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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

#411

Post by sireat »

"The receptionist’s phrase had prepared her for the only kind of link she knew, a simstim signal routed via Bell Europa. She’d assumed she’d wear a helmet studded with dermatrodes, that Virek would use a passive viewer as a human camera.

But Virek’s wealth was on another scale of magnitude entirely.

As her fingers closed around the cool brass knob, it seemed to squirm, sliding along a touch spectrum of texture and temperature in the first second of contact.

Then it became metal again, green-painted iron, sweeping out and down, along a line of perspective, an old railing she grasped now in wonder."

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

#412

Post by dash2 »

akie wrote: post #394
lultimouomo wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this worked because the person was, indeed, there. I mean, not in the same room, but down the hall or so. You can have the most perfect rendering in the world and 100ms of latency will be enough to make the experience miserable.

Depends on how much bandwidth it needs. I've been video conferencing a lot (who didn't, this past year) and even with people on the other side of the globe I don't recall latency ever being a problem.

Also depends what you're doing. Singing together is impossible over standard video conferencing, for example.

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

#413

Post by apexalpha »

noahl wrote: post #374
Pxtl wrote: 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 to be fair Google has also tried very, very hard to improve home internet access for people, to the point of setting up their own ISP and running municipal fiber networks. That's a pretty big try, and I really wish it had taken off beyond the places where Google Fiber operates. (NB: I work at Google, but this comment has nothing to do with my work.)

When it really comes down to laying Fiber isn't a job requiring innovation, it require hard man hours to pull cables.

In the end Google tried to innovate around the hard work by burying cables around 5cm deep or so in stead of a meter, which turned out to be short sighted.

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

#414

Post by supermatt »

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…

Over a decade ago I used a holographic video conferencing system that used kinect for depth mapping, it was very convincing. It would also reorient the display based on your head position. so you could look "around" the avatar.

There are demos of binocular 3d conferencing done with a lenticular display (lookingglass), although those large displays are extortionately priced (1/4 of the size of this google one is $3000...) - keeping them out of the hands of most devs.

No doubt google are doing the same, but can afford these larger displays.

You can easily find examples (and research papers) by googling for the relevant terms. Google claiming they have invented a "new technology" just shits on all those folk who dont have the publicity/funding of google.

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

#415

Post by dontwannabe »

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…

True. Covid Pandemic has proven 2 things.

1. Work From Home works. 2. Business Travel is totally unnecessary and saves a lot of money.

End of an era for Travel whores.

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

#417

Post by tomklein »

closeparen wrote: post #399
lultimouomo wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this worked because the person was, indeed, there. I mean, not in the same room, but down the hall or so. You can have the most perfect rendering in the world and 100ms of latency will be enough to make the experience miserable.

You could imagine commercial/institutional sites hundreds to thousands of miles apart with <10ms latency on dedicated fiber.

Wouldn’t that be way faster than the speed of light?

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

#418

Post by imiric »

wpietri wrote: post #330
imiric wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 go…

It's not a clear step forward except in technical terms. Those often don't matter. For example, the big revolution in the last 20 years is not faster computers, it's mobile ones. I don't have much reason to think there is any near term "next leap from 2D video and displays". 2D renderings are more than 40,000 years old. They have improved drastically in resolution and fidelity. Computers added being dynamic and inter…

> the big revolution in the last 20 years is not faster computers, it's mobile ones

Surely the improvements in manufacturing processes, faster hardware and better screens are partly responsible for that. The iPhone as a concept has existed since the 1980s, and revolutionary ideas like what General Magic tried to produce in the 90s were just too early to be successful. When Apple tried it again in the late 00s it was a massive success, but technology finally reached a point when it was commercially feasible.

So it doesn't take much to push a product to mass adoption. Just the right industry circumstances, a manufacturer willing to take the risk and capable hardware and software existing to make it happen.

> We've just been through an unprecedented period of demand for at-home entertainment, and the hardware that many said was finally, finally the thing turns out once again not to matter.

Are you dismissing the potential of VR/AR as well? The current innovation wave we're on is much bigger than whatever we had before. Headsets are becoming cheaper, more comfortable and accessible, and the visual tech we have now is leaps and bounds better than previous generations. Once we get to being able to put on sunglasses and experience different worlds, though likely sooner than that, the market adoption will likely go through the roof.

> People have had those excited faces every time.

I think it's different this time. It's not just it being 3D, but the merging of new generations of light field cameras, face/eye tracking, powerful ML algorithms, low latency networks and revolutionary displays is miles ahead of previous attempts. You can't just compare this to the ViewMaster and last century VR. The improvements here are much more substantial, and if they can make it cheap and reliable enough it could be a ground breaking product.

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

#419

Post by numpad0 »

The_rationalist wrote: post #334
kikokikokiko wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazilian guy here: my girlfriend just bought two pairs of glasses from China, I don't know from which site exactly, but some AliExpress type of site. She paid 5 dollars each, just telling which degrees she needed for each eye. The quality was the same from the 200 dollars pair she bought with a medical note here in Brazil. Unbelievable. Just telling that, if you want it, you can import it through the mail and it wil…

would be nice to share the site

Could be Zenni Optical. Prescription glasses, right as ordered, no questions asked.

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

#420

Post by [deleted] »

chewxy wrote: post #271
codeecan wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]
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