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Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

spatial.is

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Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#21

Post by shafyy »

momoro wrote: post #18
shafyy wrote: post #8

I love that people are investing time and money to make this happen. From my point of view, remote collaboration might make more sense in VR than in AR, though. AR tech is much harder than VR, and with today's AR headsets this kind of thing is not really usable. However with today's VR tech, it's fun! What is the rationale to make this happen in AR here? Is the physical location important for remote collaboration?

In lots of situations, there are 3 or 4 people in one location and one or two remote people joining. With current VR tech, in order to make this happen you'd have to have 4 beefy laptops with Windows MR headsets in the meeting room. People wouldn't be able to see their local collaborators faces, drink a glass of water, or sit in a chair. With AR, the local peole can all see each other and conduct a meeting, while als…

You can just have Oculus Go's, no need for beefy laptops ;-) Everyone would just see an avatar of the other people, remote or local.

If you absolutely need to drink water during a meeting you can just quickly move your headset up with one hand and drink a sip, while still hearing in your headphones what's going on.

You can do VR with a hybrid approach too. Same implications as calling in with a PC/mobile phone into an AR meeting.

Only upside I see with AR currently is:

- Easier to speak to people in the same room (but not necessary if half the people attending are remote anyways, in fact, it would level the playing field)

- Work on your computer during the meeting (which you shouldn't do anyways =P)

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#22

Post by shafyy »

excalibur wrote: post #16
smcameron wrote: post #14

Anywhere in AR? Will this work in my cabin in Arkansas with no electricity?

If you have an Oculus Go and a Wi-Fi hotspot, and can come up with a way to charge them both, and you get 4G signal there... Sure, why not?

You mean HoloLens or Magic Leap?

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#23

Post by momoro »

shafyy wrote: post #21
momoro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In lots of situations, there are 3 or 4 people in one location and one or two remote people joining. With current VR tech, in order to make this happen you'd have to have 4 beefy laptops with Windows MR headsets in the meeting room. People wouldn't be able to see their local collaborators faces, drink a glass of water, or sit in a chair. With AR, the local peole can all see each other and conduct a meeting, while als…

You can just have Oculus Go's, no need for beefy laptops ;-) Everyone would just see an avatar of the other people, remote or local. If you absolutely need to drink water during a meeting you can just quickly move your headset up with one hand and drink a sip, while still hearing in your headphones what's going on. You can do VR with a hybrid approach too. Same implications as calling in with a PC/mobile phone into a…

Ah, yes. Good point, I forgot about standalone headsets. Although one drawback is that everyone would have to remain seated if it's 3dof like Go.

Standalone inside out headsets could work (quest), but people still would bump into each other since they wouldn't have a good sense of where other headsets are.

These drawbacks would be OK for some meetings, but dealbreakers for others.

In many of the meetings where you could remain seated, there's a requirement to screen share from a laptop (as you mention) that likely won't go away in the near term.

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#24

Post by shafyy »

momoro wrote: post #23
shafyy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just have Oculus Go's, no need for beefy laptops ;-) Everyone would just see an avatar of the other people, remote or local. If you absolutely need to drink water during a meeting you can just quickly move your headset up with one hand and drink a sip, while still hearing in your headphones what's going on. You can do VR with a hybrid approach too. Same implications as calling in with a PC/mobile phone into a…

Ah, yes. Good point, I forgot about standalone headsets. Although one drawback is that everyone would have to remain seated if it's 3dof like Go. Standalone inside out headsets could work (quest), but people still would bump into each other since they wouldn't have a good sense of where other headsets are. These drawbacks would be OK for some meetings, but dealbreakers for others. In many of the meetings where you co…

Counter arguments :-)

- Not sure what kind of meetings you attend where it's essential that people stand up. But I would estimate that for most meetings you can be seated (citation missing of course)

- With the Rift you can already access your desktop. It's only a matter of time until they launch that feature for the Go.

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#26

Post by jrgoj »

excalibur wrote: post #16
smcameron wrote: post #14

Anywhere in AR? Will this work in my cabin in Arkansas with no electricity?

If you have an Oculus Go and a Wi-Fi hotspot, and can come up with a way to charge them both, and you get 4G signal there... Sure, why not?

He was making a joke. AR == Arkansas

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#28

Post by momoro »

shafyy wrote: post #24
momoro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes. Good point, I forgot about standalone headsets. Although one drawback is that everyone would have to remain seated if it's 3dof like Go. Standalone inside out headsets could work (quest), but people still would bump into each other since they wouldn't have a good sense of where other headsets are. These drawbacks would be OK for some meetings, but dealbreakers for others. In many of the meetings where you co…

Counter arguments :-) - Not sure what kind of meetings you attend where it's essential that people stand up. But I would estimate that for most meetings you can be seated (citation missing of course) - With the Rift you can already access your desktop. It's only a matter of time until they launch that feature for the Go.

Good points. There are def a lot of cases where vr could work.

I think it will come down to how willing people are to not see the outside world, plus how tied people are to using (at least in my little bubble) mac laptops and google docs / web apps designed for laptops. I could imagine a mobile platform like quest or go having a web browser and a keyboard, but you'd have to have one of those logitech keyboards to even be able to see it to take notes.

Again to your point though, there are lots of meetings where you are just talking and where perhaps a simple mobile-vr-based web browser could suffice. For example, I'd potentially sometimes rather watch a movie with someone remote using a Go than using a hololens. There are also lots of examples of cases where everyone is remote and you want to control the environment that they come into (like a training session or school :) where it would probably make more sense too.

Re: Meeting types, the most valuable use cases for xr meetings right now are likely not 1:1 facetime style meetings, because it's difficult to replicate that personal connection in xr right now (video is better in some ways). One argument is that a more valuable use case would be brainstorming meetings (https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS696US...) where people are often pretty active.

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#29

Post by shafyy »

momoro wrote: post #28
shafyy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter arguments :-) - Not sure what kind of meetings you attend where it's essential that people stand up. But I would estimate that for most meetings you can be seated (citation missing of course) - With the Rift you can already access your desktop. It's only a matter of time until they launch that feature for the Go.

Good points. There are def a lot of cases where vr could work. I think it will come down to how willing people are to not see the outside world, plus how tied people are to using (at least in my little bubble) mac laptops and google docs / web apps designed for laptops. I could imagine a mobile platform like quest or go having a web browser and a keyboard, but you'd have to have one of those logitech keyboards to eve…

Yeah I can see your point when people need to use Docs or other software that is currently software only. Thinking about the near future, I'm pretty sure we'll see ports of these for VR and also new input devices/ways that will work great with VR.

For brainstorming, just spawn a huge whiteboard in VR. It can be huge. With AR you're limited by the size of the room you're sitting in :-)

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#30

Post by pj_mukh »

We've been experimenting with using VR for remote meetings and it really does work in making physical presence more relevant. I think Spatial is really onto something but they can simplify the product even more. My main "immediate" use cases are actually

a) meetings while taking notes or dealing with Trello and,

b) pair programming,

So, all I want is to stream my desktop and some aspects of my physical self (face and hand-movements are enough).There is no real need to bring in aspects of individual desktop apps into immersion (as they show with notes or 3D design tools), just stream my desktop and let everyone see. For pair programming, this would need to work seamlessly hours at a time.

P.S: Incidentally AR vs. VR is less of an issue here, however, if it was real MR (i.e. I can see my real laptop screen exactly where it is) and I don't have to stream my own laptop that would be great.

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