STEREOSCOPE
Welcome to the STEREOSCOPE Podcast, the place where we dive deep into everything immersive video. From VR180, 3D360, Spatial Video, Volumetric to Photogrammetry, we cover it all. Our show is dedicated to covering the latest news, best practices, and workflows that are essential to the immersive video community. The VR industry has been a major force behind the rapid growth of this medium and we are excited to showcase how it impacts immersive video. Every episode, we feature two videos created by our talented community members to inspire and showcase the amazing work being done in this space. Join us on the next phase of cinema as we gaze through the STEREOSCOPE.
STEREOSCOPE
Canon EOS R5 Mark II Unveiled, Quest 3 HDMI Link, Xreal Beam Pro, and Pico 4 Ultra!
This episode of the Stereoscope Podcast, we’re recording from our brand-new studio space, a major upgrade from our old basement setup, and we’re diving into the hot topics of the photography and VR worlds. We start by scrutinizing the freshly released Canon EOS R5 Mark II, weighing its 45-megapixel full-frame sensor, built-in autofocus for the dual fisheye lens, and digital image stabilization against its predecessor and our current R5C cinema variant. Despite some initial performance hitches and its notorious overheating issues, we discuss how the addition of c-log2 could revolutionize dynamic range for new shooters.
Next, we tackle the evolving landscape of VR and AR devices with a spotlight on the Xreal Beam Pro + Xreal Ultra AR video glasses. We delve into the Quest 3's HDMI link feature, showing how it allows for seamless, low-latency video streaming from external devices like an Xbox console. While there’s skepticism around their effectiveness for productivity tasks, the potential to elevate media consumption is undeniable. We also dive into the practical challenges of using VR headsets with devices like the Nintendo Switch and the potential for Meta to create tailored solutions for video app usability.
Finally, we explore the cutting-edge world of VR gaming and competition in the market with the Pico 4 Ultra, a new Chinese competitor for the Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro. New VR leg trackers from Pico are launching with the Pico 4 Ultra with IMUs and 12 LED lights, pushing the boundaries of immersive gaming. We weigh the advancements against traditional setups like the VIVE tracker and speculate about Meta's strategy with their upcoming Meta Horizon OS, which focuses on productivity, fitness, and gaming. What does the future hold for VR headsets, and could the rumored Quest 3S headset be the game-changer we've been waiting for? Join us as we unpack these developments, emphasizing the critical need for minimum spec standards to prevent market fragmentation and ensure a seamless VR experience for all.
hey, welcome. This is the stereoscope podcast number seven. I'm byron, I'm anthony and, as you can see, we're in a new space. A new space this is. This is a studio that we're renting, which is really great for us. It really changes things up.
Speaker 2:It gives us yeah, and obviously things are still under construction. This won't be where we shoot from now on. This is just a temporary situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hopefully it's going to get even better, but I think this is already a huge improvement over my Huge improvement Little basement off.
Speaker 1:Definitely Like basement off, definitely like it. It seems like, and we'll be able to sort of play with stuff a lot more well. We have a literal room to play now, which is, yeah, I think, really exciting yeah, it's very exciting.
Speaker 2:We're gonna have a lot of space and facilities and we have some.
Speaker 1:we have some new videos coming up that we're planning and we're not announcing anything yet, but I'm sure you'll see them relatively soon and we're going to be utilizing that space to really sort of start putting out more stuff, and I'm excited about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah definitely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we haven't done a video in a while. Life got in the way. But you know, like we've said, the podcast happens when we're not doing other stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so but we can at least blame the last two weeks on COVID. You know there's that. Yeah, I know Right, little virus I.
Speaker 1:I went to a Star Trek convention in Las Vegas and hint yeah, and I got. I got COVID, which sucks, but you know it happens, but you know we have a bunch of stuff to talk about. Uh, there's a sort of we we sort of rolled into this area of a bunch of new stuff happening right now. So let's just launch out of gate with it. So we have the Canon EOS R five Mark two. So it is the sequel, it is the followup, it is the successor to the to the original R five, we, the successor to the to the original r5. We're obviously using the r5c, which is the cinema variant of the r5. Yeah, so the the mark ii is, it is a step up. There is not a huge amount of difference. It's got a 45 megapixel full frame back illuminated stack cmos sensor. It has the built-in autofocus for the r5 or to the for the dual fisheye lens, much like the r7.
