Hello! Welcome to episode 6 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! Just one point to do a little follow-up regarding what we discussed last week. Here we are. Sorry for this. I found this on LinkedIn. This is Brandon Spiegel, a specialist in VR in the healthcare field. He showed this little graph showing the occurrence of the word virtual reality in scientific papers through the years. We can see that in 2023, there are 3,000 plus VR mentioned in the healthcare scientific papers, which I think is a good thing regarding what we discussed last week about VR and healthcare. If you want to add something about this, are you surprised or do you think this is what we discussed? Yeah, I think it's a good thing indeed. I would be curious to know a bit more about the topics and why we are seeing this more and more. But yeah, I think it's a good sign. It's great that they start to use this technology. It seems to help for a lot of different things. Yeah, so this was just for the introduction. You can present your topics now, Fabien, please. Okay, thanks. So what I want to talk about this week with you guys is Apple and maybe a potential headset that is supposed to be released this year. So we know now that the Apple Developer Conference will be held early June the 5th. So the hype is growing and a lot of people think that the headset will be potentially released, at least announced or previewed. We don't know during this conference. But at the same time, there are a lot of analysts that start to be skeptical of this headset, at least of the success of this headset, because of the price. It's remote to be around 3k USD, which is quite expensive. And the multiple delays that they seem to face and also like the general public acceptance of having and using VR headsets. So, yeah, I think they are both at the same time a growing hype and growing concerns about this headset. And on top of that, something that I found, an idea that I think is interesting for them to have a real difference between all the other headsets. So there are technical things that they could do and also software experiences that they could offer. And we know Apple because of its ecosystem of apps as well on iOS and on Mac as well. So I was wondering, is there a way that they could have, they could translate this concept of apps, but for mixed reality, like an app for your home that you can control from your headset, an app for a kind of, you can install apps in the real world. You could install an app on your home, you could install an app on your garden so you can monitor the garden, you know, this kind of experience. I think there are a lot of, still a lot of technical issues with that, but I was thinking it's a good idea and maybe they will do that. So yeah, that's the two ideas that I wanted to share and I'm curious to hear what you think. Let's start with you, Guillaume, maybe. Yeah, thanks. Well, I have a lot to say about this. I'm sorry. So first of all, did you see the leak about the technical specification of the headset? They are talking about carbon fiber for the headset itself, for the weight. It would be 4K per eye. The battery would be on the hip. You can't use your prescription glasses with it, which I think it's going to bother. And as you said, one thing Apple is not known for is game. They are very bad at gaming. And I think that the very interesting part with these glasses is that what will they propose as an application for these as it won't be game, of course. So, they are talking about something called co-presence, which would be like a naval teams or Zoom for you to speak with people through 3D avatars. So, I don't know what we can think about this. And there would be a 3D creation application, something like the HoloLens presented back in the days when you can put some AR objects in front of you in AR. You can edit film as well using your hand motion. So, they are mimicking the movie. Minority Report? Yeah, Minority Report. But we know that editing a full movie with your hand, you will be tired before finishing your editing. But why not? Confirmed price of 3K. You said it. And one thing that I found interesting, there will be like a throttle, little wheels that you can turn from one side to another to phase from the real to the virtual world. So, maybe they are doing what I thought. This is meaning that their health set will be doing VR and AR as the VR headset, the VR Vayner they bought like seven years ago. And I had some leak, internal leak as well, saying that they won't present the headset on June, but on August for public release. You could buy the headset before the end of the year, so it should be released September or October this year. Because they have some internal issue and they don't think they are ready yet. And as I said, they want to do the iPhone effect, which could be very difficult regarding the economic situation. People won't have kind of money to spend in this kind of headset. And this is one thing that they found out with the PSVR2 as well. They are selling as not as good as they want it to be. And the thing is because of the economic situation, people can't afford to spend 600 or even more at 3K for entertainment. So, sorry for this long speech, but you can give your opinion about this set, please. Sure. I think we talked about that, but I think the goal is to replace your Mac with