Spatial News™ #014
This week we're all about the latest Gabe Newell interview, histories of AR, VR eye tracking and more!
Spatial News™ welcomes you to our 14th issue! For words of wisdom, we return to the book of Ecclesiastes. “There was a small city with few men in it and a great king came to it, surrounded it and constructed large siege works against it. But there was found in it a poor wise man and he delivered the city by his wisdom. Yet no one remembered that poor man. So I said, ‘Wisdom is better than strength.’ But the wisdom of the poor man is despised and his words are not heeded. The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.” -Ecc 9:14-18 (NASB) In light of current events, I couldn’t help but think about this passage. How does it relate specifically? I can’t say that I’m completely certain. As Sun Tzu teaches in The Art of War, “All warfare is based on deception.” And that casts a long shadow.
Watching Me, Watching You
Thanks to Kavya Pearlman, Founder and CEO of the XR Safety Initiative, for sharing this interview with Anand Srivatsa, CEO of Tobii, the largest manufacturer of eye-tracking tech for XR and PC. According to him, high level eye tracking can be used to
“fool your senses to say this is real, so you want to spend time there [in a virtual world, for instance]. And then the second thing is to go and have interaction that feels like real life, that really allows you to be immersed and not feel like this is something weird— because you still have the other parts of the awkwardness, like a headset.”
On top of this, it could reduce the need for bulky VR controllers. Of course, eye (and face) tracking raises any number of serious privacy issues. How do companies handle this user data? While Tobii has a strong “data transparency policy”, Srivatsa expects the companies utilizing Tobii’s tech to act responsibly and ethically.
♫ I always feel like somebody’s watching me, And I have no privacy. Wo-oh-oh I always feel like somebody’s watching me. Tell me it’s just a dream… ♫
Histories of Augmented Reality
To act as a counterpart to histories of VR resources we shared in Spatial New #011, here are histories of AR.
Image credit: g2.com
Here is another history and chart by digital learning designer Gerard Friel that helps fill in some gaps. What’s still missing?
The XR Revolution is just Getting Started
I like the optimism in this article by Aneesh Koorapaty, VP of Corporate Strategy at Cognizant. It reminds me of why I’ve been in the XR industry since 2018.
“[T]he complexity of these technologies [VR & AR] is significantly higher [than the computer and the internet, for example], and the pace of adoption will depend on the rate of innovation in multiple areas – from chipsets, to image and audio processing techniques, new display technologies, wireless transmission infrastructure and protocols, and software advances…
Claiming that VR/AR is dead or over-hyped based on these metrics [like number of VR headsets sold] would be like claiming that personal computing is dead right after the first Macintosh computer was released in 1984…
[T]he industry’s first goal is to expose users to VR/AR, since it is seldom that a user dons a VR/AR headset and walks away unimpressed [or cybersick - Joh’s cynical two cents].”
Valve's Gabe Newell Torches The Metaverse And NFTs
Shared by VR vet, Kevin Williams (Thank you!).
Gabe Newell, Co-Founder of Valve, whose Steam blocked blockchain games from the platform doesn’t mince words here.
"There's a bunch of get rich quick schemes around metaverse. Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. And they've apparently never played an MMO. They're like, 'Oh, you'll have this customizable avatar.' And it's like, well… go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy 14 and tell me that this isn't a solved problem from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing that you're, you know, inventing."
While Newell is saying a few things worth note here. For me, there is one question that echoes in my mind ‘Is the metaverse inextricably linked to Web3-related tech like NFTs?’ When one domino pops will the other bubbles fall? (I know what I said. Even if you try to fix it, the metaphor would only work as part of a Rube Goldberg Machine.)
For some Web3 proponents (unfortunately, I can’t find the link to the post so you’ll just have to believe me that this was said), virtual worlds like Second Life tried their hand at what a metaverse could be and ‘failed’. On the other hand, NFTs, they say, are the fundamental technology of the metaverse because of what they can mean for identity and interoperability, that is, being able to take the digital assets that make up one’s digital self from a virtual theme park to a virtual mall to a virtual workspace and back again.
The problem is, like Gabe Newell points out, while Blockchain is about making transactions ‘trustless' rug pulls and other kinds of malfeasance are rampant in the NFT-verse degrading trust in the promises of Web3 among consumers.
(If you aren’t done with firebrand Gabe Newell and want to read his latest interview, check it out here. He talks about the risks of crypto, his views on the recent consolidation of the gaming industry, and more.)
Why are there so many NFT Rug Pulls?!
VP of Polygon, Charles Adkins answers,
“It's quite simple really. NFT projects should be viewed as brands/businesses. A startup, essentially. Many of these have operators with ZERO experience running a brand and/or a business. You, as an investor, are making an EXTREME early stage venture investment into them. Most venture investments completely fail or hardly come back to make the investors whole. Rug pulls are total business failures and sometimes there are cases of flat out frauds. The project owner knows there is no clear exit, no way to return capital or value, and sometimes just disappears.
You can expect regulation to enter at some point because of this repeated behavior, but right now... as they say... DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! You buy NFTs? You are a venture investor. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
Sound advice.
Metaverse Resources
If you are still cautiously optimistic and curious, happy-go-lucky and eager, undeterred and zealous, or anything in between to explore the “metaverse” then, cybernauts, don your Helmet Heads NFT (I’ve got #7046 a rare “No Time to Live” with the iridescent cracked visor, alien symbiote eye, and missing breathing tubes) and check out resources from avatar creation to volumetric capture. Apparently, you can also suggest some resources that they have missed. Thanks to entrepreneur and author Tommaso Di Bartolo for bringing this to my attention.
Like they say (way too much), that’s a wrap! Thank you for reading, and see you in seven! And remember, we are spatial!
Joh, reading the ancients while I think about the present
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