Tech and AI: 3. VR, AR and the Metaverse

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Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Welcome to Understand Tech and AI, the podcast that takes you back to basics to explain, explore, unpick, and demystify the technology that's becoming part of our everyday lives.

I'm Spencer Kelly from BBC Click and you can find all of these episodes on BBC Sounds.

I'd like you to imagine something.

Imagine strapping on a big eye mask over your face.

Now it completely covers your eyes and inside is a screen which fills your vision.

It's showing a forest scene.

You can see the trees swaying in front of of you.

You can hear the wind rustling in the leaves.

Now, the next bit is important because the screen doesn't just show a fixed view of the forest.

As you turn your head to the left, you can see the trees on your left.

As you tilt your head upwards, you can see the sky.

Even though you're not really there, this headset knows which way your head is facing and shifts what it shows you accordingly.

And it really does feel like you're in the forest.

Today we'll be talking virtual reality, along with a couple of other terms that we'll meet along the way.

You will hear us mention augmented reality and the metaverse too.

And here to help us understand these worlds is David Ripperts, President of the UK's Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Association.

David, welcome.

Thank you.

What sort of environments might you enjoy?

What kind of VR experiences are there out there?

Well, VR is very wide, actually, and it's existed for a long time.

I think if you unpick consumer versus company or enterprise, there are different use cases there.

So, on the consumer side, it's about video games and it's about, like you said, being immersed in a virtual environment.

Or you can go to exotic places you've never been before.

And you can imagine, as a consumer, you could also go and shop perhaps and buy things virtually.

You can interact with friends as well in virtual reality.

You can be represented by an avatar.

Remind us what an avatar is.

An avatar would be a virtual representation of a character.

It could look exactly like you if you designed it to look like you, or it could look like nothing like you.

It could be an alien, an animal, or whatever it is.

But basically, you would be in the skin of the avatar of that 3D person.

And this is what will roam around the 3D world.

Yes, you'll be walking around, and people will see you as this representation of you, but it's virtual.

And on the company or sort of enterprise side, you can imagine that people train with VR, they can learn new things because you can recreate environments virtually, which is a lot less expensive to do than if you've had to build it out in the real life.

Imagine people training to be nurses or training to be surgeons.

Traditionally, they have to practice on mannequins that are very expensive to produce or even bodies.

That's quite scary.

With virtual reality, you're simulating the operating room, you're simulating that environment or the body.

So you could practice on that virtual body.

It's giving you feedback.

And that's a great way to learn.

And you can do that with lots of people at the same time as well.

And it really is immersive, isn't it?

I mean, this is the point of it, that it's all you can see.

And I think that alone takes you almost all of the way into the experience.

Yeah, the whole point is you are at home in your living room, you're in an office, you're wherever you want to be, and you put these goggles on, and it just erases the world around you.

You're just immersed in a completely new world.

One of the other applications is, as you say, immersive experiences, where you are in a, it feels like a real forest, but it is actually a real forest that's that's been filmed using 360 cameras, special cameras with lenses that can see all the way around them.

So as you turn your head, the camera has already filmed what's behind you.

I actually used to work for YouTube and we had studios and we did a lot of 360, so what you film all around you with special cameras.

And I think from places that are recreated like a jungle where you can really see a gorilla looking at you in front of you to documentaries that have been done actually in Syria and other places.

And you can really feel you're in that environment.

I think it creates a lot of empathy as well if you can be immersed in that real recreated environment.

Let's pause there for a second if we may.

Virtual reality has been around longer than you might think and our resident technology historian Dr.

James Sumner from the University of Manchester picks up the story although I doubt he could pick up the first headset.

In 1968, researchers at the University of Utah first built a system with miniature television strapped to the user's face, showing computer-generated objects that moved around in response to their head movements.

It was slow, it was basic, and it was held up by a big mechanical arm bolted to the ceiling, but it was also clearly what we'd recognize as a virtual reality headset.

Part of the appeal of virtual world technology was that it was hugely familiar from science fiction.

For obvious reasons, the VR of sci-fi tended not to be ultra-realistic, but deliberately weird and symbolic.

The name Matrix crops up surprisingly often.

Doctor Who introduced it in 1976 to describe a repository of Time-Lord knowledge which appears as a hallucinatory dreamscape with distinct elements of a clay quarry near Reigate.

William Gibson's cyberpunk Matrix of the 1980s is a hyper-modern neon metropolis which hackers can literally break into to access.

Most famously, the 1999 film The Matrix turns the concept on its head, with what looks like reality revealed as a giant simulation hiding an uncomfortable truth.

Back in our world, work has been progressing secretly behind closed doors on the first practical application of virtual reality, elaborate video games.

The 1990s VR boom turned out to be short-lived.

Motion sickness was a constant problem for the users.

A virtual world without headsets was Second Life, launched in 2003, but by the late 2010s, use was falling off and it felt like another craze whose time had been and gone.

That was Dr.

James Sumner.

Now, David, there is a difference, and I would argue, more practical use.

of this technology, not virtual reality, but augmented reality.

Can you explain the difference?

Yeah, the big difference is virtual reality.

You're immersed in a totally closed-off environment.

It's not the real world.

It's always virtual around you.

Whereas with augmented reality, you can see the real world and you can overlay content.

Content appears around you in the real world.

So you could use your phone, look at the phone's screen, see your environment with the phone's camera, but then you'll have magical things appear on that screen.

From a consumer, a user angle, they might shop, they might look at themselves on their phones, for example, and try on virtual makeup or try on virtual glasses and Try different models order them directly from there on the company side companies might use it for instructional things So if you work on a factory or if you work in a store you could have instructions on where to replace things and move things around you can get headsets that are augmented reality glasses and these are basically transparent glasses so i would be able to see you and the studio or my living room but then there are graphics that are superimposed over what you can see.

