Sebastien Perez: This is where you do all the goofiest faces possible. So I think we might be live will have to ask the people who are required. Oh yeah, that looks live. Oh, we're live!
Alan's getting live! Introduce yourself we've got the man of the hour Alan Smithson. What? Alan Smithson: Wow! Whaaat? So thank you for talking with me Sebastien, this is a really exciting. I'm here. I'm actually live coming to you live on LinkedIn live from LiveWorx nice I was at the LinkedIn or sorry the live works VR AR enterprise summit yesterday and Boston. I'm actually here right now and you know I'm sitting outside of the convention center. And yeah,
it's really exciting. There is a ton of enterprise applications of mixed and augmented reality. So we'll get into that later. I'm the CEO of MetaVRse, and metaverse, the virtual and augmented reality consulting firm, we design build custom applications for for different businesses. But I'm also really
excited to announce we announced last week at AWE, a new program called XR Ignite, which is a community hub for XR startups, or Virtual / Augmented / Mixed Reality startups and companies that really bring them together. Because what we found is that all these startups have great products, they have great, you know, solutions, they may be they're a studio, and they don't know how to get into the enterprise. The big companies, they don't know how to do business with small startups, they don't know how to pick the ones that they want to work with. So we're really trying to become that conduit between business and startups in the XR space. It's XRIgnite.com. I'm also the host of a podcast which you should be on later t o. It's the XR for Busines
Podcast, where we intervi w industry leaders who are eit er making or using Virtual /Augmented / Mixed Reality technologies to transfo m their businesses. So that's hy LiveWorx today is so excitin , because there's no I got to ry a tractor where I was, I as, you know, using a RealWea (headset) I got to repair tractor never touched the tra tor before. But because of this new technology, I'm able to put n this headset, I've never t uched it before and I'm able to fix a tractor. This is the pow r of this technology is for tra ning, for remote assista ce, for marketing, for sales, or data visualization, the imp ct of these technologies is neve ending and every single industr will use them. So that's
hat I'm really passion te about it. Sebastien Perez: Awesome. Well, thank you for that. And that sounds really exciting. Let's talk a little bit about that tractor for a second. So this is
obviously Location Based Training for businesses. Alan Smithson: It's not. Sebastien Perez: It's not? Alan Smithson: The way they've done it, and this is what's really amazing about this is that by simply having this heads up display, you can now upload any information to this headset, put the headset anywhere in the world, and it will give you the information on how to fix that particular tractor. Imagine you know you have Model 375, right? Model 375, you pull up the schematics, and it walks you through step by step how to repair maybe change the filter, which is what I was doing today, change oil, plugs, whatever spark plugs and oil pans, whatever it is you need to do for that tractor. But imagine, every single tractor model can have this. And you know, we're very early days people are, you know, experimenting and stuff like that. But this is kind of
the future because as we have a massive retirement of, you know, skilled workers, you know, people who've been working on these tractors for years and years and years, what they're able to do is put this headset on them, and it's just a little like camera and a little screen. But they're able to put this headset on the professionals who are going to be retiring in a few years and capture their skills digitally. So now we can have anybody do it. So if
somebody comes out of school, maybe they don't know anything about tractors, they can put this headset on, hands-free, and walk them through how to fix the tractor. I mean, it's just one of many, many use cases. But this is an exponential use case. Because now you can hire people to replace these, you know, retired workers, but you don't have to spend, you know, six years training them on how to fix a tractor, you can literally train them on the job, which is expediting training. You know,
one of the things that people worry about is, you know, artificial intelligence and quantum computers and all you know, all these different exponential technologies, replacing jobs, you know? Are they going to get rid of jobs? It's not that they're going to get rid of jobs, it's that the jobs are just going to keep changing. It's less a matter of will all jobs be wiped out? Some jobs will be completely wiped out. But so many more jobs will be you know, reinvented. And so I think it's really important to understand how these technologies can help somebody reinvent themselves over and over and over, as certain categories of jobs get replaced. It's not something to worry about, it's not something to be scared about. It's something to
embrace, because we have now the technologies to replace your job, but also train you really fast for a new one. I think that's what's exciting. Sebastien Perez: I think that that's really an impactful thought there, because I, I've listened to a lot of UBI conversations, you know, conversations about how like, for example, the truck driving industry will be the first one to get hit. And the question is, how do we retrain these truck drivers to be able to make a sustainable income? And then on top of that, are the skills transferable? So I hear a lot of conversation about that. But I haven't actually heard a lot of discussion on how AR/VR plays a role in retraining, you know, future workforces or existing workforces who have lost their employment. So I think that that's awesome. Go ahead, go for
it. Alan Smithson: So I have a theory on on the whole truck driver thing, because you know, over the next maybe five years? It's coming faster than I would have said 10, a couple of years ago, but like, five years, maybe six? Large rigs, you know, big kind of freight trucks, they will be autonomous, because, you know, let's just do a quick business analysis, I have a truck, I can run it 13 hours a day with a driver, I got to pay the driver, 100 grand a year, or whatever it is 200 grand a year, he's got it, he can only drive for she can only drive 13 hours a day, and then they've got to stop. With autonomous vehicles, I can run that thing 24/7, it rides more safely, it is more fuel efficient, and it never asks for vacation. But what I think would be really interesting, we're going to go through this phase of, you know, autonomous trucks, we'll have to have a driver in them for the next kind of five years. Going through this transition phase, you don't have to be, you know, staring out the window and worried about the cars driving itself. So while you're driving
twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a day, in an autonomous vehicle, you can be upskilling yourself. You can be learning, you know, if you want to learn how to code, you can learn anything you want with 13 hours a day. If you imagine, if you put 13 hours a day into studying something now that you won't have to worry about driving, you can learn. So I think what we need to do is really empower these drivers to learn whatever it is they want to learn. While they're while they're being phased out of their own job. Sebastien Perez: Interesting! Alan Smithson: Not a bad idea.
