STEREOSCOPE
Welcome to the STEREOSCOPE Podcast, the place where we dive deep into everything immersive video. From VR180, 3D360, Spatial Video, Volumetric to Photogrammetry, we cover it all. Our show is dedicated to covering the latest news, best practices, and workflows that are essential to the immersive video community. The VR industry has been a major force behind the rapid growth of this medium and we are excited to showcase how it impacts immersive video. Every episode, we feature two videos created by our talented community members to inspire and showcase the amazing work being done in this space. Join us on the next phase of cinema as we gaze through the STEREOSCOPE.
STEREOSCOPE
Cameras! Co-Watching! VR Phones- Oh my! Xtadium - LumePad 2 Tablet - ImmerGallery - iPhone Spatial Video - Slam Phone
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Ever dreamt of exploring the world, attending concerts, or watching sports games from the comfort of your home? Pack your virtual bags, folks, because, in this episode, we're taking a journey into the pulsing heart of VR Video technology. From the game-changing LumePad tablet by Leia Inc. to the innovative pass-through video recording feature of Oculus Quest 3, we're discussing exciting developments and questioning their potential drawbacks.
We're taking an in-depth look at the iPhone 15 Pro's spatial video capabilities and how this tech titan could transform stereo video content. But hold your horses - we're not just singing praises! We're also expressing some well-warranted skepticism, as we underscore the need for further improvements. Don't miss out as we also discuss the Slam Phone and its potential to democratize VR content creation.
In our featured videos this week we have:
Wonders of Xochimilco - Mexico | DeoVR - VRO Films
ROMANSHORN - SWITZERLAND - DRONE FLIGHT 8K | DeoVR - Jussuf Lieberherr
Finally, we're stepping into the world of co-watching sports games like you've never seen before. Xtadium, an app that offers a unique experience for sports enthusiasts, giving you a virtual front-row seat to the action. But how does it stack up against competitors like Apple's Next VR? We'll break it down for you. We're wrapping up by highlighting the exciting potential of VR in reshaping travel experiences and storytelling. So buckle up, tune in, and let's explore the virtual world together!
Show Notes
Stereoscope Podcast
Speaker 1Hi, I'm Byron Diffenderfer and I'm Anthony Vasiliades, and this is episode two of the Stereoscope podcast.
Speaker 2So, first of all, you might have noticed some changes to the last time we did this. We tried to listen to the feedback that we received about some significant and valid criticisms.
Speaker 1So we tried to mix it up, try to make it a little bit more visually interesting. You know we got chachkies here to give you a sense of depth.
Speaker 2Yeah, should feel a little less formal because we're not like square against the wall and stuff like that. Just try to you know, yeah, trying to make it a little more loose and less formal feeling and the awkward of just staring at our legs. Yeah, my spine-ly legs but anyway, we've got some interesting stuff to talk about today.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was interesting because, like also, I think it's pretty clear, monthly is most likely what we're going to be shooting for. At this point I think bi-weekly was a little ambitious. Hey, eventually there might be enough news to bi-weekly. Yeah and enough time to render, and you know, when we have like a render monkey, we can throw at it, and we are shooting this in 60p, so that's another thing we're hoping doesn't, yeah, so we're on a much tighter deadline than we had before.
Speaker 2Yes, but literally, yeah, this post stuff is pushing me to build a new computer.
Speaker 1Yeah, I actually. I nuked my rig from Orbit. It was the only way to be sure, or at least that's what Mystic had thought. But I had just got a new rig. I had ordered one literally days before my CPU kicked the bucket. So we're doing that from my new render rig, which is fits in the palm of your hand. It is nice. Shout out to Legion.
Speaker 1Mine won't fit in the palm of your hand, alright. So, and that was actually one of the things that I was About two weeks ago I was like I don't know if there's gonna be enough news and stuff to fit into this week, but I feel like that's gonna be a thing where, right as we're thinking that, all the news sort of pops up.
Speaker 2Yeah, ebbs and flows, alright, so what first?
