetic appeal. If you compare that to a company
Speaker 1: like Apple, which really puts aesthetics very high up on
Speaker 1: the list of important features, higher up than including the
Speaker 1: latest technologies. In fact, you see that, you know that
Speaker 1: has a more immediate appeal to the consumer than Android
Speaker 1: ones do. But now we're starting to see some updates
Speaker 1: to that, which is kind of nice. Also, I'll touch
Speaker 1: back on Apple a little bit later in this episode.
Speaker 1: Now we know that Google has brought over people from
Speaker 1: HTC to work on hardware. HTC makes mobile devices. They
Speaker 1: also make the HTC Vibe, which I've talked about already
Speaker 1: in this podcast. We also know the HTC is hard
Speaker 1: at work on a standalone device in its Vivee line.
Speaker 1: And this standalone device is truly stand alone, uh the
Speaker 1: Oculus and the HTC Vibe. Like I said, they require
Speaker 1: a PC to do all the processing. The ht C
Speaker 1: Vibe standalone would be its own independent piece of machinery.
Speaker 1: You wear it on your head. It does not connect
Speaker 1: to a phone or a computer. It does all the
Speaker 1: processing right there on the unit itself, and there's no
Speaker 1: real word on what the specs are going to be
Speaker 1: or what sort of experiences it will deliver. Uh, if
Speaker 1: you actually were to visit the HTC website, you would
Speaker 1: see a futuristic representation of the headset, but you would
Speaker 1: not actually see the hardware itself. It would be kind
Speaker 1: of this illustration over actual real people. So you see
Speaker 1: like this virtual glowing green headset that is transparent and
Speaker 1: clearly it's computer generated on top of actual people. You know,
Speaker 1: that's not what it's gonna really look like when it launches.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a cool video. It's likely to be
Speaker 1: somewhere in between the existing smartphone based headsets and the
Speaker 1: dedicated tethered headsets like Oculus and HTC Vibe as far
Speaker 1: as the experience as it can deliver. But it does
Speaker 1: mean it's completely untethered, which is very attractive piece of
Speaker 1: of of our very attractive feature. I should say, You're
Speaker 1: not going to be tied down with any cables. Google
Speaker 1: strategy for this device is to incorporate a technology for
Speaker 1: the company is calling up World Sense, and it sounds
Speaker 1: to me like World Sense is a lot like that
Speaker 1: Microsoft approach I talked about earlier, the idea that inside
Speaker 1: out tracking. So in this implementation, the headsets would contain
Speaker 1: multiple sensors and they would not rely just on those
Speaker 1: sensors for orientation but also environment tracking. And Microsoft the
Speaker 1: inside out tracking strategy relies largely on optical sensors, in
Speaker 1: other words, cameras, So you're not using base sensors like
Speaker 1: you would with HTC vive. Everything is built into the
Speaker 1: headset itself, and so the headset is gathering all the
Speaker 1: information it needs to feed into your virtual experience. Uh
Speaker 1: they face outward the cameras, they can detect walls or
Speaker 1: other surfaces or obstacles, and then as they detect them,
Speaker 1: it can incorporate that information into whatever your experiences, depending
Speaker 1: upon how people have programmed the experience. So it may
Speaker 1: again be kind of like that Holio deck thing where
Speaker 1: if you get too close to the wall, it starts
Speaker 1: to shimmer and tell you, hey, don't hurt yourself. Now,
Speaker 1: Microsoft isn't necessarily developing its own hardware. They do have
Speaker 1: kind of a developer kit that you can order if
Speaker 1: you're a developer, but they're not really interested in making
Speaker 1: the hardware themselves. Instead, the company has developed a set
Speaker 1: of specifications that headsets must meet at minimum to qualify
Speaker 1: as one of the immersive headsets that falls under Microsoft
Speaker 1: Mixed Reality. Other companies like acer A, Sous, Samsung, and
Speaker 1: things like that are actually developing the headsets themselves. So
Speaker 1: this is sort of like just looking at the world
Speaker 1: of PCs. Microsoft doesn't make computers. Microsoft makes the operating
Speaker 1: system that PCs use, so or at least Windows based
Speaker 1: PCs obviously, so it's similar to that Microsoft has created
Speaker 1: the bare minimum specs that a system must meet in
Speaker 1: order to be part of this mixed reality platform. Typically,
Speaker 1: these headsets have a display that consists of two high
Speaker 1: resolution displays, so one for each eye. Typically they're liquid
Speaker 1: crystal displays for your base models l c d s.