Sebastien Perez: Yeah! No, absolutely. Again, I was just thinking in my mind, okay, we'll have training centers and you know, with VR and whatnot. Alan Smithson: You can have a raining cen Sebastien Perez: I think that goes to speak for all enterprises really. What VR and AR is enabling is simulations of any possible event or something that you would want to replay and retry. And it allows training for virtually any job which I feel is an incredible power.
Alan Smithson: XR Ignite is a community hub and accelerator, so if anybody wants to go on it's XRIgnite.com you can sign up you're an XR Startup or you're a company wanting more information: XRIgnite.com We started with the people first. So we assembled a list of, in my opinion, the top people doing stuff, the top people in XR. The top people in the world so we have 50 mentors, and three of the mentors yesterday spoke at this LiveWorkx. John Cunningham, from Disney, who does military simulations, flight simulations and stuff like that for the military. Jonathan moss, who is
the Head of Learning for Sprint. And then Kris Kolo, who runs the global Executive Director for VRAR Association. They all spoke yesterday. And the reason why I
want to bring this up, because you know, Jonathan Moss, for example, he's running education and training for Sprint. And what they did was they use Augmented Reality on a tablet. They gave it to all their employees, like 30,000 employees, and they're seeing real defined growth. So they've
made they've been able to identify three key metrics. One of them is speed to training. The other one is retention rates. And then the last is just
costs of training and profit made. So what they did was they gave all the staff this iPad app with that has AR and they pointed at a logo, and it comes to light and it shows them the features of the new phones or just to walk them through the new features that they're trying to promote. The great thing is and the unintended consequence of that, was that the staff now take that and start teaching the customers with it. So they built it ss an internal training app, we're like, well, it's awesome, I can now help, you know, my customers with it. So it became a sales app with no additional coding. Imagine like now,
they're seeing a decrease in training times and an increase in retention rates. And they're seeing an increase in sales, all from a simple AR app that they made, that teaches people. So learning is going to be by far and away the best and most impactful use case of Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality technologies. And yesterday's presentation, there was was a full day of presentations at the VR AR enterprise summit. And every single one touched on learning or training.
Sebastien Perez: Yeah, it's almost like, you know, we ran through the information era, and now we're entering like the education era, you know, this is real, democratized, portable training, I don't think that people realize the power. I think some people look at it, as, you know, still a video game or you know, AR Masks. And the truth is, you know, people out there on LinkedIn, realize that there's a lot of business value there, there's a lot for the future of education, stopping people from losing their jobs, becoming skilled workers. [Cross
Alan Smithson: Let me explain Talk] something. I don't know that it's going to stop people losing their jobs, because AI is going to replace a block of jobs. So accountants, I'm talking to you accountants, that's going to be a job that's going to be wiped out by AI. No, because it will just do it better and faster than you can ever possibly do it. Now, I've done a lot of talks, in a lot of schools, I try to inspire and educate schoolchildren on exponential growth, and you know, just kind of preparing their mind for the future. And in every single one
that I do, you know, 500 kids in a room, I'll say how many people how many kids who want to be an accountant, zero hands go up every time. So, you know, maybe replacing certain jobs that are just kind of repetitive, mindless jobs that people need for money, maybe that's not a bad thing for humanity, maybe it will unlock a little bit more creativity, a little bit more excitement around your job, because let's be honest, a lot of people graduated University and they get a job to pay their bills. They're not getting a job to fulfill their passions. And I think, you know, with these technologies, you can learn anything as fast as possible. Walmart rolled out VR training this year in their training a million people in VR in partnership with a company called Strivr. But the magic
sauce behind that is normally would take a day, they'd fly people in to us in our regional center, and or drive them in or whatever, they bring them in and take a day, a full day of training for this one module. It now takes two hours in VR and they can ship the VR headset to them. Sebastien Perez: That's amazing! Let's let's grab some comments here from the feed because it's growing up. And that's why we're here live. So big shout out to Mark Shaw, Harvey Craft, Sarjeet, Gil, Surai, Petras. Let's get some questions here.
Alan Smithson: All right. Sebastien Perez: Well, Mark says "What's up guys? Hey Alan, XR Ignite on fire! We've got Ken Gold who says "my pleasure" Mark Shaw "Loving the discussion Seb! As always, live is best." Okay, cool. Harvey Craft says "Usability is number one." Sarjeet says "XR Ignite is a great idea. I work with startups
in the Bay Area and I'm an investor and advisor. Make sure you follow Robert Scoble. He is the go to resource for all things AR VR." Alan Smithson: So Robert, is actually on our podcast. So we've done a podcast with Robert on the XR for Business Podcast.