Speaker 1up is the. The first one we have up is LumaPad from LeiaInc, so this popped up. So this device has actually been out for a while and it's a second iteration. But it caught my eye because I think the founder of LeiaInc posted in the 360 Professionals forum that they had just updated the firmware and the software for the device to support VR180 videos playback natively on the tablet, which I think is really cool. So stereo devices obviously you need some sort of baked in hardware for it to work, unless you're using Anaglyph, and this device sort of answers that, and I think the reason why I wanted to include it is because I think it could be hugely impactful for quality control and possibly even like a real time solution for checking stereo in a production scenario. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2Yeah, that would be a lovely application for this actually, because I mean, as we know, we can do some of this stuff, like with headsets, within our editing programs, but I don't know if anybody else has found a real solution. They're really subpar, we'll just say that, and it's just too lengthy to sit there and put a headset on and off and stuff like that. So having like a small monitor similar to an editing monitor, so they're showing off how well your stereo is working, would be sweet.
Speaker 1Mind you, that's not the case yet there are. There are use cases for Unity. It does have a real time Unity application baked. Well, not baked in, but through a software portal, and that's what ends. When I was looking at the device, that's what inspired me like, well, if they can do it, for that I mean there's got to be a way to get a video out from like an R5C that they can do a real time, you know.
Speaker 2Yeah. But then you're yeah, that's a stretch stitch and do it all in real time.
Speaker 1That's. But I mean a lot of what they're doing here is not that different either. I mean it. Just it seems to me, even if it's not real time, real time with you know, a couple second delay they can do it.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean I would be. I'd be stoked with that.
Speaker 1Also, but what I'm saying is that a device like this is exactly what we need in a production scenario for just quick and dirty checking stereo. Because we ran into this, still are on a project that we're working on. We had a lens misalignment and it messed with the stereo and we didn't know until the entire thing was rendered out, and now we have to go back and use Mystica to fix it and that's what nuked my rig.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, it would be lovely. This is also just opening up a dialogue. Anybody else have issues with their VR lens for the Canon R5C, the 5.2 mil dual fisheye lens, with it falling out of, like getting pretty gnarly vertical misalignment every other time you shoot, so it's just us doing something wrong or what. I've actually got to take it open with Canon to send it off. Yeah, have it evaluated, because maybe it's just ours.
Speaker 1Okay, all right. So LumaPad, I mean there's a, there's, it's all. They're like bespoke software that is cooked by them, and I think that's probably the biggest flaw of the device. I haven't used it yet, I have to be very clear about that. But from I mean, whenever you see these devices like uh that have this baked in software, that part is always the biggest failure point. Yeah, yeah, and I think that's the only thing that's trying to sell this as a consumer device seems.
Speaker 2Yes, but on the other hand, because I mean, like even the idea of using it as a quality control device is a bit of a pipe dream, like it's not what it does yet. It just has the capability, maybe with some whatever. But outside of all that, just looking at what it is and whatever it presents to me, I just see another device that people can consume the content on.
Speaker 1And that is a good thing. That is a very good thing we need all that?
Speaker 2because every time I talk to people because obviously there's still not everybody you know there's I don't know 10, 20 million headsets out there but like I don't know hardly anybody outside of the two of us that have headsets. So I'm always talking to people like I'd really love to show you this, but you need a headset, you need some sort of device.
Speaker 1Yeah, so the more avenues for people to consume, I feel like a tablet, being a stereo device, makes a lot more sense as a consumption device than like a 3D TV, because a tablet you're only using by yourself. A 3D TV TVs are inherently a social construct. You know that's how they were. You know the whole family got around the TV back in the 1950s. A tablet unless you're watching it with a kid, you know it's a solitary yeah.
Speaker 2Well, this and this brings up with the VR video on this, like I'm assuming, then if you're watching a VR video and you want to look around, you do this right With the. Is that the? Is that the?
Speaker 1I think that, yeah, there's the, there's motion control built into it. It's probably you can move around and drag or swing around, and it uses glasses free technology, I'm guessing it's the same. They're throwing around AI.
Speaker 2I don't really understand what the AI part of this is but it's probably just buzzword, because that's the hottest thing in tech right now.
Speaker 1But they're using eye tracking and a Polaroid screen. Same I mean same tech. That was in the new Nintendo 3DS back in 2013. Yeah, and that was in 2015, which was a very good effect. I've tried, I tried that out. I used to have one and the the eye tracking really locked in the stereo in a way. That was like the three days didn't make sense until they added the eye tracking. And then it was like, oh wow, this is incredible. Mind you, it was like a 320.
Speaker 2Right, yeah, but still super cool, yeah, so anyway, well, that's the looming bed and, yeah, let's move on to Okay.
