Well, seems the deal went through! Right now, its still a rumor, but let say the ByteDance Pico deal goes through. What does that mean for the AR / VR space?

Currently the consumer VR space is pretty much dominated by Facebook with the Oculus Quest. A very good device, lots of content, very affordable price. With the release of Workrooms, we are seeing a slide into the soft enterprise space. (more on Workrooms later). Ok, so why is TikTok and Pico so interesting?

TikTok has followed both FB and Snap by offering an AR development platform. Snap has already released a dev version of AR glasses that can take advantage of their AR platform. And remember, they bought WaveOptics as well, so clearly they are committed to creating an AR device in the near term. What is interesting is that they are positioned to be the first AR glasses company to sell in large numbers give Snaps reach. Although I’m certain FB will come out with consumer level AR glasses very soon, they do not have the same penetration that Snap has for user AR content creation. Given TikToks current reach on in the user creative space, it would not be hard to imagine ByteDance is looking to compete directly with Snap. And the two of them need to move fast to buffer FB’s AR ambitions.

So how does Pico play into this? ByteDance recently bought a gaming studio to help bolster their content pool, but I think this will mostly be for the Chinese market, VR is pretty much owned by FB right now. However, if ByteDance wanted to create AR light glasses somewhat like Snap, Nreal, and Lenovo, this would be a step in the right direction. I would not be surprised to see a follow up acquisition of Nreal, or failing that, MadGaze.

This gives ByteDance quite a bit power in the Chinese market.

• Continue to expand the VR Consumer space in China perhaps with more gaming studio acquisitions.
• Support AR pass-through and copy FB Workrooms to create a Chinese version. Remember Pico using the same X2 chip Quest uses, so its doable.
• Create a set of AR glasses, either through acquisition or other work that Pico has been doing that we do not know about.
• Leverage TikTok popularity to compete with Snap and soon FB in the western market for consumer AR.

So what is missing?

Right now, both Snap and perhaps ByteDance still have a content issue. Yes, AR filters are very popular, but that will not be enough to sustain interest. To succeed they need access to the consumers phone which offers FAR more content than any one walled garden can ever create. To do this they need to figure out how to take mobile 2D content and display and interact with it on the XR device. This is why I wrote about Samsung Dex for AR-lite in the past. But guess who else has a Dex like experience? Huawei.

I’m calling this now. Watch for a future agreement between ByteDance and Huawie for a mobile based desktop experience that works in both VR and AR.

Also watch for further moves by ByteDance to implement AR glasses. Its getting closer … perhaps 2023 is when we will see the first major plays into consumer AR.

Image from http://inhabitat.com/

Ok, so this article on driver-less cabs just popped up saying NY’s Mayor de Blasio just signed with Google to have them put out a fleet of 5000 driver-less cars in Brooklyn and Queens.  They will be called Zippie.  Nice.  And that is not all; order now and get an ATM machine, vending machine spitting out mouthwash to condoms and btw the condoms will be a bit hit because I can see a trend starting on having sex in driverless cars, but that is another post.  They are even going to serve hot pizza!  What about the mess?  A 12 horse power vacuum will take care of that.  A vacumm?  How is that going to clean smeared pizza?

Does this all sound too good to be true by next year?  Yea it does.  Ok, so first off, even Google admits the driver-less car is not ready for sever weather like heavy rains, snow storms and icy roads.  This is NY we are talking about kiddies, if you ever been there in Feb.  Ug.  And serve food?  Its going to be a mess, and I’m sure some jackass will make it a worse mess.  What about legal issues?  Nothing talked about that in the post I read.

So here is what I think.. I think they are going to start putting in the ground work and doing limited tests in 2016.  Sure, you may be able to grab one of these Zippie’s next year, but I have a feeling there will be no food and running during limited times of the year ( good weather only) and limited routes.

Now you may be saying, “why such a downer man”. Actually, I’m pretty excited and looking forward to seeing even a few cabs running in limited conditions in 2016.  I want MORE cities to get in on this. Google will run the program so no one owns it. That is sooner then I would have expected from a legal perspective.  I think its great and cant wait for it.  However, lets not get crazy…. Hot Pizza?  Lets hold off on that for a bit ok?

