VR48: Addressing VR’s Identity Crisis

You wait a whole year for a Virtual Reality endurance attempt, then three come along at once.

Derek Westerman spent 25 hours in a virtual room drawing with Tilt Brush, a 3D creative tool designed to allow the user to build VR sculptures. Result: He set a Guinness World Record, babbled incoherently and threw up in a bucket.

Next, Alejandro “AJ” Fragoso and Alex Christison spent 50 hours sat on a sofa, eating snacks and drinking Red Bull watching TV and movies on Oculus Rift headsets. Result: They too grabbed a record, suffered with indigestion and grew beards.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Guinness World Records and I have a long and happy association with them. However, Virtual Reality is saddled with an image problem, one of nauseating game-play and fellas mostly wasting their time. Sadly, these types of endurance records reinforce it.

If I sound less than impressed with these other attempts, it’s because I am. I spent 24 hours in VR last year (but that’s another story) and this year, as much as I wanted to tackle the official 48 hour VR record, GWR insisted we stay awake for the entire two day period and this ironically wasn’t realistic.

I joined forces with Sarah Jones, a senior media academic and 360º storyteller, to ‘live’ in Virtual Reality. This included eating, sleeping, running, fighting, driving, wing-walking, even getting a tattoo! Everything we tackled, we did so for a reason, not just because we could but to show the outside world that VR has a place in our lives and is there to complement it, rather than replace it.

We harvested meaningful data, relayed anecdotal feedback throughout our experience and 5 minutes per hour were reserved for dashes to the bathroom and 360º video diaries – not at the same time I hasten to add.

Amongst the more conventional VR experiences such as problem-solving, training, painting and gaming, we scheduled three extreme physical activities. Our first required us to drive go-karts around a purpose-built track, using the through-camera on a Samsung Gear VR to give us a video view of the surroundings. An interesting challenge when the vibration of the vehicle causes the camera feed to shake and blur, but a great illustration of driving on instinct and highlighting some genuinely useful user-cases for Augmented Reality headsets.

Race info, ghost competitors and screen entertainment for autonomous vehicles will all follow as a direct result of this kind of real-world testing.

Our second physical challenge required less movement but greater immersion. I was ready for my tattoo…

I haven't been under an inked needle before so this was my first taste of body art. I have to admit to being a less than enthusiastic volunteer but we were determined to discover if VR could successfully mitigate pain. The irritation needed to be sustained and relatively intense, so leg-waxing or nipple-piercing were out!

I chose Gunjack to keep my mind off the job in hand (or arm). This 3D space adventure requires a pretty low skill level, but quick reflexes and prolonged concentration.

I began the process with my headset up, allowing me an unimpeded view of my arm as the needle struck home – my baseline pain levels were set. If I were to describe this raw tattooing pain as a sustained maximum of 10, I felt the VR content and the subsequent cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline genuinely dropped the irritation to a 6 or 7. That result alone would have satisfied us but we were also wearing Apple Watches throughout VR48 to monitor heart rates. Mine peaked at 103BPM in the tattoo studio with a clear view of the procedure, dropping to 74BPM under immersion. That’s anecdotal feedback supported by real science.

Sarah and I returned some uniquely different results over the course of the two days and nowhere was that more evident than in our ultimate challenge – the wing walking finale.

Still wearing our VR headsets, we arrived at RFC Rendcomb Aerodrome at 10am, fresh from the journey from Coventry University to Cirencester in the back of a MINI Convertible – acclimatising ourselves to the freezing temperatures and buffeting we’d have to endure at 150mph when strapped to the top wing of a 75 year old aircraft.

With all our preparation, our additional webbing, straps and a bespoke balaclava weren’t enough to satisfy the experienced pilot or the Breitling Aerobatic team – we were told to hold onto the Gear VR headset with both hands for the entire flight. There would be no waving to the crowd mid loop.

We hoped to gain valuable insight into the effects of velocity and wind resistance on VR viewing. Could reality enhance the virtual experience and vice versa? To view this, we would again be seeing the real world through the Samsung headset’s built-in camera. Or would we?

