0:03

Let's start the show. For

0:05

Thursday, for Friday, October

0:07

fourteenth twenty twenty two. Welcome

0:10

to this is only success, the official

0:12

podcast of TESTED.

0:31

to my ears, deceive me, to

0:33

my eyes, deceive me. I'm

0:36

looking at the zoom screen right now, and I see

0:38

I see me. I see Kishore

0:40

Hari.

0:41

I am here. And I see we'll

0:44

no better person to do this with this week.

0:47

And

0:47

I see, one, Jeremy

0:49

Williams, the

0:51

Prodigal Podcast Air Returns. You've

0:53

been back before. But welcome back again.

0:56

I agree. Jerry, nobody better to do this

0:58

with than Kishore. Absolutely

1:01

right. You know, Jeremy,

1:03

you're the only one whose

1:05

setup can indicate the time reporting this.

1:08

Is that true?

1:10

It looks evening. It looks like it's evening. It's

1:12

in the evening. Yeah. If you're watching the video.

1:14

Yeah. You guys have been recording in the evening.

1:16

You guys are totally throwing me for a loop.

1:18

We used to do this with coffee in

1:20

hand, fresh out of bed,

1:22

ready to go, hit this podcast

1:24

running, and now we're doing it eight

1:26

forty five at night. Yeah. We do.

1:28

I know with with beers, and

1:30

it's a very after dark. I

1:34

do it half a sleep. more delirious. But,

1:37

you know, we we get through it. Alright. Jeremy,

1:40

I I see first of all, welcome back, Jeremy.

1:43

Great to see you. It's like no time has

1:45

gone by. This is great. My god. Yeah. No time

1:47

has to be. I mean, it's only been another another

1:49

connect. another this another second

1:52

meta connect has gone by.

1:54

Right? Or the first meta connect, I guess they just

1:56

called the connect last year. Right. And

1:58

the third is this the

1:59

third virtual connect?

2:01

It

2:02

must be. Right? Twenty. That's

2:04

right. Yeah. Yeah. The third will we

2:06

ever go back to San Jose? I don't know.

2:08

I was thinking about that. I was thinking

2:10

about the great times. You know, not

2:12

just like the the old old days when

2:14

it was smaller and it was you

2:16

know, the DK1 days. But even

2:18

like post rift in the launch of

2:20

quest one, it's San Jose convention

2:22

center when when off those connections going on those.

2:25

Great to see people. It's good to have, like, eat lunch

2:27

and multiple airbrush was just sitting there,

2:29

you know, eating lunch and chatting with folks

2:31

and John Carmack in the hallways. But anyway,

2:33

Let's not get to nostalgia just

2:35

yet. I wanna give a shout out to you as

2:37

it's it's been a while. And I don't think we've

2:39

had you on the show since California Extreme,

2:42

Jeremy. And then one quick thing

2:44

of that is you're wearing a t shirt

2:46

of small change arcade, a

2:48

local purveyor of

2:52

half scale? Oh

2:54

my gosh. That's a good question.

2:56

I

2:56

think they're half scale. They're not third

2:59

scale. We did a video with him. I should

3:01

know this. But since

3:03

then, you guys work with him to

3:05

make

3:06

a a real arcade cabinet.

3:09

Oh my gosh. Last time I was

3:11

on, I could even our product hadn't even

3:13

been announced. But if you watched that

3:15

episode, look at my shirt.

3:17

Oh, nice.

3:20

It we announced soon after

3:22

that episode that we're working on the Atari fiftieth

3:25

anniversary collection. And as a part

3:27

of that, I had the honor

3:29

and privilege of making from scratch

3:31

my own game very much in

3:33

the vein of the nineteen seventies

3:35

Atari where engineers were told

3:37

by Noel Bushnell, go

3:40

make a game, make

3:42

your game. and come and show

3:44

it to me in three months. And so very

3:46

much like that. That's what I did. That's what my

3:48

coworkers did Dave and Jason and

3:50

and Mike. We all did that. And it

3:52

was

3:53

wonderful. And in the game I made,

3:56

I was I'm so proud of. I turned into

3:58

I I hired Matt from small change

4:00

Arcade to turn into a full fledged arcade

4:02

cabinet. And I it brought

4:04

to California extreme. People had a

4:06

blast playing it. There's footage online. You can

4:08

find it just search for vector sector

4:11

California extreme, and you can

4:13

see the cabin. And, yeah,

4:15

that's that's the whole product is coming out next

4:17

month, so you'd be able to pick it up on

4:19

switch Xbox, PlayStation, PC,

4:22

whatever you want. Very cool.

4:24

But it's been a great, great life changing

4:26

experience. I love it.

4:27

we had been podcasting the other

4:29

for, what, like, six, seven years

4:31

now, maybe longer than that, Jeremy.

4:34

Like, I can't imagine like a

4:36

bigger dream of yours becoming a reality.

4:38

Yeah. Pulling the other an

4:40

entire arcade cabinet, especially

4:42

one that's based off of Atari

4:45

classic. The game hey. Mike, let's not

4:47

let's not knock Starlords. Starlords

4:49

was also a full

4:51

blown arcade cabinet Hold it

4:53

together out of thin air, out of the mind of of

4:55

you, Jeremy, and Sean Charles working on the team of

4:57

other ocean before you work there.

5:00

Yes. and kindly funded by

5:02

tested dot com. That's right. So that's right.

5:05

Starlords was a was a great experience too.

5:07

It was. but I and I loved I

5:09

think, you know, there's some great LED effects on

5:11

that cabinet. I'm very proud of them, but that

5:13

will always be Mike's game.

5:16

he and Kevin made the game, whereas

5:18

we we made Sean made an incredible

5:20

cabinet, one of the greatest arcade cabinets ever

5:22

conceived. and I, you know, I did

5:24

the LEDs and control stuff, but this was

5:26

my game. So this was a little different for me. It

5:28

was a, you know, taken the lead

5:30

and and actually coming up with the

5:33

writing a code, coming up with the concept,

5:35

doing the transitions, doing the

5:37

testing, you know, the iterations,

5:39

and it was it's off It's it's based on

5:41

old Atari vector games

5:44

such as asteroids, lunar lander, and

5:47

it's it turned out really well. I'm really happy with

5:49

it. I don't wanna spoil anything. I think we were gonna have play

5:51

this for themselves. Of course, the it's

5:53

got the fiftieth anniversary compilation. Right?

5:55

So it's all ton of the

5:57

old games. plus the new

5:59

ones you

5:59

mentioned that individuals on the

6:02

team made kind of clear own approaches and,

6:04

yeah, paid homage to the classics and

6:07

yeah, from what what I've been able to see and and what

6:09

the folks at California Extreme, where

6:11

we'll see, not to say your

6:13

labor love, but a genuinely good game.

6:15

in

6:15

itself. The entire fiftieth man, we're real

6:17

proud of it. Can't wait for the public to see it.

6:19

It's only a few weeks away now. Oh,

6:21

amazing. Perfect timing. And, of course, perfect

6:24

timing as well for us to dive into

6:26

well, we have, like, one big story

6:28

that we're covered this week, all the news and

6:30

analysis and product. out

6:32

of the MetaConnect conference or

6:35

conference, you know, the keynote and some

6:37

of the virtual panels that took place this

6:39

past Tuesday. It's a little bit of technology news,

6:41

but stay tuned for the second half

6:43

of the show where we have some some

6:45

big news to talk about. as well.

6:47

But usually, I ignore

6:50

Norm when he tells me to stay to the

6:52

end of a of a video or podcast.

6:54

But this time, I think you should listen Yes.

6:56

Seconded

6:57

listening. Don't don't skip don't just skip this

7:00

upcoming section because it's gonna

7:02

take a little more than a minute. The

7:08

VR minute.

7:10

virtual reality this

7:12

week.

7:15

Okay. Where

7:16

do you guys wanna begin? with MetaConnect

7:18

because It's a it's a rare thing when you start the

7:20

show with a VR minute, and I love

7:22

it. I love it. So

7:26

we leading up to it, Kishore, you and I

7:28

had done our our speculation. We had,

7:30

you know, we kind of a

7:33

lot of information we've we've talked

7:35

about some of the leaks that were out there. But

7:37

there are still questions that were not known.

7:39

And what I couldn't say last week was

7:41

You know what? I couldn't say

7:44

it. I actually could not say it

7:46

last week because at the time that

7:48

we recorded the podcast last week, I

7:50

had not done not yet

7:52

went to meta to go hands

7:54

on with the class

7:56

pro. And that was the big thing

7:58

that was announced. So should we start off with the hardware? Do

8:00

you wanna go with, like, the the bigger or

8:02

the macro picture about what this

8:04

conference meant for

8:06

meta and what do you think they were trying to

8:08

accomplish? No. We we

8:10

talk about the hardware. That's it. Okay.

8:12

Let's talk about the hardware. Okay. So

8:14

it's a Met request pro, you know,

8:16

just as we may have seen

8:18

someone at a hotel unboxed to

8:20

an informal unboxing of

8:22

and and some overzealous

8:25

developers, maybe sharing some

8:27

some images of or maybe resolve

8:29

from some of the blurry pixelated

8:31

images that Zuckerberg himself. share.

8:33

It is their high

8:36

end VR headset. And by high end,

8:38

I mean, price very high, fifteen hundred

8:40

dollar VR headset They

8:42

call it a VR headset. It's not an

8:44

augmented reality headset. It's not it's

8:46

a VR headset with mixed

8:48

reality features aimed

8:50

at I think, probably unsurprisingly,

8:53

the enterprise market and

8:55

shipping available preorder now and shipping

8:57

later this month on October

8:59

twenty fifth. So

9:02

I I did a whole video with

9:04

the impressions and the tech specs. We can

9:06

run down some of the features. I'm curious

9:08

about maybe from your guys perspective, what was the

9:10

the flagship feature.

9:11

Yeah. I

9:15

would start with the color pass through.

9:17

Okay. Just because I'm

9:19

so used to the pass through on the

9:21

Quest one and two.

9:23

And that being pixelated, and

9:26

and a high degree of latency.

9:28

We finally have color pass through.

9:30

And a lot of the software announcements

9:32

maybe not a lot. But if you have the software

9:34

aucements really rely on the pass

9:37

through to really, you know,

9:39

function and and

9:41

and go. And so I know you

9:43

didn't get to try everything that

9:45

was announced in terms of the pass through,

9:47

but what were your initial

9:50

takeaways from the from the pass through? Is

9:52

this good enough or is this v

9:54

one? It's absolutely v

9:56

one. But I I think that's I mean, good what

9:58

what is the bar for good enough? Is it

10:00

as clear and our

10:02

images in the environment around

10:04

you resolve as clearly

10:07

as a optical pass

10:09

through system? No, absolutely not.

10:11

Is it clear enough that I could see

10:14

someone's face and see my environment

10:16

and know where my phone is, know where my coffee

10:18

cup is, and make icon quote

10:20

unquote, eye contact with someone in the same

10:22

room? Yes. I would say, sufficient for

10:24

that. Is it clearer than

10:26

the quest two? Much clearer

10:28

than quest CRISPR than the quest

10:30

two? Is it as sharp as if you've

10:32

watched some high quality, like, VR

10:34

one eighty video? Like, the stuff that, you

10:36

know, Meta has put out, let's film

10:38

with the the

10:40

Canon lenses, AK video

10:42

stuff, not as clear as that. And there's a

10:44

technology reason. for

10:46

that. But clearly is

10:48

their

10:49

first

10:50

public attempt at a pass through system

10:53

where they can integrate rendered holograms

10:56

but have a persistent color pass

10:58

through in not just the

10:59

main user interface, but

11:02

in as many applications as developers

11:04

wanna work on. Jeremy,

11:06

would you say, pastor, that was the big flagship feature

11:08

for you? No. I'd

11:10

say going into it, I was most

11:12

excited about the eye tracking and face tracking

11:14

because I feel like that's an area

11:17

that is completely untapped from a

11:19

consumer standpoint so far.

11:21

And I've seen what eye eye

11:23

tracking can do from a

11:25

social experience, but even more so. I

11:27

mean, I think from an in

11:29

point in input point of

11:31

view, you can use it to you

11:33

know, basically as a pointer, you

11:35

can activate things by staring at

11:37

them or you can, you know, essentially

11:39

look at something and then a button press can

11:41

become activate for that thing or a lot

11:43

of grenade in that direction or

11:45

your your aim becomes

11:47

better if you're staring in a certain direction for a

11:49

certain period of time. There's so many new things you

11:51

can do from an input

11:53

standpoint with eye tracking. I'm excited

11:55

about that. But

11:57

after watching the

11:59

event, and

12:00

seeing the price. I

12:03

don't know to what extent

12:05

that's really gonna become utilized

12:08

by developers, you know,

12:10

if they're talking about a fifteen

12:13

hundred dollar headset. And We

12:16

know that the Quest two has sold very well. They're

12:18

gonna continue to sell that, and they're

12:20

rumored to have the Quest three coming out next year, and I'm

12:22

not even rumored. Zuckerberg has

12:24

confirmed it. that it's coming out, but

12:26

not next year not this year. It's

12:28

next year. Right? What he's not next he

12:30

said I don't think he said next year. He said

12:32

not this year. I don't know if he

12:34

said next year. Well well, at

12:36

very least, I expect to hear more about it next

12:38

year. And if they're teasing it, if they're saying

12:40

that it exists, Yes. They're they're

12:42

essentially telegraphing the people.

