Welcome to episode 27 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. Let's go. So last week I was on holidays and too tired to do the podcast. So we are back this week and to change our habits it will be said that we will be starting with its topics right now. Thanks. Sure. So my topic is about a medical application that has been developed by a company. It's a VR application, actually an XR application called Medical Realities. And what is interesting in this application is that they went full 360, I would say, using the AI to allow the user to ask questions to personal assistants to get medical information on how a procedure is done, what is the the procedure and clinical skills that you need to deploy to do this kind of intervention, some XR simulation for this procedure, some 360 video showing real recorded surgical operation, an admin dashboard so you can see the progress of your students, and the ability to do the training together with multiple people. And so if a surgical procedure needs several persons then you can really simulate at school with the headset a complete operation room. Operation room. So I think what's, yeah, like I said, what is interesting that they integrated all that, all the language also using AI too, and it's available on all the meta platform and are planning to deploy it also on tablets. So here's a quick video on how it looks inside the headset. So they cut off on the video the most tricky part where they open directly the belly of someone. And so, yeah, you simulate also even in the, in the experiment, the fact that you would ask questions to your patient to know what is the issue and try to find what, train yourself to find the good question to ask to get to the medical advice you can provide to the user and get feedback on if you did right or wrong afterwards. So I think that the training is quite full and really interesting. Do you have any thoughts, guys, on that? Yeah, I think it's, we have been seeing since the rise of the generative AI end of last year, a lot of applications of AI and chat-like AI. And so I think this is very good, concrete application, and especially blending with VR. I think it's a very good application. And as myself being in a foreign country, I would totally enjoy some translation. So I know this is not the application here, but for training, that could be great to have this also as a tool in the medical office. So, yeah, it looks really good. Hopefully, so you know that generative AI can be wrong and often are. So hopefully they have something like a control system to assess if the training went well and to put limits around what the usage of AI is, but it seems to be really good. Yeah, on my part, it's a big thumbs up for the global integration of this. Seems to be very complete. However, I'm still a bit annoyed by the graphics, because I'm feeling that most of VR application right now are blocked, like 10 years ago, in terms of graphics. We are seeing the same old avatars and lightning simulation and so on. So, yeah, it's average-like graphics, but now we can do much better, especially with Unity or Unreal, and I think this is the time for most companies to get a better graphic integration and maybe employ better 3D artists, because now it feels like a very old VR application, and it's a bit annoying. I don't know if you share that point, you guys. But it feels like the application we were doing, like, 10 years ago. I mean, for training like that, where you don't have the option to simulate all that, or you need to spend a lot of time in an operation room, I think it's okay, and also it's compatible for MetaQuest 1, which is very accessible, or even Quest 2. So, I think they're planning to even release the experience for Pico and for the other headsets, so I think making that available on all the platforms. What I'm afraid of is the global acceptation of the public, as usual, when people get better application or results or graphical performances with other applications. When they will be trying this, they'll be just like, yeah, no, it's too old, or whatever. I don't like the graphics, and this could impact the success of a global application of this, which would be a bother, because it seems to be, as I said, a very good integration, and making another pass or make this improve simply just a bit the graphics, because we know now with the latest rendering application in Unity or Unreal, it's very simple to add some reflection and better lighting in a few hours, and it should be compatible with different level of devices. I guess this is not an argument right now, because we have the tools to make it better. Yeah, this was just my thoughts on this, and it could apply to a lot of professional applications in VR, because as professionals, they are targeting their knowledge towards the experience and the content and so on, but the graphical part is very important as well, especially now when we have PSVR2 games that are close to AAA games right now. That is. All right, that's it for that subject. We can move on. Okay, so Fabien. Sorry. Okay, thanks. I'm opening our part about Meta, and we have a few topics about Meta. There are a lot of news in the past few weeks. I'm starting with what you are seeing right now, which is a video shared by Zuckerberg on Instagram, and it's a keyboard that is in VR attached to your desk, and basically instead of typing on the keyboard, you are typing on your desk, as you can see here. There is a video here you can see, and so it's a Quest 2, but it's adjusted Quest 2. I think they have some – you can see there are markers on the table, and