Speaker 2:So interestingly enough, I from hughes review.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work that well really yet so, and of course this lens doesn't have autofocus yet but yeah, apparently, if you want good autofocus with a VR lens, use a 39 mil on the R7. It's not so much yet on the R5, probably going to get fixed in a firmware update, but yeah, so it's there. But yikes, I would say. The biggest thing to me, or the only thing that I'm pining for from this this model, is the IS. I didn't realize it's digital is that's enabled with the vr lens?
Speaker 1:yeah, so it's got. I noticed this. It's got built-in digital image stabilization that works in conjunction with the usvr utility, so you can like click it on, click it off. I'm guessing, how do you do? You think it's using internal, like gyroscope data in the camera?
Speaker 2:or yes, that's generally how that works, like with the other camera models, you know.
Speaker 1:Like other, yeah like the evo, see that's. I was really excited when I learned about the, the image stabilization, because it means it's most likely going to be a feature going forward for the cinema variant as well, or any other you know could you know it'll be?
Speaker 2:it'll be interesting to see. So the r5 has ibis, but they remove it from the, from the c version, because it's not really compatible. So, like most of the ibis, stuff is actually designed for stills okay and designed. That's why they they say like it gives you eight and a half stops of stabilization sure that means you can slow down the shutter that much more and still get a steady image.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's really more for stills and not that great, and so even Fuse review of the digital IS for VR is like you're still going to need a gimbal, but it helps with a little micro jitters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's not like earth shattering, but it's nice to have that have built-in stabilization, for that uses gyroscope data, especially because I think one of the things that sets the, the ints 360 evo, apart from other cameras in its class is that that built-in stabilization really, really helps, even with a gimbal yeah yeah, you know, obviously professional shooting you're going to need.
Speaker 1:You know, footfall, vibrations are huge when you move any sort of vr camera and they, you know, they go right up the tripod, they go right up the gimbal and it's like somebody's taking your head and just shaking your eyes. You know it does not feel great, but I think it's a really interesting feature. I I really hope that it comes to the platform in general over time because I think it'll be a good addition. What else it seems like it's? It seems like the mark two is a good choice for new shooters because there are some features that it benefits from. Like it's got the c-log too, so it's got better dynamic range outside, or at least the you know, the c-log formula can iron out. You know, yeah, blooming and stuff like that, but it's also noisier, is it?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, there's always.
Speaker 1:Everything comes at a cost, but it does not see well, it still overheats at 18 minutes with without a fan. So in terms of especially for you know he was saying that as long as you're planning your shots tactically you can still get around it, but it doesn't give you the freedom to just roll with it. You know, and especially for things like we couldn't use the mark 2 for the podcast. It wouldn't work unless we had the, the fan. And how would? How audible are the fans like in other devices, does it?
Speaker 2:I mean it depends on the camera. I'm gonna. It's curious on the r5 too, because it's like a battery grip add-on that adds a fan, so who knows how loud that's going to be. It's obviously inaudible on the r5c. I mean you can hear it with your ear, but it doesn't seem to ever become a problem with the footage. But you know, for instance, my black magic cameras, you can hear it a little bit. Fs7 can't hear at all, you know. So just definitely depends. But clearly, critical.
Speaker 1:It also looks like um, you can swipe around on the touch screen. That's pretty sweet. That is actually pretty cool, because we have run into some situations where it's it it doesn't really give a an accurate portrayal of what you're looking at right, you're looking at an un like the fisheye version of yeah, an unstitched version so it's doing. We're having to do this right now, exactly, and so it's bloomed. It is everything in the center of the frame Mostly looks good, but if you have anything on the extremes, the distortions, the distortion.
Speaker 1:You have to plan for the distortion when you're when you're framing your shot, but this gives you an ability to sort of swipe around, and I'm guessing you could probably. I wonder if you'd be able to put that out to a monitor.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't be able to swipe around though yeah, it's interesting, so you can do it on. Just for a like to speculate on the r5c, I can send send the zoomed image out to hdmi and still pan around on the. Oh, so you could you could swipe your possible. You could do that like we still use.
