XR for Business

By Alan Smithson from MetaVRseBusiness Technology Arts

XR for Business episodes

October 23, 2019 The YouTube of 3D Models, with Sketchfab CEO Alban Denoyel
If YouTube is the world’s compendium
of videos of cute cats and unboxings, then the Sketchfab platform is
well on its way to becoming the equivalent cultural database of
user-generated 3D objects. CEO Alban Denoyel discusses the origins
and the future of the service with Alan in this episode.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is
Alvin Denyuel– I screwed it up already. How do I say it?
Alban: “Deh-Noh-Yell.”
Alan: “Denoyel,” OK. Today’s
guest is Alban Denoyel from Sketchfab, the world’s largest platform
to publish and find 3D content online. Imagine it’s like the YouTube
for 3D. Prior to Sketchfab, he worked for four years in the 2D world
of photography. He loves making 3D content with photogrammetry or VR
sculpting. He’s a graduate from the ESSEC Business School in Paris,
France. If you want to learn more about the wonderful work they’re
doing, you can visit sketchfab.com.
Alban, welcome to the show.
Alban: Hey, Alan, thanks.
Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure.
I’ve been looking forward to this episode for so long. I’ve had a
Sketchfab account for about four years now and I’ve only managed to
publish a couple of things on there. But it’s so cool. I mean, you’re
literally making the YouTube of 3D models. How did you guys come up
with that concept? Where did that come from?
Alban: Actually, it initially
came from a technical challenge, I guess. My– So, Sketchfab is built
on top of WebGL, which is the first web-based framework to display 3D
graphics in the browser and WebGL was initiated by Mozilla back in
2011. And my co-founder and CTO, Cedric, had been a 3D programmer in
the gaming industry for 15 years, was hired by Mozilla to make one of
the very first demos of WebGL for the launch of Firefox 4. And then I
just started peeking around the tech and started building an MVP to
essentially help the people he was working with in the 3D industry to
be share and display 3D assets with just a euro and a browser.
Alan: Incredible. I mean, you
guys have come a long, long way. How long have you been doing that?
When did it start?
Alban: Cedric started in 2011, I
met him early 2012, and we officially launched in March 2012. So it’s
been more than seven years.
Alan: Wow. Seven years. And how
many 3D models are hosted on Sketchfab today?
Alban: I stopped counting at
three million. [chuckles]
Alan: So there’s over three
million 3D assets hosted on Sketchfab today. And I would assume over
the next 10 years, as everything moves to 3D, that number is going to
probably end up at 3 billion, at some point. So why do people need
Sketchfab?
Alban: So people use this mostly
in two ways: either to publish content or to find content. So
published content means sharing, embedding, displaying, hosting 3D
files that they have. So these are as 3D creators, or brands, or
architects, or any number of industries. And so they have 3D files
and they need a way to embed them on a web page or share them with
someone who doesn’t have 3D software to open them, or use them in VR
and AR and so on. And then other people come to Sketchfab just
because they need content. Either regards to presentations, or it
could be to build video games. It can be to build AR/VR experiences,
it can be to make a video or two-dimensional learning. Again, the use
cases are pretty diverse as well.
Alan: Let’s start with the way–
where you guys came from, because up until recently it was a free
platform, you could host your 3D models on there. And it was just
kind of more– it seemed more consumer-facing. And it, over the last,
I guess 24 months, it seems like you’ve morphed into a more business
tool applications. Was that always in the business plan or was this
just, you saw an opportunity?
Alban: It’s a mix of both, I
guess. We started as a community of 3D creators. Our first goal was
to attract as many creators as possible, and make sure we would
become a good to way for content creators to share and showcase and
embed their 3D work. And as a result of that, we became also the
largest library of 3D content, that was more as a byproduct, if you
will.
It’s also worth noting that when we
started WebGL, our tech stack was very early in terms of maturity of
the tech. It was running in less than 50 percent of the browsers. So
it really took five years to be a scalable technology that would run
on mobile and desktop and all browsers. And so for the first years as
a company, there was no way we could actually be in business at
scale, because the tech was too early, and also it was more important
for us to reach critical mass of content creators and content before
going after businesses.
It kind of happened organically about
maybe two years or so ago. Pretty much at the same time where we
started shooting, we reached critical mass of content creators and
content. We also started noticing more and more companies starting to
use the platform, mostly to embed content, typically for e-commerce,
computer toys, and things like that. And so we decided to expand the
product feature set, to better address those needs. And it was also
low-hanging fruit to better monetize as a platform; so, keep a free
or cheap version for content creators, and then start offering more
advanced features for companies, big or small.
Alan: Really amazing. I’m just
scrolling the front page of Sketchfab right now — and if you’re
listening, you can pull up your phone and sketchfab.com — just
scrolling there, you got robots, there’s a 3D model of a Nerf gun,
medical visualisations. What are the most common assets that you guys
have? It looks like furniture is a big one.
Alban: I mean, from the outside
a lot of it looks very artsy or gamey. Our initial power users were
definitely more on the artist side. And the contents that tends to
surface organically, or through our curation, tends to be more on the
art side, just because it’s often the most visually-appealing, and
well-made, and so on. But there is no one specific category that gets
more volume than any other. I mean, it’s really extremely diverse,
which makes it exciting. It’s worth noting that it’s more like in
terms of how the content is made. When we started, most of it was
pure CG; made with advanced CAD programs or 3D software like 3ds Max
and so on. And now a lot of the content is made with 3D capture
technologies like photogrammetry. It’s probably around 50 percent,
now, of uploads are 3D captures.
Alan: Wow, that’s a big
difference. You know, some of the things that sticks out to me with
the photogrammetry stuff is you guys have a “museums and
heritage” section, where people take photogrammetry of museum
objects. And to put it in context, our museum here in Toronto — the
Royal Ontario Museum — has, I think it’s something like 30,000
objects that are on display at any given time, around 30,000, but
there’s three million objects that are in storage. So being able to
capture those in 3D and host them on Sketchfab and then be able to
share them in virtual experiences I think is gonna be a massive way
for humanity to fully understand and learn about and enjoy hidden
artworks.
Alban: Yeah, definitely. We’re
actually just past 100,000 3D models in our cultural heritage
category. And we’re already working with many museums to do that.
Alan: If you think about it for
a second, you guys have been doing this for seven years. And seven
years is an eternity in tech. But it feels like it’s just the very
beginning. You have 3-million+ models. But as the world moves to 3D,
that number is literally going to 1000x.
Alban: Yep.
Alan: So… well, I guess one of
my questions is bandwidth. How do you guys deal with the size of the
files and then manage that? And is that all part of the platform for
users?
Alban: I mean, over the years,
we’ve done a lot of optimizations when a file is uploaded. We do a
lot of different actions on the file to remove anything that’s
unnecessary, and optimize everything we can. And so we do this not
only to improve our performances — geologic time and so on — and
also save on costs, and things we can only do with the scale that we
have. And specifically, when you upload a file, it automatically
generates… I think it’s four or five resolutions of the textures of
the model. Some are always made of geometry and textures, which are–
which is kind of a photomapped on their geometry. Then we generate
different resolutions, so that we adapt which texture resolution we
show, depending on the device you’re using. It’s a bit like on
YouTube, the video quality depends on your Internet bandwidth and
your mobile or desktop. And we essentially do something similar for
3D models, which optimizes performances and bandwidth customization.
And then just our general infrastructure of everything has really
improved over the years, as we’ve reached a larger scale and more
expertise around what we do.
Alan: In the past few years
since I first found Sketchfab, the loading times are just blazing
fast now. And I don’t know if that’s the hardware’s catching up, or
the bandwidth, or whatever, but I would assume it’s combination of
hardware, the bandwidth, the Wi-Fi, and also your techniques for
loading these really quickly. It’s really wonderful. How are
businesses using this technology right now?
Alban: The
main use case — and it’s our initial power use case — I would say
it’s really easy embedding concepts. Ours is easiest way to embed a
3D file on a webpage. So for businesses, it’s very open for
e-commerce or corporate websites. If any brand will typically make
the physical products, a lot of those brands start their products by
designing it in 3D before manufacturing it. And a lot of brands do
have 3D assets of their products. We’re making it easy for them to
leverage those assets, not only for manufacturing the product, but
also showcasing it and marketing it, so it’s very easy to leverage it
on their websites.
Then we have a bunch of features to
make it nicer, like 3D annotations — you can highlight specific
product features or 3D configurators. You can change colors or
different versions of the product. It’s kind of the main use case.
There are other customer-facing use cases, like advertising or social
media, for example. And then one use case that is getting bigger as
well is more private sharing, and internal review and collaboration.
So, it’s more like a Dropbox use case, if you will, for all the
phases of product development, where a 3D artist needs to iterate
with his colleagues and coworkers — and of course, none of them have
3D software to open any of the 3D designs. And so we’re one of the
easiest ways to just share a 3D asset for review.
Alan: Especially as marketers
start to market in full 3D. I mean, right now, they’re using 3D
images instead of photography. I know IKEA, about 50 percent of their
whole catalog is CG. I mean, that’s– if you think about it, from
just a cost savings from photographs alone, if you have to make a
kitchen and build a physical kitchen to take photographs of it, and
then you have to make a change to that, you got to change the whole
physical set, reshoot the photographs. Whereas in CG, you can make
changes to every country and have a Canadian flag in one country, an
American flag in another, and a French flag in another. Are– the
configurators and these tools, are they easy to use?
Alban: Yes. I mean, it depends.
The kind of default tool, which is just the viewer, is really easy to
use, which is one of the reasons why we got to where we are today.
When we started, 3D was very fragmented, and a lot of people working
in 3D, either have to or want to go vertical, and go after a specific
industry, because it is much easier to better address the specific
needs of this industry.
There’s more than 100 3D formats and
each of those formats and vertical has their own set of tools, and
each vertical has specific needs. The needs of the gaming industries
are very different from cultural heritage, from e-commerce, and so on
and so on. We decided to stay completely horizontal. The result: we
don’t have any of the features specific to a given vertical, but our
product is much easier to use in any given situation. The basic
product is quite easy to use.
Then we spent years building
integration with the entire ecosystems; we’re integrated with more
than 100 creation softwares today. So you can publish directly from
any of the 3D tools you use to Sketchfab. And then we’ve done similar
integrations on the embed sides, that we’ve become the easiest way to
embed 3D. And then also on the import sides, you can import Sketchfab
content directly into other applications. Then we have a set of APIs
to let you go deeper, if you have a developer resources to build
things like configurators and so on.
Alan: Now do you have a generic
configurator? So for example, I have a chair — and let’s just use
the chair for an example — and it comes in 10 different colors. What
do I do with that? I make a 3D model of the chair and then I load it
into a configurator and select the colors, and… how does that work?
Alban: First, you upload the
chair to Sketchfab and then we have a configurator studio. It’s kind
of in beta right now, but it makes it plug-and-play to add different
options; colours, or materials, or things like that. And so you can
either select the different colors you want to show up in your
configurator, or select the different textures type, and then you can
just embed that — just like you would embed a YouTube video — and
plug it in any website. It works on most websites, or WordPress, or
anything.
Alan: It’s really incredible.
You guys have taken something very complex — I mean, you said
there’s 100+ model formats, and I know there’s been some work towards
standardization of those models. I think people were all moving
towards glTF, and then Apple decided, “hey, we got our own file
format, USDZ” — how do you manage a hundred different…? Let’s
just take it, for example, in comparison to YouTube. YouTube has
MP4s, and maybe MOV files. So maybe there’s three or four types of
video files. You are dealing with 100+ types of 3D formats. How do
you guys manage that? Or do you just say, “you have to use these
formats, and this is what it is?” Or do you have a converter
that automatically converts? How does that work, and how does a
customer know which file format to use, when?
Alban: So, we support about a
bit more than 50 formats, and then most of the other softwares are
able to export to one of 50 formats. That’s kind of the 50 formats we
cover are like 95 percent, 98 percent of the needs. And then we have
the integration we have with other tools. I mean, the end user
doesn’t need to worry about the formats that you use; if you use
Revit, or Max, or Blender, or whatever, you can– these are we have
native integrations. We ship with Blender’s. There is a “share
to Sketchfab” button inside Blender. Or for Revit, you can
install Sketchfab for Revit add-on and it’ll allow the “share to
Sketchfab” button. And then you don’t even have to worry about
which formats. We’re just going to leverage the export capabilities
of Revit to make sure they’re going to use a format that we like.
Both, actually.
So that this is all on the import side.
On the export side, we’ve built our own glTF converter, to able to
convert and use these formats to glTF. And this is actually the most
robust glTF converter on the market, which means that anyone who
needs a glTF from any of those 50 formats we support can very easily
get it by just uploading and downloading from Sketchfab. A number of
people use us just for that.
Alan: That’s awesome. Yeah, I
know there’s some other glTF-to-USDZ converters, there’s one called
Meshmorph, and I think there’s a bunch of them out there, but it’s
going to be needed, especially– Do you deal with USDZ formats now?
Alban: Actually, we’re– it’s a
long story. We were launching partners of Apple for USDZ and we’re
working on it. So we will, yes.
Alan: Perfect. Awesome. You’ve
basically created a platform that makes it easy to upload, share,
download, and view 3D models across any device. What are some of the
specific business use cases? I know there’s architectural models, for
example. We’ll go by industry, and we’ll talk about each one. How are
architects or architectural real estate, how are they using this?
Alban: So, architecture is
actually not one of our biggest markets. I initially said it would
be, but for a number of reasons, it’s not really the case. One of
them is that I think they like to keep control, and so they make 3D
models and then use them to make beautiful 2D renders, and they
control how people are going to consume that content in 2D or videos.
And so it’s typically, they’re just going to just do the front of the
building, add some nice trees, and so on. At Sketchfab, we give full
power to the visitor, although there are ways to limit that. But it
actually requires even more work to use our platform, because they
need to do design the back of the building as well, things like that.
So some people–
Alan: I guess if you if you’re
talking pixels versus voxels, you actually have to think about
programming the back of the building, because if you spin it around,
there’s no walls….
Alban: Yeah, exactly.
Alan: Never thought of that.
Alban: Yeah.
Alan: But I mean, if you think
about it, from an architectural standpoint, you guys have a pro
version of the software, right? So there’s a pro/private version of
this, so that if I wanted to use it internally in my company, I can
upload my files, and it won’t be seen by the public. Is that correct?
Alban: Yeah, that’s correct.
But–
Alan: The privacy is there.
Alban: As
for consumer use cases, most of our business is more around product
display; large consumer brands using it to showcase shoes, or boats,
or cars.
Alan: Yeah. A lot of consumer
electronics, from what I can see. So let’s talk about retail, then.
So we talked about real estate. We’ll move on to retail, because the
retail seems obvious to me, if you’re gonna sell a product. Do you
have any data around whether 3D increases conversion rates or
anything like that?
Alban: Yeah. I mean, one of our
first enterprise customers was MADE.com, which is probably the
largest online retailer of furniture in the UK. They started
implementing Sketchfab a bit more than a year ago, and now they’re
giving it to more and more SKUs and they recently shared the initial
data that they could find on using Sketchfab, and their finding with
it, the people would would check a 3D viewer on any given product are
25 percent more likely to buy than those who don’t. It was pretty
mindblowing to hear that stat, and so of course we use that a lot.
Alan: Sorry, wait a second. So,
people who interact with the 3D version of the whatever it is —
furniture, let’s say, or a retail product — did you say it increases
their likelihood of buying by 25 percent?
