Dress for Success: Talking Headsets and Haptic Suits with Skarred Ghost Antony Vitillo

XR for Business

English - July 22, 2019 07:00 - 48 minutes - 44.3 MB - ★★★★★ - 12 ratings
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Previous Episode: The Right Displays for Challenging Tasks: XR on Oil Rigs, with Shell’s Michael Kaldenbach

Next Episode: Augmented Birthday Parties and Virtual Reality Field Trips with Centertec’s Bill Tustin

From headsets to haptic suits, there is going to be a lot of accessories and apparel in XR to chose from, including some that expand senses you didn’t even know were XR-compatible. Antony Vitillo – AKA Skarred Ghost – drops in to discuss different devices with Alan, their use cases, and what companies should consider when they go shopping for some.

Alan: Today’s guest is Antony
Vitillo, better known as Skarred Ghost. Antony is an XR consultant
and author of an amazing blog called The Ghost Howls. He also runs a
consulting company called New Technology Walkers, where they develop
VR solutions and advise companies about how best to use VR and AR.
Antony recently traveled to the fourth annual VIVE Ecosystem
Conference — VEC — in Shenzhen, China. If you’re not already
following Tony, you can learn a lot by connecting with him on
LinkedIn and subscribing to his newsletter at skarredghost.com. Tony
welcome to the show.

Antony: Hello, Alan! Thanks for
this opportunity.

Alan: It’s so great to have you
on the show. I had a wonderful opportunity to speak with you many
times, and we are both very, very passionate about virtual and
augmented reality. I want to just thank you for taking the time to be
on the show.

Antony: I’m very happy to be
with you. I’m happy to speak to you live, after so many messages
we’ve done on LinkedIn. Super happy to be here.

Alan: Let’s just dive right in,
and we’re going to try to bring as much value as we can to the
listeners today. We have a lot to go through; we’re going to go
through all of the different hardware aspects involved in
Virtual/Mixed/Augmented Reality — XR — and it’s not just the
headsets or headphones. You’ve got things like haptic suits, haptic
gloves. You’ve got touch-sensitive stimulators. You’ve got VR
headsets, AR headsets. You’ve got mobile phone-based AR, eye tracking
set devices, taste experiments, hot and cold devices, thermal
devices, and then tracking systems for motion capture, and of course,
treadmills for omni-directional walking. So there’s a lot to unpack
here. Let’s start at something crazy; haptic suits. Let’s talk about
haptic suits, and why and where these would be used in any
industries.

Antony: I’m very interested to
have these suits, because they offer the promise of letting you use
your full body in VR. So, finally, you can be there with all your
body. You know, my first startup was about full-body in VR, but using
Kinect. So, a different approach, but I’m a big fan of having the
possibility to kick objects, to move your body in every possible way,
and see your full self replicated in VR.

The advantage of using the haptic suits
over other approaches, like the one that they used with Kinect, is
that you don’t only have your full body — your full movement — in
VR, but you can also feel sensations. You can have haptic feedback.
So you can [feel] hot, cold. You can feel pain and whatever. It’s
really full immersion; a bit like we have seen in the Ready Player
One movie. Wade Watts wore that expensive suit, to fully be inside
the Oasis. This is why I think they’re very interesting, because they
can really enhance your visual experience; your sense of presence,
like your ancestors like to say.

Alan: So, let’s unpack this for
a second, Tony. What would some of the practical use cases of this…
I can see one in military training, where you’re in a virtual world,
you’re in a hostile environment, and maybe something explodes behind
you — a piece of shrapnel hits you — and maybe it vibrates. Maybe
explain some other instances, where this could be used in enter

Antony: Hello, Alan! Thanks for
this opportunity.

Antony: I’m very happy to be
with you. I’m happy to speak to you live, after so many messages
we’ve done on LinkedIn. Super happy to be here.

Antony: I think about different
possibilities. Like, for instance, I was talking some time ago with
some psychologists, and this can be interesting for rehabilitation.
How do you perceive your body? You can see yourself as an avatar that
is a bit too fat, too skinny, that lacks some parts of the body or
such. So, rehabilitate yourself psychologically. But it can also be
used for rehabilitation of your body. So if I can track all the
movements, and then medics have to check my patients that have
problems with the back, with their legs, whatever; I can really
observe them when they’re moving. For instance, you talk about the
military, but I think lots of industries and may have interests in
evaluating all of the body forces during training. So, if they’re
training for particular movements — and all the body — I think the
haptic suits are the only real possibility.

