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
Snap into the Future with Spectacles: iPhone Spatial Video, Calf, Immersed, and Meta Orion Chaos!
Is the iPhone 16 revolutionizing how we capture and share our lives? Tune in to our latest episode of the Stereoscope Podcast, where we welcome our new host, Sean Tarjyoto, and dive deep into the groundbreaking advancements from the Meta Connect 2024 event. We'll unpack the incredible new features of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, including spatial photos and videos now available across the entire lineup. Discover how the advanced MV-HEVC codec is changing the game for video compression. Plus, we unpack the weirdness surrounding the new 180-degree stereo camera from a Chinese social media company.
Ready to upgrade your camera gear? This episode's got you covered with a comprehensive look at the latest trends in camera technology. We also pit Canon's C80 against the C70, examining their sensor sizes and VR shooting compatibility. Whether you're a seasoned filmmaker or a tech enthusiast, this discussion on the evolving landscape of video production tools offers valuable insights and practical advice.
But that’s not all! We also traverse the whirlwind world of AR and VR with a special focus on Snap's latest Spectacles and the tumultuous story of Immersed's VR headset launch. From Snap's ambitious AR glasses with four cameras and a spatial engine to Immersed's keynote debacle, we analyze the broader implications for the industry and what these developments mean for the future of immersive technology. Wrap up the episode with our recap of the new Watch Party episode, appreciating the fantastic setup and space provided by our collaborators. Don’t miss this action-packed episode filled with the latest tech updates, expert analysis, and a touch of behind-the-scenes fun!
And don't forget to check out our VR180 Starter Pack on Amazon for some affiliate-sponsored lulz.
Hey, we have to pay the bills somehow. Do you want us to start a Patreon? Because we will. No? Then just click the Amazon link. You know you're gonna buy some socks or like, a lamp shaped like a mushroom or something.
hey, hi, I'm byron. Welcome to the stereoscope podcast number eight. We are in the new space. The new space a final form or near final form. Uh, so we, this is a huge episode. Today we have a brand new host with us. This is Sean Tariotto. He's a very good friend of ours. He's an actor, he's a VR enthusiast. Say hi Sean, hi Sean. There you go. What's up, anthony? How you doing today?
Speaker 2:Same as always All right.
Speaker 1:Whatever that means. So, yeah, this is a pretty big episode. We're in the final space and it looks fantastic. Anthony did a great job rigging it all up today and we've got a lot of stuff to talk about, because we just watched the Facebook or, sorry, the MetaConnect 2024. We saw the Orang glasses. That stuff is crazy. All right, we're going to launch into our first topic, which is the iphone spatial video on iphone 16 and iphone 16 pro, correct, yeah?
Speaker 2:so, um, this is an update for it's a very minor incremental update to what they had in the 15.
Speaker 1:And it brings spatial photos to everyone. Yeah, and spatial video to the non-Pro models no all of it is on all of it, basically.
Speaker 2:So the big change is that now you can do spatial. It's two big changes. You can do spatial photos. We couldn't do that before. Yeah, and you can do that spatial photos and videos on the entire lineup instead of just the Pro models so everybody who buys an iphone now will have a spatial camera in their pocket, correct?
Speaker 1:that is nuts. Yeah, can you? Can you imagine saying that like two years ago? No, no, I didn't think any of that was gonna happen now?
Speaker 2:it's still limited to like 1080p and 30 frames. Yeah, it's still as we know. It looks like there might be some camera updates that hopefully have fixed some of the issues we've had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe a higher resolution on the ultrawide camera and maybe just as fast a camera, because they're like we've. Well, because they said you can shoot in 4K60. Now right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think 4K120. 4k60 frames, yeah, and 122?. Yeah, the cameras are insane. Well, how much memory are you going to need to get?
Speaker 2:Do I need to put in a grip map, because that is a lot of data. The beauty is that you can now plug a hard drive into the phone and actually record directly on a hard drive.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's also recording in this MVHEVC. Yeah, the MVHEVC, which is very efficient. The way that it works is it stores the difference between the frames rather than storing two complete frames.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's something like 35 megabytes per minute of video, which is really not bad.
Speaker 1:It's actually the same technology they use to compress Blu-ray videos.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's one hand or the other, but it's really busy, you're not weighing down both sides.
Speaker 2:It is an old and that's kind of been frustrating because people want to get this use it again now. But it hasn't really been used since. I'm coding and I've got a friend who actually writes Burns 3D Blu-rays and stuff like that and the codec, the package to encode in that thing is something like the license for it is 10. That thing is something like the license for is 10 grand, it's something like the same thing, because it is this like only studios needed it, so it's got that kind of price tag on. Yeah, hopefully somebody I think somebody's working on this right now well, and we've we've used spatial phi.
