Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text up from dot
Speaker 1: com Ever, everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today I have a special guest in the studio
Speaker 1: with me, Ruben Medina. How are you, Ruben. I'm good,
Speaker 1: I'm here. I'm live in the studio. Yeah. Ruben is
Speaker 1: a is a friend of mine. He's a local performer
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta and improvisational genius now expectations. He's an
Speaker 1: improvisational performer with moments of genius. And Rubens also written
Speaker 1: for video game outlets that we often have conversations online
Speaker 1: just about like issues in the video game world. This
Speaker 1: is absolutely true. We'll just so there and say like,
Speaker 1: oh man, it's crazy in it, and then uh, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that Polygon gave that a six point
Speaker 1: five when clearly was a seven point four at least,
Speaker 1: what's that about it? Together game journalists? But I let
Speaker 1: I wanted Reuben to come onto the show, and I
Speaker 1: gave him, of course, the opportunity to choose whatever topic
Speaker 1: he wanted to talk about, and uh, you really want
Speaker 1: to talk about virtual reality? Yeah? To escape my own
Speaker 1: perilous and terrible life, I can totally understand that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we has been the promise of virtual reality ever since
Speaker 1: we first heard the term. Do you remember, you know,
Speaker 1: approximately when you first heard about virtual reality? Geez um,
Speaker 1: So I guess for reference, like I'm twenty eight, so
Speaker 1: one of the first times I can I don't know,
Speaker 1: probably like lawnmower Man or Johnny Demonic is one of
Speaker 1: the first pop culture references I really saw to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lawnmower Man was like, that was like the thing that
Speaker 1: totally destroyed virtual reality in a way because the well
Speaker 1: one Klant's lawnmar Man. It's terrible movie, but too well hey, no,
Speaker 1: completely right now, It's awesome in its own way. It's
Speaker 1: just not well made. It's still entertaining, just not the
Speaker 1: way it was necessarily in ended to be in relative
Speaker 1: to Johnny Nemonic, I mean that's true. We're we're talking,
Speaker 1: you know, in comparison, but iced tea. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a tough competition any way you slice it.
Speaker 1: But the issue, and we'll talk about this more in
Speaker 1: a little bit, was that the reality of what virtual
Speaker 1: reality was was capable of doing versus what it was
Speaker 1: being depicted as doing was totally different. Um personally. I
Speaker 1: remember hearing about virtual reality in the early nineties. I
Speaker 1: grew up in seventies and eighties, and but I remember
Speaker 1: by the early nineties of a teenager and even one
Speaker 1: of the malls here in the Metro Atlanta area had
Speaker 1: a small virtual reality game center where you would go in,
Speaker 1: stand on a platform, have a fifty pound head mounted
Speaker 1: display put down on you. It was actually suspended by
Speaker 1: cables because it was too heavy to put on just kids,
Speaker 1: and then you would uh make yourself film nauseated as
Speaker 1: you laid against polygone pterodactyls that flew and looked nothing
Speaker 1: like anything that ever really existed. Ever dinosaur adventure, but
Speaker 1: every dinosaur is just a couple of triangles. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was pretty much. That was it. And then you had
Speaker 1: a little a little kind of prism looking like gun
Speaker 1: that fired perfect cube bullets. Yeah it was. It was
Speaker 1: pretty limited, but it showed what the promise of virtual
Speaker 1: virtual reality could be. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people focused more on the limitations than on the the
Speaker 1: actual potential for the technology, and that really set the
Speaker 1: entire industry back. But just as a quick overview of
Speaker 1: the actual history, not just our personal history, you know,
Speaker 1: the basic concept is pretty simple. It's the idea of
Speaker 1: creating a virtual environment that mimics a physical environment, so
Speaker 1: that the person who is in whatever set up you're
Speaker 1: using feels as if they're in a real place, but
Speaker 1: it's all virtual representation. So uh, two very important concepts
Speaker 1: with this are immersion, which is your sense of being
Speaker 1: in that space, and interactivity, which is your ability to
Speaker 1: manipulate things within that space. So if you don't feel immersion,
Speaker 1: then there's no illusion that you are in this environment
Speaker 1: and it all kind of falls apart. And if you
Speaker 1: don't have interaction, then it's like you are in a
Speaker 1: an immersive movie, but you have no agency, You have
Speaker 1: no ability to affect the things around you. Even more
Speaker 1: than than it's sort of disconnecting when when you don't
Speaker 1: have that one to one ratio of your own movement
Speaker 1: and immersion happening, it can be complete disorienting. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: The big issue of VR is when you have that lag,
Speaker 1: it can be what causes when people get really sick
Speaker 1: from it. That's a major issue that happens. Oh sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Latency is a terrible problem. I've I've had that experience
Speaker 1: as well. In fact, I had it with that pterodactyl
Speaker 1: based game, and that was super simple graphics, so there's
Speaker 1: very low latency. There was still enough where it doesn't
Speaker 1: take much for humans to pick up on it. We're
Speaker 1: talking on the millisecond frame right, like something like sixty milliseconds.
Speaker 1: Anything more than that you can start to kind of
Speaker 1: feel it. It's one of the big challenges of the
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift was to bring that latency number down as
Speaker 1: far as possible. But then, you know, I've even used
Speaker 1: the Oculus Rift and while the latency wasn't so bad,
Speaker 1: there was a disconnect in the interface that made me
Speaker 1: feel a little swimmy. UM. And I'll talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit later too. So we've got some interesting
Speaker 1: examples of precursors to what we consider the typical virtual
Speaker 1: reality gear. And I love that you pulled these up
Speaker 1: in your research. Uh, going all the way back to
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century here. Yeah, we're talking. UM eight. The
Speaker 1: wheat Stone stereoscope. A stereoscope technology is a major major
Speaker 1: component to virtual reality. Um. It's still being used, I
Speaker 1: believe in Occulus Rift the current iterations to make that
Speaker 1: three D immersive experience. Uh. And so we had these Uh,
Speaker 1: like the wheat Stone stereoscope. It was basically a pair
Speaker 1: of giant or is at forty five degree angles that
Speaker 1: would make a stereoscopic image. Um. And we have this
Speaker 1: sort of going on until we got the home Stereoscope
Speaker 1: in one, which is a handheld version. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: looks you can see photos of online. It looks very,
Speaker 1: very similar to sort of a steampunk wooden version of
Speaker 1: a virtual boy. Um. It's just it's a little mobile, handheld,
Speaker 1: handheld put it on your face sort of interface. Except
Speaker 1: I would imagine I don't know, maybe the headache is
Speaker 1: quite as bad as virtual I sure hope not. Man.
Speaker 1: Did you ever play with one of those? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: it was heinous, right, Although it did introduce the world
Speaker 1: to Warrior, which is great. I mean Warrio Mario Tennis
Speaker 1: I think was on there. But it also made your
Speaker 1: eyes bleed. Yeah. No, not not the most pleasant of
Speaker 1: user experiences. Yeah. And stereoscopic effect is is pretty cool
Speaker 1: because there's a technological element, but the really important step
Speaker 1: is all done by your brain, because it's it's your
Speaker 1: eyes getting too slightly different images and then your brain
Speaker 1: combining that to create the what you perceive as a
Speaker 1: three dimensional base. It's the same sort of principle that
Speaker 1: comes out of three D movies, the idea that you're
Speaker 1: you're getting just slightly different views to kind of mimic
Speaker 1: what you would get with parallax. That's where your eyes
Speaker 1: converge on a point and you get that sense of depth.
Speaker 1: So super interesting. And then nine six you've got the
Speaker 1: tell usphere mask. Yeah, this guy more Highlig he created this.
Speaker 1: It's a stereoscopic three D TV with stereoston and wide
Speaker 1: vision display and it's probably the first thing that I've
Speaker 1: found that's similar to the head mounted displays we're kind
Speaker 1: of more used to in looking at Project Morpheus or sorry,
Speaker 1: Project Morpheus rather and Oculus rift um. And then uh,
Speaker 1: two years later, the same guy makes this thing, the
Speaker 1: Sense of Rama, which is an Arcad style three D
Speaker 1: cabinet with a vibrating seat and scent producer um. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of a lot of there is Disney rides.
Speaker 1: That there's an alien Disney ride actually that you would
Speaker 1: sit in this theater and there was three D, but
Speaker 1: they would like you have water splashed on you when
Speaker 1: the alien are crawling around a little like rubber tubes.
