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Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

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Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#141

Post by speeder »

abhv wrote: post #2

A good friend of mine at Google is the technical lead of this project (he has a Phd Princeton, and was a professor before joining Google). I've tried it in person and it was truly amazing. They used some very fancy tech when I saw the demo, so I'm thrilled it is finally being announced and possibly shared with a larger audience. Explanation of why it is amazing: It totally fools your perception. No glasses or goggles…

I want to try this just to see what happens, if I will have again the feeling something is more real than reality.

Because optometrists are illegal in my country (here only medics can decide what glasses you can use), currently I don't have stereoscopic vision, although my brain CAN do it, if I had the correct images sent to my eyes somehow. (one of my eyes muscles is slightly shorter than the other side thus the images on that eye are shifted unless I had an optometrist design me glasses with a prism).

So when I watched Avatar, an actually well made 3D movie, it literally felt more real than reality, despite it being obvious fantasy with aliens, floating rocks and all that stuff.

EDIT: for those wondering, I am from Brazil, here medical professionals often sue the shit out of anyone offering any service remotely similar to an optometrist, they are quite aggressive about it, some attempted to make even discussion of the subject illegal. And when I was trying to get the prism and asked around my medics about it, one of them went really ballistic, I honestly thought the guy was going to punch me. I believe the reason for that is that for many medics, designing glasses is their only source of income, a guaranteed one, since here is ALSO illegal to buy glasses without a medic desining them for you first, even if the new glasses are supposed to be identical to the old ones!

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#142

Post by unethical_ban »

adam wrote: post #119
airstrike wrote: post #108

This , my friends, is how business travel becomes nearly irrelevant. This is a beautifully executed idea and if the demos live up to expectation the hype may even be warranted. But on a much more fundamental level (i.e. fancy 3D imaging and spatial audio aside), this also possibly suggests people would benefit from dedicated videoconferencing hardware. TVs and telephones do one thing really well (or at least historic…

I immediately thought of business travel as well. Project us all in to a virtual conference room and give us a suite of collaboration tools to use while we're all there. The only thing missing is the after meeting drinks and dinner, but there will inevitably be services to put us all in a restaurant/bar environment, pipe in some bar white noise, have food sent from a local restaurant, etc. for an "in-person" virtual…

That "the only thing missing" is the main reason to go to many conferences.

A lot of people (those with less social desire/social skills) seem to resent it, but it is true: Networking and casual technical conversations that happen afterhours are the draw for many technical conferences. Talks can be good, and occasionally there are well-constructed lab sandboxes. But mostly, it's going and speed-dating with peers and sales teams to talk about your needs and architecture, and building a good web of contacts.

I also believe fully remote technical/collaboration work, without any periodic physical meetups, will be awful for a lot of people. Sure, those who bought into it pre-pandemic prefer it, and that's fine. But I really think there is concern to be had for the fraying of social bonds and teamwork that can be done, even (or especially) with people you have a tough time working with.

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#143

Post by ghaff »

airstrike wrote: post #108

This , my friends, is how business travel becomes nearly irrelevant. This is a beautifully executed idea and if the demos live up to expectation the hype may even be warranted. But on a much more fundamental level (i.e. fancy 3D imaging and spatial audio aside), this also possibly suggests people would benefit from dedicated videoconferencing hardware. TVs and telephones do one thing really well (or at least historic…

Better videoconferencing hardware is not a solution to people wanting to get together socially and serendipitously at events. And, by the way, how many people are going to turn a room in their house into a work videocall room?

Personally, I find that--for most people--the idea that working remote shoves a lot of cost onto employees vs. commuting probably off-base. (With some exceptions for people living in small city apartments near offices.) But installing a room-sized videoconferencing setup at home even for people with decent-sized houses is pretty silly.

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#144

Post by munk-a »

ALittleLight wrote: post #95
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft. Linux. (Really want to write GNU, but that's not true.)

I think Minecraft and Linux are more like the content produced on top of the technology that is computers. It's like if a new book is written it's quickly available to everyone in the market who can afford a book. The book isn't really technology, but the printing, publishing, and distribution is and it's been around long enough to be distributed. Software seems less like technology and more like writing. The distrib…

IBM in the 90's strongly agrees with you - this software stuff is never going to be profitable and everything people pay for will always end up going through us!

More seriously, I disagree about software being less important because there have been very real innovations for tooling accomplished in software alone. Email is a pretty classic example - but a more modern one might be Google Cardboard which can turn your smart phone into a rather underwhelming VR headset. There are plenty of hardware alternatives but the same basic functionality was accomplished on generalized hardware.

Additionally, all this technology is only really possible due to other technology - we don't discount a new shiny computer just because it's just a dumb oddly shaped box if you can't supply it with electricity - but the costs to develop software are generally lower than hardware so I think it's fair to have a general notion that hardware is more innovative - it's just that you're conflating two different variables - cost and medium.