Speaker 1: In other words, that style display will not as crisp
Speaker 1: as something like an oh LED screen can provide a
Speaker 1: high resolution experience at a reduced costs. So the HP
Speaker 1: Windows Mixed Reality development addition, so there's kind of like
Speaker 1: the base level for if you want to develop a
Speaker 1: R experiences or VR experiences using this It has two
Speaker 1: high res l c D displays at fourteen forty by
Speaker 1: fourteen forty resolutions, so fourteen forty pixels across fourteen forty
Speaker 1: pixels down per PERV display. The displays refresh at ninety hurts,
Speaker 1: which means the image in those displays regenerates ninety times
Speaker 1: a second. Refresh rate is one of the factors that
Speaker 1: really helps create a smooth and seamless experience, and a
Speaker 1: bad refresh rate can have a similar effect as that
Speaker 1: of latency. Latency is that delay between when you send
Speaker 1: a command to a system and when that command is executed.
Speaker 1: So in a traditional video game, you might notice that
Speaker 1: if you press a jump button, your character might take
Speaker 1: a moment before it actually jumps. There's a delay between
Speaker 1: when you hit the button and when something happens, which
Speaker 1: makes those kind of games incredibly frustrating because getting the
Speaker 1: timing down for jumping when you want it to is
Speaker 1: really really tricky. The latency and VR is typically way
Speaker 1: worse than that, because if you notice a delay between
Speaker 1: when you say turn your head and when your point
Speaker 1: of view shifts. As a result, you start getting this
Speaker 1: unpleasant swimmy feeling, and if you do it long enough,
Speaker 1: you can end up getting motion sickness or VR sickness
Speaker 1: as your brain tries to suss out what's going on
Speaker 1: because it can tell you're moving, but your point of
Speaker 1: view doesn't move, and then your point of view starts
Speaker 1: to move and doesn't stop until after you've stopped moving.
Speaker 1: This disconnect is enough to make your brain say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what we need to do. Just get rid
Speaker 1: of everything you've eaten for the day, so get out
Speaker 1: of here, guys, And you start feeling really nauseated. It
Speaker 1: is not a fun experience, and it can take a
Speaker 1: couple of hours for you to start feeling normal again.
Speaker 1: A slower refresh rate can also create a similar situation.
Speaker 1: For one thing, you can get dropped frames. Dropped frames
Speaker 1: being like if you were imagine you're watching a movie
Speaker 1: and somehow some of the frames between one moment and
Speaker 1: another moment are gone, so you're starting to see the
Speaker 1: movie move in these really herky jerky motions where things
Speaker 1: are jumping across the screen instead of moving smoothly. The
Speaker 1: same thing can happen if you've got a poor refresh
Speaker 1: rate with your various equipment, and that can also create
Speaker 1: this jagged, inconsistent experience. It's like living in one of
Speaker 1: those awful horror movies where everyone's moving in really quick
Speaker 1: starts and stops. The developer kit has a three and
Speaker 1: a half millimeter jack or for headphones or microphone support,
Speaker 1: so you can actually pair headphones with a mic to
Speaker 1: the headset itself, but it's not incorporated directly into the headset.
Speaker 1: Other manufacturers can choose to incorporate the speakers so that
Speaker 1: they are part of the headset itself if they want to.
Speaker 1: H The headset has to connect to a computer station
Speaker 1: through an HDM two point O and USB three point
Speaker 1: oh cable, which are packaged together as a single cable.
Speaker 1: They have outlets or plugs to go in both, but uh,
Speaker 1: they end up being one cable, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to have two cables dangling from this headset. It does
Speaker 1: mean you're tethered to a machine. So technically, yeah, you
Speaker 1: could move around different rooms because the headset has got
Speaker 1: all the equipment to sense the environment, but you're still
Speaker 1: limited by distance to your computer because you have to
Speaker 1: be wired to a machine that's doing all the processing.
Speaker 1: The latest headset in this mixed reality lineup as of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, and the rate is the
Speaker 1: Samsung Odyssey, and several outlets like The Verge, c net
Speaker 1: and Digital Trends have had very positive things to say
Speaker 1: about their experiences. They've named it as the best Microsoft
Speaker 1: mixed reality headset so far. About probably about half a
Speaker 1: dozen different headsets have launched already, and this one appears
Speaker 1: to be the front runner. It sports some oh LED screens,
Speaker 1: so it's not using l c D, and it has
Speaker 1: a larger field of view than the other headsets that
Speaker 1: have come out so far. It also includes built in speakers.
