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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

#271

Post by chewxy »

codeecan wrote: post #221
bullfightonmars wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was a consumer product I would buy two of these today, one for myself, and one for my parents. It is more compelling that any product I have seen for a long time.

https://electronics.sony.com/spatial-reality-display/p/elfsr...

This is a 3D monitor. Not a light field display like Starline.

The traditional glasses free 3d monitors rely on special coatings on the glass to "split" the direction of a pixel. Some coatings are electronically controlled (like Sony's), some are physical (lenticular filters) It still displays a 2D projection of a 3D image, but twice.

By contrast, my understanding is lightfield displays projects the entire volume. So you don't have a pixel, you have a voxel. So each eye gets a different bit of the same voxel

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

#272

Post by imiric »

wpietri wrote: post #240
imiric wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell me a problem that it solves. Replicating the experience of in-person communication much more closely than video and 2D displays will ever do. That's a noble research goal if nothing else, I don't get the skepticism. There are several reasons 3D content and previous generation displays didn't take off, but there's no reason to believe a revolutionary new approach and product couldn't change this (e.g. electric…

> Replicating the experience of in-person communication much more closely That's not a problem people express much, at least not in ways where "3D" points to a solution. When I want to see people in person, it's not because of a lack of stereoscopy. I want to hug them, to break bread with them. > there's no reason to believe a revolutionary new approach and product couldn't change this There is indeed! In specific, t…

> When I want to see people in person, it's not because of a lack of stereoscopy.

Of course, I'm not saying this will replace physical communication (I should've said "simulating" instead of "replicating"). But it's a clear step forward for traditional teleconferencing solutions. What do you think is the next leap from 2D video and displays? We're at the point of diminishing returns as far as increasing resolution goes, most consumers don't have a need for 8K or higher res displays. VR/AR is chugging along, but we're still a few generations away from mass market adoption.

> I'd add that the telephone was not only a very successful technology for a century, audio calls still remain very popular.

I don't understand. Video calls were never meant to replace audio calls, they just added a new sensory experience. It's perfectly fine for both technologies to co-exist for different moments and preferences. In a similar way this 3D approach is an extension to traditional 2D video conferencing if people have the equipment and prefer it. Judging by the expressions of the people in the demo and some of the comments here, you're underestimating how impactful this could be, especially if it's polished and cheap enough.

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

#273

Post by rewq4321 »

wpietri wrote: post #240
imiric wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell me a problem that it solves. Replicating the experience of in-person communication much more closely than video and 2D displays will ever do. That's a noble research goal if nothing else, I don't get the skepticism. There are several reasons 3D content and previous generation displays didn't take off, but there's no reason to believe a revolutionary new approach and product couldn't change this (e.g. electric…

> Replicating the experience of in-person communication much more closely That's not a problem people express much, at least not in ways where "3D" points to a solution. When I want to see people in person, it's not because of a lack of stereoscopy. I want to hug them, to break bread with them. > there's no reason to believe a revolutionary new approach and product couldn't change this There is indeed! In specific, t…

"Hard tech" often only matures after several hype cycles. Sometimes cool tech demos can be produced a century or more beforehand. If you were in the 1980s and people were talking about video calls being the next big thing, you might point out that people have been working on video calls since the 1930s[0], and it hasn't caught on in every one of the hype cycles that have followed, so that's an indication that it won't catch on in the future. Video calls have caught on now though - especially as they've reached mobile devices instead of requiring a literal booth in your house, as with AT&T's initial "Picturephone" tech in the 70s.

I will say though that people tend to assume that each new technology will replace the preceding technology (text->audio->video->VR/light-field->...), but in fact it tends to end up just supplementing the existing tech.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony

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

#274

Post by sneak »

Pxtl wrote: post #134
sneak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom lag is an issue with Zoom, not the network generally. If you actually do wired, p2p on the same side of the same continent you can get rid of most of the lag. Current lag comes from services that aren't p2p and bad networks (e.g. wifi).

Yeah, I honestly hate how much Zoom has won because I've found it's the worst for latency. I have a mumble server running on a pi that blows the doors off Zoom for audio-quality and latency but it's unusable for casual groups because nobody wants to wear a headset and feedback destroys it.

> Yeah, I honestly hate how much Zoom has won

Zoom has won in the sense that MySpace had won, or perhaps in the sense that Facebook has won.

This too shall pass.

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

#275

Post by baud147258 »

alwayshumans wrote: post #139
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…

From my experience business travel is as much about sharing an experience as it is the discussion or dissemination of information. That's a hard thing to replicate

and business kickbacks and shared drinks at the hotel bar

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

#276

Post by ethbr0 »

speeder wrote: post #141
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 ima…

Can you import glasses? Or, say, receive a box that someone accidentally dropped a pair of glasses into, along with the item you ordered?

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

#277

Post by dpratt71 »

bsanr2 wrote: post #218
dpratt71 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Penicillin, maybe? But I wonder how quickly it became readily available outside of the Western world. And I see that Nintendo has apparently sold an extremely impressive number of consoles ( https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/nintendo_has_now_s... ). But even if everyone only bought one console each, that's only about 10% of world population. This may be a little unfair, but I do wonder if there isn't a tenden…

To say that a single company's products being used by even a single digit percentage of the world population doesn't meet the requirements to ve considered "widely available" is a stretch. In any case, you said "important," not "widely available," and yes, Nintendo's products are hugely important. Many of today's technological advancements can be traced back to their proving that a given use case for a primitive vers…

Whether it's a single company (or product) or multiple is beside the point. If a technology is only available to (say) 1% of the population, I don't think that qualifies as being widely available.

I will also note that my original comment was in response to someone who is "more interested in tech for the other 95%".

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

#278

Post by chewxy »

ricopags wrote: post #39

Looks like tonari[0] will have some heavy competition sooner than expected. This seems to have a lot more attention paid to the sensation of depth than the tonari offering. Could see this being popular at high end senior care facilities. [0] https://tonari.no

At Atlassian, they built a Portal inspired portal that connects the Sydney and SF office during one hackathon. Basically a camera behind a 2way mirror (and decorated with blue/orange LEDs in an oval frame). Tonari looks a lot more like that than Starline.

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

#279

Post by [deleted] »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #178
hirundo wrote: 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.

[deleted]

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

#280

Post by faitswulff »

asenna wrote: post #159

On a related note, I wanted to share my amazing experience with a similar but lo-fi tech. My mom and dad for the past 2-3 years have mostly lived in two separate countries (due to work reasons) and I could tell they miss each other quite a bit. I got both of them an Echo Show 10" device each and set it up for them. I don't think I can explain how our lives have changed for the better, just based on this simple piece…

Did you consider Google Nest Hub for this use case? I’ve been thinking of doing the same thing but I’m not sure which to get.
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