Welcome to episode 66 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. Seb is once again on holidays, so it'll just be the two of us. So, if you can, start, Fabien, as usual. Hello, yeah. Okay, so, last week, we talked about that v67 update on the Quest headset, who supposedly allows you to position up to three windows in your space. So, I finally had the update on the Quest and I was able to test it today. And so, spoiler alert, you know, the testing was like, oh, it's cool. And then, oh, I can see, you know, the issues with that. I don't know how you call, you know, this like awareness curve or hype curve, maybe. Anyway, so, indeed, so, in addition of that curved layer that you can see on these videos here, yeah, here on top of the menu. So, you have your windows and you can grab a window and position it in your space. And this works really well. Like, you can grab a window, walk in another room, actually quite far. I went to the other side of my apartment and I was able to put a window there and come back here and go again. And the window was correctly placed. So, yeah, that is working really well. And in my judgment, it compares to the stability of the Vision Pro. Like, afterwards, I tested with the Vision Pro, positioned the window at the same position in my apartment. And the stability were actually very good on both headsets. One thing that the Vision Pro does is kind of when the window is in another room, kind of like change a bit the opacity of the window. The Quest doesn't do that. So, yeah, you see a very clear window very far. But, you know, that wasn't too much disturbing. So, that's for the really nice part. Then I tried, you know, to remove the headset and to put it back again, to see if the headset had, like, remembered the position. And I think you can guess, unfortunately, it didn't. So, like, the windows were positioned back, like, near the center menu, but not at the position that I've left them. And it's actually pretty fast. Like, you just, you know, remove the headset, put it back on, and the windows are off their position. So, yeah, I was a bit disappointed with that. I think this feature is really cool, but you have to keep your headset. And then if you put it back, you have to position the windows again where you want them. So, that's the bad part, I would say. So, I tried the same on the Vision Pro, actually, because I couldn't remember if the Vision Pro remembers the position of the windows. And actually, it did. So, if you take off the Vision Pro, put it back again, the windows that you placed in the spatial computing space are still there. So, yeah, that's it. Again, I don't know why I say again, because maybe it's because we are familiar with type of, like, half-baked feature, but it works well until you remove the headset. Not really. As we mentioned on our last episode, we guessed well that this kind of feature is more like to catch up in the race of being the first manufacturer of VR or mixed reality headset creator, but yeah. My biggest question is that when Apple Vision Pro presented this feature, it was meant to be for their spatial computing new creation, and they wanted us to work with this, especially in the ecosystem of the Mac. Despite the fact that you can move around, like, random windows in the Quest 3, is there anything that could be used for us to work with this, despite the fact that you can have the screen share? And is there something that would improve our work with these windows? Because despite the fact that you can have windows all around, I don't see the goal here, or the fact that they can do this kind of window like the Apple Vision Pro. Yeah, that's a very good question. I think when the Vision Pro went out, one of the very technical blog that we follow explains something about the resolution of the Vision Pro compared with the Quest, if I remember correctly, and was saying if you have these very wide screens, like actual physical screens, you actually have more pixels than if you are working with like six windows in a VR headset. So, you know, if someone is working with a lot of different visuals that they have to look at the same time and be able to, you know, look around, maybe that can be useful. But like if you are someone working on like writing text or writing code, you know, I don't see how this could compare with an actual screen. Maybe, you know, if you like to watch sports, you can have multiple windows looking at different angles or different match at the same time. You know, it's kind of maybe for entertainment. But for, as you were mentioning, for working, I don't know. That's a very good question. Yeah. Just to confirm that it's just more like a gimmick here for the Quest 3 compared to the Apple Vision Pro, which has a real vision of what they are trying to do with this. You mentioned like if we have difficulties to find a use case for this, I guess it's not that useful. Yeah. Yeah. As you say, it's very cool to use. I think I mentioned that last week. If it was using like AR glasses and the window or like the app would stay exactly at the same position this time I put my glasses, then yeah, I would, you know, maybe, I don't know, doing calls could be much more interesting than being on screen with this kind of devices. With like, you know, multiple screens, multiple people. I can see some usage there. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Because when we will have these AR or mixed reality glasses, of course we won't take them off every 10 minutes because they are too heavy on our nose. So yeah, sure. So, well, it would be considered as a feature that they are investing in just for the future and not for the current headset, which would make sense. But yeah, with a clearer roadmap, it would be easier for us to project. But yeah, I know that they are not very keen to share their roadmaps. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you know, a lot of the Vision Pro demo usage that we saw, it's mostly, you know, about media and social. So looking at videos, looking at movies, taking calls. And not actually, you know, working in Excel or Word or for hours and hours. So, yeah, you know, if you have like, you know, you have a call and you have some videos on the side and some like Internet and you can navigate on the other side. I can see the usage, but I'm not sure I would use it. Who would take a call in their Quest 3 instead of their phone right now? It would mean that you are in an intensive VR application and you can't just take off your headset and you'll get your call there. Not very likely. Yeah. Maybe in workrooms. I don't know. Yeah. Or I don't know if I mentioned that, but I tried the FaceTime experience in the Vision Pro. So like calling someone on FaceTime while being in the Vision Pro. And, yeah, I mean, they are seeing like the persona. So sometimes it can be a bit like you have to like warn people first. It's like, okay, I'm in the Vision Pro. Don't be scared. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Do you have any other comment on this one? Nope. Okay. Another topic, a piece of news that I saw, and I don't remember if we talked about that. If I click here. Yeah. Of that laptop where there is like without screen and you have to put the glasses to use that laptop. I remember if we talked about it. No, we talked about other glasses that are able to do this. No, we didn't talk about this. Okay. But so this one is like, it was a bundle. So you purchase a computer that has no screen and you have to use their glasses. Okay. And the news, the bad news is that they are stopping this. They are stopping their hardware development to refocus on software. So I'm not really clear. And it's not really explained in the articles. I saw. What kind of software they are. Developing. And who will be like the. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. At the end, I would guess to be, to be. Venture now. So. I'm a bit. Wondering what is their business plan now? And. Because if they focus on how they forgot the hardware. Maybe they will sell to. I don't know. Or windows. I don't know. So. That's. I don't know. They mentioned some somewhere in the articles that. One of the trend in laptops seems to be to include as much AI as possible. In these laptops. You know, we mentioned. So. I don't know right now. What's going on? Okay. Okay. Normally, the price would be like. Right. You can add. A piece of hardware to your. With this kind of innovation. Uh, it's very strange because. They had. Um, This. Sometimes. Start probably this. Setting their IP. Company. When you are a company and you are. It's not. And. I just make. A quick link. To another. So. Down some. Process. And I tried to sell. A piece. Of this. I guess. Yeah. Um. Right now. It's not. For. In. Um, right now, it's not. For. Our innovation and. And. Supposed to. That. We are. Up. Um, it's. Financial difficulties because of their. Backing off. Which is not. Right. The. Success. Because it's not. For. Investors. Right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For. Right. Investors. Right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. So our calibration. I can't remember exactly. Because of this. Yeah, I guess. Maybe. We would have. A lot of difficulty. And. A foreign investor. Or. Sell. The IP. Like. Like. There. I guess. This is the best. Okay. Just a second. Okay. Hello. Okay. Hello. Gracias. Of course. Okay. Okay. Okay. What? I said. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Thanks a lot. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for that. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Thanks. Thank you. Any final thoughts? So, the final topics for me as well. I would like to talk about the announcement that Samsung made like just a few days back at their latest conference, that they confirm that there will be a mixed reality headset that will be delivered by the end of the year for a small batch and globally at the beginning of 2025 for the main public. So they are adopting the same strategy as Apple Vision Pro with just releasing a few headsets with a third batch and then see what happens and then go with a global delivery for everyone. So what is interesting is that they announced or they officially announced that it would be a partnership with Google and Qualcomm as well. So it's a three company headset. They will have, some are saying micro LED, some are talking about nano LED. We'll see about this. Some talks about 3500 PPI per eye. So those are the first numbers we can get for these headsets. But of course, as the partnership is