Recently Snap dropped on us their new dev version of AR glasses. There was not much on specs, save 2000 nits (1000 per eye I guess) waveguide displays. Since its tethered I would guess its pretty much following most of the other AR glasses I have seen pop up based on the QC chip.
However, what was really interesting to me what the announcement from Snap the following day. $500M purchase of WaveOptics. This was a signal to me.

Typically announcements like the Snap DK glasses, or Lenovo, or even the Niantic announcement always feel like a soft foot in. Basically trying to gauge interest while at the same time work with developers to create content, but more importantly, shake out the bugs in the wearable as well as eco system for an AR experience be it a hardware, software, or eco system play.

M&A, however, always catches my attention. Yes companies like Apple and Facebook are buying companies left and right, however, when those companies that are not quite as washed in cash start spending, that tells me something.

I have been around for a while, seen the first great transformations, and thus VR bubbles, in the late nineties, and again back around 2016’ish. And after both great leaps in XR capability, it always seem to follow a hype that XR will explode on the market.

ABI Research Reports $2 Billion+ in Funding and M&A for AR/VR

Although I do not believe we will see growth like this prediction above, something I do believe is the market will grow, and in 2025’ish we will see a 3rd revolution in XR systems. I’m not the only one who sees this, in fact, its somewhat expected 2025 will be when we really see AR glasses. Eco systems are already being built and developers being invited in. Its 2025 and after that I think we will see a change in consumer habits and substantial market opportunities.

So returning to why I think Snaps purchase of WaveOptics is so interesting. To compete in the new AR market, you need 3 things: Experience delivery. In this case, light weight attractive glasses. Content. Simply having a few cool apps is not going to do it. You need just as much content as we have on our phones today. Finally, users. Does not matter how good your system is, if you do not have a user base ready to consume it.

The last two takes quite a bit of investment unless you already have access to the phone (be it Apple, Google, or a major platform player like Microsoft, or a major phone manufacture). So hardware is the 3rd part where you can make a play to create content for your eco system and hopefully build a user base. Snap has already tried this with their first foray in to camera only glasses. Didn’t work out all that well. But the concept is still sound. If you own the hardware for display and/or input, you have at least some control over the content created for AR consumption, be it wearable or currently, phone based. Thus the investment in WaveOptics.

Snap has a very good customer base. Its apps are popular. So if they can also create a good set of glasses that enhance the particular content that its use base already enjoys, it can find itself well positioned to insure its apps are part of any AR eco system in the future. And that is the key here. The future play. As we move into a new eco system that is part phone and AR glasses based, how do you insure relevancy?

$500M is no small M&A. Snap is betting that they can get enough glasses out there to insure content for their eco system is sustained. This current device is clearly a DK, but you do not drop .5B on a company unless you plan to build future devices.

In the future, near future, there will be an interesting battle of eco systems. Open system and closed. Apple will create a closed system as we can already guess. Niantic is creating a metaverse, as is Nvidia for engineers, as is Epic which just raised $1B for this effort. However, if AR Glasses can talk to phones like Bluetooth devices can, then the question will be, how do these glasses consume content and access these various metaverses? If for example, Google creates a protocol to allow any wearable AR device to access and display phone content, then those apps that are already matured for the AR wearable market will have a substantial advantage over other apps, and in fact, will find they can grow and capture new users with features that other apps that are not already matured may find themselves displaced. Those apps in turn, can decide which metaverse(s) to support.

This I can see being worth a .5B investment.

I’m going to start this post with this statement: With consumer AR; function follows form. Now for most of you, you might remember the old design mantra; ‘Form follows function.’ For those that are unfamiliar, it basically implies design what you need first, then the form will follow. As a past Berkeley Architecture student this was drilled in my head. In consumer AR however, I think this is flipped. When you wear something, especially on your head, design matters. Given two products, a less attractive but more capable product vs a more attract but less capable one, people will tend to the more attractive product. Function follows form.

UPDATE: There has been an update to Android so now Dex no longer launches when connected. Sad Panda.

Cue the Nreal AR glasses. They look like ODG glasses, but smaller, and this makes a big difference. I really like the looks of the ODG, but just to bulky, heavy, and hot. Nreal removed all the compute of the head to slim it down. Yes, you lose some performance by moving CV to the phone, and yes there is now a chord hanging down the back, but given the value provided, this is minor.

In consumer AR, function follows form. Lets look a the Hololens/Magic Leap vs the Nreal. Now, they are completely different devices as far as I’m concerned. The Hololens is STILL the best AR device you can buy, but its big and expensive. The Nreal is small, light and only $500. However, what is really important here is; I can be at a cafe with the Nreal and feel OK, where I would not with the Hololens or any other capable AR device on the market. Why? Because the Nreal looks almost like a normal pair of sunglasses, yes it is far less powerful the other AR headsets, but it still supports most of my AR use cases. As such, I argue you need two things for a successful consumer AR device; a very light attractive device and access to lots of content. Combine the Nreal with a phone (better with a desktop like DeX) and you have it.

