Welcome to episode 34 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. Hello, guys. Fabien, if you want to start, please. Hello, thanks. Today I want to talk about this report that I'm currently sharing, which is called the State of Virtual Brain Experiences. A bit of grain of salt, I would say, this report is created by a company called Geek. It's a for-profit company, and they are doing analytics for virtual experiences, Roblox, Metaverse, and things like that. But there are really interesting things in that report, and I would like to discuss that with you. First, a number that was actually pretty impressive to me is that Gen Z are actually spending roughly half more time on a platform like Roblox than on TikTok or YouTube or other platforms like that, on an average of up to two hours or more per day on Roblox. So that was a quite shocking number to me. And then if we go into, again, the brands that are most liked by Gen Z. So it's pretty small on the screen, but there's Nike, Gucci, Adidas, H&M, Zara. So it's nice to see, and we will see it afterwards, that a lot of these brands are actually very present on virtual worlds, like quote-unquote metaverses, like Roblox, Fortnite, and other platforms like that. So something that is interesting is we don't know if it's a correlation or a causation, of course, but still, these brands are really present, as you can see here. So a correlation between most liked brand and the number of activations that they have on virtual platforms. On that slide, they explain how games are also evolving and how Gen Z actually prefers and spends more time on platforms and games that have some kind of user-generated component, like Minecraft, Roblox, again, all of these platforms that I will say the name a lot today. They are platforms where you can create your own world, you can customize it, you can customize your avatar, depending on your personality and your preferences. And this seems to be really, really liked by Gen Z. And so if we go a bit further, so I talked a lot about Roblox. We can see our beloved VRChat here on the top chart, Fortnite, of course, and Spatial, which is also a platform similar to VRChat in a sense. I think available on the web and the Quest devices as well. Interesting to see is that there are not many Web3 platforms here. I think Decentraland and Sandbox are the first ones here. And it's nice to see Meta Horizon World to be in that chart, since we don't really know how successful it is. And it's really open in a very few number of countries. And then we start to see some really interesting things here, how the evolution of brand experiences is really starting to peak. Actually, roughly at the end of COVID, beginning end of COVID. So maybe there is an effect to explore here about how the brands are actually thinking more about reaching out to users out of the retail spaces. So that's very, very interesting. And to me, this is one of the most interesting slide is this. A lot of virtual experiences, AR, VR, and things like that for brands are really like one-shot experiences that are maybe open during the month or during a few, a couple of weeks or even a couple of days. But here with these virtual worlds, we have persistent experiences. It's not something that's just a one-shot, it's just stays open. Like the, I think the Gucci town in Roblox. It will be soon, one year and a half, maybe two years that it's open and that stays open. Of course, with evolution. So, and then there are, yeah, that slide is interesting as well. We see that it's kind of obvious here, fashion and food and beverage brands are the most present on this kind of world. So it's really interesting to me that we are seeing this merging between advertising on the side, branding and gamification and games into maybe a new kind of, I don't know what to call it, gamified advertisements, maybe. And so that was really the takeaway for me on that report. It's that I don't know if the curve will keep going as it is going here, but I think it's a really good insight. And there are a lot of other slides in that report, but this was, this were the most interesting to me. So, yeah, I'm curious to know what you think and if you have some ideas, maybe how we relate this to the changes in what happened this year with a lot of VR devices and MR devices that were released. Knowing that also all of these experiences are also accessible from web application or mobile. Seb? Yeah, it's amazing that people, the amount of players playing World of Warcraft, Obsessed, and even Animal Crossing, which is a very old game on the Nintendo platform. And, yeah, I don't have a Gen Z that I know around me, so I haven't seen that move into that space. I think I had someone that was close to me that was young and was following that trend. But, yeah, I'm amazed at this number. I really need to dig into what is feasible on that platform to check it out. Thanks for bringing that to me. It's a heads up for me. Yeah, it seems like Gen Z are really looking at self-expression and shared experiences. This is, I think, one of the trends of that generation. And we can see that through the type of experiences that they like. So, more involvement in creativity, personalizing themselves online. Yeah, that's interesting. And also, the thing that is great about this platform is