Alan: I was actually reading an
article the other day — it was was more of a scientific paper —
talking about privacy, and the fact that, with haptic suits and these
headsets, we’re actually able to collect insane amounts of data. We
can not only collect data around your height — because we know how
high you are from the floor — but your gait, how you walk, your
movements, what you’re looking at, what you’re experiencing, your
heart rates. There’s so many physiological aspects that we’re able to
collect incredible amounts of data, and so, by collecting this data,
all sorts of trainers will have unprecedented levels of data around
the person they’re studying. It’s funny, because for years and years,
we’ve studied people’s movements, but we’ve never had anything this
accurate. It’s really exciting.

Antony: Yeah. It’s all exciting,
for that high input. But what I also would like are certain kinds of
suits — for instance, we can name the Teslasuit. That is a very
complete device that should be available, maybe next year, and it can
also provide feedback to the user. So for instance, I sent this video
out; people wearing the Teslasuit were able to feel hot, to feel
cold, and also to feel pain. You mentioned, for instance, the
training of the military; you can really feel the pain of having been
shot. If you are a firefighter; maybe if you don’t extinguish the
fire fast enough, you can really feel the hot or your body. I think
that can also be managed to–

Alan: It’d be amazing for
firefighters or paramedics or people who are in emergency situations,
where training for these things is almost impossible. You can’t
really train for every scenario in the real world; in virtual reality
— with these suits — you can now train in a really realistic way,
for things that are very rare. I love that.

Antony: Yeah, because the great
thing about VR is that you can perform this training, realistically
simulating the situation the person will be in. The more the
simulation is realistic, the more this person who has to solve the
problem will we be prepared to solve it. For instance, if you really
have to extinguish a fire, and in the individual simulation you’ve
already felt the cold — maybe also the humidity, whatever — of that
moment; you’ll be in front of the fire, and you’ll really feel the
hotness. You will be already prepared. This is what I think will also
be very important of these suits. Of course there will be products
tailored to enterprises; there are no products ready for the
consumers. But since we’re talking about using this stuff for
industries, for enterprises, I think that it will be a very important
application.

Alan: I agree. And just to talk
some brands that are out there now, you mentioned Teslasuit. Are
there any other ones that you know of that are out there right now?

Antony: Well, I know a few
names. Another one that I want to mention, that I tried two times —
one also at the VEC — is bHaptics. That is a Korean company, and the
thing that is interesting is that they are making a modular suit. So,
you can buy the model for the face, for the chest, for the arms, and
for the legs. So, you can also only buy the pieces that you need, and
it can provide mostly depression feedback. But it’s good, because it
can be localized. I tried a paintball game, and I really could feel
the vibration in the exact point I was shot — in the chest, or also
in the face; it was very strange when I got the vibration in my face,
because I’ve been headshot-ed by my opponent — and it also works
with various devices, and now it works also with the VIVE Focus, so
you don’t need a PC, it doesn’t have cables; you just have a headset
on your head, and the suit on your body. This can be very, very–

Alan: It’s interesting that you
mentioned the VIVE Focus, because you were just in China at the VIVE
Ecosystem Conference, and one of the things — I actually interviewed
the president of HTC VIVE, Alvin Wang Graylin, and he’s actually
gonna be on a different episode of the podcast (so if you’re
listening, you can look up that podcast as well) — one of the things
they mentioned is the launch of the VIVE Focus Plus, which I believe
you had a chance to take a look at. And one of the things they
mentioned was this ability to take up to 40 headsets at once,
synchronize them in an up-to-900,000-square-foot space, so that you
could do very large-scale trainings. And I think, now that you
mentioned that bHaptic suit combining with that, this is going to be
a very, very powerful tool for enterprises.