Speaker 1: The resolution on those oh LEDs is also a little
Speaker 1: bit better than the l c D ones. It's at
Speaker 1: fourteen forty by six hundred. It's priced at five hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: which puts it right in line with the Oculus Rift
Speaker 1: and other mixed reality headsets have launched at price points
Speaker 1: between three and four d fifty dollars. The reviews make
Speaker 1: it sound like the Samsung device is the one to
Speaker 1: go for if you're interested in this Microsoft mixed reality platform.
Speaker 1: I have to point out, however, I have not personally
Speaker 1: tried out any of these headsets. I have no personal experience,
Speaker 1: so what do I know. I just read some reviews
Speaker 1: that seemed really really positive on it. So do your research.
Speaker 1: If you're going to get into VR in any way,
Speaker 1: make sure you research all the different options before you
Speaker 1: make your choice. I think an informed opinion is the
Speaker 1: most important thing from a consumer standpoint. I do want
Speaker 1: to try all of these at some point, just to
Speaker 1: kind of see what the gamut of experiences really happens
Speaker 1: to be. And another part of the Microsoft approach involves
Speaker 1: these interesting controllers. Typically you would hold one in each hand,
Speaker 1: and they look like little sticks with like a ring
Speaker 1: shaped extension at one end of them. That same end
Speaker 1: also has an analog thumbstick and a touchpad that you
Speaker 1: can use with your thumbs, and the body of the
Speaker 1: controller features a button and a trigger, which gives you
Speaker 1: a lot more options to interact with your virtual environment.
Speaker 1: The rings at the end of the controllers have l
Speaker 1: e d s on them, so the cameras that are
Speaker 1: mounted on your headset can view the l e d s.
Speaker 1: It actually tracks the movement of the controllers by keeping
Speaker 1: an optical view of where those l e d s
Speaker 1: are and how they're aligned. So by tilting your hand,
Speaker 1: it can actually detect that tilt by the way those
Speaker 1: L e D s are displayed and reflect that in
Speaker 1: the virtual world. It's supposed to give you much more
Speaker 1: precision for the way you move your hands in real
Speaker 1: life and how that is translated in the virtual environment.
Speaker 1: And uh, you don't again have worry about any sort
Speaker 1: of external sensors because it's all built into the headset.
Speaker 1: I really do want to give it a try and
Speaker 1: see what that experience is like. Now, there are other
Speaker 1: interfaces that people are looking at. Uh. We you know,
Speaker 1: I just talked about controllers, and all of these different
Speaker 1: headsets have various controller systems that are similar. Some of
Speaker 1: them have controllers that have a lot of those sensors
Speaker 1: built into the controllers themselves, so you've got like gyroscopes, accelerometers,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. A lot of them also include
Speaker 1: some other form of tracking. So with the oculus you
Speaker 1: might be able to use L e ed uh l
Speaker 1: E ed um that are led that are are projecting
Speaker 1: an infrared which means that we can't see the light,
Speaker 1: but a computer can see it with the right camera
Speaker 1: and track the movements of those controls that way. But
Speaker 1: we also are seeing people work with other forms of interfaces,
Speaker 1: things like voice commands or just your controls, or if
Speaker 1: you listen to the recent episodes about eye tracking techno
Speaker 1: oology and gaming, you realize that eye tracking technology is
Speaker 1: also a potential interface with virtual reality. Where you are
Speaker 1: looking and where you're paying attention could end up becoming
Speaker 1: a way to actually interact with your environment, either directly
Speaker 1: or in concert with some other interface like a controller.