That episode will probably come out on the fall. We've done 35 episodes so far and it's we're a little bit backlogged right now, but we'll get them out. If you want to follow us it's XRforBusiness.io. Sebastien Perez: You got it! XRforbusiness.io. We're gonna
pull up a screen here show you exactly what it is. They've got a podcast, They've got some guests like Cathy Hackl. Alan Smithson: Today, actually, she speaks at 4pm today at the LiveWorx today Sebastien Perez: Alright! So, it's a very small, small world, isn't it? Alan Smithson: It is and it's funny because I think we're in this precipice where, you know, we've been growing linearly fairly quickly. But over the
last 10 years, it took us 10 years to get to $10 billion in revenue as an industry. As an VR/AR industry it took 10 years to get to 10 billion. Next year, it goes to $20 billion year after it goes to $40 billion. So in the next kind of three years, we're going to $200 billion in revenues. That's not including...and I use the statement VR & AR (XR) will create a trillion dollar value in the next five years. Now
let's unpack that for a second. a trillion dollars is a huge number. But if you factor in virtual and augmented reality, let's say over the next three, four years, we'll be at $100 million. Work backwards, so let's say it generates $500 billion. But that's not taking into account the savings and the productivity gains by industries. It's hard to quantify that when McDonald's rolls out training and saves $100 million in training.
Sebastien Perez: That's right. Alan Smithson: Right? Sebastien Perez: Time is money. Alan Smithson: It really is Sebastien Perez: Efficiency is money. Alan Smithson: Yep. Sebastien Perez: You know, those mistakes can be costly. At
scale, it can cost you to lose Alan Smithson: Yep. If we take customers. If they're not away training for just a second, and we look at retail, so I trained properly. hosted at AWE. And it was one of
the guys was Mohammed from Macy's. And remember, Johnny, and what did I know? What they did was amazing. So they started a small trial in six locations, they brought VR in and brought their furniture store into VR.
So you could see what couches look like any. So they did a small trial, and they had no idea what was gonna happen, they just did it, they saw 65% increase in sales, and less than 2% return rates, you can imagine returns of a culture of, you know, giant piece of furniture is expensive. So they got it down to less than 2% returns 65% increase in sales. And here's the kicker, when they build a furniture location in a Macy's store, it costs half a million dollars, just for the furniture section, right. And it's you know, it takes up a huge amount of space, real estate, the VR one takes up a couple 100 square feet and cost 50 grand. So it's a 10 x savings just there. And
they now rolled it out to 100 locations 112 locations I think they're at now. And you know, when scaled over 100 locations, they're still seeing a 45% increase in sales. like crazy. How can anybody argue with that? And why companies aren't like all over this. It's beyond me. So I think I really think we're agreed, which is why we formed XR Ignite in which was what we formed XR for Business to educate and inspire business leaders to invest in this technology. That's why we did it.
Sebastien Perez: Absolutely. I think that, first of all, it's awareness. So it's like that it is not is beyond just, you know, a game or just beyond AR Masks, then once they're aware of it, then it's that's too hard. That's future technology. That's
alien technology. There's no way my business could adopt that. And now you hear companies like Macy's, a lot of even a classic companies that are not, you know, tech companies are adopting this AR VR implementation into their business. So yeah, let's, um, let's grab a few questions here from the field because it's blowing up. And then after that,
I'm gonna jump into a game of hot or not. All right, would you rather and then and then we'll continue this great combo we got so we've got real quick, we've got the let us know if there was any training center is likely to set up. Let's see, I'm not sure what that means.
Alan Smithson: Can you maybe raise that question? And we'll we'll get to it for sure. Sure. Sebastien Perez: Yeah. Okay, so Hi. Currently AR is missing a killer app. any personal thoughts? What might that app could be? Alan Smithson: Sure. I actually
wrote an article on this. You can Google it. It's on my medium channel. The the first killer app in my opinion, for augmented reality is virtual trials. So being able to use your phone to train a person but like it like a face filter, right? You know, you go on Snapchat and Facebook. You can do these crazy face filters. I
Sebastien Perez: Rolex. Alan Smithson: Yeah, so maybe you're trying to watch for virtual try-on for watches. There's a shoe one. glasses,
jewelry makeup. So I don't know if people know this. There's a company out of Toronto called ModiFace. ModiFace have 20 patents on virtual makeup try-ons. And so they were so successful with, L'Oreal bought the company. So now it's L'Oreal ModiFace. But I think makeup
try-on / virtual try-ons is the first killer app for augmented reality in my opinion. Sebastien Perez: Try before you buy. It make sense. Alan Smithson: And then there's IKEA Place. I want to see what
the furniture looks like in my space. And you know, we've got a ton of these different ones that we've been working on. So I think the first killer app is virtual try-ons, in my opinion.