Antony: Yeah, of course, I was
there; I listened to all the presentations by HTC. I saw other
companies working with them — like, for instance, Modal VR. Maybe
let’s talk later about that here on this podcast. I think that the
strength of HTC now is the services that they’re offering for
enterprises. This ability to configure more headsets at once, and
also to create such kinds of situations so you can have multiple
players in those spaces. And yeah, both for entertainment — you can
play large spaces — but [also] for serious applications. You can
have serious games, or directly training with different teams,
attempting to train together. And everything without a cable, because
the Focus Plus is completely standalone. I think that it can be
really important. I have one here on my desk, and I think that’s an
interesting device. Yes, I think that companies may evaluate the use
of this device, especially for when there are multiple people
involved, and the company doesn’t want to buy lots of pieces have
lots of cables, stuff like–

Alan: It really democratizes it,
and makes it easy for businesses to get involved. I think, to be
honest, if you look at the roadmap of VR in general, everything kind
of launched and kicked off in 2016, to the public. But I think
businesses are really going to start embracing these standalone
headsets. While we’re talking about VR headsets, let’s unpack some of
the other ones that are becoming more prevalent in industry. We’ve
got the VIVE Focus Plus. Oculus Quest is coming out. The VIVE Cosmos,
the Pimax 8K, the Varro, the Pico… so, which one of those of you
tried, and where do you see them fitting in to different enterprises?

Antony: I think that it’s great
that this year, we are going to have lots of interest in devices.
It’s great to see the industry growing, but it’s also important for
companies to start understanding what are their needs, and so, what
are the devices that can fit them? The Oculus Quest is a great device
that is coming — very polished by Oculus, it will be quite cheap,
only $400. There is also the Oculus Go, that is already on the
market; it’s just a viewer of 360 content. One other thing that is
important is that they also understand the business license. The VIVE
Focus Plus is quite expensive — it costs $800 — but it has clear
business licensing, does business services, assistance, there is a
kiosk mode, and other things that are fundamental for a company. The
Oculus Glass — currently — when it will be launching, most probably
will be mostly a consumer device. So it will be probably a bit better
than the Focus, for what concerns the comfort and the controllers —
it is more ergonomic. But it’s not clear if it will have a business
license and business services since Day 1. There are rumors about a
business version of the Quest coming next month, but it is important
that companies understand if there is a business licensing or not,
and what it offers. This is the first thing that is important to say.

Alan: I agree with you, Tony; I
think it’s really important to unpack that just a little bit, because
Oculus and HTC both realized that the path to mass consumer adoption
of this technology is actually through enterprise applications. We
saw that very early with mobile phones, with the BlackBerry being a
very powerful business tool, and then becoming a consumer tool after
that. But really, what’s going to happen with these — and I think
Oculus, their official stance is that they want to market towards the
enterprise, but all of their advertising is towards the consumer. So
this is this kind of disconnect, and Oculus being owned by Facebook,
I really don’t know that they have the experience…

Antony: The interest.

Alan: Yeah, and it doesn’t seem
like they have that. But I mean we’ll see. With the Oculus Quest,
we’ll see what kind of services they provide. But definitely, HTC is
really far ahead with the services and, being able to do that. So I
want to just shift focuses for one second and — for those of you who
are listening who don’t really know about the VR headsets and the
difference — there’s kind of two types: there’s Three Degrees of
Freedom, and Six Degrees of Freedom. Three degrees means you can look
up, down, left, right, and you’re in the space, but you can’t move
around. Then, Six Degrees allows you to look up, down, left, right,
but also move in those [dimensions], and the newer headsets will
allow you to move. It makes a huge difference in the amount of
immersion, but also the things you can do; being able to have
controllers, or see your hands in virtual reality, and connect and
move things around. That’s Six Degrees of Freedom.

So, you have something like the Oculus
Go, which is a $200 headset, which is perfect for 360 videos; if you
want to do some basic training for people, and they can interact
using Gaze-type controls. But you can’t move around, and that’s kind
of the difference between the two. Then you have tethered and
untethered, meaning connected to a big computer or a backpack
computer, or standalone, meaning the entire computer device is on the
headset. So just for those of you who are new to this, that’s the
difference between the different headsets. Is there anything else you
want to add to that before we move on?

Antony: No, I think that was a
precise list.

Alan: There’s another headset —
there’s two out there. One’s called the Pimax, which is an 8-K
headset; it’s like wearing a giant scuba mask. It’s massive! And the
view is beautiful. I mean, it looks really gorgeous. But there’s no
way anybody in the public is going to wear this on their head,
because it is like wearing two massive cell phones strapped to your
head on a diagonal. But then, there’s another one called The Varro
out of — I believe, is it’s Sweden? or Finland?

Antony: Varro is from Finland.

Alan: Finland, sorry. And these
guys, they’re selling the most expensive VR headset on the market.
What their claim to fame is is having a really, really wide field of
view and very, very high optics and resolution. That thing is — I
think — it’s $7,000.

