Welcome to episode 7 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. So let's go and this is a special day because Seb is not with us. He's currently going to Laval Virtual and he'll be back next week. Don't worry. So Fabien, if you want to start. Yeah, cool. Thanks. Yeah, I'm looking forward to hear what Seb will hopefully discover on test at Laval Virtual. So today I want to mention something that was announced a few weeks back. It's Disney who had 50 people in their Metaverse division. And as a part of a plan of 7,000 layoffs, that team was one of the first to be laid out. So. It's a bit difficult to know if it's because of the overall economic situation that is a consequence of this, or if it's because Disney doesn't believe anymore in the Metaverse. So a bit of nuance here, but what I wanted to talk about today is their vision. They had a vision one year ago when they announced that division. And that was to actually find the next storytelling. And so it's very interesting to me that such a big company as Disney, who moved from animation to movies, to theme park, will also explore what can be done in the Metaverse. And let's use the word virtual world for now, if we don't have Metaverse yet. Yeah, I think it would be amazing to have, of course, social experiences, work experiences in the Metaverse, but also the next generation of movies in the Metaverse. I could go connect on my headset and replay a movie or be an actor in a kind of Metaverse movie and see the story from different perspectives and experience different stories in that same story. Like a merge between a game and a movie. And so I don't know what you think. Maybe it was their vision, I don't know, but I was kind of excited by that. But unfortunately, maybe it's not coming soon from Disney. Well, yeah, I saw this article as well. And we all know that Disney has been implicated in VR from the start with their Disney Research District. They are always thinking new way of communicating or creating stories. And the main article was asking us about what is the main activities of Disney and this is entertainment or movies. And I think the place of Disney in the Metaverse process was not that clear. And I understand why they cancel this. Because they still have all these other initiatives on the side with VR, with robotics, AI and all this. And they are still contributing to the building of this Metaverse by bringing up some of these parts. So I don't think this is really frightening or this is a bad sign for the Metaverse. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah, I don't have much to say more than that. This is just a way of redirecting or laying off some people, unfortunately. But they are still making research in that way. Oh, yes, just one thing. When you are talking about this kind of immersive or interactive new kind of seeing a movie or leaving a movie, I just want to rebound on that with the new volumetric capture and all these new studios that are coming up in the world. I know that one is just opening right now, two hours from Quebec. And they are proposing companies to record volumetric content. And for having tried that in VR, it's really very, very, very interesting. The way you can turn around and very mostly leave the situation. You don't have the uncanny valley effect you could have with 3D scans or avatars. And you are really living this. But, well, the main issue with this technology is still the data flow and the data management. Because for it was like a five or 30 second clip, it was taking two gigs. So if you want a whole movie, it would be several terabytes. And I don't know how you could stream that seamlessly over the network. But I think Disney is already on that. I saw some very early work in the past. And we know that they are looking at this very seriously. Yeah, I've been lucky as well to experience it in VR and some volumetric capture. It's really impressive. And it could be applied, as you said, if the diffusion part of it matches the expectation. But for sports as well, like relieving a match between two teams or being in the middle of the field. That could be super interesting as well. Or for a lot of other things, tourism, visiting, retail. Because we had this kind of experience four or five years ago with 360 stereo capture. Especially during concerts or sports events. And I don't know if it is because the VR headsets were not as advanced as they are right now. But this technology didn't work. People didn't like it. But I know it was on the three degrees of freedom headsets. And I guess people were getting sick easier with that. But we could have thought that the 360 stereo content would have been more used than it is now. Because for me it's completely abandoned. Nobody is using that anymore. And I don't know why, despite the fact that the VR headset was not that good back in the day. Maybe we should try this again now that the VR community is bigger. To see if this is something or if we need to wait for the volumetric content to be mature enough. I'm still seeing a lot of things done, especially by Matterport, for 360 capture. But yeah, I agree. This is more like retail. Yeah, mostly retail actually. For the events part and the entertainment part, I totally agree. It's a bit... Now that, at the same time, YouTube for example is supporting 360 video. I'm not sure, that's a good question. I don't have the numbers of people actually using it. Despite some dark industry that is using it way more than classic content. But yeah, I don't have the number. I could check that to see what is the real community or the real number of people using 360 or 180 stereoscopic video. One last thing on this is that the cameras that can capture that are actually much cheaper right now. Five or ten years ago you had to have two big cameras with big lenses. Now I think I have one here actually. It's just a very simple small camera that is very easy to use. I'm very surprised by the use that people are making with 360 cameras right now. I don't know if you saw that they are using this for 360 capture of extreme sports. When you are doing it alone. I'm a rollerblader myself and lots of them are using this on a stick and just making some tricks. Through the 360 capture they are succeeding in getting a very good image of what they are doing. It's not using the orbs but it's using the 360 capture to get a 2D one but in an interesting way. I found that very funny the way they are just using it in another use that was created. For sports the ability to capture once and then move the point of view where they want after. That's super helpful. I found out that maybe it's used more than the GoPro right now because of