Speaker 1:That would be very useful. Yeah, that would be very easy. Yeah, but right now it seems like if you're a dual shooter, this is probably a good option. If you're primarily as a b camera to us.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, there's definitely some some benefit to that, especially with the is and other little things like full-size HDMI.
Speaker 1:That's pretty neat, that is nice. Yeah, not having to rely on mini HDMI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have to use a little adapter to protect our baby port, you know.
Speaker 1:All right, I think we can probably move on here. All right, so our next topic is and this is an interesting one, because we've talked about these devices before and at first they seemed dubiously relevant yeah, a little hokey maybe, but they seem to be getting both better and more relevant for our interests, yeah, and I think they're something that I think the larger community is sort of becoming more aware about and supposedly they're getting a lot more usable. So we're talking about the X-Real Ultra and their new device that they added to it recently, the Beam Pro, which is a add-on device to the video glasses. So the X-Real Ultra are video glasses that you can plug into any like HDMI capable device. It has both a three DoF and a six DoF mode, but the six DoF mode is only available when using an external device that can run it effectively.
Speaker 1:I could be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure that's accurate, and the reason why I think this is very interesting for us, especially with this new beam pro edition, is that the beam pro works as its own standalone computing device. It's effectively just a smartphone that they you know, so you don't have to use your battery of your own smartphone, so you have a secondary device and it's got built-in video out, but also it's got stereo cameras on it, and we talked about this very briefly before, but now that it's out, supposedly it's actually fairly useful, the camera's a little further apart.
Speaker 2:They're 15 mil apart, so it's a little closer. I think now too there's less skepticism about it, since the iphone can pull off a decent thing really close together.
Speaker 1:So I think a little and they're the same cameras this time, yeah, instead of two separate yeah, so you don't have to, you know, worry that one is blurry, one eye is blurry, yeah, for a couple hundred bucks. It seems like a pretty. It seems, yeah, and I am interested because I think video glasses are one of those things that we've always sort of talked about in media and this is the most literal interpretation of it that I've seen. Mind you, you have to remember that these, these things, have much smaller fields of view than your traditional you, you know, like the Quest 3. Like, the effective field of view is only about, you know, 50 degrees or less, compared to, you know, 110 with the Quest 2 or Quest 3.
Speaker 1:That is but the addition. But because the each eye is separate, you can still watch stereo content. So part of the reason why it's interesting that they added these stereo cameras is now you can take spatial videos, you can consume you know iphone spatial videos, but you can also shoot your own and then immediately see them in your headset in. You can see them while you're shooting them, which I think is really, really cool, and it's just putting another stereo device into the market. That is less, it's just a point and shoot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. It's much cheaper, much cheaper. Yeah, so it makes it more accessible and you know, for a media consumption device, what seems to be because I'm not a big Google, I'm not an Android user, but like the fact that it has, you can all your play apps are available in the glasses through the X-Beam Pro. It's really useful. That's really cool. I think that's very cool.
Speaker 1:And I think they're. They've got an HDCP pipeline so you can watch, you know, and this, this is also relevant because we're going to also talk about, effectively, video glasses next as well but with the quest three you can watch HDCP protected content, so you can watch Hulu, you can watch Netflix, all that stuff right off of this device because there is a handshake and there is a HDCP. There's an HDCP handshake to make sure that that goes through right, and that's a big problem for these types of devices, because not all of these devices are capable of that, as you'll see in in our next segment. I think this is really interesting. I would love to get my hands on the this device just to to play with it, to see what it's capable of x real, if you're listening Because I think it's heavily relevant and I think we're going to see more devices like this Than less Over time, and especially if they end up being somewhat successful.
Speaker 1:And the thing is, after my experience With the next segment, with the Quest 3 HDMI link, I'm a lot less skeptical of this technology than I used to be. I think the Quest is a very interesting implementation and I think they probably have there's a lot of benefits in the way they're implementing it. But I haven't tried this and now I'm really interested to see what this version is capable, because this one is so shockingly usable. Oh, and the other thing is that the these devices are sort of mimicking the xreal ultra and beam pro is mimicking some, some of the functionality of like the apple vision pro and the quest 3, because you're able to anchor monitors, you're able to put monitors up and they're sort of hinting that you can do productivity features. I am a little more skeptical of productivity with such a limited field of view and limited resolution and limited resolution as well.