Antony: I remember something
around $6,000, maybe–

Alan: $6,000.

Antony: — but it was super,
super expensive.

Alan: It seems super expensive,
but let’s break it down for a second. About five years ago, companies
would spend millions and millions of dollars building a virtual
reality CAVE, so that people could start working in three dimensions.
If you fast forward now, $6,000 for a headset that allows your
companies to design in virtual reality, and have meetings in virtual
reality while designing; one headset saves one flight, and there’s
one flight, paid for the headset. So, in enterprise, this is not a
lot of money. In consumer, I can’t imagine anybody is gonna buy one
of these headsets. But, in the market they’re going after, it’s
really valuable to design companies. One of the other interviews we
did was with Elizabeth Baron, who headed up the VR division of Ford,
and every single car that they make has to be viewed in virtual
reality by all the senior executives, and they have a big meeting
where they’re all around the world meeting about the car and seeing
in different lighting conditions and all this, and what they need is
the best possible quality. I think for that reason, these high-end
headsets are going to work.

Speaking of high-end headsets, let’s
touch on some of the AR headsets — or the augmented reality, or
mixed reality — headsets. You’ve got a ton coming out, now; you’ve
got the Hololens, Hololens 2, Magic Leap, nreal, Realmax, Vuzix,
North glasses, Epson MOVERIO, Google Glass. So, let’s start at the
top; let’s talk about the Hololens. What are your thoughts on that?

Antony: My thought is that
Microsoft is doing a great job, because it has created the AR market
with the first Hololens, and now after some years, it has created the
new Hololens 2, that is a big improvement over the previous one. I
have not had the pleasure of trying it yet, but from what I have
read, the greatest improvement is that it is much smaller and
useable. If you have ever tried to use a Hololens One for a training
experience, it was really a pain, because the only interaction was
through the “air tap” gesture; it was like a click with the
index finger and the thumb.

Alan: Oh my goodness, it was
impossible. Basically, you had to put this headset on people, and
explain this weird clicking, like… “it’s like a mouse, only
you gotta stick your finger up and point it out,” and if anybody
who’s ever tried this, knows what I’m talking about. Anybody over 40
had a real hard time trying to figure this out; anybody under 20
picked it up instantly. But the ability to get people working on this
immediately was difficult. You posted something yesterday with the
Hololens 2 and the interactions, maybe talk about the new
interactions that Hololens 2 brings.

Antony: Well, the first
interaction that went along with the Hololens One was a disaster,
because there was only one interaction, and the system wasn’t able to
adapt it well — I had tremendous experience with that. You said the
Hololens 2 brings some more natural interactions with both hands, and
so basically, you don’t have to teach how things work. You just use
it like in real life. You have to scroll things? Just scroll them
with your hands, moving the hands from down to up. If you had to
click buttons, just to put a finger of yours on the button and press
it. It’s hard for me to explain that, because there’s no explanation
needed. You just do what you think is intuitive to do. The system can
detect all your hands, all your fingers, and so everything just
works. And it’s not only the hands. It’s also the eyes. There is a
demo by Microsoft, that you are reading a text. And when your eyes
are at the end of the text, the system detects that you have read
everything, and closes automatically — the text — so you can
continue reading it.

Alan: Hold on a sec. So
basically, because there’s eye tracking, and because the system knows
exactly where you’re looking at all times, it can know when you’re at
the end of a sentence, and move it up for you? Think about that for a
second; the world is going to move to spatial computing, and… let’s
just talk about the difference between VR and AR for a second,
because I think we skipped past that. Virtual reality puts on a
headset and transports you to another world. All of these headsets
are gonna start to have eye tracking and all of these things. But in
augmented reality, or mixed reality, you’re actually seeing your real
world, with data painted on top of it. The ability to look at
something and instantly have the information in context to that,
immediately in front of you — and now with eye tracking, it knows
exactly what you’re looking at and, can bring up information, and
know when you’re finished reading it and get it out of the way. So
this is really, really important, fundamental; eye tracking is going
to be an every single pair of glasses.

Antony: Yeah. Sorry if I
interrupt you, but something has come to my mind. Some companies that
have asked of us to make a system for the Hololens — so, in AR — so
that the worker — like, a maintenance worker — could do something
to repair machinery with the hands, and at the same time, see the
manual in augmented reality in front of him. The great advantage of
using eye tracking — for instance, the solution provided by
Microsoft — is that the worker can have their hands in the machine,
performing his work, and at the same time with the eyes, look at the
manual that will scroll, automatically, the instructions of how to
repair the machine. So this is something that can be very important
for maintenance, in my opinion.