maybe they have some AI running as well to predict and correct the movements of the fingers, and they seem to say that they reach a very high typing rate with this method. So, you know, for example, the Apple Vision Pro has also this – doesn't have this feature, but has this target to replace the computer, so having a virtual keyboard could be a solution. So, that being said, my initial thought when I saw that is – so maybe that works for like five or ten minutes, but I wonder typing – assuming that the headset is comfortable enough to work a whole day in the headset, I'm not sure that typing on a hard surface with a finger for a complete day will be comfortable. I don't know, it's just a guess, but I think like it can put strain on the fingers. There are no really like force feedback as well like on the keyboard. So, I'm really curious to know, maybe you tried similar technique, and what do you think about that? We can start with Seb. Yeah, I agree. I was trying with my hand to put my hand on the table in front of it on my desk, and yeah, I can – I agree with you. When you are on your keyboard, you can rest on the key and not have your finger left off. So, you can rest on the keyboard and only type when you want. Here on the table, it seems like you need to really hit the table and so have your finger always on top, always left flying above the desk. And therefore, you can feel that after a long time you don't rest your finger. They are always in the air. I think that's painful after a while. Yeah, and actually, I have kind of a counter argument to what I said is when we type on our phone and tablets, it's a hard surface. It's not the same method, the same for the phone. Yeah, that's a different point of view. What do you think, Guillaume? I have two things to say. First, about the haptic feedback you mentioned, typing on tablets and phones, we know that it's great for small text, but doing this all day, it's very uncomfortable because the keyboard gives us this physical or haptic feedback when you are pressing the key, especially if you have a mechanical keyboard. So, I guess to have a comfortable experience with this, we would need gloves for having this kind of, yeah, I'm tapping my desk here right now, but this return of feeling that you are pushing the key. So, maybe it's just an habit of us getting this through our keyboard. Maybe you can get used to not having this. Well, we'll have to see. But right now, if we had to move to this kind of technique, right now, I guess I won't be feeling comfortable with this because I would need this kind of feedback or separation of key or whatever. And something doesn't seem right by just typing on your keyboard, but yeah, why not? And the second thought about this video is that this video is that once again, they are demonstrating new application with the Quest 2. Whatever, wherever, where is the Quest 3? Just to open a little sub-subject because we know we have a lot of them to do about meta, but they announced, kind of, because this is a leak, official or not, we don't really know, but they announced the headset for October, especially in Canada, I know. So, for something that is about to be released next month, why are they showing or developing a new feature with their old headsets? And especially bringing back the black and white markers for something that should be innovative is, yeah, it's kind of a shocker right here. I don't know what kind of image they are bringing, but once again, it feels like 10 years ago when you were working with black and white markers and and it feels like a startup with Mark Zuckerberg in a small room, not that fancy, and just doing a small demo of what their dev team just did. So, it's funny in a way and, like, we're very, not disturbing, but strange for us to see this kind of video just popping by a few weeks from the release of their new headsets. The strategy is maybe to show that they are, even though they are releasing new headsets, they are still working on making the previous headset that has been a hit, like the Quest 2, still in progress and do more than what they do actually. So, maybe we are showing also the community, but yeah. And they are also planning to lower down the budget, so maybe they try to have, like, different target markets, a low budget market, a middle budget market, and a high budget market, like we would see with their, we'll talk about it, I think, afterwards, but they announced also the MetaQuest 4 Pro, something like that. I have a different opinion on that, I would say. I think we might be searching something, a reason that is too complex, maybe they just, like, entered the room, recorded a small video, and put it on Instagram without really thinking too much about it, and they think it was looking cool, and okay, maybe, yeah, that's my guess. Just a very simple thing. So, yeah, but it means that their dev team, they are working with the Quest 2, and not the Quest 3 right now. This is kind of weird, because usually when you are in a big company like Facebook or Meta trying to develop new features, you should get the latest headsets ahead of everyone, just especially to bring new, better feature for you to sell the new headset. So, right here, you are sending the message that you can still buy the Quest 2, because you'll still get the latest feature, and it's working pretty fine, so you don't have to change your headset. When you are releasing a new device, or a new product, you should be able to focus everyone on this, and even if it's compatible with the older version, everything should point toward the fact that you have to buy the