Welcome to episode 45 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. Hi guys, good morning and good evening for some. Just a disclaimer, we are sorry that we've been cancelled last week because we used a video of Apple and we had to cut a certain part of the video. We try to be more cautious about the Apple content that we share to avoid this kind of situation. So very sorry about this. And Fabien, you can start if you want. Okay, cool. Thanks. So today I have a couple of news around Meta and their communication around Meta for Work. So let's start with that. So it's a new video and a new content that was released over the week. Well, first, you can see it's a very funny video. You see how the users are putting the headsets. It's a very well done content. And they are showcasing one usage for each headset, which is interesting. Also, it's funny to see that they are only showcasing VR content and no mixed reality content. So they talk about learning, training with the Quest 3. They discuss creativity and design with the Quest Pro and meetings and collaboration with the Quest 2. So it kind of makes sense regarding each price tag of each headset. If just to do meetings, having a cheap headset makes more sense. And so, yeah, it was kind of interesting to see that they are fully pushing the usage of VR for Work at the same time as the release of the Apple Vision Pro. So it's interesting to put in comparison the two types of communication between the two leading companies. Well, Apple is not leading yet, but maybe they will. So yeah, that's the first piece of news that I wanted to share. And yeah, as a joke, I don't know if you would try to put your headset or remove it the same way, but it's not really easy. Anyway, Seb, what do you think about this metaphor work communication? First, I agree, it's not easy to put it with one hand like this. But yeah, it's the continuation of that. They seem to know and understand that they need to communicate on both sides, one for their game and the fun you can have with the headset. But now they are realizing that Work is a huge place where they can send maybe more advice. And with the, like you said, the Vision Pro being sold as a device that helps you with your daily work, they try to communicate around that too with a lower price tag, so it's much easier to join the community with this kind of headset. Cool, Guillaume, and just before, I want to say that they have a disclaimer, sorry, about the content. It says depicts animation with enhanced imagery, so they are clear about the communication here. Yeah, just first of all, very interesting to see that they are still pushing for the three headsets, not just the Meta 3. The Quest 2 seems to have its own place in this bundle or environment of devices. They are still pushing the Pro, which is not that obvious because of the price cut. We can guess that it didn't sell that much, but very interesting to see that they are keeping it in the lineup. Again, I think we can confirm that Meta's strategy is very VR-oriented, but we knew this. We've known this for a long time now, but you know how mixed reality came into the picture? It was one side feature on the Quest 2 just for the Guardian and for you to see the external environment, and it became the mixed reality part that we know now in the Quest 3. But showing this kind of communication, for me, it confirmed that for mixed reality, it's just a way for them to keep up with Apple, and it's not something that they are pushing very hard as they don't really have use case for this. So very interesting to see that. I've seen some spatial computing-like content at the end when they were showcasing a laptop and just at the end of the page, down, yeah, just a bit up. So they are showcasing the laptop and you can see your screen floating in mixed reality. So I think this is the only use case they are thinking about, I guess it's here. It's a very short display, but yeah, here. I guess it's mixed reality here, and I guess this is the only use case they are thinking about for work right now. So it's very limiting. And I guess this is why they are not showcasing the mixed reality part, because it's not that impressive. What do you think about this? Yeah, it struck me as well when I saw this page that, as you said, only this is mixed reality and everything else is VR. It's pretty strange because, so we love mixed reality here. So maybe we're a bit biased here, but there are a lot of usage where mixed reality can work well for work, for training, for maintenance and whatever. So there are a lot of use case. Maybe they think that the headsets are not ready, like technically not ready, which might be one option, but yeah, not sure why, actually. Seb, maybe you have some insights on this? No, maybe they don't have a lot of developers that have developed something nice that they can showcase, except the games, but in terms of professional use case with mixed reality, I guess they need real use case and get content from a specific company that did something nice that they can showcase on their website. I doubt they have any use case except meetings on their site. So yeah, that will be my guess. Like Sony and CMN, they have directly use case because they work directly for industry, Vario the same. They are just starting this kind of experiences and communication around using that for work. Yeah, they need to be in contact with a specific company that can provide what they did with the headset so they can showcase that. It's always a bit frustrating to see a giant company like Meta not able to get the talent or the knowledge they should have around them because, yeah, you said it, it's like VR. We know that for 20 years now, you have industrial and professional use cases in VR and AR. It works. You can have lots of return on investment using them and they are showcasing like nothing about this. It's very frustrating because you can have very simple use case that can be working very easily on the Quest 3. I don't know if they thought about this or maybe they don't have the communication level of the wow effect or whatever. But, yeah, it's very frustrating to see that they are just showcasing the spatial computing part or even in VR, it's a very simple training application they are showcasing and the meeting and the VR meeting. Yeah. Yeah. One thing also I don't understand in their communication, if you go down on your page, Fab, when they showcase the different use cases for the different headsets, they push the Pro as the best one for design and we know that the processor is not the most powerful one and maybe the better advantage of the Quest Pro is the controller that has cameras and can be used