Speaker 1: It hit your legs. It's that sort of full immersion,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing with they have the It's Tough
Speaker 1: to Be a Bug movie that's in the Animal Kingdom,
Speaker 1: Disney Animal Kingdom, same sort of stuff where it comes
Speaker 1: complete with the three dimensional movie. You get the sense
Speaker 1: like when the stink bug does his thing, you get
Speaker 1: a nice waft of a suitably stinky but disneyfied stinky smell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're hope, you're hopeful that you know that that truro
Speaker 1: that your your kid ate is not what's causing the problem. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they even had um things under like incorporate in
Speaker 1: the benches you sit in so that when the wasps attack,
Speaker 1: a little thing pokes you in the back, or at
Speaker 1: the very very end, when all the lights have gone
Speaker 1: down and you haven't been they haven't come up, so
Speaker 1: you can get up and walk away. Yet Uh, little
Speaker 1: things directly under the seat, like under your butt move.
Speaker 1: So it's supposed to be all the cockroaches. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: little creepy, but you know it is very immersive, terrifyingly immersive. Right.
Speaker 1: And then we have Ivan Sutherland who created the sketch pad.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I like this. Note you have to
Speaker 1: about the precursor to CAD programs, computer assisted design programs,
Speaker 1: and our computer aided design depends on who's spelling out
Speaker 1: the acronym. But you know, the graphic user interface or
Speaker 1: derived from this as well. Uh, this is one of
Speaker 1: those things that ended up making a huge impact on
Speaker 1: computing in general, not just virtual reality, but really the
Speaker 1: way that we interact with our devices today. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because this was in the VR headset he made,
Speaker 1: which they called the sort of dominicles because it hung
Speaker 1: from the scene. Of course, because it was so heavy,
Speaker 1: and of course it's a nerdy name as long as
Speaker 1: long as you didn't undo the Gordian knot totally okay,
Speaker 1: But it's funny because this is and yet this sounds
Speaker 1: very very similar to your Pterodactyl adventure set up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the technology it was massive and heavier for a while. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these displays too, especially the
Speaker 1: early ones you're talking about, probably cathode ray tube technology
Speaker 1: and a cathode ray tube television. It's enormous. I had
Speaker 1: to have a space for a vacuum tube in it.
Speaker 1: That's the tube part to create the energy for the
Speaker 1: electron gun to fire the electrons that create the images.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you definitely needed to have some assistance there
Speaker 1: to to carry that kind of weight. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know how familiar you are with
Speaker 1: CRT displays. Yeah, well enough. Yeah, if you've ever had
Speaker 1: to move one and you think, yes, I want to
Speaker 1: strap this to my face, probably not one of the
Speaker 1: first things that occurs to you. I don't have you
Speaker 1: seen my neck? I know, it's kind of like I
Speaker 1: was thinking that, you know that you were just maybe
Speaker 1: a little angry and went a little hulk ish, but
Speaker 1: just in the neck area. The only thing I work
Speaker 1: out of the gym is my neck. That's good. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's important to concentrate on muscle groups. Yeah, anxactly.
Speaker 1: And then when we get up to nineteen eighties seven,
Speaker 1: that's when a guy named Jarn Lanier created, or at
Speaker 1: least as credited for creating, the term virtual reality. There's
Speaker 1: some dispute over whether or not he actually coined it,
Speaker 1: but he certainly popularized it. Now he was a computer scientist,
Speaker 1: still is a computer scientist, I should say, because he's
Speaker 1: still very much active. But he worked for Atari for
Speaker 1: a while and then Atari, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know this, Struben, but in n at kind of blew up.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've read. Yeah, I was, I was not alive.
Speaker 1: I was there, Reuben, I was there. I've seen things, Ruben.
Speaker 1: You can't unsee's eye. When Atari died, uh, you know it,
Speaker 1: Actually it was. It was a restructuring and Lanier was
Speaker 1: let go and he co founded a company called VPL Research,
Speaker 1: and then uh he worked there for quite some time.
Speaker 1: He's also done work for Advanced Networking Services as well
Speaker 1: as for Microsoft Research, and he's been involved in tons
Speaker 1: of big technology discussions, not just virtual reality but web
Speaker 1: two point oh, which I think he argued didn't really
Speaker 1: mean anything. I think I would agree with him on that.
Speaker 1: I think it was more of a marketing term than
Speaker 1: anything technologically. And then Uh, he's also weighed in on
Speaker 1: discussions about singularity and futurism. If you think of Ray
Speaker 1: kurtzwile as we're all going to be immortal robots, uh
Speaker 1: and they're going to take over. He's kind of on
Speaker 1: the opposite end of the spectrum, which is interesting because
Speaker 1: I see a lot of coverage on the kurtswild side
Speaker 1: and very little on the skeptical, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: do you really think we're all gonna be robots? We
Speaker 1: all like a fairy tale. I think we want to
Speaker 1: that pine, this skuy dream of put my brain in
Speaker 1: our robot body. Get that molder I want to believe,
Speaker 1: poster on our on our walls. Put my brain in
Speaker 1: a molder body. You know, I'll sign me up. That
Speaker 1: is a huge upgrade from where I am right now.
Speaker 1: But Lenar worked with Tom Zimmerman, who was the guy
Speaker 1: who invented the data glove. Uh, the data glove being
Speaker 1: the foundation for things like the Nintendo Power Glove. The
Speaker 1: data glove was better, but yeah, he designed the data glove.
Speaker 1: And then so Laniar and Zimmerman work together to create
Speaker 1: some of the early examples of the typical VR hardware
Speaker 1: that we see today, like the like the interfaces, not
Speaker 1: just the head meld displays, which, as you have you
Speaker 1: as you have pointed out, predate this. So Lanier and
Speaker 1: Zimmerman work together on creating a lot of the hardware
Speaker 1: that we associate with virtual reality, not just head meld displays,
Speaker 1: which obviously pre date their work, but also some of
Speaker 1: the other interfaces like how do you actually move around
Speaker 1: and interact with this virtual environment. Because it's one thing
Speaker 1: to see it, I mean a head meld display where
Speaker 1: it tracks the movement of your head so that your
Speaker 1: perspective changes as you as you look around. That's one thing,
Speaker 1: but it's still that doesn't still give you the ability
Speaker 1: to actually do anything in that space. Certainly, Like we
Speaker 1: previously mentioned that one to one ratio, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to like to see with your head and move around,
Speaker 1: you know, with your eyes um, but to actually to
Speaker 1: try to mimic walking if it's an omnidirectional try to
Speaker 1: mill um holding whatever you're holding in your hands for
Speaker 1: this and we so we see more and more interfaces
Speaker 1: being added on. This is something we see in the
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift is sort of just one ingredient in the
Speaker 1: full immersion that they're trying to tell you one exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's is that's one of the biggest challenges. I
Speaker 1: think we'll talk about some of the challenges of VR,
Speaker 1: but interfaces alone, like how do you get an interface
Speaker 1: that is transparent enough, not not physically, but transparent enough
Speaker 1: where you're having a natural experience in this unnatural virtual
Speaker 1: environment so that it fades way. The last thing you
Speaker 1: want is for the user to be hyper aware of
Speaker 1: the interface. You want that to fade out. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the gears. So we've already mentioned displays.
Speaker 1: Headmond display is probably the most popular, although not the
Speaker 1: only one. There are some displays that are an entire
Speaker 1: room where things are projected onto walls or uh like
Speaker 1: a sphere where it's projected on the inside of the
Speaker 1: sphere and you sit down in the middle. So that
Speaker 1: like like a lot of aircraft simulation is done in
Speaker 1: this sort of style. But the one that we're mostly
Speaker 1: familiar with, especially if you're talking about a consumer level,
Speaker 1: is heading out a displace because most of us can't
Speaker 1: convert room in our house to VR hardware. That's my
Speaker 1: first question for a real tear is there, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: can't be any windows, and no windows. Is gonna be
Speaker 1: fully internal room, a perfect sphere if possible? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be. That would be ideal you crafted outside of
Speaker 1: zero g exactly. If it's completely out, if it's out
Speaker 1: of true even by a little bit, it's going to
Speaker 1: completely throw off my game of Skyrim. And I really
Speaker 1: I'm really close to the end. I pull my laser
Speaker 1: micrometer out to make sure this thing is perfect. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that might be a little bit um well excessive, I
Speaker 1: think would say. Yeah. So, the latest version of the
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift developer kit, you know, because this still has
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast, isn't a consumer product,
Speaker 1: still in the developer phase, but the latest version has
Speaker 1: tracking dots on it which an external camera can can track,
Speaker 1: and it will be able to measure the different distances
Speaker 1: between the different points and thus be able to tell
Speaker 1: what orientation the mask is on. So not only do
Speaker 1: you have the tracking technology built into the actual device
Speaker 1: where it's got accelerometers and that kind of thing to
Speaker 1: tell whether or not you're looking left, right, up or down,
Speaker 1: it can actually tell the angle. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: I wanted if I'm looking at a virtual table in
Speaker 1: front of me and I want to see if someone
Speaker 1: has written something on the underside of the table, I
Speaker 1: can bend down and look up and it was able
Speaker 1: to track that change an angle, so I can see
Speaker 1: the underside of the table in the virtual world, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. It's another one of those ways of
Speaker 1: adding a level of immersion. Oculus has been really careful
Speaker 1: to say this may not be in the final consumer version.
