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
CES 2025 Recap: XR Scramble, Google’s HTC Gambit, and Samsung’s Muhan Odyssey!
What if the future of screens is no screen at all? We explore the revolutionary world of XR and AR smart glasses—straight from CES—highlighting innovations like the groundbreaking XR glasses scramble and cyberpunk-inspired touch boards. These technological marvels promise to transform how we interact with digital environments, offering virtual displays that hover seamlessly around us. For those looking to blend the virtual with the real, this episode reveals how these advancements are reshaping user interactions through familiar interfaces like keyboards and mice.
Join us as XR glasses scramble, covering the various XR glasses announced at CES 2025. Imagine lightweight, prescription-friendly glasses that offer turn-by-turn navigation and real-time translation, all while staying unobtrusive. We dissect the competitive landscape stirred by upcoming releases, like the Meta Ray-Ban event, and introduce you to innovative hands-free controls using a ring. These glasses are not just about seeing differently—they’re about living smarter. Get ready to appreciate how technology once relegated to sci-fi is becoming a part of everyday life. We cover the shockingly relevant Play For Dream MR, an Android headset coming from a Chinese company later this year.
We wrap up with a glimpse into the future landscape of VR and AR technology, fueled by major industry moves like Google's acquisition of HTC's VR team. Dive into Samsung's ambitious Muhan project and its challenges, while considering the broader implications of non-Meta innovations. Plus, we breakdown two "new" VR180 consumer cameras with Quoocam Ultra 3 VR180 Mod and the Slam Xcam coming VERY Soon. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or a casual listener, this episode promises to keep you informed and eager for what's next in the realm of immersive technology.
Hi, welcome to Stereoscope podcast number 11. I'm Byron, I'm Anthony, I'm Sean and okay, so we're here for another. This is our second CES episode, that that's. That seems wild to me. Ces was just about three weeks ago, sort of. So much stuff happened, just an absurd amount of new tech mostly smart glasses, it seems like, but there was some vr stuff in there as well, and there's a couple other news bits that are pretty big for the industry, that are going to affect a lot of stuff going forward, and that's towards the end. And we got a couple. We got a couple of camera things this episode too which I'm pretty excited about. All right, so so, sean, there were a bunch of XR and AR glasses announced at CES, so we're we're just going to do like a scramble here, run through a bunch of them. There's a ton.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a glasses store out there, all right.
Speaker 1:So why don't you run through them for us right here, these the in-ear yeah, the in-ear glasses? In-ear In-ear.
Speaker 2:It's like one word, but it's phonetically like ear. It's what we want, right? We want a thing that you put on your face and in the air and it's not a, you know, an actual virtual reality headset with all the sort of like social awkwardness that happens when you have implications. Yeah, um, this particular graph that you see up here, it has, you know, it's an interesting box, like there's, it's, it's a glass it reminds me of a of a cyber deck from like from like shadow, or johnny mnemonic or, or cyberpunk 2020 they call it a touch board okay I guess because these part, this brand doesn't really want you to tension and interact with, like their particular take on what a you know.
Speaker 2:So it.
Speaker 1:So it sort of seems like to me that they're they're going for like this is a pc, this is like your laptop in a box, right, but without the screen, right, which is sort of cool. I like that idea. Part of me just wonders, like once you also include a screen.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think I think the thing is that what they're trying to say is you don't need a screen, you just need these glasses. Now you can have four or five, seven, you can have, yeah, and screens. You know, and you know, like, that touch board is also an external battery. Okay, it's designed to charge, you know. You know, keep your glasses on. I wonder if it's wireless, I think or if it's wired I think that's the idea.
Speaker 1:Well, if it, if it's an external battery, it's probably wired, or does it do any? Yeah, I mean, it could charge in this case thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, as you can see, there's a little mouse, there's gesture support. I think it's for folks who don't necessarily want to do this all the time, okay, or want to have this as a learning curve. This is familiar. My keyboard when I'm on remote desktop or virtual desktop, yeah, and when I'm on virtual desktop I use my controllers to, you know, interact with the, with my desktop, on my, on my mac, yeah, with remote I don't, and then I'm, but I'm still very comfortable using my keyboard because it's just, you know, I know how to, it's familiar to me and all the tech around. The quest is actually the. The keyboard's visible now on, like a lot of applications, and just it's there, visible. So I think that's what it's trying to do, and you're wearing glasses, so you're not really like obstructed, it's an mr it's an x, I know that I usually take.
Speaker 1:I bring a wireless keyboard and mouse with me when I bring my quest three or along now, because I can do like work, yeah, just in my headset. So this seems like same type of thing yeah, yeah, which.
Speaker 1:And then at that, at some point is it reinventing the wheel, I guess, except for being a battery, because, like, maybe I want to use the keyboard, I like yeah, outside I mean, yeah, I wonder thing looks like a, looks like an ipad keyboard or something like that, like hey, but like cramped, you know, but all but for all you edge runners out there, you got your next piece.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah. It really does look like all right. What? What's next? What else we got? But for all you edge runners out there, you got your next piece. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It really does look like. All right, what's next? What else we got? Oh yeah, okay. So Rokid has been around for a while. There's actually another glasses in this list here, but this is their like traditional video glasses, so tell us about these?
Speaker 2:I think these are a little more part of this. So what's tell us about this? I think these are a little more part of this. If you have a prescription and you need to use, you need to have a. Like you have a nearsighted myopia, right, okay, and it's and you need, like, really exact pupillary adjustment. You've got like, if you, if, for folks who don't wear glasses, there are, they're not just like glasses on your face, like the distance between the focal point in your eyes and where, like the, the glass itself is engineered is an important part of maintaining focus. And also so you don't, like you know, get headaches. And there are all these other things you can add in, like blue light filters to keep yourself from, like you know, staying awake all night. So, like, I think that what they're trying to do is really that's where they're pinching. They're going for Sony micro OLED. They're using like 120.
