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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

#241
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've seen 3d screens in Japan 20 years ago. TVs, ad displays, mobile phones. It works really well, and it's actually very simple technology. Never understood why that never took off.

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

#242
post #124

Thought: This could bring back phone booths. If this tech turns out to be too expensive (for normal people) we could still use it on a pay-per-use basis, like with a "video conferencing booth". You'd schedule your call and reserve a local booth for both participants through an app. And most companies should be able to afford having one of these in the office.

I hate to say it but my first impression of this was that it looked like a visiting area for a prison. (Something about the bleak colour palette and minimalist display). But, I think that presents a similar long-distance use-case as the 'phone booth.' I wouldn't be surprised to see this as a pay-per-use option for prisoners/families. It's probably only a matter of time before the 'Echo Shows' capitalize on it.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt you need gigabit for an 8K stream. The real issue is the abysmal common network infrastructure. Latency will be a bottleneck if most ISPs don't care about treating your packets properly.

Agreed, 10Mbps is likely where it'll be, probably less. If I were to guess, they are going to apply a lot of smarts to texture mapping to avoid needing a lot of bandwidth.

That seems unlikely. My game stream in 1080p at 60fps already takes 40Mbps. So 4K at 30fps would need more like 80Mbps, and 8K 320Mbps

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

#244
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook Telescreen™

To be followed up by Facebook Telepresence™ and then Facebook Omnipresence™? ;)

Mark Zuckerberg might announce that, but I think he'll go straight from Facebook Telescreen™ to Facebook Panopticon™.

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ima…

Shouldn't an ophthalmologist here in Brazil be able to diagnose you and give you a prescription for corrective lenses, or even perform corrective surgery? I'm asking in case I might need to look for one in the future.

I'm from Brazil too, and my eye glasses are recommended by a optometrist. The only way an optometrist to work is being an ophthalmologist with specialization in "optometry". It is a sad reality from our bureaucratic government that don't give us freedom to innovate.

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

#247
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Using Oculus Quest 2 had me just walking around my room in wonder about seeing straight through the headset for a bit.

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

#250
post #128

This is cool as hell, but I have to say I feel like we're solving top-level problems when most consumers don't even seem to be getting solutions to the most basic pain-points. For me, the problem with video-calling isn't the image-quality. It's all the much more mundane technological problems - high latency, lag-spikes caused by bad ISPs, failed noise-cancellation for people who don't use headsets for audio, bad wifi…

I mean Google also has Meet for regular videoconferencing that's available to normal humans for free, so it's not like they're ignoring the mainstream. The issues with connection stability and latency are very real, but I don't know if it's reasonable to expect Google to fix it; the issues there are probably more political than technical. edit: Also, I think they did mention using AI for noise cancellation while vide…

I think Meet has had noise cancellation for a while now.
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