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
The Human Within Review: Exploring the Frontier of Interactive VR Storytelling - PLUS: Deckard, Viverse, PSVR2, and BONO!
PlayStation VR 2 just received a substantial $150 price cut, bringing the headset down to $399 - a revealing move that speaks volumes about its sluggish sales. Despite quality hardware and impressive OLED displays, Sony's VR platform has struggled against Meta's dominance, with no exclusive titles released in nearly a year. The situation draws uncomfortable parallels to Sony's ill-fated PS Vita, another promising device abandoned after underwhelming market performance.
Meanwhile, excitement builds around Valve's long-rumored Deckard headset. Leaked information suggests a late 2025 launch at approximately $1,200, featuring eye-tracking technology and potentially 4K micro-OLED displays. Most intriguing is the possibility that Deckard could function as a "Steam Deck for your face," allowing users to play their entire Steam library in VR - not just dedicated VR games. Newly leaked controller designs featuring a d-pad further support this theory, potentially revolutionizing how we think about VR gaming.
On the content front, Apple's immersive video ecosystem continues expanding with Bono's upcoming feature-length documentary and Prima, a new app that claims to deliver cleaner video than Apple's own immersive format. We follow up the second half of the show with our deep-dive review of "The Human Within," a $20 interactive VR film that blends live action, 360 video, and Unity environments into a cohesive 90-minute cyberpunk thriller with multiple branching pathways. Check out our 3D Gameplay embedded in the review! It's Stereoscope-ception!
The VR landscape continues evolving rapidly, with each platform fighting for its place in this emerging medium. Whether you're a hardware enthusiast tracking the next breakthrough device or a content creator navigating these new storytelling possibilities, join us as we explore what's working, what's not, and what might define the future of virtual reality.
Want more specialized content? Check out our new companion show Z-Axis, featuring in-depth reviews with 3D gameplay footage that showcases VR experiences in their native format.
free audio. Post production by alphoniccom. Hi there, welcome to stereoscope podcast number 12. I'm byron, I'm anthony, I'm sean, all right. So all right, we're going to launch right into it. Oh, and we got little Kirby here hanging out with us today. We're just going to launch right into it, alright. So, sean, you got some stuff for us today. What do you got?
Speaker 3:Well, I just found out that the PS PlayStation VR 2 got a $150 price drop. It's been out for two years. It was $400 price drop. It's been out for two years. It was 400, now it's no, it was 500, now it's 450.
Speaker 1:It was 550 then, that's 399, the psvr1 was slapped together, but the playstation 4 was still decently capable. The playstation 4 was definitely more performant than the quest when it launched. So what I'm getting at was that a lot of people had ps4s. It was the best-selling console of the generation and so the original ps vr1 was an additional thing that you could add on to a console that sold a lot of units. So when the PSVR 2 came out, people were sort of expecting it to be sort of like the same sort of scalable thing, because originally PSVR 2, it launched without controllers, or PSVR 1, without controllers, but you could add them on, and most of the experiences when the psvr1 came out used the tracked playstation control yeah, but that's not what happened when psvr2 launched.
Speaker 1:It was more expensive than the console itself itself. Yeah, it was 50 more than the ps5, and which is why the price drop makes sense. Yes, because from what we've seen here, the the research indicates that the PSVR 2 didn't sell well at all. Sony almost abandoned it. Maybe not quite, but there hasn't been an exclusive title to come out for the PSVR in almost a year now and to but there is Gran Turismo. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, Gran Turismo is definitely I. I experienced it. I don't have a PSVR 2 yet, but I did a demo of it at a buddy's house and Gran Turismo is fantastic. Honestly, it's, it's a system seller. I have a PS ps, I have a ps5 and a very performant pc. But the fact of the matter is that there were very specific things that sony did not do with the psvr2. That was an instant no buy for me. And what did it not do the most? It didn't have pancake lenses.
Speaker 3:That's a good one, yeah, pancake and gran turismo like moving fast in vr is is nauseating in a really fun way. But moving fast in gran turismo without pancake feels like you're just.
Speaker 1:It feels like driving with goggles on is like for sure, I mean it's already. I mean so the lenses in the PSVR 2 are decent to good. The panels the OLED panels that they have are actually. They look excellent. That's what they do. The panels look good, yeah, but the lenses themselves after, because I already had a Quest 3 at this point, so trying to.
Speaker 2:Seeing how the Quest 3 and the VR 2 kind kind of like it's just a non-starter, it's just you have all this great hardware and they let it down by the thing that you look the last mile right exactly and it seemed it could be amazing, and they just wonder if they were like if you have a budget, let's be under it, or and then let's do a price point cut and then we'll like offer additional pancake lens replacements.
Speaker 1:I don't know well, and also sony is a hardware company, right, so they they're not a software company. They do have software divisions, but that's not how they think about these types of projects. They think about selling consumer electronics. I mean, they do make money off of selling games in the playstation store, but, in terms of, they're always going to make a profit on the, on the products that they sell. That's why they they launched it at 550 price point and it's why they were so aggressive to not do a price cut, at least for a while, because while because there were pretty decent price cuts on the original PlayStation VR pretty soon after launch.
Speaker 3:Speaking, of price cuts. Do you think that these price cuts will continue to exist maybe three quarters from now, or is it going to be like I think this is a permanent price?
Speaker 1:reduction, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I mean, if they're not selling, they got to do something to sell and they're clearly getting. There was empty. The weird yeah, they're not competing with.