Speaker 1: You know, you might not have this external tracking element
Speaker 1: because it does require even more hardware. You have to
Speaker 1: have that webcam to all the bust computers I think
Speaker 1: are made with them now. Yeah, but it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where it really does add that extra
Speaker 1: element of interaction. Well, looking under tables is if you're
Speaker 1: in a Hobo simulator, you've got to be able to
Speaker 1: look under furniture to see Hobo marks to what's going on.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's a big one one. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: I can imagine anything, well, anything where you're having to
Speaker 1: look around a corner, like especially like survival horror games.
Speaker 1: I mean, this will be so useful if you have
Speaker 1: the guts to play a survival horror game that fully
Speaker 1: immerses you. I'm thinking of PT the playable trailer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you imagine if that were an innoculous riff situation
Speaker 1: you probably you would probably never stop screaming. It's it was,
Speaker 1: it was. I'm not easily scared by by any sort
Speaker 1: of media. Usually that game was terrifying, So I can't
Speaker 1: imagine like being you can't like not being able to
Speaker 1: escape it, right, Yeah, you can't look away from the
Speaker 1: screen because the screen is directly in front of your
Speaker 1: eyes no matter where you look. Yeah, exactly, especially if
Speaker 1: you have three dimensional sound and and uh, really good
Speaker 1: headphones as well. That's what's really going to create that
Speaker 1: that incredible experience that is probably gonna be unforgettable, and
Speaker 1: not necessarily in a good way. It's interesting. So again
Speaker 1: we're talking about this sort of this ecosystem you have
Speaker 1: to build around not just the headset, but so the
Speaker 1: the externally amounted camera. So like this Rift, they have
Speaker 1: those points on the front to kind of to inform
Speaker 1: the environment more of what angles you're looking at, etcetera.
Speaker 1: A thing they've run into is that they don't have
Speaker 1: a way to track the back of the head. Currently,
Speaker 1: not a hard thing to fix. Um the Project Morpheus,
Speaker 1: which is Sony's thing, because they're using um light instead
Speaker 1: of these little marks, they're using led lights on the
Speaker 1: front and the back of the set. UM. It's actually
Speaker 1: a way too. If you turn around, the camera knows
Speaker 1: that you're fully turned around, not just your vision, but
Speaker 1: I'll track the back of your head. There's there's a
Speaker 1: big deal because when I was playing with the Oculus
Speaker 1: Rift just a week ago. UM, one of the big
Speaker 1: issues I ran into is that it yeah, I could
Speaker 1: turn my head to the left, but if I wanted
Speaker 1: to actually change the orientation of the character character's body,
Speaker 1: I had to use a controller to turn the character
Speaker 1: to the left, which would then end up creating that
Speaker 1: disconnect I was talking about, because that's not the way
Speaker 1: we normally interact with our environments, right. We don't normally
Speaker 1: hold a controller in our hands and say, well, I
Speaker 1: need to go to the left now, and then push
Speaker 1: a thumbstick over. So it's very disorienting. Something where it
Speaker 1: can detect exactly where you are, you know, whether in
Speaker 1: a full degree kind of way, UH could potentially allow
Speaker 1: you to actually change that orientation in the game without
Speaker 1: having to use a controller to do it. So if
Speaker 1: I turned to the left, my character actively turns to
Speaker 1: the left. You have to balance that out because do
Speaker 1: you automatically make it so that the character is moving
Speaker 1: in the direction you're looking, or do you want to
Speaker 1: have it so that you can look to the left
Speaker 1: but still keep running forward for example, And that's one
Speaker 1: of the big things in VR I know for first
Speaker 1: person shooter tap games was the ability to shoot somewhere
Speaker 1: you were not looking, because up until now it's always
Speaker 1: been contained to your vision either the center of the
Speaker 1: screen like most fps is work or I want to
Speaker 1: say like they're like the old Golden Eye actually let
Speaker 1: you free range your cursor around the screen. Um, but
Speaker 1: the ability to there's actually a great video on YouTube
Speaker 1: of guy who's using knock this rift with a couple
Speaker 1: of purples uh in Half Life two in a shooting
Speaker 1: range and he's doing all sorts of crazy stuff behind
Speaker 1: the back and over the over the head. I saw
Speaker 1: one of those where they were using not the Oculus rift,
Speaker 1: but a similar head mounted display and a vest, and
Speaker 1: the vest was what was tracking all the body motions.
Speaker 1: So it actually had sensors that went out to the
Speaker 1: arms and too the legs. So if you squatted, the
Speaker 1: character would squat in the video game. If you put
Speaker 1: your hand behind your back, your character would put his
Speaker 1: hand or her hand behind his or her back. And
Speaker 1: so it was one of those things that got around
Speaker 1: that by just take can a totally different approach to
Speaker 1: the hardware. Of course, then you get into the question
Speaker 1: of how expensive would it be to produce a full
Speaker 1: suit and would people really want to have something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, again, you'd be really aware of that interface,
Speaker 1: at least at first. Maybe after a while it fades away.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things where again you don't
Speaker 1: want the player to be too too aware of what's
Speaker 1: going on on a technical level, because then then they're
Speaker 1: thinking about that and so the experience that they're supposed
Speaker 1: to have. And I think that that's sort of the
Speaker 1: ultimate question that comes in with mass commercial acceptance of
Speaker 1: VR is you know, ideally, if you wanted to get
Speaker 1: some sort of like motion graph motion graphics set up
Speaker 1: like mo capping. Uh, you know, I would imagine something
Speaker 1: along those lines. Some sort of set up like that
Speaker 1: would be ideal. The whole array of cameras you're covered
Speaker 1: in little balls that say exactly where you are. Um,
Speaker 1: but obviously not price effective. I mean, you could maybe
Speaker 1: have an amusement park where that's something people can go
Speaker 1: and do as part of the amount. Man, yeah, I
Speaker 1: pay money for that. Yeah, that's all it was for
Speaker 1: a little bit. Sure, I'd be jumped right on that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm amazed actually that that's not something you
Speaker 1: see it's a Disney Hollywood studios where you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's what that that the impart is all about, is
Speaker 1: about the production of film and television and all the
Speaker 1: different stuff that goes into it. Um, maybe one day
Speaker 1: we'll see that. I can't imagine that. It would be
Speaker 1: a really slow loading kind of attraction. The wait time
Speaker 1: for this is four hours and there are three people
Speaker 1: ahead of you in line, like four days based on
Speaker 1: ego to Disney the simmer for maybe maybe you can
Speaker 1: fast pass it well other things, Like we mentioned audio,
Speaker 1: that's another really big element in immersion, right if you
Speaker 1: are looking at something, if something's kind of on the
Speaker 1: right side of the peripheral of your vision, but you're
Speaker 1: hearing stuff from the left, that's really disorienting, UM, because
Speaker 1: first you think, oh, well, whatever that is, there's it's
Speaker 1: brother is right next to me. But then you look
Speaker 1: and there's nothing there. So you really have to have
Speaker 1: very good sound design and sound orientation as well. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of cool ways of doing that,
Speaker 1: like binaural microphones which mimic the way sound goes into
Speaker 1: the human head. Yeah, I experienced that with UM. We
Speaker 1: were talking about SMR, which you just did the podcast on.
Speaker 1: I listened to it at work and that pretty good
Speaker 1: headphones there, and I was just like, oh, this is delightful. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: having the sound of someone slowly walking around you while
Speaker 1: talking and if you close your eyes, it's like you're there.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are a lot of a s MR
Speaker 1: videos that are about things like a like a visit
Speaker 1: to the barbershop. That's a really popular one. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have hair anymore, but I remember when I do,
Speaker 1: and and so so I there was. There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot where it's like the sound of scissors cutting near you,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing how immersive this is. And that's only
Speaker 1: one sense. If you close your eyes, it's as if
Speaker 1: you were there, to the point where you can almost
Speaker 1: imagine feeling it, even though there's nothing physically touching you
Speaker 1: up from your headphones. But it's amazing how convincing that experiences.
Speaker 1: So sound is really important, so you need to make
Speaker 1: sure that that is is well done, just as well
Speaker 1: done as the graphics, if not more so, I think.
