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Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

spatial.is

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Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#2
Looks like a serious attempt at an ambitious concept. I love how the video showcases what seems to be an actual working prototype, with its capabilities and imperfections – as opposed to the usual trend of AR 'demo' videos that are actually just mockups, and completely unrealistic ones at that (as seen with Google Glass, Pokemon Go, and Magic Leap, just from memory.)

I'm curious about the hardware. Is there a base station or two hiding in a corner somewhere? If there is, why isn't head tracking accurate enough to prevent "sway" of virtual objects with respect to real-world ones, which seems to be visible in the video? But if not, how does it capture the position and pose of the user's hands? In any case, what kinds of sensors are being used?

Unfortunately, when watching the video, what really stands out is that the 3D "ghosts" of the other participants have juddery, unsmooth motion. Surely it couldn't hurt to add a bit of interpolation? It would increase latency, but not by much, given that a user's view of a different user's body pose is not especially latency sensitive.

Edit: On second look, it seems like the HMD is just a Magic Leap One, though that doesn't answer the question of whether there's other hardware in the room.

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#3
I'm having a bit of trouble grokking how this experience works for each participant.

I get the AR piece: People who are physically in a location they see their remote peers magically floating in the room with them while they can interact with virtual objects. That's cool.

But what do the remote people see? They don't have the benefit of AR, so I'd imagine they don't experience the real-world environment as they're sitting at a desk with a headset on, or just simply viewing a 3D world like they're playing The Sims?

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#4
post #3

I'm having a bit of trouble grokking how this experience works for each participant. I get the AR piece: People who are physically in a location they see their remote peers magically floating in the room with them while they can interact with virtual objects. That's cool. But what do the remote people see? They don't have the benefit of AR, so I'd imagine they don't experience the real-world environment as they're si…

From what I can tell, both sides are using AR goggles. They just don't show the goggles on avatars of remote peers, which aren't real video but just posed 3D models customized to (somewhat) match the corresponding user's real appearance.

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#5
post #2

Looks like a serious attempt at an ambitious concept. I love how the video showcases what seems to be an actual working prototype, with its capabilities and imperfections – as opposed to the usual trend of AR 'demo' videos that are actually just mockups, and completely unrealistic ones at that (as seen with Google Glass, Pokemon Go, and Magic Leap, just from memory.) I'm curious about the hardware. Is there a base st…

"Join a Spatial meeting from HoloLens, MagicLeap, VR, PC or Phone"

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#6
post #4
post #3

I'm having a bit of trouble grokking how this experience works for each participant. I get the AR piece: People who are physically in a location they see their remote peers magically floating in the room with them while they can interact with virtual objects. That's cool. But what do the remote people see? They don't have the benefit of AR, so I'd imagine they don't experience the real-world environment as they're si…

From what I can tell, both sides are using AR goggles. They just don't show the goggles on avatars of remote peers, which aren't real video but just posed 3D models customized to (somewhat) match the corresponding user's real appearance.

Right, so I guess my question is: The remote users don't have the benefit of being in the same room as the rest of the group. The AR people/objects wouldn't likely "fit" into their physical world. Like in the initial demo video (2 guys sitting, 1 woman standing near Kanban board) -- What does she see from her perspective?

It feels to me like the "host" participants can use AR but anyone remote would need to be using VR as the physical environment mapping wouldn't make any sense for them.

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#7
It'll be interesting to see how this feels for collaboration compared to current video chat. It clearly has the advantage of allowing people to 'interact' with things in the space, but you lose the feedback aspect of people's facial expressions.

With video, especially in a group, you can see if people are following what you say, nodding or shaking heads, have confused looks, or are not engaged (or falling asleep). Compared to voice-only discussions, for example, sometimes people won't ask the question if they're confused, presumably thinking they're the only one and don't want to waste others time and/or embarrass themselves.

Maybe facial expressions can be emulated -- but there's a very big uncanny valley to get over to make that usable.

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#8
I love that people are investing time and money to make this happen. From my point of view, remote collaboration might make more sense in VR than in AR, though. AR tech is much harder than VR, and with today's AR headsets this kind of thing is not really usable. However with today's VR tech, it's fun!

What is the rationale to make this happen in AR here? Is the physical location important for remote collaboration?

Re: Spatial – Collaborate from anywhere in AR

#9
> Join a Spatial meeting from HoloLens, MagicLeap, VR, PC or Phone

I think supporting cross "platform" is a really cool viral feature.

At first it's just going to be one guy leading the meeting with real full body tracking (think meetings with architects or mech engineers where you might want to discuss and move around 3d models)

Anyone else working remotely can facechat in with their phone (w/accelerometer & gyro or ARKit/ARCore) or skype in on desktop.

But every time they want to discuss something that's outside a non-vr/ar user's fixed field of view, the dude leading the meeting will have to rotate the model for them. They will feel left out and eventually will want to buy their own AR/VR setup.

(or more realistically they will preshare their cad files first ... but the above still sounds like a plausible future)

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