12:44

Yeah. Okay. If if fifteen hundred dollar

12:46

headset isn't for you, hold tight. You know, we

12:48

got the the quest three on the

12:50

way. So people will hold out for

12:52

it. My Yeah. The the point is sales

12:54

of this will not be, you

12:56

know, stratospheric. So

12:58

if if there isn't gonna be a huge installed base,

13:00

I don't know what incentive there will be for developers

13:02

to support all these great new features. In

13:05

which case, really the thing that

13:07

I've looked forward to most and

13:09

I cannot justify buying one of these

13:11

things and yet I've done it anyway

13:13

is the pancake lenses. Yeah.

13:16

Organomics. I'm most excited

13:18

about that comfort. And I and I

13:20

understand it's it's heavier

13:21

than a quest too, but it's got it's

13:24

more symmetrically balanced with

13:26

the battery in the back. Yeah. And just

13:28

that and not

13:30

even, like, the flatness of it, although I think

13:32

that that's I assume that that

13:34

feels better in some respect just

13:36

from a momentum standpoint swinging the

13:38

thing around. But The

13:40

the focus the area of focus that you

13:42

have from panicky lenses is apparently much

13:45

wider. Carmack described

13:47

being able to read text by

13:49

scanning his eyes as opposed to having

13:51

to move your head to move where you

13:53

would normally with a quest to with, you

13:55

know, the standard lenses that we have

13:57

now. You would have to move, like, the your

13:59

headset around to scan,

14:02

text, keep it in focus, whereas now with pancake lenses,

14:04

it's possible to do that just by moving your

14:06

eyes around. So I'm I'm

14:08

super stoked to to to experience that because

14:10

that applies to everything.

14:12

And and I think those things

14:14

all support one another. When

14:16

you're talking about designing a lens

14:18

where the trade offs are thickness,

14:20

weight, field of vision,

14:22

but also clarity across the

14:24

entire field of view. They expanded sweet

14:26

spot. It's obvious that they

14:28

wanted to do that because that's gonna

14:30

pair with the eye tracking. If you're

14:32

gonna encourage eye tracking to be a

14:34

mode of input, a mode of sensing,

14:36

and content not just to be focused in the center

14:38

of the screen, but for content to be all around the field

14:40

of view that you gotta have lenses where it's gonna be

14:42

clear across the field of view.

14:44

Those things work in tandem, I think, or

14:46

complement each other. Same with, I think,

14:48

the the face and eye tracking

14:50

with the pass through. That's all in

14:52

the sensor package. So to

14:54

go through some of the the

14:56

specs and the speeds and feeds. One

14:58

of the primary differences in

15:01

this is there are now ten sensors on

15:03

the headset itself, ten camera

15:05

systems. we're on the Quest

15:07

two. There are four, primarily

15:09

all for inside out tracking. Right? There's

15:11

four cameras on the front. If you

15:13

look at the the corners of the Quest two, are

15:15

used so it can track the world and

15:18

the position of the headset, and also the

15:20

position of the controllers. And that's where

15:22

you have the inclusion being

15:24

an issue or the controller is behind

15:26

your back and the inadequacies

15:29

of that kind of inside out tracking system

15:32

versus AAA

15:34

beacon based system, a a base

15:36

station based system, which technically is

15:38

inside out. I know because it's

15:40

the sensors reading lasers. but

15:42

simulate the lasers are all around your three

15:44

sixty. Alright.

15:45

The I

15:47

wanna

15:47

go back to the past, you said because one

15:49

of the things I learned is the way and I wanna

15:51

I wanna explain how the pass through system

15:53

works because there are five sensors

15:55

now, five cameras now, on

15:58

the on the front of the headset. You

16:00

have two cameras on the side. Right?

16:02

And then there are three cameras around

16:05

the nose. The two cameras on the side,

16:07

that's for inside out tracking. Two

16:09

of the cameras on the

16:11

the nose. Also for inside out tracking,

16:13

looking down, potentially looking at

16:15

your hands, hand tracking as well.

16:17

But that fifth camera,

16:19

that's And there's also a depth

16:21

sensor as well, which is new. There's a depth

16:23

sensor in here that's not

16:25

just using depth,

16:27

stereo depth analysis. It

16:29

actually is an IR dev

16:31

sensor. And then there's a RGB

16:34

sensor that takes

16:37

a flat video at

16:40

high high ish resolution and then

16:42

superimposes that, reconstructs

16:44

it, on the geometry,

16:46

the projection of the

16:48

world that the slam system is computing.

16:52

So kinda like if you're in the quest to right now, you're drawing

16:54

your guardian, you see like this

16:56

warped, bended, gray scale,

17:00

render of the world of the of the

17:02

video over some geometry, and it's not just

17:04

pixelated, but it's kind of squiggly

17:06

as well as a maybe as a way to describe

17:08

it. Yep. this there's less

17:10

of that squiggly because

17:12

it's a more accurate mesh

17:15

that they've created. and

17:18

and a faster refresh rate, I believe.

17:20

And it's also

17:22

sharper because it's a higher resolution

17:25

RGB. But it's a I believe it

17:27

mono RGB that's then superimposed,

17:30

and it gives you on top of the stereo

17:32

images. Yeah. Super smart. Yeah.

17:34

So it's not like VR one eighty

17:36

camera, where it's two wide angle

17:39

lenses and that that's creating a stereo.

17:41

because then that doesn't work if you

17:43

tilt your head. If you if you, you know, if you if

17:45

you rotate your head, along

17:47

your neck access. VR video

17:49

just breaks completely. It needs to

17:51

be a reconstruction. It needs to

17:53

be video overlaid on top of.

17:56

geometry. Yeah. It's I

17:57

mean, this kind of thing is amazing that it's being

17:59

done in real time. I mean, that that's the kind of thing that

18:02

our people just take for granted. We

18:04

get oh, they put cameras on the front. So, of course, I can see through

18:06

it. But, no, this is this is not just, like, feeding

18:08

it, raw camera footage through. It's

18:10

it's like you're saying it's a remapping

18:13

of a black and white, you know, stereo, you know,

18:15

three-dimensional, you know

18:17

I don't know. It's a quality eight

18:20

year high. Yeah.

18:22

And it's it's where your eyes are. Like, it's not

18:24

doing a thing where it's, like, putting the cameras where

18:26

the pupils would be because that

18:28

doesn't always work because your IPDs if

18:30

everyone is different. stereo. They're they're

18:32

gonna have to, you know, realign in that

18:35

kind of or or

18:38

restitch your left and right

18:40

eye anyway. So this just solves that

18:42

by kind of bypassing it and it's

18:44

mapping video over geometry.

18:46

That's cool.

18:47

Yeah. The eye tracking

18:49

stuff interesting as

18:50

well. It's three sensors on the inside of the headset

18:53

for your eyes. IR sensors above the nose

18:55

bridge. There was

18:58

calibration, interface

19:00

it to go through to onboard

19:02

with every user, and then

19:04

the face tracking stuff which

19:06

interestingly refreshes at a lower refresh rate

19:08

than the eye tracking because they don't need

19:10

to, you know, do it seventy two times a

19:13

second. two cameras there and

19:16

that takes video

19:17

data and internally on the

19:19

headset extrapolates that into seventy

19:22

data points, which is then shared with

19:24

developers. And that's where

19:26

you get

19:26

instant camera ringing of your face. I

19:29

really hope that that technology

19:31

advances in the same way that we

19:33

saw hand tracking advance on the Quest

19:35

two, you know, which wasn't even there

19:37

in launch. should it became a thing later on, and it was

19:39

this amazing new capability. And I and I

19:41

would love to see what they

19:44

you know, are testing behind

19:47

the scenes in their laboratories on their what

19:49

are they calling, like, codec

19:51

avatars? They have is it? Where the it's

19:53

really photographic. It looks like

19:55

a person. You know, I don't expect it but

19:57

to get to that fidelity, but

19:58

something

19:59

something

19:59

closer to that than what they've demonstrated

20:02

they can do is some is

20:04

kinda what I was hoping we would see from

20:06

this device. I mean, for

20:08

such a lot more

20:09

money. I kind of

20:12

expected that the this hallmark

20:14

feature of face and eye tracking

20:16

to mean that they could bring

20:18

me into virtual reality in a

20:20

way that I haven't seen yet.

20:22

Right. And we're able to follow deckie

20:24

in. I love you, though. Yes. To expect

20:27

that. At fifteen hundred, that

20:29

feels aggressive to be. But

20:31

I get on the timeline and it's the first timeline. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

20:33

We all and then the glimpses we saw

20:35

in the past two years have been

20:37

magical of the codec avatars. What

20:39

we're getting though are just kind

20:41

of the more advanced version of

20:44

the Facebook Avatar. Those are the meta avatars.

20:46

Right? Where they're still cartoonish,

20:49

They're a little more detailed in the previews that

20:51

were shown of what they're shipping next year.

20:54

But rather than what we've had to

20:56

settle for before, which is the

20:58

faking of

20:59

social cues where developers

21:02

abstracted based on audio

21:04

cues, based on their branding

21:07

ahead. randomness. Right? Keep

21:09

alive animations, but they they would lock

21:11

eyes. Yeah. You were looking at someone and

21:13

they could detect, okay, they're probably talking to

21:15

each other because person's looking at

21:17

other, and one person is audio

21:19

is coming out when the and the microphone is

21:21

getting data. So then there are locked

21:23

eyes and blink and that that

21:25

I know for you, Jeremy, especially because

21:27

we've tried podcasting in VR, and that was

21:29

a tough thing for you to to to stomach,

21:31

and you would always see through that. I think

21:33

the eye tracking is gonna be great. Yeah. I mean, for social stuff as

21:35

long as people support it. I mean, I hope, you

21:38

know, like I say, it comes down

21:40

to incentive. this kind

21:42

of price point. I mean, clearly,

21:44

there's we hadn't gone into the

21:46

rest of the conference, but this is this

21:48

device is not marketed to

21:50

gamers. this is device is marketed towards people who wanna work

21:52

remote and have an in the office kind

21:54

of experience at least as much as they can.

21:57

And so i iContact is going to be

21:59

a big part of that just as it could be in games

22:01

like Rec Room or Big Screen.

22:04

But, you know, you

22:06

need to have

22:08

me having the device does nothing

22:10

for me, you know. You having the

22:13

device does. Yeah. That's that's a really good point

22:15

because it's it's an asymmetrical relationship.

22:17

Right. Or when you talk about hand tracking

22:19

and hand tracking and, you know, feed

22:21

tracking which we'll get to, needs

22:23

to be precise because if

22:25

any extra latency, any

22:28

mismanagement of the i k systems is

22:30

gonna break presence, break conversion for your

22:32

self because that's your body. With the

22:35

face, even if you're looking to it,

22:37

maybe if you're looking to a mirror and

22:39

it's those latency that can break in motion, but

22:41

you're not looking at your own face all time.

22:43

Like, latency minor inaccuracies

22:45

is not gonna break immersion for you.

22:47

That's for for the benefit of everyone else.

22:49

I think you're also talking

22:52

about just the

22:54

feeling of persistence, presence, which

22:56

we none of us have really

22:58

felt. an extended version of that. But for the use

23:00

cases, they were talking about, like,

23:02

being out on an oil rig or, like,

23:04

supporting somebody that's, like, doing

23:07

training in in a manufacturing

23:09

warehouse. Like, I don't think

23:11

the eye tracking

23:13

at the kind of Fidelity you're talking about

23:15

is gonna be necessary

23:17

for those early use cases, at least the

23:20

ones they listed. To get

23:22

to the part where, like,

23:24

there's real positive

23:26

meaningful VR social interactions?

23:29

Absolutely. But I'm not sure

23:31

we need photo realism

23:33

before we before we

23:35

get there. What you know,

23:37

one question I had at this price point,

23:39

and this is actually, I think, my biggest disappointment

23:41

with the headset is

23:44

is the LCD screen instead of

23:46

an OLED screen because that

23:48

tech is there. Like, well,

23:50

it's an it's an it's

23:52

an it's an LCD screen with local dimming. So

23:55

you've got the potential to have

23:57

large swaths of black.

23:59

although you won't be able to get star fields

24:01

that are lit against a black

24:03

pick sky. Yeah. Right. So it's it's like

24:05

it it it'll have know,

24:08

it's strong, you know, points and

24:10

weaknesses, but it's I I'm

24:12

I'm not terribly worried about it. I mean,

24:14

I've I in my experience with

24:17

VR has been every headset delivers.