these features. And because the quality of course is better than it was at the beginning. I guess you can have some 4K 360 videos and display it on a full HD classic one. And just move the screen to get something very interesting. But it's still not stereo. Stereo 360 is still, even if it's way cheaper than it was, people are not using it that much. Because it requires more work to make it be something beautiful. So if you want to bring up your second topic maybe. Related, still in the Melaverse topic. There was an interview of the CTO of Mela. And the interview was mostly focused on AI. So they are also working on AI a lot. One of the most famous AI researcher, Yann LeCun, which is French. He's actually a VP at Meta. So they have a lot of capabilities in AI. And they want to use it for ad generation and stuff like that. Anyway, they also mentioned that they want to use it as a way for anybody to be able to just describe what they want to see in the virtual world. And the AI will generate the world just by understanding the description that the user gives. We already mentioned that I think a few weeks back. I think the name is currently slipping my mind. Opus AI, I think. This is the name of the company who is doing that. So I think it's very interesting and very curious to see if Mela can finally succeed by using this kind of user experience. And on the more general meaning of this, I think it's a very nice user experience to just be able to describe something and to see it come alive in a virtual world. And I think I saw something about Apple, a rumor about Apple maybe having something similar for AI. So yeah, it's bringing the creation of the world to the larger public and you don't need to have programming skills or artistic skills. But at the same time, the storytelling skill will still be necessary. So yeah, I'm curious to hear what you think about that. Just for your last sentence about scenario and storytelling. I just found out yesterday that Ubisoft got their own AI for storytelling generation and avatar dialogues. They won't use it 100%, but it will help them create the story for their games. So we are getting it, getting there. And for the 3D generation content, this is great. Of course, we discussed it. This is probably the best way to make it faster because we don't have the workforce on the 3D artist side to make it as big as we would like it to be. If we are referring, for example, in the movie Ready Player One, if you want to try to create the Oasis, we'll have like 20 or 30 years to get there. So of course, AI will help us create this kind of world. The thing is right now, the generated content is not as advanced as we would like it. But of course, we will be there in a few months or years. But the idea of creating this 3D environment will very, very quickly is kind of a relief for us developers. Because it always had been a bummer to have your experience ready. And if you don't have the 3D modeling skills, it was just a real pain to get this content. Or you have to find some assets around the web, just buy a few here and a few there and just bring them up all together. And the overall quality was not as expected. And if there are some AI generating content that can create something that is consistent or just homogenous, this is the term. But it would be a very useful tool for developers. And as you said, for the main public as well. Because people, they have ideas and sometimes they are limited by their technical skills. And if AI can bring that up, of course, the whole metaverse scene or VR scene will be better for sure. Well, that's it. If you want to add something more for me. Yeah, one quick thing I've seen as well. And maybe I will bring that topic back for a longer form in the podcast in the following weeks. But AI is also helping 3D get more and more realistic. I've seen things about fluid dynamics or clothing dynamics as well. Where they run a lot of training on fluids. So this takes a lot of time, the training takes a lot of time. But actually using the model for fluid simulation afterwards, it's much faster and gets better results. I think that Unreal Engine did a demo with musculature as well. Where they used this kind of technologies. So yeah, AI is helping on the generation side of the virtual world. But also on the realism of the game engines and such. I'm really convinced that AI is not only chat GPT. It will bring the VR scene and VR content to another level. Because as we talked already, one of the main issues that we had creating content in VR are now addressed with AI. You mentioned fluid, even cloth, the scenarios, the intelligence itself of the object or the avatars. And all these are answered with AI. It's still on the early stages, but we can really hope that in a few months. We'll get some very powerful tools embedded in Unity or Unreal. And it will be just a drag and drop. Create your story or create the behavior you want your object or your character to have. And then you'll be interacting with it. Especially for training or teaching, it's a very interesting thing. Because this was the most expensive part of the VR application. It was the intelligence that was behind the VR world. And this is a very good transition to my topic. This is just a post that I saw yesterday or the day before. And it's a picture of what could be a classroom in the near future. Just to explain, it's an empty room with 20 headsets that can be connected all together and managed by the teachers. And this picture was taken in a pilot project for a low-income school district. And they want to bring the VR experience to make students access to some experience or content or industrial situations, for example. And some people are finding it sad or dystopian. And some are very excited with this kind of vision. And I just wanted to have your insight or your vision about this, Fabien. Yeah, I totally agree with what is written in the caption. I will say it for the audio part. The in-world photo looks dystopian, but what is behind the screen is exciting. So I totally agree with that. And I think you mentioned it a few weeks back. When we communicate about VR, we often see people isolated in there. Well, they look like they are isolated wearing a headset. But actually what is important is what they are looking at. And I think, as you mentioned just before, one of the great places where VR can have a tremendous application is education and trainings. So especially it's in the low-income district. So these kids maybe don't have access to a lot of, let's say, travel, for example. So they can experience things that it's not real experience, but VR can give them a sense of seeing the world. The access to