Speaker 1: Um As for the interface, that's the other issue we
Speaker 1: were talking about. How do you let the person explore
Speaker 1: that virtual environment. Is it a controller, is it a treadmill?
Speaker 1: We talked about there there are omnidirectional treadmills out there
Speaker 1: that can allow you to actually turn and run and
Speaker 1: so that way you're not limited to just forward or backward.
Speaker 1: I've never tried one. I'm curious about things like momentum
Speaker 1: and inertia and if you if you run in one
Speaker 1: direction and then you suddenly need to turn to another one,
Speaker 1: does it keep going so that you're stumbling sideways as
Speaker 1: you're trying to move to a different direction. Or I
Speaker 1: have seen one that looks like, uh, kind of like
Speaker 1: almost like a walk. It's it's just you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about right on the teflon, sir fist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's meant to reduce friction to a minimum so that
Speaker 1: you can just run as if you know, you can
Speaker 1: do an all outsprint on this thing. I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I don't trust myself on it. I just for that
Speaker 1: when I imagine like missing a step and then suddenly
Speaker 1: just doing a whoopsie daisy, you know, catapulting myself into
Speaker 1: the air as I fall down and then immediately slide
Speaker 1: up through the other side. But it's an interesting approach
Speaker 1: to a difficult problem. It's certainly since the most commercially
Speaker 1: viable version of that that I've seen, um and and
Speaker 1: they they've built in a bunch of things like stabilize
Speaker 1: yourself at the waist and all this stuff. But again, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the question is just like basic momentum, like when you're
Speaker 1: when you see a runner, like a football runner um
Speaker 1: that they called football they they're called football runners like that.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure there's at least seventeen football runners ut
Speaker 1: per side. And then, given you're asking the wrong guy,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Well, you know sports guys, sports ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you see guys in sports running, know that ability
Speaker 1: to to to duke or quick pivot like whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're if you're playing Maddened twenty billion
Speaker 1: in the future and it's vr, are we gonna be
Speaker 1: able to emulate that sort of ability, that sort of
Speaker 1: athleticism or do you want to? Yeah, there's has come
Speaker 1: a point where you say, all right, well, how immersive
Speaker 1: do I want this experience to be? Because uh, games
Speaker 1: are about escapism, And there comes a point where you
Speaker 1: turn the corner on that right where you're no longer
Speaker 1: escaping it, you are experiencing it. If you have if
Speaker 1: you have managed to replicate the experience to the point
Speaker 1: where it's indistinguishable from the real thing. Then you're really
Speaker 1: having that experience. So then you're having the question of
Speaker 1: do I want that, I mean like a war game.
Speaker 1: If I were really like war and not not some
Speaker 1: sort of gamification version of war, that would be a
Speaker 1: pretty traumatizing and terrifying experience. Maybe we'd have less real war.
Speaker 1: Maybe we would. Maybe we would, Maybe people's opinion about
Speaker 1: the games would change. Will say, you know, I I
Speaker 1: get why these other games are fun because they remove
Speaker 1: all the truly negative things of war and they just
Speaker 1: make it a competition, like it's just a winner lose,
Speaker 1: and so that it removes the ambiguity, it removes all
Speaker 1: the ethics. It's it's really all about what's your skill level.
Speaker 1: But if you were to add that back in through immersions,
Speaker 1: then suddenly you've got another conversation going on. I truly
Speaker 1: can't wait till I come on from work and I
Speaker 1: see my student loan bills in the mail, and I go,
Speaker 1: I can't deal with this right now, And I put
Speaker 1: on my VR headset and I play my student loan
Speaker 1: bills right and I just stress about it. In virtual
Speaker 1: have you played you know this is this is not
Speaker 1: exactly virtual reality, but it does remind me. Have you
Speaker 1: played Papers Please? I was exactly thinking Papers play amazing game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's a it's not virtual reality, but
Speaker 1: it's immersion. Like all your all you do is the
Speaker 1: exact same job of border guard would do, and you
Speaker 1: need to do it well and fast, and you have
Speaker 1: to make some pretty tough decisions based upon your own
Speaker 1: family's situation. And there's gamification to it, certainly, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty honest to what the experiences is like from
Speaker 1: what I've seen, and that's what makes it terrified and interesting.
Speaker 1: And I'm just waiting for the Occulus riff version of
Speaker 1: Papers Please. We're all gonna we're gonna start escaping two jobs,
Speaker 1: because what's gonna happen. It's really just like I just
Speaker 1: want some other job now. Either that either that's because
Speaker 1: you don't like your job or you just want to
Speaker 1: be able to appreciate the job you have that much more.
Speaker 1: I haven't had to work for six months. It's time
Speaker 1: to put on the cubical some of your area. This report,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this is crazy. Yeah, here's the water
Speaker 1: cooler level. I love this level. What's going on to
Speaker 1: c TV last night? This is great. So there's a
Speaker 1: show called Lost getting back into virtual reality. Another interesting
Speaker 1: aspect is the tactile part. We talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about that with the user interface, But how do you
Speaker 1: give feedback to somebody? And in some cases there is
Speaker 1: no feedback. It's just like a video game where a
Speaker 1: video game where you're using a controller where there's no
Speaker 1: rumble pack, it's there's no physical feedback. It's just visual
Speaker 1: and audio and that kind of stuff. But a haptic
Speaker 1: system does give you physical feedback. A simple one is
Speaker 1: like a rumble pack in a in a controller, so
Speaker 1: like you know, you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: games where if you're bordering on something dangerous, it starts
Speaker 1: to rumble, alerting you. It's another way of letting the
Speaker 1: player knows something's about to happen. Um. I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of different haptic feedback systems. They're active ones. Those
Speaker 1: are ones that have motors in the respond to things
Speaker 1: that are happening in the game. I've seen some that
Speaker 1: were like it was like a vest that would give
Speaker 1: you an impact if you got shot, and even a
Speaker 1: helmet that would have a little knocking sounds if you've
Speaker 1: got a head shot and uh, I remember seeing it
Speaker 1: at c Yes, and they said, do you want to
Speaker 1: try this on? No? Right, do you do? You want
Speaker 1: a physical reminder of how terrible you are at Halo.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much reminded immediately upon lugging in all of
Speaker 1: those twelve exactly twelve man that someone or nine. But
Speaker 1: then you've got passive hat haptic systems. These are actual
Speaker 1: physical objects that are in your physical environment that are
Speaker 1: mapped to the virtual world that you are in. So
Speaker 1: a simple one could be a chair that's bolted to
Speaker 1: the floor so you can't move the chair, but the
Speaker 1: chair represents an actual chair in the virtual world that
Speaker 1: if you sit in it, your virtual character sits in
Speaker 1: the virtual one. So it could be like the Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones and that's the iron throne there. It's really
Speaker 1: just a chair that's in the middle of the room
Speaker 1: you're in. Just musical Game of Thrones. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: it really could be. You can just the music plays
Speaker 1: and at the end of it, a stark dies um.
Speaker 1: But there's also a strailer. There's also there's also the
Speaker 1: idea of having physical objects that you can actually pick up,
Speaker 1: move and those are mapped to virtual objects. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that the things you pick up have a
Speaker 1: weight to them, they have a physical presence. You can
Speaker 1: actually push them and pull them and pick them up
Speaker 1: and move them around and mean, while in the virtual world,
Speaker 1: your character is picking up whatever the virtual version of
Speaker 1: that object is. So it might be something as simple
Speaker 1: as like a basketball that you pick up in the
Speaker 1: physical world, but in the virtual world, maybe it's someone's head,
Speaker 1: someone's bouncy bouncy head, a star head. Yeah, it could
Speaker 1: be a star For those of you who haven't watched
Speaker 1: Season one, don't get too attached to Sean Bean. Um
Speaker 1: should we ever be attached to Shan I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean he's he's amazing, but you know immediately right what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. I want them to have a Groundhog
Speaker 1: Day maybe where he just dies a whole bunch redo
Speaker 1: the Edge of Tomorrow, but have Sean Bean as the
Speaker 1: main character. Exactly Why not him is that it Tom Cruise.
Speaker 1: To be fair, though Tom Cruise was very entertaining in
Speaker 1: that movie. I gotta watch it. It's good. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because I know Microsoft Actually, um, so you mentioned like
Speaker 1: my probably early experience with haptic feedbacks like the Nintendo
Speaker 1: sixty four Rumble Pack, Star Fox sixty four whatever, the
Speaker 1: old like nineties video game barrel roll exactly to etcetera.