Speaker 2:Micro OLEDs do seem to be like the go-to these days, without getting too techie, like I think that's what they're up to.
Speaker 1:So these are just like regular video glasses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you can also, you don't need to have, like, you don't need to be sitting around with these. These aren't. These aren't so, and I think one of the things that we've noticed from CES is that, despite the fact that there are a lot of different types of smart glasses, some of them have lenses or, sorry, some of them have screens. Some of them don't have screens. Some are just like like the Meta Ray bands with cameras and and and audio, but, like these are just our traditional video glasses. There's a cup and that seems to be sort of the, the like replacement screen thing. Is the the thing that's like popular right now?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I can imagine that you would wear these if you're driving. You know, I would not recommend, I mean drives or just walking around your house.
Speaker 1:Sure, yes, I could see that you could wear these like on a train.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. When I said driving, I meant commuting. Okay, I meant commuting. Sorry, I use driving in my Google. That makes a lot of sense. I also bicycle. I wouldn't bicycle with these, but I would commute.
Speaker 2:I think you might end up with a hematoma if you I mean you're in the back of your Uber or your Lyft and that's not going to be weird because you're catching up with your stuff. You don't have a headset on but it's, and you can check stuff. You can look around and it just seems like it's designed to be to bridge a gap between where you live, where you work and in between.
Speaker 1:So Rokid is clearly. Clearly this is like another iteration of their existing video glasses lineup, just the next gen with better. It looks like it's better lenses, yeah, micro led and they look like the robert downey jr glasses okay, so what's the next one? What do we got next?
Speaker 2:oh, these holiday? Okay, has anyone been getting facebook ads for holiday smart glasses?
Speaker 3:I have actually and I said that out loud yeah, we will?
Speaker 1:certainly will, so one of us. So this is one of the. This is one of the like types of ar glasses that they're. They technically do have screens in them, but they're single color, right, and it's a. It's like a thin membrane, but it doesn't have like you can't like watch a video with this, yeah right, so it'll like draw.
Speaker 2:It's sort of similar, in concept, I guess, to the orion right right glasses yeah, yeah yeah, tell us a little bit more about them okay, unlike the other glasses that we just looked at, there isn't a you know a second kind of bubble. These are like glasses without bifocals, right, so you could wear these while driving. Yeah, that's that's, you know, ces. Yeah, photo from, and like the design is chill, it seems like it doesn't, it's, it's, it blends in that. The difference, right, is that what you're looking at is sort of more, I guess, old school graphics, you know, green lines, it's, it's designed, I think, make you feel like you're not obstructing your collaboration or whoever you're interacting with, and they don't have to care about that either I saw.
Speaker 1:That's why I think I saw a demo of these from a couple places online and a lot of people were really impressed by these and it's using waveguides in the same way as the Orion, and they were saying, like you could have like heads-up directions, like turn-by-turn directions, you could have real-time like translation, sort of like.
Speaker 2:And you can, because they're wave guided you. Yeah, you can get a prescription right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think most of these glasses you sort of have to have to be able to get a prescription or else they wouldn't wouldn't, really work correctly I know they'd be useless I mean, unless you wear contacts right that's true, I guess, yeah but that's like you know yeah, not a lot of people I don't know.
Speaker 3:I guess I'm not in the minority that can like. I've been wearing contacts since like fifth grade.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they look really light too, they look, so I thought this was a stock photo.
Speaker 1:I'm definitely these, especially these, I am keeping in my, in my, like I'm keeping track on the wish list I wonder yeah, I I'm really interested in sort of like this interesting because supposedly there's a new event, there's a a meta ray ban event next week that they're going to announce some new product and I'm guessing it's a going to be a direct competitor yeah, that's.
Speaker 3:The rumor I've heard is that they will have a display.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it probably won't be a complicated display. It'll be the same like turned by two directions.
Speaker 2:Halliday started as a Kickstarter, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh, I mean, that makes sense Also that name.
Speaker 2:It has nothing to do with Ernest Cline's award-winning book Ready Player One.
Speaker 1:I mean, that is definitely a choice.
Speaker 2:I don't believe you oh yeah, actually, interesting thing I just learned these actually come with a ring control. That's a touch. Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1:So you can sort of control it wirelessly.
Speaker 3:You can scroll through the information without having to wave your hand, see, this is interesting, I think, this direction that we're heading, like with the Orion glasses and the he keeps calling it a neural interface, but the bracelet or whatever that picks up. That's interesting because people don't want to be doing this, you know, and even controllers, so your arms get tired of doing that. It's just because it's an unnatural thing.
Speaker 2:you know, If you're in the back of a car, right, or even if you're driving. This is, this is just you're resting, but this is just you're resting, but without it, your arms are. You're literally just using your arms and not your fingers. It's not energy conservation, it's, I mean, okay, sure, if you're like I don't know, if you study a martial art, then you're fine, you're completely good. But if you're like adjusting a timeline or getting a sandwich.
Speaker 3:It's the precision you need while you're doing it.
Speaker 1:That makes I mean it's sort of like back in the day with something that might might be attached to your arm.
Speaker 2:That is so bad yeah, I mean like I don't know what, I don't know what you could possibly be, but I mean whatever man all right, so moving on.
Speaker 1:So we got a couple more glasses. What's so? We're back to roked see, and it's another. This seems to be the, the form factor that people are sort of like trying to capture.
Speaker 2:You know, still got screens right, right, still got nose pads that are still have ipd is still a thing. Got cameras in there, got these limbs. It's got, you know, earphones. But what makes these different from the other rokids that we just looked at?
Speaker 1:they don't have. Like I don't think you can like it doesn't have like a traditional screen, it's like it's got, like it's got its own.
Speaker 2:It's got like a hud. Yeah, it's a lot like the. Uh the holidays yeah, I don't know if anyone uh this. This might be too niche, but if you watch star trek enterprise, it's the. It takes place before the original series and before. Yeah, the next generation, and so all the interfaces in in that particular universe are basically they're trying to mirror modern pods from like cockpits and like jet planes. So it's all green buttons that correspond to information in back.
