Hello, and welcome to episode 22 of Lost in Immersion, your weekly 45-minute stream about innovation. As VR and AR veterans, we will discuss the latest news of the immersive industry. Seb is still on holiday, but he will be back next week for all his fan base. Fabien, you can start, if you want, please. Cool, yeah, thanks. Today, I went outside, yeah, I can believe it, and I tested the new AR games that went out last week, Space Invaders games. This game is made as a collaboration between Taito, the original game editor, and Google, and it's an AR game, so it doesn't work inside, you really have to go outside, because it works with the new Geospatial API, which is basically working everywhere that Google Street is working. So, they took the concept of Space Invaders, you know, you have waves of aliens that come up, and you have to destroy them, and so they brought that outside in the world, in 360 around you, and using the space around you to position the aliens, and you have basically two modes, so the one that you are currently seeing here on screen, which is what I've just described, and then after a while, the second wave is done in a more standard game view, it will come soon. Yeah, so you have this effect of a portal that opens in the sky, and then you switch to a game view, which basically brings you into the streets around you, and you have to destroy again the waves of aliens, and that iterates, so you have waves like that of these two different game styles. So, on paper and on the video, you can see it's it's very nice, and it actually is, I mean, the technology is working really nicely, you know, I had aliens on the buildings around me, and I can, I could recognize the shape of the streets around me as well in the game, but that's basically it, and I think, so I'm curious to know what you think, but again, unfortunately, similar to many AR games, the technology is good, it's working very nicely, but we're not sure that, I'm not sure that it was the right technology for that. So, I didn't experience everything, they mentioned that you can fight aliens with friends, if you are in the same area, and you have, you know, scores, you can be the best in your area, and things like that, so I didn't go as far as this, but yeah, for a casual game, I'm not sure that being only outside, so you have to go outside to start playing, and to keep playing, I'm not sure it's the right way to have something that you can replay anytime. What I would have loved to is to be able to play anywhere, but to play in the streets around me, like I didn't, to go directly into the, yeah, into that mode, and being able to navigate into the streets around me, I think that would have been maybe a bit more fun usage of the Google geolocation API. So, yeah, and as a reminder, the geolocation API, sorry, geospatial API, is, allows basically now any game developer to instantiate the, like a digital twin of the earth anywhere that Google Streets work. We talked about it last week. So, yeah, that's it, and I'm curious to know what you think. Yeah, well, you asked several questions, I'll try to remember them all. So, first of all, the fact that people have to go outside to play, it's more like Pokemon Go, and we saw that people are willing to go outside to play those games, so why not? I don't think this is much of a blocker for people to go outside, and sometimes it's a good thing for them to get outside. Then about the, well, first of all, I really think this is some kind of cool technical demonstration of an implementation of the Google IEO capabilities. Once again, why do space invaders? I don't think this is, because now people that can identify to this game are quite old, and I'm not sure that the new generation can refer to this game anymore. Even if I played Space Invaders, I don't have this whole nostalgia feeling and so on, and I'm not very attached to this game. And when I'm seeing that, I'm not really willing to test it. So, thank you, because you did. But I think that they're trying to create something with a great name of video games, or maybe the thing that it was one of the first video games, and then they are creating a new use, so they want to bring back this to create a new thing. So, it's more like a developer joke or whatever, but there is no real willing to bring the new generation to this kind of app, I guess. They could have done something way more actual by doing some other, maybe use another spaceship and other, yes, they just wanted to use the license, but I don't think this is a great thing here. And about your remark about that game mode that you would have preferred, I guess they wanted to show you that it can go bigger than that, because basically this game mode is a Pokemon Go-like, just enhanced, and they wanted to show you that it could be way bigger than that. It seems to take occlusion in consideration. Is it the case, or? So, I didn't experience it, but it seems to, yeah. Okay, because on some picture you have the mesh, so I guess you would have the occlusion, and this is something new. Maybe they could have played a bit more with this occlusion