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Apple's Headset Said to Feature 14 Cameras Enabling Lifelike Avatars, Jony Ive Has Remained Involved With Design
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About as much of a gimmick as a phonecall.
I'm not too concerned if Apple's focus hasn't been gaming right off the bat, and instead they've focused on creating next gen hardware and a software stack for enabling developers. It's a good strategy, which worked very well for iPhones and iPads. If the device can present a high quality mixed reality studio of tools, apps, and virtual assets, we'll build upon that all sorts of new, yet to be imagined apps, games, and media.
Communication. This coupled with the Airmoji device will allow AR/VR communication. Airmoji being a silent indoor drone in which a remote Glasses user can look around and move in another location, and a Glasses user in the same location would see that users avatar where the drone is including their facial expressions, eyemovement and where they are looking and located and in the space.
There's zero chance that there are lifelike avatars, but if this is all true, I do expect some pretty good face/eye tracking for more lower fidelity avatars.
I fail to see the market or any use case for.... the wheel, motorized vehicles, the airplane, personal computers, more storage, faster processors, mobile phones, broadband internet, and AR/VR/MR technology. I'm being silly and a bit sarcastic. I follow the technology closely and it's one of the most exciting leaps forward I've seen in years.
I think initially they'll probably leverage the avatars seen on iOS. Subsequent updates will offer greater and greater customization, steadily approaching photorealism, finding a careful balance to avoid the uncanny valley.
I do think it'll take the rest of the decade to get there though.
The original report suggests that they had photorealistic avatars that only ran on a high powered external computer, and they still fell into the uncanny valley.
If we assume they are at the same level of Meta/Facebook's avatar research, then it realistically won't be possible to bring to the market until late this decade, because it's an enormous challenge with breakthroughs still required even in 2022.
Perhaps. They really need to smooth things over with Epic and work together. Their combined tech, hardware and software, is simply amazing. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman-creator
So if it's Ive it will be thinner than needed and will only work if your home is as clean as an operating room, like the emoji keyboard?
The problem is Apple would be dependent on 3rd parties to function on their own Platform. Kind of like the original Mac was dependent Microsoft who then stole their tech and nearly bankrupted them.
I believe Apple is working to develop their own source of content for this. And is likely designing a platform free of an App Store at all.
They are likely souring on the business model as governments move to take their efforts and investments meant to earn a profit for them and share some with others and instead be forced to allow others to use if for free.
The UK is now proposing legislation requiring Apple to give all developers access to all of their APIs. Ridiculous!
Same functionality?? The HomePod mini is lacking compared to the original HomePod. Fewer and smaller drivers (ie lower sound quality), fewer microphones, no spatial awareness, no home theater function. But sure, "exact same functionality."
If Ives is involved then I have doubts about the successor this product. He made a complete mess of the watch launch trying to evolve it as a fashion accessory instead of fitness, which it so obviously was. He botched the macbook pro by sacrificing power and usability of form - yet again. He is the wrong person to head up technology products, when are people going to wise up to that.
My concern about the VR Metaverse is the same one I had for FB, and that is that people who opt out of it for various reasons will essentially cease to exist to their friends and family (and maybe even work?). You and your family seem to have a healthy balance in using it but that may facilitated from being early adopters. Once this becomes mainstream, I wonder how people who physically can’t use VR environments or can’t afford them will be left out of real world connections as well.
This is all based on my personal observation so take that for what it’s worth (admittedly very little): Now that people (in my sphere of existence) are leaving FB in droves for various reasons, they’re starting to reconnect to each other outside of that very unhealthy environment. They’re starting to find out yeah, some of us who opted out years ago are still alive and thriving and we didn’t get raptured away or something. That’s how low contact they went with those of us outside of FB! And understandably so, it was inconvenient keeping in touch with us. FB allowed for easy instant mass communication. Emails, texts, and other forms of individual contact are a bother.
When FB was in earlier stages, it was a fantastic fun place to be. Unfortunately, I watched it grow into a highly manipulative and toxic environment with each new “feature” upgrade. People whom I knew for most of my life and who got along so well were increasingly going at each other’s throats. And lord help everyone if they read something unintended in you failing to see and like one of their posts.
I’m not sure how the metaverse will avoid that. Actually I’m worried it could be even worse after reading of sexual harassment and assault of women’s virtual avatars already happening in some vr environments.
I guess a lot will depend on who is overseeing all of it and what rules get put into place. It could end up being awesome but I hope it won’t cause another divide in our society between haves and have nots.
I do also wonder how all of this tech will work with our biology. I am already struggling with flat OLED displays causing me to have serious migraines. Interestingly enough, despite my problems with conventional displays, I am the only person in my family and extended family who can comfortably wear and function in VR environments for as long as I want. Everyone else I know gets a bit nauseous or dizzy after a few minutes. I even used VR to relieve some of my migraine suffering. But that was with older Samsung tech. I haven’t tried the latest and greatest. It could be a disaster for me now. The thing with technology’s effects on human bodies, we can’t really predict which upgrade will break us.
Well, I suppose we could do more studies but there seems to be an odd shortage of those and the few around seem inconclusive or don’t get much attention. It’s not in the best interests of business, after all, to explore if our beloved tech is actually bad for our health. And customers don’t want to really know, either.
I’m willing to bet many of them also complain apple doesn’t innovate enough anymore.
So what's the point then? Seems like gaming is the only place AR/VR has had any traction.
The cameras are on the exterior of the device for spatial context. Not inside the glasses lol
Smartphones solved a problem. Many in fact. VR solves none. I’ve yet to meet someone who’s said ‘gee you know what would make this better? living in an avatar world’.
"Lifelike avatars" i would take to mean that facial expressions and gestures feel natural and lifelike in your space. I wouldn't think it to mean mimicing reality. More like interacting with lifelike animoji avatars. IMO, it is far more "realistic" to interact with a toonish avatar than even a video the way we do so often over FaceTime and Zoom. An avatar is a better representation of the interaction you're having than trying to mimic reality because, in fact, your are not co-located. It is harder for the brain to process remote video in which you see a 2D version of someone through a window into their space, as opposed to seeing a 3D avatar of them in your space. Also, it is better to avoid the uncanny valley in this representation. The Incredibles characters feel more real than they would if they were trying to mimic reality.
VR solves the problem of distance. Or rather it solves the problem of distance in a way that other tech doesn't, because it enables people to feel like they are there, with a person, doing X activity, in Y body.
Avatar world as you call it allows people to have all sorts of shared experiences in a way that fools the brain enough to believe its model of reality is the virtual reality. That's a huge deal.