Speaker 1:There was also some reports that they they dropped the price around the time of the pc release and around christmas and supposedly during those price drops they sold more units in that one day than they had in the rest of the year. Sony is notorious for putting out devices without a clear long-term goal for them. I mean, they did these. They did so. Part of the reason why I was pretty skeptical about the PSVR 2 in general was it took a long time to be announced. They didn't announce a lot of titles to support it when it came out, which is always a huge red flag. And also this was very, very similar to the PS Vita release a lot of titles to support it when it came out, which is always a huge red flag. And also this was very, very similar to the PS Vita release about 10 years ago which was also a sequel device to a much more popular device, the PSP versus the PS Vita.
Speaker 1:And the PS Vita was also too expensive, with too many features that it didn't need and some features that it didn't have but definitely needed, and then nobody bought it and they stopped supporting it and effectively the device just ran out of steam, except for enthusiasts. And that's exactly what's going to happen with the psvr2. The biggest missed opportunity for the psvr is that the playstation 5 is an incredibly powerful device and, combined with tethered, very seamless vr experience it. It should be the easiest way for people to have a high graphic capable experience, but sony has so dramatically fumbled that that they I think it's mostly just going to fade into the ether okay, which is disappointing the other.
Speaker 2:The other bummer about is like I have a friend that like his only entry into vr is the, the vr2, and of course he's like basically soured on vr because that's all he's got, that's all he knows. So he's like I won't even bother buying. He's like I spent the money on the vr2, so I'm not gonna buy quest three, and so he doesn't. He just cut himself off from yeah whole thing and that's a huge I see that's definitely disappointing.
Speaker 1:This next news is sort of tied to everything in the industry, and everything in the industry has been sort of like revolving around this for the last two years now and it seems like it's all coming to a head. Finally, but nothing official there, there's a leaker that focuses on all valve properties. His name is uh gabe follower. He says that there is that he has sources that are confirming that the valve deckard headset is going to launch by the end of 2025 for $1,200. And it will include first-party games and demos. So this one I'm very excited for. We've talked about the Deckard many times on the show. It is leaked so obviously speculation, grain of salt, all that, but $1,200, what do you think?
Speaker 2:Not cheap, but if it's coming from Valve.
Speaker 1:I'm excited.
Speaker 2:I feel like and it's taken a long time, this thing's been leaked for a long time Also feel like they won't disappoint For sure.
Speaker 1:And also it seems from what I've heard and what I've read is that Valve generally sells their hardware to loss because they make so much money on Steam that the small amount of profit that they're going to make on their hardware devices is completely meaningless, which is wild. So it means that we're going to get a lot of value out of the device, I mean it's. It means it's gonna, we're gonna like it's like avp level stuff yes, exactly and so I'm guessing it'll have by avp we mean apple vision pro yeah, not aliens versus y' all yeah, yeah, are you talking about like the predator?
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, we have to refer to their people as like how they prefer to be called. I'm sorry, me colonizing over here. Yeah, you're doing the work. It's shadow work. Anyways, we do AVP level. Avp level Just crashed. Yeah, avp level. Avp level Just crashed.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm talking about. Make these acronyms. Make yeah.
Speaker 1:But so what that means is we'll probably get so we've all been talking about the you know the play for dream the next headset that approaches Apple quality and most likely at $1,200,. This will be that It'll probably have the fastest SOC they can get on the market at the time System on a chip.
Speaker 3:System on a chip.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so, like the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, something like that, it'll probably have the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2. And it'll probably have 4K micro OLEDs per eye, which approaches the same quality as the AVP. The other interesting things about the Deckard is that supposedly, they're going to be focusing heavily on wireless streaming from another device, most likely a dedicated PC. Or and this is the other rumor is that they're going to launch or at launch of the headset, or maybe six, eight months down the line, a set-top box, a set-top.
Speaker 3:Like a steam, are you? Yeah, deckard's going to get a.
Speaker 1:Steam Deck. I mean possibly there's other rumors about Deckard that have more elements to the Steam Deck.
Speaker 2:There's also heavy rumors about SteamOS, right? Yes, that's another thing that could be part of this right, steamos Right. Well, because a lot of people are getting tired of Windows. They're like I cannot wait to get it, because a lot of people just have their PC for gaming.
Speaker 1:So some of this context goes back to 2013, when Valve launched this initiative called the Steam Box, and what they did was that they partnered up with hardware manufacturers Windows, pc hardware manufacturers to launch a set-top box that ran the first iteration of SteamOS, and it was supposed to be a direct competitor to Windows, but the license for SteamOS would be free for these hardware manufacturers, so that would cut down on the initial cost, and so what they were trying to do was they were trying to make a medium-specced console-like device that you could sell as a console, but for PC, but it would run Steam and it would run all windows games through a translation layer into that you could play on?
Speaker 3:what do you feel is lost in translation to folks who use max right and have a steam client on there and are like I just want cyberpunk. You know, and they got because they got.
Speaker 1:The funny thing is you most likely would not be able to do that right yeah, I mean, uh, that's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this gets much more technical in terms of, like, hardware compatibility and stuff like that because I don't think currently you can run cyberpunk on a.
Speaker 3:Actually, I'm back I heard that the I heard back in november that cyberpunk was coming to macOS, and it was just on my news feed.
Speaker 1:Well, that's because Apple just they launched their Apple Games. Support for macOS.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they are trying to finally reverse that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a whole porting pipeline that allows you to more easily port games to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the thing. I think the horsepower is there, you just have to write to it. Oh, no, no, yeah, the horsepower is definitely there.