Speaker 1:Uh, you use spatial phi more than I have, correct? Can you tell us about your experience with it?
Speaker 2:I mean works great. I haven't used it in a minute because I haven't been playing too much with these videos, but it's working really well to just convert, you know, mvhevc to.
Speaker 1:Do you have the iPhone?
Speaker 2:16? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you going to so?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean it does. One of the big changes is that there's now so used to. You'd go to photo, to video and there'd be like a little uh avp icon. You click that and that would put you into. Now there's a spatial section over here because you can do again videos and photos and you're going to drop like a spatial video yeah, so we'll do a quick little like hey, and then here's the lighting setup, in case anybody can't see that in 3d right now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's like we're time traveling, so much time traveling today.
Speaker 1:Alright, I'm excited for this. It's barely minor, but it's going to have a big impact long term.
Speaker 2:It's all about getting more and more people into this format and into the idea of thinking in 3D and all that stuff, which is the reason for the season, this format and into the idea of thinking in 3D and all that stuff. It's exciting.
Speaker 1:What do we have next? It's the Kalf Viscence. I don't know what that means, viscence.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that word means. Vision sense, I'm assuming, is what they were going for.
Speaker 1:Kalf was this new stereo viewer 180 camera that came out a couple years ago and supposedly it's a Chinese social media company that built this camera for their platform and they have an app that goes with it and it's effectively like tiktok in 3d this is like the snapdragon, this is like the snapchat lenses, but a completely different vibe, like it's a social media company.
Speaker 1:That, oh sure, yes, it's very soon yeah, I was like wait, where are you going with that? But you came around, I understand it now. Um, everything the tiktok, yeah, exactly, uh. I mean yeah, because by dance owns uh tiktok and they own pico, so, um, but this is their second version of uh, a more consumer focused rather than a prosumer focused vr 180 camera. Um, and we've been keeping our. We didn't know this was coming, necessarily, but it sort of fits into a place in the market that we've been looking at.
Speaker 1:Yeah everybody it seems like I mean everybody's desperately looking for a replacement for the, for the the insta 360 evo um, a great little point and shoot, but the problem is it just is too low of quality for what it is um and there are. There are some other cameras sort of in this place, but the one thing that this has that's coming that I think is really important is in-camera stabilization. Supposedly it's not delivered on the models that are out there right now, but it's coming in a firmware update later this, I think next month, which I'll wait for that right.
Speaker 2:Sure, I hate these promises because that's the other issue, right Is you can't adjust the image at all on this. Yeah, it's basically Well, it's a big promise Like stabilization is the reason.
Speaker 3:You know like it's like. If it's fixing that in hardware, then you've cut down your post process and you're not going to get sick exactly if you don't have the in-camera stabilization, then you have to rely on third-party tools to do that.
Speaker 1:And Mystica is $70 a month for if you even want to touch the VR180 mode, which I'm paying it. But I don't like it, but I can't imagine anybody who's trying to use these types of cameras as a consumer. They don't want to have to do anything about that and you also almost you need a gimbal if you're going to be shooting in VR180. And the reason why I think this is important and it's good for me I like to shoot moving videos like uh, I really like to take vr cameras into haunts and you there's too much moving around with that, because you can't expect where the movement is going to come from, because you're getting scared.
Speaker 1:Like you know, there's a jump, there's literally people coming up and trying to make you go pretty shaky. So this is great for me as like more of a on the ground shooter, sort of like my Fright Nights VR channel, because it means that I have something that can replace the 360 Evo. There has been some weird stuff, like I saw a VR review this guy did on his YouTube channel and the camera looked good. It was a little bit softer than I was expecting. This guy, or is it? No, it's not this guy, it's a different guy, but the problem was that his stereo disparity was off. Yeah, and I was.
Speaker 1:It was, I feel, for the guy, because we've been there we I mean we've been there, but like, but here's the thing is if, if, if he shot this and this is the result that came direct out of the camera.
Speaker 1:Something's wrong oh, that's a real problem yeah, that's a problem because that's the whole beauty of that's like point shoot camerashoot cameras and with the Insta360 Evo that didn't really happen. No, it doesn't, it just works Unless you User error mostly. So they're going to have to get that ironed out. Maybe it was a pre-production sample, you just had the camera. It's entirely possible. It's all it takes you have to hit those horizon lines and supposedly this has that built in. It's got two different levels of horizon stability lines that you can look at, which is effectively necessary. I mean it's in the, it's in the spatial video shooting mode on the iphone 16 too.
