XR for Business

XR for Business

By Alan Smithson from MetaVRseBusinessTechnologyArts
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XR for Business episodes

  • Digital Influencers and Marketing New Realities with Cathy Hackl
    The future is here, and it looks like...a hipster Colonel Sanders? Strange as it sounds, turning the antebellum-esque brand icon into a Millennial-friendly digital influencer is just one way that brands around the world are turning to XR to reach their audiences in inventive new ways.
    Here to delve deeper into the ins-and-outs of marketing in XR is futurist Cathy Hackl, co-author of the brand-new book, Marketing New Realities. From Coachella, to virtual try-ons, and yes, even KFC's "playboy chicken impresario," Cathy explains how XR technologies will change the way we interact with our customers.
    Alan: Today's guest is Cathy Hackl. Cathy is a futurist, speaker, and amazing author. Cathy is an Emmy-nominated communicator-turned-augmented-and-virtual-reality-global-speaker, producer and, author. Cathy has worked with You Are Here Labs, HTC VIVE, as a virtual reality evangelist during the launch of their latest headset, the VIVE Pro, and during the company's partnership with Warner Brothers blockbuster, Ready Player One. Cathy is also the co-author of Marketing New Realities: An Introduction to VR and AR Marketing, Branding and Communications. Cathy has been featured in media outlets like CNN, Silicon Beat, Entrepreneurs, CMO.com, Forbes Venture Beat, and so many more! She is a global adviser for the Virtual and Augmented Reality Association, and a leading voice in the VR space. For more information you can visit cathyhackl.com. It's with great honor that I welcome developer/marketing specialist Cathy Hackl.
    Welcome to the show, Cathy.
    Cathy: Thank you Alan appreciate it. Happy to
    be here.
    Alan: It's such a great pleasure to have you.
    We've been very fortunate to have traveled around the world together,
    and been on different stages, and it's so great to finally have you
    on on my show.
    Cathy: I know! I'm really excited for your
    podcast. Congratulations.
    Alan: Thank you so much. The idea with this
    podcast is to bring as much value as possible to businesses who are
    trying to kind of wrap their head around, "should I get into VR?
    What should I do? How do I get started?" All of that. So, I
    think you have an incredible insight as to this, and your book,
    Marketing New Realities. Let's start there and kind of unpack some of
    the ways that marketers are starting to use virtual and augmented
    reality, and let's dig in from there.
    Cathy: For sure. So when we started the book
    -- I co-authored it with Samantha Wolfe -- when we started the book,
    you know, really the reason we wanted to do the book was to create an
    educational resource. For marketers, specifically, that had lots of
    questions that weren't sure. And we created it as an educational
    resource for those marketers, that wanted questions answered. Also,
    as a way for marketers to educate their clients, right? They could
    bring the book to a meeting, they could leave the book with a
    potential client. So, you know, we just really put a lot of heart and
    soul into it, in making it something that people would be able to
    benefit from, from an educational standpoint. So it's been quite
    successful, you know. We were at the South by Southwest bookstore.
    Adobe Summit had us up at their bookstore as well, so it's been a
    wild ride, I have to say.
    Alan: Absolutely incredible. So I actually
    had the pleasure of reading this book, maybe... it's gonna be... when
    did you publish it?
    Cathy: 2017, was it? I think it was 2017.
    Alan: I remember reading it on a plane, and I
    was just glued to it. The whole flight, I read the book. And for
    those of you don't know, it's called Marketing New Realities; it's
    available on Amazon, and you can get it there. The book is really
    in-depth, as to the ways you can use virtual an
    0 min
  • Massive XR Environments and Transforming Education with Alvin Wang Graylin

    The latest generation of XR technologies introduces radical new capabilities, from multi-user tracking in massive spaces, to 6DOF standalone headsets, to the ability to track hands, eyes, and lips. HTC’s Alvin Wang Graylin discusses what this means for everything from automotive design to helping children learn about the universe.

    Alvin Wang Graylin is an industry leader, evangelist and passionate driver of XR technologies, particularly virtual reality. As the China President at HTC, he leads all aspects of the company’s VR and smartphone business in the region.

    Alan: Today’s guest is an industry leader, evangelist and passionate driver of XR technologies, and particular virtual reality, Mr. Alvin Wang-Graylin. Mr. Graylin is the China President at HTC, leading all aspects of the Vive/VR (VIVE.com) and the Smartphone businesses in the region. For those of you not familiar with HTC Vive, VIVE is a first-of-its-kind virtual reality platform, built and optimized for room-scale VR and true-to-life interactions. Delivering on the promise of VR with game-changing technology and best-in-class content, VIVE has created the strongest ecosystem for VR hardware and software, bringing VR to consumers, developers and enterprises alike.

    He is also currently Vice-Chairman of the Industry of Virtual Reality Alliance (IVRA.com) with 300+ company members, President of the $18B Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance (VRVCA.com) and oversees the Vive X VR Accelerators (VIVEX.co) in Beijing, Shenzhen and Tel Aviv. Mr. Graylin was born in China and educated in the US. He received his MS in computer science from MIT and MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mr. Graylin graduated top of his department with a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, where he had specialized in VR and AI over two decades ago under the tutelage of VR pioneer Tom Furness.

    Please welcome to the show Mr. Alvin Wang-Graylin.

    Alvin:

    Hi, how are you doing, Alan?

    Alan:

    I’m fantastic. There we go, we got you now. Awesome. Where are you
    calling in from?

    Alvin:

    I’m in Beijing, China.

    Alan:

    Beijing right now. And what time is it? It’s gotta be in the middle
    of the night, I think.

    Alvin:

    About 10:30 PM.

    Alan:

    Oh, well thank you so much for taking the time to record this with
    us. I’m going to jump right into it. For the people listening, you know,
    really, really exciting things happening at HTC right now, and you just held
    your fourth annual VIVE Ecosystem Conference, or VEC conference in Shenzhen.
    Can you maybe speak to some of the announcements and how their impact is going
    to really impact business use cases of VR?

    Alvin:

    Yeah, I’m happy to jump right in. We just had our yearly biggest
    conference of the year, and had about a thousand people come in, and about a
    hundred press, and essentially all the industry folks that are in China – and
    actually, quite a few folks from around Asia and even parts of the US – came.
    People, from the developers, from our sales channels, our accessory partners. A
    lot of investment companies, as well as Chinese carriers, governmental
    organizations that are involved with high tech. Essentially, what we do every
    year is gather together all of the leading players in the industry and try to
    create a unified direction. And the key direction that we were trying to point
    to this year is something called multi-mode VR. That’s when, you know, VR can
    be used, not just for one way of connecting, but it could be connected to your
    PC. It could be connected to 5G cloud VR. It can be connected to a console, or
    a 360 streaming camera, etc. So it’s a very exciting time for us in the
    industry, that these new types of innovation’s happening.

    Alan:

    I got to read some of the amazing announcements. You know, one of
    the ones that I think everybody’s really excited for is the VIVE Focus Plus.
    And you know, it’s for those of you listening, it’s a standalone headset that
    is completely six degrees of freedom, meaning you can look left, right, up, and
    down, but you can also move around. How do you think this new piece of hardware
    is going to unlock the enterprise use cases of the technology?

    Alvin: Absolutely. I think that was the highlight of the show, and you know, this is the first full six degrees of freedom standalone device that has both six degrees of freedom in the head, as well as the hands. And to be able to have that freedom, where you can move around in as large of a space as you want to, and be able to see, you know, and use all the existing content that’s out there – it’s going to be amazing, for both developers and for users out there. You know, for enterprise, you can essentially not worry about having the wires of the devices being connected. If you’re a design firm and you want to look at a car or an airplane, you can actually walk around freely without having any burden. And we actually showed off something that was quite exciting, is a large area multi-user tracking system that allows tracking to spaces up to 88,000 square meters, which is like 900,000 square feet space, with only four sensor units, and up to about 40 devices in that space. So it allows for shared teams to be able to look together and review and work together on a virtual space as large as four football fields. Or, it could be applied to theme parks, where you could have you know people go into a big, flat field and look up and see a giant amusement park in front of them. So that’s, you know, that was one of the other exciting parts that was announced last week as well.

    Alvin:

    That’s absolutely incredible. You just… you just literally blew my
    mind. That’s the one thing I hadn’t read about. So, to just recap: with four
    sensors, you can have up to 40 devices – meaning 40 people can be in a shared
    experience – in the size of four football fields, 900,000 square feet.

    Alan:

    Yep that’s right.

    Alvin:

    So I just have to kind of… I’ve got to unpack that. So, for
    enterprise use cases, you can now have a shared design experience, or
    experience in general, where people can train together. This would be good for
    military, I think; for police. For, you know, virtually any company that has
    many people training at one time. I think the training applications are just
    going to be massive with this technology.

    Alvin:

    Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, let’s say you have a
    firefighter squad that wants to train together, and, you know, they have a
    giant field that they can simulate a real fire in a building. How would they
    behave? And it can give you a full 6DOF tracking, and be able to have a unified
    positional system, so that everybody can see each other in physical space
    that’s fully aligned to the virtual space.

    Alan:

    I’m speechless. That is a game changer. Speaking of game changers, one
    of the other things you guys announced at VEC this year is six degrees of
    freedom video. So, normal 360 video allows you to kind of look around from the
    point of the camera, but what you guys have developed is a way to give, kind
    of, more presence by adding that ability to move up and down, and left and
    right. Can you maybe speak to that?

    Alvin:

    Yeah. So, you know, there’s thousands – probably tens of thousands –
    of 360 videos out there, but it’s really designed for just rotational viewing.
    So you’re in the middle of this photo/video bubble, and you can rotate your
    head. But when you move nothing really happens; that bubble moves with you.
    What happens with this 6DOF – what we call 6DOF light video – it’s not full
    6DOF, because you can’t really move around in a large space, but allows you to
    move one meter in any direction: up, down, side-to-side, and give you that
    illusion of being able to have a movable space, and lets you create a higher
    level immersion than you can’t have with these existing content. Now, the best
    part of this is that you don’t need a new camera. You don’t need new processing
    equipment. You don’t need to do anything. You just take your existing 360 video
    files or streams, stream it through it as this new video player, turn on the
    6DOF light mode, and boom – you’re able to have that movement within the video.

    Now, there are, you know, can people use

    light VR cameras? Which allow you to make larger space movements – a few
    meters, and maybe tens of meters – in a space? But they require very expensive
    camera rigs, to be able to create what this allows now. Essentially, you can
    have a standard $200-$300 360 camera, and bring that 6DOF experience to anybody
    who you stream to. So, I think this is going to open up a new concept called
    “life streaming,” where it’s not… you know, people right now, there
    are these influencers who will shoot a little video of where they are and talk
    about a story. But I think in this case, you can turn anybody into a
    “lifestreamer,” where they can share their life with their loved ones
    or with their fans.

    Alan:

    You just encouraged me to break out my 360 camera again, and start
    making some videos. This is incredible. So, I’m going to touch on some other
    things that really kind of stood out to me. One of the things that you guys
    announced was StreamLink, which is the ability to connect your devices – your
    VIVE devices, your VR devices – to computers, and consoles, PlayStation, I even
    saw something about XBox there. Is this for real? I can just plug in my headset
    to any console now, and have a powerful VR experience?

    Alvin:

    Well so, it’s, what StreamLink does is it allows you to take 2D
    content, whether it’s from your computer screen or from your TV set top box, or
    from any of the existing consoles, because it takes any HDMI video stream,
    turns it into a slightly warped, rounded virtual screen in VR. So that gives
    you essentially an IMAX experience with your VR headset. So it’s more of a
    monitor replacement than a full VR experience. What it also, because of the
    size, it actually does almost feel like you’re there. I was playing FIFA soccer
    on the XBox, but then I click it in and I feel like I’m actually on the field,
    because I can’t see the edges of that screen. If you get it closer to the
    screen, you actually, you know, there’s a spatial element of that screen. So
    once you get closer, you can actually have the screen go around you, so you
    can’t see, if you back up from it, you can see the screen. And you can actually
    size the screen as well. You can also change the shape to be flat or to be
    slightly rounded. And one of the really interesting parts is that it also has a
    video see-through a window. If you look down, you can actually see your
    keyboard, or you could see your hand game controller, and that way you’re able
    to manipulate physical objects, even when you’re in this headset as a monitor
    replacement.