Speaker 2:It'll be very interesting to see how good it actually looks in person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean supposedly they're using OLED screens in these, in the ultra glasses, so if they can get that resolution down, they're definitely going to have the the screen fidelity, though you know, when you're bouncing light through a bunch of mirrors and stuff, I don't know how much light you lose with OLED, but anyways, because productivity I have tried it on the quest 3 just by itself and I can't imagine that it's as usable with a smaller field of view, because it's barely usable yeah yeah, with a huge field view, and with that we'll move on to the next, the next little bit.
Speaker 1:So quest 3 hdmi link, so this sort of came out of nowhere. About a week and a half ago, meta just posted about it in a blog post on their website and then the app was out and you could download it right away. And so at first I was like what is this? This is this? Like? I didn't really understand what it was until I saw some Reddit posts about it and then I realized like oh, this is. At first I thought it was a dongle, Like the meta themselves were releasing a dongle in conjunction with an app. That's not the case. I think that's something that they should think about doing, especially to make sure that you know quality is high and that type of thing, or at least partner with some sort of manufacturer to make a spec'd out version of it that meets all Optimized and also maybe to get a HTCP handshake. So, anyways, Quest 3, HDMI. I bought a dongle. It's this. It's called Guermach, I don't know it's one. It's called where? Where? Mock, I don't know it's.
Speaker 1:It's one of these Amazon brands, drop shipping brands you know, that you know it's got 15 letters words, way too many consonants. So I got it overnight shipped and initially what you're seeing here is some footage that I shot with my quest the password cameras with my quest, the pass through cameras on my quest 3. So this is just being recorded in headset, just with the basic. This isn't any like hacky recording. This is the built-in live uncut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, live and uncut, though it is cut, but um, so I tested it out. Initially I tested it with my xbox, because I have an original xbox that sits fairly close to my couch and I have a long, you know eight foot hdmi cable that I plugged in. And I plugged it in and it immediately just worked. And I three to five milliseconds of latency non, it was latency that it was not perceptible to me in any meaningful way, which I was initially very shocked at and also the quality of the image despite the fact. So I have to. There there are some. Then there are some caveats. Caveats here is that I have a hdmi adapter for my original xbox. That is a fairly high quality hdmi adapter that I bought. That was initially came out five years ago. It was called the Chimeric Systems Adapter and there are other options now, but this was the first HDMI adapter for the Xbox. I also have something called the M Classic, which is a HDMI upscaler for 480p and 720p content that also adds a little bit of built-in anti-aliasing. I think it's just like the most basic form of anti-aliasing and it makes it look a little bit sharper, a little bit cleaner with anti-aliasing, anyways. So ported in the Xbox and it just worked brilliantly and I'm sort of shocked at how good it works.
Speaker 1:And then, so as you can see, I fired up Silent Hill 2. And then I was like you can, I'm showing you that you can, you can also go into not just pass through, but you can go into like virtual reality environment. So you can, you can plug in this HDMI link into any HDMI source and it just sort of works with some caveats and I'll get to that. But you can also. You can affect the brightness, so you can go into a virtual environment or your pastor environment and just black everything out, which is really cool. You can. You can curve the screen, you can make it larger, you can move the window around, you can resize it, which I think is really fantastic. Mind you, you're always going to have, because you're you're linked to an hdmi source.
Speaker 1:There is a little bit of you know, canting to one side from the video source. You can also see here the I'm changing the aspect ratio because silent hill 2 does not natively support widescreen, so it's being stretched. But on the m classic there's a little aspect ratio adjuster thing. So going to 4.3 here, I don't know. I think this is a really interesting use case. It it sort of makes. It sort of ends up becoming the same class of device as the video glasses yeah, yeah, which kind of makes the quest?
Speaker 2:it's like this gateway drug really right oh absolutely it's. They're slowly making it like the swiss army night absolutely like.
Speaker 1:In terms of like it. The quest is now becoming all the things that we thought virtual reality was going to be in the 90s yeah one thing I want to mention here is that reality was going to be in the 90s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one thing I want to mention here is that when I first booted up the, the hdmi link, I wasn't getting audio, but that's because it was outputting dolby digital. Yeah, and it's not supported. It can do dolby surround, which is like four channel dolby digital is 5.1. Gotcha, yeah, and I I switched up the game. I started playing need for speed. Most wanted just to see what the latency was like and, honestly, if I can play this game, then you could play anything really. Yeah, because this is one of those games sub millisecond latency is required to play it. Yeah, but and it's it started getting me, getting me thinking about what the hdmi link could have other purposes for. Like, I think it could be really useful for video production. Like you could have, you know, an output of a camera and put it in a 100 foot screen and it's 1080p and it's really good quality. You could get up there.