Speaker 3:So I mean that's it's necessary I feel like they're both trying to do the same thing and they know that this is an emerging market. That stabilization is like. I wish there would be that stabilization when my iPhones were like my. 2015,. 2005 iPhone videos are just a mess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen the way that you shoot videos, Sean. They should not be edited. You should, you should. You need to get a gimbal before you should be shooting spatial video. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm not None of this stuff.
Speaker 1:Good artists, hey you know, some of your videos work intentionally like that.
Speaker 3:You haven't seen the archive, Seen some of it, but like this is Okay. See, this is pretty interesting. It's just. It's interesting because look at the Gen 1 and Gen 2. Look at the it's baked in.
Speaker 1:Seems like they have a more accurate color profile this time going around, it is a little. It is very contrasty.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you could tell, but it's a little bit less contrasty than the other one, but the Gen 2 has a blue. It's like a blue ND filter, like inside the software and the Gen 1 is you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot of added. I'll say and also looking at this, because I looked at this footage in headset. It's very contrasty in headset, but it's better quality than the Evo For sure. I would hope so. Yeah, because it's got like a 7.2k Alright. So new Calc camera, consumer grade. I'm excited for it. We'll see what the long-term reviews look like. I might pick one up, all right. Oh, and it has internal stitching and 3D calibration. Maybe he didn't like activate the calibration.
Speaker 1:Like I said, maybe it was a pre-production sample, maybe their their tools haven't been released yet I'm looking forward to like look how simple that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does look really cool like it does.
Speaker 1:It's a very promising and it's not very big, it's, it's like this big yeah, yeah, it's just big enough to hold to get those lenses out.
Speaker 2:I think it's what 50 mil apart or something like that.
Speaker 1:So it's pretty decent um and having a touch screen on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all that, I mean it. So once they add in like being able to adjust the image and a few other things like that could actually be a viable b cam for us yep, all right, I think we're gonna, we're gonna move on here and we got um.
Speaker 1:So this one, this one sort of came out of nowhere.
Speaker 3:Uh, it is the c80 um, it's a canon, it's an eos, yeah this is the.
Speaker 2:It's not exactly the successor to the c70 because apparently they're going to keep selling it alongside it yeah because the c70 is a super 35 camera and this one's full frame, which is why it's compatible can you tell us the differences between like uh, what's the difference between the c70 and c80?
Speaker 1:and like the, the camera that we're using?
Speaker 2:so mainly that right. So the main differences are super 35 sensor versus full frame sensor, which, if you're not familiar, that is literally. Most cinema cameras are actually super 35. Most cameras have been Super 35. Full frame refers to what photography cameras like. A full frame of 35mm film. It's basically running a different way through the camera.
Speaker 3:There's a lot more space that you can edit down with. It's capturing like a lot of edge. Is that how people like?
Speaker 1:shoot something big, and then they'll like punch in.
Speaker 2:It's not the only thing like so in regular 2d stuff. It also means a different perspective, like a different point of view, sure. So like a 50 mil is 50 mil, whereas in super 35 or 50 it was 80 or something um.
Speaker 1:So, on the equivalent, the c80, it's got a 6k full frame yeah, so the full frame is what's necessary for. Oh, and I guess we should mention, canon has added dual fisheye support for the C80. Right, so that's why it's relevant for VR shooting. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Even if it hadn't right, like the same way that you can put this lens on a Raptor and just do all the work manually, like we already do, then you can still use it. But it is cool that they add support for it, like the guides and stuff like that that are built into the r5c. Yeah, yes, you need the full frame sensor for this particular lens, the 5.2 mil, because it projects two images on that size of a sensor, so you wouldn't be compatible with anything smaller. But yeah, it's only 6K and so I think we found pretty conclusively that 8K is kind of the minimum. I certainly wouldn't buy the C80 to use for VR exclusively. Now if you bought it for every other use that it's made for, then maybe also do some 6K video with it, fine.
Speaker 1:Sure. And maybe like upscale it or something.
Speaker 2:Because it is a high quality sensor. You're going to get a really good, clean image but it is still like kind of, in some ways less good than the c70. The c70 had a dual gain output sensor and this one does not. Okay, but it's a higher resolution.
Speaker 1:That's what we were talking about last episode. Yeah, so it's like you can get really low noise floor on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the result is apparently is pretty similar, but you know, I haven't played with it myself sure, yeah, I mean, I, I think it's.
Speaker 1:It's always good. It seems like like we talked about last time uh, canon seems to be taking this stuff deadly serious. Now, yeah, um, which is great for the entire community because it means everybody has options. Yeah, that if there is something that you shoot with regularly or you're gonna get a new camera that you shoot with regularly, you can buy the dual fisheye lens figure. Take some time to figure out how to shoot with it, which is the biggest problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you don't have to join a social network in another country. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That is focused on watching hot girls. So many hot girls in VR.