Speaker 1:Instead of like the little jewels that they had in the US.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which were colorful and you know fun Like candy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, like that's the information you're, I wonder if most of the control is actually on the, the actual frame, because in this, at least in this picture, it seems like the idea is that you can, I can see, I can see some buttons there and I'm not sure if, if it, this is that for, if that's that model. But you know you're cyclops right in, you know you're working. There's no ring control on that hand. It seems like they're trying to push this idea that you, this is what you will, you'll be doing most of this so I, I think I think it, yeah, which I?
Speaker 1:I did see that it's got like to the awkward you can, you can pay with your voice. That too, they also real-time that's worked out really recognition and it's got multi-language translation yeah, that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:This is a qualcomm chip so so it's, it's using that old ar1 qualcomm chip, yeah, like your motorola phone chip, yeah, and it's not trying to push in a snapdragon and dump in a lot of ai, like it's kind of old school. It feels like it might be that entry point.
Speaker 1:So it does seem like it's got more limited HUD information like navigation and notifications and stuff.
Speaker 2:The other thing is I think that's.
Speaker 1:Object rec. Yeah, yeah, because it's got those cameras on there. I wonder what their AI solution is going to be. Are they going to go with, like, chat, gpt, or are they going to come up with their own, like custom situation?
Speaker 3:Do they need one? That's kind of a funny.
Speaker 1:I mean, do they need them?
Speaker 3:is sort of like because like everybody's doing it, but nobody, nobody's even asking for it, right?
Speaker 1:Well, supposedly, supposedly, on the Meta Ray-Ban classes, the AI is like part of the biggest success of it.
Speaker 3:Well, which makes sense, I mean, because that's one of their big products, like but they're really trying to push, which means they're using that as a way to push it.
Speaker 1:yeah whereas everybody else is just like we have an ai too. Oh sure, yeah, like I think, us too, guys. I think I think the ai definitely makes more sense for like a glasses form factor, because you are sort of going around looking at things and like it has access to like visual data, especially for, like you know, if you're lost in a city. That fucking amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just like worse. All right, I guess my deep skepticism comes from, like every time I Google something, I'm getting wrong answers Right From the summary.
Speaker 1:I mean, all you want is to be lost and ask, ask where you are, and have the thing completely hallucinate and be like, oh, you're in the Bronx.
Speaker 3:Or I mean even the fact that we'd probably need an internet connection, right? So then you're like sorry, I can't reach the internet right now.
Speaker 1:Well, probably, I would imagine it would be tethered to your phone.
Speaker 3:Which could still I mean, you can be in a place that has so much wireless internet. That's true, yeah, especially someplace like CES.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:So you know, I would just, I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, I continue to be skeptical.
Speaker 1:There was one XR glasses that sort of stole the show, I think.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And that is.
Speaker 2:What was drumroll? Extra one pro. These honkers put a lot together. If you can tell from that photograph, there is actually a second set of lenses within the actual frame and the frame itself. I think is waveguide 2 no, so this is birdbath?
Speaker 1:yeah, it is, this is the birdbath it's all about immersion.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's all about I'm here, I'm working. I don't necessarily need to interact with someone at this point. I have what is it? Three degrees of freedom you can put to like a virtual screen that's like 171 inches, that's bigger than most tvs, yeah, and then like most large size tvs that are 65. You know the kind you see at the back of the best buy. But you can have several and it's using their own custom chip they're not even licensing to yeah, so this is.
Speaker 1:This is an interesting one because they just put out the x-ray one, like I've been seeing reviews go up for it all throughout december yeah and they just announced this, which is launching in march, and this is a slightly improved version, so that the one that came out in december had a field of view of 50 degrees. This one has a field of view of 57 degrees.
Speaker 2:That's actually very impressive for these, this class's form factor like yeah, if you go to their website, though, you'll, you'll see that like well, we don't really want to, I don't want to throw too much out there, but they really thought through their product line and this is the latest out of, I think, five different kinds of which all have their own, which are all quite similar. It's actually it's a little confusing.
Speaker 1:It's a little bit. I think they need to sort of condense their product line a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, I think what they've been doing is they've been generating, iterating. Yeah, they're rapidly iterating.
Speaker 1:I've also heard that X-Real are shipping a lot of product which yeah, they seem to be.
Speaker 3:I mean, they're one of those companies that keeps coming up when we're doing. That's good, and especially if they're developing knowns.
Speaker 1:Well, and I kept reading that the critical consensus from CES is best in show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Star yeah, five star yeah, like everyone wanted to put one of these on. Yeah, were there even enough.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure. They probably had. I mean it's shipping in March, so they probably had enough for everybody. I mean even the shipping in March, so they probably had enough for everybody. Even the model is wearing one. That's true. They had the models dressed up like the Matrix.
Speaker 3:I can tell just from the little bit of leather.
Speaker 1:Just from the little bit of patent leather. But you know the X-Reel. I'm impressed by how quickly they've grown. It seems like they're shipping a lot of product. They seem to be sort of a market leader with this form factor and definitely somebody to keep an eye on, especially since now that they have their own chip they can sort of be more reliant on their specific form factor. And everyone that I've heard who's tried the one pro is like this is it this like they? Finally, before there was always something wrong. There was always one small issue that they couldn't recommend because of that. But most of the reviews that I've seen have said pretty great.
Speaker 3:It kind of makes you wonder if, like, since they're actually actually putting out products and rapidly iterating, yeah, like are they gonna like capture the market out from under meta before they can get to you.
Speaker 2:I think that's what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's entirely possible.
Speaker 3:Mind you, you know, meta has money yeah exactly, they got 10 years and tons of money ahead, but like again, kind of like what apple sort of did with the avp, which is like perfect, perfect, perfect, until they're like oops, we're buying it right, yeah, yeah, you know the the.
