Welcome to episode 55 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! And what do we have here? Something quite huge by Meta, so I guess we'll be discussing this today. What do you think about it, Fabien? Yeah, so I think actually as an introduction, we can, I think, pat ourselves on the back and it's easy to do it with an insight, but I think we talked about that a couple of weeks ago. We said Meta is becoming the Android of VR and what happened today is kind of a first step into that direction. So yeah, there was an announcement yesterday that the operating system that is currently running on the Quest devices is open to external hardware vendors. So they are basically allowing other hardware manufacturers, like they already have partners with ASUS and Lenovo, to use the Quest operating system that is actually changing name. It's now named Meta Horizon OS. So they are removing the Quest brand from all the software that they are releasing. So the Quest app on the mobile phone is now named Meta Horizon and the Quest store is now named Meta Horizon Store. So I think, yeah, that's the first part of that announcement and I think it's interesting also to place this in the context of when it's happening. So it's after the successful, I think, release of the Vision Pro and it's just before the Google IEO conference where we suppose there will be an announcement of an XR device or an XR OS. So I think the context also is very strategic for Meta here. So that's the big introduction and I'm curious to discuss that with you guys. So let's start with you, Seb, as usual. Yes, thanks for all your analysis. It was, I didn't thought about the positioning and in time between the Google IEO and the release of the Vision Pro. But yes, something that is clear to us and to all the communities that the Vision OS make something really great with the fact that it's operating correctly with your iPhone and your Mac and it's easy to connect them both. Here, I guess the vision is to go also this way and have more easy compatibility between the headset, between the bigger market for all the gaming and maybe industry with more headsets using the same operating system makes sense for me. The developer will focus only on one operating platform, one way of coding their games. So that allows more games to be developed by a big brand because they don't spend a lot of time developing for one headset and it's different for each headset. So yeah, that's a nice move from them. We'll see if the company follows or they are keeping their own development on their side. Okay, so I guess it's my turn. Yes. I would like to talk first about the format. You mentioned the timing. Yeah, it's not supposed to be like an official video. It's Mark Zuckerberg recording it between two meetings with this little microphone and making some kind of sound check before. So it's always a bit weird, the kind of communication they are trying to do. It was kind of the same for their last announcement of Quest 3, I guess. And yeah, it's supposed to be like an amateur video, but just afterwards they have a huge presentation with a lot of animation and logos and stuff on. So it's not quite, it's always both of both worlds. It's very, really weird. I guess some people can find it cringy as well because, yeah. I don't know what kind of format they would like to adapt here. It's not a full one. It's always a hybrid one and yeah. But this put apart, I guess you answered my question on why did they just announce this as they would like us to believe, between two doors? Because it's maybe one of the most important announcements they've done in the past months or weeks or years, sorry. Why this as they are just doing a meta, it's MetaConnect in a few months or weeks. So the timing is very weird. But I guess you answered the question is more strategic one. Maybe they had rumors of what is coming up with the Google or other announcement in the upcoming days. So yeah, it's a last minute strategic call and it would justify why they did that. But apparently they are working on this for quite some years. He mentioned 10 years. So very surprising to see that it's, yeah, it's just announced on the social network very quickly. But it worked because it's everywhere now. If you are opening your LinkedIn, it's on every single pages. But yeah, very strange communication once again by Meta. I guess it's less mastered than what Apple can do. And it shows their lack of management of their communication here. