Cloud Streaming Comes to XR - Tech Insiders News, February 2023
A curated collection of «signal over noise» links about interactive technologies, AI, web3, sense-making, entrepreneurship, and psychology.
- Things are moving on content streaming for XR as Google launches Immersive Stream for XR and Mawari raised an additional $6.5M for a total of $20M to develop further their decentralized XR content delivery platform.
The idea makes sense: instead of relying on increasing device power, the content could be rendered and streamed from the cloud. Imagine the shift that occurred with Youtube, Netflix, Spotify, Google Docs… A similar disruption could happen for XR technologies!
Streaming works amazingly for videos, music, and documents, why is it so difficult to apply it to XR? I’ll pick two issues among many:
First, the movie that I am watching is the same as you are, but in XR or gaming, as the point of view is different for everyone, the cloud server needs to render one view for each user!
And then, to avoid motion sickness, the virtual content needs to be rendered at a very high frequency (> 90hz) and without noticeable delay between the virtual and the real. That’s a considerable challenge; especially in Mixed Reality, where the user is directly looking are reality. Currently, even with on-device rendering, these issues are still present. - On the AI front, Microsoft has released its implementation of GPT for their search engine Bing. I have access and tested it for a few days. Here’s my feedback:
Similar to ChatGPT, it’s pretty good for general questions. Search for a recipe, or ask for details about a concept; the search is fast, and a few links are provided so I could open the websites to complement the answers.
Stop diverting me from work, Microsoft! But that was a good joke.
On the other hand, when I code and have an error I don’t understand, I just copy-paste it into Google and the answer often lies in the first few links. But as the error is not a natural language, the new Bing didn’t understand it, so I had to phrase it like “I have this error …, can you help?“, which is time lost typing.
Sorry for the typos!
To conclude, even with the small inconvenience above, I agree with the general opinion: this is the future of search, and the other giants are not far; see below.
Oh, and I had to install the Edge browser and have a Microsoft account, of course! - As expected, Google reacted and announced Bard, a conversational AI similar to ChatGPT.
In the release video, Bard made a factual error about the James Webb telescope; and everybody freaked out, making Alphabet/Google shares value lose 7.7% in one day. I’m saying it again: don’t 100% trust answers that are coming from such conversational models! The blame is on Google for not bothering to check the answers, not on the technology!
Then even have a “Check it“ button.
So one could think that Microsoft is ahead of the curve and could “win” this time… Here is my take: millions of users have years of history of emails and documents on Gmail and Google Drive. Imagine if Bard allows you to also “search” within all your emails and documents. To me, that is what AI is all about: personalization. I’m so excited about this idea that I made a prediction market for it.
And today’s image, thanks to Midjourney: «The Meowtaverse». Yeah, I didn’t resist, that was too good!