Speaker 2:You could pixel peep yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting to play with. Can you do more than 1080?
Speaker 1:or is it? Currently you can only do 10, 1080, 60, but it outputs. So you can input 4k, 4k, but it will output at 1080. Interesting because I had seen some other videos that showed that they were doing higher than 4k sources or higher than 1080p input, but still getting a video out. So yeah, it's downscaling still might be useful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wonder if it'll do like a super sample type of situation. Yeah, it's effectively what it's doing, so I think it's really interesting. I think the ultimate killer use case for this would be for meta to add some sort of stereo mode and some sort of um like vr 180 mode, so that if there was a device that could output a stitched video source, then just turn on vr 180 mode and you've got live in headset preview of a vr camera, because currently there is no plug and play solution for that new.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's even remotely affordable well, that's and that's not.
Speaker 1:That's not plug and play. You have to, you know, start, yeah, a sir, like a server to render it, and and it's been a big problem for us and it continues to be a problem for us, because the only solution that we found is what was it?
Speaker 2:a thousand dollars it was like five hundred dollars a month or something like that 50 something a month. I was like, oh, that's not too bad. And I was like, oh, it's a month, jesus christ, that it was $350 something a month. I was like, oh, that's not too bad. And I was like, oh, it's a month, jesus Christ yeah.
Speaker 1:Unless you're a professional production with a big budget like that is just out of the question pretty much.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's like you know they have a watermarked version, so I was like, well, that's cool, the watermarked version destroys the stereo.
Speaker 1:It destroys your ability to see the stereo.
Speaker 2:So like if it was a stereo watermark, fine, I could work with that. But you can't even like, you can't even really test it with the watermark that they have on there. It's a real bummer. I wish they would come out like it's incredible what they're able to do, like live grading and all that stuff on the fly. But I'd love a strip down.
Speaker 1:It's incredibly impressive software, but it is just not accessible for anybody who's not a legitimate has a legitimate budget.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah like if yeah, it'd be amazing. Assimilate if you're ever watching this like a stripped down version, it just does the thing that we need for like the live preview is literally all we want yeah offer it as a standalone for, like I don't know, 50 bucks a month Sometimes even that is
Speaker 1:more reasonable than 300, you know, or a one-time license of 500 for just the live preview mode would be amazing.
Speaker 1:Anyways, there is one thing I want to mention is that I eventually got my switch hooked up, as you can see.
Speaker 1:But if you're going to use the hdmi link for quest, you have to.
Speaker 1:There are a couple caveats the you have to get a pass-through usbc connector because the switch will not output video unless it is getting power. So you have to get a pass an hdmi that has a pass-through on this, on the hdmi side, from the usbc out, or else it won't detect it as what it thinks is a dock. The other thing is that you have to use a controller because when the switch is connected to what it thinks is a dock, it does not accept inputs from the joycon. So you have to have a third-party controller or a pro controller or something, or you have to undock the joycons from the switch. So it makes all these things a little bit fiddly and you're gonna have a bunch of wires connected to your head, like I mean you can see later in the video that I've. In the video I've got an adapter to the usbc, adapter to the nintendo switch dock connected to a power bank, so I'm looking like robocop over here after you got shot yeah, also I tried playing youtube.
Speaker 1:It didn't output sound. I don't know why it outputted video but no sound. And then later on I tried to play youtube or, I'm sorry, hulu, but it did not accept hdcp content. So it would boot hulu, but it would not pass through any video, which is why I think that meta should come up with their own solution, because a lot of meta's issues right now is that they don't have access to video apps yeah, yeah, which I mean, I would assume for hdcp.
Speaker 2:Like really just disabling the ability to screen record should satisfy all parties involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know, I mean literally the way that I did this was screen recording and that's probably a. I mean, literally, the way that I did this was screen recording and that's probably a big problem for the studios, that's why they wouldn't, but there's got to be some way around it.