Alban: Yeah, exactly.
Alan: That’s crazy. Think about
it: what other tool can increase your sales by 25 percent?
Alban: It is pretty amazing.
Alan: There’s nothing, I don’t
think… other than spam advertising. Nobody likes that, anyway.
Alban: Yeah.
Alan: So, that’s incredible.
That’s amazing. And you’ve got retailers, they’re using it. Are they
making the 3D models, or are they having them made? Are they talking
to their suppliers? Because, you know, I would think — if you’re,
let’s say, furniture – if I’m MADE.com, I’m not going to make all
of the 3D models for every SKU that we sell. I’m going to go to my
suppliers and say “this is the format we need it in; provide
it.” Is that what you’ve seen? Is that what’s happening?
Alban: It really depends. Some
bigger brands often have in-house 3D designers and so they make their
own 3D versions of all the shoes, for example. Luxury brands. Smaller
brands outsource it, or some retailers will sell other people’s
brands and outsource it. And sometimes we’d take care of content
creation for retailers who don’t have anything. Most of our customers
have their own, and so they have a clear need because they have 3D
assets. So they are actively looking for a solution to do more with
them. But we also have inbound from companies who have nothing.
Alan: So some of the features
that you guys have on here extend beyond just a 3D view on a
website. You’ve got also– there’s a button, if you’re looking at a
3D model, there’s a button for a VR view — it looks like a little VR
goggles. Are people using the VR view? What are the stats around
that? Is it growing?
Alban: To be honest, I haven’t
even thought of that in a while. The thing is, we have so much volume
on the regular web that anything in VR is going to be tiny, tiny
conpared to that.
Alan: Yeah, I can imagine.
Alban: And it’s based on WebVR.
So VR is early. And then WebVR is a niche within VR. It’s very early,
except in Firefox, it’s going to need better versions of browsers
like Chrome. You need specific actions on the user’s site for it to
work. So it’s early. And then you need the headsets and so on.
Alan: But you guys have also
introduced an AR viewer with–
Alban: Yeah, we’re using the AR
phones, but you have to use our mobile app to use it for now. And so
I think the use is going to really increase once wearables support AR
with our app, which should come sometime next year. I think VR is
great for spaces and places; AR is great for objects. And we have
much more objects than places. I think both are great, but AR is
going to be an even better fit for us, especially once wearables
support AR straight from the embedded player.
Alan: Yeah, it’s going to be
incredible, because you’re just on a website, you’re like “Oh, I
want to see that chair.” Press the button, the chair appears in
your room in the real size. Boom, Bob’s your uncle.
Alban: Yep.
Alan: The amount of progress
that you guys have made in such a– seems like a long time, seven
years. But really over the last couple of years, you’ve really grown
leaps and bounds from both a technical standpoint, but also the sheer
numbers. When did it start to grow really fast? When did you guys
say, “Holy crap, this is really taking off?”
Alban: I think we’ve always felt
that, because I always feel like the biggest of the small guys or the
smallest is a big guys. When we started, we were just, like, two
people. And it kept growing and growing, and we reached like 10,000
models, and it seems huge, and then it reached 100,000. It seems huge
at every step. I don’t think we’ve ever felt a specific shift. It’s
always felt like growing. I mean, maybe when we passed 1 million
models and–
Alan: That must have been a big
day. What do you guys do to celebrate your wins? I mean, obviously
you have wins every once in a while. What do you guys do to
celebrate?
Alban: We’re
a lot of French people, so we like good food and good wine.
[chuckles]
We have a good meal and champagne and–
Alan: I love it. How many
people are at Sketchfab now?
Alban: We’re 30 people. And two
thirds of them are in mostly Europe, mostly Paris. And then a third
in New York.
Alan: Amazing. I would assume
that the people in New York are sales.
Alban: Sales, marketing,
community, user support. Everything that’s non-tech.
Alan: So where are the users
coming from around the world?
Alban: Not particularly France.
I mean, a lot of people have no idea that we’re a French company. We
moved to the US after a year, so it was fairly fast. I would say
about 40 percent of the users are in the US, and then another 40
percent in Europe. We’ve got a lot of users in Asia, a lot of users
in Eastern Europe.
Alan: So let’s dive into
healthcare, because I’ve seen a few things on there. Is there any
industry that won’t be impacted by this? Like, I can’t think of
anything. You’ve got running shoes to TVs, you’ve got real estate,
you’re got buildings, you’ve got flowers. Everything is going to be
in 3D. And as we move into spatial computing as a regular computing
platform, probably it’s going to be, in my opinion, maybe five years
from now. But you guys, it seems like you’re perfectly positioned to
be the YouTube of 3D and it doesn’t look like YouTube or Google or
any of these other big players are playing in your sandbox. What are
your thoughts on that?
Alban: I mean, I agree that most
industries are going to be impacted by that. I guess the only ones
that wouldn’t are financial services, things that are–
Alan: Today, Magic Leap just
released a press release. And there’s a guy from Dow Jones and The
Wall Street Journal who’s made a complete 3D visualization of the
stock exchange in New York.
Alban: I guess you can use it
for financial visualization. That’s true.
Alan: Yes. So, I mean, even the
financial markets, there’s not a business in the world that won’t be
impacted by 3D and spatial computing. And you guys are really way,
way ahead of everybody on this. But you’ve had some early successes,
some early wins. What’s next? What’s next on your roadmap, that is
like the next thing? I mean, obviously 10-million models would be the
next marker or whatever. But what is the next hurdle that you guys
have to go through in order to expand and grow?
Alban: Thereare mostly two things in my mind right now. But on the publishing
side… until now, we’ve been mostly focused on public and
consumer-facing use cases. And as I mentioned, we are getting more
traction around private sharing, so we’re starting to build features
specific to internal use and private sharing. Things like
collaboration tools and multiple seats. And not only be the market
leader in embedding and consumer-facing use cases, but also in
private sharing and collaboration around 3D assets. This is one big
thing.
On the download side of things; all the
download side is fairly new to us, and we’ve really spent most of the
past seven years onboarding content. We released our store and our
download API only a year ago, and so are really just starting to
build everything we need to also become the market leader when it
comes to finding content. And a lot of it is going to happen through
integrations, so that you can search Sketchfab within other
applications. And so we already have a set of integrations with
proprietary tools like Unity and Real Render and so on. And then
we’ll set integration with tools like SparkAR by Facebook or VR Hubs
by Mozilla. And there is a lot of work to do there to essentially be
the search bar for the 3D world and be printed everywhere. And just
like on Google Sheets, you can search Shutterstock to preview images
and you want to do the same thing on Magic Leap or Hololens or any 3D
application, like Unity or Instagram AR.
Alan: That’s really incredible.
So you’re already starting to design this — or will build it — for
integration with all of the other kind of 3D platforms.
Alban: Yep.
Alan: It’s fantastic. What is
the number one platform now? I guess it would be still Unity, for
now.
Alban: Well, it depends on how
you look, because for professional use, Unity is definitely pretty
high. But then we also have very strong adoption in smaller tools,
like Substance, Painter, or several user bases smaller but very
active with Sketchfab in general. And then there are new platforms
which are kind of B2B2C, if you will. But platform like SparkAR,
which is a tool by Facebook to let you publish AR filters on
Instagram, they just went out of beta in August and the volume has
really exploded.
Alan: Yeah, amazing. People who
are listening, if you haven’t tried SparkAR, it’s really an easy tool
for making AR, using Facebook’s platform. And I know another one is–
have you guys worked with Ske – pfft, “with Sketchfab.”
Of course you’ve worked with Sketchfab — with Snapchat?
Alban: We’re discussing their
users using our content, and so we were kind of exploring ways to
streamline that process.
Alan: I’m scrolling– as we’re
talking, I just keep scrolling through — and there’s just so many
variations of everything. I’m looking at an eagle, and a mainframe
computer, and a running shoe, and a castle, and a Bugatti, and a
dragon. It’s literally neverending. And I think really, what’s going
to happen is the tools to create these 3D assets are getting better
and better. There’s tools like Qlone out there now, where you can
just take a regular phone, hold your phone around this product or any
physical object, and it’ll automatically kick it out as a 3D object.
The democratization of the content creation is really going to be
when you guys are going to see a massive uptake. What are the tools
are you seeing that allow people to create faster?
Alban: So a lot of our users
used photogrammetry software, mostly desktop software.
Alan: CapturingReality or
something.
Alban: Yeah. CapturingReality
and Metashape by Agisoft.
Alan: I thought– it used to be
called something else, wasn’t it?
Alban: Yeah, PhotoScan.
Alan: Yeah. What’s it called
now?
Alban: Metashape. And so those
two are the market leaders — CapturingReality and Metashape — and
it gives incredible results. It’s quite time-consuming, because
processing time is pretty long. And then there are more and more
mobile applications, Qlone is one, Trnio is another one. Then there
are also new depth sensor-based applications like ScanD, it’s the
fastest but result is less good. It’s kind of a tradeoff between
speed and budget and quality, I guess.
Alan: There is always that:
speed, budget, quality — choose any two. [laughs] It’s interesting.
I’m looking here. Most of the models looked like they were CG. But
you’re saying that 50 percent of what you’re seeing come through now
is photogrammetry. That’s really impressive.
I guess the future, if we look even a
couple of years out, volumetric capture of video or videorammetry
is really starting to take off. Will your platform support things
like output from the Metastage or these volumetric– or Intel Studios
or something like that?
Alban: We already support that.
Alan: Oh, well, there you go.
Alban: And you can already
support– you can already output volumetric video, either as a mesh
or as a point cloud. Right now we support it in kind of a brute force
way, which is a sequence of scans; we have one scan per frame of the
video, so it’s not ideal in terms of performances — it’s far from
ideal — but it works. And then as it evolves, we’re going to look
into ways to better support it.
Early on we had an integration with
Mimesis as a French company which was recently acquired by Magic
Leap, and their first software was a volumetric video capture
software, and I used it to capture the first steps of my son when he
was one year old.
Alan: I saw that!
Alban: That was a volumetric
video; we processed it and uploaded it to Sketchfab.
Alan: That is so cool. Think
about that — when your son is 18, you’ll be able to put him in a
pair of glasses and he’ll be able to have himelf walking on the floor
as a baby in full volumetric. It’s really incredible. It’s the
memories that we’re gonna be able to capture — even just places. My
daughter’s room. I’m going to do her room up in photogrammetry and
just keep it as a space, because as she gets older, the posters on
the wall will change and all of these things, and capturing that
place — you could do it in 360 video or 360 photos — but really
capturing it volumetrically, allowing you to move around in space,
it’s really beautiful. Like capturing your son’s first steps. How
cool is that?
What are some of the other things that
you’ve seen that just kind of blew your way? What are some things
that you’ve seen on the platform that you really didn’t think people
would ever do with this product?
Alban: That’s a good question.
It’s used more and more to document world events. And so typically,
aerial 3D capture’s pretty big on Sketchfab; people using drones to
take video, or tons of pictures and then stitching them together into
3D models. I wasn’t really expecting news outlets to use Sketchfab
for storytelling. And so I think it’s a very interesting use case
that is emerging. Last week, Time Magazine released a story about the
Amazon Forest, and they made 3D capturers to show which was impacted
by the fire. And then they used Sketchfab to show that on their
website. That was really cool.
Alan: And I think the other one
that I saw was the chapel that burned…
Alban: Yeah, Notre-Dame.
Alan: People were showing
laser-scanned 3D before and after the fire. And I thought that was
really interesting. It’s funny, because 3D is the only way to really
understand it. You can zoom into it. You can get right into it. With
your, I think, your software, you can add annotations, if I’m not
wrong.
Alban: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Alan: You can add little
highlights and say “click here” and it’ll give you some
information about that. I’m looking at one right now. It’s called the
Charterhouse Chapel, and I’m inside this beautiful cathedral looking
chapel and I look all around It’s gorgeous. One question I had, I’m
looking at this model here and you can zoom in, zoom out and like I
can go right inside the front doors, and it looks like a kind of a
dollhouse effect. Are you able to upload Matterport camera outputs to
Sketchfab?
Alban: Yes, definitely. Lot of
people do that.
Alan: So cool. That, I didn’t
know. That’s awesome. So you can get a Matteport camera, which…
it’s like a mix between a 360 camera and a volumetric camera, I
guess. It’s got laser sensors on it that add some depth, and then
overlay the video on top, or the photo on top of it. But it’s really
impressive. And you can now upload that right into Sketchfab. I’m
assuming– actually now that I’m looking at this, it must be —
that’s how they did this chapel. It’s awesome.
Is there anything else you want people
to know?
Alban: It’s hard for us to
expose well how wide our feature suite is. A lot of people assume
that this particular thing is not going to work out on Sketchfab, but
we support a very wide set of features. Don’t assume that it’s not
going to work. We support point cloud, we support animated content,
we support huge files, we support physically-based rendering, we
support VR and AR andso on. And so my message is to try it and see
for yourself. It’s pretty magical when you upload your file, and a
super-fast process — it’s over in 10 seconds — see it live in your
browser window, and then just the fact of doing that keeps a lot of
ideas on what you can do with that file, now that’s it’s posted on
the Internet.
Alan: It’s really exciting. I
can’t wait. I’m going to start uploading way more stuff. I did a
bunch at the beginning and then I was like, you know, I didn’t have
the time. But yeah, I just– I’m going to start uploading things. And
I know Samsung’s new Note 10 has 3D capture built into it. I’ve seen
some people try. It’s not quite there. Not like the video they did on
their launch, didn’t turn out really perfect. A friend of mine took a
bear and scanned it and it ended up looking like a bear with three
eyes. [laughs] It was a little weird. But, hey, I mean, it’s a good
start if you think about it. Five years ago, we had Google Tango
phones that did this.
Alban: I still use it.
Alan: They got rid of the extra
depth sensing camera and now they’re introducing the depth sensing
camera back again. So Google was way ahead of the game, just a little
too early to the party, I guess.
So, what is the most important thing
businesses can do right now to start using the power of Sketchfab?
Alban: Uploading the content and
embedding it to their website. I think most businesses who build
physical products probably have 3D files somewhere. They should be
able to play with the platform out of the box, and then we’ll
optimize the content, or make it look really good in Sketchfab. And
if you don’t have content, for a small budget, we can help you get
your content to 3D, either through free capture or through CAD
programs. Then you don’t have to think crazy big from the start; you
can really test it with a single SKU, a single product. Upload it to
Sketchfab, embed it the same day, and then you can start getting a
sense of whether you’re getting a return on the investment doing
that.
Alan: And what would a cash
outlay for that kind of test be?
Alban: If you don’t have
content, making content really depends on the complexity and quality
and so on, but can go from 50 bucks to unlimited amounts. But like,
for a shoe, you can get a nice little shoe for 200 bucks and then–
Alan: So, for under a thousand
dollars, you can run a reasonable test on your website to see and you
can run A/B tests on your e-commerce. Let’s say for example, a test
of whether 3D does in fact increase your conversions.
Alban: Our pricing for companies
starts at 79 bucks a month. That’s it. For less than 100 bucks on a
given month you can start playing with that.
Alan: Amazing. All right, I’ve
one last question for you. And first of all, want to say thank you so
much for sharing all this amazing information. I know — it’s funny
— I’m really glad to have caught you now, before you end up getting
into the billions of models, because I think at that point you’re
gonna be too busy to be on my podcast.