in maybe different situations for professional use case and the fact that you can track the eyes of the user and that's not what they showcase here. So, that's weird that they put the performance of the headset and say the Quest Pro is the best one to use for design when I think the Quest 3 is better, actually, and they don't mention what is really differentiating the Quest Pro with this, the controllers and the eye tracking. And also the fact that it's more open, so normally better for mixed reality. But and something I think is missing for a use case for businesses, business use cases, the way to have a way to remove the headset and just put it as a hat, you know, like. Yeah, flip it. Flip it like the Lynx. I think that's like the HoloLens 2 also. That's really useful when you can just lift up the headset and be with your associate, your partner in business to discuss and quickly jump back to the experience. Yeah, I think that's something missing for this kind of use case. Anything more, Fabien? No, that's it. Okay. So, Seb, you can go on. All right. Not a lot on my side today, but I wanted to showcase this experience where we can see real light, lighting, real environment, but also the 3D object. So, it's using basically a controller connected to a light and different kind of light also. So, you can change the way the light will behave in the 3D and add some shadow inside the directly the headset. So, it feels really magical and linked to the to the reality. I really, really like this effect. So, that's why I wanted to share it and I don't know if I don't have anything more to say about it, but what is your thoughts? Well, shadow is life. And so, we know this in our 3D environment. Once you add shadows and ambient occlusion and so on, it feels always more real. So, of course, it increases the presence and the immersion of the virtual object. So, yeah, everything that can provide this effect is welcome. So, the experience is on the Quest 3, by the way. I did not mention it yet. Okay. What about you, Pham? Yeah, I think it's really nice. I see a lot of opportunities of this kind of experience for, well, for, you know, location-based entertainment. I think location-based entertainment in VR had a boom in the last year or two, I think. I think location-based entertainment in VR had a boom, if I'm correct, in last year and will be more this year. But I'm curious to see what will be done in location-based mixed reality entertainment. I think there are a lot of really nice things to do. Yeah, I agree with Ford's feedback and, yeah, definitely. And here, just to really explain that, maybe it's not clear what I said, but this is a real light, lighting the real environment, and the 3D object is rendered in the headset with the pass-through, on top of the pass-through video, and the shadow is rendered also in the headset. So it gets, with the controller, it gets the position of the light, you specify the type of light you're using, and then, as you get the direction of the light, you can render the shadow of the object and the light in your 3D scene accurate to the real one. All right, so that was my presentation. So that was my first subject, and the other one is the new AI tool announced by Google for generating video from images and text. That's going forward, and it seems really nice and can be used for augmented art, for example, like they are showcasing here. So same, I don't know if you saw the news, and saw the quality, I don't know. It's not available yet, but it will be soon, so I will definitely do some testing to see how it looks. You have any thoughts? Yeah, well, since the last reveal or whatever of Google, I'm very suspicious of the real results they can get with the AI, especially with the same way that we don't have access to it when they are presenting it, so it's always a bit weird that you are showcasing something that is not available until we don't know when. But yeah, of course, it's way better than what we have now with Pika, for example, and them themselves are, when they are showcasing their AI, they are presenting the best results they can get, and once you are trying it for real, it's really, really hard to have something that makes sense. It's, you have the same kind of results you had with Midjourney, like two years ago, with those deformations and some things that are not where they should be. You can have like five or ten frames that are right, and the last one are just all messed up. So I'm very surprised that they could get these kind of results, given that on the other AI technology that they provide, they are not that advanced. So I don't know if they are investing more on the vision part and less on the LLM and Gen AI. It could be. They chose their battle, and it could be this. But yeah, still, if you can try it, you can trust it, so we'll just have to wait. I agree. Yeah, Fab? Yeah. Yeah, I agree with the, as you mentioned, with the Gemini video, where it was obvious that, well, it was not obvious, but they kind of hide the fact that it was accelerated and edited. So here it's obviously edited, so at least that's a plus. But yeah, again, very curious to see first how they will release it, because for now, except maybe they will release it in BARD, because for now, most of the AI tools that Google has released are through APIs, but not really like open, like TiltDpt, or Majorni, or Pika, as you mentioned. So they're kind of staying in that Google Cloud API stuff, except for BARD. So I'm kind of curious at how we will be able to access that as well. Yeah, we'll dig into that. And that's it for me. Okay, so I will talk about Microsoft that announced that their Microsoft Mesh is now available for everyone that has Microsoft Teams. So you should have, I guess, the latest version and activate the proper plugin. It's a natural way, because they introduced Microsoft Avatar last year. I tried it, and to be honest, it didn't feel very interesting, because the avatar was just there to replace your face, and there was not any face tracking and so on. You had to choose your own emotion. And yeah, it was kind of gimmicky. You just use it for five minutes, and then you forget about it. And now this avatar makes sense, because it would be your representation at the virtual avatar in the Microsoft Mesh. So let's dig it a bit more. The best days. Meaning that all the headsets that they released from 2015 to now as mixed reality Microsoft compatible will not be compatible anymore, meaning they won't be recognized by Windows anymore. So you won't have this immersive room where you had access to your apps and so on. So I guess the only way of using these headsets will be through SteamVR now. So very