Speaker 2:I mean is hot girls doing hot stuff? I guess it's our version of porn propelling the market forward. Yeah, so it goes, but there's also porn.
Speaker 3:That's what happens in Vegas.
Speaker 1:It is funny because the first time when I heard about this camera I was like, oh, I wonder what type of content they have on there. So I side loaded this very sketchy APK onto my quest. I launched it up and I was like, oh, it's just sexy girls.
Speaker 2:I mean to be fair. That's why they talk a lot about the live streaming features on the thing.
Speaker 3:That's what it's there for so it's nice to see a professional like a big name company jump in, be yeah, this is what we want to do. We're still focused on like, what we can do well, but 6k we're gonna. We're gonna meet you at 6k yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think literally for this camera. It was just like oh, also, we can like it's a software tweak to add support right because otherwise we can future proof it with a full frame. Yeah, the physicality of what makes it compatible. Then they just add a little they sprinkled in the software to make it even better.
Speaker 1:All right, okay, we're gonna move on now. Okay, what do we got? There we go. Okay, we're going. We're going back to the apple vision pro. It's a deep well for us, um. So this is there, is this, okay. So Apple has been saying that they were going to add a bunch of new content for Apple vision pro users to watch on their Apple vision pro, because they launched like six videos or something like that, and a bunch of them have now finally come out. I wasn't able to find any footage of these because the only way you could watch them is with an apple tv plus subscription and an apple vision pro um, and we don't have access to one because we're not filthy rich, yeah, so, uh, yeah, I reached out to some people.
Speaker 2:I don't really know a lot of filthy rich people either, so, yeah, I mean, like even folks that are really have been doing this for a while, like the guys from 360 labs, also didn't bother to get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know um, though, from what I've heard, the division os2 has brought a lot of new functionality to huge, yeah, improvements, is what I'm hearing. Um, so they, they have three new shows uh, we've got elevated, we've got the. Uh elevated is it's like a hot, hot air balloon sort of video. It's sort of just like a tour photography type of situation. So they're literally elevated, yeah, literally, yes, um, and then the tv show out of the Apple TV screensavers yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I also read. I would watch that show, I mean in my sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, yeah, and it's takes place in hawaii, um, and you saw over like volcanoes and and cliffs and stuff. I really would love to watch it, but you know 3 500 bucks uh just sell your car, it's fine yeah, is there?
Speaker 3:is there a market out there for rental apple vision pro enthusiasts probably.
Speaker 1:You know like uh like.
Speaker 3:I don't want to commit to it. I don't want to. I don't want to lease to own.
Speaker 1:Oh, so supposedly, the the next episode will be shot in maine. Look at a bunch of cows not exactly hawaii, I mean, maine is very beautiful, um, I have also heard that they're uh, making the the in in the Studio show that they did with Alicia Keys. That's going to be a long-term series now, yeah, and also one of the new videos is a Super Bowl video, a four-minute Super Bowl video, yeah.
Speaker 2:I wonder where they got that idea from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, adam, we're so sorry, we're so sorry bud, I think he's doing just fine yeah, uh, so we had a buddy. We're he, you have a buddy. There was a situation and he didn't die, he landed on his feet. So, uh, we're, we're glad you, uh, you landed on your feet, adam, so good, thanks for watching bud. Um, but yeah, there's a. There's an apple vision pro super bowl video and, uh, you know it is the future of sports and it. But also, when was the super bowl? Yeah, how many months ago?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly we're almost.
Speaker 1:We're closer to the next super bowl correct than the last one, so that's a little embarrassing, but yeah, we're way past at least.
Speaker 2:At least we know we're not the only ones that take a long time to post-process. That is very true. This stuff is hard man.
Speaker 1:This is what happens when you're the bleeding edge. You know, I guess we're the cutting edge now.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:No scabs, here Too real. Just some scars, yeah, just some scars, just some scars.
Speaker 1:All right, so yeah, we can. We can probably move on. Okay, so the next one. We added this a little bit later than usual. It's been a busy week of announcements. It has it really. It was really crazy.
Speaker 3:This week for AR and VR stuff was really just nuts, not to get too meta.
Speaker 1:There was almost a new headset released or announced Almost every day in the last week. It's absolutely insane.
Speaker 2:It's the ramp up to MetaConnect, I guess yeah.
Speaker 1:Trying to get there. So this next one, I feel like at the time was really impressive, but orion just like absolutely sucked all of its, all of its attention out of the room. So this is the snap spectacle.
Speaker 3:It was the spider-man of the of the franchise. It like out of nowhere. Hello everybody. I thought I I was not expecting like moonshot tech to be like yeah, I mean so snaps.