Speaker 1:And now, but here's the thing is, if you got dvds, you're golden baby, you know, like if you have a big dvd collection and you want to pass it through and you can watch your dvds. Blu-rays are probably no go because they're hdcp content protected yeah, but some aren't.
Speaker 2:So I don't know, might work yeah, well it's, it's a nice beginning. We'll see what where this goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, but I was pretty impressed honestly, I thought it was a good implementation like I'm intrigued by feature, I don't really have a use case for it.
Speaker 1:My use case is actually like playing retro games, playing my Xbox. I have another device it's called the LG cloud which is sort of like a switch, an Android based switch device and it's got a USB-C out and it just works. You don't have to pass any power through it or anything, and it's got like remote play for my PS5. So, hour through it or anything, and it's got like remote play from my ps5 so I can play my ps5, my xbox series s, my I mean, here's the other thing we didn't even talk about.
Speaker 2:This would be excellent as a monitor for your pc that's the kind of thing I was thinking about is like, just because zero latency, yeah 1080p 60 content sit back, I guess, and just yeah, I mean, if you had like a laptop on.
Speaker 1:You could game with this, yeah, like play like a first person shooter, like call of duty, or I play planetside 2 and zero. You can't have lag in that game because it's, all you know, very twitch. Yeah, mouse and the. The problem with a lot of the current on like screen solutions is that there's it's almost all white, wireless and you're getting latency and also connecting there. There aren't the options like virtual desktop works pretty well, but like moonlight does not work particularly well with the current air and face on the quest three. You have to sideload it. That's the thing.
Speaker 1:But using this as a monitor would be primo. Anyways, that's all we've got for that. And then the last last thing of the day this, this sort of, just launched just a couple days ago, so it came out right as we were getting ready, and so the pico 4 ultra just came out and or was announced by Pico. It is currently only available in China, but there was a leak from a South Korean manufacturer, so and it's not currently available in South Korea. So there is some speculation that, because of the South Korean leak, that they may be trying to go for a global launch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can get it in Europe, you can't get it in the united states.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it might be huge roadblocks to specifically the us because we've yeah we're gonna stand against my dance, so yeah the united states is terrified of bike dance as a company which you know, just like meta. There are some weird concerns about privacy and that type of thing yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:But you know it's like oh, we're okay with americans spying on us, but not the chinese. But especially when you put a bunch of cameras on a device and starts and then start start scene meshing and scanning your living room. So now there will I'm sure be people complaining that the chinese have have floor plans to every house in the United States.
Speaker 2:You know, like this, that's, that's the key to world domination. Yeah, my living room looks like. Yeah, I know exactly where I keep my blender.
Speaker 1:You know, but the specs are pretty impressive. There's not it's not a huge upgrade from the Pico 4, but there are some very key things that I think are very good tactical upgrades. So it's got the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, which is the same processor in the Quest 3. Sort of curious why they didn't do the Gen 2 Plus, but probably a lot more expensive.
Speaker 2:And or power hungry. I'm not sure about that chip. Yeah, oftentimes that little extra comes out of the console lot more expensive and or power hungry. I'm not sure about that chip, but yeah, oftentimes that little extra, yeah, thermals and thermals in that form factor are definitely nothing to problem to bulk at and it's a great chip as it is. So it's like I can see why, honestly, the quest 3, I am, I've not, I'm not hitting it continues to impress me.
Speaker 1:Over time they they jumped up from 8 gigabytes of RAM to 12 gigabytes and that makes a lot of sense, because it seems like with these other features I'll just go on and then we can talk about. They. Upgraded to two 32 megapixel cameras for perspective, correct pass-through with low distortion. So their claims are that it has a better pixel per degree for the pass-through cameras than the Quest 3. As good as the quest 3 pass-through cameras have already gotten I mean, you saw the footage that I recorded on my headset, decent. Yeah, it seems like they're trying to target apple and the apple vision pro for sort of a better pass-through experience because I mean, as we've seen, as we've talked about, the pass-through cameras make the usability of the Quest 3 just so much better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the fact that they've improved it over time means it's highly software-driven. Yeah, and that's the one thing that like, without using the device, you know, you can show all these videos, and even the Quest 3 looks much better in videos than it does in practice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I don't know how good pico software is, right, that's yeah, it historically it seems that they're not as good with software as as meta is and that's gonna that's gonna be a problem with for them. But it I did hear that they retooled internally like they fired a bunch of people and then they like reclassified what their long-term goals were and I think part of that was doubling down on their software stack. And they're going to need that going forward, especially if they're going to compete with meta. Yeah, and especially with Apple, because Apple's software is dramatically better than even Meta's is. Yeah, it's got wifi seven, which is good for latency. It's going to bring that latency ceiling like way down. I guess Wifi seven just generally is a very impressive implementation. It's got largely the same. It's slightly smaller field of view than the quest, but it's 105 versus 110. Don't know, I think that's pretty similar. It's got actually better height than quest 3 does and it's got 3d stereo video capture up to 24, 48 by 15, 36 at 60 frames per second.