24:19

It's just different, you know, when

24:21

you get in there, whatever the darkest value

24:23

it can deliver is becomes black.

24:25

And Yeah. So don't watch Game of Thrones in

24:28

this, but outside of that, you can do

24:30

whatever you want. Right. I mean, I know people and

24:32

I remember the old old led screens, and

24:34

they're they're great. they're great. But III

24:36

trust them to have done the

24:38

right thing here. Even CarMax said, yeah,

24:40

it's true the olettes gave us great blacks. But once

24:42

you win up from there, this

24:45

low range of brightness was very

24:47

difficult to deal with, and it didn't

24:49

resolve that terribly well. So it's,

24:51

like, there there's pros and cons. and

24:53

and my bigger maybe

24:55

not disappointment. But, like, the thing I

24:57

value more than even, like, the

24:59

perfect pitch black of OLED pixels is

25:01

the the brightness and the range

25:03

of brightness from zero to two fifty

25:05

five. And and I don't I'm

25:08

not asking for a full hundreds

25:11

of thousands of nits of brightness in

25:13

HDR, but even looking at Give

25:15

me a tan with this headset. But

25:17

even like a thousand nits of brightness. know, the kind of

25:19

what what you'd see on a an

25:21

OLED TV or or a nice QLED

25:24

TV these days. we're

25:26

not doesn't look like we're gonna get as much

25:29

dynamic range in this. And that's because that would

25:31

require a whole different processing

25:33

layer and so much of this, including the

25:35

resolution of these displays, is

25:38

tied to backward compatibility. And

25:41

this fundamentally being

25:43

a quest two

25:44

plus extra features. But

25:47

it's gonna run the same apps, the

25:49

Quest two developers. There there are an

25:51

estimated ten million Quest two's out

25:54

there and developers are only gonna be incentivized to develop

25:57

if they have the quest two as a base

25:59

platform with them however

26:01

many quest pro users out

26:03

there. end up on this this

26:05

new this new device. And I think going

26:07

back to Avatars question, Rec Room is a

26:09

great example of where It's a system that

26:12

developers already invested in their

26:14

style of avatars. It's a kind of

26:16

iconic or unique to to

26:18

their game because it's also cross

26:20

platform. And it'll be they

26:22

they will have less incentive financially

26:25

to add engineering

26:27

to for eye tracking and face tracking

26:29

because they don't know how we're gonna buy the quest pro.

26:31

And that's why I think what meta wants

26:33

is for people to adopt developers to adopt

26:35

their avatar system and just make it a plug and play

26:37

that's scalable. Right. So you just use

26:40

whatever the user is already designed

26:42

and character created from the cells in

26:44

the main UI, in the home

26:46

menu system. And then, you know,

26:48

as eye tracking, great. It

26:50

works. It doesn't fall back to some instructions. I

26:53

wanna push back a little bit on this accusation

26:55

of being too holodecy.

26:58

for a minute. First don't accuse me of

27:00

wanting the future too badly. Okay?

27:02

I am a growing man and

27:04

I want it now. I do want

27:07

it now. But

27:09

more immediately, like,

27:11

they need to

27:14

make a virtual reality

27:18

interaction as compelling as a

27:20

Zoom

27:20

call is central to their

27:23

pitch here. They

27:24

want people to go into the metaverse,

27:26

to engage with their coworkers

27:28

and communicate in a way that you

27:30

can't over zoom. and I don't think

27:32

you're gonna get there until you

27:35

have great eye,

27:37

like, not just eye tracking, but

27:40

face mapping. you know, where you can really

27:42

bring my expressions

27:44

and responses into

27:47

the into the avatar into the three

27:49

d world. So that's that's what I want. That's it is why

27:51

I want it. Slide three

27:53

microaggressions. Right? I want my microaggressions to

27:55

fully be extrapolated in some macroaggressions.

27:58

Right. So I

28:00

agree with that. I I think

28:02

what I'm pushing back against is that

28:04

there needs to be photorealism for

28:06

that kind of interaction to happen.

28:08

And I I just don't think that's the case.

28:10

I think there's a way that you

28:12

can still use an avatar based system

28:14

and create that that sense.

28:17

Yeah. It it's gonna be like a kind

28:19

of a funky avatar system.

28:21

But, like, I don't think I need to

28:23

see the wrinkles on some somebody's

28:25

eyes -- Mhmm. -- like when they're

28:27

laughing. But I need to be able to

28:29

see the shift in their

28:32

in their in their face when they

28:34

are laughing in some way. I

28:36

didn't see that based on what

28:38

I saw so far. So that's why I'm saying, I

28:40

hope that that technology evolves.

28:42

I I think is there.

28:44

It just isn't necessarily in the meta

28:46

avatars because the alien

28:48

mirror demo that I tried -- Yeah.

28:50

-- it was it was, like,

28:52

a Pixar animation, you know. And then I I use that

28:55

as an example to say, you know, it was, like, a high

28:57

quality studio animation. Not

28:59

only it looked like a high quality render, but

29:01

it was depressive as

29:03

hell. Oh, that is really

29:05

reassuring. I'm really glad to hear that. Like

29:07

like scrunches and wrinkles

29:09

and, like, and and and, like,

29:12

brow movement and cheeks, not

29:14

just like like a huff and a puff like

29:16

I could I felt like, you know,

29:18

like an animator almost. I was trying

29:20

to go through all these, like, zany framework style

29:22

faces, and I was capturing all those.

29:24

And I could also they they may transparent

29:27

a menu for me to exaggerate

29:29

certain things. So it could tone

29:31

down, you know, parts of your expressions

29:33

or really exaggerate parts of

29:36

your expressions. And these are all we saw a little bit of, like, it's it's

29:38

almost like the the hand tracking stuff

29:40

where, you know, they would get if you can give you big

29:42

hands or octopus hands, and we've seen

29:44

those demos where you know,

29:46

the the finger tracking can can

29:48

be stretched out in ways to make you feel

29:50

like, you know, they're exaggerated in

29:52

some sense. You can do that to your

29:54

face now. or you wouldn't we will be able to do that to your

29:56

face. I think

29:58

the meta avatars, the default

29:59

ones, are gonna maybe

30:02

have

30:02

to find a common ground between that

30:05

and the quest two. Mhmm.

30:07

And so a lot of the question is, like, when that when

30:09

when does the baseline become

30:11

face tracking, eye tracking, so it can really lead

30:13

into as expressive as

30:15

these f tars can possibly be with the

30:17

tech. Right?

30:18

Yeah. And it appears that it

30:20

may not be the Quest three. And we don't

30:22

know anything about that product, but

30:25

the leaks suggest that that is not a

30:27

feature in in the quest three, at least in the what's

30:29

been, you know, leaked. Where that line is wrong. Yeah.

30:31

Yeah. And then it's an interesting

30:33

point because, yeah, we'll knowledge there there

30:35

are leaks of, you know, what, reported renders

30:38

of the Quest three with

30:41

the cameras. systems may look like. And one

30:43

of the things that I was so curious about

30:45

is if they are developing two lines

30:47

of quasi. Quest 12345

30:50

mainstream line, we'll call it,

30:52

in that sub five hundred dollar entry

30:55

point and a fifteen dollar fifty

30:57

hundred dollar baseline entry point

30:59

for a pro line where

31:01

they draw the difference in

31:03

the features. Is it in banking lenses? Is it in

31:05

ergonomics? Is it in processing? capabilities? Is it

31:07

in sensors, pass through,

31:10

or face tracking? And

31:12

the indication was that

31:15

they're gonna use developer and user feedback

31:17

from the quest pro after

31:20

it comes out for

31:22

them to draw those lines. for

31:24

in that sense that it was kind of a a developer

31:27

kit. Right? Not not only enterprise

31:29

targeted product, but a a way

31:31

to actually test

31:33

it in the wild. What are people using? What

31:35

are the users? Are they only buying games with

31:37

pass through? Are they only buying games that have

31:39

face tracking and then differentiate

31:42

their lines? And if there are

31:44

renders of the Quest already, if it is coming out

31:46

next year, it's too late

31:48

to change that. Right. Like, then that we're

31:50

talking about Quest four. We're I mean, products

31:52

take years to develop. You know,

31:54

Cambria was in its this

31:56

form basically a year ago when

31:58

they previewed it at at at the

31:59

Lasmada Connect. Right. Now,

32:02

welcome to the wild

32:04

world of hardware development. It's a

32:06

completely different animal than the

32:08

software that company

32:10

had been essentially based on

32:12

for so long. Yeah. What you're describing though

32:14

really is in line with my

32:16

hopes actually though because I

32:18

I got the sense and watching

32:21

and I I suggest anyone who really

32:23

followed, you

32:24

know, connect

32:25

check the interview that Mark Zuckerberg did

32:27

with the Virgin because it was it

32:29

shed some light on it that I thought gave

32:31

it gave it better perspective. including

32:34

the fact that, like, he he thinks of the

32:36

of

32:36

the quest pro as maybe

32:39

just one audience is just potentially

32:41

just people who just want, like, the

32:43

finest quest. You. Which happens to

32:45

be me? Yeah. Right. That's why I got it because I

32:47

want a more comfortable quest that has a few

32:49

extra bells and whistles. But

32:52

they don't they're they're not thinking of themselves as

32:54

an enterprise company, which was my huge

32:56

fear after watching Connect. They

32:58

still are are focused on consumers.

33:01

And for whatever reason, this connect just

33:03

wasn't for them. Like, this was an

33:06

odd connect in that it was focused on this

33:08

new high end device and they're pitching it

33:10

for businesses. And we'll see

33:13

if if that finds a place. I know that they

33:15

hope it does. And certainly, the

33:17

technology eventually, I think we'll get there.

33:19

I don't know if this is the one that will you

33:21

know, crack that ceiling or

33:23

not. But the the thing

33:25

that that he goes into in that

33:27

interview that I gave me relief and

33:29

and calm after watching Connect was

33:32

that they still are thinking

33:34

that this is early days, that this is a long

33:36

term thing. to me, the connect event

33:38

felt more like they were anxious

33:40

and they needed this device to be

33:42

mainstream sooner than it was naturally gonna get

33:44

there. And if

33:46

they really are thinking of this as

33:48

still early days, we got another, you

33:50

know, who knows how many years ahead of us

33:52

before we get to AAA

33:54

billion devices in the hands of consumers, then

33:58

great. Then maybe it's alright if quest

33:59

three isn't it may be the quest

34:02

pro is something they're testing

34:04

the waters with four quest four for

34:06

all we know. Like, it could be a long term

34:08

thing and it doesn't have to be that

34:10

every single year we're gonna get the

34:12

game changing device, it may still take a lot of patience.

34:14

And I I think that's the right way to

34:16

look at it. Because the the VR industry thought

34:18

it was gonna be a PCVR. device

34:22

for the longest time. You look at

34:24

too. You look at the investment,

34:26

the the previous CEO. CarMax was

34:28

all about mobile. That's true.

34:30

No. He was all about the the go. Like,

34:32

he freaking loved the go.

34:34

Yeah. You know, and he would go on and

34:36

on about if if VR

34:38

was just screens, it would be a magical

34:40

device. But but you look at the

34:42

investment they put in

34:44

with Insomniac and ready at dawn and all these amazing

34:46

games that came out in the early days of VR for

34:48

PC VR. Like, just millions and millions

34:50

and millions of dollars and, like, two developer

34:52

kits, rift drift tests.

34:54

And all of that had to be blown out of the water because it

34:56

turned out that mobile is where their

34:58

entire business was. And so they've

35:00

pivoted, they'd rebooted,

35:02

and now we're it's like we almost had to

35:04

start over again with Quest.

35:06

And so it is kind of like this

35:08

lagging early days. And I think it's a

35:10

it's a strange thing for us to

35:12

experience when we've been in it for ten years and we're ready for

35:14

it to hit, but it just has

35:16

we have to be more patient. than,

35:19

you know, than than we

35:22

wanna be. The other thing I think it gives

35:24

reassurance for for gamers is that they're

35:26

not abandoning that mainstream, that

35:28

consumer market is all all the studios they

35:30

acquired. They acquired six

35:32

big game studios. They're making from

35:34

beat saver to population one to

35:36

to really hit done. Right? Right? And and to

35:40

what was what was, you know, supernatural,

35:42

of course, with the fitness stuff,

35:45

But yeah. That's an

35:48

on work. Right? Developers of on work.

35:50

Like, that's gonna come to fruition. We

35:52

haven't seen the fruits of

35:53

those acquisitions yet. Right. I guess. That

35:55

sounds Zaru. Dude, we're gonna say Zaru. Speaking as as

35:58

god's wrath was, like, a game that contented for

35:59

game of the year of

36:02

all games. And I know like,

36:04

nobody played it because it was so

36:06

early in VR. Like, a few people

36:08

played it because they had VR headsets and everything

36:10

back then. But my god. Like, I if

36:13

if they can bring that to Quest or if

36:15

that team develop something for Quest, it's gonna

36:17

be amazing, but we it takes time. Yeah.