new headset, and it's not the message that is given with this right now. It feels like they are stuck with the Quest 2, and they are not promoting the Quest 3 as they should. It's a bit weird, but that's my opinion. And if we just want to continue with this meta subject, I'll just show mine. It's about the Flamera. We talked about the two prototypes that Meta showed at the SIGGRAPH 2023 a few weeks back, and here it is. If you can remember, there was a very focal one with a motorized screen for you to have better resolution at any point. Sorry, so we had the very focal one with the motorized screen, and we had this one, the Flamera, which looks kind of like a fly with all this camera here, and the idea behind this headset is to provide a non-distorted scale one-to-one vision of the world through the headset. So, just about the review here, very quickly, they were kind of shocked that the screens, the displays were very, very bad, low resolution, so it was hard for them to really review the quality or the crispness or whatever of the display. However, they confirmed that there was not distortion or any deformation of the image, which is kind of cool. However, about the fact that this kind of headset could hit the market soon, it won't be the case, because there are so many cameras on the headset that is getting hot very, very, very fast, and the cost of it is really, really high because of the camera, so they should find another solution, maybe less cameras and better form factor and so on. So, it's just like we said, it's an internal prototype for them to think solution to a problem that they found, and this problem is that when you are putting the cameras not in front of your eyes, the image you'll see will be distorted, and you can use software correction. However, it will never be working as good as having your camera in the same line as your eyes. This is what the Lynx is doing. This is not what the Apple Vision Pro and the Quest 3 are doing, because the cameras are at the lower end of the headsets. So, this is what I want to discuss with you, is that by showing this prototype that is answering the problem of having the camera not in the same line as your eyes, they are showing that the Quest 3, which has the camera at this position, it basically has a problem. It will have distortion at some point, especially when you will be doing video see-through with the Quest 3. So, once again, is this, are they communicating inside Meta? Because we are, I guess this is, like you said, it's a special team specialized in prototype that are showcasing what they are doing at SIGGRAPH. It may not be integrated into global marketing or communication message about the Quest 3, but when you are connecting dots, it's a bad message. Yeah. So, I think, to my knowledge, the problem of distortion during the reproduction is something that happens on all the devices that are currently on the market to a different scale. Seems like the Vision Pro is very good. The Quest Pro was quite bad, if I remember correctly. And some of the other, I tested the Pico, it's really strange, the hands are really zoomed in. So, I think, yeah, it's kind of, indeed, a very weird communication strategy from Meta with a lot of different news and different directions with, as you said, old Quest 2, old devices. And yeah, that's the feeling that seems that we all have, is like, we would like maybe a better, strong messaging for what their release plan is, what's coming up, instead of something that we have to struggle with. Yeah, I agree too. The fact that they are not talking that much of the headset one month before it's released, it's weird. I guess we'll see when users start to get it and then provide feedback about it. But, yeah, it's something strange around that. Yeah. And because we are starting to do mixed reality experience and we struggle also on our side to find the right headset to do a nice and comfortable experience for the user, it could be great that they come up with a solution for that, a solution for that. Because right now, the HoloLens 2 is great, but it's almost discontinued now. The Quest Pro is also discontinued and the camera see-through, pass-through were not that great. The XLR8 is also nice, but has its own issue too, and the processor is like the same as the Quest 2. So, to do some mixed reality experience, it's another layer that you need to add on top with shaders and video reprojection inside the headset. That costs a lot of performances. So, yeah, it could be great to have a nicer headset to do mixed reality experience for them now. Yeah, just about that. I get they created the expectation from the public with the Apple Vision Pro video and announcement. And right now, as you said, there are absolutely no device that is able to do that. So, we have clients that are waiting for us to develop something that looks like what they saw in the Apple Vision Pro. And it feels like kind of the same way, I don't know if you remember, the BMW AR video in 2015 when they showcased what augmented reality should be as a training solution. And we had at this time a lot of calls of people calling us and saying, yeah, I saw the video, can you do the same thing? And we were just explaining that it was fake. And right now, they won't have that. Even if the person in the video had these light, very cool AR glasses and saw everything that was in the motor, it couldn't be done because we didn't have the headset back in the day. And we still don't really have it right now. And it's a very frustrating time for clients and the public in general because they are waiting for something