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was, as you said, like very social network type of video with the mic and the like background subtraction, picture in picture kind of video. So yeah. One thing that struck me in the video and it ties to what you said, Seb, is exactly what their goal is. It's like, oh, there could be one headset dedicated to watch movie with very high resolution and one headset dedicated to fitness with like sweat resistant materials and one headset dedicated to gaming. And by the way, I think the Asus one is more gaming and the Lenovo one is more for like productivity and work. It seems to be like this. And also announced like an Xbox special quest. Like it was a bit strange to me. I guess this is the most important announcement is the Xbox one because it says that Microsoft is behind this as well. And I will reveal my theory behind that. But do you remember that once one Microsoft just released Microsoft Mesh and we had a big question about this, which was that Microsoft just canceled their mixed reality initiative as well as a 2016 initiative, whereas they had an open platform for different manufacturers to create different headsets for them to be able to support through Windows. So I don't know if it rings some bells here, but it's exactly the same. So I guess Microsoft just gave the key to Meta for this part, meaning that you are more advanced than us on the headset hardware part. So here is a concept. We won't be doing anything on our own, but we will be part of it. So they are just a player in this initiative. They are not the main leader anymore. And it completely matches the whole strategy behind that, meaning that Microsoft Mesh needed a whole environment or ecosystem of headsets to be able to work, and that's exactly what they are trying to do here. And just for the fun of it, Lenovo, Asus were two of the main players that were using Microsoft Mixed Reality as well. So it's just a continuity. So now we have all our answers, because it was very strange that Microsoft was just killing their Microsoft Mixed Reality suite, and nothing was there to be able to get the ball after that. And here it is. So we just have to wait a few months to have the answers. So everything is clear now. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. And it's a very good transition to another part of the announcement, which is about apps. So on the MetaQuest store, so now the MetaHorizon store, there was the apps that you can download, that you can see on the store. The review is very long, it's very complex. They have a lot of constraints for an app to be published. There was the App Lab as well. That was a bit hidden, and now it seems like it will be a very clear section in the store for independent developers to publish their apps more easily. So I think it's also very very good. And they kind of had to do this, I think, if they want to open the OS to more developers and more hardware. But yeah, kind of a bit like Google Play, I think. Which basically also, it's very interesting that in the video, Mark Zuckerberg says, oh, you could have Google Play as well if they are open to it. So yeah, this part was very funny. So what do you think about this world opening up onto more open distribution of apps? Yeah, I think it was a constraint, definitely. The Quest store is great, but there's not a lot of experience there. And for some learning experience or stuff like that, I think it's not even going through the whole validation from Meta. So having more experiences there, more easily deployable and shareable with your client or target audience, that's great. Yeah, I don't know how many times Mark Zuckerberg said the word open. I guess someone tried to count it, but it's a lot. And I guess people shouldn't be understanding this as we understand it, meaning that it's not open source. It's open to other manufacturers. And one thing that is, I guess, great is that, I guess, they realized that not a lot of people were using their Oculus Quest store right now. Most of them are using Steam or other platform for them to get their content. And they kind of listen what people are doing. And instead of having multiple platform, they are all gathering it inside this unified store. And I guess he mentioned that Steam should be supported. So I guess this is a great way for us to use the Quest, which won't be Quest anymore for very long. But I guess we are all MetaQuest users. And yeah, it's kind of irritating to have several platform where you have your apps and your games or whatever at several places. So the fact that we have only one market is, I guess, the best solution. And yeah, it's an open-minded set by Meta. And it's quite surprising because usually when you have these big companies, they try to keep the stuff in their own court. And yeah. When he explained the open world versus what Apple is doing, it was kind of funny as well. There are lots of different burns here and there in this little video clip. But yeah, it's comparison between the Meta Horizon OS and PC. At first, I didn't really understand it. You have to go through the whole video to understand what the Meta Horizon OS is. At first, I thought it was just an operating system. And then you can see that it's more an initiative or a platform for everyone to be able to develop their own headsets and be part of this unified app store. So the message is not clear at first, I guess, in the video, but it becomes it is completely revealed through the video, yeah. And speaking of Apple, so yeah, he kind of speaks about Apple, that they kind of won the battle on the smartphone. I think he's using this kind of words. But towards the end, I think he's using, I'm not sure he's using exactly spatial computing. Yeah, he's using spatial computing. Yeah. So that's also something interesting is they announced that they open, it's really not clear what it is, but they opened something for developers to build 2D experiences. So I think what they mean is spatial computing apps in the Quest