ROI: When I first got the GearVR I loved it. I was traveling a bit back then and I LOVED the fact I could put these on my head and I’m watching videos and playing games. The device only cost me just over $100 bucks and I already had the phone. The ROI was easy. I got more value out of the device than what I put into it. I also got the Vive. After a few weeks I felt done with it. It was far too troublesome to set it up. Yes the Vive is better, and could do more, but I could throw the Gear is a bag and take it anywhere. Thus I used the Gear FAR more often than the Vive.

Which brings to the main point of this post.

Consumer AR use cases will have the same ROI question. How often will you REALLY use it, and given those occasions, was it worth the money/trouble? I have read so many articles talking about all these great consumer AR use cases, virtual shopping, fitting new furniture in you place, even playing a virtual piano. How often do you really think you will use it? Most likely you will use it often if three conditions are true: 1) Easy to use/access, 2) satisfies a frequent use case, and 3) if in public, easy to carry and looks good.

Use case examples:

Before I go into these use cases, keep in mind they are not definitive or exhaustive, but instead illustrative to support the point that use cases that will support frequent use, does not need an expensive AR device to derive value from the product, in fact, less is more.

Short media consumption on the go: I define this as short sessions (say 10-20 min), alerts, short video, etc. Anything that is a quick bit of information consumption and interaction but longer than something you can see on your watch. For example; reading emails or socMed posts, viewing videos or photos. Yes you can do this on the phone, but if I have easy access to my glasses, I can enjoy a larger screen, better sound, and not keep looking down. I’ll also include HUD here as well. Walking or biking where you can get alerts and/or navigation or point of interests.

Information Augmentation. This can be language translations, getting more information on a store product, bar or QR codes, object recognition, etc.. Anything where one bit of information can be modified or expanded upon. In this case the phone would be the primary camera for capturing information allowing greater flexibility when trying to capture.

Augmented Desktop: Right now this is limited to Samsung phones as far as I know. When I connect the Nreal glasses to a Samsung phone, I get a DeX desktop. This is a big use case for me and something I can use right now when I’m away from my desk or traveling. When I plug the usbc cable into the phone, I get a 1k Desktop. Add bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and I’m set. Bonus points, as long as you are not trying to use the same app, you can run desktop on the glasses and some other app on the phone. (still need to test this more) BTW, you can use the phone as a mouse and keyboard as well. The only downside is its headlocked. I’m hoping this can be addressed.

Side bar on Travel: I used to travel quite a bit, for fun and business, and like to travel light. My current set up is to use a Samsung Fold, folding keyboard, and flat mouse. Well now with the Nreal, I will be adding one more device to my mobile war set. I have the Samsung Fold which is already a big screen, but now with the glasses, any phone should be fine. Again, we still have the issue that DeX is head locked. Side note, I still need to see if I can power the phone and keep the glasses connected at the same time. Another post for another day.

So, we just looked at 4 use cases that the current Nreal glasses and a high end phone can support. What about the chord? I got used to that really fast. For years we have been listening to our music using wire headphones and ear buds and no one has batted an eye. I have the same feeling with a chord coming from the glasses. It does not feel awkward and does not get in my way having used wired headphones for most of my life. BTW, works with a USBC extension.

Each use case has the same thing in common; they are things you would do often. They do not require too much compute power nor sensing technology. They do, however, require that you feel comfortable using them in public.

Now, I do not want to give the impression the Nreal is perfect. Far from it. It does not fit me well, (Nreal: Day 0). When I use DeX, the display is head locked. There is no easy on/off for the glasses while connected to the phone. and a few more small issues. But the main point is this. The Nreal is the first AR-lite glasses I have seen (pun intended) that sets the bar for all other AR-lite headsets to follow in the near term. Sure sometime this decade we will have wireless glasses with higher resolution and detail hand tracking and a bunch of other stuff.

But I do not want to wait that long.

I just got the Nreal AR glasses dev kit. I’m going to skip unboxing and intro stuff since there are plenty of those on the web already. So this is a day 0 review, what I did as soon I got them. So lets jump right in.

First off, the glasses do not fit me properly. I had a chance to look at the Nreal glasses last year and knew this would an issue. The fix? Well since I have to wear glasses anyway, I fixed it with a few bread ties. Almost all engineering problems can be fixed with duct tape and bread ties.