culture in general. Yeah. So, yeah, again, I don't think we need to look at the picture and find it sad. I find it very cool, actually. Well, just to be honest, I had two feelings about this. The first one was, oh, yeah, I'm excited because it's finally happening to have these VR headsets at a large scale. Well, even if it's still a pilot, but we can see the intention there. And then I asked myself, is it what we really, really, really want right now? Because we succeeded in getting the education part on remote access. People are now getting their courses at home or wherever they want. Do we want them to be back in a classroom for doing something that they could do at home on a remote, with a remote access? I can't find a very, you know, an argument that would give us this way of getting everyone in an empty room and just make them experience something. Despite the fact that after the experience, they can all debrief in the real world. All this can be done remotely. And I think at some point we'll have to make a choice. Do we want to be back in IRL or are we embracing the remote part and making everybody stay home or just gather on a time to time basis? I just want to have your thoughts on that. Well, it's a very interesting way to see this. I kind of see this as not something that will be from morning to night. They won't spend the whole day looking at the VR headset. Maybe it's like, I don't know, if sports, it's, I don't know, two hours per week. So maybe VR will be two hours per week. And so the VR headset can be used by the whole school. And there might be also budget reasons. These kids maybe don't have the level of income that allows them to have a VR headset at home. So having the opportunity to experience it at school can be. Just to explain something, we can see here some initiative where the school are buying the headsets and sending them to the student homes. And they can keep it during the whole year. And the year after they can send them back or keep them by buying them with a lower price. So this is especially for high level schools. They are shipping laptops and headsets right now. So we can easily see that. Yeah, well, why would you come back? And for school especially, it's a new market as well, because they can register students that are not close to the school. So they are widening their potential student basis. So they can have now several or hundreds of students at the same time. And for specific teaching, like some schools are the only one in the country or in the continent with this very specific training or specific learning experience. And this teaching can be brought to anyone in the world because they can do it remotely right now. So this is a good part of it. And the less good part is that people are not seeing each other again. So the social part. But well, as you say, VR is bringing people all together in the virtual world. So I think this is still the thing that people are not getting is that even if you are not close to one another in the real world, it doesn't mean that you are not close in the virtual one. And the social experience can be done in the virtual world. Yeah. Yeah, that's. I wonder if there will be an evolution of similarly to what we see of some company that are full remote with no headquarters and people from all over the world. Is this the evolution of school? School will have no classrooms, but instead being all over the world, accepting students from many countries. So like a virtual school or a remote school. I know it's happening already. Universities that offer like remote lessons and courses and stuff like that. I wonder if VR will help going this trend going more popular. Well, the use of VR is especially needed, needed by the fact that people are using it. When you are doing online courses or just physical courses as well, the media are now completely off track because what you are seeing is just a PowerPoint or maybe a blackboard or whiteboard depending on what you are. But there is a. There is a. Can you hear me still? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just just put the wrong button. But the main problem here is that most now. Huge gap between what they can see at school and what they can see at home. And this is one thing that we predicted. And when we went to the different schools and told them about VR and saying that, you know, we are going to have a virtual school. Boring presentation. They want something more because they can have something more at home. And this is not very motivating to to to have this this gap of content they can have from between home and and the school. And so VR and other immersive technologies are meant to be used more in the future. And this will bring the experience back or better for the education field, especially when you are doing technical learning and you have some machine or industrial parts to to. To experience right now with the remote part, it's it's completely impossible. And especially with the the security and old safety measures as well. People are not allowed to to use the machine as they were. They used to be 15 or 20 years ago, and they want to bring this technology, technological or experience part back. And I think that VR is a way to do it, especially with the low costs. It said that are now very available and especially schools are now getting them for the students. It's completely eliminate the the budget part, as you said, when people are not able to to afford this kind of technologies. School is getting it for them. And well, this is, as I said, this is what we kind of predicted. And it's happening slower than we would like it to be. But, yeah, just to to to to say once more is we will have to do a choice at some point if if we want to to do a completely remote school or or partial hybrid or not. But so at some point we will have to make a choice. Yeah. You know, the I, I, I am strong believer in VR, obviously, but I am also a strong believer in actual social experiences. So, well, balance can be found, I think, is is. Yeah, balance is I think the choice in many other topics as well. Yeah, the transition would be won't be as abrupt as it was during the pandemic or when we had to do a choice and not real, not really a choice. We had to adapt. And now it's getting things are getting back to normal. We can step back and reflect about this. Yeah. OK, do you have something more to add or we can wrap it up for today? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it for me. OK, great. So we'll be back next week with Seb. We all hope that we will be getting some very interesting stories or stuff to to to share with us. And so we'll see you next week. Good. Good evening. Thanks.