I mentioned different experiences and mine took a turn for the worse when strapped to the wing, preparing to taxi to the far end of the airfield. “Please remove your phone and update the software”. Seriously? My Galaxy Note 4 had chosen this very moment to force a software update on me. I wasn’t asked politely if I would like to – just told it would happen or my phone was dead. With no adequate connection in the middle of a field, I was faced with a useless piece of technology.

Not willing to submit to the failings of the Internet of Things, I removed the phone and squinted through the headset lenses for the duration of the flight. Not all was lost, as I actually experienced this through the eyes of a partially-sighted individual. Chalk one up for the power of empathy, and a huge black mark for Samsung.

Sarah had no such problems as the team set up a wireless hot spot, updated the software and sent her off to view the entire flight as planned – with the valuable research recorded.

One of the surprise results of VR48 was our time spent in Knockout League, a boxing simulator for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Your opponent is a larger-than-life cartoon character but the gameplay feels every bit as real as time spent in the ring with an actual heavyweight. We found ourselves ducking and diving, with adrenaline levels and heart rates increasing as our (virtual) vision blurred from a flurry of head-shots.

If ever there was a case against stereotypical VR couch potatoes, virtual boxing was it. That and the go-karting. And the tattoo. And the wing walk.

So what were the side-effects? For an endurance attempt such as this, it can be difficult to differentiate between regular eyestrain and fatigue and that relating to being in a virtual environment. Sarah’s forehead was sore and her cheeks were temporarily marked. The bridge of my nose was bruised and my close-up vision is still slightly more blurred than before the event.

Other than that, we appear to be psychologically unaffected – even with our VR48 content planning requiring us to fall asleep and wake up in VR!

This medical research may come as a surprise to the public, brands and hardware multinationals alike as I’m pretty sure they all thought we’d be lucky to survive unscathed.

We received no support from any headset or mobile manufacturers as they believed we contravened all their health and safety advice, but these side effects are never talked about at the many global industry events and certainly not in the consumer press.

I hope we've gone some way to change the current perception of VR and to highlight its potential, rather than its shortcomings.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Huffington Post

The Uncomfortable Middle Ground: Part 1

Call it what you will – the Internet of Things, enchanted objects, or the connected world – most of us have been plugged into the digital network for longer than we think.

This week I’ve been immersing myself in all things connected as IBM opened the doors to their stunning new Watson IoT Center Munich. Actually, IoT doesn’t go far enough – they call it the Genius of Things.

We live in a time when a connected kettle can sit on the same network as our telephone, television, baby monitor, washing machine and every light bulb in the house. In theory, a chain of events can occur when we pull into our smartwatch-sensing garage in our connected car, unlock our smart-door and enter our digital domain, or ‘home’ as it used to be known.

This networked utopia isn’t a new concept. 1950s visions of the future foretold just such a connected world where all these wondrous gadgets were living in harmony, alongside their human masters. But who’s really in control – us or the machines?

Currently, Artificial Intelligence isn’t that intelligent and we haven’t handed over the reigns just yet because they’re not all playing nice. With so much emerging technology trying to piggyback legacy systems, we’re living in the ‘Uncomfortable Middle Ground’.

The what? UMG is that awkward grey area between the creation of platforms and devices and realising their potential. With great arm-waving comes great responsibility and the need to deliver on a promise. In order to achieve this, our connected world needs to be truly connected.

Much of the public IoT fanfare comes from existing personal assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft’s OS voice-botherers, but it’s what’s under the skin that really counts or you’re left with a pretty shallow experience.

I was invited to the Genius of Things Summit as a Futurist by WIRED Insider for Watson IoT. It was here that IBM and 20 clients showcased some of the stunning technology that interacts beautifully with the outside world, but does something meaningful with the data. Ricoh’s intelligent whiteboard, Panasonic’s interactive mirror and Bragi’s new Dash hearable for enterprise with built-in language translation were all perfect examples of effective IoT partnerships.

I may have an abnormal interest in future platforms and their potential impact on business and our lives as consumers, but the only time IBM has been on my radar since their early PCs is with a misinformed opinion of Watson, a chess and Jeopardy-playing super-brain. This week changed all that.