Now that I can see clearly, I first started up the puck and tried the demo experiences. They are good. Again, plenty of reviews on the web so unless there is a particular question, I can say in general the colors are bright, rendering seems around 30-45 fps, FOV is good enough. Images do have some swim and jitter, but that is dependent on the environment. In a perfect setting, the image hold position pretty well, more challenging, less stability as one would expect. Rotation correction (timewarp or pLSR depending on who you talk to) is pretty good. I point this out because I assume all the LSR functions are on the phone as well, but its possible pLSR is done on the headset. The NrealTower app does not work for some reason, still trying to sort that out. However, I’m not that interested in those, instead I want to connect to my phone.

<caution: segway rant ahead> A LONG time ago, I went to visit ODG in SF to have a look at their AR glasses. I have a background in 3D graphics, VR, and computer graphics going back to 1995, so I immediately saw a problem with their approach. This is going to be a world of hurt because of the power/heat requirements. So I asked; hey, can I get a set of glasses with only camera and IMU support? I want to run everything on the phone. Got a look like; ‘Are you nuts? No.’ I left there disappointed, but convinced that a successful AR HMD needs to do two things; be very lightweight, and have lots of content. Connecting to the phone does both. Our phones are powerful have as much access to content as our PCs. If I can get that content on my glasses, that would be worth the price. Que in something called Samsung DeX, and now I can have desktop experience in AR! Full disclosure, I work at Samsung in R&D and got a really hacked version of DeX in working in VR and AR a few years ago so I have already experienced how cool this could be.

So back to the Nreal. ALMOST right out of the box, I connected the glasses to my Galaxy S10 (later Samsung Fold) and boom! I have HDMI. BTW I say almost because you need to hold down brightness up to get into 3D mode on the glasses. So once that happens, DeX!! I already have a travel set up with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse so I was up right out of the box. A limitation right now is the display is headlocked. This is fixable by setting up a virtual display and getting RGB images from the video buffer to the HMD after performing timewarp or pLSR. Or something like that. I’m sure they will figure it out sooner or later. Once they do that, then I can have two screens, DeX in the glasses and the normal phone display. I was pretty impressed I could have both running at the same time. No sure how long this will last from a power point of view, so I need to experiment with this more. So all and all, my experience in DeX was great. Images are bright and clear. Easy to read text and if you keep the brightness down, no eye strain.

On day zero I had a web meeting that I needed to attend. As an experiment, I login via the PC like normal, but instead of using the PC, I connected the glasses. Same thing, HDMI headlocked video, just on the phone. I was able to participate in a 1hr online meeting using just the glasses, and bluetooth mouse. I was sitting up on the bed fully relaxing, drinking tea and had no problems reading content on the power point slides. I could even reply to messages when I later added my bluetooth keyboard. Tying on the phone is a bit if a challenge with the Nreals being headlocked.

This event is pretty key for a zero day experience. I was able to use the glasses right out of the box. Later I watched the news via YouTube on the phone. The only thing that stopped me using the glasses even longer is the hack I have to attach to my glasses are not the best. Once this is sorted out, I can see using these for long conf calls so I can walk away from my desk now and again.

So to sum up, on day Zero I had access to via the phone to a desktop experience (DeX), web browsing, office docs, videos, a few games, chat, photos, etc.. I know what you are going to ask; then why not get a HDMI HMD viewer? Few reasons. Headlocked is still a limitation. To free up headlock we need 3 DOF, min. 6 DoF is better in my mind. Plus the are going to be times I will want to full AR experience. I do not want to buy a device that cannot support this.

BTW: Follow up to this post. function follows form: consumer AR use-cases

Now some questions I got since people found out I had this.

Q: did you find the cable an issue? No, not really. I have a usbC extension cable so I feel pretty free, but mostly I just place the phone where ever and its fine. My wish right now is for DeX phone UI to support keyboard in addition to mouse entry. So this is a Samsung issue.

Q: Does it get hot? yes, but the heat dissipation is top front, so I never really feel it.

Q: Does WebXR work? I read that its coming end of the year. I will try to get invited as an early tester.

Q: How is your experience comparing Hololens 2.0? I’ve said many time before, the hololens is the best example of AR you can get. V2.0 is better but not a massive jump. That being said, the CV on the hololens 1 is better then Nreal. The graphics feel about the same as far as brightness and ease on my eyes. (headset fit not withstanding). I do not think the Nreal will ever be as good as the HL in terms in CV, but it does not need to be. Two different products with two different customer segments.

Q: Does it feel heavy after long use? Hard to say. Longest I have used it is 1.5 hrs and both times I was either laying down and reclining, so the weight was a bit more off the nose then if I wore it standing. So more testing to do.

Q: How was reading text? Again it was headlocked so until they support at least 3DoF, I will hold back judgement, but while headlocked, I could read fine.

Q: Can you connect to a PC? Yes. you get pretty much the same experience as DeX. Same problem though, headlocked.