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#145

Post by Pxtl »

asim wrote: post #50

This is actually groundbreaking technology. If this gets widely deployed and then evolves we're looking at telepresence as the next step in ambient computing. When the technology fades into the background that's when you know things are going to be remarkably different. This is quite honestly going to be as close to teleportation as we get.

If it got widely deployed onto infrastructure not owned by Google, real-world internet conditions would ruin it with latency and lag-spikes.

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#146

Post by shahar2k »

abhv wrote: post #69
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it's possible 90% of this is due to the studio quality lighting, large high quality screen, good mic/speakers, and low latency network? It seems like those factors alone would get most of the way there and the 3D aspect is just a bonus. Obviously I haven't used it in person but this was just a thought since most people are used to video calls on their small phone/laptop with poor lighting, mics, etc

NO WAY. It is impossible for me to explain how/why it works so well.

I imagine they are using lightfield type displays like the ones made at this company - https://lookingglassfactory.com/

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#147

Post by ElliotH »

unethical_ban wrote: post #137
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it's possible 90% of this is due to the studio quality lighting, large high quality screen, good mic/speakers, and low latency network? It seems like those factors alone would get most of the way there and the 3D aspect is just a bonus. Obviously I haven't used it in person but this was just a thought since most people are used to video calls on their small phone/laptop with poor lighting, mics, etc

What I think you're trying to describe already exists as a product from Cisco called "telepresence". It is/was insanely expensive, was a permanent installation that only Cisco contracted techs could install, and did what you describe: It is a series of large, curved HD displays with desks at an appropriate distance from the screens/cameras, and copious amounts of indirect lighting from behind the setup to make each p…

I’ve used such a Cisco system. Compared to regular video calls the latency and quality was light years ahead, much more natural conversations were possible. By which I mean it was possible to laugh, interject, and generally have a realistic conversation with a colleague in another country without having to compensate for video lag in that very careful way I find necessary on Meet and Zoom.

That said, there was no “emotional connection” like the Google one is described as offering. It was still a video call. There was no forgetting that. I suspect the 3D and the apparent physical closeness to the display add a lot.

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#148

Post by shahar2k »

imiric wrote: post #129
abhv wrote: post #2

A good friend of mine at Google is the technical lead of this project (he has a Phd Princeton, and was a professor before joining Google). I've tried it in person and it was truly amazing. They used some very fancy tech when I saw the demo, so I'm thrilled it is finally being announced and possibly shared with a larger audience. Explanation of why it is amazing: It totally fools your perception. No glasses or goggles…

It looks like they're doing photogrammetry in real time, which is mind boggling. I'm not familiar with this space, but building a 3D model, texturing it with live video, compressing and sending that over the internet, and doing it with minimal latency for it to be believable/enjoyable? Incredible technical achievement if that's the approach. Using state of the art tech, no doubt, and probably lots of ML magic to smoo…

not that hard to do if you have actual depth sensing cameras, and even without those, something like the oculus quest 2 does that exact task (generate a rough 3d volume based on several 2d video feeds) you can see a neat example when you draw your guardian space, and move objects (and notice how it updates the 3d volume representation)

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#149

Post by nmca »

airstrike wrote: post #108

This , my friends, is how business travel becomes nearly irrelevant. This is a beautifully executed idea and if the demos live up to expectation the hype may even be warranted. But on a much more fundamental level (i.e. fancy 3D imaging and spatial audio aside), this also possibly suggests people would benefit from dedicated videoconferencing hardware. TVs and telephones do one thing really well (or at least historic…

Entertainingly, the technology to real-time impersonate someone over zoom photorealistically is also rapidly approaching - the window of irrelevant travel might be small.

Re: Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

#150

Post by ghaff »

unethical_ban wrote: post #142
adam wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I immediately thought of business travel as well. Project us all in to a virtual conference room and give us a suite of collaboration tools to use while we're all there. The only thing missing is the after meeting drinks and dinner, but there will inevitably be services to put us all in a restaurant/bar environment, pipe in some bar white noise, have food sent from a local restaurant, etc. for an "in-person" virtual…

That "the only thing missing" is the main reason to go to many conferences. A lot of people (those with less social desire/social skills) seem to resent it, but it is true: Networking and casual technical conversations that happen afterhours are the draw for many technical conferences. Talks can be good, and occasionally there are well-constructed lab sandboxes. But mostly, it's going and speed-dating with peers and…

Yeah, the last year has shown us that streaming videos with some side chat is the easy part. Heck, maybe it's even better than in-person a lot of the time. I can re-record stuff when I screw up and do some things I can't do in front of a room of 50-100 people.

And it's even good that people who just go to sessions for the content will be able to do so--for a lot less money and effort. But I'm planning to go back to in-person conferences as soon as possible.

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