feature, occlusion feature that is, to my point, something that has not been seen on other AR app, especially when you're using the whole neighborhood. It's more localized. So, yeah. Great demo. They could have done something better, because I don't think people will try this more than what you did. Just a few seconds, and then I'll close it down. But it can bring some ideas to developers to do something a bit better. So, well, yeah. Great demo. Good, a lot of ideas that can be done. So, we'll be waiting for developers to create something that is enjoyable and makes sense, and we are willing to keep on our app. And yeah, last thing, of course, this is not the best device, because playing like this with your cell, I think it's kind of goofy as always. So, maybe, yeah. Always the same stuff. When we have our AR headsets or Mixed Reality headsets, it would make sense. Right now, it doesn't much. Yeah. Yeah. So, one thing is I, so I agree with you. Oh, I didn't experience that. Maybe I didn't go further enough. I saw the occlusion, actually, when the portal opens here. So, this is not my recording. It's a promotion video. So, you can see here, it's very perfect. I experienced something a bit different, like there were gaps around the buildings when the portal opens. But still, it's a really cool effect to transition between the real world view and the virtual world. That was very cool. And yeah, I don't know, maybe they could have, because here, you have to stay in this, roughly the same area. If you start walking during a wave of aliens, it will say, go back to the play area. You have an out-of-band warning when you're, okay. Yeah. So, I don't know if it's a technical limitation or a gameplay limitation, but I would have loved, you know, to have to search for aliens in my neighborhood. You know, I don't know, two blocks around. You have to search for 10 aliens around. That would have maybe another fun, a bit more engaging gameplay. But yeah. Yeah, you have to be in a good physical condition to do a game like this. But yeah, you can go level after levels. You can wider the area where you're playing. It could be a great idea, yeah. Yeah, I was making some research, because I thought that at some point, there was some kind of movie or a feature, like you're seeing the space invaders inside the... So, I'm finding the space invader movie in the work at Warner Bros. It was in 2014. So, I'm not crazy. I've seen this kind of image when you see the alien flying around. But apparently, there's no real movie. Space invaders serve as an inspiration for the upcoming movie Pixels. Yeah, it was in Pixels. Yeah. So, I don't know if this is some kind of announcement for another movie or... But yeah, it's strange. We can see exactly the same image of those aliens flying around the city. And you said that it was Google and what company that did this? Taito. Okay. So, yeah, you're right. It's a legitimate game of space invaders. Okay. Okay, perfect. Anything more to add to this topic? No, not much. Again, a bit disappointed by a great technology and not that great execution. Yeah. They have some ideas, but yeah, the execution could be better. Yeah. Okay. So, next topic. We just discussed about this before the stream. I had the news last week that Meta was kind of stopping the Oculus Quest, meaning that they were not buying new components to make them. So, once their stock of electronic components is done, there won't be any more new MetaQuest 2, which is kind of surprising because the headset is not that old. I guess it's maybe one year and a half or two years. It's quite recent. And there was another rumor that said that there won't be any more MetaQuest 2, but this information was nuanced by the CTO because he didn't say that there will be a 2, but he said that we don't have to trust everything that we are hearing meaning that they seem to have a few iterations of their Quest Pro for a new iteration, but they don't know which one they will choose for the release. So, anyway, with this nuanced setting, it's still very weird. Well, their strategy seems to be very weird because when you are doing some hardware system, especially when you're doing VR headsets, normally you have a roadmap over several years, and they seem to have a very short-term strategy without really knowing their market, because if they release the Pro and it didn't work, it means that their analysis were not that good, especially for the professional market. One of the main concerns, one of the main reasons why people are not trying the Quest Pro is that even if it has the eye tracking feature, is that there isn't much application on the store or available. There are not that many applications on store that are using this eye tracking, so people don't have a good idea of what can be done with this technology. The community as well is not that huge, so there are very many users of the Quest Pro. People really don't know how to use it. If there are some issues, you don't have much information about these headsets. Because of the price first, even if it's now a Southern USD, it's still quite expensive. Another complaint I saw