    Alan:

    So that leads me to the next thing that I saw. First of all, that’s
    incredible. The visual that I’m getting is of, you know, a trader or a
    financial trader being able to put up their screen in a massive screen, so your
    computer now is a wrap-around IMAX screen. Imagine the amount of work you could
    get done by having an IMAX-sized screen while you’re doing your work. That’s
    just incredible.

    Alvin:

    Yes. I think it’s both good for work and for entertainment, that’s the
    best part. In fact, our guys are trying to create a little program to get
    people to spend a whole day, like 24 hours, inside VR. And just to use this one
    single device, because it’s able to connect to all of the current media sources
    that we have anyways. And you know, the Focus Plus also allows you to connect
    wirelessly to your phone and wirelessly to your PC, to experience PC VR. So all
    the 4000+ pieces of PC VR content can be streamed directly to this standalone
    device. So it’s kind of like The Lord of the Rings, this is like the Lord of
    HMV. You know, they’re the HMV that connects to everything.

    Alan:

    I can tell you, this is what I personally have been waiting for. I
    want to be able to open my – I know it sounds boring to everybody – but I want
    to be able to open my emails and work in VR on a giant screen and have, you
    know, my podcast link over here, and my e-mails over here, and all these things
    kind of spread out. I am really excited for this. And you know, one of the
    things you mentioned was looking down and seeing your hands. Something else you
    guys addressed at VEC this year was native hand-and-finger tracking.

    Alvin:

    Yes.

    Alan:

    This is going to unlock so much.

    Alvin:

    Yeah, we definitely have a lot of news packed in to–

    Alan:

    I’ve got a long list here! I’m gonna keep going. This is amazing,
    you guys announced so many things.

    Alvin:

    Yeah, I think we announced too many things, because most people only
    heard probably maybe a third of it, or only comprehended a third of what we
    what we announced. Yes, so at the VEC – and at GDC – we actually announced our
    USDKs for hand tracking. About a year ago actually, at the last VEC, I had
    announced that we were going to bring gesture control to VIVE, using the
    existing cameras that are on both the VIVE and the VIVE Focus. So at the GDC
    this year, we demonstrated the hand-and-finger tracking on the VIVE Pro. But at
    VEC, we also demonstrated the finger tracking on the VIVE Focus. So, on a
    standalone device, to be able to have 21-point finger tracking, that’s amazing.
    We actually didn’t think it was possible, because of processing limitations of
    the mobile chipsets. But after almost a year of optimizing, we got it all to
    work, and then we also released publicly the SD case for the VIVE and the VIVE
    Pro, and the gestures on the VIVE Focus, so that any developer, now, can essentially
    incorporate natural hand movement directly into the app without having to buy a
    third-party piece of accessory like the Leap Motion.

    Alan:

    So I keep coming back to training, but let’s really kind of take a
    second to unpack the native hand-tracking and finger-tracking; if you’re able
    to reach out, see your hands, and interact with things in virtual spaces, this
    is going to literally unlock unlimited potential for training. So, if you want
    to teach somebody how to do something in real life, they can reach out, grab
    it, learn it. And you know, one of the things that you posted recently was on
    education and how VR is improving students’ concentration. I think both
    students in grade school from K to 12, but also university, but I think right
    through to enterprise training scenarios, I think virtual reality has a
    potential to really lead the way with how we educate in the future, and how we
    train. It’s kind of my personal passion as well, but can you speak to what you
    posted the other day about the VR improving students concentration? By a
    considerable amount.

    Alvin:

    This is a brand new study – it has not actually been published yet.
    It will be published in about two weeks. And there was a study that we helped,
    I guess, fund, but then it was completely done independently from us. We had no
    influence over the study processes. But what they did was essentially brought
    two different groups of kids that were 12-to-13-year-old kids, and taught them
    basic physics, mechanics. And so, two kids had the same courses, the same
    questions, the same tests, and one supplemented the experience with
    VR-supplemented material, to allow the kids to be able to interact with the
    principles that was discussed. And the other one was just using more blackboard
    and teacher discussions. So, your normal classroom-type methodology.

    What we found was that the concentration

    went… and for both sets of students, we, for both at the students we used EEG
    sensors on them during the entire class, and was able to capture the movement
    and the intensity of the frontal lobe, which was to to identify the
    concentration level and focus of the students. And it was very, very clear that
    the students that were in the VR session, they had, I think it was a 6x
    improvement, in terms of concentration level, which led to grades that were
    significantly higher. Essentially, the control group had scores that was about
    a C+, right after they did the course, in terms of passing the tests, whereas
    the VR group right after was an A score, in terms of their average score. And a
    week later, it was still in mid-B range for the VR students.

    So even a week later, after not being

    reminded the content after they were retested, they outperformed the immediate
    test scores of the control group. And a week later, on the control group, was
    down to, I think it was a D+. So either way, what it shows is that for complex
    topics, this type of a training mechanism really both helps to increase
    concentration and retention for the content, and you know, very, very
    statistically significant.

    Alan:

    It’s incredible, and you know, we’re seeing already some major
    shifts in how enterprises are using this, and I just want to touch, before we
    move on to that, the one other stat that I saw here from one of your
    presentations, was VR training is useful also in sports education. You guys did
    a study showing improvement using soccer teams, children’s soccer teams, and
    using VR training. One of the things that you showed was a 36 per cent increase
    in performance after using VR. Can you speak to that?

    Alvin:

    So actually, before going into that, I want to add one more point to
    the last study on the concentration level, because one piece of data that’s not
    actually in the slide I published was that there was a distinctive difference,
    actually, in the concentration improvements for male versus female. It seemed
    like the more distractable boys actually had even bigger improvements than the
    girls, who are normally very able to concentrate in class, whereas the boys
    usually tend to be harder to manage and are easily distractable. And what we
    found is that they actually had a bigger improvement because of VR. So the more
    distractable that the age group or the child, the more benefit they actually
    will get from this from this technology. So that is a very surprising finding.
    But I guess it’s intuitive after the fact, looking at it.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting you say that, because I’d been reading a lot of
    articles around how virtual reality is being used for autism, and to really
    train people with different levels …on the spectrum, to interact with other
    students, and kind of studying their eye contact and that sort of thing. And
    one of the things that you guys announced at VEC – I keep going back to this –
    but, you know eye tracking and lip tracking.

    Alvin:

    Yes. Yes.

    Alan:

    This is incredible. So, you know, I’m thinking for HR, if you wanted
    to do an interview with somebody, you could send them a headset, you could do a
    full interview in VR with them and really get a sense of, are they looking at
    you? Do they make eye contact? Now that you can see their hands and fingers, do
    they use their hands and gestures? And lip tracking allows you to kind of match
    what they’re saying to a visual, maybe–

    Alvin:

    It can probably go further than that, because micro expressions in
    your body really gives a sign of whether or not you’re telling the truth, or
    whether you’re fibbing, or whether you’re kind of making up things, and what part
    of your brain you’re looking at, that you’re trying to withdraw information
    from. Well actually, your eyes point to different places. So, by looking at eye
    tracking, you can actually use it as a lie detector, and probably in a more
    accurate way than the current polygraphs that are out there. So yeah, that’s
    also a new technology that we are putting out.

    Even though we just announced recently our

    VIVE Pro Eye, which has built-in eye-tracking, the SDK that we are releasing
    will actually work with any existing eye-tracking system. So in fact, very soon
    we’ll be coming out with third party accessories that can add eye-tracking onto
    our existing VIVEs, VIVE Pros, and also the VIVE Focus.

    Alan:

    That’s incredible. I actually… it’s interesting, the whole idea of
    the lie detector. I just read a piece by Jeremy Bailenson – and for those of
    you who don’t know he’s a researcher at Stanford – and he was on the privacy of
    people while collecting physical data. So, things like eye tracking, now lip
    tracking, but also their movements. You know, their posture, how they move, and
    that sort of thing. And the study or the piece really talked about, by
    collecting this data, we’re able to now, down to a very granular level, one
    that kind of transcends all of the other studies we’ve ever had before into
    collecting data about people that is way more accurate than just asking them on
    a survey or that we have…this is next-level data collection. And I think,
    while it opens a Pandora’s box for ethical concerns, it also, you know, can
    serve businesses very, very dramatically on both their HR needs, their training
    needs. There’s so many different aspects of this.

    Alvin:

    Yeah yeah absolutely. And let’s say if you’re an advertising agency,
    and you want to know if your ad works – what are people really looking at?
    What’s attracting their attention? You know exactly by looking at, by using eye
    tracking and putting them in front of that ad, either in the virtual space or a
    physical space. If you’re designing a cockpit for a car or an airplane and you
    want to make sure that it’s easy for people to understand, you put them into
    that space and you know how long did it take them to find the right buttons.
    Where are they spending their time looking when they’re when you’re driving
    this car, when they’re using this car? So those kinds of information, it’s very
    difficult to get in the real world, or you had to spend a lot of money to to
    actually build out versions of that physical cockpit, and then have people try
    it and then give you a feeling of what which one felt better. Right? With this,
    you know exactly how long it would take them to find that button. Did they look
    at the speedometer numbers in the right way, or do they prefer to look up or
    down, et cetera. That kind of information can give you so much value in terms
    of designing something that’s more human-centric.

    Alan:

    Well, since you brought it up, I’m going to talk about the
    automobile industry and logistics and travel, automotive in general. So you’ve
    done work, HTC has done work with BMW, Volkswagen, McLaren, probably a number
    of other companies in the periphery as well. Can you speak to some of the ways
    that automotive companies are using this? I know Volkswagen’s using it for
    collaborative training, for factory logistics. BMW is doing virtual prototypes.
    McLaren allows you to race one of their McLarens. What’s going on? Why are
    automotive companies jumping on so much, and what are they doing with it? Where
    are they seeing the most value?

    Alvin:

    I think it actually can be used in essentially all steps of their
    creation/design/testing/training/manufacturing process. Normally, whether
    you’re talking about a car or a plane, you’re talking on the order of years, or
    a number of years, to design and build a new product. And what we’re finding is
    that, in the design industry, we can get a 2x, up to maybe a 10x improvement in
    terms of how long it takes to go from concept to product. Because a lot of
    what’s happening today, in terms of creating these things, is that they have to
    create physical prototypes that are made of clay, have people come from around
    the world to review them, make changes, come back a few weeks later, etc.,
    which just doesn’t produce very fast turnaround. In VR, you can do all of that
    virtually. And in fact, we had a very interesting case study just released a
    few months ago – two to three months ago – where Bell Helicopters, normally it
    takes five to seven years to build and design a new helicopter. It took them
    six months to go from concept to a working prototype that was flying, and that
    that’s just crazy fast. I think that’s faster than that would take us to build
    a new headset. So it’s amazing how much value they got from using that. I don’t
    think that’s typical. I would I would say typically, probably an improvement of
    2-to-3x in terms of design time is probably typical.

    Alan:

    So… let’s just kind of stop for one second. So Bell Helicopter
    designed a new helicopter in six months that would have taken them five years.

    Alvin:

    Yes, exactly.

    Alan:

    And that’s an outlier. OK. We’ll take that as an outlier. But
    typically, average what you’re seeing is a 2x to 3x expedited process of
    design.

    Alvin:

    Yeah. And that’s not just for vehicles. It can be used for
    buildings, for interior design; essentially anything that requires review and
    design and collaboration between teams to create. It can be dramatically
    faster, improved.

    Alan:

    So that leads me to the next question. Why isn’t every company doing
    this already? If you’re seeing two to three times improvements, why is this not
    in every single design office in the world?