Speaker 1: So we are seeing some other innovation in the space,
Speaker 1: although that's rolling out a little more gradually than this
Speaker 1: basic approach, which is to be expected. You know, every evolution,
Speaker 1: we're going to see more of these different interfaces built
Speaker 1: into the system itself. Now, before I go into the
Speaker 1: next break, I do want to talk about one thing
Speaker 1: that isn't going to happen as well as one thing
Speaker 1: that is still continuing, and that both of these things
Speaker 1: come from Intel. So in tween, Intel had been working
Speaker 1: on a project called code named Alloy Project Alloy, and
Speaker 1: this was supposed to be a standalone headset. It was
Speaker 1: not going to require a an additional PC or phone
Speaker 1: or anything of those lines. It was gonna do all
Speaker 1: the processing itself. It was gonna be a VR or
Speaker 1: mixed reality headset. It was going to have the cameras
Speaker 1: sort of this inside out tracking that that Microsoft is
Speaker 1: also using. UH. It was to include all sorts of
Speaker 1: interesting technologies and strategies for dealing with mixed reality. It
Speaker 1: looked really, really cool, but it's now dead in the
Speaker 1: water Until has discontinued the project. And the stated reason,
Speaker 1: and I have no reason to dispute this, is that
Speaker 1: Intel was finding it very difficult to find partners to
Speaker 1: actually build the parts that would be used to create
Speaker 1: the project Alloy headsets. They were not finding people interested
Speaker 1: in that, partly because the Microsoft Mixed Reality headsets were
Speaker 1: coming out, and so people were kind of migrating towards
Speaker 1: that platform instead of wanting to divide their attention to
Speaker 1: two different but similar platforms. So Intel eventually he said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we'd be better served going a slightly
Speaker 1: different route. That it's not going to pay off in
Speaker 1: the long run if we stick with this. There's too
Speaker 1: much UH competition in the market space. Even if you
Speaker 1: just look at Microsoft Mixed Reality. Like I said, about
Speaker 1: a half dozen different headsets have already launched, so there's
Speaker 1: already gonna be crazy competition. Just in that category than
Speaker 1: to launch something that is similar but in a different category,
Speaker 1: it would be even more difficult to get a dedicaid
Speaker 1: consumer base. So what they have pivoted towards doing is
Speaker 1: working on a technology that would be very beneficial toward
Speaker 1: people who are making headsets for virtual reality that would
Speaker 1: pair with a PC, but they would not need a
Speaker 1: cable between the two. And that is why gig as
Speaker 1: in WiFi, but why gig like in the the gigabit
Speaker 1: spectrum for data transfer, so it has a lot more throughput. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not that the information is going fast, suster.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind informations traveling at the speed of light.
Speaker 1: You can't make it go faster. You can just send
Speaker 1: more information at a time so it gets to its
Speaker 1: destination and can return faster because you're sending bigger groups,
Speaker 1: bigger chunks of data. Not that it's going faster, but
Speaker 1: you're seeing the bigger chunks. Well, that's what Intel is
Speaker 1: working on. They're working on this y gig technology so
Speaker 1: that future implementations of these headsets will be able to
Speaker 1: work with properly equipped PCs and have this wireless data
Speaker 1: transfer at very high throughputs. So that you can have
Speaker 1: that virtual reality experience without being tied down to the machine.
Speaker 1: As long as you are within range of the transmission
Speaker 1: of that data, you would be able to continue this experience.
Speaker 1: Then you would really have that inside out tracking experience
Speaker 1: where you're you're not you're not tethered physically to a device.
Speaker 1: You can move from room to room and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about tripping. Oh, we're at least not
Speaker 1: tripping over a cable. You can trip over, say a
Speaker 1: pet or something else that you cannot see that the
Speaker 1: system has not picked up on, but you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: tangled up in cables this way. So while I'm sad
Speaker 1: to see Project Alloy go away or really never materialize,
Speaker 1: I am really pleased to hear about the y gig
Speaker 1: initiative and hope that that ends up turning into something special.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna take another quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'm gonna tell you about how Apple, the
Speaker 1: company I infamously apparently despise according to some of you
Speaker 1: out there, I don't despise Apple, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people say I've gotten anti mac bias. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about how Apple is making a really big impact in
Speaker 1: the world of a R. But first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. Now let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about Apple and Apple's recent approach to augmented reality,
Speaker 1: because I think it's actually a really important step for
Speaker 1: a R as a whole. And you guys, if you've
Speaker 1: listened to tech stuff for a while, you know I'm
Speaker 1: not someone who owns an iPhone. I own Android devices,
Speaker 1: I don't have a Mac, I own PCs, but I
Speaker 1: recognize the important contributions Apple has made to the field
Speaker 1: of technology, and when it comes to a R, I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the most important steps so far.