The huge glass towers project an impressive facade but the ‘FAB Lab’ and client ‘Collaboratory' inside Watson’s Head Office have a playful air about them. The work environment feels very much like a high tech college, where the IBM’ers and co-working clients all exude a genuine sense of child-like wonder and possibility.

IBM positions Watson as Cognitive Computing – a step above Artificial Intelligence, which is in turn a level above Machine Learning – and this is apparent in the Munich HQ. It’s like Stark Industries, but the Pepper and Nao robots aren’t weaponised.

The smart elevators really do talk to the smart doors, room and desk reservation system, the lights, windows and aircon. If you ever wondered what they say to each other, visit machineconversations.kone.com

We’re nudging closer to that connected vision of the future and we’ll see good (and plenty of bad) ideas fall by the wayside in the rush to offer a seamless experience. In order to be ground-breaking, you need to break a few heads, hearts and rules along the way. That top layer will always face the most criticism as it’s our first touch point but the rewards for perseverance are high when the information backbone delivers results. After my visit to Munich, I’m convinced the future’s in safe hands.

IoC: Internet of Cars

What’s the biggest auto show in the world? Geneva, Paris, Frankfurt, Detroit? Nope, with 180,000 attendees spread over 2.5 million sq ft, it’s CES in Las Vegas. Isn’t it full of robots, drones, augmented reality, touch screens and IoT? Yep, and so are the cars.

I’m not about to write a preachy outsider’s view of the automotive future or an insider’s defence of the industry – rather uniquely, I have feet placed firmly in both camps and a tattoo across my skull that reads ‘petrol head’.

OK, the tattoo’s on the inside and I actually like electric propulsion as well as exhaust sniffing. It’s a good job too as the main headlines at CES were all made by cars fuelled from the wall, not the pump.

Faraday Future made a triumphant return to the Nevada stage with their FF 91 at a glitzy live-streamed event. Last year they revealed a concept resembling the Batmobile, twelve months later, it was a far more practical SUV.

For all the glamour, slick branding and live theatre, the focus was on a record attempt – could the new FF 91 beat the Bentley Bentayga, Ferrari 488 GTB and Tesla Model X from 0-60mph? It did, by 0.01sec, hitting the mark in 2.39 sec. I’m not convinced many in the audience bought into the line that someone torn between the Ferrari and the FF 91 would choose the SUV over the supercar based on a straight line dash. Show them both a series of twisting corners and see who emerges at the other end with a smile on their face and who has their half-digested lunch in their lap.

Speaking of smiling faces, that’s exactly what I’d had earlier the same day as I spent quality time with the team from Lucid Motors – another EV startup focused on disrupting the automotive industry. Their forthcoming ‘Air’ also makes a fast dash from 0-60 but the story behind it is one of driving dynamics, rather than straight line bragging rights. Lucid’s CTO Peter Rawlinson, formerly Chief Engineer at Tesla and Lotus, put forward a strong case for his passionate team of 300+ employees and why they’re convinced driving and design appreciation will be just as important as battery range and autonomous tech to the Lucid audience.

Rawlinson believes their battery, developed in partnership with Samsung SDI, is a genuine differentiator in a new world of range anxiety. “It’s not just about distance, but sustained range. The breakthrough cell density is resistant to battery charge depletion usually experienced with repeated fast-charging.” The automotive industry faces many of the issues we already encounter with our personal technology, such as connectivity and mobile phone batteries caught in a recharging memory cycle of decreasing shelf life – not something we’ll tolerate when spending $100,000+ on a luxury car.

VP of Design, Derek Jenkins, former Director of Design at Mazda and VW told me he’d relished the creative challenges when starting with an automotive clean sheet. Sensors for autonomous driving need to be integrated, rather than added to a familiar silhouette and the interior design maximises the space around the electric drivetrain, rather than one inherited from the mechanical components of a traditional combustion engine.

It’s Rawlinson’s engineering appreciation and Jenkins’ design skills that brought the aforementioned smile to my face as we headed out onto the dusty Vegas roads in a development prototype. Peter eagerly hanging the back end out at every opportunity, putting that passion for driving into action!