    Alvin:

    Actually, I would say we’re working with almost every major auto
    manufacturer and airplane manufacturer out there. In fact, if you look at
    Boeing and Airbus, they were working 5-10 years ago with CAVE systems, and CAVE
    systems essentially are an early version of VR, where you’re in a room and it’s
    projecting the expected outcome around you in these screens that that feels
    like you’re in that environment. It’s not as individualized as you would get
    with current headsets, but for the technology of the time, it looked and felt
    very much like today’s VR. And those were million-dollar systems, but they’ve
    been using them for 10, 15 years.

    Alan:

    Absolutely incredible. So it’s really interesting, I mean, you
    studied under kind of the godfather of VR, Tom Furness, and you were looking at
    how VR can disrupt education.

    Alvin:

    Yes.

    Alan:

    You shared some stats, around six times improvement of
    concentration, and one of the other stats was a 36 per cent improvement in
    sports education, performance, and training.

    Alvin:

    Yes, actually, I think I forgot to mention the sports education when
    I said – let me let me go back to that case that you asked for. So we had
    worked with the national youth team that was managed by the Chinese Ministry of
    Sports, and they’re essentially the elite, kind of next generation soccer
    athletes in China, and they were brought in for a one month training camp. So,
    they had four teams, and two teams were using VR, two teams were not using VR,
    and they had the same the same kind of national-level coaches helping all four
    of these teams, except some were supplemented with VR strategy education.

    What they found is, at the end of the

    month, the group that was using VR improved by 30 per cent in terms of their
    strategy scores. In the elite athlete level, it’s not the physical capability
    of these kids or adult athletes that separates them; it’s all about their
    mental acuity, in terms of understanding the deeper level of the strategy of
    the game. And so that’s something that’s actually very difficult for people to
    train, and you have to create varied scenarios, and it’s hard to simulate those
    scenarios. But when you can put these kids into thousands of potential
    scenarios, if these defenders are here and the ball is here and the goalie was
    there, what should you do? Who should you pass to and how should you kick this,
    or how should you defend? And by putting them in those scenarios, and then
    being able to score them and be able to measure them, they were able to
    accelerate significantly something that would take years to train. And they
    essentially got that level of improvement in the month, whereas the average
    non-VR student or athlete only improved by about 5 per cent in terms of their
    post-month training scores. So it’s, again, like 6, 7, 8x difference in terms
    of improvement.

    Alan:

    That would probably explain why Walmart has decided to roll out VR
    across their entire company to train people.

    Alvin:

    Yes. Yes. I mean, the larger your workforce, the more important
    training is to your teams. And it can be used for sales training, like what
    Wal-Mart’s doing. But also at Volkswagen, they are using it for assembly line
    training, so people don’t make any mistakes when they… or, they make the
    mistakes in virtual reality first, so they don’t make it on the real car. And
    you have people like Send For Help, who are using it to train nurses so that
    they don’t harm the patients. They make all their mistakes and VR, and their
    teacher can be alongside them to watch them and see what they’re doing in the
    virtual world. Again, training can be applied to essentially every industry.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting, you know, one of the companies that we’re working
    with is called Career VR, and what they’ve done is created simulators to show
    youth and people looking to do different jobs and explore different career
    opportunities. One of them is you know a crane operator, and one of them is a
    forklift operator, one of those is a heavy machinery operator. Plumbing, and
    welding. So by creating these virtual experiences, it lets people really get an
    understanding of what is this job all about. Do I like it? Is it something I
    want to go into? And then from there they can train in it. I know you guys did
    some work with Raymond Forklift. Can you maybe speak to that and what they’re
    using it for?

    Alvin:

    Yes. So, you know, these forklifts are used in warehouses to move
    very heavy equipment and materials, and if you make a mistake, it could be
    thousands of dollars, or tens of thousands of dollars of damage. Right? So what
    they did was they essentially created a cockpit that was completed at the same
    size, shape, and all the buttons in the right places. You put on this headset
    and you can simulate yourself driving this forklift, and they can test and be
    able to measure all the things that you’re doing to make sure that you’re doing
    it safely and you’re following all the procedures. And then you’re also getting
    your muscle memory, because you’re touching all the right buttons, and those
    buttons and knobs and levers link exactly to what would happen in the physical
    world in the headset space that you’re in. So it is kind of a 1:1 physical,
    kind of like a simulator training for airplane pilots; they’re doing it for
    forklifts.

    Alan:

    It’s incredible. I actually got to try, with the Career VR guys, I
    got to try an excavator and, I mean, I’ve never been in one of these machines
    before, I had no idea. But step by step, they walk me through starting the
    machine, turning the pivot, driving it, moving the dump or the bucket. And by
    the end of it, I was like, okay, you know, I’m pretty sure I could get into any
    of these excavators and work it. And a friend of mine at VR Scout, he did a
    crane trainer, where you drive a crane and you go through this thing, and in
    one hour and crane training in VR. Then they took him outside put him in a real
    crane and said, “here, drive it.” And he was able to drive it. And
    that’s wow. I mean, incredible!

    Alvin:

    Yeah. I mean, those cranes are pretty expensive; you don’t want them
    making their mistakes on those things. So that’s, you know, just to spend one
    hour or two to prevent a potential damage to the device or the property around
    it? That is well worth it. And I’ll give you another example of a very
    different type of training, is police training. We actually worked with some of
    the Chinese police force, where they’re trying to get their officers to be to
    react properly to very high-stress environments. And these high stress
    environments are very hard to simulate in the real world. You’re not going to
    have bad guys and good guys all in the same place, and be able to use a gun to
    shoot at them. But to be able to distinguish, to be a know how to react, to be
    able to stay calm, and be able to measure and see it from a trainer’s perspective,
    what the natural reaction of these different officers are. That’s something
    that they’ve told us is immensely valuable.

    Alan:

    Yeah, I think police training is going to be huge, and also
    emergency services. One of the other ones that… we were speaking with a
    client, and they own nuclear facilities, and one of the problems that they have
    is that once the nuclear reactor is started, you can’t train for emergencies.
    You can’t shut down the nuclear reactor to train for it. So they’re looking at
    ways and scenarios of, how do we train for scenarios that we just can’t train
    for in real life? And one of the people that I had on my podcast – I’m actually
    gonna check my notes here – came up with a really good…it was Steve Grubbs
    from Victory VR, and they’re doing a number of different education things. They
    did a frog dissection in VR and stuff. And he said, you know, the case for VR
    learning really hits home when it’s rare, impossible to train for, dangerous
    environments, or expensive. And he came up with the acronym RIDE: Rare,
    Impossible to train for, Dangerous environments, and Expensive. And it seems to
    be, literally, the perfect case for that.

    Alvin:

    Yeah. I mean, I think those are definitely probably the most extreme
    examples. But we’re working with banks right now to do kind of hostile customer
    training, where somebody comes in and they’re complaining, and you know how do
    you react to that? And then, in fact, you can then tie it to things like your
    heart rate, and do heart rate monitors and breathing monitors. In fact, you can
    tie to your EEG brainwave monitors to be able to measure the response of the
    customer service agents, so that they can stay calm and be able to give the
    proper response. So something like that.

    Also, there could be empathy training.

    Going back to the officers, they have officers who recently, in the last few
    years, there’s been a lot of issues with officers and violence towards some of
    the assailants. And now, if they put the officers actually on the other side –
    they actually are the ones being accosted by the officers – they then, when
    they come out, they can actually have more empathy for the potential assailant
    and not try to be as hostile, or have a much calmer demeanor when dealing with
    them. So it can be used for both dangerous and hard-to-create situations, or it
    can be used to create empathy.

    Alan:

    Absolutely. I think that’s a really great point. Empathy training,
    you know, and I think it was Chris Milk who coined the phrase, “VR is the
    ultimate empathy machine,” and he’s really kind of pushed that. And kind
    of a fun fact: Chris Milk was actually the first person to ever show me VR.

    Alvin:

    That’s something to be proud of. Well, I mean, he’s done a lot with
    his various documentary films, trying to bring VR to a larger group of people.
    In fact, now, I think the films that he had made, if you put those into our
    6DOF volumetric player, they’d actually bring even closer to the people that he
    was filming.

    Alan:

    Incredible. I love the fact that it’s just a player. I mean, it’s
    all built in and it just works. I think it’s gonna be a huge hit for you guys.
    I want to just ask you a personal question: What is the most impressive
    business use case of virtual and augmented reality that you’ve seen so far? You
    talked about Bell Helicopters. What is the most impressive one that you’ve seen
    personally?

    Alvin:

    I mean, I think… I’ve seen so many, so I honestly feel like every
    one I’ve seen is impressive in a different way, and people have utilized it.
    You have people who have who have prevented various levels of potential damage,
    from mispractice for doctors. Or you have people who have taught kids, you
    know, things that would be impossible at their age level. Or you have, like
    you’re saying, vehicles that are created in one fraction of the time. Just,
    every use case I’ve seen comes out with a level of results that far outweighs
    anything that I’ve seen with other practices. Right? So, I just feel that there
    is almost limitless possibilities of utilizing this technology, to make the
    work process more efficient for almost any industry. And that’s what’s most
    exciting, because every time I see a customer, or I talk to a channel partner,
    or I go visit an investor, I hear stories that I’m just amazed at.

    Alan:

    It’s incredible. You know, you mentioned more efficient but I also
    think, you know, less mundane. You did a TED Talk last year, where you
    described VR and how VR can unlock us from the mundane work and education
    systems of today, and give us new challenges that will expand our minds and
    create untold wealth and prosperity. And you asked a question at the end of
    your TED Talk: how would you spend your time if money and location were not a
    factor? So I sometimes wonder, what parts of our current jobs will be replaced
    by AI and robotics? But more importantly, what new, amazing jobs are going to
    be created that challenge us in ways that we never before imagined? To invent
    new things at a pace we’ve never seen in human history? So, how do you see VR
    changing the world of work as we know it today?

    Alvin:

    I actually think…I think about this question quite a bit, because
    I do believe that within the next 15-20 years, most of the jobs that are out
    there today probably won’t exist, or won’t need to exist, because machines will
    do it better than we do, and do it for less money and at higher quality, in
    which case, we need to find something else that we’re going to be more suited
    to do.

    The fact that VR can train us to

    become skilled in almost anything, and to do it faster, because all the
    research out there clearly shows that VR is probably the most effective means
    for us to put information into our brains and to have it stay there. Both
    because of the ability to use your full brain to learn – to be actively
    participating in the learning – versus using just your ears or your eyes to
    bring information in, but also the fact that, by being focused, you’re not
    distracted by other things around you, and also the fact that it can put you
    into environments that would be impossible for you to understand. Let’s say you
    want to understand subatomic particles; if you could put yourself to be the
    size of a subatomic particle, and see the interactions and feel the
    interactions between these particles, that helps you to understand quantum
    physics a lot better than if you were just being told something, you know, and
    there’s a little picture on the blackboard.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting you say that, because I got to try a VR experience
    where it was looking at carbon, and I was at the molecular level looking at a
    piece of carbon in a diamond format, versus a graphene sheet. And it showed the
    way it’s the same molecules, but they’re stacked a different way. I really got
    the spatial understanding of what that means, and I could draw it out on paper
    now that I’ve seen it. I think this is going to unlock a new era of everything
    in education, and my personal mission is to inspire and educate future leaders
    to think and act in a socially, economically, and environmentally-sustainable
    way. And I think the current education systems do a great job of preparing
    people for jobs, but those jobs are not going to be there. So I think virtual
    and augmented reality will hyper-accelerate the learning path for children and
    everybody to really find their purpose, and their mission and passions. And I
    think that can really drive humanity forward.

    Alvin:

    I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, just this morning when I posted
    that new study about the concentration level in education, I had a person
    respond to me and say, “oh, you know, but there’s just not enough budget
    to invest in these devices; they’re just too expensive, and we don’t have the
    money for it.” But you know, at the end of the day, if you look at what’s
    going on in most of the developed countries in the world, the countries are
    spending somewhere between 3 to 5 per cent of total GDP of the country on
    education, but they’re doing a pretty poor job at it because everybody is
    teaching kids how to take tests. They’re not teaching kids how to learn.