interesting, or I don't know. Interesting to see that they are releasing a VR application, and at the same way, they are completely destroying their mixed reality initiative, which I thought was a good thing, because those headsets were very easy to connect. You just have the HDMI and the USB, and I'm still working with this as a debug device, because they can flip, and the connection is very easy, the tracking as well. Of course, the quality is not there, but as a working device, I always think it was a very good choice for debugging and just quick development. So this is the one thing I wanted to share. And the second one is that it shows that Microsoft is still working in the VR field, which was not obvious. There was a lot of layoffs in their immersive branch and AR branch as well. We still don't know if HoloLens will have a future or not, but by reading this, it shows that they are still interested in the VR. They presented it as a metaverse for work at some point, but I guess I'm not talking about this anymore. So yeah, what do you think about this? And just a quick review. They are using a bottomless avatar, which is funny, because Meta had a lot of issues with this, but apparently Microsoft can, and nobody will say anything about this. Yeah, I was about to make the joke as well. Where are the legs? I saw as well that... ... like allowing almost all the platforms and all the different actors to have their apps available on Quest. So they have workspace, but they also allow Microsoft to have their teams and mesh. I guess the question is, and I don't know if mesh will be available on the Apple Vision Pro. But it's kind of interesting to see how, after a lot of different explorations for a lot of factors, my guess is that kind of like starts to settle down and they are each finding their own area where they are and they want to push through. So I guess we'll see how 2024 unfolds and how the adoption as well of Microsoft Mesh is, because it's not available only on VR headsets. You can go on it. Yeah, that's where they are clever, I think making that available through different device. That's where it makes sense. I don't have all the community that would want to wear the headset or have the time to wear the headset for the meeting. So mixing the two can make sense. I will be keen to look into how it looks when you join it through your desktop PC or your Mac or your phone, plus someone that is wearing the headset to check out how the experience feel, in fact. And I guess for Microsoft, they now have a huge market for the HoloLens 2 in the business. So they are still selling headsets, they still promote museum experiences. So they are pushing this headset to be kind of everywhere. And my guess is that now they secure and a lot of people are using the headset that try for the next version to build up on that. That's what I would do if I were them and bring then an headset that really add a lot from the previous version. So it makes sense to change it to get the best gen version when it's available. And I don't know if they plan also to make, but I guess they are to make the Office 365 available through all the devices too. So all the app converted to all the headset and also maybe change the way you interact with them in VR or in mixed reality. But we'll see how they move forward, yeah. And also with Copilot, we probably had the AI part of it inside of the experience. So, yeah. My question is, how do you use... You know, because when you had the Microsoft mixed reality headsets, they were still plugged in on your PC or laptops and just like this kind of use case were great because you had your teams open and just select the immersive, put your headset on and then you were immersed. Now, with the headsets available on the market, it would be more painful, I guess, because if your Oculus is plugged in, it should be plugged in to get this linked relation between your teams and the headset. So you have a quest plugged into your PC, you have to go through the Oculus interface and it's way less, you know, the UX is worse with a headset like Meta compared to what you could have with the mixed reality headset. It's really weird that they just deactivate this as it was very efficient for this use case, especially. I don't think they had any device manufacturer that was providing any more headset, any update on the other headset. So maybe... But Samsung were doing the Galaxy and HP as well with the reverb. Like the latest iteration is like two years ago with higher resolution and better performances. But still, yeah, it's just two years back. So it's not that far. It's not like they just released the 2015 and then it stops. I had clients that are still using these headsets and now they are questioning the way they could work with this as Microsoft support is now stopped. They're a very weird strategy unless they are... I don't think they'll be releasing a new lineup of headsets. They are just focusing on the application now, but the way that they would like us to use it is not compatible anymore with what the headset can do. But yeah. Something that I'd like to mention about what you were saying on the practicality of using a Quest or a headset for accessing mesh or anything else. Actually, this is, I think, where Apple will win the battle very easily because already from a Mac, if you have an iPad, you can just transfer a window to your iPad. And this is actually what was shown in the video that we looked at last week is from your Mac, there will be, hopefully, it seems to be, sorry, a way to push a window to your headset. So, this is where having such a closed and linked ecosystem for Apple is where they will win the battle on user experience. Yeah. Yeah, you'll be able to airdrop any content from one device to another because they're all owning all the environments. So, it's easier for them to do this. But yeah, of course, on the UX part, it's the best way of doing this. Okay. So, do you have- Just one last news. I saw that the way you can record 3D videos with your iPhone and watch it on the Vision Pro, it seems that they opened the ability to look also at the video on the Quest 3. So, it will be available soon. So, that's a nice move because your content is not only available to be watched on the Vision Pro now. So, that's a nice move from Apple to open that to other headsets, I think. So, that's it. That was my... I don't know if you want to react on that. No, it's surprising that they are willing to open. But yeah, it's a good thing. Fabien, Seb, any last words? No? No. No? Okay. So, it's a wrap up for today. And we'll see you guys next week for another episode of Lost in Immersion. See you guys next week. Bye. Bye.