Alan: I agree, and in fact,
there are some studies by Boeing — that are using this technology
immediately, now — and they’re seeing a 25 to 45 percent decrease in
the amount of time that it takes a worker to complete a task. Now,
think about that; 25 percent faster. That alone is incredible, but
the real kicker comes in the fact that they have near-zero error.

Antony: Wow!

Alan: So, by putting these
instructions up in front of them, they’re seeing near-zero errors.
And there are companies out there like Upskill — they’re going to be
on the podcast as well — there’s some other companies there, that
are really starting to take digital manuals, and put them into a
heads-up display, so you’re completely hands-free, and you have the
information, when you need it, in context to what you need
immediately. And that is a really powerful tool that… well, very
few enterprises are working on now, but I think it’s going to explode
in 2019.

Antony: In the end, it will
disrupt completely the maintenance sector, in my opinion. In maybe
five years, all the maintenance operations that we know now that
completely changed by AR and MR.

Alan: I agree. So, we’ve talked
about the VR headsets — for training, for simulations, for design.
We’ve talked about augmented or mixed reality headsets — the
Hololens, Hololens 2. Magic Leap is kind of a Hololens competitor;
they really went after the consumer market, and they’re actually
gonna be selling through AT&T stores — starting this week, I
think. And I think Microsoft really has a firm grasp on the
enterprise of this, and I think they’ve got a really good head start,
because 1. They have great relationships with all the enterprise
clients already. 2. They’re building services into their Azure cloud,
so that’s really exciting. And now, everything’s gonna just work with
your current BIM systems (if you’re in construction), or your CAD
diagrams. I think one of the things that came up at the Hololens 2
launch — that I think is going to be revolutionary — is a program
called Spatial. What were your thoughts on that?

Antony: Well, Spatial. I think
that it’s one of the best — from what I’ve been able to see —
collaboration tools. It’s not the only one, because there are other
ones for VR; there are some custom solutions. For instance, there’s
one from Nvidia in VR that is also very, very good (also very, very
expensive). It is important, because it lets the workers of a company
that are maybe in offices in different parts of the world — maybe
some are in Beijing, some are in New York, some are at home — and
they can meet in augmented reality. They can discuss ideas, they can
work on 3D models together. For instance, to refine a prototype. They
can meet as if they were in the same space, seeing them together,
interacting, talking. Imagine how this is great, because this can
save lots and lots of money for companies.

I was talking with the CEO of a Chinese
company that is working on another collaboration tool in VR, called
XCOL. She explained to me that for certain kinds of companies that
produce objects — so, not people like me that create software that
can be exchanged easily by just sharing a folder, maybe on Dropbox —
people that have to create concrete objects — real objects — maybe
they have to share prototypes made with chalk, wood, or whatever.
Creating these prototypes, sharing them by sending these packages all
over the world, then having a meeting. It’s all a waste of time and
money — big money, it’s not just a hundred dollars. So, the
possibility to meet in only one virtual space, talk together, and
modifying objects together. So instead of 3D printing the object to
walking on — I don’t know, a remote control for a new TV — we can
see the 3D model of the remote control in front of us and we can
discuss in front of it, and decide to change it together. All with
zero cost, because that 3D model is just a digital object, so it can
be modified on the fly. We can take pictures. We can see multimedia
elements together. At the end of the day, there is a modified version
of this object that is okay for all of us, and without spending
money. The saving for companies is really huge, and that’s why there
are lots of companies working on these kinds of solutions, and
Spatial can be one of the best, also, because it works with the
Hololens.

Alan: Yeah, and one of the
things that has come out of these types of collaboration tools — and
I think it’s important to note — is that they have to be completely
interchangeable with all the different XR technologies. So, if you
break down XR or — extended reality, or whatever you want to call it
— into its individual components: you’ve got the real world, and
then you’ve got the sliding scale of immersion, where you have
augmented reality — or overlays of computer graphics on top of the
real world. Then you’ve got mixed reality, meaning overlays of
computer graphics on top of the real world in context, so it knows
that’s a table or a chair, and it builds the experience around the
objects that are in your real world. And then you have virtual
reality, where it completely hijacks your whole world. If you look at
the scale of these, one of the things that I think is gonna be an
important factor in mass consumer adoption — but also, in businesses
— is leveraging the power of the mobile phone. Mobile phone-based
augmented reality has only scratched the surface; it’s been around
for five or six years, and companies are only starting to scratch the
surface.