Exploring Camera Stabilization and Spatial Video
Speaker 1So the next one is Immer Gallery. So there it's a. It's a video consumption app. It looks like it's, you know, in a alpha, but they they found a way to grab the pass through from the Quest 3 cameras and record video for it. So everybody who has a Quest 3 has a stereo camera built in, from what I've seen. Obviously, it is very hacky. A lot of the stuff featured today is hacky, but it's very, very interesting because. So what are your thoughts on this?
Speaker 2I mean, yeah it's, it's cool.
Speaker 1I think you're a little bit more skeptical than I am.
Speaker 2Well, we all know how great the visual quality of the pass through is on the, on the Quest 3.
Speaker 1Yeah, so there's that yeah. Lots of different noise.
Speaker 2And as they're sort of showing here, like your head being the thing that controls the camera, probably not great, because staying level is not something your head goes over.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean yeah, whenever I've thought about this it's like you know. So this gives us some insight into the same issues that the Apple Vision Pro is going to have. You know, like if you're strapping a camera to your face, your cat, your, your head is not a gimbal, you know, and your brain processes out the inconsistencies in the motion, and this camera is obviously not doing that. You can even see there in in some of the description of how this works. They mentioned that how we should use it is you should use the level and then it'll. It'll start the level and then it'll go away after five seconds and then just keep your head that way, you know, which does not seem like a high usability factor, but it's. It's a very cool thing.
Speaker 1I haven't tried it out, mainly because I'm a little wary of doing this on my stock Quest 3. But it does. It makes me think about the, the issues that the Apple Vision Pro is going to have, because I just cannot see their stabilization software working in the same way. What do you? What do you think?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean to me, unless it has like really epic stabilization where you can at least do this, you know, and not throw the level off, then maybe it's something. My my thoughts in general, though, are like I'm I'm just happy that, like people are doing this, which means there's some sort of demand for it, which means people are trying to make content, which means the market's growing. So I'm only ever like really thinking about, like you know, we're in this space, we're looking for audiences. I think this means that's coming.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it also means that there are people trying to solve these problems of what is what is a camera in a headset look like, what are the practical use case scenarios and what are the impractical use case scenarios? At what point does it stop being a gimmick and start being usable?
Speaker 2Yeah, let's look at it this way. We're just now getting to the point where things shot on iPhone are actually like super viable, and that's in 2D. So this is like, this is like your Motorola Razr camera phone level of it's convenient that you have it, but is it really useful? Yeah, it brings us into the next topic, which is kind of the same thing, or the next two topics anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 1So this one, I mean this is going to be a big thing. It was in our last episode. It's going to be a continuing process covering this, because this is sort of where all of the industry this is the crux for the industry is the iPhone 15 Pro and spatial video, at least for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2I mean, I don't know if crux is the right word, but it's like it is a weird inflection point. Good or bad? Yeah, not sure, because this honestly feels like you know, people have you know. For if you don't already know, you know, if you install the beta software on your phone, you can get this feature going and then somebody's hacked together.
Speaker 1Got a video from Hugh here, yeah.
Speaker 2And you extract the video from the phone and watch it on your headset and it's 1080p, it's 30p and that's it. There's not much to it.
Speaker 1And because frame.
Speaker 2Yeah, In a frame that's obviously not 180 at all, and because one camera is the main camera on the phone which is excellent and the other one is somewhat mediocre because it's the wide angle camera and we're cropping into that wide angle image. The eyes don't even fully match.
Speaker 1So yeah, so there was somebody on Reddit who did a really good breakdown.
Speaker 2A great breakdown, fantastic breakdown. We should shout out when we look at his name and shout him out.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes. He effectively said that it's got an excellent stereo effect. So the magic that they're using, you know, it's not hypostereo, hyper stereo. I think hypo is Hypo, hypo stereo, despite the fact that the lenses are right next to each other. But the depth sensor doing the depth mapping works really well, which I was very Sort of skeptical about it, just because I've seen it in the past and I've never seen it work correctly or at least as well. Supposedly this works. But he said that it's Not great quality. Right, and like you said. Well, one thing he mentioned that I thought was really interesting was one eye felt dramatically lower quality than the other, which we know something about that.
Speaker 2Yeah, don't watch the first.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I guess and we talked about this a lot last time and but I do think it's now that we've seen it I'm sort of not impressed.