is that the AR features are not that good as well, because you don't have this one-to-one ratio or scale factor. When you are trying to grab something with the headset in AR mode, you have to adjust because it's not at the same place. So, yeah, a lot of complaints which can explain why this headset is not working. Once again, why did they release it if it was not perfect? I get the AR feature was announced at the end, just before the release of the headset, and maybe it was not the feature that they wanted to put on the front scene, but yeah. So, apparently, if we follow the strategy of Meta, they are doing the Quest 3 that doesn't have the eye tracking, but is smaller. The price is still the same, around $500 or $600. And yeah, there is another information. I don't know if it was confirmed or not, but apparently, they also have an AR device oriented in the work at Meta, and the announcement, or the rumor we got is that they are decreasing their will to create the optimal or perfect device to try to get the price down to provide a less complicated device that would be able to do AR. So, what I can see behind or through all this information is that Meta is more of a low cost or low price competitor for Apple, especially in the AR field. They are trying to keep their devices low price for people to get. So, I'm not sure they really understood their issue, which we already discussed, is that they are lacking content and application to bring the community in VR. It's not by making cheap VR, et cetera, that they will bring the community. When you are reading some comments and going through a different platform, people are, the VR enthusiasts or experts, I might say, is that even if the headset is $700, $800, or $900, or $1,000, some of them are willing to pay it if it brings the feature that they want, especially good eye tracking, some AR feature, mixed reality, and so on. So, I guess the price point of $1,000 is not that hard to reach, but it has to have the feature associated with to make the price right. So, I don't know. What do you think about those two news, which maybe we have to moderate because we don't have an official validation on this? Yeah. So, Sam has one, MetaQuest Pro, and he did a lot of testing with it. As you mentioned, the thing that is the most disturbing is the path through mixed reality that is really, really not to the level of the competition, like the Lenovo or the Pico. Even the Pico is very zoomed, but still better than the MetaQuest Pro. So, I think this, and as you mentioned, a lot of other small hardware issues is maybe driving Meta to, as you said, trust and maybe put a lot of trust into the Quest 3, which seems to, I think, will have a better mixed reality, like a market-level quality of mixed reality. Yeah. The announcement video is basically AR or mixed reality oriented. When we see Mark Zuckerberg playing with doing some boxing app and so on with collaboration features, they are bringing the whole communication level to the AR features, especially to answer Apple, of course. So, we can hope that it's working. Yeah. So, indeed, there is no eye tracking, but is it that important? I'm not sure. What I wonder is, so the Quest 2 was the device that can be easily accessed by a lot of people because of its price for VR, and the Quest 3 maybe is the same, but for mixed reality. That being said, I totally agree with you that if the content is not there, if there is no app, I mean, there are apps, but there is no good content, good community management, and good communities on there, then, I mean, yeah, won't have the expected success. So, I'm really curious to see what the Quest 3 is capable of, because they are still, I don't know exactly when it's scheduled to be released, but there's still quite a big time between the release of the Quest 3 and the availability of the Apple device. So, you know, maybe they have room to sell a lot of devices between Apple goes out, and I agree that if the quality is there, people can buy, can put the price, like you see with all iPhones and Android that are getting more and more expensive, but we know that the Apple device won't be, they don't, I forgot the number, but there are like a set number of devices that they will sell. So, yeah, it's around, now the latest estimation is 150,000, so it's very, very low, a very, very low batch. They said that even the demonstration will be very, very limited to the main Apple stores worldwide. It would be, of course, centered in the U.S. in the first place, because they won't be, it won't be available in other parts of the world. It would be U.S. centered, but yeah, I guess they are trying to limit or slow down the release of this, so I guess we won't be able to get our hands on one of these until the end of 2024, something like this. So, yeah. So, yeah, it gives room for Meta to sell some Quest 3 in between, but I'm really asking myself about the whole Meta strategy over there, because Meta slash Facebook, their business is community, and they should be able to know how to grow one, and on this VR topics, it seems to have unlearned everything possible, or maybe