that it's available, like you said, on a really old device. That is a strong force of this platform. Yeah, and what about you, Guillaume? Yeah, I guess this is the whole view that we need to have about Gen Z. You mentioned it just a few seconds ago. I guess the whole thing is based on content creation. We know that influencers and content creators are now one of the most liked professions for Gen Z. And, of course, those kind of professionals will prefer content platforms that allow them to create this content and create new videos and create new posts. So, of course, those platforms are put forward and liked by this generation. Because when they are not playing Roblox, they are watching videos about Roblox. So, this is the whole universe around this Gen Z generation, I guess. And this is why some platforms like Roblox, we didn't really understand the fame at some point because it was blocky, not very beautiful. But this whole creation part makes it what it is now for this generation. And I just have some numbers to add to this study that you are showing that the latest evaluation is that Metaverses could be worth 900 billion by 2030. This is a company named Baden Company that are putting this number. But as always, we should be very cautious because we know that Citibank or McKinsey, they predicted that this Metaverses would be worth like 5 trillion. So, those are very huge numbers. We know that these estimations have been in the wild for quite some time. I guess VR should be like 500 billion right now. But we know that it's not the case. We can see that there is a trend, especially with Gen Z, spending a lot of time with this platform that could be seen in VR. We knew that when Roblox and Meta made this partnership, the idea was to bring this community to VR. I'm not sure right now that this is the case, given the selling numbers of Quest 3. If this action was successful, I guess the Quest 3 would have had better numbers right now. So, maybe those who were using VR already are now using VR more often because of Roblox. I guess this is one hint we can give or one thing we can suggest at this point. My main question here is that, does the Gen Z generation continue on this path of creation and using this platform? Or are they growing older? Maybe they will change their technology use with this. It would be very interesting to see in the future if Roblox is growing with its community. Or by getting older, those people are not interested anymore and are switching back to more classical. As I'm saying it, I'm not very sure about this. Because they grew up with this creation and this way of thinking and using new technologies. So, I guess it will be evolving, not maybe Roblox, but other forms, maybe more mature platforms. So, we'll see what will be done by this generation of developers. Because they will be developers at some point. Well, some of them will be developers and they will be creating a new experience. So, it will be interesting to see what they'll be doing with this. I think you're raising a very interesting point. We can see that with Facebook, that had a lot of users. And since some users went to Instagram, Twitter, the usage went down. And the persona of the average Facebook user has changed. And yeah, I think it's a very good point. Maybe this will change for Roblox and the other platforms as well. One name that we didn't mention yet is the Rec Room. And I mention it because they were mentioned during the Apple Vision Pro release conference. So, it's interesting to see that. Obviously, they are at the top as well. Yeah, anything else on that topic? Yeah, I understand the fact that the player wants to play this kind of game. I don't know how that piece perceives the brands' experience inside of that. And how they are spending money on those brands. And how there is a return on investment for the brands. I would like to see the creators' numbers. I don't know any way to get those. Yeah, it's not mentioned here in that report. So, I don't have the numbers. But yeah, it's interesting to see that. I've seen a few articles about that. That the virtual shopping also translates to retail shopping. And actually, I've seen this week that I don't want to say a mistake. It's Nike or Adidas that did shoes first in virtual. And now they are doing it in real. So, it's funny to see the link back to retail. And is there really some customization available in VR? And then you can have it printed or customized for you and available in shop? The one I've seen is really one model. That would be great, yeah. Okay, so maybe Seb, do you want to present your topic? Sure. Do you see my screen? In just a few seconds. Yes, we do. All right. So, I have two posts about GoSharp Splatting being used here in augmented reality. So, not with a phone, but with a PC and a Vario XL3. So, render on a PC with a high graphic card. But, yeah, the results, as we say every week, start to be really amazing. The scale of the person is great here. And you can see that because they use the Vario XL3, they have the ability to mix the real environment with the avatar. Mask the user so we can see him in front of his own character that he has come. So, that was the first one. Now, the second one is the use. This time in mixed reality on the PS3. So, seeing it in real-time, being able to scale, position