Speaker 1: Um And, Uh, it's interesting. One of the things I
Speaker 1: actually like about the Xbox One as far as feedback
Speaker 1: is concerned versus the PS four um is that they
Speaker 1: actually win like above and beyond with the rumble feedback
Speaker 1: on that if you play fours on it. Uh. They
Speaker 1: put there's like the things that make the rumble happen,
Speaker 1: these little weights that they basically spin at different frequencies,
Speaker 1: different speeds, um and that kind of will pull different
Speaker 1: directions or give you different variances in intensity. They put
Speaker 1: some of them right in the triggers, like right under
Speaker 1: the triggers. So breaking in forsa is surprisingly realistic feeling,
Speaker 1: even though it's your fingers instead of your feet. The
Speaker 1: feedback is really interesting. Um And and to the other spectrum,
Speaker 1: there's stuff out there now, like gloves that you'll put
Speaker 1: on and they'll if you're grabbing an object that's around,
Speaker 1: they will harden or provide resistance so that you physically
Speaker 1: can't fully close your hand because there is that object
Speaker 1: in your hand virtually, and that's really really interesting. That's
Speaker 1: really cool to me. It looks like you're wearing like
Speaker 1: a plastic skeleton hand on top of your actual hand
Speaker 1: because because they have these sort of levered arms that
Speaker 1: end in rings, the rings slip around the ends of
Speaker 1: your fingers, so when you are squeezing your hand, you're
Speaker 1: actually pulling against these rings and these and these levered
Speaker 1: arms that have usually some sort of pivot in the center.
Speaker 1: And there's a there's actually a kickstarter for this. There's
Speaker 1: a kickstarter for a specific glove that does this kind
Speaker 1: of thing where you map it to a virtual object
Speaker 1: like a ball. And yeah, just like you said, as
Speaker 1: your hands close in on what the dimensions of the
Speaker 1: ball would be in the virtual world, those those connections
Speaker 1: stiffen so that you get that resistance and it feels
Speaker 1: as if you're holding something. Now granted there's no weight there,
Speaker 1: but there is that resistance so that you know, you
Speaker 1: have the feeling, oh, this weightless ball is in my
Speaker 1: hand now, which is kind of neat um. And whatever
Speaker 1: fail safes are in that glove to keep it from
Speaker 1: going the opposite ring, right, it broke every finger I
Speaker 1: had I should have known not to pick up that ball. Uh,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have gotten the deaf kid. Maybe wait for
Speaker 1: the consumer version. There are other really cool ones that
Speaker 1: we've talked about. You talked about the Censorama, where there
Speaker 1: was a cabinet that actually also produced scent. Then we
Speaker 1: talked about the Disney the Disney Experience. There's also a
Speaker 1: Disney right called sore In that incorporates smells in that
Speaker 1: it has three different smells. As I recalled, this is
Speaker 1: trivia for you guys. And by the way, if you
Speaker 1: ever are in a Disney trivia game, they do ask
Speaker 1: this question. The three smells are the smell of the ocean,
Speaker 1: the smell of evergreens, and the smell of oranges. Because
Speaker 1: it's sore In over California, and you go to different
Speaker 1: environments over California, so Sorein incorporates a lot of the
Speaker 1: elements we're talking about with virtual reality. It's a huge
Speaker 1: screen that that fills up your your peripheral, so you're seeing.
Speaker 1: Everything you see is related to a a fly over
Speaker 1: sequence over California. It blows wind at you, so that's
Speaker 1: sort of a haptic feedback, getting a tactile sensation Um,
Speaker 1: so you're getting this breeze blown at you. So it's
Speaker 1: or simulates what would happen if you were hang gliding
Speaker 1: over this space. You are in a row of seats
Speaker 1: that is suspended from the ceiling and swoops around as
Speaker 1: if you are actually flying. So that's another tactile response.
Speaker 1: And you get this scent in certain scenes where they
Speaker 1: incorporate the scent in the breeze that hits you. So
Speaker 1: you're flying over an orange grove and you smell oranges
Speaker 1: over long Beach and you smell medical marijuana, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you fly fly over muscle Beach and you just smell
Speaker 1: like tanning oil and yeah, you know. Sure they decided
Speaker 1: not to go the full route with immersion because it
Speaker 1: is California. But no, it was really pretty, pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: pretty immersive. And I don't know of any consumer approaches
Speaker 1: to trying this because it's problematic. How do you produce
Speaker 1: the sense? How many would you produce? How do you
Speaker 1: clean something like that so that you don't you know,
Speaker 1: like everything smells like oranges now, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a little tricky. So I don't expect that this will
Speaker 1: become something that we commonly see in the in the
Speaker 1: home market. But you have to mentorize some sort of
Speaker 1: chemical synthesis down to a tiny, tiny packet of a
Speaker 1: billion mixtures for a billion different combinations and make certain right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be impossible. Or you have a really good
Speaker 1: friend who just has a huge box of stuff and
Speaker 1: it's just waiting and like you say something like, wow,
Speaker 1: that really does look like pizza. Pizza, pizza. Here you go,
Speaker 1: and then just hold it under your nose. I mean
Speaker 1: that's really the only other word version just by twenty
Speaker 1: Yankee candles and put him in front of exactly, okay, pizza.
Speaker 1: See that's I'm gonna go with. I'm gonna go with
Speaker 1: Apple Christmas. And how's that pizza, Apple Christmas Pizza. I
Speaker 1: don't know somebody's gonna do it. Yeah, I'll sign me up. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we have, of course, the sense of taste, which
Speaker 1: I don't even want to think about. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't need that kind of level of immersion. I don't
Speaker 1: use one game I've played where I'm like, I want
Speaker 1: to taste what's happening here? Did you ever see the
Speaker 1: British comedy series hyper Drive as Nick for lost Uh.
Speaker 1: In it, he plays the lead character who's a captain
Speaker 1: of a of a starship and it's a very kind
Speaker 1: of hopeless crew and they mess up all the time.
Speaker 1: In one of the episodes, one of the characters has
Speaker 1: a device that is a glowing ball that you put
Speaker 1: in your mouth. It's got a cable attached to it
Speaker 1: and in a handheld um uh interface where you tell
Speaker 1: it what flavor you want it to be. So it's
Speaker 1: just supposed to be a thing that lets you taste
Speaker 1: different flavors. And of course he hands it to a
Speaker 1: friend of his who immediately starts putting in horrible flavors
Speaker 1: as the guy's got in his mouth. And never trust friends, never,
Speaker 1: But that's one of the big reasons, Like, even if
Speaker 1: that were such a thing, I can't imagine keeping that
Speaker 1: clean or wanting to put it in my mouth or
Speaker 1: so I'm pretty sure taste is out. Um And a
Speaker 1: lot of VR gear, whether it's meant for games, because
Speaker 1: we think of it in terms of games, but VR
Speaker 1: has a lot of applications outside of video games. But
Speaker 1: a lot of the gear that researchers and VR use
Speaker 1: is just repurposed video game gear, And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is it's expensive to develop your own technology to
Speaker 1: do this sort of stuff. And I talked to a
Speaker 1: VR specialist a few years ago. It was actually when
Speaker 1: the Nintendo we first came out, and she was so
Speaker 1: excited about the Wii because she thought the WE controller
Speaker 1: the we mote was an incredible boon for VR research
Speaker 1: and was a new way of interfacing with VR. Same
Speaker 1: thing with the connect, huge boon to VR research. So
Speaker 1: the interesting thing to me is that virtual environments are
Speaker 1: still very much part of the research world, but they're
Speaker 1: so dependent upon companies like Oculus making stuff because without it,
Speaker 1: they just don't have the money to go out and
Speaker 1: develop the technology. You don't want to do a one
Speaker 1: off every single time. Yeah, and it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: I think a sad reverse that. Um, the funding for
Speaker 1: the science usually isn't there and nless we find a
Speaker 1: commercially viable thing for it, and video games are money makers,
Speaker 1: it's super commercially viable. So when we see that stuff happen,
Speaker 1: it's like, great, we have the tools. Um, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's been There's always the always needed to be something
Speaker 1: to kind of bring new mediums, new formats for it.
Speaker 1: Video games. You could argue that the PS three really
Speaker 1: made blue ray take off as opposed to HTDVD because
Speaker 1: the PS three had it built in and people had that,
Speaker 1: um crazy enough. Frankly, pornography is a big boon to
Speaker 1: a lot of medium formats taking off. There's there's been
Speaker 1: Google class pornography for VR type usage. That's a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: It's terrible idea. Yeah, people, you can see what's on
Speaker 1: that screen from the other side. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know that or not. Yeah, uh no, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, yeah, no, we we had the same discussion.
