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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

#531
post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casting Skype to a TV is not the only possibility Right now with off the shelf hardware one could make a great video-call station. 4k screen, 4k camera, high-quality mics and speakers. But approximately nobody does it because laptops and iPads and phones are generally good enough for them. That to me demonstrates that, contra your initial assertion, there isn't a big market for this. As to the last part, you've gone…

What I enjoy here most is how you clearly know better than me (M44, immigrant, kids, MSc. SE, embedded systems engineer) what I actually want.

It depends on what you mean by want. Are you having feelings of desire? Sure. That's the point of demos and commercials. I fully believe you have those feelings, and trust you to be an expert on them.

But I've done a lot of customer development over the years. People say all sorts of things. The question when doing market analysis is what they'll actually do. And the better guide there is what they're actually doing , not what they say they would do.

So when you say that "everyone in immigrant communities" will buy it, I'm going to be skeptical because what people are actually doing is nothing like that. They could already move in this direction with existing tech. As far as I can tell, they aren't. If you have evidence otherwise, I'd love to see it.

I also can't find evidence of third parties competing with shared higher-quality video call setups, which is what we'd expect to see if the demand were there but the price hadn't fallen enough yet. That's the pattern we saw with video arcades and internet cafes/wangbas, for example. Wangbas are still getting by because they've shifted to gamers, who are willing to pay up for better hardware and connections (and room for team play). But I can't find mention of any similar shift for video calls. E.g. India's PCO network seems to be in rapid free-fall, not reinventing themselves around high-quality video calls. That suggests what all the other market data suggests: to the extent people want video calling, relatively low-quality gear like smartphones and laptops are in practice sufficient.

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

#532
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Again, you're arguing that the technology might get better. I don't disagree. I'm not comparing the technology of the ViewMaster. I'm comparing the lack of demonstrated demand/utility and the pattern of hype . Every one of the products I named was greeted at the time exactly like you are now. The new technology was amazing! The potential was unlimited! And for the repeats like 3D movies and VR: It's different this ti…

Just one final comment: I agree with you that there are technical innovations that don't result in mass adoption and ultimately don't matter. Where I think you're mistaken is that the leap from 2D displays to 3D holograms (or 3D displays as an intermediate step) is similar to the leap from black and white TVs to color TVs. It's obvious that it's the next big step since our world is not black and white in the same way that it's not 2D. The potential market for that is global so we've been pushing in that direction for 170 years, as you say (though sources for that claim would be appreciated as I couldn't find any), yet the technology just wasn't there to make it a good product.

Do you remember the Virtual Boy? Or the old cheap red/green paper glasses, and recently plastic glasses that are uncomfortable, darken the picture and give you headaches? These are all issues that better technology can solve, thus reducing the barrier to entry. A display that shows a 3D image without glasses to every viewer with a head tracking effect can potentially solve a lot of them. With similar improvements in camera technology, networks (5G anyone?), ML, etc. and all the pieces are starting to fall into place for what could be a revolution in how we communicate electronically.

Or Google might just axe it as they've done before ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Still bummed about Project Ara...)

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

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

That's not true -- even with depth sensing cameras, it will still be full of artifacts, and things like curly hair or strands of hair will become disastrous because they're not easily geometrically modeled. The Oculus Quest 2 doesn't do anything like what you're describing -- it essentially just pipes in stereoscopic video from its stereo cameras and stitches them together in a trivial way. It doesn't attempt to buil…

The Oculus Quest 2 (and the Quest 1) infers the geometry of your environment in the same way a Magic Leap does. The Quest uses the mesh to show perspective-correct stereoscopic pass-through views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V__SEPobM4

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

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> not that hard to do Then it would be done already.

Yep, it is done already. https://kinectron.github.io/#/

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

#535
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…

I'm a regular in the XR space. A popular running theory is that wearing something is the barrier right now. Often what's brought up is that the only wearable to make it to the prime time is the smartwatch--and even then it's a very slow uptake. People absolutely do not want to wear something to make marginal gains in their viewing experience.

In that respect I'm very excited for Starline and related technologies--"trying them" will finally just involve being in the line of sight of one rather than having an attendant fit some goggles onto your head.

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

#536
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you're arguing that the technology might get better. I don't disagree. I'm not comparing the technology of the ViewMaster. I'm comparing the lack of demonstrated demand/utility and the pattern of hype . Every one of the products I named was greeted at the time exactly like you are now. The new technology was amazing! The potential was unlimited! And for the repeats like 3D movies and VR: It's different this ti…

Just one final comment: I agree with you that there are technical innovations that don't result in mass adoption and ultimately don't matter. Where I think you're mistaken is that the leap from 2D displays to 3D holograms (or 3D displays as an intermediate step) is similar to the leap from black and white TVs to color TVs. It's obvious that it's the next big step since our world is not black and white in the same way…

I agree it's "obvious" that it's the "next big step". And I'm saying that's the problem.

Obviousness is a feeling people have about ideas in their head. Feelings can be useful or misleading. Every single person who got behind previous generations of 3D thought that it was "obviously" the next step. Many thousands of people had that feeling each time, buying in to a new platform. Great sums of money were invested by smart execs. All of those people were wrong each time. All of them. That you have the same feeling is not proof that it will be different this time. Indeed, the history suggests you should distrust that feeling.

Color video is a great example, so thanks for bringing it up. Color TV and color movies were quickly and widely adopted despite the extra cost and complexity. But 3D movies and TV have failed. Wearing a pair of glasses is not a major burden; 64% of Americans do it every day. Millions of people tried 3D movies and gave a collective shrug. The pretty obvious lesson to learn from those waves is that people are drawn to the concept but actually do not care in practice once the novelty wears off.

Another way to look at it is that people don't even care about stereoscopic vision much in actual life. Humans have a lot of mechanisms for extracting spatial information from the world, and the stereo-ness of it doesn't matter much. About 10% of people don't have it; they can still drive just fine. My grandfather, for example, was blinded in one eye as a kid, and nobody ever noticed. You can try it yourself; go out for a walk and keep one eye closed. Your 3D perception will be basically unaffected except for relatively close objects.

So sure, as I've said repeatedly, anything can happen. I'm just saying there is good reason to believe this will not happen, and excellent reason to not just assume it will. To see this not as a technological problem, but a problem of demand.

As to citations, I'm not sure what you're looking for. I've mentioned the Brewster Stereoscope twice in this thread. Ditto the ViewMaster. What do you need that isn't in the first page of Google results for those?

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

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Why would you need lightfields to make a TV that shows a different projection if you change vantagepoint? The device knows where the viewer's eyes are in 3D, so can display an image of the other end, as viewed from that point (within some constraint).

I'm no expert but if it simulates a window, no normal cameras can capture the field of view as effectively as a lightfield. Google also had a proprietary method of transferring data, not sure if that's mentioned in the article.

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

#539
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager a guess that its due to lack of competition. Apple Maps only works on iOS. DDG is great but the search results aren’t. Does YouTube even have a competitor? I don’t think you’re a curmudgeon at all. Circa 2008, Google was innovating in a lot of different areas that were very valuable to the average user. The ROI on these services has gone way down.

NB: Apple Maps also has a dedicated Mac app.

And a web API, so you can embed it in your website.
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