Q: How does it compare to Magic Leap, since they are both tethered? So quick answer, it was pretty much the same. I got used the Magic Leap tether pretty quickly and same with the Nreal. What is better about the Nreal is of course, I can plug it into various devices and I have an usbc extension and that gave me extra room. But from a user point of view. it was a non issue. Somewhat like wearing wired headphones, you figure out the best way to route the wire, then you forget about it. The only case where I can see the wire becoming an issue is if I was doing a high activity experience, like beat saber or something like that. And even then, I’m sure I could figure something out.

Q: How is DEX in AR? Did you not just read this post?!

Any other questions? Let me know and I’ll add them.

So as far as I know, I may be the first person in history to use the new V10 Tesla Smart Summon on the Samsung Galaxy Fold phone. So shameless plug, I work at Samsung and I think the Fold is amazing. Yea it has its issues, its new, but I love it. I’ll write a post about it another day. So, that aside, I also did a few experiments with smart summon and got a mixed bag. So I shot a few vids and posted them. The tl:dr, GPS is not very accurate and if you are in an area with lots of building, it can through it off a few feet. If you are in a parking garage, its far worse. Next it sees many open spaces as an intersection and thus will pause. Better safe than sorry I guess. It also can ‘trap’ itself if it does not back out of the parking spot correctly. This has only happened once, but then again, I have only just started playing with it. That aside, it works most of the time. Sometimes you will have to restart your app because it will get ‘stuck’ after performing a summon.

First experiment went pretty well. The car moved from the parking space to me with only a few pauses. Did not make it all the way. I think it was not sure where I was given how odd the parking is here. I made it easy by backing the car in, which is how I park most of the time anyway. You can see on the large screen that the car is sending back what it ‘sees’, not video mind you. I would LOVE to get video instead, but may need a special encoder on the car for that to get the data load low enough. So test 1 was pretty good.

Test 2. As you can see on the Fold, this time I placed a pin and had the car come to the pin. This worked pretty well as well. But again I made it pretty easy since I backed the car in. Still, pretty cool! There is a distance limit, but hopefully that will get expanded as time goes on.

Test 3. I made this a little harder, and unfortunately, it failed this one. In this test I put it in a parking garage and parked next to a pillar. The pillar got it backing up incorrectly. Its also possible the GPS was messed up and it was thinking I was somewhere else, but either way, once it gets messed up as far as local path-finding, it has a hard time recovering. In this case it tried to leave the garage. I had to stop it since it was about to hit the pillar.

Test 4. In this test, I wanted to get away from the buildings and try to find a more open parking area so that GPS will not have reflection issues. That proved to be accurate, however, it saw each intersection in the parking area as perhaps normal intersections? Paused a few second each time. I do not mind once, but it seems to see far too many intersections. You can see this towards the end of the film.

Test 5, final test. I did this one because I read a comment on Reddit that made me want to get a film with our security robot. Two self driving systems living in a harmonious world… or something like that. Worked pretty well again, but this time, I was simply after a nice shot.

So there you go. Pretty impressive so far. The first experiment was actually last night in a different parking lot after shopping. Worked pretty much the same. It reversed out, and headed over. However, it tends to head straight for you and stop in the middle of lane. You need to be quick to get to the car. Do NOT recommend of its busy.

• Quick note.  Look likes it US phones only running the Qualcomm chip for now.

Some games seemed to have a glitch the first time I would try them.  I tried Fallout Shelter first.  Did not load the first time, but worked fine after that.  Not sure what the story is here. Same with Pokemon Go. Did not work the first time, then works fine.  However,  it locks to portrait and when using AR, the camera does not display correctly.  I turned AR off and it was fine after that. few other games seemed locked to one view port or another, but that was not too much of an issue after I got used to it.  I would make the window a bit smaller for portrait games, larger for landscape.

I then tried Monument Valley, a favorite of mine.  This took 3 tried, but again, seems to work after that.  That game play was even nicer with the view port set to the largest setting despite portrait mode.  I have it smaller in my screenshot.  It took a little bit of effort to get used to the controller, but I got it down soon enough.  I do not like this screenshot that much, but for some reason, screen capture and video capture are iffy with PhoneCast.  There is a video of this at the bottom of the post as well.

What was really cool was trying ARCore apps in PhoneCast.  It ‘mostly’ works, and when I say mostly, that is because the viewport is not locked to the head. If you check out the video below you will see what I mean.  Still, VERY cool! I tried the first ARCore app that was released, ‘Atom Visualizer‘ from Signal Garden.   I contacted the good people involved in this project and made a request, we’ll see how it goes.  If they can lock the view port, this would be really fun!  Have a look for the video at the bottom of this post.

Here is a Pro tip for you.  The controller takes a bit of time to get used to, so don’t get put off.  Keep working at it.  BTW, there is not pinch to zoom.  Something I found out on Fallout Shelter.  Hopefully they will find a work around.  I suggested they should map something on the controller for zooming and zoom around the center view.  That could take some work though.