Speaker 2:Thing is is.
Speaker 2:This company has been working pretty closely with a pretty a very like international standards on safety like are embedded into into the, into the hardware things like if you need to use this in a lab setting and you also need to use it for every day. It's kind of exceeding expectations. It's like also, they're they're like clearly functionally designed to be a professional, like to work in a professional setting. I think that that's interesting that they're not doing the other thing with the other three that we just saw, where they're minimalizing, uh and they're minimalizing their form factor at the expense of like feature sets.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I like the direction that they're going, I think I mean the bird path optics do are we haven't really seen, been able to see the video glasses. When it comes to physics and the construction of these glasses, there's just a certain physical limitation to how you can get these giant screens into a glasses form factor, and it seems like bird bath optics. One of the things that I was reading is that the actual optical stack is much, much slimmer in this line than the like the Air 2 Ultras from before, which. So I mean, how small are they going to be able to get that, you know, in like five years?
Speaker 3:I'm curious, because the Air 2, that was just a year ago, right, that was a year ago, that was literally what we were reporting a year ago.
Speaker 1:That was like at CES last year.
Speaker 1:So that's in one year, so yeah, yeah, yeah, and so I mean that was, that was sort of the range of XR headsets that were at CES, and it seems like most likely we'll see even more next year. And I think we're finally in this sort of era where the headsets have gone from potentiality to reality and that's exciting because immersive entertainment is going to be able to, especially on the glasses, with screens. You can already watch 3D content on them, which I think is great, and it means that you know, maybe eventually someday we'll be able to get you know a slightly wider field of view. You may be able to watch, you know, vr immersive videos in there eventually. I mean even right now, you can just watch spatial videos too. So I think that's pretty cool, and even the that on the beam got a stereo.
Speaker 2:oh, the camera, yeah this is another thing I noticed. I don't know if you really wanted to dive into it, but I just wanted to mention the stereoscopic camera on there. Yeah it's a separate computing puck that is optional as part of the x1 real line, and it expands the potential for this to not just be like a multi-meter device but actually a creator device, because there are cameras that are bounded on the beam.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that even like eye widths aside, yeah, I think it's got a traditional 65 millimeter IPD All right, but there was a VR headset that stole the show too.
Speaker 2:The company's called the product is called Play for Dream. Yeah, Play for Dream MR. It's a mixed reality set that can do what the xreal can do, and but in the form factor of an old-fashioned apple vision.
Speaker 1:I mean, it looks pretty familiar, looks pretty familiar, but in black, you know?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's innovation for you the difference is isn't using apple, it's using a android xr os. Well, it's. You know. Google's uh project, mohen is is building an xr mr. You know os trying to build a.
Speaker 1:It seems very fortunate for them that gosh that their android xr is launching right around the time that this is coming out, it's also a chinese company.
Speaker 2:When you develop a product that has this much iteration but it's based off of other iterations and it's all open, I mean it looks impressive.
Speaker 1:Look at it. I mean it's got a nice design. It looks, yeah, very familiar, honestly, but I I kept hearing consensus from ces that play for dream sort of wowed them. Yeah that it was much better than everyone expected. A lot of people were very skeptical of it, but it's got some really decent hardware in there. It's got the same boe 4k 4k micro oleds as the pymax air that they announced a couple months ago. Oh right, and those are really really great panels. They're not the same as the Sony ones, but from what I've heard is the BOE panels are very similar in quality to the Sony panels that are also in the Apple Vision Pro.
Speaker 2:So much of the hardware set seems like they're doing this for half a cost. Right, it's not $3,500. It's lightweight, it doesn't have a lot of you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think they've announced a price yet, but they said it's going to be under $2,000, which Well, actually I see it.
Speaker 2:I think they mentioned it was going to be under $2,000, but above $13,000.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, well, that's good to know. That's honestly and we were saying this last episode about the Android XR headset I was, I'm still, convinced that they won't ship for more than two grand. I just think that that's a psychological price point that most people are just like. I can't legitimize that. You know most people now pay, you know, between 500 to 1500 for their iphone, so that for a headset, which is also a spatial computer, you know, I would say 1500 is probably the sweet spot for these types of devices to be able to ship like on the higher end right, like ultimately on the higher end, that's Like ultimately on the higher end.
Speaker 3:That's where you want For sure, because I think you know again, doubling or tripling, that is.
Speaker 1:I mean we'll wait for some reviews. I'm going to try and see if we can get a review sample for the Play for Dream when it comes out, because we are starting to get some review samples, because we're sort of pivoting into hardware reviews as well, because I think it fits the channel pretty well. We're also trying to figure out like a format that sort of more interestingly structures the Stereoscope brand. We'll talk more about that in the future. But I'm excited for this Play for Dream headset. I mean, the guy from Upload VR was really wowed. He said it was the best mixed reality pass through that he'd ever seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even compared to apples, apples is the best that I've seen. Yeah, sean, did you ever end up doing the demo?
Speaker 2:No, ABP demo.
Speaker 3:I haven't actually I haven't actually done it, we should we should do another one, we should all do another one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That'd give us a chance to look at something, and we should force them to let us watch the video.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just want to watch the new episodes.
Speaker 2:I think this thing also has that outsider vibe that you need when you're pushing the edge and you're bleeding all over the place. It's just mavericky enough to be like yeah, we see what you want, we can do better. And it's not tied to a price point or brand. It's not tied to a distributor, really even. It's just kind of like technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what we're talking about now is there was this big announcement a couple days ago that google is buying part of htc vibes vr team. Which interesting. This is very interesting because if you know anything about HTC's VR efforts, it is that they have consistently sort of fumbled the ball Over time.
