Dive into Google’s World of Extended Reality with Melbourne’s First XR Meetup
Team PHORIA were super stroked to host Melbourne’s inaugural Extended Reality (XR) Meetup on Friday, 13th of July. It was the first in our unique series of immersive technology-themed meetups, tasked with raising the shared capital of XR knowledge and expertise across Australia.
We couldn’t think of a more fitting way to open the doors to our new home PHORIA Ground Control than to celebrate recent industry advances in the XR space. You don’t have to look far these days to notice the incredible progress being made in computer vision and shared experiences, combining the virtual and physical worlds that serve to extend our reality.
First things first, what is XR?
Google envision XR and define it is as an Immersive Computing Spectrum. Where these new tools and technologies dance is between the real world and a computer-generated one. 💃
Now we’ve set that straight, let’s dive into what we covered at the Meetup.
What better way to kick off the proceedings than to welcome the talented James Birney, a Product Manager on ARCore at Google, to our HQ.
James covered some very exciting developments in AR at Google.
“There’s this general question of how do you get a millennial’s attention, or even a non-millennial who is addicted to their phone. This is a really hard challenge. But, we think AR is potentially a really good solution to that… There’s not many things in life where you can double the cognitive engagement just by changing the medium.”
It’s been fascinating to witness the increase in quantifiable evidence, clearly demonstrating the positive power that AR and VR can have in day-to-day life. Even performing a task as simple as using a measuring tape can be turned into an engaging experience, as James illustrated with Google Measure.
“One of the ways Google talks about AR is that it can be useful and it can be fun… When a phone is walking [with you] around the room, in order to do AR the phone has to understand the room. As a side effect, that also means we have the ability to be the best tape measure ever. There is an app that we just recently launched called Measure. You can measure out any three-dimensional space that you want and you can even do volumes. Beyond that you can also place furniture. AR is really good at placing furniture.”
James also shared some of the great wins for the ARCore team. One such win is the activation of Augmented Images from existing 2D images. With this activation, the ARCore team have shown that it’s possible to tell an even deeper story with AR.
Beyond that, James honed in on Cloud Anchor API and how Cloud Anchors elevate shared experience even further with the ability to extend beyond Android, connecting with iOS devices via the AR Cloud.
Happiness is best when shared!
If you want to discover more about Google’s Cloud Anchors, we highly recommend watching his keynote presentation from Google I/O ’18.
What do these new tools mean for me?
After James, we heard from one of our gifted shareVOX developers, Samuel Tate. He discussed the challenges and rewards of co-creating an app enabled with Cloud Anchors. The amazing feat was actually the speed at which we were able bring a shared AR app to life — only 30 days.
To prove that shareVOX isn’t just smoke and mirrors, we pulled off a live demo. It highlighted that the ability to create new worlds with friends has never been easier. Everybody got out of their seats and involved in the fun. It was great to see users quickly downloading the app and jumping in on that action instantly.
Topping it all off, we ran several installations around the space, designed to explore the idea that creating immersive experiences in XR is not only reliant on using different display types, but also on discovering new ways to interact.
In true Melbourne fashion, one of our installations was designed to take the human body through four seasons, reacting directly to physical movement. Another installation showed how Poly API enables you to interact with 3D digital information using hand gestures. Projected AR & Holograms, sound like fun?
Nestled alongside was a feature on DREAM3D, one of our research programs investigating the potential of VR to create calming, relaxing environments in hospitals, reducing anxiety and drug use whilst improving wellbeing.
As Sam summed it up, the installations were “pretty much direct UX testing of hand-based Minority Report style interactions and seasonal dancing.” 👌
But for those of you who missed the XR Meetup, don’t fret! Thanks to our friends at Rush Productions, we were able to film James’ presentation, which covers these talking points:
- How to build social experiences with ARCore Cloud Anchors.
- The evolution of technology into immersive computing.
- Key industries that will benefit from new tools, including retail, entertainment/social, gaming and AR tours.
- What’s next in Web XR — A.K.A. in-browser AR experiences.
- Future integrations within the Google ecosystem (Google Poly, Tilt-Brush & Google Blocks).
Check it out:
An extended thank you to all those who attended. We hope to see you all, and many more, at the next XR Meetup (Friday, 14th of September).
— Team PHORIA
For those interested, shareVOX is now available on Google Play & iOS. Your feedback is welcomed.
If you want to hear more of what Team PHORIA get up to and our upcoming projects like shareVOX, check out our socials:
// YouTube
You can also go across to our website, or drop a line to our CEO directly: trent@phoria.com.au.