Speaker 1:This is not the first pair of ar glasses that snap has released. They they released like, actually starting like about four years ago. They released sort of the same thing as, like the meta ray-ban glasses, where they've got cameras in them. Yeah, um, supposedly they did better than they expected and so they just started spending a bunch of money on this, because I don't know what else is snapchat doing these days.
Speaker 3:Oh, they're just now I mean they're just taking over the so the snap spectacles are standalone air glasses powered by snap os.
Speaker 1:Um. They feature four cameras, a spatial engine, micro projectors, and it's got a 46 degree field of view. Um. It's got hand tracking, voice tracking or like voice recognition, um, and it's got a 13 millisecond motion of photon latency, which is some of the lowest ar latency I've ever heard of explain to me what a photon is pretend so motion to photon latency is the time between when it renders, uh, when, when you it senses a motion to the moment the photon is rendered to go to your eye.
Speaker 3:So I move my hand in front of a chess piece and I want to move that and check someone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the motion of photon latency is the time between when you move the piece and the thing that it's rendering goes to your eye. 30 is pretty, it's 13. 13 frames per second yeah, that's milliseconds. That's very, very, very good Heard you that.
Speaker 1:Third time For meta. I, that's milliseconds. Yeah, that's very, very, very good for. Yeah, for for meta, I think it's actually even more than that. Um. The thing about this, though, is it's it is it's powered by snapdragon processors, but I believe it's the gen one. I'm not sure. Actually, I'm so sorry I got I'm getting this wrong. Um, but it's. This is not a consumer device, it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a dev kit, it's like 99 a month of rental, uh, yeah, um, and it only has 45 minutes of battery standalone, or else it has to be plugged in, um. So this is this is another one of these sort of moonshot devices, the we can do it devices, showing you what's possible. I'm a little confused about what Snap's long-term goals in this category are.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure they know. Yeah, exactly Like I'm not sure yeah.
Speaker 1:But they are very interesting and it was a very impressive demo, from what people who were there said of it.
Speaker 3:Just comparing and contrasting this with the Orion demo. I mean, this is out there as a thing and Orion is sometime in the future?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the thing.
Speaker 1:This is a developer kit that's going to be going directly into people's hands. Mind you, it does sound like the Orion dev kits are coming out soon. They didn't say when they were going out, but they did say that they're coming soon. But supposedly these have auto-dimming lenses so you can use them outdoors. That's cool. Yeah, would you wear them outdoors? I mean, they're goofy as hell, but they're straight out of Fortnite. Like yeah it's, it looks like there is some brain rot going on there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's a good audience though, right yeah?
Speaker 1:I mean, this is cool, you can like control it with your phone. Um, yeah, that big. It's funny because all of these, it feels like all of these companies. It feels like the early smartphone era, where everybody was making a phone and then all these companies just like blinked out of existence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or all their products. This is like sort of pre-iPhone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly what I mean, like Windows, that era where they were like making phones that were like a clam. For women that was like a clamshell, it was like a compact. Yeah, oh, for women that was like a clamshell, like a compact. You know Mr Mobile, you ever watch Mr Mobile when phones were fun. It's also a Trekkie, so shout out.
Speaker 1:I lived through that era it was fun and this feels like that era where these companies that really don't this isn't their real house are trying. They're like we can do this we have an air division.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, yeah everyone's got we're with it, yeah you know, there are a lot of developers, there's a lot of jobs out there. Yeah, you know it's. It's just like time. It's easy to be goofy when you're starting out because there's you got to make these mistakes and these and I want to see them.
Speaker 1:And there's so much iteration that we that we have seen it's easy to be goofy when you're starting out. You've got to make these mistakes, that's true.
Speaker 2:And there's so much iteration that we have seen. Yeah, I mean, it's clearly some sort of stepping stone, since it's not being sold to anybody. It's a very impressive product.
Speaker 3:I just want to go on the record. I love the design. I know it looks goofy, but it feels goofy to to.
Speaker 2:You know it at least looks a little bit more intentional versus, you know, the millhouse look of the yeah, yeah though I I mean don't it's gonna grow on me I like them in a weird way I like them, but they definitely look like the 3d glasses.
Speaker 1:These, these look like the 3d glasses you get at the at the movie theater yeah definitely like yeah, yeah, but not as disposable. Yeah, um, don't throw it away yeah, I think the name, I think the name is good. Um, all right, uh, yeah, now on to what was largely the the main topic going forward before, before Meta, but and it was going to be the main topic because we were so excited for it, but now the main topic is a very different toad. Oh no, oh dear, and that is, oh gosh, the Immersedor.
