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Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

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31–40 of 151 posts

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#31
i love how all the people in the demo videos are excessively and unnaturally expressive in order to show off how it captures depth.

would be neat to try, would be curious how much the effect holds up over time (vs flat video conferencing) as people get used to it.

interesting technology regardless.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#32
post #10

I'm struggling to believe Google will see this through beyond a tech demo. And who's the target audience? I mean, what would a unit's cost be? Looks like another cool tech Google won't be able to productize successfully. Edit: I was super excited for Soli way back when, but so far haven't see any smart clothes they were imagining in the early days.

Soli did seem cool. Wasn't Jacquard the smart clothing technology? Surprisingly, I think there are some products: https://atap.google.com/jacquard/products/

Nest is doing some cool stuff with Soli on their hubs to monitor sleep patterns: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-nest-hub-soli-motion

Disclosure: I work on Fuchsia which is now the OS for some of the Nest hubs (https://9to5google.com/2022/06/23/google-fuchsia-nest-hub-ma...)

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#33
The cards are definitely stacked against this when it's at Google. Because of:

1. Google's solid track record of killing things because they didn't grow quickly, after a half hearted effort. Stadia being the latest example.

2. Google being pretty bad at cracking the corporate communication space. Teams and Zoom ate its lunch.

3. Google not having a strategy behind communication tools in general. Meet, Hangouts, Chat, Duo, Alo, ... already it's weird where this fits.

4. Google being bad at supporting new hardware gadgets. My Daydream VR came out 2 years before my Pixel, somehow these two things don't support each other.

I wish they at least would sell their divisions instead of kill/hamper such moonshot products. This looks like the next Google Glass.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#34

I'm struggling to believe Google will see this through beyond a tech demo. And who's the target audience? I mean, what would a unit's cost be? Looks like another cool tech Google won't be able to productize successfully. Edit: I was super excited for Soli way back when, but so far haven't see any smart clothes they were imagining in the early days.

Can I say that a Magic Window in my office sounds 1000x better than a magic headset that I have to wear (Meta Quest 2)

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#35

This is my favorite Google project. I hope it becomes something that we all can use. To me, at least, this is more useful than meeting in vr with no legs.

My questions are: 1. Does it only support 1-on-1 meetings (the demos only show 1-1)? I think that's still useful, but note probably 90%+ of my online meetings have at least 3 people. 2. Sounds like the expense means it will only be installed in offices, not people's homes. Which, again, is still useful as long as it hits the 3rd bullet point. 3. Does everyone need to be on a Starline device to participate? I'd expect…

> 2. Sounds like the expense means it will only be installed in offices, not people's homes. Which, again, is still useful as long as it hits the 3rd bullet point.

honestly, with all the cool stuff coming out of computer vision these days, you might see something that can create a similar effect on your laptop in the not so distant future.

high quality, single camera (realtime?) depth maps are a thing now.

head tracking is easier to do now as well.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#36

I have definitely been wrong about technology before, prime example was camera phones when the first appeared; couldn't for the life of me see the point. With that caveat, I don't get how this makes employees/customers/clients more engaged/productive or form rapport/have better experiences. Like the Facebook thing I'm definitely not using anything that has to be this massively invasive (eye tracking, facial recogniti…

The desire to connect across distance is very real. Grandparents want to see their grandkids, customers want to see their vendors, friends want to see each other.

Indeed. And the market has a lot of products that already attempt to address that. Aside from being physically bigger and therefore more expensive, what is the value-add to this for those scenarios?

We'd all love a 65" window to stay in touch with loved ones, but the price is the problem not the tech. This doesn't attempt to address the economics, and to be honest I'm not sure what is new or interesting about Starline?

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#37
post #27

This reminds me of Cisco's Telepresence. Anyone know how this is different?

I think I just answered my own question via https://blog.google/technology/research/project-starline/. It appears some kind of “3D display” is being used.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#38

This is my favorite Google project. I hope it becomes something that we all can use. To me, at least, this is more useful than meeting in vr with no legs.

Why do you need legs for conference calls? Also you can totally have legs in VR. Not only are there leg trackers but Meta has already announced they have worked out inferenced leg kinematics coming next year and other apps already have them (VRChat etc).

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#39
post #34

I'm struggling to believe Google will see this through beyond a tech demo. And who's the target audience? I mean, what would a unit's cost be? Looks like another cool tech Google won't be able to productize successfully. Edit: I was super excited for Soli way back when, but so far haven't see any smart clothes they were imagining in the early days.

Can I say that a Magic Window in my office sounds 1000x better than a magic headset that I have to wear (Meta Quest 2)

It does. And so does a hologram. But it remains to be seen if Google can see a tech demo through, make a profitable product, and support it past the initial hype. I hope this time it does, but I wouldn't bet on it.
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