One of the things I saw which is really cool is a company called Placenote, where you hold up your phone, and you can leave a note for somebody in 3D space. So, say you’re working on a house, and you want to leave some note saying, “don’t forget to move this thing here,” or you can leave notes for your housekeeper, or your Airbnb host, or whatever. There’s some incredible things that can be done with the mobile phones. If we take away the glasses for a minute, let’s see what we can do with the mobile phones that are in everybody’s pocket. Because by the end of 2019, there will be about 2 billion devices that have powerful AR built right into them, and they’re in everybody’s pocket. So let’s unpack some of the things that we can do with those phones.

Antony: Well, I think that — as
you said — the augmented reality runs in the phone is great, because
every one of us has a phone. The classic example is that we see how
it is done with Pokémon Go. There are lots of people running like
zombies in the cities, hunting for Pokémon. So we see how it can be
powerful, augmented reality on the phone. I think the tablet, with
its wider screen, can be more important for AR, even more than the
phone. I’ve seen some examples — I’ve tried some examples — where I
could see augmented reality through the tablet is great, because you
can see wider space that’s augmented. Some applications come to mind:
I’ve seen interesting things — again — one in maintenance. For
instance, there was this company — I don’t remember the name —
where I could look at my car that is not working. I just open it, I
see the engine. I take my tablet. I find my engine. There is a worker
that sees what my phone sees, and can write on my screen, can send me
instructions to fix what is not working. So what I’m going to say is
that I can see the augmentations from my phone, how can I fix my car
if it is broken. I’m not a mechanic, so it could be important and
interesting for everyone of us, and especially in certain sectors.
Well, maintenance is important. Another experiment that I’ve seen
that was quite original, was using the phone to see MRI scans of the
body. So, the world’s doctors sharing these MRI scans. By moving the
phone, the doctor was able to see the particular size of the scan,
and so; analyze better, in a more natural way, what could be the
problem for the patient.

Alan: That’s incredible. And I
think that’s a really great use case. We don’t touch too much on the
health care use cases, but they’re so vast. I mean, we could build a
podcast just around the health care uses of this; everything from MRI
scans in augmented reality; to mixed reality, aiming surgical tools
to make sure you’re accurate; to virtual reality simulators to treat
PTSD and other things like this. The applications in the medical
industry are literally endless.

Antony: Can I just add one thing
that I think is fundamental for your listeners? It’s that, even if
it’s more dedicated to consumers, what is huge now in 2019 with
mobile phones in the AR is advertisement. Because there are lots of
experiments how to use advertisements with AR filters; we all know a
Snapchat is doing great things with Snap filters and such. You can
try, for instance, makeup on your face directly with an AR filter.
You can try some glasses. There is also a great campaign by Burger
King that makes you burn the ads of their competitors in augmented
reality. And I think that is important for companies to know that ads
in AR are really outperforming the standard advertisement services.

Alan: You’re absolutely right.
That Burger King one: basically, you take your phone, you point it at
a competitor’s ad, and it catches on fire and gives you a free
Whopper, and then allows you to post the video of you burning down
their competitor’s poster or billboard or anything. In the first
week, they give away 50,000 Whoppers. Imagine the earned media that
they got around the world from that. I know when I posted it on my
LinkedIn, it got over 100,000 views, just on my LinkedIn. So, you can
imagine the amount of eyeballs that Burger King got from this, and it
probably only cost them maybe — I don’t know — $50-60 thousand to
build that application.

Antony: Yeah, probably.

Alan: Incredible. I don’t know
how much it cost, but it far less than the revenue that they brought
in from it and the marketing. So, you’re right, absolutely marketing.
If you look at Snapchat alone, Snapchat filters — they have built
over 400,000 filters on Snapchat. This is not them specifically, but
people building them, and brands are starting to jump on board.
Nike’s done a bunch of stuff with LeBron and with Michael Jordan. So,
Snapchat is leading the way in mobile phone-based augmented reality
marketing and advertising. So, you really nailed it on that one. And
there’s companies like Admix. Samuel Huber has been a guest on this
podcast as well; he’s creating programmatic augmented reality
advertising, so that brands can now scale their advertising using his
platform, on Instagram and Facebook, and now Snapchat. So, it’s
really an exciting time for advertising, as well.