    If we change the mindset to say, instead of

    having bigger buildings and nicer computers and bigger whatever, nicer chairs,
    if we give them this equipment that helps them to unleash the genius that’s in
    every single child, I think that’s the part that is worth investing in. There’s
    a quote from Warren Buffett, that the best investment you can make is in
    yourself, is in educating yourself. So I think in terms of a society, that
    should be our number one investment. Instead of buying a new car, it probably
    makes more sense to buy a headset that can then teach you and your kids how to
    be smarter in everything that you’re interested in; to learn a language in a
    matter of weeks instead of years. That’s the kind of things that’s possible.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting that you touched on priorities and budgeting. I
    don’t get involved in these political things, but the US military budget is $600
    billion. That’s enough to give every person in the US, I don’t know, three or
    four VR headsets? So I mean, you know, there’s that.

    Alvin:

    It’s not that there isn’t the money. It’s about how we prioritize
    that money. And that’s something that there needs to be more education out
    there to the decision-makers, to the policymakers, so that they can understand
    the benefit of this. And it’s not that expensive. I mean, a device like the
    VIVE Focus Plus, we’re talking about $800, and you can do everything you can do
    a few years ago with a PC-based VR that was several thousand dollars. So the
    costs are already coming down. And from a usability perspective it’s even
    easier. It takes a few minutes to set up instead of a few hours set up. It
    takes a few seconds, you put it on and you’re in VR, instead of several
    minutes. So in every aspect, the devices today are superior to the ones just
    three years ago.

    Alan:

    It’s amazing, when I started in VR in 2015, we used to carry around
    a giant computer, and the Oculus DK1 I think, or DK2 – we’d carry it around,
    and it would take 40 minutes to set it up, and oh my God. It was a disaster.
    And that was just to be able to put it on someone’s head and say, hey, check it
    out. So we’ve come a long way.

    Alvin:

    Yes. I think if you put on a Focus device, a Focus Plus, I think
    you’ll feel so much more efficient, in terms of telling the VR story.

    Alan:

    Absolutely.

    Alvin:

    Because as you know, with VR, if you don’t get people in the
    headset, they don’t fully understand.

    Alan:

    It’s like explaining the color red to somebody who’s blind.

    Alvin:

    Yes. So that’s why we have to let that process, to put this device
    in front of people, so much easier. The easier it is, the more people will try
    it; the more people try it, the more people will believe it and understand.

    Alan:

    Absolutely. So, I really want to thank you so much for taking the
    time to come on the show and explain the transformative power of
    virtual/augmented/mixed reality, or XR technologies, to the business community.
    My final question today: How would you spend your time if money and location
    were not a factor?

    Alvin:

    You know what? I’d probably spend a lot of the ways I would do
    today, but probably more on the investment and the mentoring side of it. I
    spend a lot of time right now managing my team, and getting our products out,
    and doing the messaging and sales and marketing and all of that, whereas
    another part of my job is to work with startups, and that’s the part that I get
    the most personal fulfillment out from, is that. When I talk to these young
    entrepreneurs and are able to help them clarify their stories, help them be
    able to get funding, help them realize their dreams. If the other piece of my
    work was less of what I did, I would have more time to focus on the more
    personal aspect of these one-on-one mentorships for the various potential
    portfolio companies, or just startups in general. I just really like spending
    time with people who are passionate about what they’re doing, and who have a
    shared dream of trying to change the world in some way.

    Alan: It’s

    amazing. And before we hit record today, I told you about what we’re working
    on, and I think our visions and our passions are fully aligned. So, I want to
    again thank you so much for taking the time to come on this podcast. This has
    been amazing. Do you have any final words?

    Alvin: If you

    haven’t tried VR, go try it. If you have, go and take it and bring it into your
    company, and really start piloting and experimenting. If you’ve already piloted
    it, then start deploying, because it is probably going to be the highest ROI
    investment you’ll make, at least in the next few years. So good luck out there.

    54 min
  • Massive XR Environments and Transforming Education with Alvin Wang Graylin
    The latest generation of XR technologies introduces radical new capabilities, from multi-user tracking in massive spaces, to 6DOF standalone headsets, to the ability to track hands, eyes, and lips. HTC's Alvin Wang Graylin discusses what this means for everything from automotive design to helping children learn about the universe.
    Alvin Wang Graylin is an industry leader, evangelist and passionate driver of XR technologies, particularly virtual reality. As the China President at HTC, he leads all aspects of the company's VR and smartphone business in the region.
    Alan: Today's guest is an industry leader, evangelist and passionate driver of XR technologies, and particular virtual reality, Mr. Alvin Wang-Graylin. Mr. Graylin is the China President at HTC, leading all aspects of the Vive/VR (VIVE.com) and the Smartphone businesses in the region. For those of you not familiar with HTC Vive, VIVE is a first-of-its-kind virtual reality platform, built and optimized for room-scale VR and true-to-life interactions. Delivering on the promise of VR with game-changing technology and best-in-class content, VIVE has created the strongest ecosystem for VR hardware and software, bringing VR to consumers, developers and enterprises alike.
    He is also currently Vice-Chairman of the Industry of Virtual Reality Alliance (IVRA.com) with 300+ company members, President of the $18B Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance (VRVCA.com) and oversees the Vive X VR Accelerators (VIVEX.co) in Beijing, Shenzhen and Tel Aviv. Mr. Graylin was born in China and educated in the US. He received his MS in computer science from MIT and MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mr. Graylin graduated top of his department with a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, where he had specialized in VR and AI over two decades ago under the tutelage of VR pioneer Tom Furness.
    Please welcome to the show Mr. Alvin Wang-Graylin.
    Alvin:
    Hi, how are you doing, Alan?
    Alan:
    I'm fantastic. There we go, we got you now. Awesome. Where are you
    calling in from?
    Alvin:
    I'm in Beijing, China.
    Alan:
    Beijing right now. And what time is it? It's gotta be in the middle
    of the night, I think.
    Alvin:
    About 10:30 PM.
    Alan:
    Oh, well thank you so much for taking the time to record this with
    us. I'm going to jump right into it. For the people listening, you know,
    really, really exciting things happening at HTC right now, and you just held
    your fourth annual VIVE Ecosystem Conference, or VEC conference in Shenzhen.
    Can you maybe speak to some of the announcements and how their impact is going
    to really impact business use cases of VR?
    Alvin:
    Yeah, I'm happy to jump right in. We just had our yearly biggest
    conference of the year, and had about a thousand people come in, and about a
    hundred press, and essentially all the industry folks that are in China – and
    actually, quite a few folks from around Asia and even parts of the US – came.
    People, from the developers, from our sales channels, our accessory partners. A
    lot of investment companies, as well as Chinese carriers, governmental
    organizations that are involved with high tech. Essentially, what we do every
    year is gather together all of the leading players in the industry and try to
    create a unified direction. And the key direction that we were trying to point
    to this year is something called multi-mode VR. That's when, you know, VR can
    be used, not just for one way of connecting, but it could be connected to your
    PC. It could be connected to 5G cloud VR. It can be connected to a console, or
    a 360 streaming camera, etc. So it's a very exciting time for us in the
    industry, that these new types of innovation's happening.
    Alan:
    0 min
  • Convergence, Enterprise AR, and Mapping the Inside World with Charlie Fink

    How will the convergence of 5G and AR and artificial intelligence lead to the creation of experiences that no one’s ever imagined? Join Forbes columnist and author Charlie Fink to find out!

    Alan: Hello everybody. Today’s guest is one of my good friends and someone I consider a mentor. XR consultant, columnist, speaker, and author, Mr. Charlie Fink. Charlie Fink is a Forbes columnist and an author of two AR-enabled books – Charlie Fink’s Metaverse: A Guide to VR and AR, and Convergence: How the World Will Be Painted with Data. Charlie is a former Disney, AOL, and AG Interactive executive, famous for coming up with the idea that turned into The Lion King. Charlie was EVP and COO of VR Pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. He was an SVP of AOL Studios and president of the American Greetings Interactive. Charlie founded and exited to venture-backed startups and has produced over 30 award-winning Broadway musicals. Charlie is leading the way in XR for business by covering and reporting on everything XR-related. With that, let’s welcome Charlie Fink.

    Charlie:

    Wow, I don’t know if I can live up to an introduction like that.
    Thank you Alan.

    Alan:

    Oh you’re amazing. You’re amazing and thank you so much for being on
    the show. First of all I want to congratulate you on the launch of your new
    book Convergence, an AR-enabled book about AR. Maybe you can tell us a little
    bit about the book, and why it came to be.

    Charlie:

    Well, we were looking at doing a second edition of the first book
    which sold very well, but it soon became apparent that the AR topic in
    particular had been sort of glossed over in the first book, which was largely
    about VR. So, I started to think about the idea of doing a new book, and I got
    a lot of support for it in the community. In fact, it is a sponsored book,
    meaning I got enough donations that I could afford to write the book and get it
    printed. It’s printed on premium paper and it’s priced high like a textbook at
    fifty dollars – of course it’s filled with an hour of animation – so it’s not a
    normal book and it doesn’t adhere to book economics. So to make it work I
    really needed to build a community of about 100 people around the book, many
    providing augmented scenes and many actually contributing thought leadership
    and reporting. The topic of the book kind of evolved because I, you know,
    originally I was thinking the title would be something like ‘the many modes of
    AR,’ or ‘how the world will be painted with data,’ which is a phrase I coined,
    which suggests a fully-scaleable AR cloud. Which would make the devices we
    use a whole lot more useful and interesting than they are today, where we use
    something called marker-based AR.

    And as I got into the book and editing the

    work of my collaborators, it was clear everyone was talking about the same
    thing, which is this world of ubiquitous, wearable computing. What the final
    form factor will be we can debate, but this idea of a magic-verse based on a
    mirror world became the theme of the book, which is essentially the convergence
    of 5G and AR and artificial intelligence that would manage all of this data for
    you so that it is wanted and contextual. Otherwise, if it’s interrupting you, I
    don’t see how that’s possibly a welcome augmentation, right? It can’t be showing
    you advertising; it has to show you what you want when you want it or where you
    need it. You don’t need to see the weather in front of your eyes spatially,
    although it would be fun from time to time. But the truth is you know what the
    weather is.

    So that became the title of the book,

    Convergence. And if you look at history you know there have been a number of
    moments of sort of platform innovation that launched heretofore unconceived
    ideas. So
    if, for example, look at GPS in a phone, right, there would be no Uber, no
    Seamless. There’s a whole range of services, and GPS is getting better now that
    it’s being married to computer vision, so you can get highly-localized Google
    directions – really accurate, down to a couple of feet.

    So convergence is beginning, right? The combustion

    engine is an example of convergence. What did it enable? Look at steam: it
    enabled factories, it enabled transportation and railroads in the same way that
    GPS and the Internet has essentially created five of the biggest companies in
    the world. So that’s the topic of the book. And of course, it’s filled with
    augmentations, as opposed to the first book, which had kind of a funny cartoon
    series that was made by living pop-ups. This has 50 augmentations, mostly from
    the sponsors. There is a little living pop-ups layered in just because it’s so
    funny and so incredibly well-done.

    Alan:

    It is amazing.

    Charlie: On the topic of technology, so, it’s great to work with them and all the collaborators. We made this book together… although, of course, I had to do that horrible 12 weeks of doing nothing else and sleeping five hours a night in order to ultimately pull it all together with all the pictures; the book is beautifully designed. You know that’s an award-winning design that Porteramic came up with. So I’m feeling good about it, people seem to really like the book. It’s much denser than the first book. I think the first book was 40,000 words; this is 90,000 words. So I would say it’s the most in-depth book about what’s happening in AR and what the trends are today.

    Alan:

    Awesome. So, Charlie, you know, your book really covers a lot. So
    it’s got in there everything from kind of social and social augmentations and
    things like this, but really, for the listeners of this podcast, we want to
    drill down into the business applications of this. In the book, you discuss
    military, telepresence, design and architecture, medical, retail, marketing,
    journalism, social media, entertainment, gaming, and education. Which of these
    do you feel right now holds the greatest business potential and why?

