Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio, and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It's time for a tech Stuff classic episode.
Speaker 1: This episode is called Augmenting Your Reality and originally published
Speaker 1: November twenty third, twenty sixteen. Obviously, augmented reality is still
Speaker 1: a developing technology. I would argue that no one has
Speaker 1: really created the killer hardware for augmented reality as of yet.
Speaker 1: By the time you listen to this, is entirely possible
Speaker 1: that Apple has already unveiled its mixed reality headset, and
Speaker 1: maybe Apple will be the company that really succeeds where
Speaker 1: others just haven't yet. I don't know. I'm recording this
Speaker 1: way back in May twenty twenty three before Apple has
Speaker 1: held that event, So when it comes round, I guess
Speaker 1: I'll find out. Anyway, that's going down a long tangent.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to this classic episode, Augmenting Your Reality, which
Speaker 1: published November twenty third, twenty sixteen. So I thought I
Speaker 1: would do a deeper dive, a bigger explanation about what
Speaker 1: augmented reality is. What it's all about how it works
Speaker 1: and sort of the applications we might put a R
Speaker 1: toward things that, you know, was it good for tons
Speaker 1: of stuff? As it turns out, So the first thing
Speaker 1: we should do is probably defined some terms, because if
Speaker 1: you haven't really looked into augmented reality and you aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with AR, you might just be lost. I'm going
Speaker 1: to define it all for you right now, because that's
Speaker 1: the kind of stand up guy I am. Technically speaking,
Speaker 1: augmented reality is using digital information to enhance or augment
Speaker 1: and experience in our physical real world. So the way
Speaker 1: we usually see this implemented involves some sort of display
Speaker 1: that has an image of the real world on it
Speaker 1: and it overlays digital information on top of that image.
Speaker 1: So think of like a camera's viewfinder, like an LCD
Speaker 1: screen on a camera, and it actually labels the buildings
Speaker 1: that are in view. When you're out on the street
Speaker 1: and you hold the camera up, or a smartphone or
Speaker 1: even a wearable device like a head mounted display that
Speaker 1: you can look through so you can see the real world.
Speaker 1: You're not just staring at a screen, or if you
Speaker 1: are staring at a screen, you're staring at a video
Speaker 1: feed that is provided by an external camera mounted just
Speaker 1: on the other side of the screen, so it's like
Speaker 1: you're looking through a display in the first place, but
Speaker 1: then on top of that view you have this digital information.
Speaker 1: That's the most common implementation we talk about, but it's
Speaker 1: not the only one. Augmented reality does not have to
Speaker 1: only be or even involve visual information at all. You
Speaker 1: could have audio only augmented reality, for example, But the
Speaker 1: whole idea is that it's something that is created digitally
Speaker 1: to enhance your experience in the real world. Now we
Speaker 1: can contrast this with the concept of virtual reality. Virtual reality,
Speaker 1: of course, is a term where you create an experience
Speaker 1: completely through computer generated means a computer is making all
Speaker 1: the things you see and hear, and maybe even beyond
Speaker 1: that if you have really sophisticated setups, so you might
Speaker 1: have some haptic feedback. Haptic refers to your sense of touch,
Speaker 1: so if you have haptic feedback, that means you're getting
Speaker 1: information feedback through your sense of touch. A common example
Speaker 1: of this is a rumble pack inside a game controller
Speaker 1: where you fire a gun and a first person shooter
Speaker 1: and your controller rumbles as a result, letting you know
Speaker 1: that you are in fact, unleashing virtual destruction upon all
Speaker 1: you survey. Well, the same thing can be true with
Speaker 1: a virtual reality setup. So virtual reality is all about
Speaker 1: constructing an artificial reality, a simulated reality. Augmented reality is
Speaker 1: all about enhancing the one that we are actually in.
Speaker 1: And then there's also mixed reality. Mixed reality is kind
Speaker 1: of sort of in between the two. You might have
Speaker 1: some physical objects within a room that are also mapped
Speaker 1: to a virtual environment, and then you use something like
Speaker 1: a head melted display to enter the virtual environment. That's
Speaker 1: what looks like you're inside. But you have physical objects
Speaker 1: in the room around you that are also mapped to
Speaker 1: the virtual world, meaning you could pick up this physical
Speaker 1: object and you would see that reflect did within the
Speaker 1: virtual world, where you might pick up a sword and
Speaker 1: shield or move a chair or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: So augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality are all
Speaker 1: kind of interrelated, so much so that their histories also
Speaker 1: are very much interrelated. And there's some people who try
Speaker 1: to collect these different technologies, these different approaches and put
Speaker 1: them under a common umbrella, and they tend to use
Speaker 1: the phrase alternate reality, which is unfortunate because that's also
Speaker 1: ar but Alternate reality is kind of the umbrella for virtual,
Speaker 1: augmented and mixed reality. Now that kind of gives you
Speaker 1: the definition of those basic terms, and it is important
Speaker 1: to understand them because they're becoming more and more important today.
Speaker 1: You are already probably aware of a lot of VR
Speaker 1: headsets that are out there on the market as well
Speaker 1: as VR well, they're kind of like case is that
Speaker 1: you slide your smartphone into, so your smartphone becomes the
Speaker 1: actual display on a VR headset. The headset itself is
Speaker 1: more or less just a head mounted case for your phone.
Speaker 1: We've seen a lot of those come out over the
Speaker 1: last few years. We've also seen a lot of AR
Speaker 1: applications come out, typically for things like iPads and smartphones,
Speaker 1: but we've also seen some hardware come out that for
Speaker 1: wearable devices that falls into the augmented reality category, stuff
Speaker 1: like Google Glass, which i'll talk about more a little
Speaker 1: bit later in this episode. For augmented reality to work
Speaker 1: to get this enhanced experience of reality around you, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of technological components that have to come
Speaker 1: together so that you actually do get an experience that
Speaker 1: is meaningful. You have to have technology that quote unquote
Speaker 1: knows where you are and what you are looking at
Speaker 1: or what you are close to in order to get
Speaker 1: that augmented experience. It wouldn't do me any good if
Speaker 1: I put on an augmented reality headset, for example, and
Speaker 1: stared at let's say a famous painting, and instead of
Speaker 1: getting information about the famous painting, I see an exploded
Speaker 1: view of an car engine. That would make no sense.
Speaker 1: So you have to build in technologies in order for
Speaker 1: the AR to understand what it is you're trying to
Speaker 1: do and to augment that experience, which meant that we
Speaker 1: had to wait a pretty good long time for the
Speaker 1: various technologies that we use to create this relationship to
Speaker 1: mature to a point where it was possible. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: had technologies that would allow us to do it, but
Speaker 1: it required tethering headsets to very large computers, which meant
Speaker 1: that you didn't have really any mobility and it really
Speaker 1: limited the usefulness of the actual application. In other cases,
Speaker 1: you could say things like your head tracking technology was
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary for AR to develop the way it did.