Speaker 2:That is very interesting yeah, but it's just stereo, not 180, right is it? Is it similar to the iphone, or like the, the x-beam, or is it?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I wonder. I'm guessing that resolution sort of implies exactly, it does sound like a square, like a square format, yeah, though which is cool, I mean it seems like it's slightly bigger on one side, so it's probably like a well, that actually would be.
Speaker 2:That would be consistent with two widescreen oh yeah, good call.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty decent resolution in 3d. Yeah, we'll have to see what it looks like. We've talked about how shooting with a camera attached to your head never seems. It seems intuitive. I have not yet seen it implemented in a way that is particularly yeah good, I'll never not think about rick and morty when I think about this idea, yeah, for sure I am not staring at you.
Speaker 1:I am a cyborg photographer, just act. Natural, this is a candid shot. I don't require a camera. So sorry, but it does seem that the pico 4 seems pretty impressive. They sort of backed off for a while. They canceled the pico 5 and I think they were just retooling their existing headset, and I think that's very smart. They got rid of the the rings on the controllers. They're also releasing trackers, the leg track the leg track.
Speaker 1:I think these are really cool and it's something that, especially for standalone, there's so many vr chat players that are just like obsessed with vr chat and they'll spend just ludicrous amounts of money to get their perfect vr chat. Players that are just like obsessed with vr chat and they'll spend just ludicrous amounts of money to get their perfect vr chat setup. And this seems way more intuitive. Just these, the, so the new leg trackers. Not only do they have imus, that have gyrometers and accelerometers in them, but they also have 12 led lights that are tracked by the, the downward facing cameras, which I think is why. Haven't we already seen this sort of situation like it seems like a it's yeah a no-brainer.
Speaker 2:I mean I've and I've heard of like developers and other like homebrew people like modifying controllers and strapping yeah, yeah, exactly the exact same thing so it makes sense.
Speaker 1:So it seems way more expensive than a vibe tracker setup, which you know I don't mess with vr chat, unless occasionally I'll take somebody and be like hey, look at this crazy bullshit, you know like you're never gonna want to do this.
Speaker 1:There's a bunch of furries over there, yeah but I think it's good to have competition, even if it isn't going to wind up here. I know some european vr enthusiasts actually really love the, the original pico 4, even a 3, it seems. The general consensus is that the lack of the display port is a big hang up for a lot of people, but I mean, that doesn't seem like anybody's doing that anymore anyways, other than like big screen beyond and, I guess, the psvr2 now.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's good to know that meta has competition and I think taking on trying to sort of square apple is a good tactical move because yeah, it's the kind of, in some ways, they're the hardest target and also the easiest target, because trying to sort of square it Apple is a good tactical move because, yeah, it's the kind of, in some ways, they're the hardest target and also the easiest target because the price is so much higher. Yeah, like it's it is, it makes sense it's going for 600 bucks.
Speaker 1:So it's a little bit more expensive than the quest three, but it's still less than a fourth the cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah Of yeah. Less than a fourth the cost. Yeah of yeah. What was the internal?
Speaker 1:storage on this. I know it's 12 gigs oh 256, available in 256 gigabytes. It's interesting that they don't have a higher tier. Yeah, that is interesting. But the increase in ram seems really important because if they're going to be doing all these more product, they also announced that they have a much bigger productivity stack and we're going to continue to see this because it does seem that, now that Apple is doing it and Meta has their implementation, that productivity is going to be a thing that people are expecting these to do long term. And you know, I actually have tried productivity in my quest 3 and, weirdly enough, it worked. Yeah, fairly well, it's handy.
