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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

#191

Post by Philip-J-Fry »

Pxtl wrote: post #131
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'm still not understanding how the 3D works... is it like the 3DS? Because that required you position your head in a very specific place.

The "New 3DS" introduced head tracking and no longer needed your head in a fixed position by the way.

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

#192

Post by wpietri »

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…

The question for me is how much it matters after the novelty wears off.

I count at least 5 waves of 3D technology starting in 1851 with the Brewster Stereoscope. Each time there's a surge of popularity driven by the legitimately amazing initial experience. And each time people slowly stop caring. People were incredibly excited about Avatar, and many thought it would change the movie industry. But how many people now go out of the way to see something in 3D?

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

#193

Post by TulliusCicero »

chis wrote: post #135
mrfusion wrote: post #23

I’m confused what the 3d display screen is? I thought we didn’t have technology like that without glasses?

I think it's something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI__qNx8Gdk Track both eyes, and then project an image to each eye based on its image in the room. The part I don't really understand is how it's possible to target the image to each eye. Maybe we have displays now which are like the 3DS screen, but with variable focal locations?

If it's that, why does the camera see a gradually different image as it pans around?

See: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ori...

Notice how the angle of her face changes as the camera moves: first you only see her left ear, at the end of the animation you only see her right ear.

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

#194

Post by imiric »

shahar2k wrote: post #148
imiric wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they're doing photogrammetry in real time, which is mind boggling. I'm not familiar with this space, but building a 3D model, texturing it with live video, compressing and sending that over the internet, and doing it with minimal latency for it to be believable/enjoyable? Incredible technical achievement if that's the approach. Using state of the art tech, no doubt, and probably lots of ML magic to smoo…

not that hard to do if you have actual depth sensing cameras, and even without those, something like the oculus quest 2 does that exact task (generate a rough 3d volume based on several 2d video feeds) you can see a neat example when you draw your guardian space, and move objects (and notice how it updates the 3d volume representation)

Good point, I haven't followed the latest VR advancements, that does sound neat. Still, Starline's approach is surely much more sophisticated (the hardware obviously has a lot to do with that, these are prototypes of a desk-sized machine vs a headset). The 3D model looks reasonably detailed, and the final render has very few artifacts. Making it all work over a WAN link with latencies critical for teleconferencing is also impressive.

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

#195

Post by apinstein »

If you want to get a sense of what this "feels" like and you have 6DoF VR, try a VR 180 video. I've not experienced the Google Starline project, but I can tell you that when I saw some of the really well-produced VR180 videos it was so realistic I felt I was invading someone's privacy.

Of course this won't be the interactive feeling but it was pretty mind blowing to "feel" how intimate real 3d telepresence could be.

They have some demo's here:

https://arvr.google.com/vr180/

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

#196

Post by suyash »

wpietri wrote: post #192
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…

The question for me is how much it matters after the novelty wears off. I count at least 5 waves of 3D technology starting in 1851 with the Brewster Stereoscope. Each time there's a surge of popularity driven by the legitimately amazing initial experience. And each time people slowly stop caring. People were incredibly excited about Avatar, and many thought it would change the movie industry. But how many people now…

Exactly, it's just a fancy FaceTime technology, I would be bored after few days. Tell me a problem that it solves.

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

#197

Post by bellyfullofbac »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #11

While cool for the top 5% wealthiest people, I'd be more interested in tech for the other 95% that will actually be affordable.

I was travelling a few years ago. Even Russian bus ladies (they collect your fare) and Mongolians living in traditional huts in the middle of nowhere (and without any signal!) have smartphones now. I found the idea funny that the "To plug in a USB cable, you need 3 tries" experience was maybe universal.

So, 12 years (back then) after the iPhone, it's reached a lot more than 5% of the world.

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

#198

Post by XnoiVeX »

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…

Sony has it's own version of the light field display. https://youtu.be/KrLMnQM0_Ps

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

#199

Post by TulliusCicero »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #34
dpratt71 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an example of important technology that did not start as something only available to the affluent/connected?

Minecraft. Linux. (Really want to write GNU, but that's not true.)

I think they meant hardware. For software, yes there are tons of examples (open source software is usually free, games are usually cheap).

But for hardware, it's almost always some expensive thing first. The internet was once very expensive to access, cell phones were initially very expensive, DVD players were initially very expensive, computers in general, etc.

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