Speaker 1:They keep making these headsets that are almost great and then just aren't powerful enough or they've got a weird form factor or they're lacking some important feature, and HTC does seem to have more corporate clients, so I think they're able to keep themselves ahead. But over time their last headset totally flopped, I heard. It was incredibly uncomfortable. It had a sort of modular design, so it could be sort of glasses too, but it wasn't comfortable when you were wearing it in glasses mode. It was too heavy. And so HTC it sounds like Google they are worried about how far ahead that meta is of them, and so it seems like this is a very tactical and strategic acquisition of HTC's underperforming VR team. I think this is going to be big for Google, because it means that they can sort of gain back some ground quickly that they may have lost to their abandoning VR.
Speaker 3:That they willfully gave up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that they, and the most frustrating thing about that is that if they had just kept their eyes on the ball, they could honestly already be ahead of Meta. They're transferring a bunch of engineers to Google and they're also getting non-exclusive rights to some of HTC's extended reality IP, so they can use some of their tech that they've already developed and google can just get access to it. Yeah, which is going to be big for them. They've also talked about how this is going to create a long-term partnership between them for future projects. I'm guessing probably other, you know another pixel device or tablet or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more competition for Apple.
Speaker 1:Honestly, it's it's smart. I I was sort of expecting something like this to happen, just because Google seems to be making waves in the industry about how they're not going to give up this time. They're in this for the long. They're never going to give you up.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just wait for Google to Rick roll us all, yep.
Speaker 3:I swear this time it'll be different.
Speaker 1:And you know. Going into the next topic, samsung had their unpacked event just after CES. They usually do this every year. They're usually not available on CES the floor because they want to do it themselves. They have their own event, but they did do a big final like reveal of Google did their Android XR reveal last month, samsung now is doing their reveal of project muhan, which they still don't have a name for which I think is yeah, at this point it's getting silly it's getting silly at this point, definitely, especially since so much has already leaked.
Speaker 1:It's only been a month though, yeah, but we've known a lot of stuff about. Yeah, so it's on Android XR and it's got 4K micro OLEDs. It's got Snapdragon XR2 plus Gen 2, which is the same one as the Play for Dream Eye tracking. There was some sort of curiosity about whether it had eye tracking. It does have eye tracking, but from all of the various attention, supposedly it's very impressive. I mean, I would sort of expect it to. Samsung is probably one of the best hardware manufacturers in the business, comparable to Apple. I think their software is consistently the problem.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, Samsung phones are no particular Google OS and really kind of they're notorious for bloatware. Yeah, that's, I think, kind of what they're up to. But they have all these other things that they're doing, like the pen interface, Like they've always been trying to push it a little bit. Well, they're looking for differentiation right With an AR set like an XR.
Speaker 1:Well, and it looks like they're following Apple Vision Pro in that it's going to have a battery pack with a custom like it's using USB-C so you could swap out the battery for whatever, but it locks in there because it's got one of those holes in there. It's got physical controls on the actual device. It's got a touch sensor, right, yeah, it's got a touch sensor on the right strap. It's got Gemini, of course, because it's running Google or Android XR, that is, Circle to search, which.
Speaker 3:Mark Pez.
Speaker 1:Brownlee. He did a a video on this and he sort of illustrated that anything within your field of view is searchable and can be brought up using Gemini, which again we're getting into the AI models in here.
Speaker 3:Just Google image search. I mean, yeah, that's literally what he did. Mention that the problem that they the gesture is something like this and because it's this direction your hand always ends up in the actual so it's like oh, are you searching for your hand?
Speaker 1:oh gosh, that seems like such an easy software fix, like, oh, I mean, it hasn't even shipped yet, though, and so I think it's good that we finally saw this. From Samsung themselves, we're starting to get actual specs on it, though there's still being a little cagey about some of it. I think, between the Play for Dream, between this, the AVP, we're finally getting non-meta products that need to be in this space, because you know some very clear reasons competition breeds innovation.
Speaker 1:Innovation breeds more jedi yeah, I'm excited, I've probably, I'm gonna. I mean, I would say this is probably gonna be two grand, though I don't think that they're gonna launch that much lower two grand, though I don't think that they're going to launch that much lower.
Speaker 3:It is the same. Yeah, I mean, to me the next closest competitor is actually the.
Speaker 2:Play for Dream. Oh, for sure, this is a Korean company. As we all remember, luhan means infinity in Korean, so they're never going to change the name. Yeah, forever.
Speaker 1:Going on into perpetuity. Maybe that's why they haven't changed the name yet, because it's it is in perpetuity all right, moving on. So we've got some camera stuff. Now, camera stuff, we're in the anthony territory, so slam, so slam. This is interesting because we covered this in one of our first episodes, when it was just a phone. Do you remember that? I don't.
Speaker 3:Was it the same company? Same company.
Speaker 1:Interesting. They completely retooled their thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It seems really interesting. So the quick rundown here. It's a Kickstarter Currently. I think they're at. I mean, the Kickstarter is funded. It was $10,000 gold, they're at $70,000 plus they blew past it. Yeah, Really.
Speaker 2:Only $10,000?.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean you know they probably it's just a way to get prototyping money, basically. I think, so the rundown 8K 30P or 5.7K 60.
Speaker 3:It seems 30p or 5.7k, 60, it seems like that's sort of like the threshold for consumer cameras, the baseline, which is not quite good enough, but yeah good, but with you know with ai like, yeah, ai, frame interpolation is actually pretty good, it is so yeah, for for as cheap devices I mean these are, I think the cheapest is 9.99 through the Kickstarter, which and then they go up to like $16.99 post-Kickstarter. Yeah, because they have like three models, which is funny. We'll get into that in a second, but again another Snapdragon. This thing is in everything.
Speaker 1:So is it running?
Speaker 3:It is running a version of Android. Okay, it seems like it is a custom thing and it's purpose built around shooting video Interesting, but it is running Android. Like you can install apps and do all that stuff, but you can do things like adjust your horizontal disparity and vertical disparity in camera Whoa, in camera.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting and I'm guessing that's a touchscreen on the back.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's a big touchscreen. I forgot what the size of the screen is, but it's more software device than camera device. Basically Like the short version. My conclusion so far is and granted, this is unreleased, they have really great looking software and really powerful like. The potential in this thing is really high because it is basically a computer.