Speaker 3:Um, I lost my little controller thing um, it's like immersed was trying to be that I'm running into technical difficulties well, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's kind of funny, right, because? So the big thing with the merce, while he's oh yeah is don't go that like it was. They were promising the world and everybody's like this is vaporware, it's so bullshit, it's a scam, and so then, when they finally get their product the chance to to show it off, it doesn't work. So it just confirmed everybody's fears.
Speaker 1:Yeah, spoiler alert and so I think that wait a minute, the uh, the elephant in the room with this is that this company has. So they're a software development company. They created this piece of software for headsets. It's called Immersed and it's a. It's a. It's like virtual desktop. Yeah, it's like you know, but it's like a working platform. It's a. It's like a working platform. It's for working in headsets, both mixed reality and in vr, though it's mostly vr previously. Um and they. They teamed up with qualcomm to make this headset. It was announced about a about a little over a year ago.
Speaker 1:But they've been really awkward with the way that they've interacted with people on social media. Their Reddit, their subreddit has been locked down. Any sort of deviation from the norm in their subreddit has been just like completely excised, which is not a good look for these types of companies. Yeah, no, this is absolutely, especially in a place where you know there's a lot. There have already been so many companies that have promised the moon with these devices and just absolutely shot the bed. So there's a lot of skepticism around these devices already existing. So you can't go in from the beginning with this perception that something is wrong.
Speaker 1:So about a year ago they put out pre-orders for this device and they started promising these things. Mind you, as we got closer, they started showing these really impressive renders. They started showing these really impressive renders. They started showing, um, a lot of concepts that were like, wow, okay, this looks pretty good. And the fact that they were they they had uh qualcomm backing them. I started to think like, well, they're working with qualcomm. Surely they have to be taking this seriously, you know, yeah, um. So in the last few months, it started, as we were getting closer, they would uh show people wearing them. It started to look like, hey, maybe the haters are wrong on this one, maybe this is actually real.
Speaker 3:And then they had their this keynote and the keynote was uh, and the demos that they were supposed to get at this keynote were a complete and utter disaster.
Speaker 1:Um, let's take a look. So, from what I've read, the demo was completely disorganized and the reveal was what are we looking at here? This is the founder, his keynote, and him talking about how they started the company, where they ended up, the form factors. It's his cosplaying, cosplaying steve jobs situation. Um and yeah, uh, but the when the demo happened, none of the people who were working up, who got there, none of the demos were working. It was showing a single static image that was not in 3D.
Speaker 2:Well, and that was only after they kludged one of them together. Yes, like nothing worked at all for like most of the time. Yeah, and they're like hey, we got this one thing working and that was it. That was the demo.
Speaker 1:So we came into this like I started writing the notes for the podcast about a week and a half ago and the the demo hadn't or the keynote hadn't happened yet. So we went into this, uh, optimistic, optimistic, assuming that this was going to be the main topic of the show, because it was so important to the long-term industry, because the form factor was really impressive. The specs that they were talking about were supposed to be uh, they're using micro oleds, comparable uh in higher resolution than the apple vision pro, which, in that form factor, is like mind-blowing, you know, um yeah it, it's.
Speaker 3:It's like a robertey Jr was trying to make his own suit, but then he built.
Speaker 1:He built that one from Iron man 2 that twists in half and kills the guy and he's like screaming yeah, immersed. He did eventually on threads yesterday post, or I think it was on x actually, um, post a video of the visor working and it's like you could have just done that at the giant event that you organized. Yeah, you know. So the rumor.
Speaker 2:What was overheard, at least per the guys on uh on the upload vr podcast, was that like they had everything working and there was like a last minute firmware update that borked all the headsets, which I totally believe, like that. I mean that, yeah, that sounds like what a maniacal ceo would be like, or whoever was managing isn't there, like it isn't there an episode of, uh, halt and catch fire.
Speaker 1:That's like the exact thing it's the most cliche based on a real event. That's the most cliche yeah, fuck up yeah, yeah, we're big fans of halt and catch fire, yeah, um watched it twice.
Speaker 2:It's great, yeah, uh. But yeah, it's like you just don't do that and they're like, well, we got to get this one feature in there and blew the whole thing up. And especially when you're talking about firmware stuff, it's's just not. You don't slap that stuff together. I'm speculating, obviously.
Speaker 1:Just from a from a planning aspect, wouldn't you, just wouldn't you, keep one or two devices not in the back upgraded with the new firmware?
Speaker 2:that's the maniacal word, right, because like that means somebody who's very confident in the thing they don't know task failed, spectacular, or what?