the model that you have scanned outside. So, we start to see the use in real-life use case for the GoSharp Splatting. I don't know what is your reaction on that. To me, it's really nice to see this on mobile platform. So, the Quest 3, as we mentioned last week and over the past week, that one of the biggest potential success factor and improvement on the Quest 3 is the chipset. And, I mean, if that chipset allows this kind of rendering, I mean, the kind of technology to be used on the Quest 3, that's really a great improvement. What about your game? Yeah, I guess the main innovation here is that by bringing GoSharp Splatting to Unity or Unreal, I don't know what engine they are using there, but as it is, as I'm using Unity, I know this is considered as a game object. So, even if it's a point cloud behind that, we know that, we see that we can manipulate and work with it as it is a real object. Because just as a reminder, there is no mesh for this. So, it's very interesting that we can bypass this limitation of not having a mesh by just moving it around because of the ability of the GoSharp Splatting to be compatible with real time. So, though they're small objects, I'm not sure it would work with bigger ones, because it would drain, it would take a lot of power to make it work, because they are, well, refreshing the point cloud very often. But yeah, very interesting. I was working on this. So, maybe we have a demonstration on this next week. But I made a person scan with GoSharp Splatting, which is very convincing as well. Maybe even better than the one we've seen here. The main issue I've got by scanning a person is for the scanned person to be still the whole process, especially on the face, because once you are moving it a little bit, it will give you a deformed face or, you know, as it is, adjusting to all the pictures you've taken is still misaligned. You will have, at some point when you're turning, you will have your face deforming a bit, which is not ideal. But yeah, very interesting, still a lot of posts those last weeks about GoSharp Splatting. So, very, very interesting to see that Mixed Reality is entering the room as well. I think for a small product, that would be an amazing improvement. I scan t-shirts, clothes, and I get a real texture that is tough to get. And yeah, doing that very quickly with a setup with multiple cameras. I saw someone doing that with an AT GoPro setup around him and doing a scan of him on his couch. The GoSharp Splatting was kind of amazing. And he did that with one frame, so with the same model of cameras, so we don't have any distortion or anything. So the result was really great. But yeah, doing that with a phone and moving around with someone being still in the middle, I guess that's tough. Yeah, I think that the GoSharp Splatting technology is giving a new life to those setup, rigged setup with a lot of cameras. We knew that they use that for 3D scans and volumetric, but it was not ideal because of the result of volumetric and photogrammetry, which needs a lot of post-processing to make it work. Especially if you are doing furniture scans. I know a lot of manufacturers doing this to their collection. And it's a lot of work behind that to get this 3D model usable for them. So those kind of rigs with tens or thousands of cameras synchronized all together, it's a blessing for this kind of technology because, as you mentioned, it's a one-shot and you'll get a very nice 3D object after that. Just one last thing. I think the Quest 3 and the Quest version are the only ones making it compatible with Vulkan rendering, in Unity at least. I guess that allows a lot more performances because the particles can be rendered on the GPU. So I think that's the trick to make it work. So if you look into it, you can look into the Vulkan rendering. Okay. The other subject was the fact that Qualcomm released at least the Stuffed Background Spaces SDK for its development. So now the Link CL1 and the Lenovo VFX will have that, I hope, soon. Because that's missing on both devices. So you are not able to ensure objects in your environment right now. For the Links, you need to use picture tracking. But for the Lenovo, there is nothing. There are only slabs and you can't save your position of objects and reload them right now. So that will allow that. And also, they are announcing the compatibility with a mobile device, so a multi-duty application to sync the onshore that you have set up on your device, on your Excel device, but also being able to reload the onshore with your mobile device. So that's kind of a great move. We need to see how it will be implemented and how great it will be compared to the other solution, the LPE for HTC Vive and the Quest system. So we'll see when it's available. But it's great that it's released because it was really missing on both devices. Any thoughts on that? Well, nice to see that there will be some improvement. On the global note, we can see that now devices are not stuck in one state. This is very fortunate that all the components can be upgraded afterwards. I see just in my topics as an opponent that sometimes they need to do some improvement. And it's very, very nice to see. Fabien? Yeah, not much on that topic. I'm really curious to see the quality of it and how easy it is to use. But yeah, it's