it. So, I guess Xcode and other main app will be ported to this headset right from the beginning. So, you can code directly on the headset and forget about buying a Mac. So, the price to get back is more acceptable for users. If you really replace a complete Mac that costs around the same price, then it kind of makes sense. And also, you can bring it wherever you want. So, it may be in a smaller form factor than your Mac itself. So, yeah, that could be the advoir in targeting the public instead of what the other do and targeting the pro consumer. And if that's the case, then yeah. And if it works perfectly and really replace your screen, your keyboard, your Mac, then it could make sense to pay that price. So, I guess that's their challenge. That's what they need to target if they want to sell it. I want to bounce on what you said, Guillaume. They have a wheel to switch from AR to VR? Yeah, you can say. Does it mean they activate the camera? Because they are still using camera to film? It's a video see-through technology. I don't think there are so much surprise about this. They are doing exactly like the Vario headsets, but they have this wheel. I talked to the CEO of VR, Veina, and he told me that when they bought his company, this is the first thing that they patented, this kind of wheel to phase from the reality to the full virtual one. And for having tested it, I think this is a very nice idea. Why? Because you can really phase the real to the virtual? Yeah, you can be half through AR, half through VR, and it gives you a very smooth way of phasing from one side to another. And when you are doing AR and you want to switch to VR, you just have to switch it, turn the wheel, and then you are full VR and you come back. So you don't have to take off the headsets at any time and it's very comfortable as a sensation. Okay. It's weird to me because the way Oculus did it with the two taps on the side on the microphone that triggered the switch to the real view was for me the most practical because you don't have to turn something, it's really quick. Well, I don't know how they will use it, but the effect is very cool. This control of the phasing through VR is very, very cool. And it matches the Apple philosophy of UI. The tapping stuff is not as... I don't know how to describe it, but yeah, this is a kind of motion and it really links to what you want to do. Yeah, it's similar to the wheel that is on the Apple Watch, I think. Okay. We'll see. We'll see. So just one very quick reaction about what you said, Guillaume, about the price tag of headsets and the trend that we might see is a very short piece of news. I saw last week that VRChat has announced their intention of doing a mobile app. So that is also, I think, going into the same trend of having a new entry point for them instead of focusing only on VR headsets and desktop. They will also have a new market with the users that can access VRChat through their mobile. So yeah, kind of a news in the same direction, I would say. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I guess they want to catch the Roblox or Minecraft and Fortnite community. So I think this is a good thing for VRChat. Maybe not for the community itself, because the average age of the users will go down, I guess, because it's between 12 and 16, maybe, and it will grow in the community. But I guess this is good news for them. Seb, any last words on this? No, can't wait to have some previews and see what's happening. Okay. So, well, you can continue by presenting your topics. Okay, sure. So last week, I had the opportunity to go in a lab, in French lab, doing some experience on psychological reaction of user. Trying to teach, like Fabien, you said it last week, to teach back to psychopaths and people like that. Maybe it was you, Bien. Yeah, it was me, I guess. And teach them how to reinteract with other users and track their behavior to see if there is a change in the way they interact with people. So they do this kind of experience and a lot of other things in that kind of area. And so they bought a new device, which is the Infinadec VR treadmill, which is omnidirectional and goes at 6 mph, so 10 kilometers per hour. And I have a video, I don't know if you shared it already, Bien. Yeah, it's here. So here it is. It's a two-directional treadmill that allows you to go in any direction. So it's quite an impressive device on which you put a VR headset. Here it was the HTC Vive with a Wi-Fi system, so you are not linked to a cable. And you have to wear a Vive tracker on your wrist to allow the system to recenter you every time you move on the treadmill. I was really keen to test it. I wanted to test that since a long time, and I didn't have the chance. Every time I went to CES, it was fully booked, and I had two hours of wait to do one experience like that, so I never had the time to do it. So it was great to test it. I had some… I thought it would be a really nice experience, but I was a bit disappointed to be honest by testing it. I was not able to stand in the middle and just walk and change direction. I had always to handle the bar to put myself around, to handle the way the treadmill is moving and make sure I'm not falling. I think it might be because they did not set it up correctly. They spent a lot of time before I was able to stand on it, readjusting the parameter. But I did not see any