What is a problem in the world that you
want to see solved using XR technologies?
Alban: I think we touched about
it with the cultural heritage thing. I think it goes a bit beyond
cultural heritage — just preserving things that are not going to
exist in the future. This also applies to iconic products. The very
first Nike shoe, or Lego sets that you can’t buy anymore, and having
your virtual museum of everything on Earth. Which requires the
efforts of not only brands, but crowdsourced, user-generated content.
And of course it’s great for cultural heritage, but actually it needs
to happen for places and buildings and objects and toys and so on.
And that’s really one thing we can solve with digital twins of
everything. It will be used for commerce, and entertainment, and
history, and learning, and education, and even crime scenes. We’re
discussing with some people who are using Sketchfab for crime scenes
— or for counterfeits, fraud detection and so many things.
48 min
October 23, 2019 The YouTube of 3D Models, with Sketchfab CEO Alban Denoyel
If YouTube is the world's compendium
of videos of cute cats and unboxings, then the Sketchfab platform is
well on its way to becoming the equivalent cultural database of
user-generated 3D objects. CEO Alban Denoyel discusses the origins
and the future of the service with Alan in this episode.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is
Alvin Denyuel-- I screwed it up already. How do I say it?
Alban: "Deh-Noh-Yell."
Alan: “Denoyel,” OK. Today's
guest is Alban Denoyel from Sketchfab, the world's largest platform
to publish and find 3D content online. Imagine it's like the YouTube
for 3D. Prior to Sketchfab, he worked for four years in the 2D world
of photography. He loves making 3D content with photogrammetry or VR
sculpting. He's a graduate from the ESSEC Business School in Paris,
France. If you want to learn more about the wonderful work they're
doing, you can visit sketchfab.com.
Alban, welcome to the show.
Alban: Hey, Alan, thanks.
Alan: It's my absolute pleasure.
I've been looking forward to this episode for so long. I've had a
Sketchfab account for about four years now and I've only managed to
publish a couple of things on there. But it's so cool. I mean, you're
literally making the YouTube of 3D models. How did you guys come up
with that concept? Where did that come from?
Alban: Actually, it initially
came from a technical challenge, I guess. My-- So, Sketchfab is built
on top of WebGL, which is the first web-based framework to display 3D
graphics in the browser and WebGL was initiated by Mozilla back in
2011. And my co-founder and CTO, Cedric, had been a 3D programmer in
the gaming industry for 15 years, was hired by Mozilla to make one of
the very first demos of WebGL for the launch of Firefox 4. And then I
just started peeking around the tech and started building an MVP to
essentially help the people he was working with in the 3D industry to
be share and display 3D assets with just a euro and a browser.
Alan: Incredible. I mean, you
guys have come a long, long way. How long have you been doing that?
When did it start?
Alban: Cedric started in 2011, I
met him early 2012, and we officially launched in March 2012. So it's
been more than seven years.
Alan: Wow. Seven years. And how
many 3D models are hosted on Sketchfab today?
Alban: I stopped counting at
three million. [chuckles]
Alan: So there's over three
million 3D assets hosted on Sketchfab today. And I would assume over
the next 10 years, as everything moves to 3D, that number is going to
probably end up at 3 billion, at some point. So why do people need
Sketchfab?
Alban: So people use this mostly
in two ways: either to publish content or to find content. So
published content means sharing, embedding, displaying, hosting 3D
files that they have. So these are as 3D creators, or brands, or
architects, or any number of industries. And so they have 3D files
and they need a way to embed them on a web page or share them with
someone who doesn't have 3D software to open them, or use them in VR
and AR and so on. And then other people come to Sketchfab just
because they need content. Either regards to presentations, or it
could be to build video games. It can be to build AR/VR experiences,
it can be to make a video or two-dimensional learning. Again, the use
cases are pretty diverse as well.
Alan: Let's start with the way--
where you guys came from, because up until recently it was a free
platform, you could host your 3D models on there. And it was just
kind of more-- it seemed more consumer-facing. And it, over the la
0 min
October 21, 2019 The Pain of Empty Space, with SpatialFirst Co-Founder Emily Olman
Thanks to the power of computer
technology, you can browse the contents of a book you might like to
buy online, without ever touching a physical copy of it until it’s
already been bought and delivered. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could
do that, but with real estate that doesn’t even exist yet? Recent
Auggie winner Emily Olman thinks so, and she drops by to tell Alan
all about how volumetric capture and photogrammetry will make that
possible.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is a
great friend of mine, Emily Olman, CEO and co-founder of
SpatialFirst, a prop tech startup and creators of PlaceTime, a mobile
immersive property visualization application bringing spatial
computing to real estate. Prior to this, Emily founded Hopscotch
Interactive, a 3D VR marketing service company, to accelerate the
adoption of new media and technology for property marketing using
reality capture. She spent her career monetizing new media and
developing new business models for Frontier Technologies. With a
background in media sales, business, and property marketing, she
believes that spatial interfaces will unlock properties’ full
potential. Emily is a regular speaker on immersive real estate
technology, both in the US and abroad. She’s just finished serving as
the VR/AR Association’s San Francisco chapter co-president from 2016
to 2019. Yes, she’s got mad skills.
Emily, welcome to the show!
Emily: Hi! Thank you, Alan.
Alan: Thanks so much for joining
me. It’s been a long time since we saw each other, I think was at
AWE.
Emily: Yeah, it’s been a little
bit, but it’s great to be chatting with you.
Alan: Amazing. How’s everything
going?
Emily: Well, it’s great. And
it’s been busy. And I feel like we are just heading into the most
exciting time of the year. Things sometimes have their natural ebb
and flow, in the summer months, for instance. But I think as we get
towards the end of 2019, I think there’s some really exciting things
that are gonna be happening.
Alan: So tell us, tell us what’s
been going on with you. You were the co-president of the San
Francisco chapter, which is one of the big chapters of the VR/AR
Association. And you’ve seen this industry come from nothing to where
it is today, and it’s really starting to take off. So maybe just give
us kind of a brief history of how you got into this industry, and
where you’ve seen it come from?
Emily: That’s a great segue into
my perspective on the industry. I was fortunate to be running the San
Francisco chapter of the VR/AR Association for a few years with Mike
Boland. And we really got to see the industry start to go through
many different shifts. But I would definitely also say that we got to
where we are today because we really are standing on the shoulders of
giants. And so the work that folks have been doing for decades in
immersive technologies and virtual reality has really led to what’s
enabled me to move from my passion for reality capture into creating
a new interface and to be involved with very emerging technologies
such as spatial computing. What’s kept me busy is having a startup.
We started this company, SpatialFirst, about two years ago and have
been working hard ever since to really make something unique that
addresses the future of spatial computing for real estate.
Alan: So when you say spatial
computing for real estate. Walk us through what that means and why
it’s important.
Emily: As we know, when we are
looking at spatial computing, this notion of we know exactly where a
digital piece of content or a digital element is in the real world.
There’s this notion of being able to connect the physical and the
digital space. Whether that means that the whole world is mapped to
it as X, Y, Z coordinates. And we agree upon what that map will look
like. And therefore, we can access and engage with content in a new
way, with either a wearable device or with a mobile device initially.
That’s sort of the premise for what we’re building, which is that,
OK, content is going to be organized in a different way. It’s going
to be organized spatially. And one of the best ways that we can
engage with content spatially is when we are thinking about it in
relationship to the place that we are. So whether that’s your home,
whether it’s your office, whether it’s you at an airport, wherever
you are, organizing content spatially really means that you’re going
to be able to access that based on where you are. So we have come at
it from this approach of what– we have the tools — with augmented
reality — to view the information and to get content onto a mobile
device, or onto a wearable. But what is the interface for that? What
does that look like? How does it actually come together so that we
can use it and it can be part of our everyday experience?
Alan: Have you read the book The
Age of Smart Information?
Emily: No, I haven’t. Is that a
knowledge gap? [laughs]
Alan: Oh my god.
Emily: Sorry.
Alan: So in the book– I was
very lucky to have the
author on the show earlier today. And the book’s called The Age
of Smart Information: How Artificial Intelligence and Spatial
Computing Will Transform the Way We Communicate Forever.
Emily: Uh-huh.
Alan: And I mean, it’s a must
read for anybody in this industry. It’s by Mike Pell and he works
with the Microsoft Garage. They’re constantly inventing new stuff.
And to listen to you talk about how we’re going to have spatial
computing for real estate, and be able to see properties that don’t
exist, and to also be able to work within those parameters. It’s
simply amazing.
Emily: I’ll definitely check out
that book. What brought me to this early on was my interest in
reality capture because I started doing 3D scanning, using the
Matterport technology, which is– for those of you who don’t know,
it’s a camera that uses lenses, but then also has infrared scanning,
which enables it to sort of create — with a point cloud — a 3D
model of a space. But then we can use that actually as sort of this
initial, if you will, like a digital twin of a property, of a place
that’s already been built. That potential for 3D scanning, for
creating new maps and new understanding of spaces, and to be able to
use that for virtual reality going in and out of spaces where you
would otherwise not be able to travel to really became a passion of
mine. And then I began to explore all of the other ways that people
are doing this, whether they use photogrammetry, other types of laser
scanning. I was very, very fascinated by what we could do once we had
a digital twin.
Alan: So what *can* we do with
it?
Emily: So one of the things that
frustrated me in the beginning about using this technology just to
sort of scan one place — like a house, for instance — was that “OK,
well, I’ve got this home and that’s awesome. And I love my 3D model.”
And you can go on to anything from Sketchfab to millions of
Matterport models or other types of photogrammetry. And you can see
like they’re these amazing 3D objects. But what was so challenging
for me was like, wait, but I want to understand it in the context of
its location. I want to know what does this have to do with the
property in the surroundings? It’s almost like when you’re a VR
enthusiast, you know, you kind of think of the possibilities of like,
“Well, what if this were part of a bigger world, or what if I
could add content to this, or I could interact with it?” And
those are the things that really began to take shape for me as the
real opportunity, because obviously as like one of the largest asset
classes, real estate has a tremendous amount of value. But it also
has been slow to adopt new technology. And so when I came at this
from the perspective of digital twin creating a 3D experience, and
that’s where I came in touch with my co-founders of SpatialFirst,
because we all really saw this as an opportunity for enterprise, to
not only create storytelling, but also to index and to understand
content within the context of where it’s located. I hope that makes
sense. [laughs]
Alan: Yeah. I mean, if you’re
going to build a building in downtown Berlin, it’s going to be a
little different than downtown San Francisco.
Emily: Yes, that’s exactly
right.
Alan: The interactions between
people and those buildings are gonna be different as well.
Emily: Yeah. And think about the
thing that we want to always be able to do is to enable decision
making. And I love this sort of going back to more like a sales
metaphor. It’s like enabling distance selling. And that’s one of
those things that was always sort of the thing we always wanted to be
able to do, it’s like the promise of Amazon is like we’ll sell
something that nobody has to touch. Like, they don’t have to touch a
book to know that they want to buy the book, right? And so how do we
learn from some of these other types of experiences and purchases and
decision making? Can we do that with property? Can we do that with
the real world? Can we apply those kinds of things to property
marketing and then — eventually — to property management? Those are
some of the things that really have gotten us excited as we’ve gone
on this journey.
Alan: So who’s your typical
customer? If you’re out there promoting SpatialFirst, who is the
first customer for SpatialFirst?
Emily: So SpatialFirst has an
app that we have in private beta now on iOS and it’s called
PlaceTime. Our first customer is a large global asset manager. They
have about 40 billion in assets under management and they’re testing
this out with one of their marquee properties in Oakland, California.
The use case that we’re going after is class A commercial office
space to support a broker, also to support a landlord and to support
a tenant in the leasing process. It’s very niche and it’s very
specific to commercial real estate. But again, it’s sort of like the
tip of the spear for us. We’re trying to really deeply understand the
things that we can do to enable and to shorten the time that it takes
for properties to be leased.
Alan: All right. So walk me
through what that looks like from the standpoint of the customer and
then the end user.
Emily: From the standpoint of
the customer: if the customer is a broke, the broker is inevitably
going to be trying to lease some commercial office space. And
commercial office space is interesting because most of the time, if
it’s brand new and it’s very slick and it’s been redone and it’s like
perfect, then there’s not much necessarily that we can add to it,
except for the virtual staging and then the content describing
everything about the place. That’s great. But we’ve really seen that
the user that is getting a lot of value out of this is somebody who
has a space that maybe isn’t finished yet, is what they call shell
and core. So it hasn’t had a full fit-out yet, a full tenant fit-out.
And so people have a very difficult time visualizing things. And so
we say this all the time. We say, well, “empty space is
painful.” We use this metaphor of pain because it’s like for the
broker, they just want to transact and close that space as quickly as
possible and to get a tenant in there and to lease it up. But the
tenant is having a hard time visualizing what it’s going to look
like. With the PlaceTime application we can take a hypothetical 3D
model, put that into our app, put that into a 3D map of the world,
and then we can both remotely and in situ tour them of what the space
will become and what it will look like.
Alan: So is this using tablets,
or headsets, or VR, or…?
Emily: This is tablet. So this
is best experienced right now on an iPad and then eventually also
iPhone. But we’re initially supporting the iPad use case. It’s a
bigger screen. It’s still something that most brokers already have
and are able to tour with and are able to show. And and it’s really
just sort of puts all of that property information into your pocket
and gives you access, as the broker, to all of those different apps
and all the information that you need to get while you’re on tour. We
talked to and interviewed dozens of brokers as we were building this.
And one of the things that they all complained about was like, OK,
number one, it’s fiercely competitive. So they always want to have an
advantage over their competition. Number two, there’s just so much
information that they have to stay on top of about each property. And
remember, they’re touring like three to five properties a day. That
means that they’re just always on the go and they’re always reaching
for like, where’s the floor plan? Where’s all the information? And
it’s just spread out across a Dropbox and email and you name it. And
time is money. We’re trying to make that communication much, much
better.
Alan: So are you overlaying the
architectural renderings of a proposed finished — let’s say it’s a
lobby, for example — here’s a proposed finished lobby. You hold up
your iPad and I’m able to wave it around and see what the finished
reception area would look like.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. So–
Alan: Is it locked to the real
world?
Emily: It’s not locked to the
real world. It can be calibrated. So we have created– currently in
the app, we have a sort of a in between phase on the tech roadmap
where we’re able to do a calibration that lines it up to the real
world. But we don’t have the re-localization — which you’re talking
about — just yet. But we’re definitely researching that and we want
to get that in there. And we think that it’s going to take probably a
few different integrations for different use cases to get that
re-localization piece in there. But a lot of that tech we talk about,
it is still coming out of the lab, so we will be among the first to
use it, but we don’t have it in there yet.
Alan: I mean, we’re still early
days for this technology. So you’re rolling this out. How are you
importing the design files? Is it from CAD? Is it from BIM? Do you
have a converter? How are people getting their renderings into it, so
that they can use this?
Emily: We are basically agnostic
to whatever types of files people have. And so they send it to us and
then we are able to convert it into the 3D model, from whether it’s a
2D schematic, or if they have the 3D they can send it to us as well.
Ultimately, it has to get into a glTF file, which is a file format
that most architects and most folks aren’t so used to. But it’s
really optimized for us and what we’re building in. But yeah, we’re
getting those files ultimately into glTF.
Alan: But you’re able to take
that in from CAD or BIM or anything?
Emily: Uh-huh. Exactly.