Speaker 1:is it successful? Yeah, that's failed successfully, I mean. So this, this single handedly put back my faith in, is immersed back to the square one, I mean yeah, and then obviously all the haters that are just like well see, I told you it is yeah, uh, I mean, even if it wasn't, uh, obfuscation, hiding the fact that maybe something wasn't, even if that's the case, I still am like well, from a business standpoint, these people don't know what the hell they're doing. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3:I feel like just the demo, the parts of the demo that I'm watching on their laptop which is reflected in the back of the screen there. There's a lot of couldn'ts, there's a lot of question marks, there's a lot of couldn'ts there's a lot of question marks.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of these in my college photos.
Speaker 3:I don't know what they're trying to sell. They're selling like he's selling himself. Yeah, he's doing. It feels like kind of culty but in a yeah, he's trying to do junk. Yeah, right, exactly like I said cosplaying right, steve jobs but then if you lock out your reddit, you still you lock up the thread, that seems yeah, I mean it's a hallmark of any scam and or whatever, like certainly anti-consumer company, right, like well it's like it's why.
Speaker 1:It's why ai has taken off in silicon valley so hard. Is that? Uh, the people who who have money invested in it don't understand that, like there are stakes for creative use of generative ai, that yeah, that's a bold statement and I thought we didn't care about ai here, but I mean I don't, I, I don't care about ai in the sense that, uh, in it, it. I don't think it is an ethically used for creative creative endeavors it is.
Speaker 2:It is a product of mbas ruining the tech sector, and they're also ruining the film sector and so we don't really notice that part. We don't really talk about ai on this podcast, mostly in that it's not really relevant for what we do yeah, um yeah, only in the ways that we use it for, like denoising and or like sure you know how. Three million, yeah, but not.
Speaker 1:Not in the ways that they're trying to sell it, which is like these assistants that'll do this or that and I just, I brought that up mostly because it, that type of culture, is the same type of stuff that gets you stuff like this 100 yeah, um is is a detachment from reality.
Speaker 2:They're not tech people making tech decisions exactly their finance bros.
Speaker 1:Yeah, making tech decisions, yeah yeah, he definitely works out. Yeah, and especially after the orion reveal, this feels out of touch. It feels like uh completely missed opportunity. Yeah, they had a chance to steal metis thunder, even with orion, and just they just didn't spectacularly yeah. Yeah, so that was originally our main topic, but we're going to move on and talk about medic uh connect 2024 now, because we managed to get it in at uh at the last minute in 10 years, where you're the orion in 10 years is what is.
Speaker 3:It's just it's fun to imagine the idea of it, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's not. It's, it's not a thing that feels like they're going to throw it at our faces, Literally. It's like it's like oh yeah, this is complete. This is what we're doing in the skunk works. This is where we have the secret. This is what the secret project was about.
Speaker 1:This is what you're worried. This is where all your their investors were like that really was. That's like the definition of skunk works. Like they. They've been working on this for 10 years and it took them this long to get to this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, the results like technically, skunk works is like, uh, hidden from the company, sure the company doesn't know what you're doing. That's technically where Skunk Works is yeah well we got to get. It certainly is very scrappy and crazy. You know it's fucking nuts like um, but uh yeah. And then obviously the three.
Speaker 1:The 3s is exactly what everybody thought it was, but still cool and it became, and they hit the price point that they were trying to hit and honestly, honestly, I think what we've seen is that the sales of the Quest 2 were phenomenal, especially when they dropped the price. Yeah, especially when they dropped the price, good lord. But the Quest 3 hasn't really captured the attention of most people in the way that the Quest 2 did, because it's just too expensive. Yeah, it's, it's past that casual purchase point, you know. It's past the. It's more of a big-ticket Christmas item. You know it's the family device. It's not the. You get one and you get one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, price, you know but then when you have, like, the biggest market that's growing right now are like, basically, kids that are like my nephew's age, that are like 10, around 10 or whatever, and they're playing like gorilla tag and they don't need a.
Speaker 1:The quest three, yeah, this three s is gonna be perfect same. Yeah, I'm thinking about getting the quest three, uh, for somebody in my life I'm not gonna mention who, but people can probably figure it out and they also. Yeah, they don't need that type of thing because they don't care about the biggest and the best and the flashiest, you know. I mean, I personally think that pancake lenses would have been in. It's hard for me to think about going back to Fresnel lenses, see, like I actually got a subscription, a prescription for my lenses for the quest 2.
Speaker 3:When I first got it, um, I thought that was probably the best, like I thought it was really, yeah, the best you could get. Um, now my prescription's a little like. You know, I'm a little bit older. It doesn't work. I still want to, like you know, hold on to that um, but I can't, I can't, I can't imagine it.
Speaker 1:Well, you recently upgraded from the quest to the quest three right.
Speaker 3:So I recently did that and I did. I waited this long to find a deal on like uh, on like an auction site, yeah, and wait a minute, this is. This can't be real. This is half of what I what. So I went and get, I did it, and then I even I went so far as to to look at like like zipper after pay, or clarinet or affirms. You're like can I just half this?