that they saw a few months back. And we are saying then that we won't be able to do this until maybe next year. And we are not sure of the quality of the headset yet. And once again, I guess this is a very missed opportunity for Lynx because if they had their headsets right now, they could be selling not billions but millions for sure. And it would be a very, very nice opportunity for them because right now, there is a void of device for this kind of experience. And we know that you have this kind of problem for special delivery in a few weeks. So, I don't know where you are right now. But yeah, we have clients that are waiting to do some mixed reality experience. But we can't do that at this point. And just I can't remember my second point. But it was about Meta and showcasing their headsets. And just to make a side note as well to another topic we saw is that we announced the Quest Pro death a few weeks back. And then the marketing team went back and say, no, no, no, no. You misunderstood. It's not what we meant at this time. And like two days ago, it just announced that the new Quest Pro will be done with LG to make something that looks like the Apple Vision Pro. So, once again, very strange strategy. Yeah, I can't remember what that is that you mentioned that we don't have any real communication about the Quest 3 right now. We had this leaky, not so fake, we don't know, opening of the headset. And that's all. So, the only communication or it was not a review. It was just an unpacked Quest 3, which was not really the case because it was already unpacked at some point. And we can see that it was prepared at some point. So, yeah, very, very strange communication. At this point, I talked about this a few times, but at this point, I don't really know if I can buy the Quest 3 because I don't know if it can answer my needs right now because we don't have a real reviews and the headsets is, yes, it will be on the market next month. So, very, very strange. Once again, is the headset ready or not at this point? That's all. Yeah, I mean, it could be a not really well-executed secrecy reveal that they are trying to do, like keeping everything secret, not showing off until the release date. It could be. But it could be also that they might have production problems. So, they don't want to have a lot of orders at the beginning because they're similar to Lynx. They will have issues producing. So, yeah, I think on my side, it's just like we don't know. Yeah. I'm still pretty excited by the Quest 3, I would say, if it delivers to its promise of being a good path through a lighter, more small-factor version. For me, it's really the depth sensor that will add much more for the room tracking, room recognition, not having to do the room preparation where you need to draw on your floor and draw where you don't want to hit objects. That's really something that is missing right now and that makes everything shift sometimes or not recognize your room easily. With the depth sensor, I hope it will solve all those issues because it's really frustrating to have the HoloLens, even the one, the first one, was better at positioning itself in a room than the Quest. So, and it has been released a long time ago, 2019. So, we are in 2023 and I don't have this kind of quality of room tracking yet. That's frustrating. So, that's really what I'm hoping for, that they solve those issues with the depth sensor embedded inside the unit. Yeah. I was just thinking, there is another video as well about the hand tracking. I don't know if you saw that. They were just announcing that hand tracking was as good as controllers and they were showcasing the difference, the latency between the movement with the controllers and the hand. And once again, I was a bit, yeah, it was strange because their showcase or their video were not that good as I, for my part, because they were showcasing that there were latency between the hand and the controllers. There was like, yeah, a few, not seconds, but a lot. Yeah, lots of milliseconds between this. And I thought, yeah, what are you trying to say right now to showcase? You're just proving that there is a latency between the hand tracking and the controllers. Very, very weird. So, as Fabien said, maybe it was done like on the corner of the table. Oh, yeah, it's a good feature. Just make a quick video and post it on the social network. But, yeah, not so controlled message. I didn't check to see if other people were thinking the same as us, but I guess. I'm professional. I believe that other people were like, yeah, you're just showcasing that you have latency. Maybe less, but still. Yeah, less, but still, you still have latency. And especially for a game like Beat Saber or other games like this that are requesting a high tracking level. Yeah, you can't do competitive gaming with this. So, very, very weird. And basically, we can see that they are communicating a lot. There are lots of news, lots of different information about what Meta is doing. But I think their biggest problem is the consistency or the main global vision, what they are trying to communicate about. Because for my part, I'm a bit lost. As Fabien said, the Quest 3 is still something that I'm waiting for. But I don't really know what I'm expecting anymore at this point. Will it be just a small improvement compared to the Quest 2 or Quest 3? Or will it be something that will be a big change? They are not building this waiting or high expectation that they should be building for something that is groundbreaking. Or like the Apple Vision Pro, they are building something so that in a year or