Fullscreen HTML5Med Res (??MB)HTML4

Wait! What? Really? Techno Talk Max the Magnificent I first read Ready Player One deep in the mists of time we used to call 2011 (which is now 13 years ago – give me strength!). At that time, the technology depicted in this tale was the stuff of science fiction, but we are getting closer day-by-day. W hen the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and mixed reality (MR) comes to fruition, it will change the way we interface with our systems, the world, and each other. Keep it real! As John Lennon famously noted, ‘Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.’ In fact, there are multiple flavors of reality. At one end of the reality spectrum we have the real world, which we might call ‘physical reality’ (PR). At the other end we have virtual reality (VR) in which everything we see is computer generated. Most people these days are familiar with the term augmented reality (AR). Many believe this to involve only a visual view of the real world superimposed with text or graphics. More generally, and quoting myself, we might say that AR refers to ‘an interactive experience in which objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory [relating to a sensation such as pressure or warmth], and olfactory.’ The conceptual opposite to AR is diminished reality (DR), which involves diminishing or removing information or stimuli from the real world. One example would be if you were at a cocktail party and your DR-enabled system faded down all the voices except that of the person with whom you are conversing. Another would be to change most of your view of the world into grayscale, leaving only the portion of interest in colour. Think of a Where’s Waldo image. It would be a lot easier to spot the little rascal if he was the only portion of the picture in colour. Similarly, if you were looking for your friends in an environment containing thousands of other people – like an open-air concert, for example – it would be advantageous if your AI+AR+DR headset presented everything but your friends in black-and-white. 8 And then there’s augmented virtuality (AV) in which a predominantly virtual environment is augmented with real-world objects or people. Because all this is a bit of a mouthful, we use the term mixed reality (MR) to embrace AR, DR, VR and AV. Don’t get me started on hyper reality (HR), but feel free to search for ‘Hyper Reality’ on YouTube. More cheese, Gromit? I was first exposed to VR in the form of military systems 20+ years ago. At that time, I thought a consumer-level experience of any significance was years away in my future. So, you can only imagine my surprise and delight when the Oculus Rift VR headset launched in 2016. Suffice it to say I was at the front of the queue for one of those bodacious beauties. Of course, being tethered to a large computer and having to use external sensors was a bit of a downer, which is why I traded my Oculus Rift for an Oculus Quest (now Meta Quest) VR headset as soon as it came out in 2019. More recently, I splashed the cash for a Meta Quest 3 MR headset, which was released in October 2023. This little scamp is sitting on my desk singing its siren song as I pen these words. There are myriad mixed reality applications available for the Quest 3. One of my favorites involves Wallace and Gromit. Assume you are standing in the middle of your family room. The headset has forward-looking colour cameras whose video streams are presented on the displays that reside in front of your eyes. As a result, you see the same thing you would if you took the headset off… apart from the virtual electric toaster in front of you and the virtual jam-dispensing, steampunk-looking gun in your hand. When a slice of toast is ejected from your toaster, you attempt to hit it with a blob of jam fired from your gun. If you miss, the jam carries on its trajectory until it hits (and sticks to) the ceiling or wall. Brilliant! The noblest of fruits The current state-of-the-art in consumer MR is the recently introduced Apple Vision Pro. (It’s tempting to speculate that Henry David Thoreau was channeling the future when he proclaimed, ‘Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits.’) When people are first exposed to Vision Pro publicity shots, they often assume that this device features a transparent visor because it looks like you can see the wearer’s eyes. In reality (no pun intended), the visor is opaque. This feature – which is called EyeSight – starts with a 3D facial scan of the person wearing the headset. In addition to other tasks, four eye-tracking cameras inside the headset are used to control where the virtual eyes are looking on the outward-facing display. I would love to own a Vision Pro, but it’s way outside my price range. A Quest 3 headset costs around £400 in the UK. By comparison, a Vision Pro will lighten your wallet by a hefty £3,500 give-or-take (Eeek!). Wait! What? Really? It’s probably fair to say that most people might be a tad embarrassed to be out and about – perambulating through town or strolling round a supermarket, for example – sporting a Quest 3 or Vision Pro style headset. Having said this, no one would care if everyone else was doing the same thing. Hopefully, it won’t be long before we have display technologies like those being developed by Kura (www.kura.tech), which look like regular glasses but sport 50,000,000 MR pixels per eye. I have just seen something else that has me quivering in excitement. This comes to us from Zinn Labs (www.zinnlabs.com). It’s a set of glasses frames (no lenses) equipped with a forward-looking camera that sees what you see and eye trackers that can determine what you are looking at. If you visit Zinn’s website, you can see these glasses connected wirelessly to ChatGPT. All you do is look at something, ask a question about it, and let the ChatGPTgenerated answer tickle your lugholes. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the future is closer than we think! Practical Electronics | April | 2024