Speaker 1: GPS technology as well. Remember it wasn't that long ago
Speaker 1: that we ordinary mirror mortals didn't have access to really
Speaker 1: accurate GPS information For a very long time that was
Speaker 1: purposefully made less accurate. It was a matter of national defense.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the nineties that you started to see
Speaker 1: GPS become more accurate. For the basic consumer. Way back
Speaker 1: in the day, you might get accuracy of up to
Speaker 1: around one hundred meters, which is not great if you're
Speaker 1: looking for the next place to make your turn. If
Speaker 1: it's one hundred meters away, that's pretty far. But now
Speaker 1: it's within a few feet, so it's much better. That
Speaker 1: sort of stuff all had to come together in order
Speaker 1: for augmented reality to become viable. I almost said a reality,
Speaker 1: but that just starts to sound redundant at any rate,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of these technologies we really need,
Speaker 1: things like gyroscopes, accelerometers. These help devices understand their orientation
Speaker 1: where they are in respect to something else, like are
Speaker 1: they For a smartphone, it might be is it in
Speaker 1: landscape mode or portrait mode? But for a head mounted display,
Speaker 1: it would help give the unit the information it needs
Speaker 1: to know which way you're looking, like are you looking
Speaker 1: to the east or to the west. That kind of
Speaker 1: thing also compasses obviously very important GPS sensors, image recognition software,
Speaker 1: but has become really important so that when you are
Speaker 1: looking at something, the system can actually identify what that is.
Speaker 1: In some cases you can get around this. You can
Speaker 1: design an AR system where let's say you make a
Speaker 1: movie post and the AR application has the movie poster
Speaker 1: animate in some way if you hold up a smartphone
Speaker 1: that's running the appropriate app. So I'm just gonna take
Speaker 1: a movie from my past that does not have an
Speaker 1: AR movie poster associated with it, but one that I
Speaker 1: can talk about as if it were a good example,
Speaker 1: and that has to be Big Trouble in Little China,
Speaker 1: universally declared the best movie that has ever been made.
Speaker 1: So you've got your Big Trouble in Little China poster
Speaker 1: up on the wall, and you hold up your smartphone
Speaker 1: and you activate your Big Trouble in Little China movie
Speaker 1: marketing app and the camera on your phone to text
Speaker 1: the poster. You know the posters there well, The app
Speaker 1: and the poster together are able to construct the augmented
Speaker 1: experience because there have been elements put into the poster
Speaker 1: that the app is looking for, and once the app
Speaker 1: identifies that, like, it sees maybe eight different points on
Speaker 1: the poster and because of the orientation of those points,
Speaker 1: it knows what angle it's at, what height it's at
Speaker 1: in relation to the phone, and can give you on
Speaker 1: your display the augmented reality experience. In this case, it's
Speaker 1: obviously Jack Burton and the pork Chop Express eating a sandwich, because,
Speaker 1: as we know, the most riveting scene in the movie
Speaker 1: unfolds in this way. So that would be kind of
Speaker 1: an augmented reality experience where you didn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about every possible application out in the real world. You
Speaker 1: made it for something very specific, which means in your
Speaker 1: software you can have the camera look quote unquote for
Speaker 1: these particular points of reference and thus create the augmented
Speaker 1: experience in that way. If you want to take that
Speaker 1: and move it to the real world where you can
Speaker 1: see augmented information about just the world around you, it
Speaker 1: becomes way more complicated. You have to have very sophisticated
Speaker 1: image recognition saw so that the camera picks up the images,
Speaker 1: the software processes the information, identifies what those images are,
Speaker 1: and gives you the relevant information. So working with all
Speaker 1: the sensors, augmented reality can make this a possibility. So
Speaker 1: another example, let's say you're out on the street in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: you're here in my hometown Atlanta, Georgia, and you're looking
Speaker 1: at a building and you wonder what it is, and
Speaker 1: you hold up your phone and you've got your little
Speaker 1: map app that allows you to look at a real
Speaker 1: world setting and tells you information about it, and it
Speaker 1: tells you it's the Georgia Aquarium. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you would probably know that already because the signage there
Speaker 1: is actually pretty good. But the point being that this
Speaker 1: would be something that would tap into the GPS coordinates
Speaker 1: on your phone, so it would know where your location
Speaker 1: was and help narrow that down. The compass would tell
Speaker 1: it what direction you are facing the camera angle. Also,
Speaker 1: you have some image recognition going on there. The accelerometer
Speaker 1: tells the orientation of the phone itself. All of this
Speaker 1: data together would give the software the information needed for
Speaker 1: it to display the labeled Georgia Aquarium on your phone.
Speaker 1: And it all happens in an instant that's pretty amazing. Typically,
Speaker 1: you also have to have some other method to communicate
Speaker 1: with a larger infrastructure, because we don't have the capability
Speaker 1: of building an enormously powerful computer that has all this
Speaker 1: real world information programmed into it and make it a
Speaker 1: handheld or wearable device. So usually you have to pair
Speaker 1: these devices with some other larger infrastructure. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: double handshake. For example, with Google Glass, you would use
Speaker 1: Bluetooth to connect Google Glass to a smartphone. Then the
Speaker 1: smartphone would have the connection to the larger internet through
Speaker 1: your smartphone's cell service provider. So while you're experiencing the
Speaker 1: augmented reality through the Google Glass, it's actually communicating through
Speaker 1: your phone to the infrastructure to get the data it
Speaker 1: needs to show you the information. It's showing you very
Speaker 1: important elements. And all of these components, like I said,
Speaker 1: came together more or less around the same time. Most
Speaker 1: of them were being developed independently of each other, and
Speaker 1: it's just that now we're seeing them all converge. That's
Speaker 1: an old favorite word here at tech stuff converge together
Speaker 1: to create the augmented reality experience and make it possible.
Speaker 1: So how did we get here? How did these different
Speaker 1: elements develop? Well, there are a whole bunch of technology
Speaker 1: pioneers who really create the foundation for augmented reality as
Speaker 1: well as virtual reality and mixed reality. But one that
Speaker 1: I think we really need to concentrate on it first
Speaker 1: is Ivan Sutherland. Now Sutherland was born in Hastings, Nebraska
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, and as a kid, he was
Speaker 1: fascinated with mathematics, particularly geometry, and also with engineering. He
Speaker 1: began to study and experiment with computers while he was
Speaker 1: in school, and this was at a time where personal
Speaker 1: computers weren't a thing. There were no personal computers at
Speaker 1: this point. Computers were actually pretty rare, and they were huge,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they often would rely upon physical media
Speaker 1: formats like punch cards or paper tape to read a program.