36:19

I mean, you're just still talking about the

36:21

game developers they acquired. There's all

36:24

the hardware groups they

36:26

acquired along the way too.

36:28

Control Labs Like, none

36:30

of that tech has shown up inside of

36:32

any of these devices yet. Yeah. So,

36:34

like, just like, I

36:36

still think the future is bright.

36:38

for more precise tracking and realism

36:41

to come. I think there's

36:43

some big problems with,

36:46

like, battery and processing that they are going

36:48

to hit. Timing is very funny

36:50

for this. And I I think going back to what

36:52

you're saying, Jeremy, the the elephant room

36:56

and it was explicitly said in that verge interview is

36:58

is Apple, is they need to get something

37:00

that they want businesses enterprises

37:02

to be invested monetarily in

37:05

as a platform before Apple

37:08

is out there with their augmented

37:10

reality headset, which we all expect

37:13

is coming and maybe more expensive

37:15

than fifteen hundred. Apple's not gonna make an

37:17

enterprise only device. They're gonna make a

37:19

high end consumer device. And

37:22

it's a it's a it's a bar phrase from

37:24

what was said in the keynote.

37:26

Zuckerberg and Co don't wanna

37:28

be fashionably late. to to this. They'd

37:30

rather have the foot in early and

37:32

kind of set the

37:34

tone of expectations because

37:37

there was gonna be parity across, I think, you

37:39

know, what what we hope in terms

37:41

of sensors, pass through, face

37:44

face tracking. These are kinda, like, fundamental things

37:46

that anyone

37:48

who's then research in AR and VR knows has to happen

37:50

for these devices to

37:53

to be useful. you know, there's

37:55

another elephant in the room and it's coming from

37:58

Sony and they better

37:59

watch their back be at both of these

38:02

companies because I think the PSVR two

38:04

is going to apprise a lot of people who aren't paying That

38:06

thing is they figured out everything they

38:08

needed to learn with the first draft

38:12

and they're coming out guns blazing. Like, this thing is has things

38:14

that the that the place that

38:16

the guy again is in the word, the quest pro

38:20

doesn't have. Right? And it's

38:22

going to be a consumer device. It has

38:24

eye tracking. It has

38:26

adaptive triggers. It has

38:28

head haptics. It's you know what I'm saying? Like, they they figured out

38:30

and it's going to be gamer focused

38:32

and running on a PlayStation five. They

38:34

don't they're not relying on a mobile

38:38

hardware anymore. they have the potential to dofoliated which is

38:40

gonna increase the resolution a little

38:42

bit for where you're focused.

38:44

And, I mean,

38:46

this is This is gonna be

38:48

the biggest competition Nacogdoches ever seen from

38:50

a gaming standpoint. I think they would welcome it. I think

38:52

they would be so happy if

38:54

PSVR two ticks off. because that encourage

38:56

developers to stick with VR. And

38:58

they don't have to shoulder the responsibility

39:00

of their hardware carrying

39:02

an entire unproven early

39:04

days in this entry. And I think

39:06

if PSVR two fails, they are

39:08

they are gonna feel like it's not good

39:11

for the

39:11

industry as a whole. You

39:13

know what? My big fear was is

39:15

when that that fashionably late comment came

39:17

out, I thought they were gonna

39:19

announce the Hermes. version of the

39:22

MediWest brand. And that was just

39:24

like, it's like, oh,

39:26

no. Hey. No. No tops strap anymore.

39:28

No tops strap. Hey. Okay. So let's let's let's still

39:30

dive into some of the hardware because there's still

39:32

a lot of interesting stuff to discuss.

39:35

Processing was something sure you

39:37

mentioned as being maybe a disappointment. or

39:39

limitation, and they are sticking with Qualcomm,

39:41

the Snapdragon XR XR

39:44

two now plus processor.

39:46

And the interesting thing here is

39:48

John Carmack talked about thermals are really a big problem

39:51

that has not been solved

39:53

in headsets, and you're not gonna

39:55

get a forty ninety you

39:58

know, in a VR headset because those

40:00

things are not only consume a ton

40:02

of power, but also

40:04

put out a ton of heat. and even in

40:06

the mobile chipset in the ARM world.

40:08

Well, acknowledge and Boscakal is

40:10

that designing their

40:12

own silicon has to happen

40:14

at some point, and this isn't their

40:16

wholly owned silicon the way the m one

40:18

chip is for Apple, which is

40:20

a huge competitive advantage because they could

40:22

scale that across all the other

40:24

devices are already selling tens of

40:26

millions, hundreds of millions of phones and

40:28

laptops and

40:30

tablets. Qualcomm has the fabs

40:32

to to make something that's more

40:34

efficient than the way they put for custom

40:36

FPGAAs, for

40:38

the sensors, while still having that compatibility

40:40

with those two.

40:42

Yeah. You know what? We haven't talked about

40:44

the controllers yet. We that they're self

40:48

tracking. That's a Qualcomm processors themselves. That's

40:50

a big deal. Yeah. Like that. Two

40:52

cameras in each one too? How

40:54

many cameras? three.

40:56

Three. So I think the three cameras in

40:58

each, I think, is less interesting

41:00

unless there's something we haven't

41:02

heard yet. No developers can't say.

41:05

oh, here's something cool about the cameras.

41:07

You can in the the controllers, you

41:09

know, as as a as

41:11

a novel interface. Right? Like, pass through camera from

41:13

a controller to a viewport --

41:16

Oh. -- in your head. Like,

41:18

whoa. Yeah. I'm saying, like, that that's

41:20

a wild thing. No developer has said that. So

41:22

-- Right. -- my assumption is that it's just purely

41:24

for tracking purposes.

41:26

Yeah. Fine. more interesting. And that's essential because

41:28

you've had no more inclusion.

41:30

There's better inclusion for

41:32

past due with physician. Right? So you

41:36

actually your controllers overlay on top of the video for

41:38

pass through, you can put the controllers on your

41:40

head, whatever whatever. I mean,

41:42

these are the things that you needed

41:44

of of and valve

41:46

headset to solve until now. This is I

41:48

think this is a big deal. It is. I think

41:50

it's about the input, though, that got

41:52

less attention, that's even bigger deal.

41:55

because not only do you have the same buttons, the ABXY

41:58

and your thumbstick, there's

41:59

now thumb sensitive pressure sensitivity

42:02

on the thumb. And

42:04

it's still

42:05

a trigger button and a grip

42:07

button. But on the trigger button, it's

42:09

actually there's a

42:12

horizontal that allows you so it's it's no

42:14

longer the the the

42:16

analog depression of the trigger

42:18

button itself. that animates the

42:20

hand, you know, how the the your

42:22

oculus hands always were like, yes.

42:24

It would go from like a smooth animation to

42:26

like a snap. So wide open

42:28

for a fist or a wide

42:30

open. Here that you can actually

42:32

map a

42:32

gentle curl of your

42:34

index finger. over You're saying

42:36

it's capacitive? It's capacitive in

42:38

itself. In addition to being analog an

42:41

analog depression. Cool. Yeah. So

42:44

that allows for a pinching

42:46

mechanic, while holding the controllers

42:48

because you can lift your fingers

42:50

off of the off of the

42:52

actual button slowly,

42:53

you

42:54

yeah know,

42:55

curl it on top of the button

42:57

to the depression as well as having

42:59

the thumb pressure And in one of

43:01

the demos I was able to do, it was a a Zynga game, and it was a

43:04

precise Zynga game, like -- Mhmm. -- squeeze.

43:06

Mhmm. Like, it was

43:08

almost like too

43:10

precise because I was, like, shaking almost because it was it was that

43:12

the physics simulation wasn't smoothed out.

43:15

So there's that there's

43:17

three new or three

43:19

total new motors now for

43:22

haptics. So there's one in the

43:24

base, one in the thumb, and one in the

43:26

the top. So you get you're gonna get

43:28

feet like you know, HD haptics for lack of a better

43:30

phrase, for more activities,

43:32

Nate. And I think that's one of

43:34

the reasons they went from

43:36

or that's one of the benefits of not using double a battery is they

43:38

could use that space for for

43:40

motors, for actuators, for haptics.

43:44

And they are backwards compatible with the quest two,

43:46

which I wasn't expecting. Yeah. And

43:48

I think some of that is because of

43:52

haptics feedback some of that is for the better sensing. So you're gonna be able to

43:54

do, you know, your wild beats saver actions with

43:56

the quest two headset. And some of that is

43:58

also the productivity stuff that you're pushing so hard.

43:59

So so high so even even

44:02

if your

44:02

company may be all quest two enabled right now

44:04

in some virtual environment. You

44:06

can now use that quest pro controller

44:08

as a stylus with pressure sensitivity.

44:11

I I have to admit the stylist was the one that

44:14

lost me. I was like, I can't

44:16

imagine somebody really

44:18

using this. it's actually pretty it's

44:20

it's it's a feature that's been in work rooms.

44:22

You if you when

44:24

they demoed it and I was like, now

44:26

hold your quest two controller hold it

44:28

like a pen, the grip part. It feels like a fat

44:30

marker. But with that little knob,

44:33

your table surface writes

44:35

like a pen. Yeah.

44:37

No. It's the best way to write with a touch

44:40

controller for sure. I mean, it's

44:42

not like that many ways to do it, but

44:44

it's I I've done it on

44:46

the quest too, and I was surprised by how good it works. And with that little

44:48

tip, the rubber tip and the pressure

44:50

sensitive sensor, on the

44:52

the the base of

44:54

the controller, it actually it it's like having a nice stylus.

44:56

Yeah. Yeah. I imagine this part. But three hundred bucks.

44:58

Three hundred bucks for the controllers. For

45:00

the pair. which is, I

45:02

think, is twice as much as replacement quest

45:04

two controllers, touch controllers.

45:06

And and I guess, in line with,

45:08

like, replacement index controllers. I think those

45:10

are two hundred fifty bucks. for for repair.

45:12

Yeah. So still expensive.

45:14

Right? Yeah. Battery life

45:16

also surprising. So Yeah. Well, yes

45:18

and no. I mean, apparently, it's you

45:21

know, potentially one to two hours, which does not bode well. But CarMax said

45:23

in his talk that if you do

45:25

turn off the special,

45:28

you know, pro features, eye tracking, face

45:30

tracking, pass through, pass

45:32

through, then yield should last longer

45:34

than the quest two would. it

45:37

actually has a bigger battery. But if

45:39

you're if you're gonna be, you know,

45:41

using to his full power, it's yeah.

45:43

It's gonna be a short

45:46

battery life. Yeah. Yeah. It's so weird that

45:48

they they quoted off that one to two

45:50

when, I guess, they want people

45:52

to use all

45:54

these Right? And it has to do with weight. It has to do

45:56

with just how how the

45:58

batteries where they are, like these curve

45:59

batteries now, how they work as

46:02

a counterbalance. a counter wake

46:04

and and that the

46:06

the efficiency of the SoC. It's

46:08

it's not the latest process

46:10

that they're using for for

46:12

heat dissipation. they're always going to struggle with battery, with

46:14

pass through. Like, you can't do that

46:16

kind of camera technology

46:18

with overlaying things that without

46:22

costing a lot of of

46:24

battery power. Yeah.

46:26

I'm sure if they did what Apple did and,

46:28

like, build their own chips and all that

46:30

kind of stuff. there'd be some economies

46:34

around battery life. But I I think it's a

46:36

it's pretend physics to

46:38

think that this isn't always

46:40

in that mode. Gonna consume a ton of battery very quickly. Yeah.

46:42

I just hope that you can

46:45

charge while using it.

46:48

playing. Yeah. You know, with a with a big old fat battery pack

46:50

that can that can put out the necessary

46:52

current, I I hope that it can

46:54

as the quest to can. Yeah.

46:57

Yeah. Yeah. Which yes. You just have to find a a novel way

47:00

to mount that external battery now

47:02

because it's all self can. You you lose

47:04

the tilt You no longer can tilt the headset. I

47:06

will miss that. My my

47:08

mom, she has a quest too. She's had

47:10

every headset or the

47:12

mobile ones. She

47:14

had no idea that even existed. I wouldn't be

47:15

surprised if most people never use that

47:18

feature, but I do and I love it, so I'm

47:20

gonna miss it. And I I

47:22

think that's them saying in

47:24

the past, you had to do the tilt

47:26

for clarity on the lens to find the sweet

47:28

spot. Yeah. That's true. The pancake optics, maybe you

47:30

don't have to do that. or -- Right. --

47:32

fit. Yeah. So

47:34

to be tested, for sure, when we

47:36

hopefully get a heads on with it.

47:38

Double the memory. twelve gigs of RAM, and I

47:40

think this is also a understated

47:44

feature. This could be a big deal

47:46

for the for

47:48

multitasking. Like, if you want to use

47:50

a VR headset as a general purpose computer, right

47:52

now, it still feels like an iPhone

47:54

iPhone four. Right? Right.