Speaker 2Yeah, we pretty much went from being like oh my god, this is gonna be so cool.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think it's a curiosity. At best, I do think people are gonna use it, but Until, I sort of feel like there will be a Previous iteration that will be of higher quality and that I'm pretty interested in, but this version is.
Speaker 2Yeah, but like the other things we've talked about here, I think it means there's interest in this and it's just gonna keep Pushing stereo into the minds of people that maybe are not thinking about stereo video content.
VR Technology and Concerts Impact
Speaker 1Yeah, and it's something that we were we've been talking about for a couple weeks, but this this week, really sort of this month, really sort of put it in perspective, I feel like we're at a point where stereo is starting to be. There are channels towards mainstream adoption that have never existed previously.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it's happening faster and faster, which I think is the most, because we now have many various devices shooting for a stereo market.
Speaker 1We have multiple VR headsets from different manufacturers at different price points and different Market segmentations PSVR to quest three, big screen beyond Whatever the valve Deckard headset is gonna be we have a lot of different things vying for the same Stereo. So, like watching movies in 3d on the quest I've been doing it over the last month it is so much better than on any other headset I've ever used. Mind you, I have not tried the big spring big screen beyond, but supposedly that's better than even the quest three. But I watched an entire, I watched all of Dune in my headset a couple weeks ago, like two weeks ago. It was amazing.
Speaker 1I had I had like five point one surround sound I had. It was in 1080p but it was a crisp 1080p. I really wish I could get in 4k. But yeah, streaming services, yeah, yeah. So it feels like the stereo thing is really hitting and the spatial Video on the iPhone is gonna be huge. I mean it were sit. What we're seeing here is the HEE, mv, hbc, pulldown. Somebody extract hue, manage to extract it and, mind you, it's a hacky. Even the way to get it off the phone is hacky, did you see? It's like?
Speaker 2I didn't even once.
Speaker 1I yeah, I don't do beta firmware so yeah, it's so. It's this app called spatial fi which effectively pulls down, it does some ffmpeg magic in the background and then turns the file on your phone into a Non encrypted version of the file more standard side-by-side and then that you can and it is just a traditional side-by-side. And here's the thing is that originally we were sort of led to believe that there would be some sort of depth magic with this. I'm unsure, like maybe it'll work on Apple formats.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, I mean this is. There's so many things I'm very curious to see once the official firmware comes out.
Speaker 1Well, I'll probably do this for what we've seen here.
Speaker 2That's not the case, yeah and even spatial, if I or whatever you're gonna is. A is a test flight app, so you have to get all into the test flight program to even play with that. Hopefully that has an official release but might also get blocked by Apple because of what it does.
Speaker 1So yeah, but anyway, yeah, so now slam phone this. This is another one of these things where it is interesting Pretty much only conceptually, because it's not even a real product. There isn't a release date. They're asking for a Kickstarter. So Already lots of red flags, you know, lots of probably not gonna happen, yeah. But I do think this one is super interesting, especially for our community, because it is a VR 180 phone With domed 180-degree cameras In a stereo configuration, mind you. It also looks like they're hitting a less than 65 millimeter IPD, but there is there was a mixed reality news article where the author interviewed the head of the company and said that they are also Interested in exploring a 65 millimeter IPD configuration in like a this format. Yeah, um, what do you think?
Speaker 2I mean, I'm, I'm, I was just the reason, like I'm staring at the video because I'm laughing. So the thing that they said about that, like we didn't want to do a 65 Mill IPD because they're worried about hands on the back of the phone being in the shot the first shot of this person holding the phone was his hand right under the lenses, which would be in the shot again, as anybody knows who's shooting in this format. It sees everything you can't have. Yeah, so this is hilarious to me that that was their Uh sort of reason. Well, I think that's why it's sort of the camera.
Speaker 1It's, the camera seems to be Bumped out. They are. Yeah, you know it's not enough.
Speaker 2You know it's not enough. I mean that I get my hands on on the r5c when I'm just hitting the record button. Show up a little bit.