Speaker 1:It's handy and it's interesting for these headset makers that are into games to go after productivity, because kind of apple's only doing productivity and entertainment and not doing games thus far well and the with meta is sort of doing an interesting thing because they created the, they announced meta horizon os, so now and the, the assumption and sort of the announcement that they made implied that we'll have targeted headsets for different product, like places in the market so like you'll have a a fitness focused headset.
Speaker 1:You'll have a productivity focused headset that maybe doesn't have quite, as that doesn't have controllers, or fitness minded headset that has better breathability and less weight to it. It just has, you know, controllers and a really slim profile, that type of thing right, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like you could get carried away with market fragmentation again, which has not been great, and that is a big concern because android devices already have notoriously bad market fragmentation and I personally don't want that becomes problematic really quickly as.
Speaker 1:But I feel like with vr there is a minimum spec standard that you sort of have to, you have to hit, yeah, and I think that's. It'll be good to see that at least it'll be interesting to see what meta's expectations are for minimum, viable, releasable, you know, specs yeah, which I mean.
Speaker 2:But that's also like it's what the market is willing to pay for, too right, so they're gonna. It was confirmed, right, that they're gonna do the uh 3s or whatever, the quest 3s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is where we took a little too long yeah, we took a little too long of a break, but like it's basically going to be a quest 3 with quest 2 lenses and shit like that, right. Yeah, I don't think it has literally been officially confirmed, but MetaConnect is next month. Oh yeah, we've seen pictures of it. They've been leaked. It's definitely a thing.
Speaker 2:It gets interesting because there's like clearly there's a market for the processing power and the gaming ability and not the lenses, because for me the lens is huge right.
Speaker 1:Like I don't understand the not using pancake lenses, that seems like the biggest barrier.
Speaker 1:I'll never go back I will literally never go back. That's why I mean, I have a ps5, I have a pc that I could use the psv to as a as a PC or VR headset, but the fact that it has Fresnel lenses I just am not interested in it at all. Yeah, but you know, here's the thing is that the quest three S is it's marketed for children. It's for children, right, it's for children. And it's for people want to do fitness and don't care about you know, they want something cheap or at least inexpensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we'll see what Meta is planning at Connect next month. But it's for children, it's so that they can hit that $300 price point and sell a lot, millions of them, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean Interesting times though. Interesting times, and I, yeah, yeah, well, I mean.
Speaker 2:Interesting times though.
Speaker 1:Interesting times, and I think that's really all we got today. It was a good one. I think we covered some good stuff. I like our new space. I'm enjoying it. I think it's a very natural.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just I don't know for me just not being cramped in my little office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you spend so much time in that office At some point I should have.
Speaker 2:I wish I could have turned the camera on, to be like so we could see the camera was basically sitting on my desk, you know what I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:You're having to like duck under lights we can actually move the lights around here, you know totally different lighting set up you know, I think it looks great, honestly, and I'm really excited for the space because I think it's going to help us output more stuff. I think it's going to.
Speaker 2:we're going to be able to be more creative with how we light things, how we I mean one of our ideas is to have a big splash screen on a psych behind us.
Speaker 1:Hopefully next episode we'll be able to project our logo behind us during the entire thing or whatever's on here. Or even like output, because one of our we're working on sort of like a tech show where we can output the video from the hardware that we're featuring in that episode onto the psych so we can get like a maxi view, sort of like that scene. And do you remember that movie, the wizard? Where they're, where they go to the universal studios and play super mario, super mario brothers 3 seems so so cool when I was a kid oh my god, it was amazing I love the power glove.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so bad. The biggest let down hey, hey, and it's got Jenny Lewis in it too. Yeah, so California, is that from that? That's from that movie, because they drive by the dinosaurs in Palm Beach. That's my favorite meme. Yeah, oh, it's so good.
Speaker 2:Anthony Kiedis, oh yeah, writing his first song.
Speaker 1:California, california, just pull over Stay still honey I used to live in palm springs near those dinosaurs and I used to drive by them once a week pretty much it's at a date. That place has a date farm and you can get date shakes at those dinosaurs Random Alright. Thanks for coming folks. This was a good one. See you next time. Serious Goat Podcast. We're out.