So there you go!  Enjoy.

Technical

The obvious thing is technically what they pulled off.  Using multiple xbox sensors (I’m not sure how many) they are able to do full body tracking.  Because the user’s vision is completely obscured by the HMD, they can place the xbox sensors and light it to provide the maximum effectiveness for body tracking. Hand and head position most likely are sent via closed wifi to the gear.  From there its rendered in (Unity?). As you can see in some of the shots, not only is head positional tracking going on, you can see your hands on the rope as you walk across!

This is great. Now add wind, cold air and sound (notice there we saw no headphones so the sound was most likely piped in), and you have a very deep immersive experience,  Because the Gear VR is wireless, the user is not restricted by cables.  In fact, once you are immersed, and given all the other sensory input, your brain can have a real fight deciding what is real and what is VR.

Even better is the fact that you put on the HMD outside the room, (again as best I can tell) the user never saw the real bridge that was constructed, so the bran has no other cognitive interpretation of what is going on except for what they see. BTW, don’t misunderstand me, with exception to perhaps one person, they KNOW its a simulation and short of flinching and perhaps lowering one’s body, they are enjoying it for what it is.

Marketing

I would guess most people who watch this video, especially those in the VR world would mostly be thinking about how great of an immersive simulation this is, and move on. But what really caught my attention, and what I like and admire just as much about this concept, is how well this works from a marketing point of view. Remember, they are releasing a (new?) instant latte. The sell point for this product is you can enjoy a cafe quality latte anytime, simply by using a microwave.  Ok, so what are the customer scenario where they may want this?   Most likely at home and perhaps the office.  I think most offices offer coffee and if not, typically there is a cafe near most large office complexes.  But at home, not so much.

In the experience we saw in the video, you are asked to cross this long dangerous bridge on a distant exotic mountain top in a blizzard!  Many dangers face you on your trek to get to the other side where a microwave waits for you.  Each step on this old decrepit bridge becomes more dangerous as the winds increase, and rocks start to fall all round you!  Somehow, through perseverance and a bit of luck, you make it to the end where, you find a microwave, (yes people do randomly leave microwaves in the Himalayan Mountains, just go with it). You open the door and a wonderful hot beverage is waiting for you to warm you up, body and soul.

Now, think about a long snowy winter train ride come where you have to walk the last 3 or 4 blocks.  Not too different eh?  And if you like lattes then knowing you have a nice warm drink waiting for you could be that much better.  So the sell point here is to associate a tough trek with a warm reward.  This experience drives this idea to the customer is a very real and tangible experience. An experience they will not soon forget, and share with their friends, including the idea of the microwave latte and the branding that goes with it.

Execution

I have not experience this but having been doing VR for so long, and having tried everything from the CAVE to the wind bird simulation, its not hard for me to put myself there and have an idea of what this would feel like.  I love the fact that this experience really allows you to ‘walk’ through it.  Yes we have plenty of simulations where you can walk, but typically its flat ground.  But here you have a bridge, you have rope to grab.  As the wind starts to push you back, the IMU on the headset reflects the sublet changes in head position because of it.  As you walk, the scene walks.  With the xbox sensors and the very well lite room, body tracking can be very precise.  I’m sure a dedicated local wifi was running allow the fastest possible update time that can be done with current technology.  Based on the headset graphics it looks like Unity is running this, but again, because of all the various sensors being reinforced with the same cognitive interpretation; you are on a bridge, in a cold wind storm, with the proper sounds, the less than realistic graphics does not matter so much. For some people, its too much!

BTW< this could have been staged, not sure.

A small note here.  Notice no gloves on peoples hands.  They are asked to walk through this cold experience with no gloves.  What that means, and you can tell at the end when people come out, is that they are using the drink to warm themselves.  A GREAT bit a experience detail.  Even after the HMD is off your head, YOU ARE STILL COLD! The experience is still with you, and the reward of the hot latte continues to reinforce the benefits of buying this product.

Appropriateness

So here I want to reinforce something about VR and marketing.  Like I said, I have been around VR for a long time, 20 years plus.  I have seen MANY marking events that try to use a VR experience to create an association of “high tech” or “cutting edge” or “next generation” to a product, some successful, some not so much.  In all cases however the VR experience has little to no association with the value of the product. Further, once the VR experience was over, that was it.  I typically remember what I liked or was annoyed by in the experience, to date I cannot remember a single product from one of those marketing campaigns. This is different.  Even though I did not experience it myself, the whole idea of walking through a blizzard to be rewarded with a hot latte seems to stick.  As the more real the struggle to reward is, the more likely you will have a favorable memory of the reward. What is appropriate about using VR here is that VR has nothing to do with campaign.  It is simply the best tool to achieve the maximum positive reward association with the product. Not trying to be ‘new tech’ or ‘cutting edge’ or ‘cool’.  well ok, a bit cool.  But instead simple marking 101, create a positive association with your product, and VR in this case, was a great choice.