great to see that. And I really like the compatibility with mobile. Because I think I mentioned that before here as well, but I'm a really strong believer of multiplayer experiences where one or more people have a headset and the other can participate with their mobile phone. And having this kind of technology would be very helpful to create this kind of experiences. Okay, great. So I'll jump to my topic, I guess. I had the last one, just about the Chris. Oh, yeah, sure. You have three of them. Sorry. The WebXR experience on it, the spatial fusion experience, which is working really great. It was not working at all on the Quest for the CPU was too low on this one. But yeah, the experience on the Quest 3 is really smooth. There is collision of particles inside your own environment that you have scanned before. And you can see that at one point it replaced your own environment with some, like you were in the spaceships and you really have to interact with it. And yeah, like I said, the experience is smooth. It's placing the object correctly in your environment automatically without you to place anything. So it recognizes your own space where you are and scale the object. So everything feels like it's fitting your environment. Yeah, I think that's kind of amazing to see it play on the WebXR. So far, we don't have tested yet, but we advise you to test it to see how it looks. The rendering is still simple. You can see the fact that it's not a high poly model, but the shader they applied to it and the whole experience looks really great. And the interaction that you can have with the environment is great. Cool. Yeah, we'll try it. And I hope that at some point Apple will open WebXR just not only for developers, but just as by default on the Vision Pro. That would be amazing. I guess we all agree that WebXR will be one part of the global adoption of VR. Using it, you know, the bridge between the classical or maybe the new web and VR is the main goal here. I've been working with WebXR for quite some years, and now we have seen that we are able to display things that are interesting and we can work with them. You mentioned the graphics. Of course, this can't be as beautiful as a standalone application, but with this kind of rendering, I guess we can do a lot of things already. Yeah, because it's mixed reality, you can focus on a smaller object inside your environment and not completely replace the whole environment. You can play with that and get more performances on smaller objects. It started to be usable. Before, even with Quest 4, it was not working at all. It was very slow. Here, it's smooth. The tracking of the hand and the controller are great. I'm keen to see if someone is able to do a mask of the hand, so to see your hand in front of the object, like they did on the app. I tested it on the app myself, and it's working great with the Quest 3. I would say even better than what I saw on the Vario accessory, because it's more of a 3D model that goes on top of you, so it's smoother on the border, rather than on the Vario, where it's really a mask, the light of your hand. So there is a lot of aliasing. Here, it looks better. Here, it looks better. Okay, so I'll do my topics now. So, here we are. The thing that I've been seeing... ... Because, just as a retrospective, we knew that the Quest 1 was two and a half hours, maybe three hours at some point. Then the Quest 2 was more like two hours-ish, and the Quest 3 is more like one hour and a half, and two hours of intensive use. So those headsets, the Quest 2 and Quest 3, they need external battery, if you want to use them at an extensive time. So they found the solution with the Quest 2. You had some specific headsets, headbands, sorry, headstrap. That allows you to switch the battery during your games. And what they found out is that those solutions are not working anymore with the Quest 3. They tried all the different sorts of straps and batteries that are available on the market. The conclusion is that the Quest 3, the Quest 3 is too thirsty in energy. When you are putting the battery, it will shut down, even if your battery is still at half capacity. So it's very weird. It's just that there's a conclusion to this, is that the electrical debit is higher on the Quest 3. All those batteries and solutions that we had for the Quest 2 are not giving enough energy at this higher debit. So even if you are using cable directly plugged into a wall, you can hope to keep your charge at the same level. But if you are doing intensive application, then it will go down as well. So I guess Fabien already mentioned that it was very long to be charged. And apparently it's very hard to make it stable in energy. So to this date right now, there is no solution for you to use it for six or seven hours. You will have to put it down and charge it the classical way. Other thing that have been reported is that the Elite strap that is sold by Meta, they have a lot of malfunction or they're just getting broken at some point. So lots of people use them for three intensive days and it's just broke. So the main idea here and the conclusion about the community is that it's very... Well, Meta is working on a solution right now. They are trying to see how they can solve this issue. However, it's still very damaging that when you are releasing