Speaker 1:You could probably run it on an M1, honestly, but with this specifically. The point of the set-top box is that they want you to be able to have near-zero latency, high-fidelity wireless streaming directly from the headset to the Steam box, and I'm guessing that the Steam box will come with dedicated wireless streaming hardware so that you don't have to purchase a 6 or 7 gigabits router. Also, the other thing is that when they ported the Valve Steam Link app to Quest devices, it had support for heavy fixed foveated rendering technology.
Speaker 3:Once again remind me heavy, fixed, foveated rendering sounds a lot like sounds a lot like.
Speaker 1:So effectively. What this is implying is that valve has been working on all these solutions to make wireless streaming to a standalone headset as seamless as possible and as high quality as possible, so that they can make that so. Fixed. Voviated rendering means that when you look, when you have a headset on, anything outside of your periphery is rendered at a lower resolution, which increases the the floor for rendering hardware.
Speaker 3:Uh, so basically, if you're, if you're not really paying attention to what's going on in the sides, they don't need to put as much computing power on that stuff you're focused on what's happening in front of you exactly.
Speaker 1:All hands on deckard I would put money on the fact that the valve deckard will have eye tracking and it will rely heavily on eye tracking to increase performance of the set-top box and it will also use that for and this is the other thing is that most likely? Because this is the deckard is a standalone device. It will be able to run VR games on the headset itself. Now how well it'll run those devices is sort of up in the air because, as we know and as David Heaney on the Upload VR podcast or Download, Upload, upload.
Speaker 1:VR Upload. Vr podcast Upload Always reminds us, is that there's no way you could get half life alex running on a standalone chipset. It's just physically not possible. I would argue that you don't have to get the pc version running, but you could get a port running that is heavily optimized to run and most likely what will happen is they'll do the same thing that that oculus was doing for a while, which is that if you buy the standalone version, you get the pc version and vice versa, which makes for great value like that would definitely sweeten the deal for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I'll be honest, the the 1200 like if the1,200, and it's an Apple vision pro competitor, this is a day one purchase for me. It being a quest competitor actually is a little bit less relevant to me as as a consumer, but I also own a you know $1,500 spec'd out gaming PC. It's the set top box thing is where I'm a little curious. But the last thing that is that that is the most curious and I think sort of brings us all into clear vision is these controllers right here?
Speaker 3:oh, those look like so these, these leaked.
Speaker 1:These are actually renders from a leak that somebody renders. So these, these, oh right, because the seam has some kind of like yeah, so these are not the real controllers, but this is what the controllers are going to look like, most likely. You can see it's got a d-pad on the left side there. Yeah, so the heavy speculation by d-pad.
Speaker 3:Just to clarify, it's not the x, y, a or b, it's the cross, the plus sign sign, which is the d plus sign, which has nothing to do with getting good grades. You're really breaking it down for us today, sean. I thought I'd you know. Speak to some of our critics. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So some of the other speculation is that the Decker is also going to double as a Steam Deck for your face, gosh so it'll be able to run SteamOS.
Speaker 2:That's.
Speaker 1:And it has a D-pad because it's going to work with one-to-one control schemes for all of the Steam Deck features.
Speaker 3:Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. All right, let's break that down. That's huge. I see Anthony's lit like there are lights. Well, because.
Speaker 2:So that means like it's basically okay. So the Steam Deck, if you're not aware, is a handheld console that Steam makes, which is very popular and very good. Everybody loves it. I kind of want one, but I'm not enough of a gamer but I'm a hardware nerd, it's like.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I don't have one, but I will. I'm so desperate.
Speaker 2:So if you could basically have that, but it's in headsets, I'm assuming you're looking at, even if it's just a 2D version the same version of the game it would be floating in space. And you have these, maybe not just 2D. That's interesting, so this could be. This would really crack things open.
Speaker 1:Valve is working on a rendering pipeline that would cut. That would allow you to play most to all games that run on SteamOS in a 3D window floating virtual screen, just like you can with other on the Quest 3. But the games themselves would have depth, so they just make it out of stereo layer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, interesting. So okay, say, I really want to play Donkey Kong, right? You all know what Donkeyong is. I hope hopefully. If you don't, it's okay. You know what kirby is. You know what don't kirby is? You know what zelda is? And 2d scroller, zelda in 3d where, like the plants, like on that eagle mind you, I think you're gonna have to there.
Speaker 1:There are going to have to be some limitations here, because I'm imagining it's games that have a Z depth buffer or a Z axis?
Speaker 3:Z axis.
Speaker 1:Anyways. So the thing that's really coming together here is that the Deckard is not just going to be for playing VR games. It's also going to run natively on the device itself all games that are SteamOS compatible.
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:So yeah, if this is what happens, then boy Meta better watch out.
Speaker 1:They're going to have to have some answer, because here's the thing. Is it like that? When I first saw the d-pad on the controllers, I knew instantly yeah, it just makes so much sense and I've actually I've had that problem before is that you know you can side load like I've gotten ps2 emulation running on my quest 3 and the chipset. The quest 3 is powerful enough to do ps2 emulation.
Speaker 1:But you don't have enough buttons on your controllers, you have to use a third-party controller, bluetooth controller, I mean. It works well with just like Xbox Series X or S controller. Perfectly, actually, it's so simple, it's almost like they're, and it's such an elegant solution.
Speaker 2:I don't know why we haven't already seen this, but that's classic Valve man, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:Valve really are people who they look at a problem and they go all right, we got this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, and that's a render. I bet someone like threw that back and like, hey, what about this?