Speaker 1: So you didn't even have a disc or like certainly
Speaker 1: nothing like a USB thumb drive or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You actually had to put physical media into the machine
Speaker 1: for it to read and then execute whatever program you
Speaker 1: had designed for that device. He went to college at
Speaker 1: what is now Carnegie Mellon University on a full scholarship.
Speaker 1: He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. He would
Speaker 1: then go on to earn a master's degree at cal
Speaker 1: Tech and a PhD in electrical engineering from MIT. And
Speaker 1: actually his doctoral thesis supervisor was Claude Shannon. And we
Speaker 1: talked about Claude Shannon back in the twenty fourteen episode
Speaker 1: Who is Claude Shannon. We recorded that not too long
Speaker 1: after Shannon's passing, So if you want to hear a
Speaker 1: really interesting story about a pioneer in computer science, you
Speaker 1: should go check out that twenty fourteen episode. Back to Sutherland.
Speaker 1: For his thesis, he created something called Sketchpad and that
Speaker 1: was really, by most accounts, the first computer graphical user
Speaker 1: interface or guy A graphic goal user interface means that
Speaker 1: you interact with the computer through graphics representing various commands
Speaker 1: on the computer. Windows and the Mac operating system are
Speaker 1: both examples of graphical user interfaces, as is the interface
Speaker 1: on your smartphone. If you have a smartphone where you
Speaker 1: choose applications on a screen, that's a graphical user interface. Well,
Speaker 1: Sutherland created what is largely considered to be the first
Speaker 1: one of those. After college, he entered military service and
Speaker 1: he was assigned to the National Seecurity Agency. We have
Speaker 1: great friends there. I assume I'm sure they're listening, because
Speaker 1: they're listening to everything at any rate. He entered the
Speaker 1: NSA as an electrical engineer, and in nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: he replaced JC. R. Licklider as the head of DARPA's
Speaker 1: Information Processing Techniques Office. Or IPTO. And also by back
Speaker 1: then DARPA wasn't DARPA, it was just ARPA. So this
Speaker 1: is the same group, by the way, that would end
Speaker 1: up doing a lot of work that would form the
Speaker 1: ARPANET a few years later, and the arpainet was the
Speaker 1: predecessor to the Internet in some ways. At least, the
Speaker 1: ARPAET was what ended up being the building blocks for
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that would become the Internet. Now, all of
Speaker 1: that work happened after Sutherland had already departed the organization.
Speaker 1: His work became a fundamental component of both virtual and
Speaker 1: augmented reality. As I mentioned earlier, in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: he wrote a piece and essay. It's very short, it's
Speaker 1: very easy read, and you can find it online. The
Speaker 1: title of the essay is the Ultimate Display. And if
Speaker 1: you ever do any research and virtual reality or augmented reality,
Speaker 1: this essay is going to pop up in your research,
Speaker 1: so go ahead and read it. It's like two pages long,
Speaker 1: so it goes very quickly. In that essay he talked
Speaker 1: about several ideas, including the idealized display, the ultimate display,
Speaker 1: something that would be the furthest you could go with
Speaker 1: display technology. Now, keep in mind in his time. By
Speaker 1: his time, he's still alive, by the way, this time
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, he you know, things were just
Speaker 1: restricted to monitors. You might have a light pen, but
Speaker 1: usually you just use a keyboard. Like it was pretty
Speaker 1: bare bones. But he said, let's push this as far
Speaker 1: as we can imagine it. His example, he thought of
Speaker 1: a room that would be completely controlled by computers. Everything
Speaker 1: you would experience within that room would be generated by
Speaker 1: a computer. Everything you see here, smell, taste, and touch,
Speaker 1: all of it generated by computers. The computer would even
Speaker 1: be able to form physical objects out of pure matter itself. Now,
Speaker 1: he wasn't suggesting that this would ever be a device
Speaker 1: that we would actually be able to build. He was
Speaker 1: just saying, what is the ultimate incarnation of display technology?
Speaker 1: And if you read it, you realize, oh, this is
Speaker 1: where the Star Trek Next Generation writers got their idea
Speaker 1: for the Holidack. But unlike Star Trek the Next Generation,
Speaker 1: the Ultimate Display would not go on the Fritz every
Speaker 1: other episode and try to kill the crew. It was
Speaker 1: better than that. The Ultimate Display was sort of a
Speaker 1: foundational like Philosophically, it was foundational forvirual reality and augmented reality.
Speaker 1: This idea of a very immersive experience where you, as
Speaker 1: a user are surrounded somehow by this computer generated experience.
Speaker 1: And that's true both with augmented reality and virtual reality.
Speaker 1: In augmented reality, the real world is still there, but
Speaker 1: you get this enhanced experience that is completely computer generated.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixty eight, Sutherland and a student named
Speaker 1: Danny Cohen would create a VR ar head mounted display
Speaker 1: or HMD, and they nicknamed it the Sword of Damocles.
Speaker 1: Why because you had to suspend it from the ceiling.
Speaker 1: It was too heavy to wear on your head. You
Speaker 1: needed it to be nice and sturdy. It included transparent lenses,
Speaker 1: which meant you could overlay computer information on the lenses themselves,
Speaker 1: and thus you could look through the lenses at the
Speaker 1: real world and have these wireframe graphics on top of
Speaker 1: what you were looking at. And it also had a
Speaker 1: magnetic tracking system, meaning that it had sensors that could
Speaker 1: detect magnetic fields, and as you turned your head or
Speaker 1: you change the inclination of your head, it would change
Speaker 1: the magnetic field and this would be relayed as a
Speaker 1: command to the visual center the actual lenses themselves, so
Speaker 1: that it would the change would be reflected in what
Speaker 1: you saw. So if you have a virtual environment and
Speaker 1: you turn your head to the left, you want the
Speaker 1: view within the virtual environment to go to the left too,
Speaker 1: But without head tracking technology that's impossible. So this was
Speaker 1: a very early example of head tracking technology, and again
Speaker 1: it used magnets magnetic fields in order to do that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's also really important for augmented reality. Again, if the
Speaker 1: AR system doesn't detect that you are looking around, then
Speaker 1: you're not getting relevant information for the specific thing you
Speaker 1: are looking at. Anyway, as I said, the graphics were
Speaker 1: pretty primitive, they were wireframe drawings, but they still showed
Speaker 1: that this was a viable approach to technology using HMD
Speaker 1: for augmented or virtual reality use. Oh and one other
Speaker 1: note I should make So a lot of people say
Speaker 1: the sort of Damocles was the first head mounted display,
Speaker 1: and they say, you know, this is the first HMD
Speaker 1: was made in nineteen sixty eight. I take issue with that.
Speaker 1: I don't think of the sort of Damocles as the
Speaker 1: first head mounted display. That to me should go to
Speaker 1: a different invention called the head site hadsight now that
Speaker 1: was developed by phil Co and unlike the sort of damocles.