Well, aside from Pokemon. Sebastien Perez: Haha! That's right. All right. So we go we've got "How do you deal with xR applications that requires security and privacy of data on platforms like Steam and Oculus?" Alan Smithson: Well, I don't know that you would, you would use Steam or Oculus for Enterprise right now. They just don't have the security protocols. What we've been recommending, and then this is a really good question, because the answer is we're working through it. Yeah, we don't know
yet. IT security protocols are very important. The Oculus Quest, for example, they're pushing out an enterprise version of it, which is like three times the price. But it, it comes with the enterprise security kind of baked into the back end. So I don't think it's
fully baked just yet, but it's getting there. So it's a really good question. It's one that people are actively trying to figure out and sort out because another big problem is Device Management, right? How do you, how do you manage these devices, and actually, I should send you guys, I'll send you a photo while we're talking here. My friend, Jeremy Dalton, from PwC UK, he did an event recently where they had 275 people in VR simultaneously. Wow. And the
problem is in it, and I've got a video of it. And what the problem was, was, after everybody did the thing, they put it down on the table, whatever, they had to collect them all. And there was literally a pile of headsets, like 275 headsets piled in a pile and one by one.
Sebastien Perez: What kind of headsets? They were using Pico G2s. The reason why they they actually did a full analysis and all the different three degrees of freedom. So for the people listening three degrees of freedom means you can look left, right, up and down, but you can't move in those directions. So you have no sense of kind of moving in the space. But it's good enough for you know, 360, video training, a lot of different things for that it's a really good, scalable thing. So they did a full analysis of all the different headsets in three degrees of freedom. And the Pico
jeetu, again, came up on top because they could push security protocols to it, they could push it up wildly. They didn't have to go through the Oculus store. So they chose that one as as their thing. And I think that's
to answer the question about security. I think you can bake it into headsets that aren't on Oculus, as well. Okay, interesting thing to consider. Alan Smithson: We're completely agnostic. So we use Oculus, we use, you know, Pico, we use HTC Vive, whatever is the best solution for the client at the time.
Sebastien Perez: Right, whatever, whatever gets the job done. That makes sense. All right. Well, let's jump into a quick game, a lightning round, if you will, of "Would You Rather?" So I'm going to show you a couple options that you and then you're going to let me know which one you would choose. So ready to kick it off here.
The first question is, "Would You Rather?" Considering the prices are both $499? Nreal Light or Oculus Quest? Alan Smithson: For what purpose? They're both completely different technologies, and you can't have your so the holy? So the question is... Sebastien Perez: if you had to take one home, let's say you had a choice, you have $499 in your pocket, they're definitely different applications. Alan Smithson: I would say Oculus Quest because there's, it's kind of there's more things you can do with it. So the
Nreal, just to unpack what that is, for people who don't know, the Nreal glasses are Augmented Reality Glasses with a pretty wide field of view, and are very lightweight, 88 grams, and then they have a cable that goes from the back down to your phone. So your phone becomes the processing unit for these glasses. There's nothing on them. Like literally it's a developer kit. So I think I need
both because it depends on the use case, if you need something for augmented reality where you need to see the real world, Nreal is an amazing pair of glasses. But the Oculus Quest is awesome. You got Beat Saber in the Quest, like, pshhhhh. Have you played Beat Saber? It's amazing! Sebastien Perez: Yeah, that makes sense. It's content. Alan Smithson: I want in, I want both. Sebastien Perez: Yeah, but it sounds like you said content is king. That's what it sounds
like. Alan Smithson: It's true. I'll take it the Quest if I'm going to use it and Nreal if we're building for it. Sebastien Perez: Yeah. So maybe, maybe a year from now you'll have a different answer.
Alan Smithson: True! There may be new stuff on it. Sorry. Sebastien Perez: So on that same trend. Apple Pro Stand for $1,000.
Alan Smithson: What is it? Apple Pro Stand? Sebastien Perez: Apple Pro Stand. So it's literally the stand to their new screen. Alan Smithson: Okay. [Laughs]
Sebastien Perez: So if you want to buy the display, I believe it's about five grand. Four or five grand and the stand has the magnetic connectors. Remember proprietary! Alan Smithson: Okay...