Alan: Amazing. Amazing. So did
you guys have to build that infrastructure to do that?
Emily: No, we didn’t build the
infrastructure to do that. We’re working with partners to do that.
But it’s certainly something that we think that these processes are
going to just get infinitely easier as we progress. As the number of
assets that we’ve worked with increases, we’re going to be able to
solve for all of those things. And then again, it’s not just that’s
for the hypothetical stuff and for stuff that has not been built yet.
When you’re talking about reality capture, when you’re talking about
showing something that already exists, that’s another area that I’ve
spent a lot of time working on, 3D scanning and capture. We mostly
use the Matterport scans for that, but again, I’m very excited by
photogrammetry. So for instance, doing very large outdoor modelling
of large spaces outdoors. It’s certainly not limited to interiors,
and that’s really the idea. I mean, when I met my co-founder Bart
Denny, he’d been working at a company called World3D and that was
literally the genesis of our building SpatialFirst and then meeting
our third co-founder, Joe Boyle was like, “OK, we want to put
the interior maps in the exterior maps together.” So in whatever
way we can do that to be agnostic, yes, we’d like to be able to
accept everything, but certainly we do have preferred workflow.
Alan: So you’ve built this
platform. Who is your ideal customer? You’ve talked about class A
commercial office space is your first. What’s the five year roadmap
and the ideal customers? Because at the end of the day, this podcast
is literally about driving value for those customers. And so how can
we get this tool, this PlaceTime into the hands of as many brokers
and dealers as possible so that they can leverage this? Because it
sounds like it gives them a distinctive advantage.
Emily: Yeah, I mean, five years
out, we hope that it’ll be used far beyond the real estate use case.
But I think initially anybody who has a portfolio of properties and
needs to communicate better between other stakeholders. So one of the
things that we have used as a way to describe this to people, it’s
sort of a military term is to say, well, you need to have your common
operating picture. Which is something you can pull up, like you would
if you were a military general, you pull up your common operating
picture. And you have this sort of overview of everything that you
need to think about in a certain physical location. We have built
that with the PlaceTime application. So if you have multiple
properties in your portfolio, it could be everything from industrial
properties, at some point it could be residential. Although I have
opinions about why that would be easy and also hard. It could be used
for retail or malls or a lot of other use cases. But for the thing
that is unique about commercial real estate is that there’s this
thing about these buildings right now, right? So we have IoT that is
coming into a lot of discussions and people are saying, “Well,
we’re going to have smart buildings.”
And I think the counter argument to
that is like, “Well, you have connected buildings, you have
buildings that have a lot of connectivity in them.” But the
potential of what you can do if you had an actual interface to get
at, for instance, if you wanted to share with somebody, a new
employee. Well, here’s where everything is on your floor, here’s your
special guide to working in this space. Or for the delivery person,
here’s how you enter into the space, here’s the loading dock, here’s
the map, here’s the information. We really want to enable landlords
to be able to have this best map of their property. That’s where we
really are putting a lot of our focus right now is thinking of these
use cases because we know that leasing is just sort of the beginning
or even development, then followed by leasing and sales. But then the
people that work and live in those properties can also benefit from
having this spatial map — or what we like to call spatial utility —
of the property. Basically meaning anybody who comes in and is
engaging with that property or visits that property will have the
best map, depending on who they are and what they need to do while
they’re there.
Alan: Personalized information.
Emily: Personalized information
and secure information. I think that’s another thing that’s really
important for us. You know, we really feel like we’ve seen a lot of
this dark side to data and privacy and we feel like that the landlord
really should have this ability to control who gets information
within their property. It’s their property. So I would say that
that’s my personal philosophy as well as in terms of like the
residential sphere and wanting to be able to give those tools to
people so that they feel like they have control.
Alan: When you look at these
technologies as a whole, what is your long term vision for how these
technologies are going to impact us? I’m looking at your video here
of of SpatialFirst, and it’s really mind-blowing, the amount of
information that you can provide to somebody just looking at a
property. But it’s early days. People haven’t adopted it. Now, do you
think this technology is going to be adopted quickly or what do you
think is gonna be the driver of adoption? What we’ve seen in other
industries is that once one company does it, sees amazing results,
then everybody starts to jump on board. Is that what you’re expecting
from your side of things?
Emily: I think that as an early
stage startup, the best thing that could happen for us is to have
highly visible use cases where we’re able to show things in a market
where we have high vacancy rates. So anytime you get vacancy in any
kind of downtown or city above, let’s say 7 percent, up to 12
percent, even higher. That’s where it’s very difficult for these
brokers to differentiate and for properties to differentiate
themselves. Now, if in five years time, you know and you can trust a
building that has been enabled by SpatialFirst, that allows you to
have some sense of expectation of, “well, this property will–
this property does this, which all these other properties don’t do.”
I think that as a brand, I think that as an experience, the long term
vision is to say, “this is a better way to organize our
information. This is a better way to communicate with people.”
We would like to see that become something that is used widely. The
speed at which it will be taken up, it just sort of depends on how
quickly we can get from the pilot phase into greater deployment. So
deploying deeper into somebody’s portfolio and the benefit of working
with commercial real estate is like, well, there’s a lot of
consolidation. There’s thousands of landlords, but there’s quite a
few that own the majority of commercial properties. And so being able
to have partnerships with those companies will enable us to do that
faster.
Alan: Interesting that you say
that, because I was just listening– or watching a video by Mike
Boland from ARtillery, he’s one of the mentors for XR Ignite. And the
whole interview was about escaping pilot purgatory.
Emily: It is purgatory. It
really is. But it’s great. I think as a early stage company, to have
the trust and the access to a property, these are hundreds of
thousands of square feet, they’re millions of dollars in revenue
every year, they’re worth millions. I just think that we don’t want
to take that for granted. But we also need to move quickly out of the
pilot stage into the next phase. That’s when we get to do the
exciting stuff, like really get the deep learning on KPIs and ROI and
all the things that’ll help people make those buying decisions,
right?
Alan: That “Roy” guy. He
always gets in the way.
Emily: [laughs] “That Roy
guy.” I know. What’s his deal?
Alan: He’s everywhere. Everybody
keeps asking about this Roy guy. I’m like, “I don’t know any
Roy.”
Emily: Yeah, I know, I know.
Alan: We have to focus on the
ROI, because it really– when we started in this technology — and
you know it as well as I do — you’d pitch a company and they’d say,
“Who’s done it, how much does it cost, and what was the
results?” And you’re like, “Nobody, a lot, and we have no
idea.”
Emily: Yeah, I think actually
it’s funny, because my– it’s not– for me, it’s like not getting out
of the not just the pilot phase, but also the studio mentality. I
think that’s important. Studios are incredible places, there’re very
talented people that work at studios. But if we ever want to see XR
scale, we have to build scalable businesses around XR. So that means
products that are scalable, that means services that feed into
platforms that are scalable, that means a business ecosystem that
will enable others to benefit from it. So we have to elevate the
game, you know what I mean? And that’s where enterprise has always
been the thing for me, where I’ve said, “Look, there’s a lot at
stake because they have the most to gain, but they have the most to
lose if they don’t get started.” I mean, I so value all these
companies that — and we saw a lot of them over the last few years —
jump into the game and we need more of that. We need those leaps of
faith by companies to try this and to work with us, because I think
that the industry needs to move away from the one-offs and to move
into real scalability.
Alan: I couldn’t agree more.
Building something once for a company, not only is it prohibitive in
the long run, but it just becomes ridiculously expensive because
every time you build something, you’re building from scratch. And
it’s part of the reason why we started XR Ignite, was to leverage
these platforms and products. But also the content developers and
content studios and individual developers who’re making great
technology, maybe they’re making great content, but they don’t have a
way to leverage it and sell it to more than one customer.
Emily: Yeah.
Alan: Let’s say, for example,
you make training and– in your example, you make a real estate
training simulator, where here’s a bunch of different buildings, you
got to look at the different features or identify the different
features, something like that. Well, just because you made it for one
company, it’s probably valuable to all of the companies in that
field. And by making it available to everybody, it decreases the
costs for everybody, first of all, the first person up front has to
pay for it, and really accelerates the technology for the whole
industry. And one of the things that we thought of with XR Ignite
was, how do we then make a marketplace for not only the platforms and
products, but also the content? Because once the content’s made, once
you make a warehouse, for example, in a warehouse for training, a
warehouse is a warehouse. How big do you want the warehouse, whatever
you want, you can just scale it. But once it’s designed, you can
scale it infinitely for multiple customers. And if you look at a lot
of the XR studios out there, they’ve got a real estate thing, and
then they’ve got a retail thing, and then they’ve got a training
thing. And it’s like– and we’re guilty of it as well. We’ve done a
bit of everything in the market to kind of understand it. And I think
that’s where the industry was. And I think where we’re going now is,
“OK, I built this one thing. Let’s try to sell it 100 times.”
Emily: That’s right. And go with
your winners. That’s the thing is, like all of those learnings are
crucial. And we were at a moment in time over the last few years,
continuously at a moment in time. [laughs] Which is ironic as we
discuss reality. You know, it’s like the thing is that those
experiences that were created, maybe they weren’t something that we
could resell, but we learned a ton from them. And the studios, I
think that what I heard from clients over the last several months is
sort of this notion of like, “Well, it’s really expensive.”
And if you get into building things for folks that cost the order of
magnitude of like hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of
dollars, you know, that’s like early days VR, right? Where it’s
millions of dollars to do VR. And now we’ve seen the prices come down
on the hardware. And so since we know that software is scalable, I
think we’re at the right time to build those scalable experiences.
And so I get very excited about creating something that a lot of
people can plug into and that they can use. And so the marketplace, I
think, is the right way to frame it, because there’s infinite
business out there. But folks just don’t know how to engage. And I
don’t think that the creators are, for instance, able to get those
inroads because they’re all trying to do it independently. They’re
all trying to sell in independently. So you need to kind of also like
get a bit of a movement going from these creators to be able to sell
what they’ve got.
Alan: So I’m going to insert a
commercial here for XR Ignite. [music] If you’re a creator,
developer, or a studio, or product developer in AR, VR, or AI, go to
XRignite.com, sign up for the community hub, and that’s exactly what
we’re doing, is bringing everybody together so that we can all work
as a unified front to help push this technology forward.
End commercial. [music ends abruptly]
Emily: [laughs]
Alan: I mean, it just kind of
lends itself so perfectly. You’re like, “We need this.” I’m
like, “Yes, we do.”
Emily: It’s true, we do need
that. And it’s hard, because I see things that I think are really
going to help people. And I want them to do that. I think that we’ve
gotten a little bit– we had this feeling of like an XR/VR winter
couple years ago. And I feel like we’re really out of that. And it–
was it you? I feel like– I don’t know if it was you, but somebody
said the other day, it’s like, “Well, the tourists are gone.”
You know, that was the good thing about having a little bit of
contraction in VR. And I liked that. I was like, “Oh, good!
That’s great!” That means that the folks that are in it now,
they’ve gone through these learnings. And it’s not their first rodeo.
And we’re really going to get some great stuff happening. And it’s
been two years now since ARKit and ARCore came out. And I think it
takes about 18 to 24 months to see these amazing applications really
come to market. So that’s why when I at started at the beginning of
this talk, I said, “Well, gosh, I really think that 2019 still
has a lot in store.” And so I’m bullish on what we’re going to
see over the next few months, not just entry– not entry level. I
don’t want to diminish the efforts. I just want to see– and I think
we’re going to see some more sophisticated things coming to market.
Alan: I agree. I think it’s–
we’ve gotten past the phase of kitschy stuff and now we’re into real
ROI driven solutions. And I think that’s exciting. That’s not to say
that there aren’t more kitschy and cool things coming because with
Facebook, SparkAR and Snapchat’s Lens Studio, I think there’s going
to be a lot more individuals that are going to be creating awesome
stuff.
Emily: Yeah.
Alan: YouTube just introduced,
this week, their lipstick try-on and or their virtual try-on within
the YouTube app. This is coming, and by opening it up to creators of
all shapes and sizes, it’s democratizing the creation of the content,
which is really exciting. A year ago, if somebody had said, “Hey,
we want a face filter for trying on sunglasses,” it would have
been $50,000, minimum. And now you could do it on SparkAR for
nothing.
Emily: Yeah.
Alan: That’s really pushing
things forward. It’s exciting.
Emily: Yeah. And along those
same lines, I think that the cost of capturing reality is going to
also start to come down significantly, because we’re going to have
these amazing depth sensing technologies in our– we have them
already, but have these depth sensing technologies on our mobile
devices. So I think about.
Alan: Like Tango? We had it five
years ago.
Emily: We had that five years
ago. And I still love my Phab 2. I mean, there’s things that, it’s
like– [laughs]
Alan: I’ll buy it off you, I’ve
been looking for one.
Emily: Oh my gosh! OK, alright,
we’ll make a deal.
Alan: It’s either by the Phab 2
or just by the new Samsung S10.
Emily: Uh, no– oh, yeah!
Alan: Samsung Note has infrared
camera on it.
Emily: I think you were posting
about that. I have to check that out. I haven’t seen it yet, but
that– but wasn’t it like– you’re not– you were like, “I’m not
sponsored by them! But I love this!”
Alan: It looked so good. Oh,
man. Yeah, I would buy that phone. Honestly, it’s a thousand dollar
phone. I think being able to do depth sensing and then capturing like
you talked about capturing reality. Well, imagine you’re a small
retailer on Amazon and Amazon moves to 3D. How do you get all your
products into 3D? Well, the new Samsung phone, you literally just
kind of walk around the product and it turns it into a 3D model for
you.
Emily: That’s right. And again,
I feel like it’s a lot like, people say, “Well, photography is
totally commoditized and all these things are commoditized.” But
I don’t think so. I think that there’s so many infinite numbers of
new skills, and just having the understanding of how those things
work, that this is going to open up a lot of opportunity for people
to be part of the creation and to be part of — like you said —
democratizing how things are made. And when we talk about how do we
get people to understand the value or have for them to see what is
the value of 3D, what is the value of spatial computing? It’s a
little bit like virtual reality. It’s like you can tell them about it
as much as you want, but until they’ve experienced it, I just don’t
think that they get it. So that’s why I’ve spent a lot more time
recently going out into my vertical, going out and meeting with
people that are not the regular XR folks, although I love that
community deeply and and I’m very committed to it. I feel like it’s
almost like it’s really my job to educate people and to share with
them what this is, because when they see it, they get. And that’s
really, truly the magic.
Alan: It’s so true. It’s one of
those “you have to see it to believe it.”
Emily: Absolutely.
Alan: Well, on that note, I’m
going to ask you one last question here. What problem in the world do
you want to see solved using XR technologies?
Emily: So there’s so many
problems that we can solve using XR technologies. I hope that when we
look at our lives in five years, that we feel like we have a better
relationship with technology, rather than one that is perhaps a
little bit more skeptical these days due to security and due to
privacy concerns. And I hope that XR and all of these XR technologies
can be the thing that actually makes us feel like we’re more in
control and that we’re more able to have the relationship to
technology that we want. I’m hoping that we become a positive
influence in the world.
Alan: Well, thank you, Emily,
for your positive outlook in this beautiful technology. And thank you
for pushing forward.
Emily: Yeah. And also XR Ignite,
really excited about that. And so excited for what you’re doing,
Alan. Thank you for all the hard work that you do.
Alan: I appreciate it. Thank you
so much. So if you want to learn more about Emily and SpatialFirst,
you can visit spatialfirst.com.