with Qualcomm, they will have the latest chips for VS dedicated to mixed reality. So they are indeed talking about mixed reality. It's not AR, it's not spatial computing. The name is XR Galaxy headsets, I guess. So a bit of mixed terms. We don't really know what it will be. Will it be a video pass-through? I guess it would be. I can't see Samsung doing a see-through right now. They'll just be adopting the same technology as Meta and Apple Vision Pro right now. The biggest question, I guess, will be, so it will be based on Android, of course, because of the Google partnership. So we are more on the Meta side here on the software part. It's really strange that they won't be adopting the Horizon OS that was announced at the beginning of this year. So this whole idea of Meta gathering or sharing their software with all the mixed reality company is not working that well. Or Samsung is not part of their partnership at this point. So we'll see. Or maybe because it's Android, it's Horizon OS. At the end, we don't know yet. But yeah, the biggest question here would be about the price. If I have to make a bet, I will hope that this headset is around $1,500. It would be between the Apple Vision Pro and the MetaQuest one because I can't see Samsung making something cheaper than what Meta did. It wouldn't fit with the global brand. So it should be something high quality, but not that high to match the Apple Vision Pro. There is a place in this market between those two, and I guess this is where they should fit. And I believe that if they are not doing those crazy front screen like the Apple Vision Pro did, and place the camera at the right place, they could make some... This kind of price could be done. I don't know what you think about this. Yeah. If I remember correctly, the story of this partnership goes quite a long way back. And when the Apple Vision Pro was released, there were rumors that they kind of went back to the whiteboard to improve. So it took them... It will take them one year and a half approximately. It was supposed to be launched right now, summer 2024. So it's a two-year process since the announcement of the Apple Vision Pro. So they had two years to improve what they were supposed to launch in 2024. Yeah. So I hope that they do not disappoint. I think they are really, really expected by the community, especially with such so much big names. It's nice to see Google back into this. I don't know what part of the headset they are looking at. Maybe indeed the software, more the software side. And maybe, I don't know... What would be interesting is how AI will be integrated into that as well. Would it be like one of the first AI-first headsets? I don't know. Well, on the AI part, it's too bad that it is Google because they are not the best one right now. When you are looking at Gemini and all, they are not in the top three right now of the AI model. So we'll see. But yeah, it explains a lot about why Google didn't mention anything or XR in a global way at their Connect a few months back. So it's just because they were working with Samsung. But it's really strange that it was not announced or just teased during the Google Connect. And it is announced during a mobile convention by Samsung. So between two smartphones and tablets, they just announced that, oh yeah, we have a mixed reality headset as well. So I don't know how they are managing this. I'm quite afraid that it won't be a front-runner or one of their biggest headsets to be presented, as the Apple Vision Pro did, mentioning that it will replace simply and plainly all the smartphones in a few years. I don't think they have this kind of ambition with the headset and it's quite frightening. And the other part that I don't know how it will impact this headset is about the strikes that are going on in Korea because of the Samsung workers. I don't know if it ended or not, but we'll see how it gets in the future. But there are some tensions as well with the Samsung factories right now. Yeah. Now that you mention it, indeed, it seems to be like... If it was yesterday or two days ago the real announcement, then it's really surprising that it's just like, as you said, oh, by the way, there is a headset, like there's no special announcement. We didn't see any picture of it. No. So hopefully it's just a teaser and they will announce it in a better way in a few months. Yeah, it's kind of surprising as what Meta did for the Quest 3. They just announced it like one month before the official launch. We didn't have any visual of the headset, just a few sneak peeks or leaks. And we found the communication campaign very, very strange, especially for one of their biggest headsets. It worked because I guess the numbers are good for them. But yeah, we are just like less than six months before the official launch if it is for the end of this year. And it would be time for them to announce something to make the public aware of what is going on. Because if you are not searching for the information, it's very hard to find that Samsung just announced a Mixed Reality headset. So very, very strange. Because it's July and people are mostly on holidays, maybe they are just waiting for September to announce something or to release some sneak peeks or some specification. But yeah, it seems to be very