Speaker 1But again, it seems like it seems like there are many interested. Uh, forces that. Um, you know, obviously this seems like a product that has been in design for a while, probably at least a year, probably more than that, probably two years, I'm guessing Though with a Kickstarter, you never know. But you know they're trying to race the market, to Compete, either compete or be an alternative to the iPhone 15 pro and the apple vision pro stereo cameras. Um, I think this one, specifically, is much more interesting to me because, uh, it is a phone and it's vr 180 and I love the promise of it.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean look at what having a phone your pocket did for Photography and videography. I mean partially wound it, but partially, but then also we talked about it in the first episode, though, like it brings down the barrier, a barrier to entry, but it also allows Non-informed people to make content.
Speaker 1That is potentially you, so I have so many mixed feelings about it. I do sort of I do like that. It is a VR180 camera, so it is. How are you going to not damage those cameras, though, like, is it going to have, like, a lens cap?
Speaker 2that you have to wear on it Any time you set the phone.
Speaker 1Now you're going to be scratching the lenses.
Speaker 2You have to use a battery case.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, it really does. I think it sort of means that you'll have to have a lens cap on it, but also it reminds me so much of the red hydrogen one, the red phone.
Speaker 2The highly successful, the highly successful red phone by.
Speaker 1it was a stereo screen and stereo cameras. It was not VR180, because that wasn't even a twinkle in Google's eye yet, but I guess it was already around in 2018 when it launched.
Speaker 2But anyways, it was a huge flop and you were saying yeah, I can't remember the exact specifics, but it seemed like the best thing about the phone was that you could trade it in for credit for a red camera, and I remember I'm pretty sure it worked with the. Komodo, specifically because I remember when the Komodo came out, people were selling the phones or trying to get their hands on the phone because they could get like $1,000.
Speaker 1Oh yeah. So it was like if you could get a used phone for like $200, you could get $800 worth of credit or something Exactly for people that didn't know what. So that's really funny.
Speaker 2That's the most. That's what the fame for me for the hydrogen one is, the discount that people got.
Speaker 1All right, I think we're done with that.
Speaker 2I think all these products kind of are burning that same. I think it's good for the market, although that could be bad, just like we're saying. I worry how much 3D TVs and that whole thing damage the idea of 3D content. Oh my God it did irreparable harm.
Speaker 1I mean, people still use the 3D TV comparison to VR still, when it's very clear that there are more Quest 2s than there were ever 3D TVs manufactured. You know like very frustrating yeah so.
Speaker 1We'll see. So this next one, this is a little bit different less hardware stuff. So iHeart Radio and Meta TV are gearing up there's to release a series of VR concerts on Meta TV and Horizon Venues. We love to see that. As people who have made VR concert videos and look to make many more, I love to see that content because it means that there is a market for it. The good thing about this one specifically that I like is that this is speculation, but it's based on the last few iHeart Radio concerts that have been put out. When they go up on Horizon Venues they're in 2D, which boo. But when they go up on Meta TV they're in stereo, which big plus. I've watched a few of them in stereo and they're quite good. I have small little problems with production stuff, but that's just preference stuff. But they're high quality. They look great, they sound great. I don't know any of the performers because I'm an old.
Speaker 2Yes, it's funny, I had the exact. I was reading through the notes and I was like, well, I don't know, oh, all of my favorite bands.
Speaker 1I am an old George Smyth, you know Like. I mean, I'm going to check them out and hopefully it'll be something that I'm something new to do.
Speaker 1I mean, that's the thing is like. I actually do listen to a lot of new music. I try to keep up. It gets harder the closer you get to 40 and past 40. But I still especially since we work in music stuff I try to keep interested and I do a pretty good job, yeah, and so I'm going to check these out. I'm excited too. Because I'm excited too, because the I think the quality and getting getting to see new performances live is that, that moment where you see a really fantastic Live performer for the first time and you're like, oh wow, this is, and you don't even have to listen to the album and you already like it. That's a magical moment.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's. There's a Festival near here that happens. It's called pickathon and that it's a. It's a festival all about discovering. It's literally like three big artists and a bunch of people you've never heard of and you come away with like ten new Favorite bands. You know that's a great experience.
Speaker 1I love that, and so I'm really excited that meta is. It seems that. So meta is producing these, but they're being put on by our heart radio, which I heart radio, if you don't know, is another name for clear channel. They rebranded about ten years ago and I don't love that. They're still, you know the, the ten thousand pound gorilla throwing their weight around the worst thing that happen live music.
Speaker 2They're also ticketmaster. Yes, don't they own ticketmaster as well? Um?