And yeah. Thank you so much, Emily. I’m looking forward to seeing you
in person again.
Sound effects sourced from here
and here.
37 min
October 21, 2019 The Pain of Empty Space, with SpatialFirst Co-Founder Emily Olman
Thanks to the power of computer
technology, you can browse the contents of a book you might like to
buy online, without ever touching a physical copy of it until it's
already been bought and delivered. Wouldn't it be neat if you could
do that, but with real estate that doesn't even exist yet? Recent
Auggie winner Emily Olman thinks so, and she drops by to tell Alan
all about how volumetric capture and photogrammetry will make that
possible.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is a
great friend of mine, Emily Olman, CEO and co-founder of
SpatialFirst, a prop tech startup and creators of PlaceTime, a mobile
immersive property visualization application bringing spatial
computing to real estate. Prior to this, Emily founded Hopscotch
Interactive, a 3D VR marketing service company, to accelerate the
adoption of new media and technology for property marketing using
reality capture. She spent her career monetizing new media and
developing new business models for Frontier Technologies. With a
background in media sales, business, and property marketing, she
believes that spatial interfaces will unlock properties' full
potential. Emily is a regular speaker on immersive real estate
technology, both in the US and abroad. She's just finished serving as
the VR/AR Association's San Francisco chapter co-president from 2016
to 2019. Yes, she's got mad skills.
Emily, welcome to the show!
Emily: Hi! Thank you, Alan.
Alan: Thanks so much for joining
me. It's been a long time since we saw each other, I think was at
AWE.
Emily: Yeah, it's been a little
bit, but it's great to be chatting with you.
Alan: Amazing. How's everything
going?
Emily: Well, it's great. And
it's been busy. And I feel like we are just heading into the most
exciting time of the year. Things sometimes have their natural ebb
and flow, in the summer months, for instance. But I think as we get
towards the end of 2019, I think there's some really exciting things
that are gonna be happening.
Alan: So tell us, tell us what's
been going on with you. You were the co-president of the San
Francisco chapter, which is one of the big chapters of the VR/AR
Association. And you've seen this industry come from nothing to where
it is today, and it's really starting to take off. So maybe just give
us kind of a brief history of how you got into this industry, and
where you've seen it come from?
Emily: That's a great segue into
my perspective on the industry. I was fortunate to be running the San
Francisco chapter of the VR/AR Association for a few years with Mike
Boland. And we really got to see the industry start to go through
many different shifts. But I would definitely also say that we got to
where we are today because we really are standing on the shoulders of
giants. And so the work that folks have been doing for decades in
immersive technologies and virtual reality has really led to what's
enabled me to move from my passion for reality capture into creating
a new interface and to be involved with very emerging technologies
such as spatial computing. What's kept me busy is having a startup.
We started this company, SpatialFirst, about two years ago and have
been working hard ever since to really make something unique that
addresses the future of spatial computing for real estate.
Alan: So when you say spatial
computing for real estate. Walk us through what that means and why
it's important.
Emily: As we know, when we are
looking at spatial computing, this notion of we know exactly where a
digital piece of content or a digital element is in the real world.
There's this notion of being able to connect the physical and the
digital space. Whether t
0 min
October 18, 2019 Mass VR and Squeaky Floors, with PwC’s Jeremy Dalton
One of Alan’s favourite XR
experiences was running into a room at the Royal York Hotel, filled
with 200 people, all deathly silent and hooked into VR headsets. It
may sound like a Matrix prequel, but it was actually a demo of PwC’s
VR platform. Jeremy Dalton — the author of this anecdote — stops by
to talk about mass VR technology.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is
Jeremy Dalton. Jeremy leads PwC’s Virtual and Augmented Reality Team,
helping clients across all sectors understand, quantify and implement
the benefits of virtual and augmented reality technology. As part of
his mission to educate, connect, and inspire, he’s also a member of
the World Economic Forum, Virtual and Augmented Reality Global Future
Council, and sits on the Advisory Board of Immerse UK, a cross-sector
network for businesses, research and educational organisations in the
immersive technology industry. Jeremy is also an advisor for the
VR/AR Association, and he’s also a mentor for our XR Ignite program.
To learn more about PwC’s VR and AR endeavors, you can visit
PwC.co.uk/vr.
Welcome to the show, Jeremy.
Jeremy: Hi, Alan. It’s a
pleasure to be here.
Alan: It’s such an honor and a
pleasure to have you on the show. We’ve been communicating for many
years now and we even have a kind of a joint research folder that
we’ve been adding to over the years. So it’s really great to have you
on the show.
Jeremy: Definitely, I’m looking
forward to getting stuck in.
Alan: [laughs] Yeah, it’s
amazing. So I just want to tell a quick story. About two months ago,
you came to Toronto with your PwC team and ran a partners conference,
and you had an enormous number of simultaneous virtual reality
experiences. So you wanna maybe just explain what that was and how
that came to be?
Jeremy: Yeah, sure. So this was
a particularly exciting project for us where — very, very quickly,
in summary — we put 200 people into virtual reality at the same time
and they all had this simultaneous experience in the same room. And I
was able to collect that data in real time and understand exactly
where in that experience they were and what decisions they were
making in that world. So it was fantastic. It went off without a
hitch, thankfully, given the number of potential technical issues
that could have gone wrong. I was very happy. It all went very
smoothly.
Alan: It was quite endeavour. I
remember you said, “Hey, we’re doing this thing tomorrow
morning. I’m in Toronto.” I cancelled my meetings the morning, I
came over there. I went into the hotel — it was at the Royal York in
Toronto — and I went upstairs, walked into this room and it was dead
silent. And there’s 200 people — 200+ people, there was more than
200 people, for sure — and you could hear a pin drop on a carpet.
And it was the strangest thing, because everybody was in VR and
everybody’s looking in different directions. It was this crazy thing.
And you had this branching narrative. Maybe talk to what that
branching narrative was? Right after the experience, you were able to
show the information. Walk us through how that came to be.
Jeremy: Yeah, sure. And I like
your comment about being able to keep everyone quiet. That was
actually mentioned as well by by some of the organizers of the
conference, that they were amazed by this pindrop silence in the
room, because obviously it’s very rare. You’ve usually got people
messing around on their mobile phones. You got them talking to each
other, going to get a glass of water, leaving the room, coming into
the room. So I think it’s a testament to the power of virtual reality
to create such a captive and focused audience.
Alan: It was incredible. You
know, I think this is one of the things that people underestimate
about virtual reality. Because once you’re in there, you’ve got the
headphones on and you’re in a comfortable, safe place where you can
get right into it, people lose themselves. They’re no longer in a
conference room in a hotel in Toronto. They are in — in your case —
a board room in an office talking about cybersecurity. You’ve
literally transported hundreds of people into one joint experience.
And I don’t think there’s been any other technology in the world that
hijacks 100 percent of our entire focus.
Jeremy: Exactly. And I think
that point, we call it immersion. Immersion is one of the greatest
strengths and in fact, *the* main strength of virtual reality. But I
feel like the word immersion is very broad and doesn’t quite pinpoint
the many subsections of immersion that you get as advantages from
virtual reality. And one of them is that ability to captivate an
audience and to put them in a distractionless environment. And that
obviously has incredible uses when it comes to training, to learning,
education, and a number of other business and consumer applications.
Alan: Let’s walk through the
experience itself that you guys created, because I think
cybersecurity is a huge issue. And I mean, I don’t know how detailed
you want to get, but this was a cybersecurity attack and you were
educating the partners on what to do.
Jeremy: Exactly, exactly. So we
effectively built this from the ground up over a three month period
leading up to that event in Toronto. And the desire was to create an
immersive experience that put people in the middle of a cybersecurity
attack on their company. So we wanted to be able to to take clients
to this world where their company is under attack and to help them
understand what it’s like to be in such a scenario, without the
danger or the cost or inconvenience of being in such a scenario
itself. So that’s why we use virtual reality here to make that
happen. The base content was 360 video, but a branch narrative of 360
video. So if you can imagine in this world you were asked to make a
number of decisions. One of the first — or choices, rather, I’ll
call them — one of the first choices is whether you want to be the
CEO, the CFO, or the CISO — the chief information security officer
— in this experience, and depending on which character you choose to
embody, you get given a different path or experience in this
cybersecurity attack. So from the CEO’s perspective, you’re looking
at the strategic agenda of this attack and what it entails for the
company at a high level, things like its reputation, for example.
Alan: And eventually you are
pulled up in front of the press to answer–
Jeremy: Yeah, that was cool.
Alan: Yeah. To answer some very
taxing questions about the cybersecurity attack. If you choose to be
the CFO. You then have to make a decision as to whether you recommend
making payments — Bitcoin payments — on the ransomware attack
that’s taking place. And finally, if you choose to be the CISO, you
get a more technical view of the attack. You’re trying to understand
where has it come from, who effectively, where was ground zero in
terms of the attack, who is responsible, what channel was
responsible? And you’re trying to plug that up as soon as possible.
And the choice you make there is whether you want to prioritize the
external public facing websites or the internal customer relationship
management or CRM system. And the great thing is, depending on what
decision you make, you get given a different experience. And we can
see all of that data in real time based on what you’re doing. I
literally had a tablet in front of me in that massive hotel
conference room and I was able to see exactly what was going on, what
every individual person was doing in that world.
Jeremy: And that’s something
that really struck me as very beneficial to facilitators of training,
facilitators of conferences. This, to me, is probably one of the
first times a company has ever done something like this. And that’s
why I think it bears a lot of discussion around this, because you
took 200 executives and you put them in the exact same experience,
but with different choices. Now, one of the things that I saw
afterwards is, as soon as they took off the headsets, it was
interesting how you managed to make it so that they all ended within,
I think, 40 seconds of each other or something.
Alan: Yeah, that’s right. So
that required not only some technical know-how in terms of using this
platform to kick everyone off at exactly the same time. So I’d
literally be there. Everyone’s ready, no issues, no more hands
raised. So I would click this button on the tablet and all 200 plus
headsets would light up and start the experience. That was the first
thing we had to do. And the second thing and probably more
importantly, we had to build the narrative — or design the narrative
— of that experience in such a way that the sum of the lengths of
all the branch narratives added up to approximately the same amount.
So you can imagine that was a bit tedious, but as you said, we
managed it. Takes a lot of planning, but yes, we did manage it within
about 30 or 40 seconds.
Jeremy: I recorded a video of
this. You know, I walked into the room and it’s funny because I
walked in. People are already in VR. I took some film around
everybody. And then at the end, you see all these people taking it
off and they’re kind of like who else is there? And then they start
looking at each other and like with these kind of big eyes going,
“Wow, that was amazing.” And the one thing that I thought
was amazing — beyond the reactions from the people — was the fact
that you had the metrics up on the screen. So not only were you able
to see it on the tablet, but you then projected that information on
the screen. So as you take off your headset, you can look up and see
what percentage of people chose to be a CFO, CEO or CISO. And then
what percentage of people chose different branching narratives from
there. People are in VR, they don’t know what other people are doing.
They pull it off and they can see a consensus. And I’m pretty sure we
figured this out remotely as well. You could do this with employees
all around the world and run them through training scenarios. I mean,
it’s obviously not as easy as doing it in one room, but I think
there’s definitely potential here. And I think that’s probably where
you’re going in the future with us.
Alan: Absolutely. I mean, we
could consider this phase one effectively. And there are lots of
other options open to us in terms of how we advance this idea or
concept. And yes, it could be advancing it in a geographical context.
So being able to spread it out to different parts of the world. And
in fact, we’ve already begun on that. We now have over 500 different
headsets in PwC globally. And a number of the headsets that you saw
in Toronto are now in places like Chicago, New York, London,
Singapore, Melbourne, Dubai, Lagos, Nigeria, even. So we’re
definitely keen to spread it all around the world and spread the
education around virtual reality, because I think that’s particularly
important. And education, not only in terms of the theoretical
understanding of knowing that VR is advantageous in a training
context because of X, Y, and Z, but actually feeling it, so knowing
it from firsthand experience. And that’s incredibly important for a
technology like virtual reality because it is experiential, it can
never be fully understood in purely a theoretical context, which is
why we’re so keen to spread the headsets globally, spread the
experience globally, and therefore, spread the knowledge and
understanding globally.
Alan: You mentioned 500 headsets
across PwC around the world. And one of the things that I noticed and
I took some photos of the aftermath, that was this experience. You
had 200 and some odd people in VR. They finish the experience, they
go out for coffee break. Your team collects all these VR headsets and
headphones and brought them into a staging room. And there was
literally a pile, four feet high by five feet wide, of VR headsets.
And I mean, that’s clearly not the way we’re gonna do this in the
future. How are you guys managing your device management? Is it like
something like a device, like a cell phone or something? Or how are
you managing device management within PwC? And what would you
recommend to other companies who are looking to deploy these
headsets? Because that’s a big challenge for people, it’s device
management.
Jeremy: Absolutely. And yeah,
you’re right. That scene was something out of a VR apocalypse
scenario.
Alan: It was scary! [laughs]
Jeremy: [laughs] But
unfortunately, that is the way it has to be, at least currently.
There’s no real way of getting round it, if you’re trying to manage
headsets on such a large scale and particularly trying to handle them
remotely, you’ve got to have some sort of mobile device management —
or MDM — solution in place to be able to manage, control the
software on the headsets, manage the settings on them, install,
uninstall content, all of this sort of stuff. It’s very difficult to
centralize that physically, and very onerous. So if you imagine 300
headsets globally, if we needed to do updates on those headsets or we
needed to install content, or delete content or whatever it is,
perform some sort of action, the very low-fi way of doing it is to
call the person up on the phone and say, “Right, step-by-step
instructions. This is what you need to do.” and send them the
files and get them to plug the headsets in, or have rails they’re
going to move the files across. And it would be an absolute nightmare
to do that on a scale, large scale.
So instead, what we’ve got is we’ve got
this mobile device management software installed on every single one
of those headsets, which has gone around the world. And whenever
anyone has requested an update or the installation of some content,
all I have to do is ask them to read me the asset tag on the side of
the headset. I will then go into my MDM control panel on my web
browser here in London. I’ll enter the asset number in, I’ll see it.
They have to connect it to Wi-Fi. That’s one of the things they have
to do. But once it’s connected to the Internet, I’ll see it pop up as
online. I will then send it instructions remotely via this web panel.
So, for example, we have a little macro, so to speak, around
installing certain bits of content or wiping the device or changing
the Bluetooth name, all of those little things. So I will send as
many instructions as I need to to get the action to be performed. It
will get performed remotely via Wi-Fi on their side and depending on
the size of the file, if we’re installing something, it should take
anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour maybe to get that content
installed, and away they go. There is no need for them to do anything
beyond reading that asset number and connecting it to Wi-Fi. We
just– we do the rest remotely via this web based control panel.
Alan: That’s incredible. Now,
this control panel, is this something that you’re making available to
other companies?
Jeremy: So this is not our piece
of software. So this is a piece of software by a company called 42
Gears, and they have a platform called SureMDM. But that’s only one
option that we’re looking at at the moment. There are many other
options. VMware is looking into MDM solutions for virtual reality
headsets. And then you’ve also got Oculus with their own MDM solution
as well. So there’s quite a few different bits and pieces out there.
Alan: So let’s talk quickly. And
I don’t want to talk too much about brands and stuff like that, but
you chose not to work with the Oculus Go headset. But instead you
were working with another brand, that was mainly because of this MDM
mobile device management software solution. Correct?