    Charlie:

    Well, enterprise AR just in its infancy, but it transforms anyone
    who’s involved with either the manufacturing process or logistics, which is
    just about every company in the world. So AR is going to make the jobs that
    people are already doing much easier. There will be adoption issues. It’s quite
    inexpensive compared to other methods; it’s no more expensive than an RF gun,
    and it enables all sorts of new functionality like, as you mentioned, see what
    I see. So you can call a remote expert. And again, that’s an innovation that is
    being driven by the camera. You can also do that on a pad or a smartphone, and
    of course the use of the camera and the digitization of real environments
    spatially, you know, is going to enable a whole range of functionality. They’ve
    already got, you know, in your Apple phone, RF detection is already built in.
    That’s the beginning.

    Alan:

    Interesting. So then I think one of the questions that people are
    going to have is, at what point do we go from a mobile device – so, a phone or
    a tablet – and then go to glasses, and where kind of is that divide, and is
    there a solution that basically bridges the gap between that, and what do you
    see as the uptake of glasses versus devices such as iPads?

    Charlie:

    There are two things. One is, glasses allow workers to keep their
    hands free. Glasses allow workers to see schematics and the handwork in the
    same field of view, so that many fewer mistakes are made. When you’re wiring a
    jet, mistakes are…inspection and correction takes as long as the actual
    wiring of the jet. So you’ve got companies like Boeing and Airbus saving tens
    of millions of dollars per jet – I don’t know, Boeing makes 3,000 jets a year –
    so that’s quite extraordinary in terms of the amount of savings, and they have
    a system that they can use themselves and change out the schematics. The
    workers can take a picture of their work when they’re done, so that if a
    mistake is found, the picture could be reviewed, or their picture could be
    reviewed in real time.

    Alan:

    So interesting.

    Charlie:

    Many companies are adapting it for that reason. But, you know,
    companies should select the right tool for the job. Is this a job for Google
    Glass? Is this a job for the Hololens? Or is this something that we can just
    have a worker do on a smartphone?

    Alan:

    It’s interesting that you talk about these different headsets. And
    for the listeners who don’t understand the difference between them, maybe you
    can walk us through kind of the beginning of it. So, you know, maybe a
    phone-based, right up and through to something like the Hololens, and kind of
    what are the differentiations between them?

    Charlie:

    Well, first let me set this up by talking about the difference
    between AR and VR.

    Alan:

    Sure.

    Charlie:

    VR has a lot of fantastic applications in training and simulation.
    That is its most powerful use. And it is quite effective at those things. Of
    course it also has telepresence, so you could be virtually present in a place
    like Egypt – not in real time, but in space and simulation. And a lot of
    companies – anybody who’s got vehicle-based businesses, machine businesses –
    there was a fantastic example, up South by Southwest. The Raymond Corporation,
    which makes forklifts, has created a simulator module that you can clip onto a
    real forklift. You can have that in your warehouse, and whenever you’re
    training a new worker, you have them spend a few hours on the simulator.

    Alan:

    That’s awesome.

    Charlie:

    So that’s what VR is good for, right? It fully includes the world
    and creates a new reality in which you can be present. So that’s a very
    powerful quality that it has, and again, it’s a platform and people are
    innovating. But the success seems to be, right now, limited to both medical
    applications and training applications. There are some games and social
    experiences. I mean, there are millions of people going into Rec Room. So, it has some
    social benefits, you know, because that’s not a game – that’s an experience.
    Not to say that games can’t be experienced. But in my opinion, I don’t think
    the killer app of virtual reality is games.

    But let’s now switch to the topic of

    augmented reality, which is really what this conversation is about. It’s much
    more broadly applicable to business than VR. They’re both technologies that
    that share some things in common, but largely are separate. Because you need
    the real world in order to augment it.

    Alan:

    Absolutely. What you’re saying here is virtual reality is great for
    kind of those before you’re on the site – so, training, and then maybe remote
    collaboration for design, maybe? And then AR is more on the practical side of
    your everyday work.

    Charlie:

    Yeah that’s one way to think about it. In other words, think about
    it on a spectrum of immersion… although that doesn’t really make sense. Let’s
    start out with the basic device, right? You can do a lot of the things we’re
    talking about – see what I see with remote experts, documentation, geo-located
    instructions – you can do all that with a smartphone, right? That’s cheapest,
    because the worker already has a pad or a smartphone with them. So no
    retraining required. This is not a worker who necessarily has to have their
    hands free in order to read the information that they need.

    Charlie:

    So the cheapest and the simplest is, of course, in many cases, all
    that’s necessary. You have to look at the segment specific-elements of it that
    can be augmented. Not everything in the business process is going to be
    benefited by augmented reality. Of course, anybody who has a warehouse can be
    hugely benefited, because you take the functionality of that pad, the barcode,
    the RF gun, and you put it all in a head-mounted display. So that’s actually a
    fantastic use case, and there are a lot of companies focused on exactly that: warehousing
    and logistics. Because augmented reality is so effective, and they use
    something called the monocular micro display, which is really a tiny TV set
    hanging out there in your peripheral view, and you’re mostly looking past it,
    but you can focus on it when you need it.

    Alan:

    Kind of like heads-up instructions.

    Charlie:

    Yeah it’s Google Glass. You know, there are a lot of
    companies that probably people on this podcast have never heard of, nor do they
    need to know their names, that make monocular micro displays. Some of them,
    like Vuzix, are as popular as Google Glass. They make something called the
    M300, which is very popular. So, the next kind of augmented reality is called
    Reflective AR, and this is where you’re using your smartphone, but you’re
    balancing the image or the information on some kind of projection surface in
    front of your face. And that is actually similar to the way the Hololens works,
    except the Hololens is filled with sensors, and is aware of your environment, and
    it has advanced optics which can place 3D objects in your field of view.

    Alan:

    So give us an example of why that would be important, where you need
    to be contextually aware and why you would need 3D data.

    Charlie:

    Let’s go back to the wiring of the jet.

    Alan:

    OK.

    Charlie:

    And I’ll talk about something that Lockheed does. You put the
    Hololens on, and it can place on each peg what wire goes in it. Why can it do
    that? It has much better, more sophisticated sensors. So that’s a better tool
    for that job in a certain respect. But it’s much more intrusive, it’s heavier,
    it’s harder to wear for a long period of time. Whereas a monocular micro
    display can clip one to your helmet.

    Alan:

    Interesting. So give us an example of, you know, maybe some
    companies – you said Lockheed Martin is using spatially-aware headsets to kind
    of overlay instructions and data on top of the real world. Give an example of
    maybe a company that you know of that’s this monocular display. You talked
    about Vuzix and I think there’s you know there’s other–

    Charlie:

    Vuzix is one. Kopin is one, but they made a reference design that
    they’re hoping other companies like RealWear will adapt and manufacture and
    market.

    Alan:

    Maybe describe RealWear to everybody.

    Charlie:

    RealWear is a company that is associated with Kopin, and uses their
    reference design to create a monocular micro-display. But they house it…
    their trick is the way they house it, is industrial-grade. So it clips on to,
    for example, work glasses. Let’s say you were doing welding: you know, it
    incorporates easily, those kinds of practical uses.

    Alan:

    I’ve actually tried it at CES, they had it in a work helmet.

    Charlie:

    Yes, I saw that too, and also when they walked on stage at AWE last
    May, one of the guys was in a hazmat suit.

    Alan:

    Interesting.

    Charlie:

    So it’s a very versatile, rugged device that they made using
    somebody else’s technology, but their industry knowledge and their
    understanding of the customer needs.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting, because I think we’re going to see a lot of this,
    where you have hardware manufacturers like Kopin, and for people who don’t
    know, Kopin a display manufacturer that makes micro displays for these types of
    glasses and headsets; I believe they make parts for the for the Vuzix Blade,
    and they make different parts for different people’s glasses. But there’s gonna
    be the makers of the of the actual hardware, but then there’s going to be
    solutions providers, like companies like Upscale, where they’re actually
    providing kind of the software back-end and other companies–

    Charlie:

    They are Reflect. There’s a whole class of companies that I call
    “consulting integrators.”

    Alan:

    Got it.

    Charlie:

    So they’ve got a platform that they’re going to leave behind them.
    They’re going to work with the client to identify the need, the right tools for
    the job, and then they leave them with a SAS platform that’s object-oriented,
    meaning you don’t need to be a programmer to update the app.

    Alan:

    Absolutely.

    Charlie:

    Of course, then they get recurring revenue, and that’s really what
    everybody wants in media today.

    Alan:

    So maybe you can, in the interest of the listeners and getting
    straight to the point of value creation, what are some of the companies – you
    mentioned a couple there – what are some of the companies that are offering
    this service? Because I know coming up in other episodes of this podcast we’ll
    be interviewing these different companies, so what are some of the companies
    that you are seeing that are–

    Charlie:

    Depends on the vertical, right? They’re sort of dividing it up by
    vertical.

    Alan:

    Got it.

    Charlie:

    So you’ve got a company like Visualix out of Germany that is
    specifically looking at geo-location in warehouses; micro geo-location. So it’s
    using edge computing, it’s identifying a box down to six inches. So you’re
    driving the forklift and it’s giving you directions to the box and everything
    is automatic. And it tracks the changes in the environment. So that’s one
    example. You have Reflect, which is focused largely on the industrial
    aftermarket and large equipment and integrating CAD. Occipital does that as
    well. Scope AR, you know, is a broad integrator, like Upscale, that has clients
    in a lot of different verticals. And then of course the big daddy that really
    doesn’t get talked about as much is PTC, which is a 10-billion dollar,
    publicly-traded company focused, I would say, probably 65 per cent, two thirds,
    on augmented reality. And then they have a legacy CAD business that has
    different forms for them, and still is a lot of their revenue. Right? But a lot
    of what they did was say, ‘why can’t we bring these CADs into the real world?’
    Think of the application for architecture and design on-site. To see their
    buildings in place before they break ground.

    Alan:

    Interesting. We’ve talked a lot about kind of the industrial and
    enterprise applications, but you were just at South by Southwest for the launch
    of your book. Can you maybe talk about some of the the marketing applications,
    or some of the things that you saw there, that were maybe not as industrialised
    for listeners that are in marketing or in sales or in training or HR; what are
    some of the other aspects of this technology that are being used that you’ve
    seen?

    Charlie:

    Anything that uses your camera is inherently social. The way companies
    market today is they get their customers to do it for them on social media.
    Obviously they do microtargeting and use Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to
    try and find people in context, but they also use different strategies for
    getting people to make content for them. And this is an example of the camera
    as a platform enabling things that were heretofore impossible.

    Amazon Prime has a series coming up called

    Good Omens, which is about angels and devils among us in the days before the
    apocalypse. And it’s a comedy. And they set up a compound that people waited in
    line hours to get into, and it was sort of a Garden of Earthly Delights, if you
    will, where you could post it in different stations and take selfies, and you
    uploaded them to get prizes. They had a big leaderboard of all the social posts
    that were being made, and they made it as visual as possible. Including when
    you left, having a machine that would take a selfie and post it for you. And
    then, they were walking all around, had costumed characters as angels and
    devils all walking around the convention center, for some experiential
    marketing. It was fantastically well-done activation, it probably cost millions
    of dollars.

    Alan:

    Is this for a new TV show, is that what it’s for?

    Charlie:

    Yeah it’s it’s a series on Amazon.

    Alan:

    Amazing.

    Charlie:

    But companies don’t have, you know, TV commercials don’t really do
    it today, and they’re still very expensive, so that was a way to take 80,000
    influencers, and people were active – you know, generally people who go to
    South by Southwest are thought leaders of some sort in their own social circle.

    Alan:

    This is true.