Speaker 1: I did a podcast, a couple of podcasts with i
Speaker 1: Azactar of c net, and we talked about technology has
Speaker 1: that gone obsolete? And we talked about then that no,
Speaker 1: pornography actually is an industry leader. You start to see
Speaker 1: which standards are going to be adopted because that's the
Speaker 1: one that it moves to one first and that becomes
Speaker 1: the standard. And it's odd. It's a surprising barometer if you,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if there's a format war coming up,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much look at the adult industry as
Speaker 1: a good indicator of what's gonna probably went out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's almost a full episode there but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I'm comfortable enough doing it, but it is
Speaker 1: research hours. I'll put it in. John. Well, that's I'm
Speaker 1: glad to know you got my back anytime. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: you know you've got some interesting things here too about
Speaker 1: other uses of not just virtual reality, but augmented reality,
Speaker 1: which we haven't really touched on yet. But augmented reality
Speaker 1: does share a lot of the same features with virtual reality.
Speaker 1: It's more about marrying the virtual world with the physical
Speaker 1: world in a way where it's almost like an overlay
Speaker 1: on top of the physical world. So one of the
Speaker 1: examples I saw was recently at Georgia Tech at their
Speaker 1: augmented reality lab, and they have um uh, they have
Speaker 1: an Auburn Avenue experience where the ideas you you put
Speaker 1: on or you hold up a display. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to wear one. It can be on a phone
Speaker 1: or a tablet or whatever, and you hold it up
Speaker 1: while you're on Auburn Avenue and it will show you
Speaker 1: historic views of what it looked like in decades past,
Speaker 1: which gives you this ability to explore a physical space
Speaker 1: in a new way. And that's something I've always been
Speaker 1: really excited about. But it is interesting also to see
Speaker 1: other elements using augmented reality. You have a whole sectional
Speaker 1: augmented reality therapy, which I wasn't even aware of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a surprisingly interesting field for medicinal uses. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a phantom limb syndrome. If you guys are unfamiliar, it's
Speaker 1: basically the ideas a lot of amputees, the brain when
Speaker 1: you lose that limb rewires itself UM and they victim
Speaker 1: are victim but a UM, someone suffering from from being
Speaker 1: an amputee. They can have these phantom limbs, these phantom
Speaker 1: limbs sensations. They'll still feel the pain of these limbs
Speaker 1: that aren't there anymore, and there's no way to uh
Speaker 1: to calm this pain or make it better. The limbs
Speaker 1: not there might might feel an itch on a limb
Speaker 1: that doesn't exists, so there's no way you can scratch that.
Speaker 1: You can't scratch it, you can't treat it. Um. It's
Speaker 1: it's been a thing that's been plaguing amputees since since
Speaker 1: it's been in the medical arena. And so this interesting thing.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that used to actually treat phantom
Speaker 1: limb was a mirror. They would take a mirror, and
Speaker 1: they would mirror it to the limb that you still have.
Speaker 1: So let's say I don't have my left arm, but
Speaker 1: I have my right they would mirror it, so it
Speaker 1: looks like to your brain you have though it's in
Speaker 1: a mirror and it's very obvious. There's actually an episode
Speaker 1: of House Empty where they do this, UM and it's
Speaker 1: actually like pretty accurate. Um. But the idea is that
Speaker 1: you took your brain into scene into thinking that that
Speaker 1: limit is back, and then you can go about changing
Speaker 1: those feelings, uh, those those itches, those pains that you have.
Speaker 1: And so there's this really really interesting um uh. There's
Speaker 1: an article in Frontiers and Neuroscience UM about using virtual reality,
Speaker 1: so you could you could be an emputee and in
Speaker 1: multiple ways multiple limbs missing, and they put on this
Speaker 1: virtual audi in the your brain being tricked into thinking
Speaker 1: that you now have these limbs back in this virtual world. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's been shown to be more effective than drug treatment.
Speaker 1: Even there's they've cited a guy who he had been
Speaker 1: suffering from a phantom limp pain for forty eight years
Speaker 1: and this is the first time that it felt treated
Speaker 1: that he was having some relief, which is nuts is
Speaker 1: incredible to think that the immersion can be so convincing
Speaker 1: as to have that profound an effect on our psychology.
Speaker 1: As smart as we are, the brain is so easily tricked, yeh.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could talk about placebo effect in the
Speaker 1: whole little thing, or even stage magicians who very much
Speaker 1: depend upon the things our brains. The shortcuts that we
Speaker 1: take where we make assumptions that we have perceived something
Speaker 1: even if we haven't actually perceived it. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are whole businesses, both legitimate and otherwise, that are based
Speaker 1: on that premise. Yeah, exactly. There's another one. There's a
Speaker 1: burned patient treatment that Loyal University Hospital has been using. UM.
Speaker 1: And this one's interesting because they basically, uh, it's a
Speaker 1: VR game, but it's like a VR FPS, but in
Speaker 1: this case, it's like a first person snowballer. I guess
Speaker 1: like the ideas it's a it's a it's a game
Speaker 1: where you throw snowballs and you're in this arctic world.
Speaker 1: And it's not like the graphics. I was watching the
Speaker 1: video of it. It looks like PS one maybe early
Speaker 1: PS two er graphics. UM, But the sensation of being
Speaker 1: in this world, that's all ice and all snow and
Speaker 1: you're throwing snowballs at penguins and it's happy and you're
Speaker 1: having a good time. They'll put this on patients while
Speaker 1: they're receiving treatment that's usually intensely painful. Um. Some of
Speaker 1: the treatments for for burn patient victims is like skin
Speaker 1: stretching is one thing which is painful without you know,
Speaker 1: having burn woods. Um. And consistently patients site uh, not
Speaker 1: feeling the pain nearly as much. Some of them even
Speaker 1: have a little bit of fun during it because they're
Speaker 1: playing this game. UM. And it's again amazing. It's that
Speaker 1: this one little thing, even with the graphics that aren't
Speaker 1: that realistic, you have the sense of a cooling sensation
Speaker 1: of feeling that burning sensation for a moment. Yeah. I've
Speaker 1: seen that sort of response from other VR like researchers.
Speaker 1: I've talked to them and they say, yeah, there are
Speaker 1: times where you can have graphics that if you were
Speaker 1: to look at this on a screen, you'd say, well,
Speaker 1: that's not convincing at all. I mean it looks like
Speaker 1: big polygone blocky graphics. It's not that far off from
Speaker 1: the pterodactyl experience I was talking about. Maybe you know
Speaker 1: better than that, but not so much that you'd say
Speaker 1: it was a you know, a quantum leap forward. But
Speaker 1: they'd say this is this doesn't matter. If you spend
Speaker 1: enough time to acclimate yourself to the virtual environment, your
Speaker 1: brain just starts to make those assumptions and starts to
Speaker 1: actually produce those kind of reactions. And typically speaking, if
Speaker 1: the latency is low, because that's one of the big issues.
Speaker 1: The latency is low so that you don't have this
Speaker 1: disorienting feeling as you move around, takes about thirty seconds
Speaker 1: to a minute to really start to get acclimated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It also shows how plastic our brains are
Speaker 1: that we're able to add that quickly. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's another um Uh. Surgeons are using VR simulators even
Speaker 1: so back in the day, you'd have to test cadavers,
Speaker 1: which you're only gonna have so many of um that
Speaker 1: can be tested on so many ways before we have
Speaker 1: to move on to a new one. Ideally hopefully you're
Speaker 1: not testing on patients live, which you know was happening
Speaker 1: way way back. Why a lot of scientific progress made
Speaker 1: in that unethical science. Um. But so now we have
Speaker 1: VR systems that are super realistic um that surgeons can
Speaker 1: use can use to train. And it's an interesting This
Speaker 1: is sort of related to that there are surgeons in
Speaker 1: Florida that they would find before surgery, they would have
Speaker 1: the surgeons play super monkey Ball, which is, if you
Speaker 1: haven't played it, super monkey Ball is a highly frustrating
Speaker 1: game where they the old wood game Labyrinth where you
Speaker 1: put the marble in the maze. There's holes all over
Speaker 1: to move the marble. Yeah, you have a couple of
Speaker 1: axes of tilting that you can do. Um, it's very
Speaker 1: similar to that, very very similar um. And they found
Speaker 1: that surgeons who played just twenty minutes of this before
Speaker 1: surgery had was steady your hands much much better spatial
Speaker 1: reasoning and abilities. Interesting uh and again like very very
Speaker 1: little of practicing these reflexes in a virtual environment, giving
Speaker 1: them the ability to work much better while they're actually
Speaker 1: cutting you open and doing things inside you. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there are other ways of using VR in this
Speaker 1: same sort of sense. In fact, one that I've seen
Speaker 1: that psychologists have used is immersion therapy for people who
Speaker 1: have post traumatic stress disorder or they have a phobia.