Speaker 1:And it has long-term capability.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm saying Like extensibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Possibly, possibly Right, but the door is open there because it does not shoot to SD cards. Oh, so you're going to need a, an external drive, external drive, which is the flavors, maybe better, so, oh, so you're going to need a, an external drive, an external drive, which is the flavors, maybe better, but yeah, the flavors that they the the other models, which is like the basic, oh, so, yeah, so it's the basic, the plus and the plus plus which come on. It's just storage. The plus plus, well it's, it's RAM and storage actually.
Speaker 3:So it's like it's pull it up here it's 8 and 1, 8 and 128, then 16 and 256 and 24 and 512 for the plus plus oh, okay so, which is interesting, because so for a device that's somewhat purpose driven, yeah, like you either have enough ram or you don't, so I'm a little, that's why I was like what do you think the?
Speaker 1:What's the RAM upgrade? You're not going to be running games on this thing. I'm sure it makes it better, but then like.
Speaker 3:then is that like? Does that mean the basic is not good? Yeah, you know, is that the very minimum? And then like, why would you sell it that way? I understand the extra memory built in the storage makes sense, it does. The ram thing is a little weird so this is one of the things that's interesting about it is it does run at like up to 100 megabits per second, like recording, yeah, which is but that's like the minimum.
Speaker 1:It's very low.
Speaker 3:That is very especially for 8k and that is very exactly, and I think the only reason it works is because it's 8k 30, right okay, and it is 10 bit video, or it's capable 10, 10 bit video if you don't shoot in rec 709, so that's impressive I wonder if they could increase that with.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm wondering so.
Speaker 3:So a lot of times, the reason you have a lower overall bit rate coming out is because the memory cards are limited in what they can receive. Yeah, but this thing has got built-in storage and you can plug in a USB drive and run at.
Speaker 1:Now it is.
Speaker 3:USB 3 Gen 1. So it's not full full speed, but still you can run a high-speed memory, but the internal memory should be enough for higher than 100 megabits per second. That's right and, based on the video samples that I looked at, that seems to be the biggest issue with the image coming out of it is it's highly compressed. Okay, that seems to be the biggest issue with the image coming out of it is it's highly compressed and so it has some really interesting like. The edge-to-edge sharpness is fantastic, yeah, but there's some sync issues between the things.
Speaker 1:Sure, and I think they're aware of this and they're working on it. Just to be clear, we have been in communication with SLAM and they're going to be sending us a review sample in the future. Yeah, closer to launch, closer to launch when they've got more of the bugs worked out. I just wanted to make that.
Speaker 3:Yes, a little bit of transparency. I mean, this thing is still very early and again, I think the beauty of it being such an open software platform that they're developing, I mean it makes it really it makes the potential, for I mean, if you can do manage disparity on camera, mind you, that's only for professionals.
Speaker 1:Nobody, nobody who's not a professional should be messing with any anything like that. But also like the ability for like live streaming, that live streaming live, like it even says that they're going to be working on live streaming yes, it's, it's.
Speaker 3:It skips a lot of compute like post steps okay that's really cool and that might be where you would want to buy one with, like, more ram so that you can do more like maybe there's a possibility for ai upscaling and frame interpolation on device that could be really, that's really cool.
Speaker 1:Okay, I I will be very honest like this. There's a couple devices that we've talked about it many times of the the Evo, the next consumer camera that solves a bunch of just like fun little stuff outside of our professional projects where, you know, I want to go to like a theme park and take it in the theme park, or go to like a river or something and just or, if I go on like a like a day trip to Seattle or something, I can have something on me that isn't going to, you know, a full professional. This would be perfect.
Speaker 3:It's in your pocket, it would be perfect. It's in your pocket, it would be great, it is. You know it's. It's basically the size of a iphone max but, much thicker you know, like the overall yeah and it's got.
Speaker 1:It looks like it's got the full ipd yeah I think they advertise 65 on this, yeah and it's got all of your like traditional, like camera controls, like iso adjustment and that type of thing?
Speaker 3:yeah, I haven't seen. I know that it has a range I looked at like it's got the kind of standard range of like 640 to 2000 or so and and stuff like that. I've seen some issues about like maybe there's a variable shutter or variable frame rates. These are all, like you know, in the comment section on the kickstarter. So we're reserving judgment, all that stuff, until we get our hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on it gosh and this is a computer. This is like a community project from right, like from what I was reading, that it was sort of some people who are trying to solve a problem.
Speaker 1:It's not like a giant company yeah, it's, it's some folks from denmark, I believe yeah, they were using, and they were using dovr video creators as like sort of a test bed. Yeah, to like sort of bounce information off, like, should we do this, should we do that? I think that's pretty cool. I mean, we'll see. The proof really is in what the final video quality is like. Yeah, I hope they get it right because I desperately want there to be.
Speaker 3:We all really want another Evo, I mean. So the Evo actually was only like 2019 when that thing came out and they discontinued it by 2020.
Speaker 1:I don't understand Such an interesting and they never did a follow up. They never did a follow up. They keep putting out the.
Speaker 3:It's like they treated it like a failure. It's everybody's favorite pocket 360 camera. I mean like it's yeah, it was great, it was 500 bucks it. 100 megabit video, back then 5.7K yeah, I mean really impressive.
Speaker 1:Internal stabilization. Yeah, 6-axis. Oh, that was another. This also has that. Well, I think actually Hugh was saying that it has anti-shake.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you know what? Yes, they call it 6-axis, but it doesn't do the rotation. It doesn't do rotation. So it's good for, like your hand holding in a car and it'll take the shake out, but you don't want to be walking around with it.
