Mixed Reality: Digital meets Virtual (Boulder Startup Week 2016)
I’ve been pretty vocal with my predictions that augmented reality will fundamentally change how we collaborate, so I was eager to check out a session with the Colorado-based ‘spatial computing company’ Occipital at Boulder Startup Week 2016.
The session, entitled Mixed Reality: Digital meets Virtual, consisted of three presentations by speakers from Occipital, followed by Q&A. It was a great overview into some of the more practical considerations in planning for a mixed reality world.
First off, Computer Vision Engineer Brandon Minor shared his perspectives on how mixed reality is actually a more challenging problem to solve than virtual reality, because you have to account for dynamic input from the real world. This seems obvious as I write it, but it hadn’t been something I’d necessarily been conscious of before. I had been focused on not having to create an entire virtual world, when in fact a VR space is a controlled environment, so the designer can selectively create constraints within the environment.
Although I went to a LOT of VR and AR sessions at SXSW, I have to say that the guys from Occipital helped me gain a much deeper appreciation for some of the considerations in designing and developing an immersive experience. In fact, that was called out as an intentional term.
“Immersion is key. Otherwise this is just a video game”.
Brandon shared his recipe for immersion:
- Interaction and gestures
- Realistic rendering
- An understanding and utilization of the physical space
Hardware Engineer Evan Fletcher called out two considerations to create an ideal VR experience:
- Experience-complete
- Complete illusion
Basically: the individual shouldn’t come across any gaps in the experience, and there should be some realism (you don’t walk through walls in real life, you shouldn’t be able to in a virtual world). This led to a conversation about haptics and the implications of a virtual reality system being able to do you harm if you do something stupid!
He did dig into some of the more technical limitations of designing an experience-that whole “speed of light” constant needs to be accounted for-which did little for me other than to drive home that this is an industry still in its infancy, for all the hype we’re hearing about!
The discussion reminded me of something I too often forget: designing the experience is actually the most critical piece. Just because companies like Occipital or Microsoft Hololens and Google Project Tango are starting to release dev kits for AR doesn’t mean just anyone can design a great AR app. The focus needs to be on the problem to be solved, a deep appreciation of human cognition, and how we can present an elegant (immersive) solution. For this to truly take off, there will have to be a new wave of designers and developers who understand the nuances of this new interface.
Occipital makes both hardware and software, because they recognize the two complement each other. They don’t play along every level of the value chain yet, though, as they focus more on the development side: working with the sensors to create the 3D models. They aren’t digging into the consumer-side (yet?). That could definitely be intentional as they remain agnostic as they let the big HMD players battle it out.
The session wrapped up with some bold predictions from Occipital founder Vikas Reddy. Most notable was his prediction that augmented reality displays would get traction with consumers within the next 5–10 years. Sure, he has a vested interest in that happening, but given his time in the space (Occipital went through Techstars in 2008), he has watched the evolution of technology and consumer expectations and I’ll be rooting for him and the whole Occipital team to see if it all comes true!