Sebastien Perez: It allows you to it's $1,000. Now, if you want to skip the...I'm just giving you the details on the product, if you want to skip the Pro Stand, you can get an adapter for your stand, but it's going to cost you I believe another $200. So either way, you got to spend $200 or $1,000. So I think that the Pro Stand sounds pretty good, but what about when compared to an Nreal and an Oculus Quest? Alan Smithson: No brainer man! Nreal and a Quest over a frickin' stand any day! You know what? Dammit! If you'd said the Mac Pro for 10 grand or whatever it is, I would have been like, "it's pretty badass." But I
would not pay $1,000 for a stand. I'm cheap, and I'm not doing that. Sebastien Perez: Well. So there you have it, you can either have the future of technology or you can have a stand. You choose
people. [Laughter] Alan Smithson: I love you Apple. You're amazing. Sebastien Perez: All right, let's keep going down here. So "Would You Rather?" Varjo or Vive Pro? Alan Smithson: Ooh. Vive Pro with eye tracking? Sebastien Perez: Sure, let's throw it in just to make it easy. Varjo XR-1 has eye
tracking as well. So let's say Vive Pro Eye versus Varjo XR-1? Alan Smithson: Varjo XR-1. I tried it at AWE, it is really badass. And the fact that I could probably sell it and buy three Vive Pros. Yeah. So. Sebastien Perez: Yeah, the price is unfair. But you know, I would
tell you that the Varjo blew my mind too. Alan Smithson: It's really good. So the way they did it, for the people listening Varjo, it's V-A-R-J-O. The way they did it was they actually did a fixed foviated rendering meaning the middle of the screen is higher resolution because you really only see high resolution in the middle of your vision anyway. If you want to test that, take your hand, look at it in your periphery and it's actually fuzzy, it's blurry. Because your
eyes don't, you're only basically your focus is only in the first center 5% of your vision. So what they did was they took that thought, and really just made a really high resolution screen in the middle, and then the screen on the outside is lower resolution. So it kind of blends out to that. And it's a really, really great use case. And the XR-1 has two
front facing cameras with 15 millisecond precision, for pass-through camera, augmented reality. There's a photo of me like I'm holding my hand like this looking at my hand and I'm, you know, waving it. It's really accurate. I really love it. Sebastien Perez: I agree it's beautiful Alan Smithson: So beautiful. Sebastien Perez: The pass-through going from full pass-through in color to AR to full VR. I mean, I had chills. You know, it's kind of hard to Alan Smithson: You're in a room explain.
looking at everybody. And all of a sudden, this car spawns itself in front of me. And now I'm sitting in a car with this photo real like I'm looking at a Volvo logo in it. The chrome is shining in the right light, yet the whole world changes around it is really impressive.
So you can disappear from your reality. So yeah, I I definitely agree. All right, this next one is going to be a callback to an old live stream that I had on LinkedIn live. And if you guys haven't seen it yet, make sure you go back to my activity and check it out, it's "AI vs AI" So the question here is a personal question. Amazon Alexa, or Google Home.
Google Home every day of the week man. Sebastien Perez: Ooooooh! Alan Smithson: I love it! We have both. And so for Christmas, we bought two because we have two daughters. And we bought an Alexa and Google Home. And we
actually sat down beside each other without them fighting each other. Yeah, we got Alexa to say, "Hey, Google" and then like, oh, yeah, we got them going. With Alexa, what I found is if you don't you have to be a Prime member, which is fine, you know, but they make you pay for everything. Whereas Google, "Google play some music" and it plays music. Whereas, you know, the Alexa in the place of music. "Well, you have to sign up for our...you know, our music."
Like, it's kind of a pain in the ass. Yeah, Google Home. I love it. Sebastien Perez: "Content is King" isn't it? I love it. "Content is king" There goes again, for the content part. Alright, content creators, you know that, you know, once the device exists, you know that there still has to be stuff built for it? And if there's not enough, then then he's not going to choose it on the next episode, of "Would You Rather?" With XR Ignite and content creators, we were really focused on kind of products and platforms. And what we realized
recently is that products and platforms are useless without the content. So we're opening it up to content creators and everybody because we need to have a full ecosystem. And that was a mistake of ours, we thought we could just, you know, work on the platforms and products. And then we realized that we can't we have to have the content creators, it's part of the ecosystem. So if creators
XRIgnite.com. You have to. Yeah, are out there, and you're making VR, 360 video, anything to do with virtual reality. photogrammetry whatever you're doing, sign up at XRIgnite.com.
That's right. all right. Here's the last question on "Would you rather?" then we're going to jump into "Hot or Not?" The future of retail is AR or VR? Alan Smithson: That's a really good question. Future of retail. Hmm, I think AR because I think what's gonna happen is Apple's gonna have some AR glasses that come out in the next little bit.
What's gonna happen is they're gonna be I think we're gonna have this convergence of AR and VR together so that your glasses do both. But I think AR is going to be the future of retail because with the pass through camera, or with the camera not pass through, but with a camera, I can now look at a pair of shoes. And with object recognition, it can tell me where you know, I can buy those shoes right on by looking at somebody's feet. So the future retail is not going to be going to store it's not going to be looking at these racks of shoes and be like, I love that backpack. Look at the backpack.
I go buy now when it comes to my Amazon shipment. Sebastien Perez: That makes sense, contextual, contextual order. Alan Smithson: And I think that's, you know, really what it comes down to. And there's a company that pitched at the startup pitch day that I hosted at AWS last week, and they actually won, it was called lex.ai x.ai. And they have image
recognition for websites. So for example, you have a website, and you pick an image on it, and it'll show you where to buy it. It's really, really useful. So I think AR for retail, because it's contextual.
Sebastien Perez: I think that's a great answer. And it doesn't make sense. Yeah. You know, you want to walk into someone's house, you know, where did you buy that and Alan Smithson: look at it wink or, you know, whatever, that Yeah, gaze at it. All the all the glasses in the next five years will have eye tracking too. So you know, when you have
eye tracking, you can have this kind of really, really powerful device stuck on your face. And hopefully, I don't know if you guys want to watch something dystopian and weird. Look at "Hyper Reality"...
