Your Reality Here Extended Reality and the Web

I’m Peter Gasston @stopsatgreen Creative Tech at rehab

What I’m going to

talk about The post-mobile

platform The reasons What’s missing The role of the Web

The post-mobile platform

Extended reality (XR)

XR will be the next platform.

Gartner hype cycle 2017

Benedict Evans / a16z

The reasons

Why XR is the next platform Because we’re

told so Because of

human nature Because we have

the foundation

Because we’re told so

One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become part of daily life for billions of people.” —Mark Zuckerberg “

I regard [AR] as a big idea, like the smartphone.” —Tim Cook “

Some of Apple’s

moves in XR 2013: Buy

PrimeSense 2015: Buy Metaio 2016: Buy Flyby 2017: Buy VRVana 2017: Launch ARKit

Because of human nature

XR meets two persistent human desires: to know, and to be tricked.

The desire to know

Knowledge is power. Scientia potestas est.

Spoken language

developed so that we

could pass on

knowledge; and written

language so that we

could record it.

What would augment reality?

If I could see anything, what should I see? Look at the world and tell me about it Who is this person? Is this cheaper on Amazon? Where did I leave that?

The desire to be tricked

Perspectival representation aimed to give viewers the illusion that they had been transported into geometrically coherent and psychologically convincing other worlds.” — Margaret Wertheim “

If I could see anything, what should I see? Look at the world and tell me about it Who is this person? Is this cheaper on Amazon? Where did I leave that? Add something to the world Make every wall a screen Put Minecraft on the table Show me the recipe

Because we have the foundation

Mixed reality is a display problem, a sensor problem and a decision problem.” — Benedict Evans “

The sensor

Top three most-photographed subjects Source: Creative Strategies, Inc Smartphone Photography Survey. n=965. Audience: Mainstream.

We’re going from computers with cameras, that take photos, to computers with eyes, that can see.” — Benedict Evans “

Information I’d never have had unless I’d asked whoever I was with to describe it to me. Having the ability to do that independently is really quite remarkable.” — Léonie Watson “

Computer vision has become commoditised in a very short time.

Simultaneous Location And Mapping (SLAM)

The display

Video see-through (VST) Optical see-through (OST)

Phone-based AR is a social impediment and can be uncomfortable for more than short bursts.

Having your hands free to manipulate, hold, touch or help while you’re taking a snap… greatly increases the sense of ‘place’ that you get out of it.” — Matthew Panzarino “

Digital things in physical spaces, and remixing digital input

Digital things sharing space with physical things

The decision-maker

In MR, what you don’t see could be as important as what you see.

Google’s Knowledge Graph

aims to give you an answer,

not a page of links.

“ … An intent represents a

mapping between what a

user says and what action

should be taken by your

software.”

What’s missing

Diverse voices

A platform that’s closely integrated with the real world should reflect real world values—not just those of Silicon Valley.

In the Renaissance, new concepts

of scientific thinking, such as

perspective and space, were

brought into the public sphere by

artists and philosophers.

A shared space

AR has the ability to re-enable scarcity. Many AR experiences will be tied to the location in which you experience it.” — Matt Miesniks “

“ … The future of Nike and of

sneaker culture is to be able

to seamlessly blend

real-world charm with

digital world convenience.”

The biggest thing that’s been missing for the entire last decade was our physical embodied space.” — Anjney Midha “

SLAM

The AR Cloud is a shared [digital] memory of the physical world. It’s the single most important software infrastructure in computing.” — Ori Inbar “

Google Maps for gaming + virtual positioning system (VPS)

How do we stop massive platforms dominating the AR Cloud in the same way they dominate the Web?

The role of the Web

The Web has transformed the world, but stands aloof from it.” — Mark Pesce “

53.796852, -1.543991 63.0 false //alldayhey.com/ Mixed Reality Service (MRS)

adds a missing metadata

layer to the real world,

adding links in space.

Hololens App Model

WebXR is aimed at letting

you create VR/AR

experiences that are

embedded in the web.

Article (Google prototype)

Facebook 3D post

We have an opportunity to more fundamentally reconsider what we want the Web to be.

We expect Stories are on track to overtake posts in Feed as the most common way that people share across all social apps.” — Mark Zuckerberg “

The rise of Stories

Hopscotch (concept)—fluffy-shanks.glitch.me

Our current idea of what qualifies as a site, and the value (or lack thereof) that this implies, may be holding the web back.” — Stephanie Rieger “

A richer, more shareable Web

There’s a disconnect between the Web we have   —   which is largely text   —   and the Web we need, which is richly visualised. “

Our world is not text, and the Web, as it becomes more a part of this world, must become more like the world.” — Mark Pesce “

“ … We use ‘X’ not as part of an acronym but as an

algebraic variable to indicate

‘Your Reality Here’.”

Let’s make the Web be the X in XR.

The End

How to experiment with XR on the Web now WebXR AR.js, three.ar.js