Speaker 1: It didn't create a virtual world. Instead, the head site
Speaker 1: was sort of a remote viewfinder for a video camera.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you got a camera mounted on a mechanical
Speaker 1: swiveling mount, so you can move it left right, you
Speaker 1: can change the orientation the inclination as well, and then
Speaker 1: you have that mapped to a head mounted display, so
Speaker 1: that if I put the display on and I look
Speaker 1: to the left, the camera pans to the left. If
Speaker 1: I look to the right, it pans to the right.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. It was meant to be a
Speaker 1: way for people to operate a camera in a remote
Speaker 1: location that might not be very friendly to a human
Speaker 1: being standing there. For example, the exterior of an aircraft.
Speaker 1: You could have a camera mounted on the outside of
Speaker 1: your aircraft that would allow an engineer on the inside
Speaker 1: to look around and maybe help a pilot land or
Speaker 1: navigate in a dangerous situation, or just get an idea
Speaker 1: of the status of the aircraft itself. This was very
Speaker 1: much a technology that was being pushed by the military,
Speaker 1: an idea to create more military uses using this technology
Speaker 1: to make the military more competent, more adept at very
Speaker 1: rapid changing situations on the technology front, so headsite preceded
Speaker 1: the sort of Damocles by about seven years. It came
Speaker 1: out around nineteen sixty one. But again it wasn't a
Speaker 1: virtual reality headset or an augmented reality headset. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a like I said, a remote viewfinder. But
Speaker 1: still I consider that to be the earliest head mounted display,
Speaker 1: not the sort of Damocles. However, Sutherland would end up
Speaker 1: going on to make lots of other contributions in computer
Speaker 1: graphics as well as the overall concepts that would guide
Speaker 1: both virtual reality and augmented reality development over the next
Speaker 1: several decades. But now it'll be time for me to
Speaker 1: kind of move away from Sutherland and talk about some
Speaker 1: other developments that were important in AR. And before I
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. All Right, we just left off with Ivan Sutherland.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about a different father of augmented reality,
Speaker 1: Myron Krueger or doctor Myron Krueger. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: doctor Krueger created an augmented reality lab called Video Place.
Speaker 1: He was really into this idea of seeing the interaction
Speaker 1: of technology and people in artistic ways. He really wanted
Speaker 1: to explore artistic expressions using technology and people working together.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to create an artificial reality environment that
Speaker 1: didn't require the user to wear special equipment. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to put on a head Moulton display, or wear
Speaker 1: special gloves, or use in any kind of device to
Speaker 1: control your actions, because that's a barrier between you and
Speaker 1: the experience. Instead, his version consisted of a laboratory that
Speaker 1: had several rooms all networked together, and each room had
Speaker 1: a video camera in it and a projector and a screen. Now,
Speaker 1: the video camera would pick up the motions of the
Speaker 1: person inside the room, it would send information to the projector,
Speaker 1: which would then project the person's silhouette on the screen.
Speaker 1: And the silhouette was typically a really bright color, and
Speaker 1: you could move around and your silhouette would move around,
Speaker 1: So you almost became like a puppet master controlling your
Speaker 1: own silhouette. But then he started to incorporate other things,
Speaker 1: like other elements that were virtually on the screen. The
Speaker 1: projector was projecting things that were on the screen but
Speaker 1: not in the actual real room itself. So imagine a ball,
Speaker 1: and a ball is being projected on the screen. Well,
Speaker 1: you could move as that your silhouette would interact with
Speaker 1: the ball and the ball would bounce away. That sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So you would be able to interact with
Speaker 1: virtual environments by moving around in a real physical space.
Speaker 1: And while those objects weren't really there in front of you,
Speaker 1: you could see the representation of them on the screen.
Speaker 1: And this was really powerful stuff. And remember I said
Speaker 1: these rooms were all networked together, so you could actually
Speaker 1: have a system where a person in one room and
Speaker 1: a person in another room both have their silhouettes projected
Speaker 1: together in their respective rooms on the screen, and your
Speaker 1: silhouette would be one color, the other person's silhouette would
Speaker 1: be a different color, and you could interact with one another.
Speaker 1: And according to reports from this art experiment, they noticed
Speaker 1: that whenever people would have their silhouettes cross one another,
Speaker 1: they would actually recoil in their physical rooms. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: they're in different rooms, they're not in the same one together,
Speaker 1: they would recoil as if they had made physical contact
Speaker 1: or bumped into someone. So it showed that there was
Speaker 1: a very powerful psychological element to this virtual presence. And
Speaker 1: again that psychological element plays a huge important role in
Speaker 1: VR and AR research and development, not just for creating products,
Speaker 1: but just to understand how we process information and incorporate
Speaker 1: it into our sense of reality. Not to get too
Speaker 1: deep for you guys, So experimentation in the field continued
Speaker 1: over the years. In the early nineteen eighties, doctor Krueger
Speaker 1: would write a book and publish it about artificial realities.
Speaker 1: But while the principles for augmented reality were established, the
Speaker 1: technologies were still rather unwieldy. They were large, they weren't reliable,
Speaker 1: and it would require several years of work to improve
Speaker 1: those technologies, to create miniaturization strategies, to get the elements
Speaker 1: down to a size that was more practic for that
Speaker 1: sort of use, and what can require you to have
Speaker 1: a headmund display mounted to the ceiling, and all of
Speaker 1: that took time, but you could tell that the ideas
Speaker 1: underlying augmented and virtual reality were already in place. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety there was a Boeing researcher named Tom Coddell
Speaker 1: who coined the term augmented reality, and he was specifically
Speaker 1: using it to talk about this approach to overlaying digital
Speaker 1: information on top of our physical world to enhance it
Speaker 1: in some way. Now, doctor Coddell earned a PhD in
Speaker 1: physics and astronomy from the University of Arizona, and before
Speaker 1: contributing the term augmented reality to the public lexicon, he
Speaker 1: did extensive work and artificial intelligence research and development. He
Speaker 1: also became a professor in the fields of electrical and
Speaker 1: computer engineering at the University of New Mexico. So when
Speaker 1: he was working with Boeing, he used this phrase to
Speaker 1: talk about specific system he was working on, an augmented
Speaker 1: reality system, and the whole purpose of this was to
Speaker 1: help people who were helping construct airplanes lay cables properly.