Speaker 1: They might not be able to cope in a real
Speaker 1: situation where something might trigger that that reaction, and so
Speaker 1: to get them more accustomed to it so they can
Speaker 1: build up to dealing with that in a real world situation.
Speaker 1: Virtual environments have been used to acclimate people to that,
Speaker 1: so that because we have this feeling of immersion, if
Speaker 1: it's done well, just well enough. It doesn't even have
Speaker 1: to be fantastic, It just needs to be well enough
Speaker 1: to convince the brain that you're going through this the
Speaker 1: sequence of events that normally would trigger a negative response,
Speaker 1: that would be enough to get the physiological response going.
Speaker 1: So if someone is afraid of heights and you put
Speaker 1: them in a virtual environment where it looks like they're
Speaker 1: on top of a building, their heart rates starts to
Speaker 1: go up, their blood pressure changes. I mean, they actually
Speaker 1: start to experience the physical reaction they would have if
Speaker 1: they were encountering this in real life. And yet you
Speaker 1: can reassure them that they are in a safe place.
Speaker 1: They are on the ground, they are nowhere near an
Speaker 1: edge of anything, and they can start to allow themselves
Speaker 1: to acclimate and get used to this and explore. So
Speaker 1: the first time of patient might do this. They might
Speaker 1: just sit and look for a little bit and tell
Speaker 1: the psychologist. When they can't, they like, I can't do
Speaker 1: this anymore. Then they might get to a point where
Speaker 1: they're moving around, they might get to a point where
Speaker 1: they're able to walk to an edge. The goal of
Speaker 1: this is never to cure someone. The goal is so
Speaker 1: that you can move up to a point where the
Speaker 1: patient feels comfortable enough to actually do some immersion in
Speaker 1: in real life. So with the heights example, after you've
Speaker 1: done this for a while and done a few therapy
Speaker 1: sessions and UH and helped the patient be able to
Speaker 1: manage these responses, you might take a trip out to
Speaker 1: a building that has a few floors to it and
Speaker 1: go up to the top floor and allow the person
Speaker 1: to walk toward the window and and confront this in
Speaker 1: a real space, and because they've already done it in
Speaker 1: the virtual space, they're more capable of dealing with that.
Speaker 1: I've also seen it for people who are afraid of airplanes,
Speaker 1: where they'll use it to have a virtual visit to
Speaker 1: an airport and they have the same experience of stress
Speaker 1: and anxiety that they would if they were to really
Speaker 1: go in a real place, And then the goal would
Speaker 1: be to ultimately take them to an actual airport so
Speaker 1: that they could confront this in in person once they
Speaker 1: feel comfortable in the virtual environment. Being a top seller.
Speaker 1: It's funny because the the VR specialist I was talking
Speaker 1: to you said, yeah, changes in security have made it
Speaker 1: much hard order to deal with this because in the
Speaker 1: old days, you used to be able to go through
Speaker 1: security even without a ticket, Like you could just show
Speaker 1: up at the airport, go through security, and then walk
Speaker 1: to a gate because then you could you know Greek
Speaker 1: people when they got off the plane, right at the
Speaker 1: gate that they were at. I used to do it
Speaker 1: all the time. You can't do that anymore. You have
Speaker 1: to have a ticket to go through security, so it
Speaker 1: makes it makes it much more expensive to treat these
Speaker 1: kind of things. You have to actually buy a ticket
Speaker 1: on a trip in order to be able to go
Speaker 1: through the security. So but that's, you know, a totally
Speaker 1: different barrier than the VR stuff. The military also uses
Speaker 1: VR not just for training soldiers, but also as part
Speaker 1: of uh UH systems that allow people who are operating
Speaker 1: vehicles that normally wouldn't have a good line of sight
Speaker 1: to be able to see around them. In fact, some
Speaker 1: of the earliest headmale displays were made for pilots so
Speaker 1: that they could have a sixty degree view around the
Speaker 1: aircraft they were in, because there were parts of the
Speaker 1: aircraft that would block their visions and there'd be no
Speaker 1: way of seeing through. That same thing with tanks. I've
Speaker 1: seen some tanks that have had um head mound displays
Speaker 1: and external mounted cameras with like a hundred eighty degree
Speaker 1: field of view so that you can get a real
Speaker 1: time They actually, uh, they stitched together all the videos
Speaker 1: so that you can turn around in place and see
Speaker 1: a three sixty degree view around the tank that you're in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, any any sort of thing that
Speaker 1: allows vision like physically is probably gonna be a weak
Speaker 1: point on your craft. It actually reminds me of like
Speaker 1: Iron Man's heads up display. You know, that's his entire
Speaker 1: thing is being beamed into his suit, into his eyes.
Speaker 1: It's all video coming right back in. You know. If
Speaker 1: you had a big window face, he would be way
Speaker 1: more susceptible to all those. Yeah, and if any external
Speaker 1: cameras went dead, then he'd be blind. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's certainly an interesting approach of using
Speaker 1: that same technology for something different. As for the challenges
Speaker 1: of the R Well, the earliest one was that perception
Speaker 1: problem I talked about where we had Hollywood telling us
Speaker 1: that VR was going to be the future of interacting
Speaker 1: with machines, that you know, you weren't going to use
Speaker 1: a keyboard and a display anymore, you were going to
Speaker 1: be in the computer program. My favorite is any depiction
Speaker 1: of hacking where you would actually walk through amaze. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he turn turn, take a right, and then you see
Speaker 1: like a skull and crossbones. You're like, oh, firewall and
Speaker 1: you turn around. What the other way? Do you think?
Speaker 1: This is not the way this works. I got to
Speaker 1: punch this firewall out of the way. Excuse me when
Speaker 1: I punched the firewall in the face. And you also
Speaker 1: have to wear a really off like you have to
Speaker 1: wear like a hot topic costume. Yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: do that. Also, just just in case you ever do
Speaker 1: enter an antiquated system, just know that no matter what
Speaker 1: the password is, it doesn't matter. The first two guesses
Speaker 1: are going to be wrong and the third one is
Speaker 1: gonna be right. Yeah, third one. Ah, that's what it
Speaker 1: was his birthday and his uh dog's name. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: So use a strong password generator. Is the moral of
Speaker 1: that story. Not your birthday and your dog. No, don't
Speaker 1: not not my birthday and my dog either, because it
Speaker 1: is my birthday and I know the trick. Um late
Speaker 1: and see again. Another big issue that is the thing
Speaker 1: that can make you feel pretty nauseated pretty quickly if
Speaker 1: it's not solved. And then that interface like we're talking
Speaker 1: about before, if you don't have that fade into the background,
Speaker 1: it can really become a barrier to immersion and interactivity.
Speaker 1: So here comes the last little bit of this episode.
Speaker 1: It's been an epic episode, Ruben. What do you think
Speaker 1: you think is the consumer market ready for virtual reality now?
Speaker 1: I mean I remember in the nineties when it was
Speaker 1: first coming out, that the whole virtual boy era. I
Speaker 1: remember all of that really well, and it definitely wasn't
Speaker 1: ready yet. Do you think it's ready now? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I think we're I think we're in the
Speaker 1: early days of it becoming a real thing. Um. I
Speaker 1: think Iculus riffed the Kickstarters apport behind that. I think
Speaker 1: it's proof enough that there's a market for it, that
Speaker 1: people want it. I mean they made multiple times more
Speaker 1: than what they were asked. Yeah, you know, it was
Speaker 1: it was one. It was for a while, it was
Speaker 1: the most successful kickstarter. Uh. If you compare what they
Speaker 1: were asking for versus is what they got, it was
Speaker 1: ten times the amount. And I think it's a great
Speaker 1: it's a great idea, especially the technology is getting there.