    Charlie:

    So you see a lot of big companies doing activation. There are always
    the Vox Media, and Vevo, and Dell, and Deloitte all have, you know, big sort of
    houses that they rent, both by the convention center and over on Rainey St.,
    which is across the street from the convention center. There is a street full
    of bars, you know, a lot of little houses that were converted into bars, and
    those get rented by companies – probably, I’m going to guess, for about $25,000
    a day. And they have events there, and they host parties there. Everyone is
    trying to, you know, get in front of the people who are there. And some of them
    are really popular, and they’re free, right? People wait in line to get their
    drink tickets and hear a band. The other thing about Southwest is you do hear a
    lot of amazing music by accident. I was at Flatstock, which is the paper print
    exhibition – posters and big bands. So it’s called Flatstock. And there was a
    Flatstock stage, where there was a band playing: Jonathan from Croatia.

    Alan:

    Okay.

    Charlie:

    He was really pretty good. So, those are the delights of South by
    Southwest. Those things that happen accidentally that weren’t on your schedule
    that you just stumble into.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting.

    Charlie:

    Brands will that too to establish themselves. Now, you asked about
    specifically marketing applications for AR, because all this started with with
    me saying it has to be social. So, Burger King has an app where it’s doing
    computer vision to recognize the advertising of a competitor, and sort of
    deface it in an amusing way.

    Alan:

    I actually posted that the other day and it got 50,000 views in two
    days.

    Charlie:

    Cool. So it’ll get out and, of course, people are using it socially.
    You know, it’s on their camera. They’re record it.

    Alan:

    Really a fun one. I love that.

    Charlie:

    They think it’s cool. So that’s a tremendous amount of marketing on
    Burger King’s behalf that is being done by its customers.

    Alan:

    Absolutely. It’s interesting that you brought that one up because,
    you know, of all the crazy things we’ve seen people do with AR from, you know,
    selfie images and all of this, the AR – and for those of you who don’t know,
    Burger King, what they did was they created an app so that if you pointed it at
    their competitor’s advertising, whether it be a billboard or a poster or
    whatever, it burst into flames and gave you a free Whopper, a flame-grilled
    Whopper.

    Charlie:

      They’re using
    computer vision. It’s a really good application.

    Alan:

    So smart. I’m assuming they’re just looking for the logos of their
    competitors and then blowing them up. So what a great–

    Charlie:

    Or they are, you know, texture-mapping or depth-mapping the images
    so that they can trigger the hyper location, right? They know where they are
    physically; they need a kind of mesh to recognize it, if they’re not using a
    marker of some kind, or the logo. Some logos will scan better than others,
    depending on what technology they’re using.

    Alan:

    Absolutely. So let me ask you a question: of all the things that
    you’ve seen – in your new book here, you’ve gotten military applications,
    you’ve got retail applications, you’ve got – what do you think is that
    so-called ‘killer app’ of augmented reality, what is that? And you know it’s
    funny, because I wrote an article about augmented reality’s first killer app,
    but I’m interested to know what your thought is on the first killer app of
    this, in business.

    Charlie:

    I don’t think we…well, I mean, in business, remote experts and
    work instructions and wayfinding in warehouses are the three really big ones.

    Alan:

    So maybe let’s let’s unpack that. So the first one is remote
    instruction.

    Charlie:

    Well that’s where you, remote instructions, right? That was my
    wiring diagram from earlier.

    Alan:

    So one of the things that–

    Charlie:

    Any worker who’s looking at schematics can benefit from having the
    schematics in the field of view of the handwork.

    Alan:

    One of the things that we saw early on was kind of a
    ‘see-what-I-see,’ being able to call in an expert and–

    Charlie:

    Yeah, take a low-skill worker and turn them into a high-skill
    worker. So, you know, the low-skill workers is on the factory floor; the
    high-skill worker is in the office. So call your supervisor. He doesn’t have to
    walk 10 minutes to find you and, or, you know. So the see-what-you-see is
    powerful and useful.

    Alan:

    I agree.

    Charlie:

    And also the ability to document the work in a hands-free way.

    Alan:

    That’s very important. So shifting gears slightly, you know, and
    this is interesting, it’s in your book as well: A recent study commissioned by
    Microsoft in the Harvard Business Review showed that 87 per cent of
    correspondants that they interviewed are currently exploring, piloting, or
    deploying mixed reality in their company workflows. What I want to know is, is
    this congruent with what you’re seeing and hearing in the field?

    Charlie:

    At big companies that have innovation offices? It is true. And there
    are a lot of integrators out there. The big consulting companies that are
    evangelizing this in various companies, it’s starting to be something that they
    do.

    Alan:

    So there’s, you know, the Deloittes and the Accentures of the world,
    is that you’re talking about?

    Charlie:

    Correct. Correct. But they’re looking at, you know, because they
    have Fortune 500 clients. And their clients aren’t super cost-sensitive. Again,
    look at the savings that Boeing yielded working with Upscale. They liked them
    so much they invested in the company, because it was obvious to them how many
    applications there would be, and in fact they’re going factory-by-factory and
    figuring it out. But, you know, the pace of change in a company like Boeing is
    extraordinarily small…er, extraordinarily large! So that’s partly what the
    Innovation Office does, they kind of figure out what’s out there and try and
    evangelize it to colleagues. Sometimes on their own, sometimes with the help of
    the CIO, or just depends on how the company is approaching it. But I think the
    companies that Microsoft included in the survey were those large companies that
    have innovation offices. But, you know, you’re talking about, you know, one per
    cent of their workflow is being assisted by augmented reality. This kind of
    augmented reality that we’re largely talking about with micro displays are no
    longer, we’re no longer calling it ‘augmented reality’ – we’re calling that
    ‘assisted reality.’

    Alan:

    Got it.

    Charlie:

    The difference being it doesn’t go through the camera.

    Alan:

    Got it. OK, so that’s just an assisted reality, a heads-up display.
    You know, interestingly, the person who wrote your forward for your new book
    Convergence, Jay Samit, he was the kind of chairman or–

    Charlie:

    He’s still, right now, the non-executive vice chairman.

    Alan:

    –Non-executive vice chairman of Deloitte Digital. And in their–

    Charlie:

    Yeah, they deploy him when they need him.

    Alan:

    Interesting.

    Charlie:

    He’s like a weapon in their quiver, and he knows a lot of people. I
    would expect Jay is actually helping them with sourcing clients.

    Alan:

    Absolutely. He’s a very, very well-known innovator.

    Charlie:

    He also is a fantastic speaker and one of the nicest guys you’ll
    ever meet.

    Alan:

    Yeah. I’m hoping to have him on the podcast.

    Charlie:

    –who I used to work for years ago. He seems to be living a few
    years into the future, so it’s always exciting to get his perspective of what’s
    going on.

    Alan:

    So speaking of looking into the future, somebody else who’s kind of
    looking to the future that you’ve been covering in your Forbes articles is
    Magic Leap, and their CEO, Rony. Maybe you can discuss kind of what their big
    vision is – because I know you’ve spent some quite a lot of time with them, and
    you’ve written several articles about their vision for the future – and how do
    you see them relating to kind of the business applications of XR technologies?

    Charlie:

    Well, a few things about Magic Leap, just to describe it for your
    readers who don’t know: they use a multi-planer system to place objects in-depth.
    That is its most unique aspect of the optical technology that they have, right?
    They know how far away things are. That’s part of the beauty of their sensors.
    They haven’t yet–

    Alan:

    Be honest; when you first put it on in and you hear a sound come
    from behind you, and it sounds like it should be 10 feet away, and you look and
    something is 10 feet away – it’s incredible.

    Charlie:

    Right. You place digital objects and they remain anchored where
    you’ve placed them. It does games where they, you know, anchor on a wall and
    then things come through the hole in the wall. It’s a very, very clever system
    that took them over five years to pull together because there were so many
    issues that had to be solved. Along the way they raised over 3 billion dollars,
    which is quite remarkable since most of their plans were secret.

    Alan:

    Let’s just kind of… you know, 3 billion dollars they raised as a
    startup.

    Charlie:

    Right, and they raised it. And part of the story there is who they
    raised it from. Google put in 500 million dollars. Once they did that, it
    activated a lot of large investors, including Disney and Warner Brothers, and
    AT&T, and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. They also have the
    largest investment companies in the world investing in them and they don’t
    expect to make money for at least 10 years.

    Alan:

    Incredible. So they’re taking the long route.

    Charlie:

    They’re taking the Amazon route.

    Alan:

    Do you think that…

    Charlie:

    Amazon is basically still not profitable.

    Alan:

    Do you think 3 billion is enough?

    Charlie:

    Probably not. But they’re getting a lot of traction, so they’ll be
    able to raise more money at a more realistic valuation because so much more
    will be known by the market. But I think they could go several years on the
    money they have now. Magic Leap a lot of great people running off doing
    different things. They’re in education. They’re pushing hard for enterprise.
    They recognize that those kinds of applications in the near-term, because
    they’re more expensive, are going to be the ones used most frequently. In the
    long term they see a consumer platform that has some powerful A.I. in it and
    can function well in a fully-5G environment. I think the beauty of Magic Leap
    is this whole idea of spatial computing, which you describe very well a couple
    of minutes ago. They have, the past several years, been evangelizing this
    vision. It hasn’t always been clear to people what the heck they were talking
    about, but their vision is a 3D world in which digital objects and information
    cohabit the world with us. So imagine walking down Fifth Avenue and everybody
    walks past you as a cartoon animal and every building is, you know, like Toon Town,
    just to use an example. Those are the kinds of apps that Magic Leap wants to
    enable. But you need ubiquitous, zero-latency wearable computing to do it. So
    that’s their vision. And they’re thinking, the final form factor they’re
    thinking is very light and not terribly different from the glasses you’re
    already wearing. But they’re also thinking, it’s not necessarily the device,
    right? It’s the layers. The Magic-verse is where the value is. And you might
    project that from a watch onto a projection surface. We don’t know what the
    form factor is going to be. And they’re hedging, because they know they don’t
    know. But they’re using the optical system and the infrastructure that they’re
    building to build this 3D twin of the world in which content can be realistically
    anchored and persist for the next person who sees it.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting you mention that, because, you know, recently Kevin
    Kelly released an article on Wired called ‘Mirrorworld,’ talking about how we
    would have an exact duplicate of the entire planet, and if you look at what
    Google’s done over the last 20 years, or 10 years I guess, they’ve really taken
    a depth map and full, comprehensive view of the entire external world that we
    live in…

    Charlie:

     Google Maps maybe one of the
    biggest digital assets in the world.

    Alan:

    Absolutely. And the one thing that people don’t realize is that
    Google Maps has a map of the entire planet on the outside; they don’t have the
    inside world. So I think there’s gonna be a huge opportunity for companies like
    Magic Leap, and maybe Apple and Amazon and Google, to capture a point cloud or
    a version – a mirror world – of every part of our lives, from the inside of our
    house, to our offices, to buildings. What are your thoughts on that, and
    companies like 6d.ai that are kind of pioneering this as well?

    Charlie:

    6d.ai is an interesting company. They have an augment in the book
    and we’re one of the sponsors; the CEO and co-founder of the company Matt
    Miesnieks, a former Samsung executive who also is part of a well-known AR
    venture capital fund, Super Ventures. In his travels, he became exposed to this
    technology and started thinking about this notion of using everybody’s depth
    data and point clouds, and stitching them together on the back end to create a
    digital twin of the world, that mirror world, that you could place augmented
    reality on top of a within. So there are two things that we’re really talking
    about, right? One is the mirror world, and the other is the AR which gets
    anchored to it spatially.

    Alan:

    Interesting.

    Charlie:

    And Magic Leap calls that the Magic-verse, or Ian Barr calls it the
    Wikipedia for the real world, and I call it a world painted with data. All the
    data, which will be like anchoring pictures of food where you take them right?
    So this is the end of the news feed, which goes by at 100 miles an hour.
    Instead, it will be the age of contextual content. So you want to take a
    picture of food and you’ll add a little review a friend who’s in the same
    restaurant a year later.

    Alan:

    Incredible. Absolutely.

