SH*T I SAW AT SXSW

From sensor-filled cat ears and beyond….

Last week I attended my first SXSW in Austin thanks to an opportunity to join Oakley and Intel on stage to talk on “The Future of Coaching with AR Device Design”.

On top of meeting some incredibly smart people and getting my fill of BBQ (so much BBQ), I spent a lot of time demoing as much tech as possible.

Since SXSW is “a festival celebrating the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries” I thought instead of getting all serious and breaking down the trends I saw at the show in this post, I’d just list some of the seriously awesome AR, VR and wearable tech I came across both in and outside the Convention Center. A lot of this is fun, but IMHO we are in need of more experimentation and fun in these nascent spaces. It was good to see both large and small organizations pushing the boundaries with this tech.

Sony puts the “W” in SXSW with the Wow Center

Wow is the right word for what Sony put together at SXSW 2017. It’s experience center, which was situated directly across from the Convention Center, was filled with AR, VR and wearable tech — giving a sneak peek into Sony’s vision of the future of music, gaming and entertainment.

The cyber gym VR cave setup I tried first was like a page out of Tron. Riding a stationary bike equipped with sensors, Sony gamified what is typically a boring gym exercise by having me lean left and right while biking through a galactic tunnel to collect the power balls that were on my journey.

Cycling was just one of many sports Sony was augmenting at SXSW. It’s AR projection climbing wall was turning attendees into superheroes using Sony’s moving projector technology.

The Spiderman projection wall wasn’t the only experience heightening visitors senses. Sony was also showing off its Synesthesia Suit which let wearers dive into the world of the award-winning PSVR game Rez Infinite with a full body suit with 26 actuators synching to the gameplay while simultaneously lit up with LEDs.

Sony’s VR Tag experience at the back of the center was toying with our sense of sight by using VR headsets to give each tag player the ability to see through all players eyes at once. I got to try this one first-hand and it was a disorienting experience to try to find other players while being able to look through your own eyes and the other three players eyes at the same time.

But it was the social VR game using the HTC Vive, GoldRushVR, that packed the most “Wow” for me in the Sony Center. Leveraging VR backpacks, me and two other players entered a world of hidden treasure where we needed to work together to bash walls and chests and suck up gold with our magic vacuums. Although the tracking wasn’t always the greatest, it was cool to be able to see one another in the virtual world. But what really took the game to the next level was riding a mine cart between levels which felt extremely real thanks to the motion simulator and huge fan which Sony setup for this part of the experience.

Japanese startups bring the magic

Arthur C. Clarke said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So I appreciate a good project that shows just how magical our tech has become and there was one area in the Trade Show at SXSW which was like visiting knockturn alley in a Harry Potter book — the Japanese startup pavilion.

From cat ears equipped with an accelerometer to move with your body’s motion…

…to using a Kinect to turn art into a moving picture…

… the Japanese startups in the pavilion were illustrating how this next wave of computing can augment our real world to make it a living wonderland.

One of my favorite experiences was in Japanese ad giant, Hakuhodo’s prototype area. Using a HoloLens and Thalmic Lab’s Myo, the experience turned me into a psychic mastermind. While wearing the HoloLens on my face and the EMG armband Myo on my arm, I was asked to concentrate on an energy shield in front of me which was protecting a stack of bricks (like Jenga). I then had to use my Myo arm to shoot a burst of magic three times to break the shield before issuing one final pulse to the bricks causing them to explode — quite literally! Check out the full video below.

Google and Levis will make your clothing look dumb

The most exciting wearable tech announcement at SXSW this year was the much-anticipated debut of the Google & Levis connected Commuter Trucker Jacket. Announced over a year ago as part of Google’s Project Jacquard, this jacket for cyclists is made with conductive fabric to turn the left sleeve into a controller. I got to try the jacket out at the Levis Outpost at the event including giving the tech a spin with the connected app which lets you configure specific actions like turning your music on and off or having the time spoken by a voice assistant by swiping left or right or tapping on the sleeve. The jacket sleeve also features haptic feedback which is used for navigation which is a great for when you are on the go and don’t want to pull out your phone.

Hitting Zero Gravity with Tom Cruise

One of my first experiences at SXSW was The Mummy VR demo which was a companion experience to the upcoming Tom Cruise reboot of this popular movie franchise. While sitting in a positron pod equipped with Subpac haptics, I put on a Rift to take a ride with Tom as he walked me through how he and the film crew achieved one of the most complex scenes in the movie, floating in mid-air when a plane goes down after being attacked by what looked like a million birds. The Mummy crew achieved this by actually filming this scene while in a plane that was free falling and the positron/Supbac pods combined with the Rift were trying to make me feel like I had also beaten gravity. While this experience wasn’t as immersive as some of the other VR demos I did at SXSW, I walked away really digging the Positron pods, both in design and functionality, which are in use in IMAX’s new VR arcades.

Robots are better cowboys than I’ll ever be

There were a ton of amazing demos that I haven’t listed here in this post. You can check them all out on my Instagram if you are craving for some more. But I’ll leave you with this arm robot I stumbled upon that caught my eye because it was rocking a cowboy hat — I mean, we were in Austin, Texas. This little buddy was picking up beer bottles and, well, just watch it to see its mad skills.