Speaker 1:And also getting away from meta. That's just a lot of people doicent to it ourselves. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I totally understand and I think part of that is to do like Valve just being a small team Like there was. I think it's like 40 people that work there and they're like a multi-billion dollar company Like so that that makes them nimble. You know they don't have yeah.
Speaker 1:Supposedly, supposedly, they have the most profit revenue per person, per person of any company in the world. All right, from somebody we love a little bit less bono bono stories of surrender everyone's favorite lovable rock and roll icon from the 1980s.
Speaker 2:That won't go away the good part of this is this is a feature length documentary in development to be shown in apple immersive. That's the first thing we've heard, right like the first feature length documentary we've heard coming from apple, from apple I don't even really know if there's any other feature length period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, immersive things that aren't like tiny little studios that you've never heard of and especially feature length like that.
Speaker 2:This is a real test of the medium. Like a lot of people think that, like you, can't be in headset that long or that people don't have the attention span or the comfort. Especially on the AVP, comfort could be an issue at, say, 90 minutes of content.
Speaker 1:I've definitely been in headset for longer than 90 minutes many times.
Speaker 2:But I would say the Quest 3 is more comfortable than the AVP especially with the battery strength.
Speaker 3:It's like a concert, right like I, but you can't leave a concert. You can split your. I mean you can listen concert, but well, you can leave. If you don't like the concert, you can leave the concert, you can't leave a bono concert.
Speaker 2:Yeah, arm guards at the doors Sit down, oh let us out.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, the Streets With no Name is a pretty good song, honestly.
Speaker 3:Also, Joshua Tree does remind me of all the Joshua's.
Speaker 1:So, supposedly, this feature-length documentary is an adaptation of Bono's memoir Surrender, which came out in 2022. Yeah, so, and it's being shot simultaneously with a traditional flat documentary, so that's actually quite interesting. That makes a lot more sense, and we have talked about this a few times. A few times, yeah, about how we think that it's really expensive to shoot immersive if immersive is the only audience that you're going to go for. So we've definitely talked about piggybacking immersive experiences on existing traditional flat cameras. Filmic work, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:like as a supplemental not just as supplemental.
Speaker 1:I mean, I I supplemental is is what you would imagine, you know but I also think that there is a possible market for shooting both in a similar way and maybe just taking them in different directions I mean they'll have to in some way yeah, I'm very curious to see.
Speaker 2:I mean especially like are they doing things? Like, are you going to see the 2d camera in the in the immersive dock? Is it going to be? Is it gonna have more of a behind the scenes feel? Yeah, yeah, sort of by nature, because, you know, since the the camera sees all, it's like be interesting to see if they just do two takes of everything or do two setups or what, but either way, I think it's cool.
Speaker 2:I think you know, despite it, obviously, you know it's kind of just fashionable to give them shit, but I'm still interested in seeing it and interested in what it could be and what it could mean for the medium. I mean, I think there's still so much skepticism around vr 180 as a, as a an actual medium, that I just want to see more of it get pushed forward and like yeah, same, this is, this is the hip, the hip senior vps at apple going.
Speaker 3:We need to make sure that we figure out how to get these kids on board, because yeah, you get them, you hook them with you too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 3:I know a guy, let's go. Okay, so, gosh. So I just found out about this. And Vyverse, okay, walk with me back to 2021, when Meta said oh, verizon Worlds, there's this whole new world, the meta-verse. It's a world where all our devices and all of our various platforms and different kind of digital tribes can come together and hang out and it can be iterated in. Whatever You're still part of the club. There's no in, there's no out. It's kind of a beautiful idea.
Speaker 1:And here we now have Viverse, which is htc yeah, the phone manufacturer, and sometimes vr and the company yeah with their own take on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I dare say I can walk and chew gum at the same time well, and the?
Speaker 3:and the difference here is that this is based on webxr yeah, if for folks who don't know what webxr is, it's basically open up your browser in the headset. It's a cross-platform javascript based like unity or unreal it you can it's. It's like let me, let me rewind the clock back here again to a time when no one knew what webxr was. And now you're like oh shit, I can totally. I can totally hang out in this world well, so it's like it's so webxr is in front of the store. What?
Speaker 1:no, not, not horsey right okay, okay, yeah so the good thing about webxr is that it's available on any device you can put it into your apparently not apple is a friend.
Speaker 3:I guess I'm still speaking to our critics.
Speaker 1:So you don't have to download a like an APK or a file or an EXE. It's. It launches into the language when you load it up on your browser and then immediately downloads the assets. It's a turnkey, yeah, Like a bubblegum machine that I mentioned before.
Speaker 1:It's. It's interoperable on various devices, and so you don't need to have a dedicated platform to be able to use it, and I think that's part of here's the thing, though. So, like Horizon, worlds, which is Meta's version of the Metaverse, is also available on smartphones and other devices, but you still have to be using the meta ecosystem, you have to have a meta account, et cetera. I'm guessing by verse will probably have some sort of token system or login that's similarly tied to their thing.
Speaker 3:If you log in, you know you're not choosing one like Google, facebook, apple. Signing a's login.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's more adaptable. So supposedly they're aiming this at businesses so that they can have their own inter, probably like white label version of workrooms, exactly an immersive space, sort of like what second life was doing, yeah, 20 years ago, where you had like a crispy cream virtual hangout situation where you can throw virtual donuts in your friend's face, which we all want to do this, don't we? That's already bought a headset. This is definitely why bought a headset for advertisement.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Costco, I love you.