Speaker 1I am unsure.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, and that's and that is a frustrating thing because they have so much power already. Yeah, I, what I would really like to see is I would like to see smaller labels Working with in a more streamlined and capacity VR concert producers Like us, for example, in a more, in a more organized and streamlined capacity, because I think If we could get some other non clear channel affiliated bands I think there's a lot of Stuff out there that would benefit from the art shows. Yeah, all right. Moving on, oh, okay, so, um, pardon, so we're into our featured video segments. Uh, all right.
VR Travel Videos and Drone Work
Speaker 1So my video of the week is by VR o films and it is wonders of oh gosh, um Shoshi milko Um Mexico. It is a fantastic video I really liked. Okay, um, I'm gonna switch over to Dio here, all right, um, I've. What really popped out to me was I thought the use of color was incredible. I think there's a strong sense of Presence. I really felt like I was here. Um, they're following like. What I like to say are Good best practices, so moving the camera on one axis at a time, so either forward or that side shot when he was walking, because I've noticed that the biggest way to make people sick in VR is to move on two axes at the same time or out of two axes. What do you think?
Speaker 2Yeah, I agree. Um, I think this does hit all the right, like they never get too close to the camera or anything like that, so, like I never once felt nauseous or like wanted to close my eyes which I've seen a lot of videos lately where people are on a gimbal and they're shooting it like a traditional video, so they're moving in very quickly back and forth. You're just like you know, never, ever felt like I had to do that here. I've been to this place before and I was like, yeah, this is exactly what it's like to be there.
Speaker 1So it's so cool and I grew up in southern california. I grew up in um san diego, and so, uh, uh, it's a lot of exposure to mexican culture. My stepmother's mexican, so we used to go to Mexico all the time. So this was a brought me back very much Um.
Speaker 2But yeah, yeah, I'd say my only like little nitpicks are uh, you know, often faces are overexposed, some technical stuff like that, but I think all the I didn't you know as as the the less Less filmmaking um oriented guy in the room.
Speaker 1I didn't even notice that. Yeah, of course you did. Yeah, exactly, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2Way to be a dp. But yeah, uh, but, yeah, uh, matt, I think it's great.
Speaker 1Oh and shout out I loved uh the micheladas, the a plus for the micheladas. Um. As somebody who enjoys a good uh taquine rim, I can appreciate it. Um, yeah, uh, yeah, and I really I mean. One of the things that we have talked about quite a bit is that travel videos in vr are some of the most incredible stuff. Um really got me through the pandemic Um, and stuff like this is really fascinating.
Speaker 2Yeah, it might arguably be the best thing to do with vr.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think that you know, I still want to see narrative in vr for sure, and it doesn't seem like a lot of people are doing that, but maybe they're not doing it for a reason.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean we're, we're, we're, we're knocking on that door, but we'll see what we come up with.
Speaker 1Okay, we're gonna move on to our next video, so this is my choice. So I do not know how to pronounce your name, so I'm not going to try. It is in the bottom part of the screen.
Speaker 2We will not remember your name, but you did amazing drone work here Um this is fantastic drone work.
Speaker 2I popped this in on the headset and I was, like, immediately struck by the color and the clarity of it.
Speaker 2And even though you are flying, the moves aren't too again, in my opinion too abrupt or anything like that. And while there is a bit of a sense of um, a little bit of like air sickness or whatever, I found it to be the same for me as when I'm playing a, a flight sim in VR, where it's just like you bank the plane over, you kind of get a little nauseous and to me, that that, to me, is successful vr. It's like it's. It's tricking your senses into feeling like you're You're doing that thing which is going to mess with you, because this is obviously an unnatural thing for a human to do. But none of it was so bad that I didn't want to keep watching. I was very much just like wow, wow, wow, wow, you know, just taking it all in and really enjoying the smoothness and the clarity and the color of it and Uh, yeah, it's an interesting way to experience. It's like a different kind of travel video.
Speaker 2Yeah because there's some moments here. We just see people like driving down the street and I mean the.
Speaker 1The thing that really struck me there, too, is an incredible feel of feeling of flying. So I used to be a pilot, I used to fly a little sesnas, and this is the closest I have gotten to that feeling From any VR video I've ever seen. The other is I don't know what black magic you use to get this video so stable, but there was. I did not sense any sense of, uh, vibration From the, the motors At all whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, was there, like I'm guessing it was a combination of post magic and also like some really intense stabilization tech like dampeners, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2Almost seems like If DJI put a stereo camera on the drone, because obviously their tech is. They've got the whole camera Isolation down really, really well. So yeah, I'm very curious because if this was hard mounted and there was a lot of vibration, you'd see it rolling through the the CMOS center.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, you can't get rid of that, so it's yeah, it's a very impressive video, so I mean I will.