Now, check out the Video.

I took two plane trips in the last 2 weeks and decided to see what level of utility the gear VR would be on a flight.  Not only was it great, it totally changed the flight experience. In this post I’m going to list my favorite VR apps for flying and WHY it was so much better.

First, lets set the stage. Most of the time when I fly, I do not get to fly first class and often I’m sitting behind someone. short continental flights means I’m crammed into a small seat, with little leg room and even LESS room for my laptop if the person in front of me decides to recline back… which is often.

So here we are in the little space, unable to work comfortably and if you want to watch a movie you have those little screens in the headrest in front of you or worse a large screen somewhere on the ceiling.  Not the best experience.

Now lets introduce the Gear VR to this situation.

We already know that by putting on the HMD we would find my ourselves immersed in a virtual reality.  Whats great about that is almost all the VR immersion take you to a space that is FAR larger then the little seat you are sitting in.  Add good headphones and you are fully isolated from crying babies, people opening and closing blinds, and the person in front of you trying to recline into your lap.  Even though I knew this would happen, the effect and relief was beyond expectations.

Although the Gear VR is not perfect, and you have to deal with cooling and power issues, I found I was able to stay in the HMD for multiple hours per session.  On my flight to Spain I watched Star Wars IV.  Using the oculus theater mode, I started the movie using the cinema setting, making me feel I was in a large empty space.  After about 15 min I switched to ‘void’ mode and did not lose the feeling of watching a large screen TV in a large comfortable setting. BTW, helpful hint here; to maximize the battery live of your s6, turn down the brightness, stay in airplane mode and use ‘Void’.  The void setting will help reduce demand on the system to render all those polys that make up the various movie settings.  Also, turn on the air and have it blow on you.  It will cool the phone, and you, and help with fogging.

One issue, well two issues I’ve found is the movie tends to drift over time and I have to recenter it.  Annoying.  Also when the plane turns I have to recenter.  Its not a big enough issue to stop me from watching movies, but hopefully they will find a fix for this.

A common question I was asked is; can I play any movie?  Yes.  As long as its in a mp4 or other supported format, you should be fine.  If you place the file in you ‘movie’ folder it will find it.  You an use MilkVR too.  Create a folder called “MilkVR” and it should find it.

I preloaded a few movies, some TV episodes and few random video’s I shot. Worked great.

Now on to games.  Here you need to be a bit more selective.  Remember you are sitting in an airline seat and can only turn your head somewhat.  ALSO remember you might have someone sleeping next to you so lots of turning to see 180, which means you have to often turn your shoulders could be out of the question.  So get games where all the action is not more then say 160 fov.  My absolute favorite game, Bandit six o’clock, is around 120.  Perfect.  So if needed play your game a little before the flight in a ridged chair.  Many games lose their essence if you are not in a swivel chair.

Next, try to be sure your game uses the gamepad.  If you game only works on the HMD trackpad, then either make sure you get the window seat or the person sitting to your right is quite tolerant because odds are you might smack the with your elbow.

Finally, spend the money and get full games.  Remember, you are trying to kill time up there and a demo is not going to last.

There are a few games I like but NOTHING come close to bandit six o’clock, and even MORE so when flying.  The game is simple.  You are a tail gunner on a WW2 Lancaster.  Enemy plans are trying to get behind you to shot you down.  What is so great about this game is the game play is actually a bit more sophisticated then it sounds.  Also the immersive effect is amazing for a game.  Unlike most of the games I play I really sense the dimensionality of the airplanes when they are flying in.  Its even more believable when you get a bit of turbulence on your flight!  I played this game for 1.5 hours TWICE! and for an hour on the Spain trip.  I only stopped because of the phone overheating or I was interrupted for one thing or another.

Now some tips.

* Plugin earphone or nice a nice headset.  BRING it! shutting out outside sound is your friend.

* Bring back up power.  Although most flight has AC or DC, not all of them do.  Be prepared.

* Bring a cigarette DC adapter.  My section had a DC socket; I got lucky that I asked the flight attendant right away and got one. I may not get so lucky next time.

* Keep your jacket on and turn the air full blast.  You need to keep the phone as cool as you can.  I have actually hacked a small cooling fan for my Note4 and working on a s6 version now.  I’ll post the these modes when I get time. This is really important, the hotter your phone get the less efficient everything is, including the battery, and at 35,000 feed you need to save power where you can.

There are a number of other apps I played on the flight I did not talk about but the main point is the VR helmet as an escape from a small airline seat was extremely successful. As such I will never fly again without my Gear VR.  And if you have a fear of flying, or hate small places, this is for you!