Speaker 1:But I mean the thing is is that we do need more alternatives to meta's ecosystems, and I think Viverse is the first open platform that I've seen that has the performance, a big name with heavy vr chops behind it.
Speaker 2:anyways, moving on prima is a new app on the avp, right? Yeah, new new app on the avp. Is it currently exclusive to avp? Yes, and made so it's using. These guys use this camera that they made themselves, this company that's called Immersive Company, right, immersive Company? Yeah, so they've created a custom camera that they're shooting with and apparently now this it's not a codec, but it's an encoder called Primo that encodes cleaner than H.265. I'm still trying to understand exactly what this means, because like Seems like it's a finishing codec right yeah most things need to be.
Speaker 2:but it's like the processing engine Because, like H.265, like the way they've described it on UploadVR, is that it's much better versus X.265, but X.265 is a codec, not an encoder per se, so I'm curious exactly what this means. But regardless, it's producing much sharper results, like apparently this is cleaner than anything apple is producing, which is pretty shot, which is really shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the apple immersive video that I've seen is the best immersive video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've ever seen. So they're both like, they're both 8k, 90 frames per second. Hdr yeah, hdr, but the prima stuff is significantly cleaner. Now, apparently this comes at a cost. It reduces the 3d effect, perspectives are kind of messed up and maybe there's quite a bit of warping like I don't know. There know there was some comments. Maybe the camera? Well yeah, but it could be Apparently. When you look at it it looks like, like it might just be a fancy way of saying AI upscaling.
Speaker 1:Oh, maybe they're doing some AI upscaling, like on the headset itself.
Speaker 2:That's what some of these have floated Like. There were some comments that I read that were like oh, and the guitar person's lips are never moving, but words are coming out of his mouth, so there might be some weird artifacting that's coming out of this as well. Again, we haven't seen it ourselves.
Speaker 3:Maybe he's just a ventriloquist, so this is hard to say Maybe he's just a ventriloquist is what Byron just said. If you did catch that, you'd be an AI upscale, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:Anybody who's done, you know, any type of ai, noise reduction, a upscaling, sometimes, some weird like wobbly stuff happens, so I can see like certain details getting lost and maybe muted, as if it was, like you know, plastic surgery.
Speaker 3:It's still an iteration that you know it feels interesting. It's interesting that if you don't know what h265 is, it's after h263 and four and four, which we don't talk about. Yeah, if you're a video I don't know if you're a video enthusiast and like the early apple g4 era where, like all these were brand new numbers, they were doing something that was way better than windows like faster, cleaner is an interesting way to place what they've done here, because I looked at the before and after and I could see way more detail and fidelity. Stuff that you know like maybe isn't quote-unquote flattering on a flat screen, but it's more real, it's and it's and it's less and it's less process, it's upscaled, which is like wait, do I want a washed out, like cleaner, a touched up appearance for something that's like, yeah, live, well, it's not necessarily like upscaled, but it's just.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you zoom in and look at it's. One of the biggest problems with vr video is that the codec is just a little how do you say chunky there's always these.
Speaker 2:Like you can see the macro blocking around eyes and eye details, yeah, and a lot of times, the other thing that happens is people often sharpen the footage after that, yeah, and so then it just actually makes that stick out more, so you end up with this shimmery effect. That is something that's really hard to fight. Yeah, it's something that's really hard to fight. Yeah, so getting away from, like, getting the idea of having a VR immersive, specific and suited to codec and or encoding process is good, because, like, one of the things that happens, even with, like, ai noise reduction, is it doesn't work that well for VR because it's not respecting the fact that there's two If you have an artifact in one eye and not the other.
Speaker 3:Right, that's not exactly exactly if it doesn't do it in concert, then you end up with some you get new artifacts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, come out of it. Digital astigmatism, so having more technology that is specific to this medium like that great.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I actually talked to a buddy of mine, justin fecto. What's up justin about? I asked him because he's worked in video post-production for he used to work in video post-production for a long time and I asked him is there a perspective correct denoising software that exists? And he said no, but if somebody made it, it would break, break the industry. It would be huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if anybody could and should do it, I mean, cause everybody like Topaz is basically already the household name and AI denoising, so if anybody should do it, it should be Topaz. Like they, everybody already uses their stuff, so why not Like? But I bet the thing is, everything I've heard about AI and VR is that they don't work well together and the AI cannot deal with stereo very well, so I think that has a lot to do with it, which is ironic, because you do have things like Owl 3D, which will turn 2D into 3D, and it does a pretty decent job.
Speaker 2:But I think AI recognizing 3D is a problem, so maybe that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and supposedly they're shooting this. So this platform, it's only on Apple Vision Pro. Currently, there's only one video available and it's with this band you can see on the TV behind us. It's AJ Lee and Blue Summit. The video itself it's a paid service. It's $3.99, which I think this is totally reasonable For a high quality performance. I think that is yeah, and also I know that it's $3.99, which I think this is totally reasonable, this for a high quality performance.
Speaker 1:I think that is yeah and also four dollars I know that it's very difficult to get people to pay for video content these days because we're so used to getting it in a subscription service or for free, but this stuff is incredibly, incredibly expensive to produce. Yeah, so please, god, get used to paying money for it again. Anyways, there's like a one minute trailer, yeah, and but the the content itself was shot by a company called the spatialist, so this, this was sort of two different companies coming into a partnership together to produce this type of stuff, and that's sort of how these things happen is that you have one company who knows the tech side and the other who knows the production side and they come together to bolt wrong. And I mean, again, I have not seen this in a headset before it's impressed, it seems impressive.