Sebastien Perez: ...by Keiichi Matsuda. Yeah. So as the previous futurist, for Leap Motion. Alan Smithson: yeah. So I met
him finally at AWE week. So he's a legend. And I couldn't believe how young he was. I don't know
if he maybe is old, but I don't know, he looked very young. But it's interesting because the community manager manager from from Leap Motion, and people don't know what Leap Motion is, it's a little sensor, you know, but the half the size of a phone with some sensors in the tracks, hand motions for industrial applications. And they just got they just merged with another company called UltraHaptics, UltraHaptics out of UK. And
UltraHaptics is a using ultrasonic waves to give you a tactile feel in midair. So imagine tracking the hand but also feeling something like a nut knob that doesn't exist, but you can feel it and turn it and move it. So I think that combinations are really going to be great. And Alex Cogan, who is the community manager, and marketing for Leap Motion is also our community manager and marketing for XR. Look at that,
what a coincidence. Go back to Hyper Reality. Check out hyper reality, go on YouTube type in Hyper Reality, it's insane. But
I think the user experience of Hyper Reality is nuts. Like it's when your whole world is hijacked by digital. I honestly don't think that's where it's gonna go, what I think will happen is the UX will be a little different, where some things that are activated by AR will just highlight slightly very slightly highlights, you know, that if you chose to look at that, maybe wink or whatever the interaction is that it will give you more rich content. So you'll be able to decide which content you want in your world.
I think it's got to be that way or the otherwise we're just going to get bombarded by crap. And I don't think people will go for that. Sebastien Perez: Yeah, I think it's going to be a combination of sensors, like, you know, you know, for proximity, and then also location information. So
you get contextual information, and not when you don't need it. And I think the old classical computer, is, we're used to having multiple windows, and that's kind of what that future is the paints with the Hyper Reality. But yeah, I think that AI will decide what to show you when before you know you want it based off of where you are and what your habits are. So but yeah, and actually quick comment on that last part about the Apple headset. So there's, there's a rumor and it's allegedly, okay, allegedly, I repeat, this is not a fact. But allegedly, it's a VR headset with pass-through not an AR headset.
Alan Smithson: Something to think about. Sebastien Perez: Hmm, well, à la Varjo perhaps. Alan Smithson: Interesting. So that makes sense from a couple of different reasons. So a couple years ago, Apple bought it I don't agree with that, actually, we'll see. Apple
bought a company called moto and the title was a an augmented reality platform very similar to kind of euphoria with you know, planar tracking and object recognition and image recognition. So they bought Metaio and they turned it into ARKit. Metaio was the framework for ARKit, and that's how that came about. But they also bought a company called VRvana out of Montreal. VRvana, the only thing they really solved was occlusion at a distance. So it is standing
in front of you And something walks in front of or behind CEO like, you can tell. But imagine augmented reality, it doesn't know how far that is. And like, they had solved that problem using single cameras instead of depth sensors. So that's why they bought Ravana, which gave them the ability to create a really robust I guess, positional tracking and opposite. You know what I'm looking back. Yeah. Yeah,
Sebastien Perez: yeah. And I think I think that the ARKit is incredibly impressive. Their new updates is like...woo! It gives me excited. That's like an instant update over millions of experiences with occlusion and all of that is really great stuff. All right, well, let's jump into this game of "Hot or Not?" Hot, or not! Hot like Ignite? Like something hot on the way? I don't know. We'll
have to see. So okay. Alan Smithson: It's on fire! Sebastien Perez: It's on fire! LinkedIn Live is on fire! Alan Smithson: How many people we got viewing right now? Sebastien Perez: We are burning down the booth. Let me check. So it looks like we've got in the 60s live, but we've got a ton of people participating in the comments. Alan Smithson: Awesome. Well, hi, everybody! Sebastien Perez: Awesome. Thank you guys for tuning in. This is
Alan's first LinkedIn Live stream. Alan Smithson: Yeah, I need to be a LinkedIn Live person so that I can stream from these types of things, but I guess I'm not that important because I live in Canada. Oh, it's a Canadian thing. Totally, a Canadian thing! [Unintelligible] I had to fly to Vegas to get my Magic Leap. Sebastien Perez: Ah, man. All
right. Well, LinkedIn pay attention to Canada, there's a lot of things happening there. Alright, so Hot or Not? Inside-out Tracking. Alan Smithson: Hot. Obviously, if you're without inside out...For people don't know what
that is inside out tracking is using cameras on the device to track where you are. So the Vive Focus+, and people don't know this, it's on, it's actually on the podcast with Alvin Wang Graylin on XR for Business Podcast that I own. But the Vive Focus+, you can have up to 40 devices in a space the size of a football field, all tracked with only two external sensors. So it's using the inside-out tracking, and the external sensors to triangulate up to 40 people in the size of a football field. Sebastien Perez: Wow! Alan Smithson: Now, think about the things you could do with that! Sebastien Perez: Amazing. Alan Smithson: It's cool.
