Gadgetory

good morning on Thursday November 16th this episode 318 of the 359 podcast on BVG and full house today Joanie soles Minh Ben Fox Ruben and Alfred Inge will be your hosts hello hello yes so today we're gonna be talking all about different VR experiences that our lovely friend Joan has checked out all throughout this week you've had kind of a fun week we are things so VR gaming is one of them with Nintendo's duckin in VR and the other one was the new Pixar movie Coco got its own you know VR experience - so okay but when are we getting 3:59 VR edition well we did that's that's not real VR all right well it's true yeah we do be VG in front of us okay and I'm I can like pull up like a sword or something and in virtual reality that's that's where the real money maker is that that's what this podcast needs anyway send in your questions and comments BVG we'll get to as many as you can at the end of the show at the end of the show show at the end of the shoo-shoo let's get to the podcast alright we're gonna record this we'll see you guys back in the chat in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox ribbon I'm Joni sauceman I'm ralpher dang so Pixar offered its first foray into virtual reality with an experience called Coco VR based on the upcoming film Coco Joan you had a chance to check this out what was it like it was really fun every time I talk to people that make VR or thinking about VR cheerleaders of ER they always describe virtuality to people who haven't tried it as it's like stepping into a Pixar movie and this is the first time that Pixar that animation studio that almost is universally beloved has dedicated their resources and their level of quality and their animation to a virtual reality experience is it kind of like like a trailer for the movie or what's what's like it actually like what do you do it's not a trailer it goes beyond what a lot of promotional film VR featurettes have done it's really interactive it's really social and basically you become KOCO is about basically it's based on the Mexican holiday do Dia de los Muertos the Day of the Dead and you become a skeleton you are in a room and you get to try on clothing and stuff to get yourself like you take your head off you can take your skull off and throw it around the room if you want and you're doing all this with a friend in VR like a real friend yeah like I did it with one of the oculus producers that worked on the project anyway so you're in a room and then you kind of like almost like when Dorothy like leaves her house and enters Oz and you see color for this time you step out into this town square and this gigantic world of the Dead and it's it looks like a Pixar movie it's like being in a beautiful Pixar land and you can like you get to go to an art gallery and look at sort of like DVD extras you get to see concept art and trailers there's a movie theater and you can see it deleted scene but you also get to just play around and do things take your picture at a photobooth there are sparklers you can wave sparklers around let's go yeah I feel like this is the first time I've seen a VR like movie promotion or anything like that where I didn't think it was extremely corny and I feel like Pixar definitely adds that element to it definitely went beyond where a lot of those promotional work can feel like it's forced where it's like oh here's the thing we should do a promo thing for it yeah it looks like they made a little bit more of an hour I saw I saw like one of the clips at the beginning where like when you were in VR you like put a hat on and like and it showed like Coco putting the Hat on that looks really cool yeah it was cool it was a lot of fun so you also got a chance to check out what is it like Nintendo's duck hunt or a reboot of it in VR as well right so last night or I guess this morning a vibe HTC vive which makes another of the high-end headsets they announced some new controllers that allow you to do games that already exist and some new games with actual guns that feel like guns having records and rackets instead of just having the awkward kind of hand controllers as your only way to play and so one of the games that they let us try was this reboot of duck hunt and it had it was so if you played duck hunt as a kid I played it anytime I was sick home from school if I would just sit in blink hunt all day long it's really fun they have like almost like a stranger things like 80s throwback a living room that you're sitting in at the beginning and the duck hunt starts or duck season starts it's not called Scott it's called duck season but like the same a little dog that like comes up in traffic yeah he comes up and he's in VR he's doing these horrible dances and you can shoot them if you want and then you shoot ducks but it's super fun and they really played up the like retro like nostalgia factor of it too it's really cool so we don't have a ton of time left but I did want to get to like big picture concept do you think stuff like this is actually gonna get people to invest in VR headsets like these two concepts are with oculus and HTC vive they cost a lot of money but do you think that this is something that's really going to push this forward into the mainstream I think that the only thing