Speaker 1:But that is definitely something they could possibly add in, I believe. So I mean, we're not saying that they are.
Speaker 3:That sounds like something you could do if the gyros are in the device. You just got to build the algorithm.
Speaker 1:Because that rotational. I've said on here many times that the perfect VR180 consumer shooting device would be a camera built onto a gimbal or usable with a gimbal that uses both internal stabilization data from gyros on the camera itself and a gimbal.
Speaker 3:Possibly. What's interesting is, in a lot of cases, like in the 2D world, anyway, you want to absolutely turn off your stabilization before you put it on a gimbal. Possibly what's interesting is, in a lot of cases, like in the 2D world, anyway, you want to absolutely turn off your stabilization before you put it on a gimbal.
Speaker 2:Really yeah.
Speaker 3:But it just depends on the device. But if they're talking to each other, that could make the difference, okay, the Evo didn't have a post-processing setup.
Speaker 2:It was too early right.
Speaker 3:Well, it actually had software, because it wrote to these weird files like INSF files.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you can't stream a hundred.
Speaker 1:Well, it uses Insta360 Studio, right. So they had like easy sticking software and there, technically, was an app at one point. But it's long to follow, yeah.
Speaker 3:All that stuff is one of the reasons why. Yeah, again, we wanted a replacement. So obviously people are trying to step in and do that the Cav Viscents and stuff like that. Nobody's quite hitting the mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but this is solving so many problems at once. Like it's like having a Filmic Pro, like butt in a camera that's designed to work for stream. Like this is a streamer, and like it's built with mechs. It's built like this is a streamer and like it it's built with max.
Speaker 1:it's built like this. Mind you, there aren't a lot of places that can accept live streaming, yet, I mean, we are working on it. Uh, I think there's a couple platforms that are working on it. Nobody's sort of solved it yet, but yeah, yeah, but it's, you know, except for google five years ago yeah yeah 8k lives all right but there is another, so the other option has popped up recently this is fascinating to me because I had not even heard about this really, really interesting.
Speaker 3:So Kandao QCAM 3 Ultra that was released in August of 24 is what this thing is based on, and a modder named I'm hoping I'm pronouncing this right Siyong Qi.
Speaker 1:Okay, created this mod, so it's a mod for the Qualcomm 3 Ultra.
Speaker 3:For the QCAM 3 Ultra. Okay, so, as you can kind of see from the pictures here, so I will be very honest.
Speaker 1:I am very reticent for mods. Yes, that's just uncomfortable.
Speaker 3:I know in the camera world it it's just sort of something that happens, you know, even even in the camera world. People don't necessarily I mean I, it depends on what it is and whether I'm gonna would want to tackle it right sure and so they. Obviously, this modder has done a great job with, like, the mod kit itself, and so it's a full mod kit. Yeah, so, as you can see, here, you get you the specs from the Kanda, right? Yeah, a great camera.
Speaker 1:I've heard it's definitely a favorite in 360.
Speaker 3:150 megabit per second video. Dang it's higher than the yeah. Ak-30, 10-bit HDR. It's got a lot of great specs.
Speaker 1:And I've seen footage from it and it looks great.
Speaker 3:Pretty good, honestly, and I've seen footage from it and it looks great. Pretty good, honestly. It has slightly larger sensors than the than the slam. The slam only slight like 0.02 okay so very fine, they're basically compared.
Speaker 3:So at that point it's coming down to a software difference yeah, well, yes, okay, and so you have all the the modes there. What makes this interesting is that obviously, there's this mod. You can see from there the whole thing that you like. Pull one camera off the back, put it into this new casing and mount that onto the front.
Speaker 1:Oh, look at it, they put in a little level there.
Speaker 3:It's just great, like, honestly, that's really, it's absolutely necessary. Nice thing One of the things you do give up is this camera is actually like waterproof Until until you mod Until you do the mod, but I don't know how many people are taking that thing under the rug. Yeah, this is a big deal right here, though, the fact that the modder made it and QCAM Studio supports the VR180 setup. So they stepped in and modified the software so that you could use that you could still use Studio to process the footage out of this mod.
Speaker 3:That's huge and so cool. It's one of those things you usually find.
Speaker 1:Well, because they know that they're going to sell a bunch more of these cameras that way. I'm now interested no, exactly, I was not interested in their 360 camera. Now I am interested in their camera.
Speaker 3:This is very cool. I'm very impressed with what and I went through the modding process. It is kind of intimidating but there's no soldering, Just like you got to pick up some you know cables and it looks like the most extensive thing is like relocating the spatial mics, because it does have spatial audio, so you're having to relocate the mics to the front, like near the lenses.
Speaker 1:Man, I would love to get a review sample of this too, like maybe we can reach out to them.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think we will. The pricing is pretty decent. So if you're gonna buy the q3u by itself, it's 5.99, and then you would spend 100 bucks on the kit. Do it yourself, risk it yourself for just another 100 bucks more, they'll do it for you, okay, well, that's, that's probably worth it, that's probably worth it, because I know that I would probably yeah I mean I like even even the way they worded it on this Reddit post that I pulled this from was like it's on me to make the mistakes in the market.
Speaker 3:You're guaranteed to get a functional camera. It's my bad if it doesn't. You know, you know, I appreciate that. I mean really. I mean there's a.
Speaker 1:Do they give you all the stuff that the QoCam came with.
Speaker 3:Yes, I mean it looks like see, with all original accessories there in the box, so they just. It looks probably like we do the box a little bit and it's well thought out. You know I skip past it, but like one of the things shown off here and it's kind of one of those things. I didn't touch on it and it is. It's inherent in the design, I think, but it is spaced out enough that your hands aren't in the shot. That's actually really thoughtful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is thoughtful, because I can't tell you. I mean, one of the things that sort of frustrates me about the design of the slam cam is that how are you supposed to hold that thing? You don't. You gotta go like this. Yeah, you gotta go. You gotta do the like claw thing, you know Right.