Antony: Yeah. It’s a new world,
and I feel that it’s important, also, to jump now, that there is not
much competition, maybe? For companies, it’s a great opportunity to
start to make advertising in the new and more effective way.

Alan: I agree. I look at the
mobile phone-based a AR as the training wheels to where the world’s
going. In the next five years, the devices like Hololens and Magic
Leap and these really industrial glasses that are being used for
enterprise, I think, are going to end up on the faces of everybody,
because you just won’t be able to compete anymore. If I wear a pair
of glasses, and it gives me all the information I need — real-time
and in context of the world around me — and you don’t, good luck
trying to compete with me in my job. So I think we’re going to end up
having these glasses that give us superpowers on a daily basis. Some
of the other things that we didn’t touch on yet: haptic gloves. We
talked about haptic suits and wearing like a full suit for haptics,
but what about just something like a pair of gloves, that allow me to
reach out and grab something, and feel that it’s there. The feeling
of touch and seeing your hands and in virtual spaces is absolutely
incredible.

Antony: Well, it’s fantastic.
It’s a new field. It’s something that is not consumer ready, but
there are some enterprise solutions that are really interesting. One
that got very popular on the social media and such lately as being
HaptX gloves. The device is really good, because — while they are
incredibly cumbersome and expensive — but it has a haptic engine
that is really sophisticated, so you can really feel the sensations
of touch all over your hands, with a lot of positions, with bigger
solutions; so you just don’t feel a vibration on the one finger;
you’ll feel the vibration on the single point on your finger, for
instance. There is a demo with these glasses, where there is rain in
virtual reality. You can really feel the drops of the rain falling on
your hand.

Alan: Oh wow!

Antony: Yeah, it’s amazing.

Alan: The haptics ones also have
force feedback. So, I reach out and grab a can; it feels like a can
in my hand.

Antony: It’s a completely
realistic haptic sensation. You can feel objects on your hand as if
they were there. You can feel how they are heavy and such. It’s
really something that I will really want to have, but–.

Alan: Me too!

Antony: — but I don’t need them
now.

Alan: Tony, I tried the
Ultrahaptics. It’s just a little finger sensor; it looks like a blood
measure — like a pulse oximeter — on your fingers. I tried them at
CES, and I reached out and moved some blocks or whatever, and I could
feel the haptic feedback. But the second part: they told me to stand
by a fire, and then reach my hand into the fire. When I reached my
hand in the fire, the finger haptics buzzed on my fingers, and scared
the living crap out of me. I jumped back about three feet, and I must
have looked like a complete idiot, because there’s nothing there. But
it scared me in a way that would be an incredible training tool. I
mean, here’s here’s something like McDonald’s; “don’t reach your
hand into the deep fryer, because this is what happens.” Better
to train somebody in virtual reality than to train them when they
actually could burn themselves. That, really… it’s stuck in my
head, like, I touched a fire; it burned me. And even though I know it
wasn’t real, it felt so real.

Antony: Yeah it’s fantastic. You
mentioned Ultrahaptics. It’s completely the opposite approach from
HaptX gloves, because HaptX gloves, it’s a really cumbersome device
on your hands, but gives you every kind of possible sensation, while
the Ultrahaptics leaves you with your bare hands. So this is really
like the future. You don’t need any gloves, but there is a device
that showers ultrasound waves throughout your fingers, and can give
you the sense of touch. But you can’t have all the sensation that a
glove can give you. One of these can be great relief for training,
because you can really make the people have the sensation of having
an object in the hand. So, every kind of training that requires
tools; if there is not such a kind of powerful gloves, it’s just
like… I don’t know how to explain that if you play a game in
virtual reality with the standard controllers, like when you have a
sword, or you have a gun. Everything seems fake, because you don’t
have the sense of weight. You don’t have the real sensation of the
things in your hand. When you use these kind of gloves, you can
really feel the weight. You can feel the recoil of the weapon, and
this means that, for every kind of training that requires a tool,
from the most precise one, to the more hardcore ones — like a gun —
I think that gloves can easily improve the training experience.