Speaker 1: The whole idea was to use this system so that
Speaker 1: an electrician can see exactly where the cable needed to
Speaker 1: go inside the partly constructed cabin of an aircraft, and
Speaker 1: that way you could follow the directions that you see
Speaker 1: through your display, lay the actual cable down where the
Speaker 1: guide tells you to go, and then you would have
Speaker 1: a properly wired airplane. And I'm sure, as we're all aware,
Speaker 1: properly wired airplanes are good airplanes. Improperly wired airplanes are
Speaker 1: not so good. So it was a very important system
Speaker 1: to make this much more smooth and fast, and it
Speaker 1: meant that you didn't have to have as many experts
Speaker 1: to guide the process. You could actually have someone come
Speaker 1: in who had never done this before and just follow
Speaker 1: the directions through this augmented reality set system and they
Speaker 1: could wire the airplane properly. So really clever means of
Speaker 1: using augmented reality. Also, we would end up seeing that
Speaker 1: same sort of philosophy used again and again in the
Speaker 1: future in more sophisticated types of technology, but it was
Speaker 1: the exact same approach, exact same idea underlying it. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, Lewis Rosenberg proposed a system that the
Speaker 1: Air Force could use to allow someone to control devices
Speaker 1: from a remote location, and that consisted of a video
Speaker 1: camera which would provide the visual data to the user
Speaker 1: through a head mounted display. They would wear the display
Speaker 1: on their heads or they would look at a screen,
Speaker 1: but typically they'd wear a display, and then they would
Speaker 1: also wear an exoskeleton on their upper body that would
Speaker 1: allow them to control some sort of robotic device, typically
Speaker 1: robotic arms. And usually the way this would work is
Speaker 1: that the display was designed in such a way with
Speaker 1: the video camera so that the view that the person
Speaker 1: had it made it look like the robot arms were
Speaker 1: their actual arms, which required a little bit of trickery
Speaker 1: on the part of Rosenberg. They had to fudge the
Speaker 1: distances between the video camera and the robotic arms to
Speaker 1: give this sort of feeling that the robot arms represented
Speaker 1: your actual arms. So you move your arms inside the
Speaker 1: exoskeleton and the robot arms would move as well at
Speaker 1: their remote location. So it's kind of like a really
Speaker 1: fancy remote control. Now imagine that the robot arms are
Speaker 1: holding various tools. The suit would also provide haptic feedback,
Speaker 1: that touch based feedback to let a user know more
Speaker 1: about what is going on when they're operating the arms.
Speaker 1: So if you were to do something that would make
Speaker 1: a robot arm and counter resistance, then you would feel
Speaker 1: haptic feedback in the suit that would indicate, oh, you're
Speaker 1: going beyond the parameters of where this robot arm is
Speaker 1: capable of going. So you learn very quickly where you
Speaker 1: can operate within that suit and make sure that you
Speaker 1: are not pushing it beyond its limits. You could also
Speaker 1: end up using these tools to do various things in
Speaker 1: this remote environment. Now, Rosenberg called a system virtual fixtures,
Speaker 1: which meant that the user would see these virtual overlays
Speaker 1: on top of a real environment that they were looking
Speaker 1: at So I'm going to give a very basic example
Speaker 1: to illustrate this, because it's hard to imagine, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get it across in words. But let's say you're
Speaker 1: looking through a head mount display and in front of
Speaker 1: you is a board, wooden board, and it's just a
Speaker 1: regular wooden board. There's nothing painted on it or anything
Speaker 1: in the real world, and it's in a room that's
Speaker 1: across the building from you. You cannot see this with
Speaker 1: your own eyes. You can only see it through the
Speaker 1: video camera. The virtual fixture overlay might be a series
Speaker 1: of circles, and the circles are things that you are
Speaker 1: meant to cut out of the board using the robot
Speaker 1: arms and a tool that's right there inside the physical environment,
Speaker 1: across the building from you. So you follow the patterns
Speaker 1: that you see in this virtual overlay and you complete
Speaker 1: the task. That's a very simple example, and this system
Speaker 1: was meant to allow for that. That's what he would
Speaker 1: call the virtual fixtures, these overlays that you would see
Speaker 1: that would appear to be real, but actually were not
Speaker 1: present in the physical environment itself. Now, also in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, a group of researchers at Columbia University were
Speaker 1: proposing a system that they called the Knowledge based Augmented
Speaker 1: Reality for Maintenance Assistance aka Karma Cute. Their approach was
Speaker 1: pretty novel. They pointed out that while augmented reality had
Speaker 1: tremendous potential, it also had a really big barrier in
Speaker 1: that it takes an enormous amount of time to design
Speaker 1: or animate and implement these graphic overlays for AR applications.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're in a room and you're looking
Speaker 1: at different objects, and little labels are popping up for
Speaker 1: each object. If you're having to do all that by hand,
Speaker 1: it takes a huge amount of time. What they wanted
Speaker 1: to do was create artificial intelligence systems, or at least
Speaker 1: techniques to generate graphics automatically on the fly. So this
Speaker 1: would be similar to using image recognition software, so that
Speaker 1: if you look at a specific box, let's say, the
Speaker 1: image recognition software might be able to map that box
Speaker 1: to a specific product and thus give you an overlay
Speaker 1: of information about the product though inside that box. And
Speaker 1: it would be able to do all this automatically. It
Speaker 1: would not require a human programmer to go through and
Speaker 1: look at every single product in every single type of box.
Speaker 1: And program all that out. That would be ridiculous, it
Speaker 1: would take forever. So it was the work of this
Speaker 1: group with Karma that really started the ball rolling with
Speaker 1: this AI approach to automatically fill in that information and
Speaker 1: make AR a more practical experience. Around the same time,
Speaker 1: between ninety two and ninety three, the Laurel Western Development Labs,
Speaker 1: which was a defense contractor, began to work with the
Speaker 1: US military to create AR systems for military vehicles. And
Speaker 1: you can understand very quickly how AR would have enormous
Speaker 1: potential for military applications. And in fact, AR is very
Speaker 1: commonly used in lots of different things like pilot helmets
Speaker 1: where it helps pilots keep track of targets and potential threats,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But in this case, they were
Speaker 1: really looking at creating a augmented reality system that would
Speaker 1: create virtual opponents for people working in simulated wartime conditions,
Speaker 1: so really a training program. Imagine that you're operating an
Speaker 1: actual military vehicle like a tank, and you have a
Speaker 1: view outside that is really an augmented reality system, so
Speaker 1: you're actually looking at the real world around you. You
Speaker 1: aren't just sitting in a simulator inside of building. You
Speaker 1: are out there in the field controlling a real vehicle
Speaker 1: moving around in real terrain, but you also see virtual
Speaker 1: representations of enemies in that real terrain, and you can
Speaker 1: practice maneuvers and firing on enemies that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: probably not using live ammunition at that point, but having
Speaker 1: a more realistic simulation in a real environment, so that
Speaker 1: you're not just trying to create a totally virtual scenario. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that work was done in ninety two and ninety three,
Speaker 1: the world wouldn't really learn about it at large until
Speaker 1: about ninety nine, because that's the way the military works.