47:56

You don't have real multitask You have

47:59

instances of applications. And with

48:02

the quest pro, you can have a

48:04

browser running

48:06

without shutting an

48:08

application. Yeah. That sounds interesting. I I

48:10

agree with you. I think that this twelve gigs

48:12

has gone under, you

48:14

know, explored. by the press

48:16

since the event. I I think I I think

48:18

just the whole thing should

48:20

feel more responsive, you know, when you're

48:22

launching and getting back to

48:24

certain things going to the back to

48:26

the dock, back into a game is potentially gonna be much faster. It's a battery. Also,

48:28

more memory. It's a battery.

48:32

Yeah. Ergonomix. ergonomics I'll

48:34

tell you it was

48:35

really comfortable. It was so comfortable,

48:37

guys. Yes, it weighs more. The

48:40

way you put it on,

48:42

you know, take a little getting used to because there's no bend. So it's

48:44

not the stretchy of the visor.

48:46

You, you know, you lose it at and put it

48:48

on. I said, like, a crown -- Mhmm. -- the bulb were

48:50

said. That's very

48:52

apt. It has the light bleed.

48:54

So by default, you you

48:56

see the world and that's that I'm

48:58

leaning into. the pass through

49:00

video. And so, you know, the the synchronize

49:02

the matching of where your real

49:04

arm is to where it shows up

49:06

in headset

49:08

is perfect. and it has, you know,

49:10

these magnetic light blockers for the

49:12

sides that you can attach where I didn't get to

49:14

try, but they fit my glasses

49:16

so well. like,

49:18

really perfectly. And didn't push push them

49:20

against my face at all. Like, it's

49:22

very comfortably

49:24

put on. Did you think I was sorry. Go ahead. How you

49:26

compare the comfort to something like the

49:28

index? Much more comfortable.

49:30

In marketing. And I think it's a

49:32

combination of

49:34

you have to credit the pancake optics. It's the pancake optics one

49:38

that you just no longer have

49:40

a bulk of a

49:42

thing. Yeah. even

49:44

two and a half inches away from your eyes.

49:46

That extra whatever the

49:48

distance is that is reduced and

49:51

the battery being in the back by

49:53

default. So, yeah, we've had counter weighted

49:56

headsets in the past before, but, like, on the

49:58

quest two, you still have the battery in the front if you

49:59

got a battery in the back. hear the battery in the

50:02

back, the front just no

50:04

longer feels like it's straining your nose

50:06

bridge. You have a a headrest

50:08

that it mounts on, and that's

50:10

adjustable too. So

50:11

you you didn't miss

50:14

the the custom

50:16

prescription lenses?

50:18

because you have those for your quest to I do. Yeah.

50:20

Yeah. And it's because, you know,

50:22

normally, if I I use it in in

50:24

my weird weird vision anyway, where

50:27

one of my eyes is

50:30

perfect. It's being having the

50:32

glasses. Like, I'm just gonna it

50:34

it's I've had I've used a bunch of heads up before where

50:36

the glasses technically fit in.

50:38

And when they they kind

50:40

of fit, even like the Note five

50:44

Pro, it's when I take the headset

50:46

off because it's a full gasket, the glasses sometimes come out along with the headset.

50:48

Right? Or it's gonna fog up on the inside,

50:50

and here it's just easy on,

50:54

easy off. And I think it's gonna

50:56

be a big deal for them hoping for people at a desk who just

50:58

need to pop the headset on to see

51:00

a virtual object to analyze

51:04

AA3D model or to jump

51:06

into a virtual, you know, telepresence

51:08

virtual meeting that's with

51:10

pass through. Like, they just want people

51:12

taking these on and off, charging it, put them on, use it. Not necessarily

51:14

in it for, you know,

51:17

six hours at a time, but having it

51:20

as as, like, as if you look be

51:22

looking at a tablet, you know, or or

51:24

a phone. It's a thing that

51:25

you pick up and put on and use. This is

51:28

gonna sound a little silly,

51:30

but there's something I wear my

51:32

glasses all day, There's something about

51:34

the weight of the glasses on my

51:36

face that makes it

51:38

feel normal to me. And when I don't

51:40

have my glasses on, even with

51:42

the prescription lenses in my

51:44

quest, it never feels

51:46

quite right.

51:48

And so I was weirdly excited about that feature. I

51:50

forgot my glasses were still on. I

51:52

went to look for my glasses on

51:55

a side table.

51:57

the after

51:58

taking the headset off as I would have

51:59

done at any other demo

52:02

and they were still on. Like, that

52:04

muscle memory

52:06

completely forgot. How is

52:08

the sound quality compared to Quest

52:10

two? Notice would be better. What?

52:12

And the first demo I was put in was

52:16

the tribe XR. So

52:18

the DJing, it's like, has a

52:20

whole deck that's simulated. They

52:22

have, like, guitar hero, rock band style, you

52:25

know, follow along the icons, and I wasn't

52:27

very good at that, but it sounded

52:29

really good. That's that's I mean, it's

52:31

still the same kind of Yes. Sound

52:33

delivery mechanism. Right? Yeah. Yeah. holes in the arms. Right. But the arms

52:35

are solid, and I think the placement of

52:37

those holes because in

52:39

the quest, it's

52:42

a default. There there are no arms. Right? So it's Right.

52:44

Soft strap. It's Soft strap. So here, because

52:46

the arms are fixed, the placement of

52:50

it is more directly over your ears. Okay. Love your ears.

52:52

Nice. This is very good to hear. I

52:54

didn't know that. Not as good as

52:56

the Andex. They're not speaking or

52:58

Come on. But it it sounded like, I was surprised. I

53:00

asked him, like, wow. The I I it was

53:02

a noticeable thing. That's great. That demo.

53:04

three microphones and two headphone ports. So they will, like,

53:06

in was the Quest one that they

53:08

had two -- Yep. -- headphone jacks.

53:11

also two headphone jacks here. So for earbuds,

53:14

if you wanna -- Yeah. -- do that.

53:16

Yeah. So

53:19

talk about price. some of the applications. Any questions about some

53:21

of the things I saw? So, you

53:24

know, Figman XR was really

53:26

neat, and

53:28

that's multi platform,

53:30

mixed reality application, it has

53:32

tilt brush, open source in

53:34

in it. Yeah. You

53:36

can import models, you can sort search

53:39

for gifts. You can create portals, import physics,

53:41

anything that Unity has. So it's

53:43

a really fun sandbox.

53:46

and natural in with the pass through. So, again, like, all

53:48

these demos, I was just talking to developers standing

53:50

next to me while they were looking at

53:52

their phone, casting what I was seeing,

53:55

The cast on the phone does not pass the video through

53:57

for privacy reasons. That's interesting. And

53:59

so, you know, if you're casting

54:01

what you see in that

54:03

set, So Chromecast or to a phone, it will it'll be like

54:05

a black background. It captures the overlay,

54:08

but it's a black background. Yeah.

54:10

Exactly. World

54:12

was really surprising, W000RLD

54:16

It's a social mapping application.

54:20

So imports the map,

54:22

the three d maps from Bing.

54:24

And based on your Internet connection,

54:28

it will stream them in, you know, Google Map style, but

54:30

you you have a table, virtual

54:32

table, and

54:35

you've done you've done like Google Maps and VR. Right?

54:37

Yep. Really cool. You're you're Superman, you

54:39

can fly. Here it's

54:42

like the HEist

54:43

movie where you and for

54:45

other people are on a or

54:48

looking at a hologram of a city and and that

54:50

you can, like, I'll zoom in at the at the same,

54:52

you have a shared representation to

54:54

that three d model. Okay. You can decide to

54:56

guide you raging around

54:58

town. Like, your equal height

55:00

to the skyscraper. You can do it.

55:02

You can scale up and down. You can draw

55:04

and point and create, like,

55:06

holographic markers, tilt brush

55:08

style for all sorts of,

55:10

like, planning. you know, fun or or dev games built in. There's a, like,

55:12

a street view. You can, like, you know, place a little

55:14

marker on your all

55:16

premise review.

55:18

As soon as I saw this, I was thinking, like, so many real estate

55:20

listings now use Matterport

55:22

for the virtual tours. I

55:24

immediately like, this is gonna be

55:27

part of real estate listings. Oh, one hundred percent.

55:30

Imagine, like, in real estate, if you're you in a

55:32

real estate, you're not even in the same room. Right? You're

55:34

all avatars. They

55:36

have headsets. And it's telepresence

55:38

and you can, like, look through a map of the city

55:40

and, like, you know, draw out. This is where the

55:42

neighborhoods are. This is where restaurants

55:44

are. Like,

55:46

here's where a property we're looking at here and then drop into a view and

55:48

then see a three sixty video of what the

55:50

neighborhood looks like. Like, that that type

55:52

of, you know, use of maps is

55:56

like, it feels like use of

55:58

of maps and social. And it's

56:00

it's a it's it's

56:02

it's It was one of the first

56:05

telepresence applications where, you know,

56:07

when I drop in, you're not in a

56:09

fixed location. Like, you're not in a I'm

56:11

standing in seat a or seat b or seat c.

56:13

Like, the other people there

56:15

are just in their own spaces, which may

56:17

be different size cases

56:19

that weren't I'm in, but they we all have

56:22

an anchor which is the map.

56:24

And you can teleport yourself for

56:26

free locomotion yourself relative to the map

56:28

anywhere you wanna be. But

56:30

then if I look to the right in that

56:32

avatars right there,

56:34

then they're looking to me at the left.

56:36

And so is that, like, virtual avatar in

56:39

your space? In a in a

56:41

shared virtual space? Yeah. That's

56:44

cool. Since the

56:45

the announcement, it sounds like a lot

56:47

of developers have started coming out of the

56:49

woodworks sharing that they've had access to

56:51

a quest pro.

56:54

for, you know, better part of a year now and

56:56

start sharing some videos of the things

56:58

we've been using with the pass through with some

57:00

of the face tracking. And one of

57:03

the things that interesting is a lot of them are also tapping

57:05

into the gray scale pass through. So

57:08

supporting quest two as well as

57:10

quest pro

57:12

why not having a version exactly. Right? And having a version

57:14

of their game that's or a software

57:16

experience that's gonna allow for grayscale

57:20

through as the base level, and then color pass through as

57:22

just a a slider to toggle on

57:24

if the user has a quest pro.

57:28

And that's an untapped market

57:30

right now. I mean, it's it's like it's been slowly

57:32

coming out that games incorporate pass

57:34

throughs and they open up that

57:36

that ability. for developers. Yeah. This should flood the market with that. And I

57:38

think it's gonna be powerful as well.

57:40

It it the quest pro isn't more

57:42

capable of doing any kind

57:44

of slam of actual

57:46

world geometry? Is it where it could

57:48

just naturally, without any

57:50

assistance, detect where tables

57:52

are, couches, you know, in

57:55

addition to walls. So not automated general automatically generated,

57:57

it won't do the thing

57:59

that what's the application

58:01

on the phone

58:04

that uses LiDAR what's the scanning app? It's

58:07

it's a photogrammetry app -- Yeah. --

58:09

on the phone, the word, if you use your

58:11

phone and it has LiDAR, it

58:14

that only can map, like, where the ceilings are, and the rooms are, can identify

58:16

that's a a doorway, and that's a the

58:18

assumption is that's a mirror. It doesn't have semantic understanding.

58:20

It's what I'm gonna say. Right. It's

58:23

It's only doing the mesh for for depth

58:26

purposes. There's a app on

58:28

the app lab that I forgot what it's called. Look for my

58:30

phone. Is it like

58:32

dungeon maker? And it's it's an

58:34

augmented reality app for Quest too.

58:36

It it's absolutely worth your

58:38

money. And and it's

58:40

fantastic. You you just go into your room. You

58:42

gotta pass through. and then you can turn

58:44

your room into a dungeon. But one of

58:46

the features that it has is you

58:48

can tell it where your

58:50

surfaces are. So you stretch a rectangle over the

58:52

couch, and then it

58:54

becomes a what

58:57

does it it it it includes things that are behind it. So

58:59

you can then put traps behind your couch

59:01

that you can't actually see until you

59:03

walk around, which up until recently, like, until unless

59:05

you had that feature, you would that wouldn't work. You'd see

59:07

everything even if it was, you know, behind a wall.

59:10

So that kind

59:12

of thing is what interests me a lot because this kind of experience where you can

59:14

turn your own space into a playground.

59:17

It needs to be

59:20

more automatic. like, when I put my son into this app,

59:22

he was like, well, what you had to tell

59:24

it all this stuff? He was not impressed,

59:26

and I was super

59:28

impressed. But Like, I I

59:30

realized that that's where it has to go.

59:32

Absolutely. And, like, painting VR was

59:34

an application I used where you could tell

59:36

it that is that is a surface,

59:38

so your paint tools can The Physics will

59:40

work properly, where that's a flat

59:42

surface. And so you can drop it there, pick an object

59:44

up, but it won't do it automatically. And there's no reason that's just, like,

59:46

over time. Right? That's building a database and

59:48

using AI and and the neural learnings.