Image from http://inhabitat.com/

Now there are exceptions to this of course, but when I tell people that in five years they will no longer need a new car, I get a look like I’m nuts.  But once I explain that you are getting a new(ish) car and its a ‘need’ not want, then they are a little less skeptical.  However, once I give the full explanation, as I’m about to here, gentle readers, you will agree with me and start telling your friends the same thing just to get that ‘your crazy’ look from them.

First, the caveats.  There are people who buy vehicles for work or hobby.  Truck, Van, taxicab or RV for example.  Then there are those that WANT to buy a new car because its a part of their identity, or love high performance, or have that classic that they love to drive.  Then there are those who live near the edge or off the grid with poor or dirt roads.

OK, now that we have the exceptions out of the way, lets talk about your typical citizen living in a urban environment. In five years, that will be the last time you need to buy a new or newish car. How does that figure?  3 things are going to start happening in 5 years and be complete in 15.

In 5 years we will have our first autonomous vehicles on the road. FULLY autonomous meaning we have the legal issues sorted out that these little Google panda cars driving around my neighborhood will no longer need a driver.  This will be huge. The idea that I can use my phone to have a car pick me up and take me where I need to go will be just as convenient as taking my own car. To make this work, there needs to be a lot of these little buggers running around such that I can have a car at my door in 3 min or less.  Assuming Uber has not been sued out of existence, they will be first in line to try and make that happen.  Watch for them to partner with google and some car maker.

In 5 years the price of these little bugs will be 1/10 the cost of a normal car.  They will be fully electric with no frills.  There will be competitors (Apple, Tesla and later other car makers) that will focus on higher end self driving cars, but those will be seen more as luxury than a necessity. The simple ‘autono-cabs’ will be simple, and thus inexpensive such that there will be many of them. So many that in 15 years many of the next generation will question why they need to ever buy a car or even get a drivers license. (By the way, when that happens we will need a new form of ID.)

Parking space, who needs a parking space?  If you live in San Francisco you know parking is a pain. Worse when you are coming home tired and the last thing you want to is run circles around the blocks trying to find a place to park.  That goes away.  Worried about finding parking when you go somewhere?  Don’t worry about it anymore.  The autono-cab will pick you up at your door and drop you off at your location. Suddenly, parking anywhere will be easier and cheaper because of the reduction of demand.  Going to the game? Or big event?  Not only will you not worry about parking, there will be special lanes for electric autono-cabs so you will get there faster then driving?  Why will this happen?  People who run events and the cities authorities where the event takes place does not want traffic anymore then you do.  They want people in and out quickly, without accidents and drunk drivers making a mess of things.  Win.

Range?  Got that covered. I looked into buying a leaf and decided not to.  If I wanted to take a day trip from mountain view to say Napa, or halfmoon bay, or Oakland (hey its kick’en over there) or even SF I could not be sure I would get back unless I was positive I could find a charging station and have the car there long enough to get a charge.  Our little cabs?  Well, being smaller, lighter and battery tech about to double the range of current car battery packs, we only need to go one way.  Odds are these little guys will have a 60-75 mile range, more then enough for a one way trip anywhere in the bay area.

Now, back to the 5 years thing.  So its 2015 (at least at the time of this writing). I just bought a 2013 PIP Prius although once the new Tesla comes out I will sell the Prius and get that.  But lets say I keep it for 5 years and buy a 2018 Tesla. (I almost never buy new). That takes us to 2020.  Many people believe, as I do, that we should start seeing autonomous cars on the road in 2020. I live in Mountain View, which is not ‘Big city’ but dense enough that the first wave of autonomous cars will reach me.  Odds are, like bike sharing, there will be a monthly or yearly fee you can pay for near unlimited rides.  So that means my Tesla stays in the garage unless I need to go somewhere outside of my local area or I want to go for a fun drive. So now that 2018 is taking on less miles and holding onto more value.  So instead of getting a new car in 2025 I can wait until 2030 or longer depending on how often I drive it.

So now we are at 2025. Battery tech will have doubled again (conservatively) making autono-cabs to more specialized public cars cheaper to make.  The autono-cab is mostly a giant tablet now with multiple screens.  Averts help reduce the costs even more. Choice increases as well as we see Apple cars, luxury Lexus and turbo Tesla’s available via an app. My 2018 Tesla is sitting in the garage most of the time and my wife got a new’ish’ car in 2015, so we have two cars that we really do not drive.  It does not make any sense to have 2 cars now, so we will sell one of them.  Now we just need to stretch the remaining car to 2030, which will be easy because again, we do not drive it much.

From www.fastcodesign.com

By 2030 the autonomous car is ubiquitous. There will still be manual cars out there but even they will have ‘safety’ overrides. The number of car accidents plummets, car insurance goes up for some, and no longer exists for others. There are gas stations, but they are also charging station for the autono-cabs.  Owning a car repair shops goes they way of the local newspaper. Traffic actually goes down instead of up even as population increases. There are more people on the road, but traffic is more efficient, almost no accidents to cause backups, no rubber necking and very few breakdowns since the cars know when they need attention and can drive themselves for service. Places like LA see a marked reduction in pollution.  And one of the biggest win IMHO, drop in drunk driving. Buying a car in 2030 does not make much sense.