Speaker 1I will say it did give me. Towards the end of the video, when he's doing some more crazy things, I got some pretty intense, uh, motion sickness, but I think it was sort of worth it for the experience. So, yeah, great video, definitely. Uh. I mean, there's a lot of really good stuff thing that's being put out right now and I think people are starting to learn all the tricks. And if you can, if you can, um, if you can wade through the sexy girl videos, there are some absolute diamonds in the rough, and these are definitely two of them.
Speaker 1So, uh, shout out to vro films. Um, wonders of shoshi, milko and roman shorn by Somebody's name I'm not going to be able to pronounce, but it will be in the show notes. I apologize. Um, all right, let's move on. It's stadium. So this gets back into the live. Um, let's we know that this gets back into the live content game. Um, so this one is a huge thing for our industry, because the other ones are just simple. Um is huge. I mean, it's probably the second most popular sport in the United States, just behind the NFL, and you know they're working on that. Shout out to Live, adam Live.
Potential of Co-Watching Sports Games
Speaker 1Adam. But this Lots of mixed feelings on, but it's absolutely in the right direction. Yeah, so we both tried out the app. We didn't do the co-location thing just because of timing and scheduling, but if we wanted to, we could have watched either the highlights or the games live in a co-location experience, as if we were watching it together in the same room, which conceptually really interesting. I haven't tried it out that way yet. I would like to do it still if we can find some time. But the big elephant in the room is that it's a 180-degree video that is not stereo, even in its immersive mode, which there is an option. So the way that it works is it's sort of like Horizon Venues, where when you enter into it, there is a You're on a platform and there's like a virtual room that you're in and in front of you are like six locations that you can seats, that you can sort of jump into, which will change your perspective of where you are in the room. It doesn't really change your perspective.
Speaker 2I was going to say only slightly.
Speaker 1Only slightly. It's like maybe a.
Speaker 2It's like scooting over.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's not that different really, but there is also an immersive mode which makes it all of that go away and wraps the video around your head, but it's still only in 2D. I understand the approach that they're going with and I think it's one of those things where possibly there's room to adapt the technology. It really seems that, because this is, I'm guessing, a co-financed by meta, or at least probably entirely financed by meta but co-produced by meta, their aspirations are for metaverse aspirations, and so they're driving their content and this is the same with Horizon Venues is that they're more interested in the co-watching capability than the immersive capability. I think that is a tactical mistake, but they're a billion-dollar corporation and I'm just a dude in a room.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't know if it's a mistake. It just might May not be as ideal, but I was talking to my buddy, brandon. He's a friend of both of ours. He's a big basketball fan.
Speaker 1I like basketball too.
Speaker 2And so he was like, when I told him about it, he's like well, that sounds really cool, that sounds like a really cool way to watch the game. Haven't got a headset on his head yet to see what he actually thinks about it, but I could also see him being into.
Speaker 1We've got three heads as we can do it?
Speaker 2We totally could, and this would be a good way to test the co-location thing, or whatever.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Because I think he could be into that. So I think it'll.
Speaker 1There's always the difference between no reason to watch a Trailblazers game. But Right, no game, no points, apparently.
Speaker 2Yeah, to see what the opinions of someone who's not immersed in the tech, and just as a pure consumer. What do they think? Well, most people actually don't care about Stereo as much as we do.
Speaker 1Well, and part of it, I think, why it's so interesting and why it's our main topic is because you could watch 52 games this year, which is a tiny fraction of the amount of games that are played every year, but it's still a lot of free content Two a week, from what I've seen, that you can watch live and then highlights for everything or highlights for lots of videos, but that's a lot of content. And it really seems that Meta is trying to compete against Apple, because Apple Next VR used to do this exact thing, this exact same concept, and so it looks like Meta is trying to cut Apple off at Like. Had them off at the past. Yes, exactly, which I think is smart for Meta, because they're going to need these types of experiences, because this is the type of thing that will sell a headset, especially if you use the NBA League Pass, which some people do is you have access to a lot more games and you can do it in this sort of multi-view mode, sort of like Buffalo Wild Wings the experience.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, but some people do do that.