Speaker 3:because I I don't even know if it's going to be the jump, the leap from the quest 2 to the quest 3 wearing these, yeah because you don't even have to yeah, like change out your glasses, everything, everything that I imagined was possible back in the when the quest 2 was brand new, is is where I, where you're at right now and I'm like re-energized. I kind of want to jump back in.
Speaker 2:So I got I got prescription. That's how I've been feeling since then and it's like you know, when we're talking about how like, even though the quest 3 was what was announced last year, this year's connect feels like the big one yes and it's because I feel like what you're saying. The quest 3 finally got us to where like meeting our expectations that we've had this whole time yeah and now, because we weren't sure before.
Speaker 1:Right when the at the last connect, we were sort of uneasy about the reveal, like is this going to be a good thing? Is this just a slight upgrade? How good are the pancake lenses? But now that we know, we're like, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:And they've continued to improve it like it's. It's actually much better device now than when it was released.
Speaker 1:Edition of the hdmi link the my perception, uh the hdmi link different thing, yeah, the different thing, in where you can like, plug in your switch and you know your the laptop yeah and have safety tip um is in having like zero lag, being able to use your laptop, like mind-blowing it's.
Speaker 1:It's become, like I said last episode, the the device that we think about when we think of video glasses or or this product category that's sort of been around since those sony video glasses in the early 2000s you know, I think he was late 90s yeah, the ones that had like little 480p, yeah, uh, it was high res screens in them, yeah, uh, yeah, that's what your look.
Speaker 3:That's what's gonna be on your logo sheet like 20 years from now. You've got the guy that's right now on.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah honestly like we could put that in right now. Honestly, I you know I've always wanted to get one of those pairs and like, because I wanted them when I was a kid you know, because I saw them in sharper image or whatever it was um, but like, imagine using them now.
Speaker 3:You, you'd be like, oh my god, it's like putting on a power glove. It's so bad.
Speaker 2:Screw that man I love it.
Speaker 1:I think the power glove came up in our last episode too. It comes up every time.
Speaker 2:We should actually just make it a thing that we just bring it up every time, you know.
Speaker 1:Lindsay has a power glove. We could get one and we could put it on. I could borrow it from her. Can we get three? Honestly, she probably has more than one. I'm not even lying, she probably has more than one.
Speaker 3:Lindsay, if you're watching, can we borrow a power glove? Yeah, and like a mannequin-like hand to fit it onto.
Speaker 2:Just as functional either way.
Speaker 1:Well, that was. That was fun. Yeah, I like this one. This has been a good.
Speaker 1:Sean, thank you so much for being here. He, sean's our new like. He's going to be a long-term host with us, so he's going to be in more episodes going forward. You can't get rid of me. You're term hosts with us, so he's gonna be in more episodes going forward. You can't get rid of me. Uh, you're, we're we're gonna shoot some new content in the space too some uh, so little small announcement. We're gonna make some. We're gonna we're working on the retro tech show and we're gonna do some gaming content too, because I I think we have a interesting take on gaming content that is a little bit different than most people. We're going to shoot it in VR. Almost all of our videos are in VR.
Speaker 2:They're all at the very least, 3d.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so those are going to be fun. Like I said, we have an interesting take on both of those and I think it's going to be really cool. Also, we have some really cool stuff cooking up that's super secret that we can't even talk about like I don't yeah like I, I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't even know it's. It's gonna be a. I think 2025 is gonna be a really, really different year for us. Uh, we might have to. It might affect the yeah release schedule of the podcast, but we're to try and stay a little bit on schedule. But, sean, what do you got going on? Tell us what's going on in your creative life, because you're an actor.
Speaker 3:I'm an actor. I got some of that working for me.
Speaker 1:I put some of that what are the next couple of projects you're going to be in.
Speaker 3:Oh, I can't talk, that's top secret. That's the production schedule, okay, that you're going to be in. Oh, I can't talk, that's top secret. That's the.
Speaker 1:That's the production schedule. Okay, that's.
Speaker 3:That's all stuff that we're going to be coming out soon, right, actually, yeah, you know, I think I'm in this movie that was in fright fest, uk, uh, earlier last month. It's called test screening. Yeah, and I can tell you who, but you could find out on IMDb.
Speaker 1:All right, that was a lot of fun. We have the Watch Party episode also is available. That'll be separate. That's a second episode. It's not like a part thing, you can watch it independently, but we had a lot of fun. Thanks for Sean, thanks, anthony, for making this beautiful new psych wall setup we got going. And thanks to Framework for hosting us here. I mean, we are paying for it, so, but it's a great space and, yeah, we're out. Thanks for watching.