Imagine like, you know, laser tag at scale, and a football field, you just rent out a football field and have laser tag with your friends in VR. Sebastien Perez: I mean, the reason why I bring it up is obviously some people are very upset about the Rift S and the direction that they took that. And also, you know, for the record, really, they're still using Alan Smithson: But they're still using sensors on the Rift S. Sebastien Perez: Yeah, they're using sensors, but they're they're not using the base stations that you can kind, link up three sensors and put one behind you. So nothing is occluded. And your tracking is
like perfect. I think that's more maybe a gamer. Alan Smithson: HTC nailed it with their base stations are much better. Anyway, I don't want to get into a battle with Oculus. Sebastien Perez: Yes, sure.
Exactly. Okay. "Hot or Not?" Volumetric Video Alan Smithson: Not. I think Volumetric Video has a very limited scope. And it's very expensive still. And to be
honest. There's not a lot of use cases for it. In my opinion, right now. We are investing in a
company called VRAVO!, it's like Bravo with a V in the beginning, vravo.com. And what they've done is they've allowed you to take a video so I can actually take a video right here on my phone, and cut out the background and drop me into AR VR all automatically. And because it's a 2d video, it's cheap to do.
But what they did their secret sauce is they've kind of feathered the edges a little bit and added a drop shadow. So it looks like volumetric video. And if you're doing a presentation with somebody, when was last time you're talking or watching a presentation, you walk behind somebody to look at the backside, right? Never. So
volumetric video while, pretty cool. It's got to drop in price. We're like we're talking like $10,000 a second kind of thing right now. It's crazy. You've got 8i, Microsoft's Meta Stage, and you've got Intel. So there are people working on it. I just don't see it right now.
Sebastien Perez: That's a great answer. And in a way, I was hoping you would give that answer because it's an easy one to say volumetric's the future. But if you want to be realistic, it's the future. It's not the current. Alan Smithson: It's not here right now. But there is cool
things being done with it. You know, there's music videos being shot. And you know, I think what's going to be interesting about that is that, as artists start to push the limits because it all starts with cool artists doing cool stuff. Really let's be honest and then Anything that we do, it's always the musicians and artists that end up doing the coolest shit. So I think it'd be interesting to see how artists start using this technology so that you're not watching a corporate presentation, you're actually interacting and moving through the space. I think that's really
when it gets exciting. Sebastien Perez: I totally agree. I think we need more creatives in advanced technologies. I'm not gonna limit it to VR and 100% AR, I think it's I think we need creative thinkers in AI and blockchain as well. In 3d printing and the like, you know, I mean, so these are all new new superpowers, the system super powered creatives in there.
Alan Smithson: As of yesterday, I think I saw it yesterday. Beat Saber partnered with... Imagine Dragons. I'm on you,
man. Don't worry about it. I got you. You're like sucking it out of my brain! That's pretty cool. Right? You know, you've got a killer app, this big VR game that's just awesome. You're slicing beats, but now they're partnering with artists to make it even better. It's that's the
next. So I don't know if people know. But I used to be a DJ and I invented a touchscreen DJ controller. Yeah, the touchscreen. Tell us
more about the touchscreen. Sure. So in 220 10, we launched Emulator, which was the first multi touch real time application for Windows 8. Microsoft took it around and showed it all their different conferences and stuff. But we got to work with Linkin Park.
Infected Mushroom, Armin Van Buren, amazing artists. Infected Mushroom, they created a complete new system. So they created a completely new touch screen interface that controlled all of their MIDI triggers. So they could trigger things from this huge touchscreen that's see-through so the audience could see it. But it was amazing
to watch what artists did with it. And we work with some lighting artists, who took the the touchscreen interface. And instead of DJing with it or performing with it through music, they actually controlled all their lighting from it. And I thought it was really, really impressive. So I think bringing the artists to the table for technology is essential. Sebastien Perez: Absolutely.
Alan Smithson: We're actually we're starting to kind of move pivot our main company MetaVRse to focus on training. And one of the things that we're building in as our secret sauce is we're gamifying it for one but we're also bringing in storytellers to help tell the training in a better more immersive, fun way. Because let's be honest, we're competing with Fortnite games, we're competing with triple A video games. Why are we still showing training and like boring shitty PowerPoints? So we got to get it exciting for people I think that will help people buy into training. Sebastien Perez: All right, I got three more "Hot or Not?"s for you. And the next one is
"Hot or Not?" Folding Phones. So that's phones with folding screens. Alan Smithson: Yeah, i'm going to say No. I've seen this thing come and go forever. I think the
folding screens on purses or on fashion is really awesome. Sebastien Perez: Like Louis Vuitton? Alan Smithson: Yeah, like imagine having a purse. In your purse, the top of it, I saw it at CES and the top of the purse was a screen and you can program it to be whatever you want. I thought that was really cool.
