[iab] Robert Scoble
I’m at a IAB conference in Toronto. The first speaker is Robert Scoble, who I haven’t seen since the early 2000s. He’s working at Upload VR that gives him “a front row seat on what’s coming.”
WARNING: Live blogging. Not spellpchecking before posting. Not even re-reading it. Getting things wrong, including emphasis.
The title of his talk is “The Fourth Transformation: How AR and AI change everything.”
First: The PC.
Second: Mac and GUI. Important companies in the first went away.
Third: Mobile and touch. Companies from the second went away.
We’re now getting a taste of the fourth: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Kids take to VR naturally and with enthusiasm, he notes.
“Most people in the world are going to experience with VR with a mobile phone because the cost advantages of doing that are immense.” This Christmas Google will launch its Tango sensors that map the world in 3D. Early games for the Tango phone will give a taste of AR: mapping the physical space and put virtual things into it. Robert shows what’s possible with the Tango phone. Retail 411 is working on bringing you straight to the product you want in a physical store. This tech will let us build new games, but also, for example, put a virtual blue line on a floor to show you where your meeting is. Or, in a furniture store it can show you the items in a vision of your home.
Robert calls AR “Mixed Reality” because he thinks AR refers to the prior generation.
Vuforia was designed for mobile phones, placing virtual objets in real space. But soon we’ll be doing this with glasses, Robert says. Genesis [?] puts a virtual window on your wall. Click on it, and zombies crawl through it and come toward you.
Magic Leap got huge investments because the optics of the glasses they;re building are so good. He points out that the system knows to occlude images by interfering real world objects, e.g., the couch between you and the zombie.
He shows a Hololens app preview. Dokodemo Teleportation Door, made in Unity. You place a door on the ground. Open it. There’s a polygonal world inside it. Walk through the door and you’re in it.
Robert says Apple ditched the headphone jack in order to put advanced audio computing in your head, replacing ambient sound with processed sound that may include virtual audio.
Eyefluence builds sensors for eyes. Robert shows video of someone navigating complex screens of icons solely with his eyes. “Advertisers will be able to build a new kind of billboard in the street and know who looked at it.” [Oh great.]
ActionGram puts holograms into VR. [If you need a tiny George Takei in your living room — and who doesn’t? — this is for you.]
SnapChat bought a company that puts a camera in glasses. SnapChat is going to bring out a connected camera. It could be the size of a sugar cube.
Sephora has an app that shows you how their makeup looks like on your face, color matched.
Robert talks about the effect on sports. E.g, Nascar has 100+ sensors in cars already Researchers are putting sensors in NFL players’ tags for “next gen stats.”
“We’re in the Apple II stage” of this. It wasn’t great but kicked off a trillion dollar industries. Robert’s been told that we’re two years away, but says maybe it’s four years. “The new Ford cards are all built in virtual reality…If you don’t have a team thinking about working in this new world, you’ll be at a disadvantage soon.”
“This is the best educational technology humans have ever invented.”
This is intensely social tech, he says. You can play basketball or ski jumping with your friends over the Internet. He shows a Facebook demo. You can share things with others, things with media inside of them. E.g., go to a physical space and see it together. [Very cool demo. I think this is it:]