Speaker 1: And I'll explain why it's actually not so much from
Speaker 1: a technology perspective as it is a market perspective. So
Speaker 1: in September of Apple made augmented reality a really big
Speaker 1: part of its launch of the iPhone eight and iPhone
Speaker 1: ten handsets or iPhone X if you were like me
Speaker 1: and not sure if they were going to call it
Speaker 1: the iPhone ten or not. Also a side note, whatever
Speaker 1: happened to the number nine? Windows skipped it and iPhone
Speaker 1: skipped it, So that's kind of sad, right, So this
Speaker 1: particular pair of handsets they introduced upon the launch the
Speaker 1: the creation of the A R Kit platform directly incorporating
Speaker 1: a R functionality in to the Apple operating system. So again,
Speaker 1: kind of like Daydream, it's no longer a layer that's
Speaker 1: excluded only or reserved only for apps. It actually goes
Speaker 1: deeper into the operating system stack itself. There's there's fundamental
Speaker 1: support for augmented reality features inside iOS at this point,
Speaker 1: and that's a big deal. So when you pair it
Speaker 1: with something like the A eleven bionic chip that was
Speaker 1: being used in processing power for the iPhone eight and
Speaker 1: iPhone tent, it creates the opportunity for really powerful are experiences.
Speaker 1: And if you watched that demonstration, you've got to see
Speaker 1: some of those A R demos that were really kind
Speaker 1: of cool. It showed you what you could potentially do
Speaker 1: with one of these apps, especially the games. I love
Speaker 1: the various games you could play where you can turn
Speaker 1: a blank tabletop into a massive gaming virtual gaming uh
Speaker 1: board if you want. The The possibilities there are really
Speaker 1: limitless when you think about it's kind of cool. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing that I think is really important here is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the technology side, but as I said, the
Speaker 1: market side. And by that I mean if you look
Speaker 1: at market share for the mobile operating systems that are
Speaker 1: on the market. If you look at most sources, they
Speaker 1: tell you that Android handsets make up somewhere in the
Speaker 1: seventy percentile range, typically in the mid seventies, somewhere around there,
Speaker 1: sometimes as high as eight depending upon the source. If
Speaker 1: you look at iOS, they tend to be in the twenties,
Speaker 1: the low twenties. So averaging that all out, it means
Speaker 1: that there are three times as many Android devices as
Speaker 1: there are Apple devices out in the wild for the
Speaker 1: mobile side. Uh, that's just rough math. So you've got
Speaker 1: way more Android phones than you have iOS phones. However,
Speaker 1: it has only been this year, that is twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: that we've seen the Google Android app store make as
Speaker 1: much revenue as the Apple iOS store. So there are
Speaker 1: fewer Apple devices out there in the wild, but they
Speaker 1: were making more money on the apps side than Google was.
Speaker 1: This tells you that people who buy iPhones are more
Speaker 1: likely to pay money for the apps than people who
Speaker 1: buy Android phones. So when Apple starts to natively support
Speaker 1: augmented reality, that creates a business opportunity for developers who
Speaker 1: want to make a r experiences, but they also want
Speaker 1: to make money from it. They they can't just make
Speaker 1: it just to make it. They they got to cover
Speaker 1: their costs. They've got to make a profit. They have
Speaker 1: to run a business. So by having a very popular
Speaker 1: mobile platform, one that has a proven track record for
Speaker 1: having an audience of engaged, passionate users who are willing
Speaker 1: to spend money on apps, that's a very powerful use
Speaker 1: case scenario from the developer side. Now, as consumers, you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily care about that right away, unless you're an
Speaker 1: iPhone user, in which case you care about it because
Speaker 1: it means you get to benefit from it. But if
Speaker 1: you're an Android user, or you use some other operating
Speaker 1: system for your mobile device for whatever reason, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: why do I care if Apple does this, It's because
Speaker 1: it drives that research and development. And because it drives
Speaker 1: that research and development, you're going to see similar activity
Speaker 1: on other platforms. So even if you don't have an iPhone,
Speaker 1: you'll start to see more and more work done in
Speaker 1: the augmented reality space, with people coming up with new
Speaker 1: ideas for using augmented reality in ways that actually add
Speaker 1: value to an experience. So it's not just a gimmick.
Speaker 1: It's not just you hold your phone up to a
Speaker 1: movie poster and you see a trailer play out of
Speaker 1: that movie. It's not something so transitional as that, or
Speaker 1: or just you know, just just this this light experience
Speaker 1: that doesn't really mean anything. It could actually be something
Speaker 1: much more powerful. For example, the the implementation I saw
Speaker 1: most recently that I love is a NASA augmented reality
Speaker 1: app where you can take a globe and you hold
Speaker 1: your phone up so that you're looking at the globe
Speaker 1: through your phone, and it projects over the globe the
Speaker 1: position of various satellites in real time, so you can
Speaker 1: see where the International Space Station is in orbit around
Speaker 1: the Earth in relation to the globe, and you can
Speaker 1: actually see its pathway in which way it's going, And
Speaker 1: so anytime you hold your phone up, it will show
Speaker 1: you the current location of that particular satellite. I think
Speaker 1: that's amazing to be able to actually visualize where something
Speaker 1: is by using a physical object in combination with digital
Speaker 1: information that you're able to access through some device like
Speaker 1: a phone. To me, that's a very powerful statement. There's
Speaker 1: also an exhibit going on at the Franklin Institute in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia where they have terra cotta warriors, the statues that
Speaker 1: were dug up in China. These warriors, the statues have
Speaker 1: remained pretty resilient over hundreds of years, but they used
Speaker 1: to hold weapons and tools that have since rotted away.