Speaker 1: They're not so eager to talk about their stuff while
Speaker 1: are still doing it. Meanwhile, at the same time, artists
Speaker 1: were continuing to explore the relationships between physical performers and
Speaker 1: virtual elements. You remember I talked about doctor Krueger earlier,
Speaker 1: while in nineteen ninety four, a different artist, Julie Martin,
Speaker 1: would create a piece called Dancing in Cyberspace, and in
Speaker 1: that piece, dancers on a physical space or a physical
Speaker 1: stage were able to manipulate virtual objects, so an audience
Speaker 1: would be able to see both the physical performance by
Speaker 1: the dancers and the virtual reactions. The things that happened
Speaker 1: within the virtual environment as a result of the dancers
Speaker 1: moving around their physical space pretty neat. In nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: two researchers Rekimoto and Nagao created their the first real
Speaker 1: handheld AR display. But it was a tethered display. It
Speaker 1: wasn't free form. You couldn't just take it anywhere. It
Speaker 1: was called navicam, and you had to have a tether
Speaker 1: cable essentially connect the navicam to a workstation. But it
Speaker 1: had a forward facing camera and you could use a
Speaker 1: video feed to go through this handheld device through the
Speaker 1: cable to the workstation, and it could detect color coded
Speaker 1: markers in the camera image and display information on a
Speaker 1: video see through view. So you could get that augmented
Speaker 1: reality experience. Obviously very limited, you know, you could not
Speaker 1: just carry this around with you everywhere you go, but
Speaker 1: it showed the ideas behind augmented reality could in fact
Speaker 1: be realized in a handheld format. Now, it was just
Speaker 1: a matter of getting those different components small enough to
Speaker 1: all fit in a self contained mobile form factor. Now
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, we started seeing televi sporting events
Speaker 1: featuring augmented reality elements, or at least you did. I
Speaker 1: don't watch sports ball. That's not entirely true, but I
Speaker 1: don't watch football or hockey, American football or hockey, and
Speaker 1: both of those were the sports that really got them.
Speaker 1: First off, I'm going to backtrack. I used to watch hockey,
Speaker 1: but then Winnipeg stole the Atlanta Thrashers from me. Winnipeg, okay,
Speaker 1: getting back to hockey. So hockey had the Fox track system,
Speaker 1: which Fox put into hockey games so that you could
Speaker 1: easily follow the puck. Instead of trying to watch this
Speaker 1: little bitty black disc spinning around, you got to watch
Speaker 1: this very bright, highlighted neon colored disc that everyone hated.
Speaker 1: And after about two seasons, Fuck stopped doing it and
Speaker 1: people were happy until a Thrashers moved away, and then
Speaker 1: it was just miserable. American football would follow suit in
Speaker 1: the late nineties and have the first down line introduced,
Speaker 1: where they could on live video overlay the first down line.
Speaker 1: Usually it's a bright yellow line that indicates how far
Speaker 1: the offensive team needs to go. And by offensive, I
Speaker 1: mean they're on the offensive. I don't mean they offend
Speaker 1: my sensibilities. I'm not that against American football, but it
Speaker 1: showed how far they would need to go in order
Speaker 1: to establish a first down, which I am told is
Speaker 1: something you want to do. That would start to get
Speaker 1: employed in nineteen ninety eight, and over time we would
Speaker 1: see that increase where eventually Skycam was able to even
Speaker 1: use this system. At first, it wasn't You could get
Speaker 1: a skycam view, but you couldn't do the overlay of
Speaker 1: the first and ten line until later. Well, I've got
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about augmented reality, but before
Speaker 1: I do, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. Let's skip ahead to nineteen ninety nine. I
Speaker 1: guess it's not really skipping. I just talked about nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Let's plot ahead to nineteen ninety nine. That's
Speaker 1: when NASA's X thirty eight spacecraft was using an AR
Speaker 1: system as part of its navigational tools, so people back
Speaker 1: on Earth could look at a view from the spacecraft
Speaker 1: a camera mounted on the spacecraft, and on top of
Speaker 1: that view they could overlay map data to help with navigation.
Speaker 1: And all of that, of course was controlled back here
Speaker 1: on Earth. But it was sort of an experiment to
Speaker 1: see how augmented reality could be incorporated into space exploration.
Speaker 1: Missions in the future and make them more effective. Also
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine, the Navy began work on the
Speaker 1: Battlefield Augmented Reality System or BARS, which is a wearable
Speaker 1: AR system for soldiers. You probably seen various implementations of
Speaker 1: this over the years. Is obviously evolved since nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: It's one of those pieces of technology that some soldiers
Speaker 1: took to, but a lot just felt that it created
Speaker 1: unnecessary distractions. Technology and warfare is very very difficult because
Speaker 1: there's sometimes where we think, oh, more information is always better,
Speaker 1: but in some cases that doesn't seem to hold true,
Speaker 1: and for some people with these head mounted displays or
Speaker 1: really its heads up displays HUDs, that can sometimes be
Speaker 1: the case, depends on the implementation. In two thousand, hiro
Speaker 1: Katsu Kato created a software library called AR Toolkit. Very
Speaker 1: important software library was also open source, so anyone could
Speaker 1: contribute to it, modify it. Brent put out a new
Speaker 1: version that sort of stuff, and it uses video tracking
Speaker 1: to overlay computer graphics on a video camera feed, and
Speaker 1: it's still a component for a lot of AR experiences today.
Speaker 1: Later on in the two thousands, this would be adapted
Speaker 1: so that it could also be used in web experiences,
Speaker 1: not just native experiences to specific devices, and we continued
Speaker 1: to see AR built into new experiences, including smartphones and tablets.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and four, some researchers in Germany were
Speaker 1: creating AR apps that could take advantage of a smartphone's camera.
Speaker 1: But two thousand and fours pretty early for smartphones. It
Speaker 1: really would would be a few years before this would
Speaker 1: truly take off, because that's when Apple came out with
Speaker 1: the iPhone in two thousand and seven. That was the
Speaker 1: real revolution in smartphone technology. There had been smartphones before
Speaker 1: the iPhone, don't get me wrong, and many of them
Speaker 1: were really good, but the iPhone was something that caught
Speaker 1: the public's attention and made smartphones sexy. And because of that,
Speaker 1: there was a ton of money poured into the smartphone
Speaker 1: industry as well as not just Apple, but also to
Speaker 1: other companies, like the companies that were offering Android smartphones.