59:50

Right? To

59:52

just to understand different types of spaces. There is

59:54

some demo that they showed of a robot

59:56

walking up the wall and then onto

59:58

the ceiling. So, yep, I

1:00:00

guess those had to be user defined, those

1:00:03

surfaces. Okay. And and I

1:00:05

think there's a difference between

1:00:08

understanding the barriers of a of room, the walls of a room,

1:00:10

because that's just Right. There's

1:00:12

six planes. Right? It's a very

1:00:16

plainer. and something like a couch versus a desk.

1:00:18

Okay. Something to sit on versus

1:00:19

something to be a writing surface. And

1:00:22

I have

1:00:23

super cluttered

1:00:24

space. Like, it's it's gonna be a far

1:00:26

a long time before -- Right. --

1:00:28

a space like this could be

1:00:31

mapped properly with It didn't mean to the of that

1:00:33

magically one demo. That was Oh,

1:00:36

yeah. Doctor corporates Invader.

1:00:39

Oh my god. I was thinking, like, meta

1:00:41

needs to pay

1:00:44

meta to port that to quest pro.

1:00:46

Oh, dude. That's great idea. I mean,

1:00:48

the the problem they did so much problems solving. They

1:00:50

did scalable portals. They would have

1:00:52

the understanding automatically of how

1:00:54

big your

1:00:56

walls were. and it would scale dynamically how big to open the the portal

1:00:58

into the other world, the type of

1:01:00

environments it could generate and how many monsters could come

1:01:02

through at

1:01:04

one time. Yep.

1:01:06

I mean, yeah. This this is why

1:01:08

it feels like it's still the very beginning, the early days

1:01:10

of the the AR, the MR stuff. And

1:01:12

then the the sneak peaks of the the

1:01:14

far future. So the Control Labs

1:01:17

wristbands, you know, Macri

1:01:19

Raj talked about, the test they can do

1:01:21

now where not only is it the

1:01:24

subtle micro gestures in

1:01:26

your hands

1:01:28

as input, but

1:01:30

adapting and using AI so that over time,

1:01:32

everyone's micro gestures will be

1:01:34

different. And so that's an

1:01:36

important part. It's not it's not a

1:01:38

unified button press. to to

1:01:40

relate a certain action, it's

1:01:42

gonna have to be

1:01:44

constantly training based on how the

1:01:46

user who wears

1:01:48

this wristband. use it. But their goal is that it'll be better than using

1:01:50

a keyboard or mouse because

1:01:52

it is. It because it will be. The physics

1:01:54

is actually better than using a keyboard

1:01:56

or mouse. because it,

1:01:58

like, can it

1:01:59

senses that movement before

1:02:02

your digit actually moves. So

1:02:05

it has the advantage of speed

1:02:07

of light.

1:02:08

Speed of neurons.

1:02:10

Right? Speed of neurons.

1:02:12

It goes back to In in

1:02:14

in In North The shores do. It it's

1:02:18

it's like every I'm gonna tied to pop culture.

1:02:20

Every time there's a Superman versus Greenland

1:02:24

turn, you know, battle in some type of story. It's like superman can

1:02:26

move faster than green lantern and send neurons

1:02:28

to the ring. So to

1:02:30

let know what to do, Yeah.

1:02:32

Well, III don't know. I don't know how fast it's gonna be. Accuracy

1:02:34

is even more important, I think, than

1:02:37

than latency. True.

1:02:38

But, like, if it's that if

1:02:41

it's that fast, it'll mimic you

1:02:44

your feeling is that it'll

1:02:46

mimic the action that you

1:02:48

told your digit

1:02:50

to take. on the same time scale because right now

1:02:52

everything has a latency to it.

1:02:54

Right. Right. Right. Sometimes a latency is good.

1:02:56

Sometimes taking

1:02:58

a moment, the the latency between my brain thinking something and

1:03:00

my brain saying, that's what I should type

1:03:02

on the keyboard. Nah, man. You press the

1:03:04

key. You press the key. What's

1:03:06

your mind? too

1:03:08

late. Unfiltered, unfiltered thoughts. And

1:03:10

and speaking of the the

1:03:13

ready player one analogy, Remember,

1:03:16

everybody player one where Wade gets the offer

1:03:18

from Serenco about, you know, how much

1:03:20

money he'd give him to give up the key. Yes. And

1:03:22

he had to turn on his his

1:03:24

reaction filter. That's the thing that's in the

1:03:26

UI. I mean, the the privacy

1:03:28

features will be on by default where face tracking, eye

1:03:30

tracking will not be on unless you turn

1:03:32

them on. and they can

1:03:34

be toggled either of

1:03:36

those anytime in the

1:03:37

shortcut menu. So if you're if

1:03:39

you're in a game

1:03:42

of of high

1:03:42

stakes negotiations in in in

1:03:44

Horizon's workrooms, and you and you

1:03:46

don't take away your your your

1:03:50

hand. you gotta turn on to turn off the face tracking and turn off

1:03:52

the eye tracking and and hide those

1:03:54

micro or slider, you know, adjust

1:03:56

them slider in the future. Yeah.

1:03:59

And then full body codec

1:04:02

codec avatars. They they

1:04:04

allowed some people some journalists who

1:04:06

went up to to Redman, so

1:04:08

reality labs research microelectrodes showed

1:04:10

them their full telepresence

1:04:12

demo. And this is

1:04:14

the photorealistic. tracked

1:04:15

real

1:04:18

time

1:04:18

the avatars avatars that

1:04:20

are, you know, AI

1:04:24

optimized. this is legit. And I think they'd

1:04:26

showed some of this at Seagraff this

1:04:28

year. So this was

1:04:31

using a phone taking a

1:04:34

few kind of quick shots.

1:04:36

It mapping your entire face and

1:04:38

body. And you have to do

1:04:41

a few gestures and and facial

1:04:43

expressions, and then generating a

1:04:46

full codec. That was like

1:04:48

that is like the painting that follows you

1:04:50

around. in the sense

1:04:52

that your eye movement

1:04:54

is is reflected, your

1:04:56

your mouth movements are

1:04:59

reflected in this avatar. Like,

1:05:00

this was the most

1:05:02

amazing technology

1:05:03

they displayed all

1:05:06

week. with real time lighting.

1:05:08

So the the two point o versions

1:05:10

are even more realistic,

1:05:12

more subtle animations, and

1:05:14

then they also had a faster

1:05:17

rendered one where someone could use a camera phone

1:05:19

at home. In good

1:05:22

lighting, show some expressions,

1:05:24

and then with AI, they would

1:05:27

over a couple hours compute generate AAA

1:05:30

still usable photorealistic

1:05:32

codec advertiser. better than looking than,

1:05:34

you know, what you find in a video game

1:05:36

today. Speaking

1:05:38

of video games, they did announce a few video

1:05:40

games coming to the US line, including

1:05:43

ironman VR, which you'll

1:05:45

remember from Playstation VR two

1:05:47

years ago. Was it just

1:05:49

two years ago? Twenty nineteen. Yeah. Three years ago.

1:05:51

I actually only played the demo of that game, and

1:05:54

now I'm glad I did because now I get to

1:05:56

experience it.

1:05:58

Tethrless. But people generally like that game. But as every game on

1:06:00

Playstation VR that used the controllers where

1:06:02

it was seriously hampered by the tracking,

1:06:06

So it should be a better experience here. I'll be curious to see how

1:06:09

it plays. They also announced population

1:06:10

one getting a sandbox

1:06:14

mode. user

1:06:15

generated comp maps.

1:06:17

Yeah. Finally. Yeah. A big deal. I haven't

1:06:19

been in that game in a while, but that's one

1:06:21

of the great gems of the quest

1:06:23

line. I'm I'm excited to see how that goes. Among us

1:06:25

VR, any any takers here? Are you guys excited

1:06:28

for that? Not really? Gosh. It's Snell Games,

1:06:30

and there was a good stuff. And they also

1:06:32

did announce expect

1:06:34

you to die home edition for

1:06:36

free. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a it will

1:06:38

be used to pass through VR and turn your

1:06:40

home into an escape room. That's one

1:06:43

second. That game is underrated. Underrated, everyone loves that

1:06:45

game. No, didn't. Like, among

1:06:47

us is overrated. Yes.

1:06:50

I expect you to die as underrated.

1:06:53

The second one

1:06:56

made a lot

1:06:58

of money. had had a great opening intro. Yeah. You know, Bond

1:07:00

style. You're you're in the Bond opening credits,

1:07:02

basically. The Walking Dead is getting a

1:07:04

follow-up. People love that that Saints and

1:07:06

sinners game. Okay.

1:07:08

I'd I'd and I don't

1:07:10

have the zombie fetish that most of the Internet

1:07:12

has. So I I did not play very

1:07:14

much of it, but it looked great. like

1:07:16

I could tell it sequel? Yeah. It

1:07:18

is super tense. It's where the the

1:07:21

mechanic of having that

1:07:24

time limited time that you could be in the

1:07:26

maps before the zombie horde

1:07:28

would come. Right. Made those

1:07:31

really, really tense. and a lot

1:07:33

of that has a deal with, like, the dual handed

1:07:36

physics. They were like, let's let people help you let

1:07:38

people have bone lab style, you

1:07:40

know, physics chopping

1:07:42

off heads. limited ammo survival game, and

1:07:44

it's in that Walking Dead.

1:07:46

Yeah. I love that. And the final

1:07:48

announcement

1:07:48

was behemoth.

1:07:51

an

1:07:51

unknown survival game by

1:07:53

the same team who brought

1:07:56

you St.

1:07:58

The Centers. Yeah. Yeah. That's skydance. Skydance

1:07:59

interactive. Right? They've been good stuff. Yep.

1:08:02

Yep. So that's

1:08:03

that's the big stuff

1:08:05

out of MetaConnect. there

1:08:08

was the whole Carmack talk, which he did as

1:08:10

an avatar without face tracking.

1:08:12

You didn't wanna have the face tracking in that?

1:08:14

Actually, either he didn't want it. or

1:08:18

he was told not to. Now, number one, like,

1:08:20

I had I wondered was it the battery life

1:08:22

because the guy's gonna talk, maybe it's not gonna

1:08:25

last that long. But he said, you know,

1:08:27

it'll probably do something janky and people will start

1:08:29

commenting on it and we don't want that to

1:08:31

become the headline. So that

1:08:33

was Yeah. I I was really sad

1:08:35

to see that. I wanted to see an

1:08:37

example of that tech live in an action.

1:08:39

It was unfortunate. But

1:08:42

I understand them needing it to be perfect before they dis display it just in

1:08:45

the information environment

1:08:48

they're in. environment there and

1:08:50

But I would have I want I

1:08:52

wanted to see an imperfect version. Even if it got

1:08:54

a little janky, it would have been great.

1:08:57

They have two weeks to get it perfect.

1:08:59

you know, they don't have a whole lot of time It it should be pretty good by now. They

1:09:02

want it to be perfect. Maybe they just cheat

1:09:04

it and

1:09:06

and use some extra sensors. I'm talking about the feet jumping. Oh.

1:09:08

because that became the headline. Yeah.

1:09:10

Upload VR found out that the

1:09:15

demo of track feed was actually using external

1:09:17

sensors and not the the

1:09:19

AI based track

1:09:23

feed. technology that was teased, I think, even before before

1:09:25

Connect. That's the twenty twenty two

1:09:27

version of, like, those guys

1:09:29

that jumped out of

1:09:32

the plane and, like, aimed the Wi

1:09:34

Fi so that the iPhone had reception as it came in to

1:09:39

don't you remember that that keynote where,

1:09:41

like, they did the

1:09:43

the skydive and the Google Glass.

1:09:45

Right? Oh, the Google Glass. That's what

1:09:47

it jumped out skydiving, Google Glass

1:09:49

-- Yes. -- on top of my And the WiFi people, so they kept signal all the

1:09:52

way down.

1:09:56

Yeah. That's a twenty twenty two version

1:09:58

of that. What hubris that we saw would never come again.

1:10:02

Okay. Well, yeah. a lot of forward looking technologies. I'm

1:10:04

really curious about just like what

1:10:06

developers do with pass through and

1:10:09

how they embrace it. Right? Regardless

1:10:11

of how clear it is, Full

1:10:13

going from gray scale scale to color in a mass market way is a big deal.

1:10:15

Yes. We've had pass through in five

1:10:17

pro. Yes. We got face tracking,

1:10:20

eye tracking. in

1:10:22

VIVE Pro, but those are so

1:10:24

specialized, high price plus

1:10:26

aftermarket accessories. Here is a

1:10:28

standardized thing. investment they've put into the

1:10:31

Avatar systems, whether people adopt that, investment they've put into a Verizon workrooms. Like, will

1:10:33

people want to have

1:10:35

these virtual monitors you

1:10:39

know, in in in web browse

1:10:41

with a headset

1:10:43

in their kitchen.

1:10:44

kitchen

1:10:45

We

1:10:46

don't know. Yep. We don't

1:10:47

know. We'll be putting them into the

1:10:50

test. Last

1:10:51

thoughts, last words?