    Charlie:

    So it’s pretty exciting. But we’re… again, a mirror world is
    talking about the twin, right? It’s talking about infrastructure. The AR cloud,
    or the magic-verse, or the layers that Magic Leap refers to as the content of
    the services that sit on top of that. Again, let’s go back to the combustion
    engine enabling, you know, the car and the airplane. So the combustion engine
    is the thing – the person who made the combustion engine didn’t think, this is
    going to make air travel possible.

    Alan:

    No, absolutely.

    Charlie:

    Right? But but it was extremely disruptive new technologies that,
    you know, like the camera, like GPS, enabled fantastic new services.

    Alan:

    One of the things that I think is really intriguing is this idea
    that, once you have the magic-verse, or this, you know, the capture of the
    mirror world, who actually owns that three dimensional space? And you know,
    it’s interesting, we’re doing a virtual and augmented reality association
    meet-up on the legal aspects, or the looking through the legal lens of this
    technology, and you know something like the Burger King example where Burger
    King is using their competitors’ advertisings to advertise their products. And
    I mean, what are the legal implications around using three dimensional space,
    and will it be more… give more agency to the end user, so that they can
    decide what they see versus what advertisers want them to see?

    Charlie:

    Well anything that you can see in public is public domain, right?
    You can’t say, the front of my building is so unique that you may not
    photograph it, right?

    Alan:

    That’s true, but I can’t go over it…

    Charlie:

    When you get inside a building, now I think you’re in a legal gray
    zone, right? Is the inside of a mall a public place? Or does the mall owner own
    that data?

    Alan:

    Interesting. That’s a really good point.

    Charlie:

    Of course, in your private place, there’ll be all sorts of security
    protocols that you can opt in and out of. But anybody who walks through your
    house can make a map of some sort, so that’s a very different matter, right? I
    don’t think people are going to be comfortable with other people knowing where
    everything is in their house. But any kind of a magic-verse is going to be
    governed by a filter. That’s where the AI comes in. In order to see the burning
    McDonald’s sign, you have to activate that filter, say, ‘yes you can show me
    that.’

    Alan:

    Interesting.

    Charlie:

    But it has to be a permission-based system. Let’s say, I mean,
    there’s going to be a ton of graffiti. There will be graffiti apps and, you
    know, graffiti layers, if you will. Maybe people will turn them on or off for
    entertainment. They’ll be in a park. They’ll see it’s there. Right? There has
    to be a detection system that tells you when content is proximate to you and
    ask if you want to see it. But it would be so many questions, it would be so
    intrusive. The machine has to know; the computer has to know. So that’s
    artificial intelligence, where it’s integrating what it’s learning with what it
    knows.

    Alan:

    So, Charlie, you’ve mentioned a couple of technologies. You’ve
    mentioned 5G, AR, and now artificial intelligence. How do they all work
    together? Because I think what people don’t realize is that, as we enter this
    kind of exponential age or phase of technology where they all kind of coalesce
    together, you’re gonna have all of these different technologies working
    together, and you can’t really look at augmented reality without 5G, without
    IoT sensors (or Internet of Things sensors)…

    Charlie:

    Right, and what you’re talking about is what the technology people
    call a stack; what could be in the stack? Computer vision, geo-location…
    sensors, sensors, sensors. It’s all about sensors. And what I would say is, a
    sensor does not need to be head-mounted, right? A sensor could be on your
    lapel, and you could be wearing some Bose spacial sound glasses that have your
    prescription in them, and it could be telling you what you need to know rather
    than disrupting your field of view. And they’re quite extraordinary, because
    you’re the only one who hears them, even though you don’t have your earplugs
    in. And they are spatial, as we were describing the Hololens, or the Magic Leap
    device; the creator’s edition, which is their developer edition. So the current
    version of the Magic Leap is $2,300 and it’s focused on programmers and pro-sumers.

    Alan:

    Interesting. Shifting focuses a little bit to something that I saw
    on the Hololens 2 launch that, I think, is personally going to be a really
    killer app for businesses, and that’s telecommunication or remote
    communication; something like Spatial – the company Spatial –  that kind of came out of stealth recently and
    introduced this amazing ability to have virtual people in your space. So I
    could have a meeting with you in virtual space and you and I could see each
    other, interact with each other, look into each other’s eyes because it now has
    eye tracking. So maybe talk to the business applications around Spatial and
    what they’re doing.

    Charlie:

    You’re talking about a new startup called Spatial, which is
    well-funded and staffed by big technology company veterans – although they’re
    still quite young – and it creates an avatar for the user, no matter what
    device they’re using. And the avatar is generally based on your social media
    presence. So, they built my avatar, when I went to visit them, out of my
    Twitter picture. And then they use a real-time AI to kind of predict, based on
    that picture, what the rest of you looks like.

    Alan:

    Amazing.

    Charlie:

    So, a very uncanny resemblance – although it’s not photographic,
    it’s graphic. It’s cartoon. Just like Facebook does something similar in
    Facebook spaces for virtual reality.

    Alan:

    But is it creepy? Because you mentioned uncanny, and for those of
    you who don’t know, there’s a term called…

    Charlie:

    No, it’s not like, you know, those realistic Hanson robots, whatever
    that–

    Alan:

    Yeah, what’s her name?

    Charlie:

    That one is a little creepy, but it’s a really dumb person. They’re
    trying to make Robbie the Robot, right? Or that alien helper, or the cyborg
    helper in the Aliens movies. That’s never going to happen. That’s a
    technology… that’s alien technology. We’re so far away from that, you know,
    my grandchildren won’t see it.

    Alan:

    So do you think Spatial, the solution that they’re providing, where
    you can have collaboratively–

    Charlie:

    It’s very compelling. I mean, you do get a genuine sense of
    presence, no matter what device you’re using. Obviously it’s best in a more
    immersive headset like the Magic Leap or Hololens But even people who are using
    their pads, know, feel like they’re there. And of course, you then have the
    point-of-view of your avatar; you’re not seeing yourself. You can go into 3-D
    mode, but typically you’re yourself. You’re present. And it uses the tone of
    your voice to create gestures, and is generally pretty good as a remote
    collaboration platform. You could bring in YouTube, you could move the screens
    around, you could bring in 3D objects, you can walk around them, you can walk
    closer to someone. So it really does have a very, very strong sense of
    presence, especially for an augmented reality device where you’re still
    anchored in your home or office.

    Alan:

    Do you think it’s going to replace travel for business? Or not
    replace, but maybe decrease–?

    Charlie:

    It will augment it.

    Charlie:

    What we’re seeing, right, is that it’s slowly creeping in to apps we
    use every day, such as social media filters, and people don’t say that it’s
    augmented reality. They say it’s face filters. They don’t say it’s facial
    recognition filters. Those are words that consumers don’t need to know. I mean,
    every extra word is explaining, and explaining is bad.

    Alan:

    So, I know you, I know your opinion on this, but since you just hit
    on it, what do you think about this term ‘XR,’ as a catch-all phrase for
    virtual, augmented, and mixed reality?

    Charlie:

    I think it’s useful, to be honest. I have my…objections to it,
    which is it just conflates all these technologies, which is super unhelpful,
    because there are many, many modes of AR. On the other hand, if you’re writing
    about it, or writing a book about it, it’s convenient to say XR instead of
    AR/VR. And is AR/VR even that accurate? I have been railing against it, because
    I really think there’s so much misunderstanding out there. Another XR, or
    another ‘R,’ I should say, and now we’ve included diminished reality, and as I
    said earlier, assisted reality. So I don’t like all these R’s, I don’t like
    ‘XR,’ but I’m done fighting about it? Ori Inbar, in his keynote at AWE 2018,
    said, ‘go XR or go home.’

    Alan:

    Yeah, I read that in your book, actually.

    Charlie:

    Once he said that, I mean, I kind of lost. I know other people feel
    as I do, so I’m not alone. I think I’m in a distinct minority, but it’s over.
    There seems to be a rear guard action I may have ignited. But that’s just going
    to lead to even more confusion.

    Alan:

    Exactly. So–

    Charlie:

    I don’t know about this, other than this is all entre nous. This is
    all inside baseball. Most people don’t even need to know that we’re arguing
    about this because, all they care about is what it does–

    Alan:

    What it does for them, and I think that leads me into, kind of, the
    last part of this interview, which I really want to thank you so much for
    taking the time to enlighten our listeners here about the different business
    applications and what’s coming. The question that I have is, then, what do you
    see for the future of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, or XR, as it
    pertains to business? Where do you see as, kind of, the ultimate future of this
    technology?

    Charlie:

    We’d have to look at the development of the personal computer, which
    took 20 years. For a long time, people didn’t think they applied to them at
    work, and eventually you had to have them. And then people started to learn
    about the Internet and e-commerce, and they said, oh it’s it’s got an
    application that is for me personally. And don’t forget, in the mid 90s people
    started to feel that if they didn’t have email, and if they didn’t have a
    website if you were an entrepreneur, that you didn’t exist, or you feared you
    wouldn’t exist. So that was creating a lot of FOMO. But I think part of it was
    driven by email, and part of it was driven by e-commerce, and both of those
    enabled by consumer access to the Internet, through dial-up at first and then
    through broadband, which really came around very quickly; you know, by the end
    of the 90s, everybody had a cable modem.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting, I was just mapping kind of the–

    Charlie:

    By the way, the end of the 90s was 20 years .

    Alan:

    Yeah! Oh my goodness.

    Charlie:

    So this could easily take 20 years. I know people are saying five.
    And you know, we’ll see. But it’s going to take some convincing to get a lot of
    people wearing a head-mounted display. I don’t know what the benefit is yet,
    that is powerful enough to get people to do that.

    Alan:

    I agree. I haven’t seen it yet either.

    Charlie:

    But in business, of course, it’s a tool. You just take it off when
    you’re done. It’s not… I will also say this, both about consumer AR and AR
    for industry: AR is not a thing to like or dislike, or do or not do. AR as a
    tool. AR enables tools. AR augments tools, like the personal computer that has
    the schematics on it; well, AR would would make that a little better. You look
    at consumer apps like Google Maps – we talked about the combination of computer
    vision and geo-location, which enables local directions, walking directions, to
    be much more effective than they are right now, because it can tell you where
    to go but… it could tell you where you are, but not how to get there. So that’s
    going to change. Will people walk around saying, oh my god, computer vision and
    augmented reality have made Google Maps much better? Or will I just say, this
    is better Google Maps? Yeah that is cool.

    Alan:

    Exactly.

    Charlie:

    Because that’s how much thought they’re going to give it. So, you
    know, that’s an example of, you know, augmented reality taking things we’re
    doing everyday and making it better, and that’s how it integrates itself into
    your life. And so I think most of the growth of augmented reality, both in
    enterprise and on the consumer side – which will take much longer – you know,
    is going to happen without people calling it anything. It’s just going to be
    better computers, and better tools, and better apps. So augmented reality is a
    quality, or a tool that apps use to be better. So I’m not sure that there’s
    going to be a big parade for augmented reality.

    Alan:

    Definitely not.

    Charlie:

    It’ll be a big parade for better Google Apps.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting…

    Charlie:

    Again, a lot of this conversation is baseball. If you’re not in the
    industry, you don’t care.

    Alan:

    It’s interesting because, you know, Sunder Pichai from Google said,
    you know, the idea is that the very idea of the device is going to fade away.
    So it’ll be less–

    Charlie:

    Invisible computing, that’s true! The device becomes your glasses;
    you’re not even aware of them being special. That’s certainly something that
    our grandchildren will see.

    Alan:

    So, speaking of our grandchildren and looking quite that far out,
    one last thing that I think is an interesting segue into the future is
    brain-computer interfaces, and it’s not something that people are talking
    about, but I think, you know…

    Charlie:

    Elon Musk funded the company to the tune of 40 million dollars
    that’s doing that. We do have implants, right? People who have epilepsy and
    Parkinson’s are getting implants. People have been getting implants in our
    hearts for 30 years. So we already have implants now and we have some in the
    brain. There’s still not a lot known about the brain; it’s usually to treat a
    disease. But, ultimately, you know, there’s a company working on contact
    lenses. My understanding is right now they can put basically a tweet in contact
    lenses. So they may be a ways away…

    Alan:

    Kind of like the North glasses.