Speaker 1I know, I know.
Speaker 2I think there's an Anapho, was it Red Pass or? Something like that, yeah, something similar, that does the same thing, and people are like into that and it's like I'm not that guy, but like you know, if you want to sit in a sports book, and but if you are that guy, this is it.
Speaker 1If you get a case of Coors Light and you know some cheese sticks it'll and you do the NBA League Pass through Xtadium, it'll feel like you're at.
Speaker 2Buffalo Wild Wings. Yeah, yeah, without every other part of that experience.
Speaker 1Hey, you know they're happy hours. It's pretty excellent, and this is not sponsored, by the way, though if you're interested, Not a poops, not a poops, yeah, anyway, yeah, well, I do.
Speaker 1I think things like this are what their meta is going to need to stand out, and it's also the types of things like if the NFL can get this worked out, that I mean that's even bigger than the NBA. I mean it won't be as flashy, because you won't. It won't be as heavily produced, because it'll be very difficult to scale that up, but I mean putting a camera down on the 50 yard line, yeah.
Speaker 2I mean, that's again I think. I think, ultimately, where this stuff is really going to take off is getting you in a place where you could never go Right.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2It is a, you know, a magic, whatever portal thing. You know who gets to be anywhere near this. You know, most of us who don't make a bajillion dollars a year don't get these like types of tickets for ball games and can't be on the field. So like the more that we can put these cameras in places where we're not really allowed to be.
Speaker 1That really becomes an experience that is worth paying for it's access. Access, yeah, and I think that's really that's the thing that these cameras are good at and it's the thing that is going to sell out, since, and I think that's why we're seeing this level of investment this early on.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. I think this whole thing has been the shot in the arm of the industry needed, and I'm here for it.
Speaker 1Though it'd be a lot better if it was in stereo.
Speaker 2It would, and I think those days are coming, but I think they're, you know, I think it also just validates our own struggles with doing this stuff. There's a reason they're not, because it's infinitely easier.
Speaker 1Give us an option. I mean, if that's what they're interested, if they're worried about depth converges, conflict, just give us the option.
Speaker 2I think it's literally just technical, like you can't live stream. It's just so much harder to live stitch and get that out there. Double the bandwidth the whole thing. I think if it is just a basic cinema camera with 180 degree lens on it, like fish eye.
Speaker 1I was nobody figured that out yet.
Speaker 2I mean, it just takes processing.
Speaker 1Dear 180 live streaming is still everybody's white whale.
Speaker 2But there's not quite enough money yet in the market to throw the resources behind the development and we'll take to do that kind of.
Speaker 2But when it hits, it's going to hit like a bomb, you know like, but it might take things like dual M2 processors or something like that, like arm processors doing the stuff on the fly, because it is a lot of processing. I'm like, as y'all know you're, you can throw the most powerful computers in the world at it and it takes time, which is ridiculous because it was a feature that was in YouTube.
Speaker 1Google had it VR 180 live streaming baked into YouTube in 2018. Yeah, and look sure Because, but they had it running, yeah, and all they had to do was scale the bandwidth, you know, but that's probably more complicated than that too. Yeah, I mean, I think this is where we're going to wrap it up.
Speaker 2Yeah, okay, so we're at the end here, folks.
Speaker 1I think we're we have hit our time limit, but I think this is a good one.
Speaker 2Yeah, let us know how you, what you think about the changes. Obviously, I'm sure you're going to let us know. I think it's more natural thing.
Speaker 1I think it works for us a lot better. Yeah, I think all will be way more interested in terms of the depth and that type of thing. We would love to get comments. The both eyes are in focus this time.
Speaker 2Yeah, got that work out and we'll have the vertical disparity corrected this time as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, and if you would like to be featured as one of the content creators in the video, pm us will look through stuff. I think we we would really like to feature videos as actual VR videos.
Speaker 2Yeah, we'd like to insert them into this video, so you're not just watching it on a tiny little screen.
Speaker 1This works for now, but we would like to be able to to have the full immersion within the video, and it's only a small clip we're not, like, you know, 30 seconds to a minute or something like that. So if you'd like to be featured in that, hit us up and we'll make it happen All right.
Speaker 2Thanks for watching.
Speaker 1See you next time, peace.
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