1:10:53

I was you know, I just read off all the

1:10:56

gaming announcements. I'm a little disappointed to be

1:10:58

honest with you. I I was expecting and

1:11:01

Grand Theft Auto update. I was expecting some big

1:11:03

games announced. Like, as you said, Santiago's been under their

1:11:05

wing for a long time. And

1:11:07

I kind of am I'm

1:11:09

excited for the next big thing on the

1:11:12

quest. Yeah. You know, if it's quest

1:11:14

pro or not, it doesn't matter. It's

1:11:16

the same processor, so it can run

1:11:18

on everything. And I wanted to see some

1:11:20

big news. And this year was

1:11:22

all about office work and productivity. And I

1:11:24

think that they are running

1:11:26

a risk more than you do.

1:11:29

with PlayStation two v PlayStation VR two, PS VR two, coming

1:11:31

out right around the corner. I think that

1:11:34

that will be announced

1:11:36

before the next connect, maybe

1:11:38

even for sale. And that's that's gonna be a big big contender. want

1:11:43

to I PSVR two to be successful. I

1:11:46

want the developers there to make

1:11:48

money. And then when the quest three comes

1:11:50

out, I want them to port their games

1:11:53

three because I want VR developers to make

1:11:55

as The all the platforms, the more

1:11:58

content we're gonna see. Well,

1:11:59

that's true. Well,

1:12:02

we we can talk about it in two

1:12:05

weeks in Microsoft Teams.

1:12:07

That's a big thing.

1:12:09

Yeah. It's Accenture. and surprise. Microsoft

1:12:11

Teams and three sixty five

1:12:13

using meta avatars. Again, just

1:12:15

using

1:12:15

what's already been built.

1:12:17

And on that Facebook doesn't or Meta doesn't have to develop office productivity suites because they just

1:12:20

use Word and

1:12:23

remote windows and and

1:12:27

Azure in headset. And, like, we're not gonna

1:12:29

talk about this. I was surprised that Sasha

1:12:31

and Mandela was there.

1:12:33

I was, like, I was pretty caught off guard

1:12:35

about that. And I think that was it

1:12:38

wasn't much of a big deal for

1:12:40

Microsoft. I think it was a big

1:12:42

deal for meta than he was. Well,

1:12:45

I think that it's an alliance that makes sense. It's

1:12:47

an alliance that they hope

1:12:49

will get them ahead

1:12:52

of Apple. It's

1:12:54

an alliance that tells you Microsoft

1:12:56

is perhaps less interested in developing

1:12:58

their own VR hardware, and If

1:13:01

Lord That was the death nail

1:13:03

following lives. If there hasn't been enough Well, at the very least, the the

1:13:08

VR side, you know. Yeah. And and

1:13:11

and and the rumors even of HP leaving the VR market in the next year. You know,

1:13:14

that's why not?

1:13:16

Just

1:13:17

why not them default to

1:13:20

something else that probably

1:13:22

won't be Apple. And

1:13:24

it it didn't interfere with

1:13:26

the connect or the surface event. happen

1:13:28

the day after. You know, that was

1:13:30

all about what Microsoft kinda really cares about, which is selling windows and selling hard decent

1:13:36

looking hardware. that all runs,

1:13:38

you know, Windows eleven. Alright. We've done enough about

1:13:41

MetaConnect. I do

1:13:44

have one segment

1:13:46

I wanna pop culture.

1:13:49

hop culture

1:14:03

Oh my

1:14:04

goodness. I just look at the

1:14:06

time. It's like the good

1:14:08

old days. We are over

1:14:10

an hour into the podcast. and we've

1:14:12

only got it now to pop

1:14:14

culture. Only really one thing I wanna talk about, it's a card season three, the

1:14:20

second trailer I assume you out there

1:14:22

who are listening have watched it. If you haven't, skip for, let's say, five

1:14:24

minutes because I

1:14:27

will talk about the revelations in this

1:14:29

trailer. But more importantly, I don't have a talk to you guys since the trailer dropped.

1:14:32

What was your

1:14:34

big reaction when they

1:14:36

showed that

1:14:38

character. You know what I'm talking about, Jeremy. I don't know if I

1:14:39

know what you're talking about, man. Have

1:14:42

you

1:14:42

not seen a trailer?

1:14:46

I thought I saw the trailer.

1:14:48

But You know, I just

1:14:50

remember the moment. I remember where

1:14:52

it was. I was in college.

1:14:54

watching that episode where

1:14:57

picard turns as data

1:14:59

comes out and he

1:15:02

goes, lore. And just being like,

1:15:04

holy shit. And then Jordi

1:15:07

got to do that this

1:15:09

time around. And I

1:15:11

thought that was the delivery was

1:15:13

the same as when picard did that in that episode all those years

1:15:15

ago. And I I

1:15:18

loved it. I also it

1:15:22

was endearing seeing all of them together. Yeah. Yeah. The warm fuzzy

1:15:24

feelings, this this is what I

1:15:26

wanted and what we all wanted.

1:15:30

when they announced picard as a series. And I'm surprised that we're

1:15:33

getting a third season. You know, three

1:15:35

seasons of Patrick Stewart back. I

1:15:37

don't think we any of us anticipated

1:15:39

that. but I think they're I'm crossing fingers. There's one a

1:15:41

new enterprise that's glimpsed. It's an enterprise

1:15:43

that's based off of

1:15:46

a design. Audi class,

1:15:47

I wanna say, from Star Trek Online. So

1:15:49

Star Trek Online Design made Canon

1:15:51

as the enterprise f.

1:15:55

Hopefully, we'll find out what happens to enterprise e. There's the

1:15:57

second titan in this.

1:15:59

That's the ship that

1:16:01

you see 709 on.

1:16:03

Laure. Yes. That's, I think, probably

1:16:05

the biggest name in terms

1:16:07

of a a

1:16:10

legacy character. Coming back, it's also how Brent Spiner is gonna be

1:16:12

in the show. We assume he

1:16:14

is gonna be in antagonist of sorts

1:16:18

or maybe not the primary antagonist because we saw

1:16:21

the the woman played by what's

1:16:23

her name? Amanda Plummer,

1:16:25

I wanna say. as as a villain,

1:16:28

unknown what her motives are or or,

1:16:30

you know, what what her deal is.

1:16:32

But it's not Laura I'm talking

1:16:34

about. Sure. It's Moriarty. Yeah. I

1:16:37

know it's Moriarty. I was having

1:16:39

fun with the Lord Riffield.

1:16:41

Moriarty, is

1:16:42

that somebody from DS nine?

1:16:44

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Are you gosh.

1:16:46

What are you doing here? Is

1:16:49

that the doctor

1:16:52

from Voyager? Oh

1:16:53

my goodness. You've strayed so far. So far from the patch. He hasn't been

1:16:55

off the podcast this long to forget

1:16:57

all that we talked to a

1:17:00

Marvel character. Now

1:17:05

are you being

1:17:07

serious? Not about

1:17:10

the last question, though. But

1:17:13

the first two, I was Okay. Jack Sherman. Is this the

1:17:15

guy with the top hat?

1:17:17

it is the guy with a top at yes

1:17:20

Yes. What

1:17:20

is he from? Professor Moriarty from

1:17:22

the Hollodak, Data's nemesis in the Sherlock

1:17:24

Holmes episode. Oh,

1:17:27

wow. That's cool. Yeah. And

1:17:29

the one of the best episodes of next

1:17:31

generation is when he gained sentience. When he gained sentience in the first episode, he comes back,

1:17:35

he traps picard in

1:17:36

the Holidec. Yeah. And the last

1:17:38

we saw him, he was living out his life on a memory cube,

1:17:41

on

1:17:42

picard's desk, on an

1:17:44

LSD, Wow. Get them

1:17:46

a lifetime of adventures. A lifetime of

1:17:47

power.

1:17:50

Get them

1:17:52

just ring a bell. I did see

1:17:54

that episode and I remember liking it, but these things just like, I don't think about them for

1:17:58

much after the day.

1:18:01

Wow. That's the difference between you and

1:18:03

me, Jeremy. Yeah. I do nothing but think

1:18:06

about these after the day. That's it for

1:18:08

you. data collection only

1:18:10

talks to me about professor Moriarty. What happened to professor Moriarty? The physics experiments.

1:18:13

It was the

1:18:15

most black mirror of

1:18:18

all the episodes. It's just

1:18:20

Black Mirror before Black Mirror about

1:18:22

virtual lives and AI and simulations.

1:18:25

I can say definitively Moriarty has no role in the

1:18:27

Star Trek next generation pinball machine. So there that's

1:18:29

one reason why I had no idea

1:18:31

what you're talking about. Alright.

1:18:35

Well, he was no one expected him to

1:18:37

be back. He's back. Presumably

1:18:39

still a hologram. maybe

1:18:42

with a mobile emitter now in the

1:18:44

twenty fifth century, or late twenty fourth century, where

1:18:46

they are now in the time line.

1:18:50

But the hits. They're bringing back the hits. Yeah.

1:18:52

I hope more and more surprises. The

1:18:54

fan service, this is fan service.

1:18:56

I can get behind. It's coming out

1:18:59

next year. Impairment Plus, the final season of the card.

1:19:01

Everyone looks great. The ships look great. What

1:19:03

they showed, it looks it

1:19:06

looks perilous and I hope that they they conclude

1:19:08

it well. Do you yeah. Do you

1:19:10

think they will conclude it with

1:19:13

something that keeps picard from ever possibly coming back for a

1:19:16

fourth season. Yes.

1:19:18

I think

1:19:19

he's done. I

1:19:22

think Patrick Stewart's done. Okay. I

1:19:24

I think there's gonna be different

1:19:26

torchbearers. Even setting up seven of nine being

1:19:28

the show, I think she's a

1:19:31

torchbearer now of Star Trek. So

1:19:33

I think there's opportunity for spin offs, but I think Patrick Stewart's done is done after this. And there there are

1:19:35

rumors in, you know, in in the press

1:19:38

interviews in New York, Comcast, they were

1:19:40

saying, would

1:19:43

they do another season? Would they do another movie? They're not gonna

1:19:45

do another movie. Right. You know, at

1:19:47

some point that Paramount plus

1:19:49

money is gonna run out, and and they're spending

1:19:51

it on strange new worlds. If the future of

1:19:54

Trek is in strange new worlds and discovery

1:19:56

and some of the animated

1:19:58

stuff, and younger audience, as well with

1:19:59

Prodigi. And I

1:20:01

think Patrick

1:20:02

Stewart has

1:20:03

served his time. He

1:20:06

can retire. you can retire. Go go make more make

1:20:09

more wine, read

1:20:11

more poetry.

1:20:12

Alright. That's

1:20:14

the pop culture moment. Oh, yeah.

1:20:17

And and and you know what? We did one thing in pop culture.

1:20:19

I think we'd be remiss if we did not do also.

1:20:31

Now it's time

1:20:34

for a moment of

1:20:36

science.

1:20:39

This story comes submitted from a

1:20:41

user airwear. I think

1:20:43

it's his bundle. There

1:20:47

is a there is a paper that

1:20:49

came out in the journal

1:20:51

neuron from this startup

1:20:53

in the UK called

1:20:56

cortical labs. And what cortical

1:20:58

labs is trying to do is something that a lot of neuroscience

1:21:00

researchers have been trying

1:21:02

to do, which is take

1:21:05

a series of of what's called human induced pluripotent cells,

1:21:07

grow them into

1:21:12

neuronal cells. So you can actually this

1:21:14

whatever that described, actually won a Nobel Prize. You can take skin cells,

1:21:20

actually have them undergo a process, have

1:21:22

them turn back into stem cells. And then from those stem cells, you

1:21:27

can regrow them cells. So

1:21:29

in this case, you

1:21:31

basically take probably skin

1:21:33

cells, turn

1:21:35

them

1:21:35

back into stem cells

1:21:38

and then regrow them into neurons. And if you grow these neurons in

1:21:40

like a media where they

1:21:42

they're essentially surrounded with food, and

1:21:47

you grow them and grow them grow them, you can get enough

1:21:49

neurons that you can start

1:21:51

to essentially see some dendrites

1:21:54

and axons, which are like

1:21:56

the connections between neurons

1:21:58

form. And if you set up a system that can actually continually

1:22:04

put electrical pulses into this, those

1:22:07

neurons will start acting like

1:22:09

a system and

1:22:11

perform some behaviors. So

1:22:14

a group in the UK essentially built a chip. This it

1:22:17

was a multi

1:22:20

electrode array. that

1:22:22

essentially kept pulsing this petri dish full of these neurons. It probably had about

1:22:24

eight hundred thousand

1:22:27

cells in it. with

1:22:32

electrical signals and

1:22:35

connected it to a

1:22:37

sensor sensory array that

1:22:39

would feed it inputs. And so

1:22:41

this

1:22:41

set of cells had

1:22:43

had food

1:22:47

and had stimuli and now it had

1:22:50

a input. And the input they decided was a simulated

1:22:53

version of the

1:22:56

game pong. And what

1:22:58

they did is they created a a simulated paddle and a simulated

1:23:01

ball. And

1:23:04

by pulsing electrical

1:23:06

signals into these neurons, you could created a system where the neurons

1:23:09

could, quote

1:23:12

unquote, learn and

1:23:14

play pong. And they tested out a number of scenarios

1:23:16

and was to

1:23:19

able to demonstrate that

1:23:22

the neuron the electrical signals that

1:23:24

the neurons in this disc

1:23:27

generated were were more significant when

1:23:29

it was able to essentially keep

1:23:31

playing the ball. It, like, had a different stimuli

1:23:33

if they missed, and one

1:23:35

if the paddle actually

1:23:38

connected with I don't want

1:23:41

you to think about this as if neurons in a

1:23:43

dish were playing the game pong. That

1:23:46

is not what happened. I

1:23:48

I think you're being really

1:23:50

inconsiderate here, kashore. These so called neurons

1:23:53

in a dish have

1:23:55

a name. Okay? You

1:23:57

want me to call them DISH Brain? I I think that you could call it by its name

1:24:00

DISH Brain.