it's really two teams completely different between Meta Facebook and Meta Quest or Oculus, if I might say. I'm seeing that the departure or the fact that John Carmack left this company, it seems to have a real impact on the whole things, because since he left, the whole hardware part seems to be completely lost and not really knowing what they are doing, especially on their roadmap. As I said, they should be knowing roughly what they'll be doing in the next five years, and apparently they don't, because they are canceling and bringing some devices back, and changing their perspective from full VR to mixed reality AR. Of course, they are adapting to the market as well, because you can see that the Apple announcements changed the mind of a few manufacturers, like Samsung. They were supposed to release their new headsets at the end of this year, and now it's more mid-2024, because they want to do some adjustment, but it doesn't justify the whole blurry roadmap and situation that is occurring right now, especially when you have those kind of rumours, and the CTO is making some announcements, saying no, no, no, it's not completely right. It's really, really strange. Yeah, it's very difficult to follow and to know what they think. My guess is, as you said, they are reacting to the market, so it's confusing. Yeah, and it's not very reassuring or safe for developers. Developers as well can't have a real view of what's going on, so it's really hard to invest yourself or create a company based on, especially those companies that bought the Quest Pro because of the eye-tracking feature, understanding that it was a pre-release for professionals, maybe for a broader audience, because it would be integrated into Quest 3. They could have some advance or some times before the release of the Quest 3 by buying the Quest Pro, but apparently it's not the case. So, if you created your company based on the eye-tracking features to create your app, well, you are basically screwed at this point, because there isn't any eye-tracking in the future devices by Meta. So, it's not a good signal as well, because it seems to mean that you can't invest in the process of the Meta iteration, because you don't really know what features will be added and cancelled. Yeah, so that's actually a vicious circle, because if Meta wants to have a community and a lot of apps, they need to gain the trust of the developers. Yeah, and be completely transparent of what they'll be doing. So, I don't know if they want to keep this as content creators for their headsets, but we can see that Meta is not good at creating content for their headsets. It's not a content company. They are a hardware one, and we know that it's really hard to combine content and hardware. So, they should be focusing on their hardware roadmap, be completely clear about this, especially for companies that are willing to invest or create content, so that they can have a real clear view of what the future will be made of. Yeah. Another announcement is that we talked about this, the lack of Apple in the artificial intelligence field. We found out at the time, we were saying that in the middle of all the big ones, they were all creating their own AI, and Apple was not there. And now it's corrected, because they announced the Apple GPT, which explains why chat GPT is not allowed inside the Apple walls, because they want to keep this between them and using their own AI. So, I'm not aware of any roadmap to when it would be available to Apple devices. Maybe it's already on. I don't know if you have this information, Fabien. No, I didn't see it. Okay. So, one of the things that I wanted to bring on the table is that apparently they released a new patent for their AirPods, and it would be supporting or it would be doing some BCI or wave brain analysis integrated inside the AirPods around the bit that goes into your ear. So, very, very interesting that, once again, Apple is maybe opening the road to the wavelength brainwave analysis. So, we can easily see that this technology can be coupled with AI and maybe with their Apple Vision Pro as well. So, all the blocks are getting all together to see that Apple is, they are having a whole vision of what they want to do with this technology in the very near future. So, we talked about BCI like one week or two weeks ago, and by saying that this technology is getting a new push towards global acceptation, and I think this is the case right now with Apple once again bringing this technology to a whole new level. So, I don't know what kind of brainwave they can get inside your ears because usually it's set on your head, but if they are patenting something, it should be working at some point. And yeah, very interesting to see that this kind of feature is now having a new future and something that is easier to use than the whole headbands or headsets that can be put on your head. What do you think about this? Yeah. So, first about the Apple GPT, and I'm really curious to see how and when and on which device they will integrate this. They already have Siri, which maybe didn't have the success that they expected. So, is