Alan: I agree 100 percent.
Something else that I want to bring up, because it’s underestimated
on how this is gonna be really important — and the last thing that I
want to touch on — is scent devices. Being able to provide people
with a realistic scent… there’s two; there’s VAQSO, and then
FEELREAL is a Kickstarter on right now. I’ve actually had a chance to
try VAQSO; I put on the headset, and it had this little device that
was underneath my nose that gave me scents, and the scents were
programmed in the experience. So for example, I reached out and
grabbed a cup of coffee. I smelled the cup of coffee — brought it
close to my face — and as I brought it close to my face, the scent
was released, and I could smell coffee. Then I did the same thing
with a chocolate bar. And then the last part of the demo, they told
me, “now smell the girl.” I thought they were Punking me —
I thought it was gonna be on some television show. I looked to my
left, and there was a Japanese anime character, and you have to lean
in and smell her. When I leaned over — I smelled the coffee and the
chocolate — and then when I leaned over, she smelled like perfume. I
will never forget that.

Scent is one of the most incredible
ways for our brain to remember things, and I think in industrial
applications where there are times where scent is really, really
important. Maybe you’re underneath a mine that has sulfur, and you
want to give people that realistic experience of being there before
they get there, because some people maybe can’t take going into a
mine shaft with sulfur smell. Maybe they throw up immediately, and
it’s better to know before they send them down there and spend
thousands of dollars and training them to send them down. So, I think
there’s a really interesting opportunity to use these scent machines.
What are your thoughts?

Antony: Well, I’m a huge fan of
all the research that doesn’t go to the immediate direction of
improving just optics and audio, but also try to improve these other
sensations, like the scent and the taste. I think that…our sense of
smell is like one of the most ancient ones; it is wired in a
particular way in the brain, so it is connected with lots of regions.
Why have we just been ignoring it in including it in our headsets?
It’s actually one of the most important senses that we have. So it is
important that we we implement data in VR, if we want the simulation
to be realistic. What VAQSO is doing is great. Also, FEELREAL. We’ll
also be able to provide the sense of humidity in front of your face.
So not only the sense of smell, but also a bit of simulation of how
the air can be. It’s great, not only for entertainment; it can be
also good for marketing, because you can associate VR marketing
campaign with pleasant scents that can make the user remember the
brand better.

Alan: Oh my goodness — you know
what? This could be used for real estate. You go into a real estate,
and you smell cookies baking in the oven. Maybe you’re selling
cannabis, and you want the cannabis smell. Think about it: it can be
used for literally anything, and to market anything. Creating a
powerful smell interaction, your brain doesn’t easily forget that. I
think it’s really something that nobody has really fully embraced
yet. I’m really excited to do some experiments on that.

Antony: Yeah, we we should do
that together! Imagine that, as you say, you’re selling a house, and
when customers enters the house, maybe there is someone that is
cooking, and they can really smell the taste of food or whatever. You
can maybe dangle it off the balconies, and it could have the smell of
the sea, of the grass. I think that’s something that is sticking with
their head, and will make them continues to think about the house. He
can create a connection.

Alan: I agree.

Antony: That would be great.

Alan: Man, that would be
amazing. I think we found our new business model! [laughs]

Antony: Yeah! [laughs]

Alan: Tony, I really want to
thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I’m going to
ask you one final question: what do you see for the future of XR, as
it pertains to business?

Antony: Well, the sure thing that I can see as a trend is that it will be used always more. I assume that also, among my customers, maybe someone, some years ago, just said, “ah, VR. I’ve heard about it, but I’m not interested,” and now they’re coming again because their competitors started using VR. So, it’s something that will be fundamental for business in the next [few] years. It is fundamental because it makes companies spend [less] money, and makes their jobs [work] in more effective ways. I’ve seen lots of articles; I’ve seen lots of videos about the efficiency that companies are gaining. For instance, HTC always talks about Bell, that can prototype a helicopter now in months, and not in years, as before, thanks to VR. I see this great trend. Regarding the technology, what I can envision is that this kind of virtual reality is going to become always more realistic. As we’ve discussed, that would be slowly, with the adoption of new sciences. But visuals are going to become very realistic. We are seeing the Varjo headset, that has the resolution of the human eye; we can go further than that. Audio is already well emulated. With the gloves, we are going to improve; now, the devices are very expensive, but yes in a few years, it will be better. The sense of smell and taste will come later, but I’m sure that they will come, anyway. So, I envision lots of great things coming — lots of great hardware coming — and I’m so happy to be here, now.