that's gonna get people excited about paying that much money for something that they don't really understand what it is is when there are these trusted games or movies that they know that they love that give them a reason to be like oh yeah I actually do want to try that when it son from you know when it's an unfamiliar technology and unfamiliar content there's nothing there to pull you in but when it's something like Pixar or duck hunt that you already love that could give people more of a reason to start trying it yeah totally anyway if we want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Johnny Salzmann I'm Alfred Aang thanks for listening all right everybody onboard go ahead and start submitting questions and comments this is pretty cool stuff I just loved how you've so casually like you become a skeleton that's just maybe for chuckle I had to hold it back so I didn't commit you die it's like a very high version of dying it's a very day of the dead consciousness right that like it's a skeleton but it's fun it's a fun skeleton you're a fun skeleton yeah super fun I had a lot of fun doing it I did want to mention this during the podcast but it's never enough time so if you actually want to try this out the experience is available on the oculus rift right now and a version of the experience will launch on Samsung gear VR November 22nd right which is next week alongside the opening of the film and if you if you don't have a VR headset or at all they are doing demos of it at some Disney stores and at some movie theaters so you can go online and find out which ones which makes a lot of sense I feel like VR is such a new concept for a lot of people that putting it in you know like a movie theater or retail location it doesn't require people to like shell out a ton of money for this stuff because I don't know unless you're gonna use it a ton why are you spending why would you spend that much I said just go to VR arcades that's a thing to bring that back yeah you can go to our kids and just give like a dollar or something for like one VR session I don't know what the VR arcade price is all have you been to those actually the demo of the duck season and all the vibe HTC vive stuff was at a VR arcade they because they it's a handy because they already have base set up with five things so the competitions that show up at a place I should have arcades with like VR stuff I feel like a lot of people would go to that because they don't want to you know that's the same reason of arcades back when consoles used to cost a lot and you didn't want to buy a whole cabinet just to play pac-man well it's largely the same mentality of the gimmicks that they put in to get people back into movie theaters the 3d movies and everything had their little or the Renaissance yeah yeah I mean you make it an experience everybody can put a big screen in their house now make it something more I mean I'm not saying 3d was the end-all be-all the movies that certainly has proven that it hasn't been but give me some well and then well no there's 4d theaters which I went by the way and saw rogue one when it came out don't go see rogue one in 4d if it ever comes back my movie has a lot of rain in it what is Hardy you just wings like they have like the physical experience is it like that a Shrek one where uh like the dragon like breeze fire and it gets hotter in the room or like there's rats running around they like you feel like something like touching your leg this sounds really yeah yeah it's forty it's for D yes gimmicky but it can be fun but for the record there's a beach scene and a lot of rain and rogue one and that got old fast that was my that's my formal unofficial 4d review hey are you wearing like a headset or something shows up and spray something on you watch the movie normally like a 3d movie it's just like there's stuff in the room that like messes with you okay I don't know that I would be super into that but there's just all these devices and lights and the seat shake and stuff like that but yeah I just kept getting sprayed with water and I got really annoying um Joan I was also curious like so for instance with like a VR arcade can you tell us a bit about that like I've never been to one does it seem kind of cool is it something that you think like a lot of people are gonna want to go to clips and chips lips and chips I think that it makes a lot of sense to have them but I don't know if people are really flocking to them I've read articles about how they're because it's such a niche thing there's not a lot of them yet that the ones that do exist they can be really popular just because it's the only place that you can go there isn't that like the kind of ubiquity where there's competition in a city with tons and tons of places yeah but the problem is is like the investment and actually making one yeah and also I mean people are still so unfamiliar it's not like you're like oh man I don't have anything to do Friday night what I I'm gonna go to the VR arcade it's not like ingrained as an entertainment option into our mentality yet so it definitely makes sense to have them I don't know I don't know how popular they are I also I feel like once we are gets more affordable they're gonna go the exact same route as arcades