your new product, there are those kind of issues, especially for maybe not for the mainstream user that are using it as a 30 minutes or one hour entertainment, but for the hardcore VR community that are using VR headsets for intensive hours, it's a very strong step back and people are not happy with it. They are really living it as a very big issue because they can't play as long as they would like to, as they used to with the previous headset. So we'll see what can be done with this. Maybe some kind of new batteries or new straps, but once again, people that invested in those hoped to make it work with their new Quest 3 headset. So we'll see what the community say. But right now, there are some issues with the Quest 3. So I don't know what's your opinion about this as MetaQuest users. Did you have the same kind of issue? It's not great news. Right now, I'm doing some development on my Quest 3. It's always plugged, so I don't have any issue with battery life. But definitely for events, that is not great news. I know for the HoloLens 2, we had the same issue for the trance we developed for museums. We had to find a way to have a set of 28 sets always on for the whole day with a lot of person coming in. So we found one battery that was able to charge the headset and not drain power from it. So ready to be able to keep the headset at 100% and only have the external battery drain down. So it was a non-car battery, and we had to measure exactly what the battery was draining with a tool that we put in between to really measure the amount of battery that was consumed. And I saw another news about the microphone that was even worse than the Quest 1. So I did not test it yet, but that's also bad news because if you want to use it for events, you need to put an external USB-C microphone, Bluetooth things, because otherwise you get some delay. So I guess that will also drain some battery and adding that on top of the battery, that's going to be tough for events to use that. But we'll see if they improve that system. That's all the time. Thank you. Sometimes they cut me off. Okay. Just another thing I would like to show you here is that people are using the Quest 3 as the Apple Vision Pro would like it to be used, meaning that they are using it as an everyday life device and doing chores and cooking and so on. So apparently it works. I guess it's not ideal, but it's fun to see that people are embracing the way that those devices will be used at some point. Yes, it's really fun to see. I saw people doing bike with the Quest 3 or even going outside. I wonder if it's just for fun and to be on the buzz of the Quest 3 or if it's a usage that will actually persist. Yes, I saw this one. For me, I'm not sensitive to motion sickness, so I will let Seb speak about this. Yes, when I'm moving around with the Quest 3, I kind of get dizzy sometimes, particularly when there is some gesture in front of the camera. That's definitely affecting me. So moving around like that, I'm not sure I would be comfortable with that yet. Doing it at home and displaying things in front of me without my hands is okay, but as soon as I look at my phone or something like that, I need to stay still. I can even close my eyes for a bit to wait for the distortion to adjust and then look at it and move around my head afterwards. But yes, it's not yet comfortable, definitely. I wanted to share also something around that, about the video that was shared with the user of AI with the Ray-Ban glasses done by Mark Zuckerberg, where he asked the AI to give him advice on how to make a specific haircut. I'm not sure if you saw that. Yes, that's kind of a nice use case to be able to ask your glasses some questions. So there is no multivariability, like we said, but it's only an AI interface with a microphone where you ask your question and it gives you advice. And you can shoot a video on what you're asking, what it looks like and what you were looking at at the time. Yes, it's globally interesting to see that those devices are entering slowly, but surely our everyday life, there's still the form factor that is, I guess, not ideal once again. But people understood what they are meant to do, so they are trying to, but we know that those are not ready yet. Fabien, please. I'm sorry, one question. So the answer from the AI, is it seen on the glasses or is it like voice? No, it's audio. There is no screen in the glasses, it's only cameras and a microphone connected to the phone, I guess. Connected to the AI system. You have directive audio inside the glasses branches. So just like we've seen on the HoloLens, for example. So people that are around should be able to hear at some point, but not that much. Okay. Yeah, I mean, these glasses have been released for a couple of days or a week now. So I think it will be interesting to see, similar to what we just saw for the Quest 3, how users are starting to... And the smart glasses, meaning that at some point, those two devices should fusion or merge to create this everyday life device. You should see that it described what the Ray-Ban glasses can do and not at this point. We'll check it out. Great. So do you have anything more to add for today? No? So, okay. So it's a wrap up. Thank you guys for this episode and we'll see you back next week for new adventures. Thank you guys.