That's right.

They're quite heavy-duty, and I would say they're still quite a nascent technology.

They haven't nailed it yet, have they?

Yes, so the augmented reality glasses are quite big, they're quite heavy, they're quite clunky, and not as sexy as pure glasses that you put on on the street.

So I think that's why it's mainly companies using them.

What kind of information might I want in augmented reality as I walk down the street or I'm at home or talking to other people?

What might I want to see in front of my eyes?

Well, you can think of the things that you already do right now.

So if you're walking down the street, you might be in front of a restaurant and you're feeling hungry.

You want to get more information, and you go on a certain website to look at the menu or see what it looks like inside.

With augmented reality, you might look at the building.

and you're going to get all these photos of the food, the ratings showing up in front of you on the screen.

Beyond that, you can navigate through the streets as well.

I'll give you arrows that tell you to go left or right or whatnot.

Even you might see someone and you might get information about that person that appears magically above them.

I tell you, I'm total with names, so that would help me.

I could look at you and see all your information floating above your head.

Yeah, so that's something that could happen.

I mean, if you're at home, or even if you go to the supermarket and you want to do a special recipe tonight, it might show you which food you need, that they will appear in front of you, and it might give you a navigation in the supermarket to find that food.

You collect it, you buy it, you go home, and then all of a sudden you'll get instructions appearing in front of you on the glasses, showing you what to chop, what to put in the oven, what order to do it in, and all the instructions.

so basically you don't have to pick up a phone you don't have to pick up a menu you don't have to do anything with your hands the information is just there in front of you yeah you're hands free to cut all the food safely in 2014 i went to nasa and i saw the perseverance mars rover years before it was actually built sat there in the room full scale it was at a 3d rendering of it and we were able to walk around it wearing microsoft holo lens and we were able to see this in augmented reality and i have to say if you give yourself to to it, it is still quite immersive.

It is an amazing experience to see imaginary objects in the room with real people.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it saves a lot of effort as well.

Imagine someone wanted to show you a car, they'd have to move it to where you are if you don't go to a car showroom.

With the glasses, it's like putting the car in front of you in your driveway.

Okay, I'm going to say a word to you now, David, and I'd like you to discuss it.

The metaverse.

What do we mean by the metaverse and how does it connect to these VR and AR headsets?

Yes, I think people might mean a lot of different things with the word metaverse, and that's why it can get confusing.

Most of the people, when they say metaverse, they think about a virtual environment.

They think about a place you are roaming in and you are represented by an avatar, for example.

And you might be gaming in that environment.

You might be working with other people or you might do practical things.

So just like on the internet, you might apply for a visa and go travel somewhere.

You could actually go to an embassy in a virtual world in the metaverse and interact with someone and might be an assistant and like apply for that trip.

Or you might go into a virtual shop and look at virtual clothing that you might order there and get in the real world.

I think there's some confusion over the idea of just 3D virtual worlds, of which there will be one in, say, Minecraft and a different one in a different video game, and then maybe a place where you and I will meet and have an interview.

Those are all individual virtual worlds.

My understanding of the metaverse is it's some overarching virtual space where you can go to all of these other worlds, but it connects them all, a bit like the universe.

Yes, so I think that's why when people think about the metaverse, they also think this is the future of interaction and it's the future of how we look for information.

So, just like the internet today, we go on a web page in 2D on a screen and we find information.

In the future, it will all be in 3D and virtual worlds, and we'll be navigating there and finding information there.

So, indeed, to do that, everything has to be connected.

Just like today on the internet, you have lots of different websites.

With the metaverse, you have lots of different platforms and lots of different places to go.

You would want that to be one place, really.

There's an awful lot of talk about virtual reality and now the metaverse as well.

Is it all talk?

Do people actually want this?

I think if you think about consumers, probably the demand is not very high at the moment because it is not solving a key challenge.

Then if you think about augmented reality, actually giving the navigation example, I definitely would like something more practical than a phone when I'm a bicycle and I need to get somewhere.

For companies, I think there is definitely demand for this technology because it is saving a lot of challenges for them already, giving the example of recreating a virtual simulation.

So there is definitely demand there.

It's not just...

an example of they can make this technology so they are and they're going to shout very loudly until we all buy it i think companies truly believe it is the next version of the internet and it is the next type of device that we need.

They even think that we might get it implanted in our brain in the future.

Oh, there's something to look forward to.

Well, David, thanks very much for painting such a vivid picture of the world of the future.

Virtual world of the future, mixed world of the future.

I'm not sure what it is, but it's a very vivid picture.

So thank you.

Thanks, Spencer.

I'll see you in the metaverse.

Now, if you do find yourself wandering around the metaverse, you might want to buy something for your virtual self.

And that is what we're going to be talking about in the next episode.

There is a new way to pay for things online, a type of money that's very different to pounds, euros, and dollars.

It's called cryptocurrency.

And the one that you may have heard of is Bitcoin.

And our job will be to help you understand what it is, how it works, and whether you should get some.

Until then.

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

Who's the greatest storyteller of all?

To countless fans worldwide, the answer is Walt Disney.

I'm Mel Gedreuch and in my Radio 4 podcast, Walt Disney, A Life in Films, I'm leaping through the looking glass and entering the world of the man behind the mouse.

Who was the real Walt Disney?

And how did somebody who molded Western pop culture in his image end up on his deathbed afraid that he'd be forgotten?

Through the stories of 10 of his greatest works, I'll be separating what's fact and what's fiction when it comes to this much mythologized genius.

Listen now on BBC Sounds.

Sups!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be heard!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.