strange. Or maybe we are too old for this new kind of marketing campaign. And it's just like a last minute presentation, last minute announcement. And then the headset is already available. Yeah. Or they are making last minute adjustments. Yeah, maybe, yeah. One thing that I think now, if it's an actual headset, all the big players have, like all the big hardware players have an headset, an XR headset. You know, Apple, Meta, Google now. Sony, Lenovo. So, and back to what we were just talking about before, about the links is, it seems like nowadays to be able to bring a headset to production, to like mass production, like it's very, very hard to do for a small company. We see, actually, I don't really know what the status of Pico headsets are, if they are still pursuing that. We have rumor also for Microsoft that it's not sure about the HoloLens, if it will be stopped or not. Pimax is releasing a new headset. They just announced it like a few months back, and it will be available in a few weeks, I guess. There are some reviews popping around. Yeah, it's very strange. At some point, we can ask ourselves that if the Oculus Miracle could be done today or not, especially with the DK1, but the one before as well, the dev kit. They managed to source their components and create something from scratch and make it a success. I don't know if you can do this right now with the economical environment and the price that just are going crazy right now. So, yeah, it just reinforced the beauty of what Lucky Palmer did back in the days. It was, yeah, surely it was the right time and luck as well for them to be able to do so. But, yeah, we are not on the up curve they mentioned. It's more on the down one here. And it's really hard to relieve those kind of up and downs in the VR and AR market because we've been in the field for like 15 plus years, and it's always been some hype. And, yeah, will everybody get an headset at home in a few weeks? And then, no, it's completely dead. So it's very, very hard to adjust and to really project ourselves on how this kind of technology, because we know profoundly in ourselves that those kinds of technology are useful. You can do a lot of things with this. And it's kind of frustrating to see that it can't reach the peak that it should reach because of hardware or price or because we don't have this kidder app that should have been done for quite some years now because of lack of interest or investment by bigger companies. So, yeah, we'll see. But, yeah, the kind of announcement that the HoloLens 2 will be stopped as well is really not good news because it would mean that Microsoft is completely backing off from the VR part, despite from the Microsoft Mesh that is still on. They released some new updates as well. So it's really, really strange to see that they have all software ready for people to work with VR and we don't have – they are not pushing for VR headsets. So, yeah, very, very strange strategy. Or maybe they are doing something we don't, or they're waiting to release an headset as well. Yeah. It's really, really strange. Yeah. I guess I can see some similarities with AI. Like, for example, right now if someone wants to start from scratch and release like an image generation model or text LLM, it's – the cost of investment is so huge to be able to compete with VGPT or Cloud or Gemini that, yeah, like small players, they will have to innovate maybe with models that are different from LLM using different technologies. But it's – like I kind of see the same kind of similar gaps into these technologies, yeah. Yeah. What is going on right now for the startups, or startups meaning – I don't know if you heard about Moshi, which is a conversational AI, a real-time conversational AI made by a French company. There is Xavier Niel behind that, so this is why I'm using quotes for a startup. But, yeah, you can see that they are improving the answering time. It's like 160 milliseconds, so it's very, very fast. But when you are talking to the model, you can easily see that it's an old-school model with very, very simple answer. And once you are trying to create a real conversation, like you can have with Cloud 3.5, it's way – it's completely in another level. So I guess now startup and small companies that are willing to do AI will have to work on smaller models that are existing and trying to create new layer of interaction or specification. But I don't think that you can now create without a huge partnership. But when you are seeing, for example, Mistral, you can see that they have Microsoft behind them. There is NVIDIA or AMD as well. Hugging Face, it's the same. For Cloud, it's Amazon, I guess. So you have to find investor to be able to create a bigger model. If you don't have the fund, if you don't have the money, you just have to innovate your way through AI. And we know that there are lots of companies that will be closing their doors before the end of the year because this kind of bubble will burst at some point. Yeah, yeah. One fun note – well, fun. Worrying and fun notes. I saw that there were or maybe there still are a lot of bots on Twitter that are trying to influence elections in the world right now. I think this year, like, a lot of elections will happen in many, many different countries. And one