Live data from Hacker News

Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together

blog.google

251–260 of 539 posts

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

#251

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.

The profession of optometry came from physics instead of medicine, many of the early ones with physicists specialized in optics that ALSO understood how the eye worked, optics-wise.

In places where they are legal they spend their time learning more and more about optics, physics, math and eye anatomy, they don't study diseases, infections and so on.

As result you can't rely on one to fix certain stuff where you do need a medic, but if you need fancy lenses, they will calculate them, not just use a number they get from their measurement machine like ophtalmologists do.

They also would be helpful to design proper 3D glasses and whatnot, holograms and so on.

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

#254
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…

Isn't it just the "Pepper's Ghost" technique?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost

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

#255
I would love to try this - and use it for calls with family, etc.

I’m skeptical on its impact on the in-person vs. remote debate for work. What really distinguishes in-person for me is the potential for informality. Bump into somebody, have a chat, walk over to a colleague’s desk for 5 minutes, decide to go on a walk for a 1x1 instead of sit in a room. This doesn’t do anything for any of that. In fact, it arguably increases formality.

Understood that many folks are not interested in those in-person artifacts - sharing what I see as key distinctions which aren’t in the solution space of Starline.

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

#256
post #49

My dad used to tell a story about my grandfather's first experience with television in the late forties. There was a buxom woman on the screen, and he walked up to it, trying to look down her cleavage. It didn't work. Does Starline give you a different view when you change your perspective? It looks like it does to some extent. If so, it might work before long, but grandpa died about fifty years too soon for it.

On the topic of buxom women, my first thought about this tech was, it'll be the next frontier for OnlyFans/porn accounts on Snapchat. Before you laugh or be prude, porn content was what made VHS and BluRay succeed (or are these urban legends?) and they were pioneers in stuff like online video streaming.

Ah yes, the people whose first thought is not how they can use this to commodify women’s bodies are “prudes”. Yes of course. Women: become literal prostitutes for the only fans corporation. You could be RICH! It’s so fun! They have t-shirts! Remember how I said you could be RICH?!

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

#257
post #254
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…

Isn't it just the "Pepper's Ghost" technique? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost

huh ? how is it related to that in any way ?

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

#258
post #229
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm right there with you, and I use a 4k camera and a boom mic and headphones and wired ethernet to videoconference now: I have been regularly complaining about the low resolution and framerates of current videoconferencing systems (10-15fps, 720p, low bitrate - and that's the highest quality setting available!). If Google wanted to make me believe they care about videoconferencing quality, they'd have a 4k 60fps opt…

And most people won't have wired gigabit and can't,

A lot of residential areas in the US have gigabit options, in some cases symmetric. There are lots that have 1000mbps down/40mbps up cable.

Even 100mbps is sufficient for a 1-on-1 4k video call, as high-bitrate 4k is 30-40mbps. Most commercial office buildings in business districts have it available. Even Starlink (20mbps up) should be sufficient for 1-1 30fps 4k videoconferencing with a lower bitrate.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool, thanks for explaining this for me!

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doubtful, IMO. The fact that you need it to be both extremely low latency and with essentially zero compression artifacts (probably lossless, based on their goal). If the numbers listed here[1] are correct, then the most efficient lossy codec at that time was doing 100 minutes of 8k video in ~37GB of data. From that we can intuit that it was using an average of 50 Mbps for that 100 minutes of video. For the most effi…

There have been great strides made in ai compression in recent years. I wonder if they are going to leverage that.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/10/05/gan-video-conferenc...

https://ai.googleblog.com/2021/02/lyra-new-very-low-bitrate-...

https://aibots.my/officialBlog/deepminds-ai-agent-muzero-cou...

Post reply on HN