Speaker 1: As far as the visual thing, you can actually they
Speaker 1: make little headpieces. Google has a cardboard box. You can
Speaker 1: put your smartphone in it and get steroscopic vision to
Speaker 1: your cell phone. Like we have tiny tiny five inch
Speaker 1: slabs of l C deer, amile D whatever it is
Speaker 1: UM that are strong enough and fast enough to uh
Speaker 1: to produce these virtual images. So I think a lot
Speaker 1: of our technology for the visions there. The biggest hindrance
Speaker 1: I think is going to be cost. Like the Oculus
Speaker 1: rift is actually a fairly reasonable price wise, but then
Speaker 1: you get omnidirectional treadmill thing. Even if it's just that
Speaker 1: that teflon one, no moving parts really, UM, that's still
Speaker 1: fairly expensive and it requires space, which means that's another
Speaker 1: expense because you know, we don't think of it as
Speaker 1: space equals money, but not everyone has a place big
Speaker 1: enough to have a standing, you know, pet stole that
Speaker 1: is just there as an interface for computer game. The
Speaker 1: first connect for the Xbox of the new connect connected
Speaker 1: to I guess has a much wider field division from
Speaker 1: up close, but the first one didn't, and a lot
Speaker 1: of game reviewers ran into problems in their tiny New
Speaker 1: York apartments of like, I can't I can't play this
Speaker 1: game apartment. It cuts off all of my limbs because
Speaker 1: I'm too close to the camera. But if we even
Speaker 1: just think about, like so Sony's Project Morpheus, which they
Speaker 1: have a lot of the ecosystem already there, the PlayStation
Speaker 1: for a camera. So not only you need the headset
Speaker 1: the Morpheus itself whenever it becomes commercially available, if it does,
Speaker 1: you need the camera, You need the headset, You need
Speaker 1: at least one probably of the two two of the
Speaker 1: move controllers who can map your hands. We're not even
Speaker 1: going into uh, your lower body, and that's that's a
Speaker 1: lot of and the PS four so we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know about a grand buy in just for the
Speaker 1: very very basics yet yeah, and not even a game
Speaker 1: for it. Um So, I definitely think that we're sort
Speaker 1: of on that us of doing things that are reminiscent
Speaker 1: of the crazy stuff that we saw in the nineties
Speaker 1: and will be exactly that. But we're getting closer. But
Speaker 1: as far as like mass adoption, I feel like i'd
Speaker 1: give us five to ten years. Yeah, I I agree
Speaker 1: with that. I think I think on top of that,
Speaker 1: on top of all the challenges you mentioned, there are
Speaker 1: other ones that we don't think about as consumers that
Speaker 1: are on the back end, like developing for this system,
Speaker 1: because developing a game that actually works in this environment
Speaker 1: and is fun and functional, that's a that's a tall order.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're really talking about the difference between say,
Speaker 1: shooting a movie as a regular cinematic experience and shooting
Speaker 1: an actual three D movie that was intended to be
Speaker 1: three D the entire time. And we talk about ten
Speaker 1: a DP and everything. When you're do in virtual reality,
Speaker 1: you're splitting, you have to split your resolution into so
Speaker 1: that's a crazy horsepower to can maintain the same fidelity
Speaker 1: we have in a single vision. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there there's some big challenges that we're going to be
Speaker 1: facing technologically as well as just economically. You know the
Speaker 1: idea of doing the system where it's affordable, do we
Speaker 1: make it a loss leader where we're going to try
Speaker 1: and make it up in the content we create. If
Speaker 1: we don't sell enough of them, are we going to
Speaker 1: be able to create the content that will let us
Speaker 1: recapture the costs? I mean, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions to answer, and I don't think we're quite there yet.
Speaker 1: I think we are on that that edge where excuse
Speaker 1: me again, I don't think we're right we're there just yet.
Speaker 1: I think we're around the edge where it could go
Speaker 1: either way, where we could either see some really promising
Speaker 1: development and thus that pushes consumers to really get excited
Speaker 1: by it, or we could have these challenges we've talked
Speaker 1: about show that we're not quite ready, that there's still
Speaker 1: some pieces missing that we need to solve first, and
Speaker 1: then maybe in five to ten years we'll have the
Speaker 1: pieces there where this will become at least a form
Speaker 1: of consuming entertainment. I don't. I also don't think it's
Speaker 1: ever going to become the predominant one. I think it
Speaker 1: will always be a section of the gaming community. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be like I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that the console, the next console in ten years, with
Speaker 1: the PS four and Xbox One, I've completely gone through
Speaker 1: their life cycle, is going to be a head mounted system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we'll see it asn't been supported maybe in
Speaker 1: the next generation, as sort of like it's going to
Speaker 1: support this automatically like three D was supported stuff last gen. Um.
Speaker 1: I do think gaming is probably gonna be the herald
Speaker 1: of this by all means. But we see like Google
Speaker 1: Glass with the augmented reality that is not necessarily for
Speaker 1: gamers at all. There's some there's some filmmakers that are
Speaker 1: exploring the ability of of making stuff specifically for people
Speaker 1: to watch while wearing the oculus where you you can
Speaker 1: look around an entire scene and see everything that's going on. Now,
Speaker 1: that of course, presents its own series of incredible challenges
Speaker 1: to the filmmaking industry. Film the three sixty degrees every
Speaker 1: time everywhere? Have you not see the set somehow not
Speaker 1: see not see like like the the teamsters lounging in
Speaker 1: the background smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, or or in
Speaker 1: the case of h you know, um uh other forms
Speaker 1: of media just do you how do you make everything
Speaker 1: interesting enough to look at, knowing that someone is always
Speaker 1: going to be looking at that point at any given moment.
Speaker 1: Not everyone will, but you know, it's just like theater
Speaker 1: in the round. If you if you set up a
Speaker 1: theater in the round, you have to assume that someone
Speaker 1: is looking at every single part of that scene at
Speaker 1: any given time. You know, even if that's not supposed
Speaker 1: to be the focus of the scene, someone's looking there.
Speaker 1: So you've got to be present, and you've gotta be
Speaker 1: ready to go, and you've gotta make sure it looks good.
Speaker 1: And UH has its own huge sets of challenges. I
Speaker 1: think when the most terrifying indicators that it is going
Speaker 1: to happen is Facebook taking them Facebook buying oculus, I'm
Speaker 1: taking too massive steak and something that used to you go, oh,
Speaker 1: why would why would Facebook want this? They firmly believe
Speaker 1: in the integration that it has and you know, they
Speaker 1: have a alien users. There's only you know, after a while,
Speaker 1: like growth plateaus, and then you think, all right, well
Speaker 1: we have to diversify. If we only concentrate on this
Speaker 1: one thing, we can't grow year over year. And if
Speaker 1: we can't grow, investors aren't happy, and the investors aren't happy,
Speaker 1: then we lose money and then that's a downward spiral.
Speaker 1: So this is a you know, this is a big
Speaker 1: bet for Facebook and UH personally, I hope it pays off,
Speaker 1: because I think it the future could be really incredible
Speaker 1: with us uh and uh, I certainly, I'm I'm enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about it, even though my own personal experience was a
Speaker 1: little uh, you know, stomach turning. But again, I didn't
Speaker 1: have enough time to really um acclimate myself, so I
Speaker 1: think after a little while I probably would have gotten
Speaker 1: used to it. If I can be a virtual sandwich
Speaker 1: artist and I go home, I'll be so happy. I
Speaker 1: was going to go right back to papers. Please, Ruben,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. This is
Speaker 1: fantastic conversation, pretty long episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Ruben.
Speaker 1: Where can people find you? Oh boy? Um, so I
Speaker 1: guess uh. I'm out on Twitter, um at robots r
Speaker 1: O O b O T s um heads up, very
Speaker 1: little things. A very few of the things I'll mention
Speaker 1: here are safer work, including my Twitter. Um. But also
Speaker 1: you can find me at Dad's garage. That's where do
Speaker 1: most of my theater stuff here in town in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: So if you're in town by all means comes wing
Speaker 1: by check out a show. Definitely do that. Dad's garage
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite places in the city. We're
Speaker 1: doing a murder mystery tonight that's Star Wars themed. Just
Speaker 1: in case you're you're concerned about our nerd credentials, Trust me,
Speaker 1: the people at Dad's garage are probably some of the
Speaker 1: nerdiest prints I'd have was. I was painting Karelian blood
Speaker 1: stripes on pants last night for Han Solo wonderful so
Speaker 1: um yeah. Um also ed Tom and Reuben dot com.
Speaker 1: It's a little dicky say, I threw up for me
Speaker 1: and two guys from Dad's. We are doing sketches and podcasts. Um.
Speaker 1: We have a podcast called Welcome to super Basement. Um.
Speaker 1: Trying to think of how to truncate the description. How
Speaker 1: would you describe it? John? Welcome to Super Basement is
Speaker 1: the story of three friends who inhabit a basement that
Speaker 1: is so huge that it incorporates everything in reality and
Speaker 1: fantasy and science fiction all in one. It is completely improvised.
Speaker 1: It is approximately a half hour per episode where the
Speaker 1: three friends discover some form of adventure and then go
Speaker 1: on it and maybe there's a conclusion and inappropriate jam.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No. It's very much not safe for work,
Speaker 1: but it's incredibly hilarious. I absolutely adore the show. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend checking out Welcome to super Basement. If you
Speaker 1: are of an age to appreciate not safe for work humor,
Speaker 1: you can subscribe on there. Yeah, that's fantastic, Reuben, Thank
Speaker 1: you again. Thank you guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for future episodes, or maybe a
Speaker 1: request for a special guest host or interview, let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me a message my email addresses, text stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The handle it all three
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff hs W and will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Because it has to have work dot com