it a replacement for Siri or are they thinking about something really different? That's an interesting question. One thing that makes sense for Apple, I don't think they will ever release just a chat, like, I don't know, chat.apple.com. That doesn't really make sense for the brand. So, it would be integrated somewhere into a device, the iPhone or the Apple or the Vision Pro. So, yeah, if we compare to Meta, if we back up a bit to Meta, Meta is an AI company and there is AI everywhere in the headsets, in the ads, of course, in the social media optimization. So, it's really interesting to see the difference of approach between the two. And back to the AirPods VCI, yeah, I'm really curious. First, what they will be able to detect and what will be the usage like? Is it something like I can think of playing the next song and the next song plays? I don't know. Or is it really something more advanced, like a full interface? I mean, I just feel the pattern. So, I guess until there are really real applications, there will be quite a lot of time. But it's an interesting thought experiment to think about what the application will be, yeah. Yeah, on that part, I guess they are giving us some hints, especially with the Apple Vision Pro, you know, they develop the whole prediction when you are about to click on something for them to be able to get the interactions right. So, as you mentioned, I guess they will be doing a lot of prediction of what people are about to do. And I guess it really matches their view of the user interface, of your user experience when the device or machine or whatever is already knowing what you will be doing. And I guess they will get their wow effect that way. But at some point, it can be scary as well. Because when you are giving these to normal people, quote unquote, maybe realizing that the device can guess what you will be doing before you do it can be a bit scary at some point. So, maybe it will need some adjustment by the whole main users. I know that a part of them will be very willing to try and use this on an everyday basis. But some kind of the population can be very scared of this. And yeah, once again, for of course, I guess the BCI use is always about advertisement. When you are seeing some ads, you can measure the different brainwaves and understand better what people are liking or not. So, you will get some very, very targeted and personalized ads. So, of course, once again, it can be a bit scary because the device or the service provider will be able to know exactly what you are willing to buy and promote it accordingly. So, yeah. A lot of use, of course. But once again, the big question is what kind of road data they can get from these airports. So, maybe it's just some simple, very, very simple elements and they won't be doing much with this. But very interesting that again, they are going on this road. Yeah, very interesting. And just to give a very concrete example, I saw a few weeks back is after the release and announcement of the Vision Pro, some developers tried to mimic the eye selection interface into a quest. And they had issues because the when we look at something and our eyes are going in a lot of different directions. So, it was very difficult for them to know if it was really focused on something or if just the eye going on something and then going out. And maybe this is where AI can help to know if you are actually looking at something to act on it or if you are just passing by. So, yeah, it's very interesting and scary, as you say there. Yeah, I saw that there are quite a new community of copycat dev that are trying to copy basically all they saw in the Apple Vision Pro and put it in the MetaQuest with more or less success with the Pinch, for example. We can see that it's interesting because all this way of trying to replicate or copy what Apple did, it really brings out all the limitations of the MetaQuest because you can see that it's not working as well as it should. So, it proves the technical superiority of the Apple Vision Pro compared to the Meta. So, it's a good yeah, it's really interesting to see that it's not that easy. And yeah, Meta needs to work on these technical features to be able to compete with the Apple Vision Pro at some point. Yeah, interesting feature. Short one, yeah, it would be 2024, the great battle of AR mixed reality headsets. I'm really curious to see what Samsung would be bringing to the table as well and maybe Lenovo because we saw that they are also trying to do something with the industrial. I saw about Lenovo very quickly that they are trying to create an industrial metaverse. So, they may be trying to get on the software or application part as well. So, very interesting to see that Lenovo is very, very willing to bring the VR, AR, mixed reality to professionals and industrial especially. Yeah. Yeah, we will have the ThinkReality next month. So, stay tuned for a detailed test on this one. Nice. Okay. So, do you have anything more to add for today? No. Yeah, I think that's it. Okay. So, see you next week with Seb. I hope he'll be bringing a whole new set of ideas on news