Speaker 2:I mean, just the fact that they crafted their own camera is impressive. It's very impressive. And all this stuff is supposed to be also compatible with the, the upcoming or the, I guess recently released Ursa Immersive, the Blackmagic Ursa Immersive.
Speaker 1:Definitely see. This is definitely a company to keep your eye on, because if they're doing this, that's impressive stuff.
Speaker 2:They kind of came out swinging yeah stuff.
Speaker 3:They kind of came out swinging and so yeah, yeah, I would say probably should have launched with more than one video personally, but well you know, new kid on the block doesn't want to be like look at all my, look at all my toys got this one cool thing going on a little close to the maybe with all this custom software has taken them a year to get the post-production done.
Speaker 2:I'm not like, honestly, you just never know. I mean I would it's not easy to pull this stuff off. I would totally understand that. Ben there done that, you know.
Speaker 1:All right, it's cool stuff. I definitely want to see more of it.
Speaker 2:And supposedly it's at a lower bit rate than even. Was it 30% or 40% more efficient or something like that, yeah than.
Speaker 1:X265, which is going to have to be the way it happens, because if you want to be able to download these ultra high res files, I mean, this is what it's only a 14 minute experience. That's really. I wonder how big the file is. How big would that be if it?
Speaker 2:was X26? I'm just going to guess at like 20 gigs, holy shit For 14 minutes, something like that, right, like I don't really know, because it's probably 90 frames.
Speaker 1:So this is probably about 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like one of our episodes. An hour of content at 8k 60 is, I think, about 80 gigs every time.
Speaker 1:Wow so just just ballpark, yeah no, I know I've downloaded them to to do editing and they're huge. We have to use drive. Yeah, yeah, all right, yeah, yeah, so that's that's sort of it for the news segment. Today we have a something a little bit different. We haven't really tried anything like this before. We're doing a review of the human within, and so this is the human within is available on MetaQuest platforms. It is an interactive VR film, right?
Speaker 3:I guess that's the best way to call it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it's like you know, you know part game, part part film.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's there's a story and there's an interactive element that let you have to work with in order to move the story forward, but you can change the outcome of the story depending on whether you decide to look left, look right, within the six degrees of freedom that they've immersed in, and I find it interesting as a way of like introducing the idea and the concept, and the story itself is really kind of to use lack of a better word meta yeah it's, it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a very traditional, like modern science fiction. There's like a hacker and a brain computer interface and it's dealing with surveillance technology, and I'll say this. So it's about 90 minutes long. It uses clips from 2d video, 3d 360 video, what looks to be rendered like unity stuff, unity environments with interactable video content, where there's a sequence where, where you first go into this sort of matrix of reality, you're inside the computer type of situation and there are videos floating around you in a grid and you can pick up the video and pull it up to your face and it'll start playing. And that was actually, I thought, part of the most compelling part of the narrative was it took all these disparate elements of all these things from these movies that you've seen. We're like we're got to hack into the mainframe or like Mike Nichols, you know remember time code.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, time code.
Speaker 1:It was a first love that film. I haven't thought about that since. Like that's, like that is a film school staple, that is.
Speaker 3:That movie. It was shot on video right.
Speaker 1:It was, yeah, it was an interesting four channels.
Speaker 3:You're following four or five different characters across four different points in the movie and, like a live you know, ongoing narrative and it's so rewatchable. It's so replayable in the sense that if you feel like you maybe missed something, you can go back and go what were they doing? And chapter select. It's also got like a dvd menu style chapter selection, so if you want to replay a scene and change your choice, you can go backwards. Oh yeah, also, and it's not boring, because there's so much going on and the channels are coming at you a big part of this project is that it's a branching choice, narrative experience.
Speaker 1:However, one of my biggest issues with it is that element itself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, too many choices or the illusion of choice in the matrix that we of our yeah yeah, well, I mean, there's two things I mean.
Speaker 2:From my perspective, I would say one of the issues is simply that it's not clear how you're supposed to make the choice. And I went I personally went through the entire game just taking the defaults because I didn't know how to change the choice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why I mentioned up in front of if you selected to the, if you go back to the beginning of this chapter, if you, depending on which way you look when prompted, you'll steer the story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the only thing in the game that's gaze based, so you don't really know that that's what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:I also did not know how to trigger the choice events and but I was watching it in in the room while anthony was here and sean was here. So they told me how to do it, and if they had not told me how to do it, I would not have figured it out, or at least I had might not.
Speaker 2:Have I waited for him to get frustrated before I should. Yeah, I I looked at.
Speaker 1:I looked at my controller and went like but wait, what's, what's happening?
Speaker 3:oh god, it already selected yeah, I wonder if that's a way and there's a patchable and there's also not a time code.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's not a time code. You can't. You can't scroll back, you can't scroll forward. Yeah, so it's not like I could go back without jumping back 15 minutes, because I go back to this chapter.
Speaker 2:This is my other like kind of gripe. Is that the scene selection stuff. If you're going back you have to watch the entire scene. Like let's say you miss the choice or you want to try a different choice, you have to go through the entire video section before the choice is presented, Whereas for me, as somebody like wanting to explore what the different choices would do, I would love those scene selections.
Speaker 3:Just take me back to the choice part or three or four minutes kind of like Bandersnatch gave you that ability to go to a cue point and then, if you miss the cue point because I don't know something was going on in the living room, you could easily go wait. What happened happened and then you know redo the honestly for.
