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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

#371
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…

So in my company, I've used various avatar's of Cisco TelePresence systems over many years.

The big commercial need it turns out isn't so much realism as it is flexibility to accommodate people dialing in from different systems - phones, laptops, different types of telepresence setups from small single room to big conference rooms or even telephone connections etc.

Many years ago, we were all wowed by the life-size realism and had people come into offices for it . Nowadays these meetings have lots of people crammed in across multiple screens dialing in as they please and all the better for everyone :-)

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

#372
post #46
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…

My mind was also blown when I got to demo this a few years ago. You sit down and you forget that there's technology happening. The person is there, in front of you. I don't know how else to describe it. The testimonials in the video aren't exaggerating compared to my experience.

i got curious (since you said you'd seen this years ago) and found my way to your cppcon 2016 talk. good talk but in particular i want to congratulate you on the weaving pun (first multithreaded tech).

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

#373

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

If you search for "myopia glasses" on Aliexpress you'll find prescription glasses starting as low as $2. I just added a pair to my cart and the total was $3.31 including shipping. :O

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

#374
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.)

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

#375
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly the thought I have. I have a feeling it would be truly bizarre to sit down and talk to my mum or dad through this.

Better than what we have now

Well at some point prisoners won't have the choice in practice, because for safety and convenience remote video call will become the norm. This is the same paradox as social networks; making people supposedly closer, but in reality making humans further and further away.

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

#376
post #124

Thought: This could bring back phone booths. If this tech turns out to be too expensive (for normal people) we could still use it on a pay-per-use basis, like with a "video conferencing booth". You'd schedule your call and reserve a local booth for both participants through an app. And most companies should be able to afford having one of these in the office.

This could bring fax machines back too. Draw something on a piece of paper, put it into the receptacle, and voila - it's instantly printed on the other side.

Or, I mean, live synced drawing tablets. Why paper? (Unless you like the feeling of writing on paper like me but I bet money they’ll replicate that sooner rather than later).

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

#378
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google owns one of the major consumer operating systems (Android) and a lot of videoconferencing goes via Chrome. They could absolutely be doing things like offering better connection quality metrics - look at how everyone currently ends up using a random shady "speed test" site.

That exists now. If you Google search ‘speed test’ (on mobile at least) the first result is now a simple speed test provided by Google.

Not for me, either on android or desktop chrome.

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

#379
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.

If this uses fully fledged lightfield[0] it might be able to. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2020/06/23/googl...

Non-amp link: https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/23/googles-46-camera-light-fi...
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