1:24:03

Yes, I do. Dish Brain

1:24:05

is the marketing name that this company, cortical labs, has come

1:24:07

up with, for this

1:24:10

essentially neuron and a

1:24:12

chip. And

1:24:14

they're trying to explore essentially like a terminator design of mixing

1:24:16

organic and electrical arrays

1:24:18

to see if they can

1:24:23

generate more complicated, like, systems

1:24:26

of of stimuli and

1:24:30

response. So it actually did demonstrate that this that

1:24:33

this system was able

1:24:35

to, quote unquote, learn

1:24:37

and, like and

1:24:40

there is indications

1:24:41

that when it was able to make contact

1:24:43

with the simulated paddle

1:24:44

and the ball that it was

1:24:47

able to sorta keep that

1:24:51

going more than a control set

1:24:53

of cells that were non neurons

1:24:55

in the I don't

1:24:57

think to do. It is the

1:24:59

preferred pronoun. I I think it let's

1:25:02

go with they then until we

1:25:05

know any better. Okay. Fair. This

1:25:07

is an incredibly this is

1:25:09

an enclosed system. It is a set

1:25:11

of cells, a

1:25:13

a pretty simple electoral array,

1:25:15

and a constant stimuli. The funny thing is

1:25:17

is what they're gonna try to do

1:25:20

next is

1:25:23

essentially dose the cells with some alcohol to see

1:25:25

how it would function playing

1:25:27

Pong a little inebriated. It's

1:25:31

great. It's great, man. I I gotta tell you

1:25:33

though, I've played a lot of pong over

1:25:35

the past year. working

1:25:38

on Atari fiftieth, as you as

1:25:40

you know. It's it's the fiftieth

1:25:42

year of introducing Pong. That's where

1:25:45

they marked the beginning. And I'm

1:25:48

ninety percent sure DISH Brink

1:25:50

could beat me. It's just

1:25:52

younger. So it's younger.

1:25:54

Right? Alright. neurons. Absolutely. Absolutely. If

1:25:57

you're functioning with a capacity of

1:25:59

eight hundred thousand neurons, I'd

1:26:01

be very concerned about you, my

1:26:03

friend. Sounds like a lot. I'm sorry. I'd

1:26:06

be very concerned about day.

1:26:08

Yeah.

1:26:09

it Gotta

1:26:11

get it

1:26:11

right. Alright. That wraps it

1:26:14

for a moment of science. And

1:26:18

that also wraps it basically for

1:26:20

this episode. So as we alluded to

1:26:22

at the beginning of the show, we

1:26:25

got some stuff to announce. and

1:26:27

unbeknownst to you, dear listener, as you've

1:26:29

been listening to this episode, what you've

1:26:31

been listening to

1:26:33

hasn't just been a reunion of getting

1:26:36

Jeremy on the show here and our

1:26:38

big annual recap of which we've been

1:26:41

doing for four, five years

1:26:44

now of the big VR biggest

1:26:46

VR event of the year. But this

1:26:49

listener is actually our final

1:26:51

episode of this is only a test, the

1:26:54

podcast. Yes,

1:26:54

it's true. We're

1:26:56

we're not we're not joking. This

1:26:58

is not a joke. It's it's it's

1:27:01

a serious real thing. We're after six hundred

1:27:03

and sixty eight episodes. Maybe

1:27:09

a little more, maybe a little

1:27:11

less. No. No. That's not the most accurate in the world. It is. not. October

1:27:15

cast included CES recordings

1:27:18

included in twelve years

1:27:20

of doing the show. We

1:27:23

are retiring the podcast. and

1:27:27

and there

1:27:28

no no grand

1:27:30

reason for it. We've been

1:27:32

doing it for so long.

1:27:34

The our lineup's changed. Jeremy,

1:27:37

you know, I don't think it's any secret that, you know,

1:27:39

once you left the show, things were very different, but we've

1:27:41

been we couldn't

1:27:44

be happier with, you know,

1:27:46

with what you've been able to do with that extra time. Yeah. Me too. I'm I'm ready with

1:27:48

you. but

1:27:53

also, you know, where we are in

1:27:55

our lives is different, where test it is, is

1:27:57

different, and decide to use the energies of doing

1:27:59

the show. every

1:28:02

week as we do it late

1:28:04

at night even and refocusing them elsewhere on the

1:28:06

channel. Nothing major is changing in the channel.

1:28:08

you

1:28:10

know, we'll have more stuff to

1:28:13

talk about, but this is one of the

1:28:15

one of the things that's happening. So

1:28:17

yeah, we wanted to take this time and, you know, I don't know how long

1:28:19

this episode's gonna last. It may never guys. If I keep if

1:28:22

I just keep this going --

1:28:24

Yeah. then

1:28:26

the podcast, what will podcast will never

1:28:28

die. Right? You'll see us

1:28:31

come in every day. That's

1:28:33

right. You never even die. You know,

1:28:35

how long can a Zoom call last? How long will Lancaster let us

1:28:37

record record up? I guess, although, if

1:28:39

it doesn't end, I'll never

1:28:42

we'll never be able to release it. and and and that too. And then when Is

1:28:44

it even a podcast if no one listens

1:28:46

to it? I don't know. I mean, we're

1:28:48

testing the boundaries of that.

1:28:50

We're not a target right you

1:28:53

know, dozens of you. Literally dozens. But we did we're so glad Jeremy that timing worked out that you able

1:28:59

to join us for this final

1:29:01

episode. I'm honored. Jeremy, I mean, I'll I'll be honest. You know, Will and

1:29:03

I started this podcast and

1:29:06

we started testing in twenty

1:29:08

ten. Right?

1:29:10

Before we started working with Adam -- Twelve years

1:29:12

and twelve. -- twelve years ago. We

1:29:15

had podcasted together before, but Jeremy,

1:29:17

it was you. You are the first

1:29:19

person. that I podcasted with. And had you done --

1:29:21

Not for tests. -- you mean No. No.

1:29:23

No. PC gamer. Yeah. Yeah.

1:29:25

Yeah. The first podcast

1:29:27

I was on was the first episode

1:29:30

of the PC camera podcast back on August twenty ninth two thousand five. So

1:29:32

for seventeen years and going

1:29:34

now over seventeen years, Almost

1:29:39

every week with occasional

1:29:43

lapses, I've been in

1:29:45

some podcast feed or another. And next week, that won't be the case. So you were there, Jeremy, when I

1:29:47

entered this world, and you are

1:29:50

here when I'm leaving it.

1:29:52

With what

1:29:55

a delicate way to say this, I learned this

1:29:58

by watching you.

1:30:00

Incredible. Well, the pupil has

1:30:02

clearly become the master here. This

1:30:05

this podcast, as you said, has been

1:30:07

twelve years running and has garnered quite an audience that I'm sure are all now

1:30:09

going through a little bit of

1:30:12

a shock.

1:30:15

Yeah. Yeah. That's And

1:30:17

and understandably and and, you know, we've

1:30:19

we've the thing that

1:30:21

I think I told you shortly after

1:30:23

a silicone and after every event we go to

1:30:26

is we're always surprised that one people listen because I

1:30:28

think they think yes,

1:30:30

we put out the podcast and we know people

1:30:32

listen to it. We see, you know, the reviews

1:30:34

on the the video on on YouTube and

1:30:36

and comments if people ping us. But so

1:30:39

much of what we do on the

1:30:39

podcast we've done, at least I've done

1:30:42

for me

1:30:43

as a excuse to hang

1:30:44

out with you you guys. And

1:30:46

especially in the past, you know, three

1:30:49

years -- Right. -- where we haven't been able

1:30:51

to see each other in person. And even before then, you know, Jeremy, it was a really nice to

1:30:53

have you come in once a week, shore

1:30:55

you as well. when

1:30:59

when, you know, even though you guys weren't, you know, full

1:31:01

time tested employees just to come in

1:31:03

for an hour, have lunch,

1:31:06

and and shoot the shit

1:31:08

for two plus hours. And it was the same

1:31:10

back then with when Will and I were doing it and, you know, it's why Gary wanted to do the podcast

1:31:12

because he got him

1:31:15

out of the house. he he

1:31:17

got him out of the house. He had things

1:31:19

to say, and we had people to listen to it. Who wanted to hear it? We wanted to hear it. And And

1:31:24

I think that's what makes for some of the best

1:31:26

podcast. I I love personally love listening to is that it feels like I get a chance to hang

1:31:31

out with people who don't know me, but I feel know them. And

1:31:33

every time we do an event

1:31:35

and people come up and say they

1:31:37

listen to podcasts. And now for the

1:31:39

over twelve years, we've

1:31:42

traveled the world and met listeners all around the world in the most surprising of places.

1:31:44

And it may not be

1:31:46

the most listened to podcasts But

1:31:51

there are people out there and they are kindred

1:31:53

spirits and we are so

1:31:55

thankful. And I'm

1:31:57

so thankful. for the listenership over the

1:31:59

years.

1:32:00

Yeah. You're

1:32:02

being slightly modest

1:32:05

with the you know, doesn't have the most listeners.

1:32:07

It may not be, you know, may not have the most listeners, but you have a decent number of listeners, anyone who

1:32:09

sees your YouTube counts and

1:32:11

knows this plus most

1:32:14

of your listeners are on audio anyway. But, well,

1:32:17

you mentioned the the PC gamer

1:32:19

podcast. Like, the reason why

1:32:21

I wanted to do that podcast and I pitched

1:32:23

it to PC gamer was

1:32:25

because when I left the

1:32:28

magazine, I started missing

1:32:30

having those conversations. And I realized

1:32:32

that people, gamers, just out

1:32:34

in the world, don't always

1:32:37

have the opportunity to

1:32:39

have interesting, funny, intelligent

1:32:42

conversations with people like

1:32:44

we worked with

1:32:47

there. And this podcast absolutely carries

1:32:49

that torch of, you know,

1:32:51

just having really fun

1:32:55

conversations with intelligent people. And

1:32:57

I think this that's

1:33:00

probably why you have such

1:33:02

good numbers is people enjoy

1:33:04

hearing that the conversations that

1:33:06

are had on this podcast. God

1:33:08

knows, I mean, a two hour

1:33:10

podcast, I never would have thought. would have

1:33:12

the sustainability, but you did it. Howard Bauchner:

1:33:15

I remember two just two

1:33:16

stories

1:33:18

to illustrate the reach.

1:33:21

I remember doing this podcast, Norman

1:33:23

with you and Joey, on

1:33:25

a patio next

1:33:28

to CERN. one

1:33:30

morning. Like, we woke up early one

1:33:33

morning and recorded this

1:33:35

podcast, like, looking out

1:33:37

towards the French Alps. and,

1:33:39

like, next to one

1:33:41

of the grandest devices humanity

1:33:43

has ever created, and

1:33:46

talked about stupid pop culture and technology stories, and it was great.

1:33:48

And once I was

1:33:51

in India with my family.

1:33:55

And we're staying at a hotel near the

1:33:57

Taj Mahal. And I have, like, my

1:33:59

bags and I'm about to

1:34:02

get into an elevator. with my mom, and the elevator

1:34:04

opens. And this guy goes to

1:34:06

shore from the tested podcast. And

1:34:09

my mom does this

1:34:11

like slow turn. to

1:34:13

look at me as that statement comes out of her mouth. And

1:34:15

it you know, those are

1:34:18

just kind of some funny moments,

1:34:20

but I

1:34:22

remember meeting listeners at the live show at

1:34:25

but just on the street, in

1:34:27

airports, I've met a number

1:34:29

of people. They're always

1:34:32

so incredibly nice and thoughtful, and I

1:34:34

would always do the same shit. I would apologize. I'm like, I'm so sorry. You listen to our

1:34:40

podcast. And means and I still

1:34:42

do that. But I

1:34:43

what I did

1:34:45

that just as, like,