platform. So on that part, I think Apple wins, you know, they managed to push the spatial computing paradigm into the Quest and into meta initiatives as well. So I think that's a win for them here. Yeah. The timing also is a win for all the other competitors because they are rushing it through a video clip instead of doing a proper conference. Seb? No, that's it. Yeah. And so one other thing is, and I think you mentioned it, Seb, a bit is, and I don't know, I forgot if it's in the video or in the webpage that they mentioned it, is the Horizon profile that you will have will of course be available on all the devices. It's a bit like if you are on Android and you just log in with your Google account and all of a sudden you have all the apps that are logged in with the same and you can find easily the same data. So it's basically the same that they explained about your avatar and stuff like that. So I think it's a good thing here as well for supporting multiple platforms. And as you said, Seb, switching from one headset to the other one and you don't have to restart from the setup from scratch could be nice. Just about that, do you think this strategy of having several different headsets is the right one? Do you want to have like a headset, a different headset in every single room of your house? I hope they are not doing the same mistake they did with the mixed reality headsets, for example, where Asus, Acer, Samsung, Lenovo, they were just doing quite the same headsets and the Samsung one had a better resolution, someone had better controllers, and it was just minor differences between all these headsets. I can't see now how they can have major differences in technical terms. I guess this is to have like the Microsoft mixed reality initiative. They all had like 500 bucks price tag between all of them. So those who had better resolution had less other features because they had to keep the price low. So I don't really get this strategy of having like an Xbox headset and a Lenovo one to work. And it's completely the opposite of the Apple Vision Pro Vision, which is you have one device for everything, meaning that you don't have any laptops, you don't have any screens, you just have one device for all, not games. They didn't show the game part that much, but yeah, having an anti-sweat headset doesn't make me buy this specific one. I guess I would just buy the foam for the headset I have for my work. And yeah, I find it a bit strange and maybe they are copying the wrong side of the Microsoft mixed reality initiative there. So I don't know where they'll be heading, but not a big fan of this. I think you're forgetting the initiative glasses system, which is completely different and which you can wear daily maybe to use on your daily life. But also when you are at home and you want to switch to either working environment and use the Lenovo one or two games with the Asus one, then it makes sense to have the same operating system, the same account that follows you. I'm okay with the single sign-on and the unified OS, but the hardware part itself, because they are showing different pictures at the end and they had like a green headset when they were playing Xbox and a green or red Lenovo one and it was really VR headsets. It was not like smart glasses or so, but maybe they are blurring the lines here. But the message is, I guess for mainstream people or whatever, it's really weird. I don't know. I didn't see the review or the reaction of less maybe experts or something, but what people are feeling about having different headsets for different use cases, I'm not sure it's the right way to get the main adoption here. Of course, for manufacturers, it should be the best, but I'm not sure it's the best for us. Yeah. So, on the device part, I mean, I'm a very bad example because I have an iPad, an iPhone, Mac, and the Appalachian Pro. So, this is to speak about the kind of usage, the smartphone to carry, the iPad to write or to watch movies, but maybe it's the vendor that will manage to build a modular headset. Maybe the core of the headset stays the same and you can have maybe a more comfortable band if you want to watch movies. You have the anti-sweat one to fitness and maybe one with additional controllers for games. I don't know. Maybe there is a door open for this kind of modular headsets now. And one thing about the hardware is the Horizon OS is very tied to Qualcomm, Snapdragon hardware as well. So, that's kind of a constraint that the vendors will have to adopt. Yeah. I don't know what kind of platform Lenovo is using, but maybe their headset is already ready for MetaHorizon OS. Yes, I think it's the Snapdragon, yeah. Seb, any words? No, I'm just thinking. But yeah, we'll see. Maybe it's because they released the video, like I said, between two doors. If they presented it with VR headsets and they're in between, that should be announced in 2025. And the smart glasses, making it a whole ecosystem of devices, it would have made more sense. But as they don't want to announce maybe one of their biggest new devices, like in this short video clip, they just presented the VR headsets, I don't know. But of course, I guess all these devices will be unified on this MetaHorizon OS. So yeah, if we look at the big