Reflections on the Facebook Developer Conference F8 – Day 1
With Facebook’s #F82017 underway, industry observers are announcing the end of the cellphone and the arrival of Augmented Reality for the masses as happy developers watched a demonstration of a dad with his kid holding up his phone to view an object on the family dinner table become enhanced visually (read: AUGMENTED). Cheering and applause. Have we witnessed the dawn of a new era, or the natural evolution of a service piggybacking on the experience of the popularity of a game that had worldwide, viral acceptance (now read: POKEMON-GO)?
Similar to that, was the packaging and beta release of the Social VR concept, Facebook Spaces, employing Facebook’s Oculus products and a closed system that allows up to three participants (I didn’t say people, because perhaps there will be an avatar bot in there as well) in this VR space.
However, haven’t we seen this (albeit not in 360-degree visualization) in Second Life, with many more participants, a good 10 years ago… or Altspace VR already in play?
Apple and Google, which have never seemed to really get the hang of a real-time social network, are either buying into a slice of the pie by letting Facebook win for the platform and just selling services once users are in there, or focusing their attention elsewhere: Apple halfheartedly adding filters of sorts to their messaging system while expanding their music/entertainment distribution, and Google keeping their eye on the prize of the heart and soul of their business, selling attention to advertisers when their users are most vulnerable to buy.
The bottom line becomes, for Facebook and everyone else who wants skin in this game of VR, AR and probably where most of it will land, MR (Mixed Reality), how “real” does the experience have to be for the end user to gain mass adoption? How long can they wear an HMD, what’s the expectation of a person viewing a 2D image to feel they are experiencing something that’s “real”; how much does an avatar have to emulate natural human responses (either in body motion or being able to show the seven basic facial expressions) to be considered real-enough to replace the image of the real person? And, finally, how much are they willing to spend for the experience?
Facebook Spaces Beta allows realtime Social VR for 3 avatars. Source: Facebook
Facebook is aware that we are already well on our way into a mixed reality world. Besides the Facebook Developers conference yesterday, Google released an updated version of Google Earth VR, which now runs on (Facebook’s) Oculus Rift, and with guided stories and imagery using parallax effects to give a more realistic impression via just the common 2D browser and an Android app.
And Snapchat went another step further in blending the real with generated images in real time, stepping up their filters with the release of New World Lenses yesterday.
So, where is Magic Leap? and where will the long list of less well known competitors be by the time the next CES rolls around in January 2018, or F82018?
Some will still be figuring out their approach. At the CES 2017, Intel demonstrated their working version of Mixed Reality, called “Project Alloy”, using an HMD with a fully-obscured view and the entire image composed via cameras placed on the front of the HMD and then blended into a finished 3D view. The demo was done in a highly controlled environment, but done in public, which is more than Magic Leap has been doing for about two years now.
We’re at the youthful phase of VR/AR/MR, after years of cost and technology holding us back from the wave of mass adoption. Our Vive and Rifts make go onto the junk pile after just a year or two of underuse. I believe our phones still have a longer lifecycle, based on how many other things they do, so perhaps Facebook is on the right track of evolution rather than revolution. But the odds are on them, based on their ability to test at scale with their userbase, and playing with available technology over investing even more development only on new technology.
They can give us multiple flavors of “real”, depending on where we will cross over to make the business model scale.