Speaker 1: But I think we can really thank Apple for all
Speaker 1: of that happening in the first place, especially things like
Speaker 1: seeing that accelerometer where you could switch from portrait to
Speaker 1: landscape mode. I remember everyone freaking out about that when
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs showed it off in two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: at Macworld and everyone thought, wow, this is amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: we take it for granted now, but it was a
Speaker 1: big deal then. So once that smartphone revolution happened, it
Speaker 1: was a landslide victory for both augmented reality and virtual
Speaker 1: reality research and development, because it meant that so much
Speaker 1: money was being poured into creating newer, thinner, more capable
Speaker 1: smartphones that we saw an explosion in technological development that
Speaker 1: could also be used for virtual and augmented reality experiences. So,
Speaker 1: for example, think of those sensors I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: accelerometers and gyroscopes, that sort of thing. Well, we saw
Speaker 1: a lot of development in those spaces in order to
Speaker 1: make smartphones better, and people who were working in AR
Speaker 1: and VR experiences could take advantage of those same sensors
Speaker 1: either creating apps specifically for smartphones. Thus, you don't have
Speaker 1: to build any other hardware, you just use existing hardware,
Speaker 1: but that limits how you can use it, right because
Speaker 1: you don't typically wear your smartphone directly in front of
Speaker 1: your face. Or they could end up taking advantage of
Speaker 1: those new, smaller sensors and incorporate them directly into brand
Speaker 1: new hardware like various types of wearables like Google Glass,
Speaker 1: for example, but that would be a few more years.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, Nintendo launched the Nintendo three DS, which
Speaker 1: included a camera. It was the three D capable handheld
Speaker 1: device and included actually a pair of forward facing cameras,
Speaker 1: so you could take three D photos if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: and it also had some AR software included with it.
Speaker 1: You would get these special Nintendo cards kind of like
Speaker 1: playing cards, and if you were to point the camera
Speaker 1: of the three DS at the card and look at
Speaker 1: the screen, you would see a little virtual three dimensional
Speaker 1: character pop up on the card. So Mario would be
Speaker 1: an obvious example. You put the Mario card down on
Speaker 1: the table, you hold up the three DS, and you
Speaker 1: aim the camera at the card, and you look at
Speaker 1: the screen and there's Mario, and Mario appears to be
Speaker 1: jumping around on your physical table. Now, obviously, if you
Speaker 1: look off of the display, there's no Mario jumping around,
Speaker 1: but on the display there he is, and it was
Speaker 1: pretty cute. I remember being really impressed with this very
Speaker 1: simple implementation of AR when we got our three DS,
Speaker 1: and then I took our three DS apart, and then
Speaker 1: I took pictures of it, and then I posted it
Speaker 1: on Twitter and people got sad, it's a great day.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, Google introduced Google Glass. That was the
Speaker 1: wearable that included a small display position just above the
Speaker 1: right eye, so when you look straightforward, you could tell
Speaker 1: that there was something kind of above your natural eyeline,
Speaker 1: but it didn't get in the way too much to
Speaker 1: look at the screen. You actually had a glimpse. You
Speaker 1: had a glance upward, and then you could see what
Speaker 1: was on the display. Google Glass had augmented reality features
Speaker 1: like crazy. You could see video calls. You could actually
Speaker 1: use the glasses to not just take a video call,
Speaker 1: but show the other person what you are looking at
Speaker 1: so they could see from your point of view. You
Speaker 1: could also overlay direction, so if you're walking down street,
Speaker 1: you could glance up at the screen and it would
Speaker 1: tell you if you need to keep going straight, or
Speaker 1: turn left or turn right, that kind of thing. It
Speaker 1: was really useful. I had a pair of these Google
Speaker 1: Glass and I really liked the direction they were going in.
Speaker 1: I felt that it wasn't a fully realized product at
Speaker 1: the time, and eventually Google agreed and after a couple
Speaker 1: of years they took Google Glass off the market entirely,
Speaker 1: and now you can't get them anymore. They were clever,
Speaker 1: but they were expensive, and they had some limitations, And
Speaker 1: like I was saying earlier, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: build all the components you need into one headset. So
Speaker 1: Google Glass would communicate via Bluetooth to your smartphone, and
Speaker 1: your smartphone would act as the actual nexus point to
Speaker 1: the Internet. But it was a neat idea, and I
Speaker 1: enjoyed getting to use them while I did, so I
Speaker 1: keep hoping to see a return of that kind of technology,
Speaker 1: but perhaps in a more mature and less expensive format.
Speaker 1: Now we've also seen applications similar to the ones we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the ones that are meant to guide people
Speaker 1: into laying out or repairing a system. We've seen that
Speaker 1: in the car world. Not too long ago, there was
Speaker 1: the MARTA system introduced by Volkswagen. MARTA makes me chuckle
Speaker 1: because that's also the name of Atlanta's public transportation system,
Speaker 1: But in this case, it stands for Mobile Augmented Reality
Speaker 1: Technical Assistance, and it's specifically designed for mechanics who are
Speaker 1: working on the XL one vehicle. So if you hold
Speaker 1: up an iPad that has this app on it, and
Speaker 1: the camera is pointed at an XL one and you
Speaker 1: look at the display, you'll see information overlaid on top
Speaker 1: of the car, including labels for all the different parts.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're a mechanic and you have to
Speaker 1: do a specific repair on this vehicle. You hold up
Speaker 1: the iPad, you look through the display, and you see
Speaker 1: exactly what you need to do. It gives you a
Speaker 1: set of instructions. It shows you how you need to do.
Speaker 1: It tells you where you need to stand based upon
Speaker 1: the angle of the view. So if you hold it
Speaker 1: up and it says no, you need to move about
Speaker 1: a foot to the right, you can do that. Then
Speaker 1: hold up the iPad again and you'll say, all right,
Speaker 1: you're in the right spot. Make sure you loosen this
Speaker 1: particular bolt first, that kind of thing. And it's meant
Speaker 1: to be an interactive maintenance guide in a way maintenance
Speaker 1: and repair guide. This is one of those applications of
Speaker 1: augmentary reality. I think is a no brainer to me.
Speaker 1: It's a killer app The idea of having an ability
Speaker 1: to work with something you are not one hundred percent
Speaker 1: familiar with, but you're able to leverage the expertise of
Speaker 1: people who either designed it or built it, or just
Speaker 1: fully understand it and get guidance based on their expertise
Speaker 1: in real time, so you're not having to go and
Speaker 1: consult an article of it or watch a YouTube video.
Speaker 1: You get step by step instructions overlaid on top of
Speaker 1: your view of that thing. To me, that's the most
Speaker 1: compelling use of augmented reality from a practical standpoint. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of other uses that I'll talk about
Speaker 1: towards the end that I think are also really super cool.
Speaker 1: So don't get me wrong, It's not the only one.