Speaker 1:For a situation like this, you should be able to drop in at any point. There is a change in perspective. Yeah, so like any time, because there's a. There's this reoccurring minigame. That is fun the first three times, oh, and then after that it's just gets more and more annoying and lengthy, and the characters are yelling at you to go faster.
Speaker 2:And it brings the narrative to a halt.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:It does feel like the immersion is disrupted by its own conceit. I don't know. I just said a bunch of words.
Speaker 1:I mean you're not wrong, though that actually makes total sense, and I agree with what you said, even if you don't agree with what you just said, Case in point, because we want more hits than all the other reviews on Human Within, which spoil, by the way.
Speaker 3:If you want, you can use the controller joystick to control the 3D object. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:As opposed to kind of like having a kind of…. I was doing this the whole time.
Speaker 1:Sean literally was like oh yeah, you can rotate it with the thumbstick, and I was like, well, you were rotating your entire spine to get under the block and I'm like Byron, your headset's going to fall off okay, it's. It's a very similar mechanic as in Half-Life Alyx, which you literally have to do, that you have to rotate your hand. So I was just using the same methodology.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, despite the fact that it seems like we're saying a lot of negative things about this project, I actually quite enjoyed it, yeah I'm like I haven't even begun to become, to become negative, no yeah, no, I did too I actually think it's like I I think it's like the best of this version of entertainment I've seen, right as far as sure, choice for sure, definitely and I think like the blend of of video and unity environment and like how well rendered that was and the fact that it's six off is really cool remember we talked about this project when we we had the trailer on a few months ago and we were all, myself included very skeptical, to be fair the trailer, like once I got into the game.
Speaker 2:Once I got into the game it, because I think this actually might be a different trailer. I think it's the same one sure yeah because, like I, it felt like watching this.
Speaker 2:it's like, why is it actual gameplay? Why is there all this weird like this different types of video? And it's because, like, like this isn't it? Well, I don't even know if that's in there, but, like, some stuff is 360 and some stuff is not 360 and stereo, and so, obviously, converting everything to a 2D trailer on YouTube, you lose a lot of what is good about the thing. It's really hard to get the feeling of the game across.
Speaker 2:There's a je ne sais quoi that does not come through for sure, which we will be dropping in a little bit of gameplay, gameplay, whatever Footage, you know, 3d capture, so you can get room, for sure, which we will be dropping in a little bit of gameplay, gameplay, whatever footage, you know, 3d capture, so you can get a much better idea of what this is because I think having a 3d perspective on what it looks like in headset is a huge, huge selling point for this project.
Speaker 1:and I know, especially when I first booted it up, I was like okay, wait a second, I see what they're doing here. And I said after it was over, I also, too, said this is probably the best interactive storytelling I've ever seen. Mind you, there are a lot of clunky bits A few bugs in the system.
Speaker 3:I'm wondering if they're actually patchable, because I feel like they're actually the minigame segment.
Speaker 2:I would think stuff like that is, but I don't know enough about it.
Speaker 1:The filmmaking stuff is the stuff that probably and even watching this sequence here, I'm noticing that there are scenes that we didn't see or might not even be in the final part or alternate.
Speaker 2:It could be in a branch that we didn't click on or whatever. But yeah, I would say the biggest weak spot for me is the actual filmmaking side of it and of course I'm going to be that critical because that's what I do.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I enjoyed it, I think, in terms of what it seems like they set out to do it seems pretty successful.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is a very, very difficult medium. We talked about this in one of our first episodes in in an episode a couple months ago. Interactive storytelling is something that sort of hangs around vr technology and new, new video mediums consistently. It's always just sort of this albatross. In this way, I think it's more of a benefit, but it's very, very difficult to tell stories in a branching way when it's already difficult enough to write a story as it is right then to have it branch at the same time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of. We were warning. We got a copy of this from another friend of ours who works for a video game PR company and his background in video game branching storylines, the way we write games, the way games are structured Like there's a lot in common here, but there's also a lot of. There's a lot of relationship that is pretty baked into the story. That is like the groundwork. That that that is like the groundwork and if you love cyber thrillers, if you love thrillers, this is your this is your jam, yeah, yeah you.
Speaker 1:You said something actually that I thought was really interesting. You compared it to the brain dance mechanic in cyberpunk 2077, and that's a very apt description. That is a very, very comparable element to it, and, in fact, I could see them even possibly taking some influence from those experiences oh yeah from gibson yeah, yeah, well, and also, and also the brain dancing. Brain dances in 2077, where you can scrub forward and backward in time to change your perspective, and that type of thing.
Speaker 1:I would say so it's 20 bucks, it's about 90 minutes, that's in one straight run through right, yeah, it's not going back and playing with different yeah, I had some issues with my headset so I had to run through the entire thing in one go. I would not recommend doing that. This type of experience should almost certainly broke be broken up into like three chunks. I personally, I would have maybe released this episodically, though I don't know if it would have had the same impact I think it is an all-day pass, which, well, an all that's pass, yeah, that's a good, that's a good call.
Speaker 1:It's 20 bucks. I personally to own it. To own it, yeah, to own it on meta. I would say it's worth the price.
Speaker 2:I think it's a good admission, like in terms of the the amount of entertainment that I got out of it, if you're into this type of storytelling and curious at all about like blending narrative and immersion, yeah it is something interesting, so I think it is worth them.
Speaker 1:It's definitely something that I have never experienced before, in that it used live action footage so effectively in ways that are comparable to ways that similar things have been done in video games.
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually.
Speaker 1:I've never seen it done with the live action footage in the way that it was done so effectively.