did and I think a lot of people like to have that an tight now so they're not really like very eager to open these because like eventually it's just gonna become like a home experience yeah exactly yeah I I think a lot of people hope that that's the direction that we're gonna go in but I think the prices really have to go down and there's definitely advantages to having an arc there are things in VR that you can't even when VR technology for the home becomes more sophisticated they're still gonna be things that you're not gonna want to set up in your home like there are like seats that you sit on that move you around and make you feel like you're flying and stuff like you're not gonna set that up in here oh you mean like that thing at CES last year did you go on that no the VR flying thing yeah oh yeah the hyper suit yeah no I didn't go on that silly weird bird thing so but yeah yeah the silly weird bird thing you're not gonna want that in your home but maybe you want to be a silly bear bird at an arcade where like at a mall like something good to do with them all anyway you got any questions for us actually there appears to be some technical difficulties going on with the stream we're streaming I'm not sure why a lot of people didn't get an alert today so apologies for that I have no idea what's going on with the YouTube these days I it's kind of beyond my control but thank you to everyone who's put up with their BS and hanging on tight and perhaps to the notification squad let's take a couple of questions we've less questions more considerations I like the concept coming from Matthew debt or sorry Josh Boyd he says are there gr escape rooms how cool would that be escape rooms what is what's that mean like you know those like escape the rooms things that they do in New York or in multiple places that I don't remember the names of currently I think they have one in Idaho it's kind of an interactive choose-your-own-adventure type situation where you and a group of people are in a scenario where in basically a set like a set dressed area and you have situations you have to overcome more so verbally sometimes physically aren't there Atlanta levels very basic puzzle-based type thing but imagine doing that in a virtual environment with the incredible special effects and right especially if you've got like your buddies with you because I feel like that's relatively new right Joan that like that you could actually have a VR experience and have somebody like that's like a regular person right next to you that that kind of takes away from or at least like smooths over that whole idea that VR can be really isolated right yeah social vr has been around for a while but it's not the it's it's hard to do because not a lot of people have you are right so not a lot of people have used social VR but when you call up all your friends I'll be like hey they don't but when you do get a chance to do social vr it is really fun like scott stein who on our review side does a lot of our he'd wrote about the five controllers for example he and I were in Facebook I think it's called spaces the Facebook like come and play in this little playground with your friends and be are we did that and it's you know seven years down the line we look back on we're gonna be like god that was stupid but right now it's just kind of fun cuz it's like you look at your friend and he look kind of looks like actually Scott's avatar in spaces looked a lot like you I look good homey in VR sick burn bro so what are our favorite VR games here personally I really like this one oh shoot it's got hot in the title help me sounds like a dirty thing no it's I gotta look it up again we played okay so there were two that I played in the office that we're at least memorable and interesting one of them was a zombie shooter which I thought was very cool Roger was very good at that you had to like spin around allied and like hold like a crappy flashlight and that just makes sense like doing zombie stuff and VR is kinda the result there was one more as like a space cadet training thing or whatever that I thought was pretty fun I liked how you could like pull back and then like get different weapons or like get a shield or something like that if you only pulled back if you're like I think I remember yeah I've never played this one but I would really like to it's called office simulator your NVR pretending to a office employee is that it's awesome oh yeah job simulator that was like a big hit like three years ago job simulator I don't know why the night are interesting what is this oh is that it so I found it it's called it's called super hot I feel like an ad for never remembering that but my exposures been very limited but this is one of the very few things I did get to try and it's it's kind of a red light green light game where your enemy only moves when you move and it's what is Aki it's on oculus rift and you're equipped with a ton of different stuff surrounding you in this very just a geometric settings so there's guns and there's staplers and there's just random officee things that you can chuck at them or steal their weapons and turn it around but you can see that there's like they're in slow motion until you come at them and then they speed up to regular