But a phone that folds. It's kind of gimmicky and really no use for it. There used to be a computer and I can't remember what it was called. But there
was a computer that when you open it up both sides were screens there was no keyboard it was two screens. And we programmed it with Emulator so we had like touchscreens on both sides. And it never went anywhere. So i'm gonna say Not. Sebastien Perez: I'm with you on that one. Not a fan and especially for the price I think that they're asking for like what 10 grand or something. Man I'd rather get two Nreal Light's and two Oculus Quest's and start a damn business. Alright, so
"Hot or Not?" XR for Business. Alan Smithson: This is a trick question. It's hot AF! Sebastien Perez: Hot AF? I think we need to have that as an option! Hot AF! Alan Smithson: So here's the thing. Everybody, all the investors, a lot of VCs and a lot of investors got into the early and thank god they did because they catapulted this industry but what they people fail to realize and this is why we started an enterprise first, enterprise is leading this technology I can go down to the floor at LiveWorx right now. And
there is probably two dozen HoloLens v1's, they're RealWear headsets. There's I saw HoloLens v2 down there, like there's a dozen Oculus Go's, there's five or six HTC Vive's, all in business, and all making a difference. So definitely hot. It's the future and it's what's going to fund the development moving forward of all these technologies. Sebastien Perez: Okay, last one. [laughs] "Hot or Not?" XR Ignite. Alan Smithson: Nice, we even have a little flame, I'm gonna say it's hot, as well. And the
reason why I think it's hot, you know, our mission is is very simple and straightforward. Hyper accelerate XR for business and education. So our goal is not to, you know, make a gazillion dollars, our goal is to foster the growth and communication of everybody in this industry to work with businesses and push it forward.
So I think it's very hot for the whole XR community. Sebastien Perez: That's awesome. Well, all right. I think that that's a good game of "Hot or Not?" and I'm going to wrap it up with a question here for you. What advancement would take your business to the next level? Alan Smithson: What advancement...would...oh!
Sebastien Perez: It's open ended Alan Smithson: I need to think on purpose. about it for a second... So what advancements do I think... Computer Vision, so artificial intelligence with computer vision, being able to rapidly identify images and objects. So one of the things that that is kind of lacking right now is object recognition. Really, really robust object recognition for augmented reality. So being
able to look at something, and it automatically recognizes that thing shows me how to fix it, or whatever, whatever, you know, whatever I wanted to do. But I think we're still early days on object recognition. I think if we can catapult that using AI, I think will really, really help. So computer vision and machine learning advancements will really help this whole industry grow fast. Also, Field of View
in AR like Nreal. So Field of View in AR. Sebastien Perez: Yeah, I agree. Awesome. Well, it has been awesome. We learned a lot today.
And I think that we've had a great time. I wanted to kind of roll out the red carpet for you. If there's any thing else you wanted to let the people know out there things that they may not be considering. What message
do we leave them on? Alan Smithson: I think the the message that Jonathan Moss from Sprint yesterday, left everybody with and then John Cunningham from Disney, the message was simple. Start now, make mistakes Just start now. If you are runn ng a company and you're not usin virtual and augmented reali y for your training, at le st, like at the very minimum yo r training, then you're going to get bowled the fuck over. Beca
se here's what's happening. Big ompanies all realize the val e of this Macy's, Walmart Boeing, these big companies a e all starting to come in. And thank God that they're sharing their information with eve ybody, because now there's eal evidence to show tha this works. And it's real y effective. And compa ies...It's like the web, if yo don't if you don't have a we site now while it's useless.
If you go back 10 years when you re like, "Oh, well, this web thing may or may not take off. It's coming! And it's re olutionising business And it's also creating real usiness value immediately. You k ow. What other technology ca decrease your training t mes by 70%? Call it 7%! You kno , if you if you're working for b g enterprise, and you get a 7% improvement on anything ..Amazing. We're not tal ing 7% we're talking 20%, 30%, 40% improvements across the oard. So start now. Start maki
g mistakes, partner with s mebody on XR Ignite so that we an get this community going and really just start investing in his technology. You don't ha e to spend a lot of money to tart now. Sebastien Perez: How can startups get involved with XR Ignite? Alan Smithson: Just sign up on there's a tab for startups in the top and bottom. Just sign up
there. What we're going to be doing is we're starting to vet them and then put them into a database where we're going to take the companies and kind of marry them together. So just sign up an XRIgnite.com Sebastien Perez: All right, there you have it, everybody. So we've got XR for Business, the podcast. We've got MetaVRse and now we have XR Ignite. And we've
got the great Alan Smithson here on LinkedIn live and so glad to have you. Alan Smithson: Live from LiveWorx! LiveWorx 2019! So this is the big collab Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you liked what you saw today make sure you like, share, comment, subscribe and all the like. Make sure you follow Alan Smithson he's got some cool future tech content for you. I reached the limit of LinkedIn but if you add me, you can at least follow me. There's a cap
30,000 people on LinkedIn. I don't get it. Sebastien Perez: Yeah, I'm not there yet to the cap. So I'm not as big as Alan, but I'm trailing. I'm about three or four thousand from reaching the cap, so you can only follow him.
You can actually connect with me and make sure you do that if want to stay tuned to future. Alan Smithson: I'm gonna go trip out at LiveWorx because I'm full of some Digital Acid. Sebastien Perez: Haha! Yeah, we're on a trip right now. And so make sure that you check us out next week. We're gonna have more guests. We're gonna have
more stuff. More fun stuff. We're trying to make the future fun. So stop being so damn serious. You know what I mean? Alan Smithson: The Digital Acid! Sebastien Perez: Yeah! The Digital Acid! All right, Alan. We'll see you next time and enjoy that conference.
Alan Smithson: Thanks very much guys. Peace!
2021-01-12