Speaker 3:And it thing, you know right, and it almost certainly has to be on a gimbal, you know, yeah, and this one does have the six axis gyroscopically, you know oh you were telling me that it has supposedly best in class stabilization well, I mean, I don't know if it's best in class, probably, but like it's up there I did see sample clips of handheld walking footage and it was really good, surprisingly good slap a gimbal on there.
Speaker 3:Maybe even better, because there was gimbal footage and, like the thing you know, I have a hang-up with gimbal footage of walking and it has this real all the footfalls bouncing.
Speaker 1:Well, you always get a Z-axis stabilizer.
Speaker 3:Exactly Less. There was less of that in the handheld walking than the gimbal, so Interesting, but it is is like, perfectly synced. There's no like sync issues. They've done a ton of tests to make sure there's no drift between the cameras, which again is you know. Kandell did a great job on their design yeah but that's one of those things that even going back to the z cams, we had issues with sensors getting out of sync, even adult cameras. So like that kind of guarantee is great to see.
Speaker 1:Genlock, that's a big deal.
Speaker 3:It's essential really, yeah, Because it's one of those things that's very hard to fix, if it's even possible to fix, depending on where you're shooting, yeah, so yeah, this is really impressive. So for the pricing and the fact that, like it's kind of hardware coming out of a you know established manufacturer, yada, yada, software, support, all that stuff Pretty impressive what you could get out of this for the money.
Speaker 1:And perfectly slots into that, because it seems like we're not really, I think, the era of $400.
Speaker 3:No, I mean inflation, took care of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the $400 VR180 shooters has gone the way of the Dodo. But I mean, even with so, with the mod it's $799?. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3:That's not bad.
Speaker 1:$800 for an 8K handheld pretty easy to use, and I mean if you slap in a little bit of AI with that, you know, use Topaz or something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, give you some extra frames.
Speaker 1:Extra frames and even, like some denoising, some sharpening, yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's the thing I mean. More tests would need to be done. I know for us low light is a huge deal. We're always trying to get a better, get faster, you know. Whatever better low light I do believe this has got. Let me look up the numbers here. This has this does have a more wide, open aperture built in there's going to be better with.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, slightly better it did not get a number for this on the slam x cam. They didn't have anything published, but like to give you some. The evo was an f 2.2 and this is an f 1.6. Oh, so that's like a full stop faster.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you get a little bit extra.
Speaker 3:Yes, twice as much headroom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, wow, yeah. So this would actually be significantly better for low, yeah than the evo, than the evo, of course all this, I mean there's still.
Speaker 3:There's sensor issues and all the stuff that goes into this. It's not a.
Speaker 2:It's not that straight ahead I've got a quick question for you, anthony. Yeah, this is the vr, at 180 kendo and there's a 360, the smaller no, so that's what this is, a this is a 360. This is a 360 and they've turned it into a 180 exactly. Yeah, you can get that 360 for like 360 bucks on like bnh well, this one is the bd, ultra is five nine, the ultra.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a big difference. If you look up, you can. I don't know if you can tell on this this image versus, like, the mod, the size. Yeah, there are small differences in the dimension specs and don't get the wrong camera, yeah yeah, oh yeah, make sure you get the right yeah, this is specifically for the ultra don't?
Speaker 3:yeah, you're not getting a great deal if you see it for 300 bucks. That's a different camera so at least there's.
Speaker 1:It looks like we're getting some decent, actual, real options. I guess we don't have final samples yet for any of them. Yeah Well, you know the calf looked like it was going to be a, or the Vicence, whatever it was called, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah. There's a lot of promises made and not kept. Some kept, you know they have upgraded. Some people are quite happy with it after they've upgraded it from what I've heard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the the calf. Now that they've finally gotten clawed back their feature set, it seems like some people are, but there were a lot of people who were initially very, very annoyed with what shit?
Speaker 3:what they got, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's. It's definitely hard to buy a camera or any device based on what you think it might become later you got to buy it yeah yeah, but um, yeah, I mean. One other little little cute thing is that little plug in the back where it says, s you can get a custom, they oh, that's, you can ask for different, up to three letters of characters on the back.
Speaker 1:Oh, so, you could, we could put like an s for stereoscope or something. Oh, you could put three letters up to three yes so we could put like stereo stereoscope or something. Oh, you could put three letters, up to three, yeah. So we could put like stereo stereoscope productions L, so SPL, something like that it's like I'm not sure what we'd do.
Speaker 1:Maybe just do SP. I would love to test the quality to see if it's a viable option. Yeah, you know, yeah, and then most likely, if things work out, we'll have that slam cam sometime around the launch of that and, uh, it should be marked, by the way. Yeah, so we're really we're really trying to get into reviews for products that are relevant to the channel, so like glasses, headsets, cameras, because that seems like that's the most consistent stuff for stereoscope and most relevant for us. So if you have a product you want to launch or if there's an immersive video we have a review of.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a light review, more of an industry analysis for human within next month, and that's going to be a little bit more, not so much as a critical review, much more of how does this fit within the, the landscape and and we'll we'll have some some footage from that and our own experiences. We all have codes for it, so we're all gonna watch it individually. Yeah, so looks like that's the end of the ces episode. It was a lot of fun stuff this month industry's heating up.
Speaker 3:It's pretty cool. Yeah, excited to see these like fancy headsets and better cameras. I mean, like I love to see all the attention on the industry absolutely, and it makes it.
Speaker 1:We have. We have some projects, big projects in the works that we can't talk about, but we're going to be really busy for the next couple months. We might I'm not saying this is going to happen, but it might come up that we end up missing a month or. But we also have some other videos coming up. We have our gaming videos that we're going to try to get out the door um, the z-axis gaming show, which is under the stereoscope brand, but we're creating a new sub brand sub brand. It's called z-axis. It's our gaming show that's coming up later this month. Uh, stay tuned for that. And yeah, so stereoscope signing out.