Speaker 1: There's nothing left of them. They've disintegrated. There have been
Speaker 1: a lot of archaeologists, art historians, people on those lines,
Speaker 1: along with designers, artists, computer scientists who have worked together
Speaker 1: to create an augmented reality application where you can see
Speaker 1: this exhibit at the Franklin Institute. You can download this app,
Speaker 1: You hold your phone up and it will project onto
Speaker 1: the the image of the statue. Whatever the tools were,
Speaker 1: or weapons or whatever that the statue should be holding,
Speaker 1: but they're now gone. So if the statue was supposed
Speaker 1: to have its hands resting on a sword, you will
Speaker 1: see the sword in the augmented reality application, and you
Speaker 1: can actually see what the statue look like just after
Speaker 1: it was built, as opposed to what it just looks
Speaker 1: like now. Those are just two little examples of how
Speaker 1: augmented reality can really truly augment your experience. It's doing
Speaker 1: what the name implies, it's actually adding to your experience
Speaker 1: of whatever that moment is, and to me, that's incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful because you can imagine all sorts of implementations of
Speaker 1: augmented reality that could make a learning experience much more
Speaker 1: rich and impactful, and it will stay with you. It's
Speaker 1: something that you walk away from and you have a
Speaker 1: greater understanding of whatever it was you were witnessing, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just that was cool. I saw a little
Speaker 1: cartoon elephant run by on a poster, which ad italy
Speaker 1: is cool, but again, isn't really going to stick with
Speaker 1: you the way a learning experience will. So I think
Speaker 1: that Apple incorporating this into their operating system is going
Speaker 1: to add a lot more omph behind the industry. We're
Speaker 1: gonna see a lot more development. We're going to see
Speaker 1: people thinking about augmented reality in new ways, and that's
Speaker 1: going to benefit everybody Further down the line. It's going
Speaker 1: to benefit iPhone users first, which is unfortunate for me
Speaker 1: because I don't own an iPhone, but I'm very optimistic
Speaker 1: about how that's going to affect the industry overall in
Speaker 1: the long term. So I would say that Apple getting
Speaker 1: into that game is one of the best shots in
Speaker 1: the arm for augmented reality in a long time. It's
Speaker 1: something that can actually have a demonstrable positive effect on
Speaker 1: the industry as a whole that otherwise we would have
Speaker 1: been possibly watching this fade away or be reduced to
Speaker 1: a much more niche market, things like research and development, manufacturing,
Speaker 1: um you know, uh, various types of assemblies where you
Speaker 1: need to be able to see where things are going
Speaker 1: to go together, so you use augmented reality so that
Speaker 1: way you know where to place various components. Actually, that's
Speaker 1: how augmented reality got started. Someone created a really clever
Speaker 1: program that would show you where the wires, where the
Speaker 1: cabling needed to go inside of an aircraft's infrastructure, so
Speaker 1: that you would actually have the proper ablingh and that
Speaker 1: way you knew exactly where you need to lay the
Speaker 1: cables in order for it to fit within the construction
Speaker 1: of that that airplane. Same sort of thing. We might
Speaker 1: have only seen a R used in those areas if
Speaker 1: we didn't get companies like Apple behind it. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't guarantee that augmented reality is going to take off.
Speaker 1: It doesn't guarantee that virtual reality is going to emerge
Speaker 1: and become its own, fully fleshed consumer technology, but it
Speaker 1: definitely improves the odds. It's giving it every chance of success.
Speaker 1: There's some other things I want to chat about, just
Speaker 1: very briefly. We've got some upcoming technology that has not
Speaker 1: yet come out. There's an HTC vibe standalone I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that hasn't yet come out, but should be out
Speaker 1: any month now by the time you listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is out. I don't know. But then there's
Speaker 1: something that I wanted to chat about because we've been
Speaker 1: hearing about it for a couple of years and it's
Speaker 1: become one of those legendary almost mythical beasts in the
Speaker 1: technology world. You might argue that it is the Duke
Speaker 1: Nukem Forever a VR, and that is Magic Leap. Magic
Speaker 1: Leap is a company that people have been really paying
Speaker 1: attention to for, like I said, a couple of years.