BTW, Cabbie backlash in 3… 2… 1…

Now, there are some questions I have, like how in the heck are you going to render that many polys to really make this work? But given the size of the body vest, I’m going to assuming there is a kick-ass PC in there with the best GPU chips on the planet and serious battery power. So assuming that, all the other tech required is already out there.  They even designed their own HMD for this called the Rapture, but the cartoon rendering tells me they have not made a test version yet.  In fact, nothing in the video looks close to real, but that’s ok, every project needs to start with a vision, and this is a great one. On the site, it seems they have quotes implying that something has been built and tried, but I have a uneasy feeling about it.  But again, its doable. The computing power, HMD resolution and tracking and a specially built building with sensors all over the place could make this happen.  I’m not even sure they needs the Oculus Rift-enabled roller coasters IMHO, just walking through a fully immersed environment would be cheaper to build, take less land and would pull the same customers at the same rate.  I also like this because it will help reduce one of the biggest issues with VR and that is VOR or VR sickness.  By including the body in the VR experience, you will have far greater agreement between your vestibule tubes (part of your ears that deal with balance and movement), full body feedback that synchronize with vestibule inputs and of course the lies your eyes are telling you.  Now this will not be perfect because there are other inputs that a HMD cannot reproduce as well that ‘could’ get more sensitive people sick, but that depth of human vision physiology is not for this post.

Back to the vision.  And it’s a grand vision that they do not seem to be doing alone, partnerships with Optimal Design, and Unity 3D, tells me it may not be total vaporware.

GIF by Beckett Mufson from theVoid video.

Screencaps by Beckett Mufson

Screencaps by Beckett Mufson

OK, now for the ‘downer’ part.  This company is, from what I understand, the same company that was suppose to create Evermore, also in Utah.  They could not raise near the money needed and it was a complete failure before it even started.  Take a look at the comments from this post from the heraldextra.com/

• Ron Richey · Mapleton, Utah

  Not deliberately trying to be the skeptic here, but there are always two reasons for everything. The real reason, and the one that sounds good. Sounds good: The neighbors were bothered by the noise. Real reason: We haven’t raised anywhere near enough capital.

  I want these guys to succeed. I really do. But let’s face it, the project doesn’t make economic sense. Who is going to invest tens (or maybe hundreds) of millions of dollars on a destination theme park in Utah? This is not Southern California. It is not a tourist destination (for this sort of stuff at least), the climate is not conducive to it, and the locals won’t patronize it to the needed degree…

  Evermore, please prove me wrong!

  Reply · Like · Follow Post · April 13 at 11:59am

• Sean Sullivan · Orem, Utah

  To Ron and Lori, here are some facts as I know them. I used to be employed by Evermore Park and was involved in the Pumpkin Fest. I suppose neither of you were there the night of the concert or you would know that there were maybe a hundred people who turned out. Not enough to wake or disturb anybody. The only ones complaining were the accountants. Ron is right. Economic feasibility. We spent well over $500k and took in $73k. We all got laid off right after without even getting the property completely cleared. The property is now up for sale. I used to work for Disney. I know what it takes. I didn’t see it at Evermore Park.

  Reply · Like · Follow Post · April 24 at 7:59am

Does not fill you with confidence.  But just because one attempt failed does not mean a second one will.  But I have a real problem with looking at this film and thinking about the capital it will take to build this. And in Salt Lake City.  Not exactly a world tourist hub.  And this is important because the number of people you would need to 10x the capital investment would be substantial.  The computing equipment required to make this run would not be cheap either.  If you have even 100 people running through your park at one time, that is 200+ units you need to build to deal with failures. You cannot simply take a HMD in the back, hammer on it a few times to fix it and get it back out on the line. Also the insurance needed for this, ‘furgettaboutit’.

I think I would be more confident and more excited if they focus on just a built environment where users are walking through, perhaps look at the Lazer Tag business model and build a spreadsheet off that.  Sure this is more expensive to put together than a lazer tag setup but I would pay more for a great experience.  And the great thing about VR, you can change the experience by just changing the programming.  Matrix anyone?

First all everything I list must still come at the same price points, same battery life and same size (or smaller) then the current watches.  That being said:

Microphone!  This is what keeps the pebble off my arm right now.  I do not use the voice command all that much but every now and again I use it and appreciate it.  This should be a pretty easy add.  Odds of seeing this, Very high.

Color.  Will it be a beauty OLED or some e-paper version that does not look as good but take less room and less power.  I say color is high and most likely the e-paper type display.

Health monitoring info.  Low. BUT, I would bet they will have some sort of band option you can get that will give you all the bio data you want.

Internal character support.  VERY HIGH.  This has bugged me. I wanted to have a Japanese version of NewsSnacker and could not do it because the OS does not support extended language symbols. This will happen.

Touch screen.  Med.  I love the buttons on the Pebble and I can live without touch screen.  But perhaps we will get better accelerometers that will allow us to detect taps and swipes and other touch like gestures without have a ‘touch’ screen.