    Charlie:

    Well, North glasses are just a reflective system that tells you what
    the weather is and…

    Alan:

    In a tweet.

    Charlie:

    …But, my problem with North – and I love the form factor – is
    just, are going to want to be interrupted like that?

    Alan:

    I have a pair and–

    Charlie:

    I don’t see the benefit.

    Alan:

    –they are a little distracting. I was walking down the street and I
    got a message and thought, how cool is this? I was reading my message, and I
    almost walked into somebody because, even though it’s monocular – meaning one
    eye – both eyes kind of look towards it and I guess over time your brain, kind
    of, you know, can can do both things? But I had just got them, and I’m walking
    down the street, and I’m looking at this message and I literally almost walked
    into some poor woman on the street. So I can see this as being something maybe
    dangerous in driving, especially the first little bit, until you get used to
    that.

    Charlie:

    Yeah, well, I agree. The final form factor is that… that’s another
    argument for sound, by the way. I happen to think Apple’s stealth way into
    augmented reality is not going to be optical going to be based on airpods.

    Alan:

    Yeah it’ll be interesting to see what Apple comes up with. They’ve
    hired a lot, a lot of people. They acquired Matteo and Nirvana and a number of
    other companies. I believe it was Eyefluence or one of the eye-tracking
    companies.

    Charlie:

    Well I mean, my guess is what they’re going to do is going to be a
    spatial AR/VR inter-operable device. But the technology is really not quite
    there yet, in terms of miniaturization and form factor. And, you know,
    Microsoft is really leading the way with sensors, and I don’t think we can
    overemphasize the importance of sensors versus optics.

    Alan:

    Really excited to actually try the new Azure Connect, which is a
    cloud-based connect system. So yeah, you’re–

    Charlie:

    Of course, it’s a way for Microsoft to charge you extra money every
    month.

    Alan:

    They love that.

    Charlie:

    They love that Windows license fee level for enterprise.

    Alan:

    Well, Charlie, thank you so, so much, and everybody, thank you for
    listening. This podcast was another amazing example of how XR technologies are
    revolutionizing business across every industry. You can learn more about
    Charlie and his new book by buying the book Convergence today, by going to
    www.ConvergenceAR.com. And Charlie, thank you again so much for being on the
    show. It’s been an amazing honor.

    Charlie:

    Thank you.

    Alan:

    Thank you so much.

    57 min
  • Convergence, Enterprise AR, and Mapping the Inside World with Charlie Fink
    How will the convergence of 5G and AR and artificial intelligence lead to the creation of experiences that no one's ever imagined? Join Forbes columnist and author Charlie Fink to find out!
    Alan: Hello everybody. Today's guest is one of my good friends and someone I consider a mentor. XR consultant, columnist, speaker, and author, Mr. Charlie Fink. Charlie Fink is a Forbes columnist and an author of two AR-enabled books – Charlie Fink's Metaverse: A Guide to VR and AR, and Convergence: How the World Will Be Painted with Data. Charlie is a former Disney, AOL, and AG Interactive executive, famous for coming up with the idea that turned into The Lion King. Charlie was EVP and COO of VR Pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. He was an SVP of AOL Studios and president of the American Greetings Interactive. Charlie founded and exited to venture-backed startups and has produced over 30 award-winning Broadway musicals. Charlie is leading the way in XR for business by covering and reporting on everything XR-related. With that, let's welcome Charlie Fink.
    Charlie:
    Wow, I don't know if I can live up to an introduction like that.
    Thank you Alan.
    Alan:
    Oh you're amazing. You're amazing and thank you so much for being on
    the show. First of all I want to congratulate you on the launch of your new
    book Convergence, an AR-enabled book about AR. Maybe you can tell us a little
    bit about the book, and why it came to be.
    Charlie:
    Well, we were looking at doing a second edition of the first book
    which sold very well, but it soon became apparent that the AR topic in
    particular had been sort of glossed over in the first book, which was largely
    about VR. So, I started to think about the idea of doing a new book, and I got
    a lot of support for it in the community. In fact, it is a sponsored book,
    meaning I got enough donations that I could afford to write the book and get it
    printed. It's printed on premium paper and it's priced high like a textbook at
    fifty dollars - of course it's filled with an hour of animation - so it's not a
    normal book and it doesn't adhere to book economics. So to make it work I
    really needed to build a community of about 100 people around the book, many
    providing augmented scenes and many actually contributing thought leadership
    and reporting. The topic of the book kind of evolved because I, you know,
    originally I was thinking the title would be something like 'the many modes of
    AR,' or 'how the world will be painted with data,' which is a phrase I coined,
    which suggests a fully-scaleable AR cloud. Which would make the devices we
    use a whole lot more useful and interesting than they are today, where we use
    something called marker-based AR.
    And as I got into the book and editing the
    work of my collaborators, it was clear everyone was talking about the same
    thing, which is this world of ubiquitous, wearable computing. What the final
    form factor will be we can debate, but this idea of a magic-verse based on a
    mirror world became the theme of the book, which is essentially the convergence
    of 5G and AR and artificial intelligence that would manage all of this data for
    you so that it is wanted and contextual. Otherwise, if it's interrupting you, I
    don't see how that's possibly a welcome augmentation, right? It can't be showing
    you advertising; it has to show you what you want when you want it or where you
    need it. You don't need to see the weather in front of your eyes spatially,
    although it would be fun from time to time. But the truth is you know what the
    weather is.
    So that became the title of the book,
    Convergence. And if you look at history you know there have been a number of
    moments of sort of platform innovation that launched heretofore unconceived
    ideas. So
    if, for example, look at GPS in a phone, right, there would be no Uber, no
    Seamless. There's a whole range of services, a
    0 min
  • Welcome to XR for Business with Alan Smithson

    We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time.

    My name is Alan Smithson, and I am going to be your host for the XR for Business podcast where I will interview industry leaders who are either making or using immersive virtual, augmented and mixed reality solutions for business.

    From marketing and sales to logistics and training to design and remote collaboration, you will learn how the world’s largest organizations are implementing an XR For Business strategy and why you should too.

    We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time.

    Anyone of these technologies on their own would be revolutionary but used together, we begin racing towards the Singularity or the point where the exponential curve of technology goes straight up, unlocking unprecedented value in the market.

    Over the next 10 years, more than $1T in value will be created by virtual, augmented & mixed reality (XR). Our goal is to be the central community hub for XR for business and XR For education.

    Our mission is simple: Hyper-Accelerate XR For Business & Education.

    The XR for Business podcast will interview leaders from marketing, manufacturing, retail, training, HR, banking, insurance, emergency services, IT, and of course from virtual, augmented and mixed reality professionals creating the tools we will use to enter into the age of spatial computing.

    The podcast is aimed at inspiring and educating business leaders who are looking for an advantage by leveraging the transformative power of XR.

    This is our way of sharing our years of research, knowledge, successes and failures with you, our listeners in hopes that you will be better able to make sound investments in this technology to help you solve problems that affect us all; unnecessary business travel, retiring workforce, environmental impacts, job upskilling, automation, rapid employee onboarding, knowledge retention, remote operations and so many more. XR is solving these challenges in spectacular order.

    This podcast interviews the world’s top brands across industries from retail and e-commerce to food service, telecommunications and education so you can glean information that is relevant to you.

    Some of the technologies encompassed by the term XR include; 360° video, 3D Volumetric capture, photogrammetry, 3D modelling, virtual, augmented & mixed reality, computer vision, machine learning, and spatial audio, haptics, and even scent machines.

    A little bit about me and how I came to host the XR For Business podcast: I am the Founder and CEO of MetaVRse alongside some very talented people including one I am particularly fond of, my wife and Co-Founder, Julie Smithson. We have been working in XR since 2014 when I first tried the Oculus Rift DK1.

    MetaVRse is a leader in XR Solutions for business. Over the past 4 years, we have made some incredible world firsts; We built the first VR Photobooth™ for Samsung. We built the first Augmented Reality Teleportal for Genesys and Adobe. We made the first commercial WebAR project for Shoppers Drug Mart. We even built an AR app for HBO’s Westworld launch and a augmented reality sandbox for Kubota Tractors. We filmed Niagara Falls, Pride, Groove Cruise, and the Queen’s Plate in 360° video.

    We have consulted for firms in almost every industry; telecom, mining, food service, retail, marketing, e-commerce and education.

    It has been through these experiences that we have built the most incredible community of XR developers, researchers, manufacturers, evangelists, and executives, many of whom you will get to learn from on this show.

    You can learn more about the amazing work our team at MetaVRse is doing by visiting MetaVRse.com.

    Another great initiative is our MetaVRse Ignite program, a 3-month intensive program aimed at taking the top XR startups in the world and providing the network, administration, marketing and sales to take them from startup to scaleup fast. If you are interested in being a partner or you have a startup and you wish to apply, visit XRIgnite.com.

    As a companion to this podcast, you can sign up for our community and keep up to date with our daily blog.

    I truly look forward to sharing the knowledge of industry experts to help you make the most informed decisions about XR in your company.

    Thank you for listening; this has been the XR For Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson, and until next time, AWESOME!

    6 min
  • Welcome to XR for Business with Alan Smithson
    We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time.
    My name is Alan Smithson, and I am going to be your host for the XR for Business podcast where I will interview industry leaders who are either making or using immersive virtual, augmented and mixed reality solutions for business.
    From marketing and sales to logistics and training to design and remote collaboration, you will learn how the world’s largest organizations are implementing an XR For Business strategy and why you should too.
    We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time.
    Anyone of these technologies on their own would be revolutionary but used together, we begin racing towards the Singularity or the point where the exponential curve of technology goes straight up, unlocking unprecedented value in the market.
    Over the next 10 years, more than $1T in value will be created by virtual, augmented & mixed reality (XR). Our goal is to be the central community hub for XR for business and XR For education.
    Our mission is simple: Hyper-Accelerate XR For Business & Education.
    The XR for Business podcast will interview leaders from marketing, manufacturing, retail, training, HR, banking, insurance, emergency services, IT, and of course from virtual, augmented and mixed reality professionals creating the tools we will use to enter into the age of spatial computing.
    The podcast is aimed at inspiring and educating business leaders who are looking for an advantage by leveraging the transformative power of XR.
    This is our way of sharing our years of research, knowledge, successes and failures with you, our listeners in hopes that you will be better able to make sound investments in this technology to help you solve problems that affect us all; unnecessary business travel, retiring workforce, environmental impacts, job upskilling, automation, rapid employee onboarding, knowledge retention, remote operations and so many more. XR is solving these challenges in spectacular order.
    This podcast interviews the world’s top brands across industries from retail and e-commerce to food service, telecommunications and education so you can glean information that is relevant to you.
    Some of the technologies encompassed by the term XR include; 360° video, 3D Volumetric capture, photogrammetry, 3D modelling, virtual, augmented & mixed reality, computer vision, machine learning, and spatial audio, haptics, and even scent machines.
    A little bit about me and how I came to host the XR For Business podcast: I am the Founder and CEO of MetaVRse alongside some very talented people including one I am particularly fond of, my wife and Co-Founder, Julie Smithson. We have been working in XR since 2014 when I first tried the Oculus Rift DK1.
    MetaVRse is a leader in XR Solutions for business. Over the past 4 years, we have made some incredible world firsts; We built the first VR Photobooth™ for Samsung. We built the first Augmented Reality Teleportal for Genesys and Adobe. We made the first commercial WebAR project for Shoppers Drug Mart. We even built an AR app for HBO’s Westworld launch and a augmented reality sandbox for Kubota Tractors. We filmed Niagara Falls, Pride, Groove Cruise, and the Queen’s Plate in 360° video.
    We have consulted for firms in almost every industry; telecom, mining, food service, retail, marketing, e-commerce and education.
    It has been through these experiences that we have built
    0 min

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Meet the leaders who are changing the face of virtual and augmented reality