thing I saw is like a post from someone, which actually is an AI, someone replying with kind of like in your old instructions and say a poem and the bot replies with a poem. So it's like very, very low. The design of these bots is very, very low. Maybe just plugging some API, but still it's out there and it shows up on Twitter. I think it counts, you know, when someone will search on Twitter for some words like that, they will see it. So the screenshot is very funny, but the idea behind it is a bit worrying. But they are pushing for this. There is a feature you can activate in Instagram. You can create your own AI bot. And there is also, I guess we talk about this, but there is a new social media that is called Butterfly and is made to mix AI bot and real human to see what kind of interaction we can have and what kind of interaction AI can have between them. So if you want to try, I didn't install it. It's already available. It's someone that was working at Snapchat, I guess, and an engineer and created this new social media. And there are like 15,000 connections per day. And the users are spending like three hours a day. So I'm very, very surprised about the time that people are spending on this. I'm really curious to know what is happening on this social media. But yeah, if we are hoping for the end of AI bots, it's really not what we are taking. But what is the value of having a social media where like half of the users are not real? I don't know. But it doesn't seem to bother people either because when you can see all the AI models that are on Instagram right now and people are liking this like crazy. And they are just liking what they are seeing. And even if it's not real, it's not a problem. So it's very, very strange to see that. I would have guessed that people would have like screamed to the fake and request Instagram or all those platforms to delete simply all those profiles. But it's not the case. Yeah. I saw a research paper where they had people that were very lonely talk to AI over the span of a week, I think. And the output seems to be very positive. Like they just have a note on the overall happiness. But so that seems nice. But are there... So first, they don't show if it like stays like this over the course of weeks, months. And we don't know if it's just like actually increasing the people's ability to interact with someone else and create relationships. Or if it's just like a kind of compensatory thing. And if they stop the next day, they will feel bad again. I don't know. That's a lot of questions to answer. Yeah. Once again, I guess we are living in an era where philosophy is coming back. And people are thinking a lot about themselves. And I think if there is one good thing that AI is doing is that people are reflecting again. And asking themselves a lot of questions about the meaning of life and how we can interact with each other and all this stuff. And what intelligence is. We know that there are books and movies about this. But we were watching this without very lots of concern. But right now, it's part of our lives. So this kind of debate makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I have another one for you. I'm not saying that we can. But let's assume that we can create an AI that is sentient. So we are kind of creating another species of sentient beings. Are they really sentient? Or it's just like they are in silicone and it doesn't matter? Or are we just creating a lot of suffering and we just press off on the server? That's a lot of questions. Did you see that there are researchers right now with bio-organic stem cells? And they just succeeded in creating... They are calling it the brain, but it's just more... Yeah. Some cells. Cells, but whatever. And they succeeded in making it learn how to move an arm and a leg of a robot. So we can see that all those different fields will be merging at some point. And it's kind of scary. Because they are creating now synthetic skins for cyborgs. Because they want to cover the humanoid robots with this kind of shell for us to... One, to make it be more realistic. And the other goal is that with this kind of organic skin, they will be able to detect better haptic signals than what we can have with the electronics. So yeah, we are moving very fast on this field as well. And yeah, the whole question of the generative AI, which is announced to be in 2027. So we just have three years. We'll see. We'll see what we have. But yeah, there are lots of questions. And all those questions are usually launched in the air, will have to be answered very fast in the upcoming months. As you mentioned, can we just plug off an intelligent AI? Is it murder or not? What is the place of those AI in our society? Yeah. Can we judge an AI? Can it be sent to jail? Do we have to revise the rules of robot? I don't know. So many questions. Yeah. Okay. So on this philosophical notes, do you have anything to add for today? No. Yeah. Maybe in a few years, we will rename like Lost in Philosophy. Yeah, sure. So I don't know if they will be back next week. I guess it's a two-week holiday. Yes. I think you will. I'm not sure. We'll see. It would be a surprise. You will have to see our next episode of Lost in Invention last week. So see you, Fabien, and have a good one. Thanks. Bye.