Better integration with Android, iOS and.. wait for it.. Windows!  yes Windows!  Why do I say that?  Ok, have you seen the Windows watch?  No, those are really exercise bands, they do not have a watch.  Now why its taking this long to get Windows integration I do not know. I would bet windows was not cooperation because they ‘thought’ they would ave their own watch.  Well they still do not and of you have noticed, Microsoft had been pushing VERY HARD to get its apps in the cloud and other devices.  Perhaps they are realizing they cannot survive in a Windows only world.  If they do have a change of heart and are working with Pebble then I think it could be a mutual win for both companies.  Sure there are not that many windows phones out there, but enough to make it worth it since you are rebuilding you OS from the ground up anyway.

Speaking of App, and this is and easy one, better app cloud based dev tools including better JavaScript support.  High.  They have been walking this road for awhile so not really a wish as much as an observation.

So what does all this mean?  As you look at all the other players in the smart watch game no one seems to be trying to capture the low end market.  Seems Pebble can have this market all to themselves.  Sure there are plenty of other cheap so called smart watches out there, but non with the rich list of apps that Pebble has which means it can break out of the West and start selling in the East.

I’m excited to see what they will have.  I already have the Steel, but at $199, I might replace it.

From @williammanning

A computer virus that is, and you can.  Seems there is a reported case, on Reddit, of an e-cigarette delivering a payload of malware once plugged into the USB port.  A cheap device from China it seems. No shocker there.  So what should we learn from this especially given the post I did yesterday on lasp security and perhaps back doors left open on cheap Android tablets from China, that anything coming from a source you do not fully trust could have an number of security risks associated to them.  How about that wifi blue tooth app you bought?  Yup, it could have one too.

They way it works is pretty simple.  You plug the USB in, it pretends to be a keyboard, call a file on the device and execute.  Now a number of thing can go wrong with this process, but when you have thousands of these guys out there, a 1 in 100 rate would be pretty good.

Again, this is Reddit so take it for what its worth.  But if you are sufficiently paranoid now, there is hope.  You can get a USB Condom.  Yup, head over the kickstarter and get in on “SyncStop – Prevent data theft and malware on mobile devices”. Makes sense actually, you have no idea of a USB is just getting power short of talking it apart or shooting the middle connectors, but this is not fool proof.

Anyway, hope I made your life just that much richer by adding yes another e-boggie-man. 

Square lets you get it hot.

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Photo taken from kimberlyk1018’s eBay listing

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Image Courtesy NN Group

View original story here.

Rumor mill has it that there will be one more update to win8 and that will close it out.  The lessons learned on win8, both from a useability point of view as well as coding will be rolled into win9. However, something else will be rolled into win9 as well; remote authentication.  Perhaps the opening salvo into a subscription model as done with Office instead of using a key system, which is constantly hacked, especially in China.  Here is a quote from WZor on the Russian-language Ru-Board

It’s assumed that the activation of products distributed via ESD-RETAIL channels will be more tightly associated with a specific PC and that activation will be done when user will log in to Microsoft Store. Activation key won’t be given to user and he won’t need to enter key manually.

So what is interesting here is the possibility that windows will join the update path that many OS now follow instead of having a major release every 18 to 22 months. Stay tuned.

From Sammobile.com

Last week at Google I/O, they sprang a cardboard phone holder that basically turn your smartphone into a VR HMD display device.  Its extremely  cleaver, and was quite the hit.  So much so, there is a strong demand for these guys even a week later.  Now we are hearing rumors that a plastic version of this is coming out called the Samsung Gear VR.  I’m not sure how true this is, but it would not be all that hard to make something like the Google Cardboard HMD in plastic and then make a few improvememts.  Might even work better since it would be lighter and made to better tolerances.  However, part of the rumor is that it will be more then just a phone housing as with the cardboard version.  According to Sammobile.com this thing will come with extra feature like:

On the right side of the Gear VR, there is a see-through button, which uses the smartphone’s rear-facing camera sensor to supply the user with a video feed of the real outside world – this way the user won’t need to remove and wear the headset again and again, which will make the overall experience of wearing the headset easier than alternatives from Oculus or Sony. There is also a touchpad located directly under the see-through button, which will allow users to navigate through the user interface on the Galaxy smartphone.

I wrote before how disappointed I was when the Galaxy Gear first come out, trying to put too into the device and then pricing it too high. Not to mention locking it to their own devices.  I also discussed how I was looking forward to the Google watch for the same reason, spoiler alert, I’m going to try to get on this week and hack on it.  So I do not have my hopes up that the VR Gear will be something I want to buy.  In fact, I would not be surprised to see it locked to the Galaxy line with a special driver that is matched to the optics making it unless with any other phone.

But what I DO expect, is someone out there is going to design a simple plastic version and sell it for $15 or even better,  a 3D printer version that can be put together with 3 or 4 parts.  I will be all over that.