Speaker 1: They've raised millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising
Speaker 1: and there's no product out there to speak of yet.
Speaker 1: Magic Leap refresh their website in September. They raised half
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in funding, so five million dollars in funding.
Speaker 1: They may have a project to launch in six months.
Speaker 1: We don't know. Supposedly, this device will require a secondary
Speaker 1: device to run off of, so it'll it'll depend upon
Speaker 1: processing power from something else like a PC or maybe
Speaker 1: a smartphone. It's supposed to be an experience that's going
Speaker 1: to be bigger than something like Google Glass, but maybe
Speaker 1: less inclusive than a full VR headset um and some
Speaker 1: people are saying that the cost of it maybe anywhere
Speaker 1: between fills. And the question is is will the technology
Speaker 1: be so compelling, will the experience be so phenomenal, Will
Speaker 1: the implementation be so effective that people will find that
Speaker 1: that important enough to actually spend more than a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on the product? Or are we going to see
Speaker 1: enough devices that are at the few hundred dollar level
Speaker 1: that don't have all of those features, that they don't
Speaker 1: have all the capabilities of this this seemingly magical device
Speaker 1: that we have not yet seen. Will they be seen
Speaker 1: as being valuable enough that no one will bother with
Speaker 1: Magic Leap because there are cheaper alternatives on the market
Speaker 1: that yes, they're not going to deliver the same experience,
Speaker 1: but the experience they do deliver will be quote unquote
Speaker 1: good enough. Uh, it's too early to say. Some people,
Speaker 1: like including myself, would say, are a little skeptical. They
Speaker 1: think that magically perhaps has taken too long from the
Speaker 1: point where people knew something was in development, too launching anything.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that they can't turn around and
Speaker 1: completely blow us all away. It just makes that barrier
Speaker 1: more challenging to overcome. So magic leap is something that
Speaker 1: everyone's really taking a close look at and hoping that
Speaker 1: they learn more about it. The last thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is a little bit on the philosophy
Speaker 1: of virtual reality and augmented reality and the concept of
Speaker 1: reality itself, which starts to get a little philosophical. Now,
Speaker 1: before I get into this discussion, I gotta admit I'm
Speaker 1: a pragmatic son of a gun. I tend to be
Speaker 1: very practical. I have very little use for most philosophical
Speaker 1: arguments because when you boil it down, if you if
Speaker 1: the answer at the end of the day is there's
Speaker 1: no possible way of knowing, I just find it useless
Speaker 1: to talk about. Uh So, I'm I'm a terrible full
Speaker 1: bosophy student. You don't want me in your class. I am.
Speaker 1: I am very much like why does this matter? And
Speaker 1: you know, eventually are like, could you just go somewhere
Speaker 1: else and do something else, and I'll say thank you.
Speaker 1: But there is something about philosophy that I need to
Speaker 1: talk about, and that is our ability to experience reality.
Speaker 1: So I would consider myself kind of an objectivist. I
Speaker 1: think there is an objective reality that exists. However, our
Speaker 1: experience of reality is by definition subjective. It is subject
Speaker 1: to the information our senses bring in to our ourselves,
Speaker 1: to our brains. That we experience reality based upon how
Speaker 1: our senses pick up the information around us, whether it's
Speaker 1: site or whether it's our sense of hearing or touch
Speaker 1: or taste, whatever it may be. But that's how we
Speaker 1: filter reality our brains constructed. We experience the senses. Our
Speaker 1: brains take the information create the construct that is reality.
Speaker 1: So every and has their own subjective experience of reality.
Speaker 1: There's no way to know if your subjective experience of
Speaker 1: reality is exactly the same as mine, and maybe that
Speaker 1: there's some things that are different. We can tell with
Speaker 1: some people obviously that their experiences are different. Perhaps uh,
Speaker 1: they are not able to experience colors on the same
Speaker 1: way that the the mean person can the average person.