motion and then it's all about your reflexes and it's a it's a pretty friggin cool game I like the stylization but at the same time it kind of takes a bit away from the whole concept of VR being super immersive and you know photo really I would disagree with you because what I've heard from people that make VR is that usually it's like this what is it they call the what is it uncanny valley uncanny valley like the more you make something try to look like real people the more you're just kind of like this Thanks yeah the more you like like degrade the quality especially well especially with humans like you degrade like if you make it look polygonal and like geographic Geographics you're right worried gee whatever like the more you do that the more people like forget about like you don't think about the interface as much you just think about playing and having fun and you don't get weird yeah that's why I like my favorite games are all like pretty low graphic stuff I'm not really into why Nintendo is too cool yeah that's why Nintendo continues to exist I mean are you doesn't have very unique art doesn't have to be high fidelity just has to be stylized ya know it's just really that was one of the first VR experiences that I saw that wasn't like that was intentionally not realistic and it really is kind of like office simulators not realistic mm-hmm yeah cartoon is pretty too the other one that I wanted to mention is Barclay is very realistic yes writers being totally honest ironically so the other one which we also had in the office was like a like a Star Wars thing oh yeah that was cool it was like kind of who was kind of like a game but it was more like a trailer and it didn't last very long I could kind of tell that this is just really the early days of VR everybody's just testing things out there wasn't a ton to do there and it was mostly just being able to like look around and see things which in itself was kind of astonishing just like I'm standing next to the Millennium Falcon it was fun to do once and it's not something that would result in me buying this stuff you know not yet that's really like the way that I look at it is is like what's the market here what's actually gonna get this into the mainstream and like you know even cocoa VR I would probably argue hasn't really done that quite yet yeah I mean again my exposure has been extraordinarily limited somehow in this office the only other one I've played its Batman VR on PlayStation and I strongly recommend never playing the level titled origin okay for obvious reasons Joan remember that oh yeah remember the time we had Rhett and Lincoln yeah and what was that game called but they were just playing tilt brush yeah but it's not really a game it's more like a art playground where you use controllers to sculpt in VR and so we played a pictionary what is it yeah pictionary basically pictionary in in VR where one of them would get something they had to draw in in virtual reality I don't have to guess what it is that was fun though it was they were fun dudes if anyone can guess what what so the flashlight is drawing there it's very funny it was a flash it was a good job that's a flashlight it's actually kind of fun to play along while these guys were we're actually doing this would you see it on like a TV screen yeah we had a TV but you'd have to put like the headset on multiple headsets you could watch him do it in in VR and you could watch it in VR but there's always a monitor that you can see everything from his perspective as he's making it so I was a lot of fun one other thing that I also wanted to ask you on the VR side like more on like the filmmaking side yeah what has been like one of the standouts that you've seen also because like you got a chance to go to like South by this year or Sundance there's been a lot of like VR experiments in filmmaking yes what's something that you really liked or would like all your friends yeah well I really liked I mean the most recent thing was the coco experience and that's the thing about VR is that because it's such an emerging art form that the newest stuff that you see is pretty much going to be the stuff that is most exciting because every month people are able to figure out how the heck to do the things that they've been really wanting to do and technology's catching up with them catching up with their aspirations for what they can do but I've written a lot about Baio Bob they did one of the first narrative VR like films whatever called invasion that was super popular when gear VR was just coming out and they've done a lot of other experiences but they have they are staffed by people from Zynga and also somebody that started out at DreamWorks and so they're like Pixar they're animation is always top notch it always looks great what's invasion about it's about aliens coming to Earth and trying to attack a bunny but their foibles and not actually being able to attack the money no no bunny find the bunny wins at the end of every bunny the bunny wins so Joan do you feel like throughout your experience you've had I realized you're kind of like our VR Queen at this point for something not for games but for non games do you feel like the the medium is refining itself is it actually progressing do we see