easy way to calibrate the device, which worries me. The way it works is basically you wear a life tracker on your back, and it's always trying to center the life tracker. Wait, will you start saying your song? So if you fall or if you move and rotate, the life tracker is eccentric from your center. And so every time you try to rotate on yourself, it tries to remove you to recenter you. And therefore, every time I tried to change direction, I was falling. And it was impossible for me to stay still. So it doesn't, at least the way it was set up, it doesn't help me. It doesn't provide me an experience where I feel like I'm walking in the 3D environment. So I wonder if you already tried this kind of technology or what you think about it. And if you have seen another tech that allows this kind of effect and feedback, force feedback to the user, so they feel that they are walking naturally in the environment without moving. So I've never tried such a device. I've seen another one where it's a much smaller device. And there is an arm that holds you on the hips. So with no handles, just like, yeah, very strongly hold by the hips. So, yeah, one thing I'm curious about is, what is the expected application of these devices? Is it like for military training? Or is it just like exploration or maybe medical, like to help people with injury recovery or things like that? Is that the goal of the device? Yes, that's the exact use case. Not even, all the use cases are not even with the VR headset. Sometimes it's really just to learn back to rotate and move in an environment and they put a screen in front of the Infiniadec treadmill. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's a huge, I think it's a huge investment. And I'm sure that the tech will improve over the years. But yeah, so they are using it for behavior analysis. Is that correct? Yeah, for visiting. Actually, they do research on building a castle that has been destroyed in France during the war, and they try to rebuild it. So it's a way to explore it with a researcher and find out that this is not correctly placed, that the 3D model is not correct. Because they found some in some books that describe one room of the castle, for example. So from that text, they try to readjust the 3D model, be together, be a virtual person in the same environment to compare their research and readjust the 3D model together. That's more their use case. Okay, cool. And yeah, like you said, it's a 60k dollars device with only one person that can do it at a time. So it's quite an investment. Yeah. And it goes up 10 kilometers per hour. So you can run but not run fast on it. Okay, cool. And so you tested something else like a screen that you said was quite impressive? Yeah, it was a two laser projection at 4k at 240 FPS on one screen. And with the help of active glasses, two person were able to see different movie in front of it. So everyone has 60 frames per eyes and the frame are placed in between. So one person can see a 3D movie and one person can see another 3D movie on the same screen. So yeah, it was impressive to see how well that works. You really absolutely don't see the other screen on your hand. And they did not need it yet with tracking. But I feel like having a way to have two person in the same place having their own point of view displayed on the screen would be a nice experience. Yeah, it's great to hear that these technologies are improving. And yeah, I mean, here as well, I see more experiences and applications, I would say, like, as soon as this kind of technology is released. Maybe for a family, you can watch two different movies at the same time if you don't like it. But for events and for industrial use, when two person can work on the same time in 3D, in the same setup, just with a screen. Back to what we were saying a bit before, that headsets are still not popular, I would say. Maybe it's another way to have a common experience in 3D. But yeah, I think that the price tag of this would be quite high as well. Yeah. But because they had a huge projector, I think you can do it smaller with a smaller projector or even a TV. If a TV under 240 FPS, that I believe would be feasible. They just need the glasses, the active glasses that can sync at a different time. Yeah. So for now, it's not real time, right? It was like a movie? It was a movie, yeah. Interesting. Okay. So they had something in real time, but not tracking the head of the user to adjust their own point of view. That was for me the next step for this technology. Okay. What about you, Liam? Well, I missed a bit of your... because I had a sound problem. But well, my question about the Infinadeck was about the sound. I don't know if you addressed it. But as a motorized platform, is it bothering you when you are on this that the motors are running like hell? I was able to discuss. There was no sound in the headset. I was only seeing a 3D environment. And I was able to talk with the person next to me that was on the device and ask questions about the device easily. So it's not that impressive. There is some sound, definitely. The sound of the wheel moving, make a bit of sound, but that's not a huge sound. So it's not that bothering. And did you try the cyber race or the sliding platform when you are sliding with your socks or special shoes? No, never. That's really my first test. You can't compare the