picture, it makes more sense. But what they presented yesterday is not that clear or is not that efficient for us to have multiple headsets with just minor differentiation. Yeah. At Laval Virtual, I was able, like you, to try the Ray-Ban glasses. And like you, Fabien, I was not keen to use this kind of devices, but wanted to try it anyway. And after using it, I could, if the AI was more quick to answer and more understanding the environment and stuff like that, so having a bit more power deported on the phone to analyze the environment and behave and be more intelligent when I ask questions about what I'm seeing and stuff like that. I think that that would be quite nice. And that could be one way to have the DOS on a small carryable device that I would use daily and switch to a VR device or mixed reality device when I'm at home. That's really a use case that I would foresee using if the Ray-Ban model comes better and better with AI tools that are more usable, that understand really my environment and react to it. And then I see having the same OS for all these kind of devices make more sense because it would be much more easier to navigate through different kind of, if you switch model, because you prefer another design, then it's like when you switch phone, you can switch, you can use tools to carry all your data to your phone. It would be the same if they use the same OS. Yeah, like once again, as Fabien said, I guess Apple won this battle by showcasing how a real device ecosystem is working. So for manufacturers like Meta that don't have this whole range of devices, I guess their only solution is to open and make partnerships. And this is exactly what they did. And we know that it's way easier when you're alone to do this than where you have several partners. So I hope they will manage to get everyone on the same page. And maybe that's what happened with Microsoft and Mixed Reality 1, because after a few years, you see that the numbers of partners has just reduced very quickly. So maybe because the success was not there, or maybe their arrangement or contracts were not as good as they would have liked it to be. But yeah, we'll see. But yeah, once again, Fabien, you're right. Apple won. Well, and maybe Meta has moved their piece on the chessboard quite nicely today, or yesterday, because it's quite a bold move. And my perception is a good move, I think, for them. And maybe very curious to see what Google thinks of that and how they react. It's kind of funny to see that Google is a bit behind. Like we heard rumors of them releasing a headset. And then when the Vision Pro was announced, they delayed the release. And now Meta has announced not an open OS, but an available OEM OS. And they will announce something in a couple of weeks. So curious to see how they react. And Google is also supposed to partner with Qualcomm. So I'm very, very curious to see what happens and what they announce. Yeah, I guess it was last year when we said, as you said boldly, that Google is bad as hardware. So I don't think there will be much to showcase here, but I may be mistaken. But all the devices that Google released or tried to release, they never make a huge success. They were just like prototypes or R&D devices. Some of them were great, but I guess they can't manage these. And I don't know how they are doing this, but none of them is working. Despite maybe the Google phones, it seems something. Yeah, the Pixel 1. But if you compare this to what it should have been in the past, it's just a fraction of what they tried to do back in the day with the Nexus, I guess, and the whole environment as well. And I don't know if you can remember the holographic devices they announced last year, but it was just for the conference. It's now completely gone. Nobody is talking about this. So yeah, it's like the Project Tango and all these. They all disappear in the dark. So I'm not sure what the answer will be, but I'm not making a lot of hopes here. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see, I guess. I guess there will be rumors in a couple of weeks about what they will be announcing, so it will be on their radar. Well, if they want to get the space back, I guess they will have to do this kind of between two doors clip very, very fast. But I don't know if they are taking lessons from their AI communication because these past months and years, it was counterproductive for them to make this announcement and don't make the platform the platform be usable or testable by users. The users are waiting for something much more than what they are really releasing. I guess this mistake was made back in a day with the Google Glass and they are just keep repeating it through the years and they are making the same mistakes with AI. Every time they release something, their stock market is plumbing. So it's a very good sign of something that is not going their way. So we'll see. But yeah, maybe, as you said, the chess pieces will have to move quite faster than they wanted to. So we'll see. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see if they announce their headset with Samsung too, because there were rumors that they were working with Samsung on their headset, which should be a competitor for Vision Pro. Who was a part of the Mixed Reality initiative. So maybe they will announce the partnership with Metal Rays and OS. Who knows? Fabien, any last words about this? No, I think we did quite a good overview of what happens. So yeah, very curious to see what happens over the next weeks, months, years with this. Nice. So, Fabien, it's your turn. Yeah, today I wanted to talk about the 3DGS avatar system developed by Inuria. That's something that started to be available two months ago, this paper. And the idea is that you shoot a person with different cameras in a controlled environment, and you can get directly a 3D model animated of the person with a Gaussian splatting. And there is a wallpaper and a whole video explaining how to set up this kind of system. But this is one of the first results that I foresee being usable in our project, in terms of quality of what you get. They say that it's running at 120 FPS in a XR headset. So we were talking about having Gaussian splatting to static, but now with this kind of technology, using a rig with a lot of cameras shooting in high quality, this environment, it seems to be able to get quite quickly this kind of result. Using a big graphic card, a big NVIDIA graphic card, of course. Yeah, the result is awesome, but you have to imagine that she's in a box with hundreds of cameras around her. Yeah, but the relighting, the capability of relighting the skin and having this kind of shadow and results, even the physics and the fabrics, the hair, that's something a 3D artist works like a couple of months to have this kind of result. Yeah, sure. On the 3D modeling part, this is something that I guess we can't even do with 3D classic modeling or scanning. So yes, this is a great innovation here. I'm very surprised how they can do the detour, the contour of the person without any noise. It's really, really efficient. Sorry. So yeah, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, if you watch closely the video, you can see some vibration. I don't know exactly what word to use, but that kind of vibration around the contour. What I see as very interesting is also that company, Infinitualities, and the context in where they are using that. So Infinitualities business originally is motion capture. So they work for a very big movies, like I saw their work for like Roadrun, very like AAA Hollywood movies. And I think we talked about it quite a lot in the podcast over the past year is, I think we all see the application of Gaussian splatting into the movie industry. And this is happening. The movie industry is taking ownership kind of of the technology. And I'm really curious to see how they will apply this into AAA movies. I don't know if AAA movies, if it's for games, I don't know. Anyway, very big movies. And how the creativity that this technology can bring to director, you know, the point of view that you cannot have with a regular cameras. Yeah, super excited about that. For me, it's perhaps also mixed reality movies. The ability to have an actor reacting to you and having different videos that you place that is pre-recorded. But yeah, being able to to really have a storytelling that works in your environment or in specific environment, in museums or in space, in escape room or stuff like that. For me, that's what is really amazing. Most of the time when you see a 3D avatar in a VR headset, it's lacking a lot of reality. And with this, being able to rotate around the the character that you talk to and interact with him. Yeah, that's amazing for me. The Vision Pro opened up this kind of experiences, really mixed reality movies, another way of storytelling and delivering a movie to a user. As you mentioned, Fabien, the video industry has already taken this Gaussian splatting filming technology in hands, because I guess there are several music videos that are integrating Gaussian splatting. It's a bit rough because it's on the... I guess there is some delay between what is available now on the research side and what they are using on the movie production part. I guess what we said, it was like maybe one year ago when we first talked about Gaussian splatting and we envisioned the fact that it would be the new media for movies and video clips. So I guess the future is heading exactly where we were expecting it to be. So very interesting to see this all new, as you mentioned, said the mixed reality immersive movies or content. So yeah, very interesting to see what is coming next, but it's coming way more faster than I thought, personally, because to get this kind of result is very, very impressive in this very short period of time. Yeah, I guess the rig is impressive too in terms of pricing here. Yeah, we don't know their post-pricing time to get this. I guess it's not instant. There must be some work behind that. Definitely. And a lot of calibration. So that's it for me. If you want to take your part, yeah. Well, I didn't have any topic because I knew that the meta one would be a long one. So we are on the 45 minute time frame. So if you have anything to add but meta or anything else, this is the time. No, you're good? Okay. So that's it for today. We'll be here next week for another episode of Lost in Immersion. So have a good week and see you guys. Bye. Yes. See you.