Speaker 3:Yeah, these didn't feel like a set of cut scenes, like layered together. It felt like things progress in a way where, in order to continue feeling the immersion is god, the words that I said before, that I didn't know what I said, don't matter. It felt like you were watching a movie and when it became time to play a mini game, you know like this was a necessary part of staying immersed within a specific character. That is part of the story, part of the relationship that these other characters have around, and because you're stuck, because you're in that world with that character which we I can't really talk about because it would be spoiling the entire narrative I would say I'd give this a five out of five recommended stars to like. In terms of like, why do we want immersive storytelling and how does it make sense and what is the point of view? You know, yeah, that's the most interesting thing. That's why I think it really works. Yeah, even with a few hiccups and clunks, yeah yeah, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:It was, I think the only things that I think definitely needed to be worked on were some of the filmmaking aspects. Yeah, if we want to get into nitpicking- oh yeah, we can go into nitpicks if we want to go into nitpicks yeah yeah that's your vibe, definitely my vibe yeah. No, there were definitely things as filmmakers that we saw that we were like hmm, yeah, tell me about it?
Speaker 2:I want to know. So for me it felt very rushed. It felt like they had a couple of days to shoot all this stuff and they were like, well, that's good enough, just let's go, let's move on to the next thing. Like I think the actors did the best they probably could, based on but I'm not even sure there was a director in the credits, and it felt like it really needed direction, like a cohesive thing. There was like kind of sloppy stuff with costuming.
Speaker 1:There was scenes where Everybody's dressed like they shop at Uniqlo, yeah, which I mean Uniqlo's amazing.
Speaker 3:And there's zero direction in that store.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is true. That's a part of the Uniqlo experience. It is very maze-like. I got lost in the Seattle Uniqlo a couple months ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I went shopping with you too, Uniqlo, and we couldn't find each other for an hour or something. It was like H&N I don't know what it was. No, it was H&N. Oh shoot, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Another directionless. So it was produced by a company, signal space lab, and in participation with a berlin berlin-based studio, arctio, and funded by meta, the canada media fund and the median board berlin, brandenburg. And then it's in german.
Speaker 3:I can't see, so this had like a lot of.
Speaker 1:I figured it had to have been co-financed by. Yeah, like a.
Speaker 3:It had to have been co-financed by like a government.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't come across as a small budget thing and that's actually part of why I think it's so effective is because it's very clear that the budget was decent to good. There are some very, very impressive locations that they shot at, which do a lot to further the illusion that this is real. Yeah, yeah, the I think those elements are are impressive. It looks slick, is a very well packaged prison resented situation. It did end sort of abruptly. It was very much like, mind you, it is a branching ending. Supposedly there's like six different endings.
Speaker 3:We got the same ending. I got maybe a different ending, but it did feel like when you I want this to come off as constructively as possible. But you know, when you kind of just died in a game and you're like, oh, I didn't mean that you died, that's how I I felt that's a pretty good because, because I also wanted more story, I was like, wait, if I just this is going to be more, this is gonna be interesting if I keep, yeah, pushing and pressuring and and then oh, oh, I didn't mean to go I guess can we do it over.
Speaker 1:It does have that replayability aspect to to it built in, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I will say, though, like if there isn't a more satisfying ending after going through several different branches, then I'm going to be upset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. Yeah, because the ending that we got was very anticlimactic.
Speaker 3:This speaks to an interesting problem, I think in the immersive storytelling language that we're like talking about. Problem, and I think in the immersive storytelling language that we're like talking about, is how do we both suspend disbelief and also not cheat the audience, especially if the audience is making choices on behalf of the story or you have to make sure and this is this, you know, they, they teach entire.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's why video game storytelling is so very specific and incredibly difficult. You have to make sure that all of your various endings are thematically impactful as well as like thematically resonant. They have to make as much sense for every single version, every single different person's version of their story.
Speaker 3:You know it's like writing several scripts and having all a shooting Like how, how?
Speaker 1:would you ever make a sequel to Mass Effect trilogy that doesn't use one person's, that finds a canon ending and I definitely think, the next project from this studio. They'll learn with iteration.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can't wait to see what else they do, right right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you fix a few of the little things and it's a really great great experience and hopefully this was helpful yeah, and I think going forward we'll probably do more reviews.
Speaker 1:We might, uh, silo certain reviews under z-axis. Z-axis first one's out. Go check it out. We're really proud of it. Sean gets to tell us all about our favorite standalone, the the best. The survival guide for standalone quest titles yeah. And then my episode, which is coming soon, is going to focus on non standalone pc and non-gaming experiences the best of survival guides type of thing, and yeah speaking of iterations, like we're making improvements on every episode and so you know something you don't like on the first one.
Speaker 2:please keep checking back.
Speaker 1:And the big thing that's unique about that show is that we've utilized our expertise about inserting spatial 3D stereoscopic clips into, and that is the main focus of the gaming show is that we have 3d gameplay while we're doing the there's a picture in picture of me playing everything that we reviewed and we threw that together really quickly, by the way yeah, pressed out. You know, the second one was a little bit more iterative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we keep making improvements, but yeah, I think showing these things in 3D just beats any 2D thing, even if it's in 360.
Speaker 1:We think it's the best way to show, get a real flavor. Vr gameplay footage yeah, yeah, yeah that we also have some ideas for some like tech related stuff that could be in under z-axis as well. Yeah, yeah, so please go check those videos out and all right, that's it for the stereoscope podcast number 12. See you guys later. Peace, peace, free audio post -production by alphoniccom.