Now there will be losers in this grand future I’m painting.  Vehicle drivers; cab, truck, bus will be losing their jobs. Mechanics, we will not need as many.  Oil?  Do not need as much of that either. Car insurance, car dealerships, towing services; not a growth industry.  Municipalities will need new revenue (most likely they will tax the cabs per mile). Traffic tickets?  Kiss those dollars goodbye. Toll takers?  That is already disappearing.

So lets recap.  I said that in 5 years, that will be the last time you ‘need’ to buy a new car.  Math review time!  Buy car latest in 2020.  Good for 5+ years.  We should see the first deployments of self driving public cars in 2020.  By 2022, they should cover most urban and sub-urban areas. Since you are driving your car less, you can hang on to it for another 8 years easy which brings us to 2030.  Not so crazy sounding anymore right?  1) So start telling your friends.  2) Make money bets before you explain.  3) Profit!

P.S.  I started telling people this back in May, and started writing this post in June.  So no, I’m not following the crowd, just talking WAY to long to write my posts now-a-days.

Microsoft does have there own line of ‘watches’ although they are more exercise bands then watches, but so far they have not gone full-in on the smartwatch market.  They may at some point, but that is not why I think Microsoft is going to try to get on the Pebble.  They want Microsoft everywhere. And right now, the Pebble watch works on the two major OS’s, iOS, and Android.  If Microsoft wants to be considered a major OS in the mobile market, its a bit of an embarrassment that they are not considered important enough that Pebble, maintaining its position as a major watch brand, is not included.  As such it would make sense for Microsoft phones to be able to use the Pebble watch as well showing they are a major player.

So for now, you can downloaded from a link provided by windowscentral.com from their post. I have not tried it so proceed with cation.

XTV is a internet video service for the enterprise. (IPTV) But it’s not useful to just enterprise users.  Imagine you have a number of videos that you want to publish about your small business or hobby.  Where do you put them?  Well YouTube or some other video cloud service typically.  That’s great and all, but the problem is once your user goes to YouTube, you pretty much lost them. You have to compete with videos of cats and Epic Rap battles of history.

What xTV offers is a closed experience where not only the videos you want your users to see are provided, but they can be organized into channels with each channel showing a list of thumbnails of the videos in that channel. Nice. But that is not where the win is …

Because this is internet based, displayed using any HTML5 compliant browser, the experience can be interactive.  So not only can your viewers watch your content, they can interact with screen as well.  If the screen happens to be a large monitor on a wall, then the users can capture a 2d QR code and interact using their cell phone.  Sweet eh?

So what are some use cases?  Well as I alluded to above, you may have a number of monitors in an office lobby, or displayed at an event that will play your videos in a loop.  With the QR code displayed at all times, visitors walking by can use their phone to interact with the video, perhaps answering questions in a quiz, or perhaps learn more about a company’s offerings or positions they are trying to hire for.  Since everything is internet based, they can even take the video loop playing on the screen and take it with them to view on their own devices.

More? Here is a use case I want to see…  I went a two trips recently.  In the hotel on the first trip, the hotel played a loop of videos about the local shoppes and attractions.  However this was a loop, I could not say, just see restaurants, I had to sit through content I was not interested in.  On the second trip, which I did not research ahead a time, I expected to see the same type of video feed, instead this place just had cable. So I was stuck with using Yelp, which is ok, but I would rather hear and see from the restaurant themselves.  How much better would it have been that I could have called up the restaurant channel at the hotel, or even on the way to the hotel to see what we might like to eat?

Now as you can guess, this is not just a general review of something I found on the internet, I have been an adviser to xTV for near three years and have joined the team full time.  So there!

Now back to the goodness… and why I’m writing this post…

There are many other great use cases that are being defined with customers, but what I wanted to write about, and perhaps get some feedback on, is what ELSE can we do with this?

Part of the xTV system is to allow users to create their own networks.  What interactive elements would people put on the display?  Or run on the phones browser? So let’s say you have a network with a bunch of channels with music. It’s HTML5 so anything you can imagine on a webpage is doable. There are the easy things; voting on content, comments, and of course online shopping.  But what else? Pull up lyrics perhaps? Read the musicians’ bio? Tour dates? One of my hobbies is VR.  So if I put a VR channel together, perhaps I could show a code that lets the user into a virtual world with other people who clicked on the code.

So check out the Network and let me know what you all think.  You can leave comments here on my blog or via contact us at xtv.net if you want it private.  Check the video below…

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=S87xKAXCn3M