Speaker 1: But let's move on to twenty fifteen. That was when
Speaker 1: Microsoft would unveil the Holow Lens, something I still want
Speaker 1: to try out. I have not had a chance to
Speaker 1: try a Holow lens yet. That is a headset capable
Speaker 1: of advanced AR applications everything from what I was just
Speaker 1: talking about, giving you guidance, step by step instructions on
Speaker 1: how to do like a repair job on say an
Speaker 1: electrical outlet. You could even use a Skype system to
Speaker 1: call an expert who can then view your point of
Speaker 1: view and interact with that point of view. So let's
Speaker 1: say I'm looking at the outlet the expert electrician i'm
Speaker 1: talking to can see what I see, and he or
Speaker 1: she can also make notes on the display, which shows
Speaker 1: up in my field of view. So he or she
Speaker 1: might circle a specific wire and say you need to
Speaker 1: you need to remove that one first, and I know
Speaker 1: I need to do that one first because I can
Speaker 1: see which one they are talking about. Or they might
Speaker 1: circle another wire and say, no, matter what you do,
Speaker 1: don't cut this wire, or the toilet upstairs will explode
Speaker 1: like lethal weapon two. And I won't do that because
Speaker 1: you know that guy's like three days from retirement. So
Speaker 1: I have a heart. But no, this is this is
Speaker 1: a really neat idea, having this interactive ability to overlay
Speaker 1: the information from the world, the digital world, onto your
Speaker 1: physical world. And beyond that, the HoloLens has lots of
Speaker 1: other functions. It's not just something to do, you know,
Speaker 1: home repairs around the house. Else. You can also use
Speaker 1: it for entertainment purposes, like you could create a screen
Speaker 1: that can show you video from various sources and you
Speaker 1: can assign it a place on a wall in your environment.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you're in your living room and you
Speaker 1: just create a screen so you can watch Netflix and
Speaker 1: you slap it on a wall, and it will stay
Speaker 1: in that same position relative to your point of view.
Speaker 1: So if you look to the left or right, the
Speaker 1: screen stays where you put it, as if it were
Speaker 1: physically there on your wall. But keep in mind it's
Speaker 1: just a virtual screen, and when you look back to
Speaker 1: that part of your wall, you'll see the virtual screen
Speaker 1: there playing whatever it was that you wanted to watch.
Speaker 1: I think that's a super cool idea. And they've also
Speaker 1: shown off games like a game of Minecraft that uses
Speaker 1: hollowle in so you can actually view a Minecraft world
Speaker 1: sitting appearing to sit at any rate on top of
Speaker 1: a table, so you can walk around the table and
Speaker 1: view the Minecraft world from various angles and play that way.
Speaker 1: I think that's super neat. Don't know how compelling it is,
Speaker 1: because again I haven't tried it myself, but I really
Speaker 1: like the idea. This year, twenty sixteen, AR got another
Speaker 1: big boost from a little game called Pokemon Go. Although
Speaker 1: I have to admit this was a really primitive, basic
Speaker 1: implementation of augmented reality. Really, it was not much more
Speaker 1: than just a In fact, it was nothing more than
Speaker 1: just an animated overlay that would exist on top of
Speaker 1: the camera view of of your device. So I'd say
Speaker 1: I'm holding up my smartphone and I'm trying to catch
Speaker 1: a Jigglypuff and the jigglypuff is currently bouncing up and
Speaker 1: down on the sidewalk in front of me. That's about
Speaker 1: as far as the augmented reality actual experience would go.
Speaker 1: So very primitive. But because Pokemon Go became so popular
Speaker 1: so quickly, it really pushed the concept of AR to
Speaker 1: the front of the minds of people everywhere, including business
Speaker 1: owners who immediately said, we need an augmented reality app.
Speaker 1: Whether they actually needed one or not is beside the point.
Speaker 1: A lot of people got into AR because of Pokemon Go,
Speaker 1: for both good and bad. I always think that you
Speaker 1: have to come up with the experience first. You have
Speaker 1: to understand why you need to use a specific strategy
Speaker 1: to create a specific experience, and then build it. Not hey,
Speaker 1: we need to augmented reality. Make something that's AR. To me,
Speaker 1: that's the backwards way of going about it. But what
Speaker 1: do I know, not a programmer, So I'm sure the
Speaker 1: programmers feel in a similar way to me, But that's
Speaker 1: just a guess. Now, the future of AR depends heavily
Speaker 1: upon the applications we see in which ones end up
Speaker 1: being successful and which ones aren't. Right now, I would
Speaker 1: say that the best bet is to see more AR
Speaker 1: features built into smartphones and tablets, maybe not necessarily built
Speaker 1: into them, but have apps available that create AR experiences
Speaker 1: for very specific contexts, like let's say it's a museum app.
Speaker 1: You might download a museum app on your phone, and
Speaker 1: when you go to the museum and you use your phone,
Speaker 1: you can get more information about the paintings and sculptures
Speaker 1: and other installations that you see in the museum. That's
Speaker 1: an easy one to understand. But that same app isn't
Speaker 1: going to be useful once you leave the museum, you
Speaker 1: no longer have the context that it is tied to.
Speaker 1: I think that smartphones are probably going to be where
Speaker 1: the greatest development is going to be in the near term,
Speaker 1: because wearables is still really hard to do. We still
Speaker 1: don't have a consumer version of the HoloLens out available
Speaker 1: for anyone to purchase, and it may never come out
Speaker 1: as a consumer product. Microsoft hasn't shown a whole lot
Speaker 1: of interest in making it a consumer product. Maybe that
Speaker 1: will change, but at the moment, I wouldn't hold my
Speaker 1: breath so I would argue smartphones and tablets are pretty
Speaker 1: much where it's at. Maybe some implementation with some existing
Speaker 1: VR headsets which have external cameras mounted on them as well,
Speaker 1: like forward facing cameras, you could build ar experiences there.
Speaker 1: Then it gets a little weird because you're also you know,
Speaker 1: you're looking at a monitor, so you're looking at a
Speaker 1: video feed of your surroundings, and on top of the
Speaker 1: video feed you get the overlay. Same thing is true
Speaker 1: for your smartphones and tablets, by the way, but different
Speaker 1: that from the Google Glass implementation, where you're looking at
Speaker 1: the actual physical world, not a video representation of it,
Speaker 1: but the real world. And then, because the display itself
Speaker 1: that you are looking through is transparent, you're looking at
Speaker 1: a transparent overlay of digital information that gives you more
Speaker 1: info about the world you are in. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that classic episode from twenty sixteen, Augmenting your Reality.
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of experience using various augmented real apps,
Speaker 1: and I've always found them really intriguing and interesting and
Speaker 1: potentially really useful, but I haven't actually made use of
Speaker 1: one that I felt was, you know, really necessary or
Speaker 1: added a whole lot of value to whatever the experience was.
Speaker 1: I could see the potential, but it just didn't quite click.
Speaker 1: And it may very well be that's because I'm using
Speaker 1: the wrong equipment and probably the wrong apps. But I
Speaker 1: definitely see the potential for AR. I just haven't experienced
Speaker 1: it being really transformational. I hope that actually changes, because
Speaker 1: I really do think this is a technology that could
Speaker 1: potentially do a lot of good in a lot of
Speaker 1: different applications. That's it for this classic episode. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.