Speaker 1: So people who have color blindness, they obviously have and
Speaker 1: they cannot detect certain colors they cannot differentiate them. There
Speaker 1: are some people who are able to recognize a much
Speaker 1: wider array of colors at at tinier gradations, much better
Speaker 1: than the average person is, so we know the scale
Speaker 1: goes the other way too well. You could argue that
Speaker 1: they are actually experiencing reality slightly differently than the rest
Speaker 1: of us are. We're not able to perceive that, and
Speaker 1: we know that there are things going on in reality
Speaker 1: that we cannot perceive. For example, we call it the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum of light because by definition, it's the spectrum
Speaker 1: of light that we ourselves can perceive, but things like
Speaker 1: ultra violet light and infrared light without the aid of electronics,
Speaker 1: we can't see those. So there are definitely things that
Speaker 1: are happening around us all the time that are imperceptible
Speaker 1: to us. It doesn't mean they don't exist. They do.
Speaker 1: We just cannot experience them consciously, and so to our
Speaker 1: day to day existence, it's almost as if that stuff
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. However, with virtual reality and augmented reality, we
Speaker 1: can take some of that stuff and convert it into
Speaker 1: experiences that we can consciously understand. A very simple example
Speaker 1: of this, you could argue that one type of augmented
Speaker 1: reality would be night vision goggles, which end up picking
Speaker 1: up things like infrared wavelengths and then translating that into
Speaker 1: visible light that we can actually see. So it's taking
Speaker 1: something that is invisible to us and converting it into
Speaker 1: a format that is visible. Augmented in virtual reality could
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Beyond that, you could construct whatever
Speaker 1: stimuli you like in the virtual environment and people could
Speaker 1: experience it that way. And because our sense of reality
Speaker 1: is shaped by the data our senses bring in, it
Speaker 1: means we could literally reshape reality, at least on a
Speaker 1: subjective level, on an individual basis, for a temporary amount
Speaker 1: of time. And that sounds like a lot of qualifiers,
Speaker 1: but it is an incredibly powerful idea. We've already seen
Speaker 1: that you can use this sort of approach to treat
Speaker 1: people who are having anxieties or phobias about different subjects,
Speaker 1: but you could use it for all sorts of different applications.
Speaker 1: You could have your reality shifted in very subtle ways
Speaker 1: or dramatic ways. And because our our brains are synthesizing
Speaker 1: our sense of reality based upon all of this information,
Speaker 1: our reality changes as a result. I think that's pretty
Speaker 1: cool idea, even if it's just a temporary thing, and
Speaker 1: even if it never really sinks in on a deeper level,
Speaker 1: it's just a really fascinating concept to me. It's one
Speaker 1: of those potentials for technology that I find simultaneously exciting
Speaker 1: and potentially terrifying, depending upon the implementation. If I'm being
Speaker 1: perfectly honest, But when do you have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk about something so kind of brainy and cool like that. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't agree, Maybe you think, God, most of
Speaker 1: this is a passing entertainment and there's nothing really deep
Speaker 1: or meaningful about it beyond the fact that it's a
Speaker 1: new way to accept information. And I'm not really going
Speaker 1: to argue with you, because I might just be reading
Speaker 1: too much into this and I might just have stars
Speaker 1: in my eyes, largely because of the head mounted display
Speaker 1: I'm currently wearing. And if you're not watching this live,
Speaker 1: you don't know if I'm telling the truth or not,
Speaker 1: So don't test me, guys. That wraps up this episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: augmented reality or virtual reality, I've got other episod szades
Speaker 1: of tech stuff that I published on the subject. There's
Speaker 1: also some great articles on how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the website I I used to work for how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com as a writer. Now I'm a
Speaker 1: podcaster and video host extraordinaire. But if you guys want
Speaker 1: to check out that, you'll see tons more information about
Speaker 1: the subject, really fascinating research as well. And of course,
Speaker 1: if you want to reach out to me, you wanna Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe you have some comments or some questions. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: someone who works in the field and you want to
Speaker 1: talk to me more about either mixed reality or one
Speaker 1: of the specific implementations I've chatted about. Please reach out.
Speaker 1: Let me know. My email address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter. I use the same
Speaker 1: handle at both of those for this show. The handle
Speaker 1: is text stuff h s W. If you would like
Speaker 1: to watch me record shows live, go to twitch dot
Speaker 1: tv slash tech Stuff. I've got the schedule there. I
Speaker 1: typically record on Wednesdays and Fridays, and you can watch
Speaker 1: as I ramble about technology and occasionally chat with the
Speaker 1: chat room and uh frequently make mistakes and make Ramsey
Speaker 1: have to record me again. Anyway, I hope to see
Speaker 1: you guys there and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Because it hostaff works dot com