two, people will be ecstatic when the headset is released and people will be like throwing dollars to get this at some point and maybe make a two-day line in front of the Apple stores to get it. And this is absolutely not what will be happening with the Quest 3. I guess at some point, we'll have the news that, oh, yeah, it's available at Best Buy if you want tomorrow. Okay, great. So, I'll get to Best Buy and get it. Once again, I don't think this is the best way for them to build up this expectation or maximize the number of users that could be getting the headsets at some point, which is their goal. They want to have a whole new big community at some point. And this is absolutely not what they are working toward for. And the best they can do is that actual users of Quest 1, 2, or Pro could be getting the new one. But I don't think that they will be bringing new users to the table with this kind of communication. And what do you think about the target? It seems to me like the target, like the user persona that will buy an Apple Vision Pro and someone will buy a Quest is maybe different, similar to personal use and industry that might go to, I don't know, Lenovo or some other brand more established into the industry level. So, yeah, hopefully for Meta, the Quest 3 will be like the Nintendo Wii of the VR headsets maybe. Yeah, but this, I guess, is you'll have to change once again the way of you using the headsets by connecting it through your Meta credentials or not, because this is a huge problem for professional. This is why they did the Quest Pro at some point for them to be able not to log with your Meta credentials. They are, I guess, they are targeting the main public and especially for games and casual use. However, once again, as it is probably the best headsets right now on the market for VR, professionals are getting them as well, and they are just bending the rules or trying to do something with this, as we did for years. The best headset was always the one targeted for main public and we had to change it or customize this to make it work for professional use at some point. So, yeah, just last point that Seb brought before the show is that finally avatars in Horizon slash Meta, they have legs. This is a huge announcement. I mean, I think this will be a revolution. It's a complete revolution. I don't know what to say about it. So, I will leave you the mic for commenting on that. Well, like you, like we discussed before the call, they released that a long time after other companies did that. And I think they are still not open to make it because you can only see your legs inside the mirror right now. You cannot see it when you look down at your feet because as there is no sensor that is capable of tracking your feet on the current headset, there is no way of getting an accurate position. And when you look at your own feet and they are not matching in VR, your real feet, it starts to get weird in your head. You start to feel weird. So, they are releasing it but not making it available for the personal user to look at themselves with their feet. So, it's interesting that they struggle in releasing that kind of features and they are now releasing it but restraining the way you can use it, I would say. Yeah. Just to give a bit of precision, this is in Horizon, right? It's on the world meta platform and then it will be deployed and available in the other games as it's just been released. It's not yet integrated on the application but it will be. Okay. So, yeah. I mean, when we saw last week that the preview of Horizon on mobile... So, on mobile, of course, you have the avatars, they have legs because it doesn't make sense not to have legs on the mobile device. So, it's maybe a balance between the two configuration. But yeah, it's... I don't know. I don't know what is so big about legs, what was so difficult. I could totally understand the perception problem that will happen for our own body. But for avatars, I mean, in VRChat, you have legs. Yeah. And this lack of leg was just a meme at some point for Horizon. People were making fun of the platform because everyone, every other platform has legs except Horizon. So, yeah, at some point, we know that looking at your legs, if they're not aligned, it's not comfortable at some point. But as every other platform, we're doing legs, misaligned legs, if I can add. And people were very fine with it. Or people were adding trackers. Like for VRChat, they are using the Vive trackers to add some better tracking of their legs. And when it's becoming a meme, I guess you have to make changes. Even if your idea was not so bad at the start, you have to make quick changes. And it took them, like, a year to add the legs. And they are not still available, as Seb mentioned. So, you made your point. But at some point, yeah, you have to adapt to what the public wants at some point. And maybe this is a whole problem for what Meta is doing. Because we talked about this, like, every week. This is not a hardware problem. We have an application and something that people can look forward to in VR world. And they have to understand that we need every day or, yeah, easy application and something that you would be willing to do every day for normal people to bring bigger users and make their community grow in the future. I don't know if you have anything more to add. No? So, it's a wrap for today. Thank you both for this great insights and thoughts about Meta. I guess we'll be doing the same in the following weeks. Because at some point, we will have the Quest 3 maybe in hands or in video or knowing what it will be doing.