Jeremy: So there were a few
considerations that went into that decision. So in the end, it came
up to, for us, the Oculus Go versus the Pico G2 Pro. And we like the
fact that the Pico headset didn’t require the use of a controller,
which made it far easier to do these demonstrations at scale. So if
you imagine two hundred headsets in that room and having to connect
two hundred controllers.
Alan: Oh, that would be insane.
How would you even figure that out? You’d have to tie them– I’ve
seen it before, where they tie the remote to the headset.
Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah.
Alan: But, man, the interference
of having 200 Bluetooth devices. Oh my God.
Jeremy: Exactly. And that was
actually a consideration in deciding whether we were going to
Bluetooth the headsets, the headphones to the headsets, or not. In
the end, given what you just said, that went through our minds as
well. We don’t want to risk 200 Bluetooth connections, all in the
same location, connecting to individual headsets, and getting that
100 percent right. So we simply went for the lo-fi solution in that
case, and plugged the wiring between the headphone and each headset.
Alan: Well, it’s a good thing
that Pico didn’t take the Apple approach and get rid of their headset
jack.
Jeremy: [laughs] I know, right?
But regardless of vendors, there are advantages and disadvantages of
every single vendor. And the interesting thing is just understanding
what headset works for you, depending on the exact solution, scale,
company, and situation, basically, you’re trying to deploy to.
Alan: If you were to give five
key things that you evaluate a headset on. You just mentioned a
couple, so let’s list them out.
Jeremy: Okay. So one of them
pretty obviously is specification. So firstly, specification from a
power perspective, in terms of the processing power of the headset,
is it good enough to run the type of content that we want to? Second
of all, the type of lenses, the resolution of the screen, ultimately
the visual fidelity, the field of view, all of that I would consider
under visual fidelity of the experience, because obviously that has a
big effect when you’re running virtual reality experiences. Then I
would go also to costs because obviously that’s a major
consideration, especially if you’re doing it at scale. How much is
each headset going to cost, maybe at a bulk level if you’re buying
lots of them at once. Then I would consider the user experience
points. Now there are quite a few of these. The need to have a
controller connected was one of them that we considered. The need to
register an account to use the headset is another one that we
considered. The ability to run an MDM solution is now extremely
important consideration at scale. So that’s definitely a
consideration. And one of the other considerations we had — which
may or may not be relevant, depending on what your focus is — is the
level of B2B focus versus B2C focus of the headset manufacturer. So
for us as a company, our main concern is B2B. So we’re very keen to
engage with manufacturers of headsets that concentrate on the B2B
market.
Alan: So specifications, visual
fidelity, cost and user experience, is there anything else?
Jeremy: Other considerations
would come under supporting tools and software. So some headsets
might support a type of kiosk mode as standard, and that’s quite
useful depending on your context sometimes. I would consider privacy
issues, particularly if you’re going to have confidential content or
content that you need to have such a policy in place for compliance
reasons.
Alan: Actually, that’s really
important. Recently just read an article that three of the major VR
collaboration platforms got hacked. So–
Jeremy: Yeah.
Alan: And it exposes the fact
that while these solutions are ready for use, they’re maybe not ready
for enterprise scale yet. And I think that these are some
considerations that we all need to factor into what we use and what
we don’t.
Jeremy: Absolutely. And that
goes back to our cybersecurity concerns and one of the reasons we
created this experience in the first place.
Alan: It’s all circular.
Jeremy: Exactly.
Alan: [chuckles] So let’s dive
into some some numbers here. What were you guys measuring as the
success key performance indicators of this experience? How did you
measure success?
Jeremy: So interestingly, for
this particular event in Toronto, a measure of success would be
having a vast majority of users that have provided feedback that
believe it was a positive educational experience vs. an indifferent
or negative one. The real KPI will come in a few months time, when as
we start to run this experience with clients, we get an understanding
of their level of interest and engagement with the platform and
whether that has added value to them in terms of understanding what
it’s like to be in such a cyber security scenario. And ultimately one
of PwC’s services is in cybersecurity and providing various services
around that issue to companies. So we’ll see if that helps as well to
augment the pipeline in sense of selling these services.
Alan: So let me ask, if you can
share, what was the feedback? You probably have some data around
positive versus negative. Was there any negative feedback?
Jeremy: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there
there was. And inevitably there always will be. There will always be
negative feedback for any type of initiative or venture, particularly
with an emerging technology like virtual reality. That is– such a
technology will always come under fire when there are alternatives
that consist of the status quo. So for example, you’ll always have
some people saying why couldn’t we have just watched it as a video,
for example. Or you will get some people who are saying the room was
was too hot or too cold. Now, that may not be related to the VR
experience particularly. But if you think of it as a whole from the
outside, that does affect how a user feels about going through that
experience. So even though it’s an external factor is what I’m
saying, it does affect the ultimate outcome. So to give you some
stats on it, it was very positive, was 95 percent positive.
Alan: Whoa!
Jeremy: Exactly.
Alan: 95 percent positive. And
the other five percent said it was too hot and too cold in the room.
[laughs]
Jeremy: [laughs] I’m drawing out
some from this batch of experiences, and I’m also drawing out some
from a previous run that we did, with actually 2,800 people. So we
ran a VR experience previously, it was about a year ago, year and a
half ago now. This was with 2,800. Not at the same time, though. So
this was only with about 100, maybe 150 at a time, max. So we took it
to its limits by going to 200 this time, with our own Internet
infrastructure to support that. But previously we ran it with 2,800
people and got much greater feedback. So I’m sort of feeding that in
as well. And to create a framework — if anyone’s thinking about
gathering feedback from a VR experience — the type of feedback
you’re going to receive can be bucketed into the contents of the
experience. So in other words, was the content effective? Was it
impactful? Was it relevant?
The next bucket is facilitation. So
you’ve got someone who’s obviously leading in terms of that session.
They’re telling you how to put on the headset, what to be aware of,
what to click, what to do, what to touch, what to look at, and so on.
Instructions, ultimately. And if those instructions are poor, the
entire experience can be damaged as a result. And then you have
external factors. You have things like the temperature of the room
and believe it or not, even more interesting than the temperature of
the room — and this is a real piece of feedback — the floors were
too squeaky.
Alan: Ah.
Jeremy: So if you could imagine
a hundred people in a room going through a virtual reality headset,
just as you said, Alan, the room in Toronto was pindrop quiet. If you
have facilitators and organisers and the AV team walking around the
room dealing with whatever they’re trying to deal with during the
session, if they are making a relatively loud noise on the floor or
some sort of distracting noise, then that is taking you away from the
immersive and impactful experience that you’ve created in this
virtual reality world. So that ultimately leads to a negatively
impacted experience. So even something as small as that is something
to be aware of. Those three buckets are quite useful.
Alan: I think we figured out the
title: “Mass VR and Squeaky Floors.“
Jeremy: [laughs] I like it,
yeah. It’s good.
Alan: It’s really interesting,
because the one thing that was so striking was that silence in the
room. The squeaky floor thing is definitely an issue, and people
breaking people’s presence is an issue. But I think that can be
overcome with maybe noise canceling headphones, or something like
that.
Jeremy: Potentially, yeah. But
you know what? The bigger story and I just mentioned one more thing
before we move on. It’s also you talked about taking people away from
the world through maybe walking around or talking to each other,
whatever it is. Usually those noises are not deliberate. So you have
people that are trying to be quiet. They’re trying to creep across
the room because they need to get to the other side. But I have seen
a few people who I would describe as not mischievous or or
deliberately negative, anyway. But you can see that they’re doing
something that is deliberate, and could be conceived or would be
considered distracting. So, for example, we all know virtual reality
to a lot of people is still a novelty. So when you see your friends
or your colleagues in virtual reality, enveloped in this completely
different world, it messes with your head a bit, because you’ve
probably never had this experience before, where you are together
physically but one of you is in another world. And because of that
novelty factor, you get people who get very excitable about it.
They–
Alan: They want to get a picture
beside them, sticking their tongue out.
Jeremy: Yes. They want to get a
picture beside it. But even worse than that, you get some people who
start waving their hands in front of them and saying hi to the
person, and trying to get a reaction out of them. We definitely have
to move on from that sort of culture, and we will, eventually. But
it’s that beginning hitch.
Alan: I got to drop a story in
here. We were doing a demo for groups of people, and we were doing
one in a private club in Toronto. And there’s a pool table there.
This guy says, “Look, I’m going to go and do this VR thing. I
really want to try it, but make sure my friends don’t come near me.”
I was like, “OK, no problem.”
Jeremy: [chuckles]
Alan: He’s in the experience,
he’s doing his thing. And he hands me his phone and says, “Take
a photo of me.” I say, “Oh, OK.” So I back up, and the
second I back up to take a photo of him, his friend comes over with a
pool cue and just hits him right in the nards. And that was the end
of that guy’s VR. He will probably never go in VR again. And so I
think we need to be really cognizant one, to not do that to people,
but also not to break people’s immersion. It really is jarring.
Jeremy: Exactly.
Alan: So let’s get into some
numbers. Can you discuss the costs associated with us, ranges?
Jeremy: I can give you ranges,
yes. But I’ll start by saying that, to anyone thinking about
implementing virtual reality and deploying it in their organization,
cost is a factor. But it is not something you should be too afraid
of, because you can have VR projects that– you can vary the scope of
VR projects and the terms of those projects in such a way that they
can go from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of
dollars. Now, this particular experience to go through the ideation
on it, to build it, to set it up, procure the headsets, and actually
deploy it over in Toronto — so abroad for us, from our perspective
— and that was in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now,
bear in mind, that is also including the procurement of– this was–
I’ll tell you exactly how many we ordered, it was close to 300
headsets in the end. Because we were going to use them elsewhere as
well. So that’s the sort of range we’re looking at for such a
project. But again, that is also including the software development
time, the 360 videography, building the platform, dealing with even
things like the network infrastructure and procuring that as well.
So, I think we did it pretty well, personally.
Alan: From what I’ve seen out
there, you guys managed to do this on a real budget. Even if you said
500,000 for 300 headsets, plus the software to deliver it, plus the
filming. I mean, there’s people out there charging that much just for
360 video development. So it’s pretty impressive what you guys were
able to do. And that’s why I am so honoured to have you as a mentor
with XR Ignite, because you bring such a practical, pragmatic
approach to this technology.
Jeremy: The honour is all mine,
Alan. Thank you so much.
Alan: Awesome. So let’s talk
about the return on that investment. PwC invests 400,000 or 300,000,
whatever it is, somewhere around there. And you’ve got these VR
headsets, 200 partners that have tried it. What has progressed from
there, that will create a return? So, for example, the partners that
were there, how many of those partners now have requested VR in their
divisions?
Jeremy: So there are five to
ten, off the top of my head, that are leading cybersecurity services
around the globe for PwC. And they have requested the use of these
headsets in their territories, to assist with the selling of those
services. And as I mentioned earlier, these start in the US and they
go all across the globe, from the UK, to Central and Eastern Europe,
to India, to East Asia, Singapore, Australia. So we’re really glad to
see such a a widespread adoption of these headsets. And I don’t think
that would have been possible if they hadn’t experienced it
firsthand. So, I mean, I’m thinking one of the partners in particular
said they– after experiencing it, they immediately messaged me and
said, “Jeremy, we need to start deploying this to clients in one
of our regions in Asia immediately, let’s get on the phone.” And
I was on the phone with them the week after. And now they have a
number of headsets that they’re using over there.
Alan: Yeah, I noticed that Asia
actually– I don’t know if it’s the culture or because they bypassed
us with PCs and went straight to mobile. But the China, Asia market
for virtual reality is voracious. They love everything to do with it.
And they spend an awful lot on education and training, more so than
we do here. And this tool is by far and away the most powerful
training tool we’ve ever created as mankind. So I can see why there’s
an allure there. And then have you deployed it now in Asia?
Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah, it is
running in multiple territories in Asia now, which is great.
Alan: Incredible. So, what’s
next on the roadmap? You’ve done the cybersecurity thing. What would
the next experience be that you guys are gonna create?
Jeremy: So in context of
thinking about the future roadmap for this particular product — and
even going a little bit outside it — let’s talk about the wider
remit of training. The interesting thing for us is to see what
platforms and what types of content match different business
scenarios to add real value. So by that I mean, in my opinion,
virtual reality is really good for soft skills training and for
hands-on training. And when I say hands-on, I mean any form of
activity that requires you to be present in a certain location
because you have to use certain tools, or machinery, devices,
infrastructure, whatever it is, needing to be in that location to
perform those actions. That type of scenario is very powerful to use
virtual reality to train for. So we’re looking at those two buckets
and we’re thinking, OK, so you obviously have 360 content. And I know
360 content is potentially controversial to a lot of people. But I
will exclaim my stance on this right now and say that 360 content is
like Schrödinger’s Cat. It is both a virtual reality and not virtual
reality, at the same time. It depends on the context. So 360 content
that is being experienced in a virtual reality headset — or some
form of virtual reality device — is a virtual reality experience.
However, if you take that same virtual reality content and you
display it on a 14-inch 2D laptop screen where you’re using the mouse
to click and look around the environment, that is no longer virtual
reality, despite being exactly the same content. So that’s my stance
on 360 video with regards to virtual reality.
Now on the other side, we have a
different type of content. We have computer generated content. Now,
this offers you different advantages or disadvantages compared to 360
content. One of the advantages of computer generated content is its
ability to be quite customizable. So if I wanted to take this
experience and I wanted to switch up the type of conversations you’re
having, if I wanted to change the type of characters you’re speaking
to. That type of customization *could* be simulated using 360 video,
but much more complicated, much more time consuming in terms of
trying to build out every possible scenario. And at the end of the
day, you’ll never be able to build out every possible scenario,
without going back and revideoing in that exact same context. So
we’re keen to start exploring computer generated content. Where it
makes sense from the point of view of perhaps soft skills training,
when it comes to hands-on training computer generated tends to be
very strong, because you’re obviously looking for much greater levels
of dynamism, of interactive activities. It’s no longer about just
making decisions at a high level, it’s about actually performing
minutiae of actions. Which computer generated content is very good
for.
So in summary, we’re exploring
different types of content for training in virtual reality. We are
exploring different types of devices. We’re particularly keen to
start seeing how much of our six degrees of freedom tethered virtual
reality content can be ported to standalone headsets. So in other
words, taking it from something like an HTC Vive Pro or or an Oculus
Rift, to a Oculus Quest or a Pico Neo 2. So in a few months time,
we’ll be reviewing our 6DOF strategy, just as we did with our 3DOF
strategy for this event. And I’m quite excited to assess it, based on
a lot of the criteria we spoke about before and see where we get to.
Alan: Well, I just want to
unpack — for the people listening, who may not know what 6DOF and
3DOF are — 3DOF is three degrees of freedom, meaning you can look
left, right, up, down, but you can’t move in the space. And six
degrees of freedom, meaning you can look up, down, left, right. But
you can also walk forward, you can crouch down, you can jump up. So
you have that six degrees of freedom.
Jeremy: Yeah. And I’ll also add
to that — because that’s a good point, I keep forgetting that not
everyone might know what that means — but also to explain that
further, we’re also talking about moving from 3DOF controllers to
6DOF controllers. So, again, talking about what Alan just said from a
controller perspective, with some 3DOF controllers, you’re able to
point them around–
Alan: It’s like a glorified
laser pointer, yeah.
Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. But with
6DOF controllers, you’re actually able to move them in physical space
and see them moving in the exact same way in virtual reality. So now
imagine where you’ve got a 6DOF headset and 6DOF controllers, that
gives you complete freedom of movement and being able to look around.
And that’s the type of headset that we think is very powerful for
corporate training scenarios. And we want to explore what devices and
content really works well in an optimized fashion on those types of
headsets. So that’s what we’ll be exploring over the next few months.
Alan: Incredible. Well, Jeremy,
I want to ask you, what is one problem in the world that you want to
see solved using virtual and augmented reality or XR?
Jeremy: That is a difficult
question. I’m going to say– I’m going to pick something outside of
business, and say that when it comes to healthcare and helping people
manage traumas, helping people manage fears, helping them manage
conditions like dementia, helping them get out of the house even, if
they have accessibility challenges. I think this broad remit of using
VR for good in a personal context, I think that will have great,
great positive effects for humanity. And I think we’re only starting
to see that come out now in the world. So there’s a lot of exciting
things to come. And I think VR and AR can do a lot of good in the
world. I’m looking forward to seeing that happen.
Alan: Well, that is a great way
to end this podcast. Jeremy Dalton from PwC Global. I want to say
thank you so much for being a guest. If you want to learn more about
the great work that Jeremy and his team are doing, you can visit
PwC.co.uk/vr. And how can people get in touch with you, Jeremy?
Jeremy: Probably best via–
well, I’ll give you the options. You’ve got LinkedIn, you can get me
on LinkedIn at jeremydalton.info, you put that in your web browser.
Or you can catch me on Twitter, @jeremycdalton. I’m looking forward
to chatting.
45 min
October 18, 2019 Mass VR and Squeaky Floors, with PwC's Jeremy Dalton
One of Alan's favourite XR
experiences was running into a room at the Royal York Hotel, filled
with 200 people, all deathly silent and hooked into VR headsets. It
may sound like a Matrix prequel, but it was actually a demo of PwC's
VR platform. Jeremy Dalton -- the author of this anecdote -- stops by
to talk about mass VR technology.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is
Jeremy Dalton. Jeremy leads PwC's Virtual and Augmented Reality Team,
helping clients across all sectors understand, quantify and implement
the benefits of virtual and augmented reality technology. As part of
his mission to educate, connect, and inspire, he's also a member of
the World Economic Forum, Virtual and Augmented Reality Global Future
Council, and sits on the Advisory Board of Immerse UK, a cross-sector
network for businesses, research and educational organisations in the
immersive technology industry. Jeremy is also an advisor for the
VR/AR Association, and he's also a mentor for our XR Ignite program.
To learn more about PwC's VR and AR endeavors, you can visit
PwC.co.uk/vr.
Welcome to the show, Jeremy.
Jeremy: Hi, Alan. It's a
pleasure to be here.
Alan: It's such an honor and a
pleasure to have you on the show. We've been communicating for many
years now and we even have a kind of a joint research folder that
we've been adding to over the years. So it's really great to have you
on the show.
Jeremy: Definitely, I'm looking
forward to getting stuck in.
Alan: [laughs] Yeah, it's
amazing. So I just want to tell a quick story. About two months ago,
you came to Toronto with your PwC team and ran a partners conference,
and you had an enormous number of simultaneous virtual reality
experiences. So you wanna maybe just explain what that was and how
that came to be?
Jeremy: Yeah, sure. So this was
a particularly exciting project for us where -- very, very quickly,
in summary -- we put 200 people into virtual reality at the same time
and they all had this simultaneous experience in the same room. And I
was able to collect that data in real time and understand exactly
where in that experience they were and what decisions they were
making in that world. So it was fantastic. It went off without a
hitch, thankfully, given the number of potential technical issues
that could have gone wrong. I was very happy. It all went very
smoothly.
Alan: It was quite endeavour. I
remember you said, "Hey, we're doing this thing tomorrow
morning. I'm in Toronto." I cancelled my meetings the morning, I
came over there. I went into the hotel -- it was at the Royal York in
Toronto -- and I went upstairs, walked into this room and it was dead
silent. And there's 200 people -- 200+ people, there was more than
200 people, for sure -- and you could hear a pin drop on a carpet.
And it was the strangest thing, because everybody was in VR and
everybody's looking in different directions. It was this crazy thing.
And you had this branching narrative. Maybe talk to what that
branching narrative was? Right after the experience, you were able to
show the information. Walk us through how that came to be.
Jeremy: Yeah, sure. And I like
your comment about being able to keep everyone quiet. That was
actually mentioned as well by by some of the organizers of the
conference, that they were amazed by this pindrop silence in the
room, because obviously it's very rare. You've usually got people
messing around on their mobile phones. You got them talking to each
other, going to get a glass of water, leaving the room, coming into
the room. So I think it's a testament to the power of virtual reality
to create such a captive and focused audience.
Alan:
0 min
October 16, 2019 Serving Up Virtual Goods on a Silver PlattAR, with founder Rupert Deans
It’s
a bummer when you’re shopping for just the right item, but the store
is out of stock, and the website only has a 300×300 jpeg to go by.
Plattar’s platform is to help those retailers have digital twins
ready in AR for their customers to experience, whether at home or in
the shop. Founder and Aussie Rupert Deans braves the epic time
difference to chat with Alan in Toronto about the platform’s goals.
[Complete
Transcript Coming Soon]
40 min
October 16, 2019 Serving Up Virtual Goods on a Silver PlattAR, with founder Rupert Deans
It's
a bummer when you're shopping for just the right item, but the store
is out of stock, and the website only has a 300x300 jpeg to go by.
Plattar's platform is to help those retailers have digital twins
ready in AR for their customers to experience, whether at home or in
the shop. Founder and Aussie Rupert Deans braves the epic time
difference to chat with Alan in Toronto about the platform's goals.
[Complete
Transcript Coming Soon]
0 min
October 14, 2019 Bringing the XR World Together at the VR/AR Global Summit, with Executive Director Anne-Marie Enns
Alan, along with his wife Julie, are members of the VR/AR Association, and as such, one of the annual XR gatherings they look forward to most is the VR/AR Global Summit in Vancouver, which is just a few weeks away (Oct 31-Nov 2). Alan has the event’s executive producer, Anne-Marie Enns, on to talk about what attendees can expect on the show floor this year.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is a
great friend of mine, Anne-Marie Enns, the executive producer of the
VR/AR Global Summit, coming to Vancouver, Canada, October 31st to
November 2nd. And I am super excited to announce that both my wife
Julie and myself will be speakers at it, and it’s hosted by the VR/AR
Association, which we are also members. She’s served as the executive
producer for the show for two years and previously was the producer
of the CVR, the Consumer VR Show, also hosted in Vancouver. She’s the
founder of Pulled In Productions, a live event production company
that specializes in tech events and live productions. You can learn
more about the VR/AR Global Summit by visiting vrarglobalsummit.com.
Duh.
Anne-Marie: [chuckles]
Alan: We’re here now with
Anne-Marie. Thanks for joining me.
Anne-Marie: Thanks so much for
having me, Alan.
Alan: I’m super excited for two
things. One, to come and see everybody in Vancouver and two, to find
out who else was gonna be there speaking at this. So let’s get into
it. Tell everybody what is the VR/AR Global Summit, and what can they
expect from this?
Anne-Marie: Well, the VR/AR
Global Summit is going into its second year, and it is two days that
are jam packed full of amazing industry speakers, workshops, speed
dating, great events, amazing exhibits and demos. And so it is just
*the* show to go to if you’re looking for great content, great
conversations and awesome networking in a beautiful location.
Alan: I have been a guest
speaker at your conference for a couple of years now, and I can tell
you — for the people listening — there’s two conferences that I —
or three, I guess — that I look forward to every year: AWE, which is
by far the most impactful augmented reality conference, and that
takes place every year in San Francisco, and now there’s going to be
one in Munich. But then there’s the Virtual Reality, Toronto; VRTO:
That one is a small but very powerful group. And the Global Summit is
kind of like taking both of those. Where you’ve got this small,
intimate group talking about the future of technology. Then you’ve
got AWE, which is very kind of enterprise focused, how to make money?
And you bring those two together and you’ve got this global summit.
And it’s just incredible because it feels like a small conference,
even though it’s not small, it feels like a small conference because
everybody there is super passionate. They’re willing to share their
experiences. What can we expect from the speakers this year?
Anne-Marie: Sure. Well, we’ve
got so many amazing speakers this year, and we take a lot of time to
carefully curate who goes on our stage. So it takes us a while to get
that program launched. But we’ve got some amazing people this year,
both in the enterprise side — so talking about training — we’ve got
a whole defense and government sector that’s happening at the event
this year, a couple hours of that. We’ve got beautiful immersive
artists and people working in immersive storytelling that are coming.
So we’ve got Lenovo, Niantic, MasterCard, HP, Forbes, a whole bunch
of great of the big name companies. But then we’ve also got beautiful
artists that are coming, like Nancy Baker Cahill, and a beautiful
voice, Galit Ariel, who’s from Toronto, who was a TEDWomen speaker.
Yourself, Julie, we’ve got people from Viacom, we’ve got people from
Hasbro. There’s a lot of really interesting, diverse voices happening
at the event. We try to balance it with names that you know and with
names that you’re going to know after you come to the summit.
Alan: Let’s go through this.
There’s so many great speakers coming. You’ve got somebody from
MasterCard. What are they doing in AR and VR?
Anne-Marie: So they have taken
their training globally into VR and AR with their staff. And so
they’re talking about how they’re– they started small with that, but
now it’s a global entity, and how that changes when you’re going from
different country to country, and what they’re doing. So they’re
speaking about that. We’ve got people that are talking about sports
and fitness in VR and AR this year, from FORM Swim and YUR Fitness,
so VR in training for your body, which is great. Yeah, there’s all
kinds of great people coming to speak this year.
Alan: Sergio from Hasbro’s gonna
be there. What is Hasbro doing in VR and AR?
Anne-Marie: They’re doing some
great things with toys for kids, mostly in the AR realm and
developing educational apps with their toys and without their toys,
really working on some STEM programming as well. So he is really
interesting and they have got a lot of new things that they’ll be
launching at the summit as well.
Alan: I’m scanning through that
— if you guys want to take a look, it’s
vrarglobalsummit.com/speakers — and I’m scrolling down. Of course,
there’s familiar faces like Charlie Fink. And then there’s Amy Peck
and there’s — who’s there? — Cathy Hackl. These are people that if
you’re in the industry at all, you’ve seen these names come up. But
then there’s a whole host of people that are kind of new, and up and
coming. And it’s really, really exciting. Martina from the WXR Fund
and Amy from the WXR Fund — that’s the Women’s XR Fund — that are
really promoting women entrepreneurs in the space. I think it’s
wonderful that they’re doing that. You’ve got Jeff Olm, Alex Snider
from Patio Interactive. It’s like a host of incredible people, John
Cunningham from DiSTI. Who else is there? Oh, it’s everybody! John
Mc– Jason McDowall from The AR Show, I was on his show. Nathan
Pettyjohn, who was the founder of VR/AR Association. Who else? I’m
just going down the list, this is an incredible list of people.
Anne-Marie: Well, then we’ve got
people like Kavya Pearlman, who are doing the XR Security Initiative,
talking about ethics and security in VR and AR, and she’s amazing.
She’s a top 30 under 30. And Dr. Uma Jayaram from Travancore, who
just got bought out by Intel Sports. So they’ll be talking about
e-sports and VR and AR. And then we’ve got Renée Stevens and Amy Lou
Abernathy, who are both talking about education and diversity and
inclusion. There’s beautiful storytellers that are coming to talk
about that. So it’s really– so there’s one stage that’s enterprise,
and one stage that’s immersive. And then another stage on Saturday
that’s all about defense and government. So really, it covers
basically everything you could ever want to know about VR and AR.
It’s great. It’s great. I’m super excited.
Alan: Teppei Tsutsui.
Anne-Marie: Yep.
Anne-Marie: From GRF, or the
GREE Fund. He’s actually gonna be on my podcast in about an hour from
now.
Anne-Marie: Oh, awesome! How
excellent!
Alan: [laughs] Yeah!
Anne-Marie: Small world.
[laughs]
Alan: Jesse Damiani from VR
Focus, just like– this is gonna be like a big family gathering of
awesome people that are passionate, that are really just rolling up
their sleeves and doing stuff in this industry. So I’m super excited
for this. It’s really amazing. Is Ross Finman from Niantic speaking
as well?
Anne-Marie: He is. So he is one
of our keynotes on Friday. So we’re super excited to have him, and
what they’re talking about. And then Matt [Miesnieks] from 6D.ai. Oh,
there’s just so many good people. And Jimmy Vainstein, who’s speaking
from World Bank and how they’re helping to change the world, and
document what they’re working on with World Bank through VR and AR
and storytelling through that. And then there’s a couple of surprises
that aren’t even up there yet, that will be launched this week, that
are really cool, that I’m super excited for.
Alan: So we’ve talked about the
people that are gonna be there, which is literally the most important
part. But let’s talk about what are some of the demos that you guys
are going to have there, because I think seeing VR and AR is the key
to all this. So what are some of the things that we’re gonna be able
to to try, and touch, and play with?
Anne-Marie: Oh, there’s so many
great demos.
Alan: We really just want to
play with toys. Come on, let’s be honest.
Anne-Marie: We want to–
[chuckles]
What am I excited about, though? I don’t know, everything.
I always get lost in the exhibitor room. Lenovo’s bringing a great
exhibit this year, you’ll get to try out all of their fun stuff.
Archiact just did a great AR experience with Marvel, so that’ll be
there and, we’ll be able to experience that and engage with some of
the awesome Marvel characters. We’re going to have great gaming
companies. There are a lot of different headsets going on. It’s going
to be great. There’ll be a lot of things to try. Dreamcraft
Attractions — who are from Canada, but have never really exhibited
in Canada — they do great gaming and attraction based VR, so they’ll
be there for the first time. So there’s lots of great things. A lot
of local companies, a lot of really interesting startups. And then
we’ve got workshops too.
Alan: Oh, tell me about the
workshop! That’s important.
Anne-Marie: Magic Leap’s doing a
workshop. HTC with Vinay [Narayan], who’s always wonderful. Amazon
will be there talking about Sumerian, and then a couple other with
immersive storytelling and volumetric capture, that will be announced
this week too. So I’m excited for those.
Alan: Incredible. I know
volumetric capture’s starting to heat up, with Verizon acquiring
Jaunt and ooh, it’s getting crazy!
Anne-Marie: [laughs] It’s
getting fun!
Alan: One of my interviews today
was with Michael Mansouri from Radiant Images. And they’re really
pioneering some work in photogrammetry, volumetric capture, and light
field capture as well. So, very interesting.
Anne-Marie: Cool.
Alan: Holy moly. There’s just so
much to unpack here. There’s Telus, Facebook, Siemens, Raytheon,
Viacom, Microsoft, Lenovo, Niantic, Canadian Tire. It’s just– [sound
of mind being blown] You know, it’s nuts. There’s so many companies
that are part of this. What are some of the challenges that you’ve
had with bringing this together?