more logistical uses for it in the near future perhaps well I don't know exactly what you mean by it what do you mean by logistical uses like other applications I better more actually helpful applications for it well sure there's lots of I mean I feel like people are always coming up with different ways to apply VR and some of them are mind blowing like where the care professionals will use VR to help paraplegics regain feeling and limbs they've never did it Roger do a story about like he watched in on a surgery like through VR did he yeah may have Benetton friends yeah did it he did it from what's that mobile conference in Barcelona MWC Mobile World Congress yes yes he did it from there I believe Wow um yeah it's pretty stunning the but it's all it's pretty something the things you can do in VR and what people are imagining you can do if you have but it's also like one step away from conceptual it's like not conceptual anymore because people can actually put it in a place and do it but none of it has like traction it's still kind of like Brian the sky like the educational features for it could could really be pretty mind-blowing yeah interesting like let's go visit the Revolutionary War when you think that's all it sounds to me like that's a long way from there yeah like when you think about the implications for like disparity in education like you know poor schools versus rich schools rich schools get to go to Italy on a field trip and when you're in high school and to the bodega like an order another issue entirely yeah and like if there was a way and like you know as the VR becomes less expensive people talk about people putting iPads in classrooms the idea of putting VR in classrooms can't be that far away you might have like a VR room or something I mean like a VR headset for every desk it sounds to me like it's not coming anytime so well except like it just depends like a cardboard at every desk is totally feasible right now it just depends on how things go yeah I liked what you said with the educational experience I could see museums embracing this a lot more and instead of having big walking exhibits kind of thing there would be more of a virtual thing things would move you could be like in the in the Sahara and experience the wildlife indigenously it at least put a 3d camera out there and then maybe not be pho it would have but also get like a narration sure absolutely I mean they do that now though but now but being immersed in a headset and I think that'd be kind of cool I would be on board if David Attenborough was narrating any of it yes absolutely yeah I like Josh Boyd his comment Magic School Bus the VR experience Oh Josh Magic School Bus the experience is actually something that has happened in a way there was this is really cool because it's virtual reality but not headset based virtual reality it's there was this company and I can't remember I can't remember the name of the company sorry but basically what they did instead of putting headsets on kids to have them go to Mars they put kids on this school bus with a literal school bus where the windows were transparent glass that could also become screens like LED screens like at a flip of a switch and so they got onto this bus and they were in Washington DC and they were just like driving around DC like on the way onto some field trip when all of a sudden like the screens on their bus turned into viewpoints on Mars and so instead of looking at the window and seeing like a park go by and a swing set or somebody's house they would see like mountains on Mars and craters and it was all mapped to Mars itself so when they would take make a right turn it would like be following where they would be on Mars that's friggin awesome literally and I want that you stole any words out of my mouth I wanna go back to school just for that oh man let's can we set up a trip there can we do that I don't know it would be extra it would be extra cool if it suddenly turned into like a horror flick and like the bus driver the bus driver like hit a Martian like the like the front like hit on Martian and then like all of a sudden you had to like get out and like fight the Marcia VR haunted hayride you accidentally yeah you accidentally killed like the Martian mayor or something and then you have to like fight them Lockheed Martin was the company that like basically kind of funded it and the VR visual effects company that put it together is called Framestore so if you want to look it up it's really it's a really cool program and it was just something that they did oh it's so cute there's like kids laughing and screaming and like with joy and this this picture sorry can you also throw up on the bus as you have okay all right so I think we should wrap it up and go find these guys and set up a scene at field trip we're gonna find that buzz Oh Jo Jo and make it happen please sir I the bus has to be somewhere I want to go to there yes please all right let's let's call it this time yeah yeah fun week everybody the 359 is available on iTunes students that share SoundCloud feedburner google play music and c and ET c om thank you very much for that anyway thanks everybody for watching enjoy the weekend and we'll see you again on Monday see you Monday everybody you you