two? No. But really what bothered me is the fact that I was falling down every time. I was trying to change direction. So it was great when I was going straight. But as soon as I was trying to go to another direction to see something else in the environment, I was really falling down. So there could be some latency between your move and the adaptation of the platform? Yes. Or the Vive tracker is extracted from my body. So every time you move, as it's trying to re-center it, you have a small effect. So you are not rotating on yourself, but on a circle. And that's, I think, what is the issue. I think for every person there is an adjustment. We saw the military application of these kind of treadmills 10 years ago, and people were really running on them. But I didn't try this, so I don't know what was the effect of it. We lost Fabien. No, he's back. Okay, great. So as I'm speaking, I'll continue with my topic if you want. So I don't know if you heard, but this was the Fashion Week in the Metaverse this week. For you, I didn't hear about this. Even if I'm following the VR and innovation news, we received the news once it was done. So it's kind of strange. I don't know what kind of communication they did about this. Well, it was in Decentraland, one kind of more economic metaverse we can found. And as you can see on the screen, there was a lot of well-known brands. And why I wanted to talk about this is because of the numbers they showed about this event. They said that they had a 200% increase in sales volume in Decentraland during these events. There was 3,500 unique visitors to this metaverse, and there was like 15,000 minutes spent within the Adidas experience. Apparently, they had some kind of games or animation on their different booths, and Adidas nailed it because it was kind of fun. But I have a very hard time finding images or knowing what happened exactly during this. And there are like 10 videos on YouTube on a static screen of Adidas just jumping around, and it doesn't seem very interesting on my part. But I don't know if you heard about this. Did you see something? And what do you think about this kind of event in the metaverse or one metaverse for this one? Fabien, if you want to start. Yeah, I didn't go to this one, but I've tried Decentraland before. So, yeah, it's really interesting to see that after the hype of NFTs and Web3, the fashion industries and luxury industries are the ones who seem to benefit the most from the blockchain side of the metaverse, which maybe makes sense because of the luxury type of product that is based on owning something, owning a real nice product in reality, but also owning it in the virtual world. And yeah, they have a lot of creativity in this. So, I'm surprised by the numbers. They are very high indeed. But I'm not like too surprised, I would say, like half surprised. Yeah, yeah. Seb? Yes. I saw some friends this weekend that are not in development or anything like that, and they bought their headset. And the feedback I had from them is that they bought the headset, tried all the demo, and now that they have to pay for an app, they don't do it. They only watch a 3D movie online, and that's okay for them to have the device for that. I guess a lot of people are searching for this kind of experience that are free online and can be experienced in a game where they don't have to buy anything. At least first, they can experience something without paying. So, that's one point. And yeah, the numbers you are announcing are quite high. That's really impressive, and impressive that we don't see a lot of communication around that. Well, we saw, I don't know if you saw on LinkedIn or other social networks that some AI generated image with famous people wearing Balenciaga or Tommy Hilfiger. It was coats and stuff like that. And it was from this Fashion Week, and it was a competition for those who would be generating the best fake AI Balenciaga picture. And I found it funny that afterwards you discover what it was about because you're seeing these images popping right around your social network without really understanding what is going on. And it's afterwards that you understand. So, as I said during this presentation of this topic is that I guess their communication was not that good because the message arrived after the event and they could have maximized their number of people if this communication was done better. But I don't know, maybe I'm not on the right channels and I'm not following fashion as I would like. Another option is that it was maybe targeted to a certain audience, so they know it will work with them, and know that the amount of people that join are manageable, so there is no crash, no issue, and they are sure that the first time they do it, it's a success for at least the person that joined. Yeah, or maybe maintain this luxurious image like Fabien said. Yeah, it's a private VIP experience. Yeah, I agree with that. It seems like the NFT community, Web3 community is also very active on a platform like Discord and Telegram where they have like dedicated servers for some topics. Like, there will be one server for just for an NFT series. And so there are many things like that. Maybe this is where the community is, and maybe not from, I don't know, usual social networks like Instagram or LinkedIn. So, yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, the second effect is that by learning that you missed this event, maybe it's pushing you for the next one. Yeah. Not now. If that's true, as I may communicate more about what has been done last year and next year. Okay, great. Okay, great. So do you have anything to add to this conversation? One topic, yes, about Italy banning the chat GPT because of the age. Privacy rules and user age that is not verified as it should be. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that. It's the only country that banned it, right? Yeah, I think it's very unlikely that OpenAI will comply just for one country. Maybe I'll be surprised, but I think it's unlikely. I think that the latest tweaks on the topic of AI are very interesting. We are seeing a lot of different voices coming up from both sides. And I'm actually a bit concerned by the way that two sides are really forming and crystallizing. One, we should stop AI. And one, AI is the best thing that ever happened to us. And kind of slowly, these two sides are getting away from each other. So yeah, I'm a bit concerned. I would more like a unified discussion about that. Yeah, these two ways of thinking is like a global set of mind right now. Any subject, you have two sides fighting each other and it's very, very violent. Well, on not the physical part, but yeah, people are very passionate. It's very emotional. And yeah, the situation in Italy is echoing what the open letter of Elon Musk and all these high tech CEOs that are willing to stop the AI learning for six months at least. I know that Bill Gates is in the subject as well. And just to make a follow up to Fabien, I heard that yesterday, people were suing open AI because they found out that some personal information were leaked through chat GPT. I don't know really what happened, but yeah, if people are starting to sue the AI, maybe it will stop one way or another. Or maybe the company will make some step back to secure this kind of information. But yeah, as you were both saying, this is a troubled time for AI from the good side and the wrong. And indeed, I hope that there won't be a light side and a dark side of AI when people are going crazy doing like some, just because it's cool, just doing anything, well, what we are frightened about, but meaning that they'll give any kind of data set and making this AI too powerful and that we can't control it at some point. But yeah, this weekend I was amazed talking with people how far everyone has already tried it and tried to ask some stupid questions to chat GPT. But it was in every mouth this weekend talking with people. Everyone was talking about, hey, did you try that? And some people did not know about it, but most of them had already tried it. At least with, like I said, stupid questions like, what is the PDR number of P? And then questions like that, which doesn't make sense. And this is the fault of chat GPT as well. They did not go to creative questions. Yeah, well, on my side, on my professional part, I'm seeing that people are, well, there was the excitement of the first time they tested the chat GPT and all their AI. And now as they are trying to transfer it to their professional field and asking real professional questions, they can see the limitation of the AI and they are just saying, yeah, well, it's an advanced Google search with some kind of good insights. But what they are saying is that to be very effective, chat GPT is lacking this reflection part or interpretation that could make it worth it. And I'm seeing on this, because I did a conference last week as well, and we talked a lot about chat GPT. And this is the main mindset here that people find it's funny at first. And now that we are talking business, they are thinking more like, yeah, this is a useful tool for your drafts or to battling the white page symptom. You can win this first day of work by getting the first information, but then you have to think again. And one thing that I found funny is that I'm working as a teacher as well, and one of them tried to write the entire course through chat GPT. And he said that after this experience, he found out that he had to think more, to reflect more about his course than he would have by doing it all by himself. And after this, he found out that maybe he spent more time speaking with chat GPT and trying to improve his course than by doing it all alone. So maybe it's not that efficient, but if you can improve your content, maybe it makes sense. But we talked like three or four weeks ago about the hype of chat GPT. Maybe it's going to slow down a bit, unless somebody is doing a higher dataset learning and making the AI have some real reflection. I don't know. What do you think about this? Yeah, I mean, it's very likely that they are training GPT-5 because the GPT-4 training ended in September 21, I think. If I remember correctly. So, yeah, it's very likely that the next one is coming up. In my business circle, I also hear the same thing, that it's useful for unblocking things. But there is also quite worries about what could be next. Like, what if it gets better? What if it's multimodal? Yeah, what if people learn how to use it more and more? So, there are a lot of concerns around, not the actual state, but what could it be? So, yeah. We see the gap between each generation. So, yeah, that's worrying. Worrying. Yeah. So, yeah. Sorry, yeah, I was about to...