Anne-Marie: I think always the
challenge is just trying to fit this all into two days. Literally,
you could have stages upon stages and days upon days of topics and
interesting people. We had so many amazing people applied to speak
that we just couldn’t fit in. So I think it’s narrowing it down. It’s
also trying to give people the quality that they want and the current
topics, because the topics change so quickly in this industry. So
what we started talking about last year is either no longer
necessarily relevant or where it was or what’s going on. So it’s just
trying to make the most up-to-date, current, exciting show that we
can when it’s changing so dramatically daily, with companies being
bought out and everything. It’s just– that’s probably the hardest
part, is containing what we have, because we can do this for days,
really.
Alan: Yeah. It’s– you know, if
you go back kind of three or four years, the news would come out once
every two days or we’d like, okay, here’s some VR news. It would be a
couple of things. It’s coming out every couple of hours now.
Anne-Marie: Yeah. Yeah. And you
know, it’s funny because I’ve been doing a show like this for three
years, and the topics, what’s relevant and what’s not changes month
to month.
Alan: Okay, what was relevant a
year ago, that’s no longer today?
Anne-Marie: Well, this year we
found that we are getting a lot of people applying to speak about–
it’s basically getting down and dirty into it, like we’re doing the
training, this is what’s working, and we’re in it. And when I’ve been
doing that for the two years prior, it was a lot about where’s the
industry going, and that. Like that hockey stick curve of where you
might be and what’s going on.
Alan: Everybody with the hockey
stick curve!
Anne-Marie: I’m like, “No,
hockey stick curve!” But now it’s the people that are really
into it, and working into it, and what is actually going on in it,
rather than theory. Like it’s at practical application. So a lot of
it, when we were looking for practical applications two years ago, it
wasn’t quite there. And now that’s everything that we thought. So a
lot of enterprise training, a lot of especially military and defense.
We’ve got a lot of people talking about that. And then the quality in
storytelling and content that goes with that, not just the demand for
it, but the actual delivery of it now. So it’s just a really
interesting conversation to see how it’s grown and changed.
Alan: So three years ago — or I
guess four years ago — there was a couple of companies, Greenlight
and some other companies that made these crazy, wild, outlandish bets
on the size of the market. And most of them were wrong by a large
margin. What are we seeing now? Are we seeing more pragmatic kind of
predictions for the future? What are we seeing in the next five
years?
Anne-Marie: I mean, just based
on what I read and podcasts like yours and chatting with you and
stuff like that, I think– I don’t know. I think it’s the down and
dirty applications of it. I think people are into it. I don’t think
anyone’s looking for that huge, exciting growth that was predicted
five years ago.
Alan: [laughs] We’re not looking
to get rich. We’re just looking to get shit done.
Anne-Marie: Yeah. And that’s
what it is: it’s getting shit done. And that’s what a lot of people
are doing, and putting their heads down and doing it. And the people
that are doing gaming are doing gaming so well, and the people that
are doing enterprise are doing enterprise really well. And I think
that a lot of people are trying to do a lot of things, but it’s more
streamlined. And the people doing beautiful artwork are– they really
got an issue for it now. And you can make money off of it, you can do
those things. And I think people are getting really creative in it,
as opposed to just trying to jump on the bandwagon. I think that
people that didn’t really see the potential of it are gone a little
bit. And those that are really into it, and dove into it, and love it
are persisting and making great things. But that’s just my personal
experience. [laughs] That’s just what I see.
Alan: I think you’re absolutely
right. You’re seeing people kind of drop off of this, and people that
got into it for the shiny penny are really falling off, because it’s
hard to build something of value in any industry, especially in an
industry that’s emerging, where there’s sometimes no answers. You’re
like, “Okay, how do we do this?” And people are like, “I
don’t know. Nobody’s done it. So how do we do it?”
Anne-Marie: But you look at
people coming, like the guys that are– the two people that are
coming from Patio, which is a cannabis company. So when you’re
talking to them like, so cannabis is new. You can’t hire anyone
working in marketing and training and sales that’s worked in cannabis
before, like you can kind of take from similar, like alcohol
companies or whatever. But it is a different thing. So they’re using
VR and AR in training in a whole new industry that never even existed
two years ago.
Alan: Absolutely, and we have–
Anne-Marie: That’s the people
that are creative and innovative about it, because everything they’re
doing is creative and innovative. And that’s exciting.
Alan: Yeah, e’ve actually worked
with Charlie and his team at Patio over the years, and they do great
work. They’ve been really pioneering the cannabis space. We actually
did a project — that will never see the light of day, unfortunately
— we filmed the world’s largest cannabis facility in VR, in 360.
Anne-Marie: Oh, cool.
Alan: Yeah, it was amazing.
800,000 square foot cannabis facility. So you’re in VR and you’re
standing amongst the trees. And yeah, it was beautiful. But
unfortunately, it’ll never see the light of day, because the client–
it was under lock and key, so… But yeah, they do some amazing work.
They’ve done some really interesting work in photogrammetry of the
buds and really bringing them to life in AR as well, which is pretty
cool. And then taking that, which, you know, it’s really cool to see
a bud in AR. But what’s the point? So what they’ve done is they get
in a little bit further and said, “OK, well, let’s use it to
educate consumers about this.” And I think that’s really cool.
And recently they just did this really cool thing with wink cannabis
where they they 3D projection mapped a sign. And while it’s not kind
of VR or AR, it is really still the same technologies that we’re
using, the 3D map, and they 3D mapped a sign that says “wink.”
And it just– it looks really cool in an event. It’s really super
cool.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, awesome. And I
think that’s what you’re going to see, is people taking it and going
that one step further. Like I’m talking to some people about some
great immersive experiences that just take it that one step beyond.
And they’re exciting. They’re so great.
Alan: Yeah, I actually– Last
week I was in Orlando meeting with John Cunningham. He’s one of the
mentors for the XR Ignite’s platform or accelerator. And I got to go
to their office and try their training demos. And a lot of the
training they’re doing is in three dimensions, but it’s on 2D touch
screens. And even though it’s not in VR/AR, the 3D ability to turn
things around and see them from all angles, open them up. It really
does make a big difference. And then, of course, you know that they
can push a button and put you into VR with that. So I actually– one
of the demos I got to see was an F-18 fighter jet. And I got to put
my head in and walk around a fighter jet and open up the panels. And
that was just mind-blowing. And then it went from an F-18 fighter jet
to an HP large format printer.
Anne-Marie: I think I’d stay in
that fighter jet. [laughs]
Alan: It was like, the same
technology can be applied to this.
Anne-Marie: Yeah. Which is
awesome, right?
Alan: You get fighter jets and
printers! Crazy.
Anne-Marie: [laughs]
Alan: Who else is on this? Jason
McDowall, I was on his show recently, that was really exciting. And
he runs a podcast called The AR Show, which is really incredible.
Kavya Pearlman from XR Safety Initiative, they’re pioneering work in
making sure that we do things ethically, which is really great. Who
else is on? Tony Bevilacqua. Is he still with Cognitive3D? I think
so.
Anne-Marie: He is, yep, that’s
his company, he’s been–.
Alan: They’re doing analytics in
VR and AR, so being able to take the analytics out of that and make
sense of where people are looking, how long they interacted, all of
these things.
Anne-Marie: Yeah.
Alan: Very cool.
Anne-Marie: It’s awesome. And
what’s great to do, with it being the global summit, is we’ve got
speakers this year that are coming from Africa, and India, and Asia,
and Germany and– you know, we’re doing a European summit next year.
So you’ve got the Lisbon chapter president coming, who’s great at
marketing and VR. So it’s going to to have a lot of interesting
voices as well. So not just the standard what we’re doing here or on
the west coast of North America. But what’s the VR like in Nigeria,
and all over the world? And it’s really fascinating when you learn
what they’re doing, compared to that we’re doing and how the
direction is totally different, because there’s just not that
influence of being here. So there is going to be a lot of really
interesting discussion points, and the ability to network with people
from around the globe, that I think will be incredible always. And
that’s what I really like about this event.
Alan: And the best conversations
— let’s be honest — they always happen at the bar afterwards,
anyway.
Anne-Marie: Yeah. Yeah. We do
this awesome speed dating, where you get to meet 150 people in an
hour and then it launches into the cocktail bar.
Alan: Oh, I love that! That
looks great.
Anne-Marie: So we’re doing that
for cocktail hour and then we’re doing that at breakfast the next
morning, because it was so popular last year.
Alan: So you’re doing it twice?
Anne-Marie: With wine and with
coffee. So it’ll be good.
Alan: Oh my god.
Anne-Marie: Whatever gets your
fancy going.
Alan: Can you do both? Can you
do the cocktail one day, and then do the coffee the next?
Anne-Marie: Sure. It’s first
come, first go.
Alan: October 31st is coming up
really quick. October 31st to November 2nd is the Vancouver VR/AR
Global Summit. Is it too late for sponsors to come on board, or
exhibitors?
Anne-Marie: No. We still have a
few exhibitor spaces, because we opened up a bit of a different area.
So we’ve still got space for that, which would be amazing. And we
always welcome sponsors. We do custom proposals for everyone. So it’s
not just, you know, “here’s your money and here’s a logo,”
but you can let me know what you’re looking for to get out of it. And
I can help to custom something for you. It’s not too late. There’s so
much great exposure available on site and during and after the event
that we can help with, because of VR/AR keeps going all year. It
doesn’t just stop at the summit. So there’s great opportunities for
that. And of course, ticket sales, I mean, we’ve got ticket types for
full conference passes, if you can come Saturday only, if you just
want to check out the exhibits, if you’re a student, there’s all
kinds of great opportunities at any price point. Startups to be
involved with the summit, and it’s never too late to come on board.
We welcome everyone.
Alan: How much are tickets?
Anne-Marie: If you’re a member
there, $4.99. If you’re a non-member, I believe they are $7.99, US.
Alan: That’s full conference
pass?
Anne-Marie: That’s full
conference pass. So that’s all the workshops, it’s all the parties,
it’s all the talks. And then there’s startup passes and student
passes, and you can find them all on the website, listed on the
front.
Alan: And then, so I’ve got to
read this quote, “The VR/AR Global Summit is one of the year’s
most anticipated conferences. It attracts a broad international
cross-section of thought leaders, enterprise executives,
entertainment companies and developers for an intense two days of
panels, demos and networking.” And I’m assuming — because it
says Forbes — I’m assuming that’s a quote from Charlie Fink.
Anne-Marie: It is, it is.
Alan: Alright. So you have here,
“With over 230 companies active in VR and AR, Vancouver is the
second largest immersive ecosystem in the world. This is the fourth
time the show is happening in Vancouver. And this year’s summit will
have a strong focus on enterprise and AR, as well as immersive
interactive design.” And here, I just got to read some of the
brands that are participating in the summit. You got MasterCard,
Hershey’s, Verizon, Boeing, Wal-Mart, Viacom, Siemens, Raytheon,
Telus, Apple, Lenovo, Google, HP, Facebook, AWS, Varjo, Accenture,
Pico, Magic Leap, Vive, RE’FLEKT, Patio Interactive, BGC, Dreamcraft,
DiSTI, 8th Wall, Stryker, Atheer, Sector Five Digital, World Bank
Group, Naval Information Warfare Center, Invest Canada, Lethbridge
College, The Time, Fortune, Forbes. This is going to be an incredible
event. How many people are you anticipating this year?
Anne-Marie: We’re looking to do
about 1,000 to 1,500. That’s– our space is small, but it’s so
intimate and it’s great. So we’re just yeah, we’re just excited to
have those people come and join us. It’ll be awesome.
Alan: This is so cool, I can’t
wait for this. I’m really, really getting excited and I gotta figure
out what I’m going to talk about.
Anne-Marie: I know we have to
talk about it.
Alan: Awesome. Really looking
forward to it. I think this is gonna be a great opportunity for not
only for people to learn about the industry, but also to meet new
friends and really embrace the entire ecosystem of VR and AR in a
place where we can talk business, but also let our hair down and kind
of get to know each other from a personal standpoint. I think this is
a great opportunity. From anybody around the world, if you happen to
have a couple of free days, October 31st to November 2nd, Vancouver,
the VR/AR Global Summit and its vrarglobalsummit.com. Is there
anything else you want to share with everybody?
Anne-Marie: I think that’s all.
I’m just looking forward to seeing everyone there. And thank you,
Alan, for having me on your show. I super appreciate it.
Alan: It is my absolute
pleasure. I’m super looking forward to seeing you in — oh my God —
a couple weeks.
Anne-Marie: I know. [laughs]
26 min
October 14, 2019 Bringing the XR World Together at the VR/AR Global Summit, with Executive Director Anne-Marie Enns
Alan, along with his wife Julie, are members of the VR/AR Association, and as such, one of the annual XR gatherings they look forward to most is the VR/AR Global Summit in Vancouver, which is just a few weeks away (Oct 31-Nov 2). Alan has the event's executive producer, Anne-Marie Enns, on to talk about what attendees can expect on the show floor this year.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is a
great friend of mine, Anne-Marie Enns, the executive producer of the
VR/AR Global Summit, coming to Vancouver, Canada, October 31st to
November 2nd. And I am super excited to announce that both my wife
Julie and myself will be speakers at it, and it's hosted by the VR/AR
Association, which we are also members. She's served as the executive
producer for the show for two years and previously was the producer
of the CVR, the Consumer VR Show, also hosted in Vancouver. She's the
founder of Pulled In Productions, a live event production company
that specializes in tech events and live productions. You can learn
more about the VR/AR Global Summit by visiting vrarglobalsummit.com.
Duh.
Anne-Marie: [chuckles]
Alan: We're here now with
Anne-Marie. Thanks for joining me.
Anne-Marie: Thanks so much for
having me, Alan.
Alan: I'm super excited for two
things. One, to come and see everybody in Vancouver and two, to find
out who else was gonna be there speaking at this. So let's get into
it. Tell everybody what is the VR/AR Global Summit, and what can they
expect from this?
Anne-Marie: Well, the VR/AR
Global Summit is going into its second year, and it is two days that
are jam packed full of amazing industry speakers, workshops, speed
dating, great events, amazing exhibits and demos. And so it is just
*the* show to go to if you're looking for great content, great
conversations and awesome networking in a beautiful location.
Alan: I have been a guest
speaker at your conference for a couple of years now, and I can tell
you -- for the people listening -- there's two conferences that I --
or three, I guess -- that I look forward to every year: AWE, which is
by far the most impactful augmented reality conference, and that
takes place every year in San Francisco, and now there's going to be
one in Munich. But then there's the Virtual Reality, Toronto; VRTO:
That one is a small but very powerful group. And the Global Summit is
kind of like taking both of those. Where you've got this small,
intimate group talking about the future of technology. Then you've
got AWE, which is very kind of enterprise focused, how to make money?
And you bring those two together and you've got this global summit.
And it's just incredible because it feels like a small conference,
even though it's not small, it feels like a small conference because
everybody there is super passionate. They're willing to share their
experiences. What can we expect from the speakers this year?
Anne-Marie: Sure. Well, we've
got so many amazing speakers this year, and we take a lot of time to
carefully curate who goes on our stage. So it takes us a while to get
that program launched. But we've got some amazing people this year,
both in the enterprise side -- so talking about training -- we've got
a whole defense and government sector that's happening at the event
this year, a couple hours of that. We've got beautiful immersive
artists and people working in immersive storytelling that are coming.
So we've got Lenovo, Niantic, MasterCard, HP, Forbes, a whole bunch
of great of the big name companies. But then we've also got beautiful
artists that are coming, like Nancy Baker Cahill, and a beautiful
voice, Galit Ariel, who's from Toronto, who was a TEDWomen speaker.
Yourself, Julie, we've got people f
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