Lucid now needs to start work on their $700M Arizona factory. This has been previously misreported as a similar model to Faraday Future’s, with funds coming from their own Chinese billionaire – not so, as Rawlinson stressed “this is an American company.” Despite their intentionally understated message, they seem to be heading in the right direction at the right speed as the Air is slated for production in 2019, with first year projections of 8-10k units, rising to 50-60k.

Although Lucid seems to be on track, Faraday’s FF 91 still lacks one important ingredient – money. Vital funds need to be released by Chinese backer, Founder and CEO of LeEco Jia Yueting so work can resume on their Nevada factory. Many keep referring to Faraday Future as the ‘Tesla killer’ as if this is a good thing. It’s not, and Elon Musk has frequently said the industry needs many EV-first players to shake up the competition, not kill it!

So where does this leave everyone else? Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes and others had CES concepts to show off their latest vision for the future of vehicle connectivity – inside and out – and how they’ll all drive themselves, but BMW took out the most real estate.

Here I put my cards on the table as I drive a BMW, but it’s a petrol model and I haven’t made the jump to hybrid or electric yet as I’m still addicted to their turbocharged straight six. However, this doesn’t stop the Bavarians from trying to tempt me into an ‘i model’ every year at CES. In 2015, I piloted BMW’s petrol-electric supercar around the streets of Vegas. This year, they drove me to the ‘Speed Vegas’ desert racing circuit in an i3, then let me loose in an i8 around the track!

Compared to Faraday Future and Tesla’s unnatural obsession with straight line speed, this track session was a superb way to demonstrate the benefits of a car that is just as comfortable in the corners as the straights – and that’s a fun vision for the future!

And that future isn’t all about speed and performance. All manufacturers need to connect – with devices, the consumers that use them and the world around us. We already have a reasonable expectation that our phones will talk to our cars and in doing so, will add functionality. When our cars become fully autonomous, the safety restrictions fall away and we’ll demand entertainment, office functionality and more.

More? Well, I spoke at FutureFest in London last year and Cindy Gallop was on stage before me, talking about the statistics for sex in cars. It’s higher in countries where larger families share smaller houses as the car naturally presents an intimate space – but auto manufacturers continually fail to recognise this. Imagine the potential to relieve the boredom of a long autonomous journey with some connected sexy times. Auto brands take note, if the car is rockin’ time to come knockin’.

The very public message from the car companies at CES was “we’re in control”. This is true to a point, but it’s mostly tinged with an air of panic as they all know the future can’t be delivered overnight. Many believe their music and movie-streaming audience will no longer wish to drive or own cars and this is increasingly the message from industry analysts. But this is mostly educated guesswork and the future isn’t predetermined so the automotive business needs to give its customers a reason to love their products, want to drive them (when not having sex) and make them their own.

The only way to do this is to connect to the future audience – the ones who currently have no concept of car ownership and have never even gripped a steering wheel. Don’t neglect existing customers, but enlist their help as they’re the drivers, owners and brand advocates that can help to share the reasons we choose a Union Jack roof for a MINI, spec 20” alloys on an Audi, tick the box for red stitching with black leather on an Alfa, and take a deep breath of ‘new car smell’ when we drive away from a dealership.

I’m a petrol head for life, even if we replace the petrol with a plug socket, the dashboard with an iPhone and the dealership with a VR headset.

Dawn of the DumbWatch 2.0

I’ve been living with the interactive wrist revolution for a few years and I first wrote about the state of the smartwatch market during my visit to CES 2015. For the following 12 months I found plenty of words but struggled to find the right ones. What went wrong?

I haven’t fallen out of love with smartwatches, but they haven’t made much of an effort to spice up our relationship. I’ve spent a year reviewing watches of all shapes and sizes, various operating systems with differing views on the future of the digital timepiece.

When I wrote my first Dawn of The DumbWatch (4 years after my HD3 SLYDE review), the Apple Watch still hadn’t arrived and all talk of smartwatches at CES 2015 was about Apple’s imminent entry into the market. We’d already been working with Cupertino’s timepiece prior to launch so I wasn’t as excited by it’s arrival as many. Was that through familiarity, or something else?

Apple sold more Watches in one day than the entire Android Wear market had in the previous year and as a standalone smartwatch, it’s the best of the best. The Retina screen is every bit as stunning as the iPhone’s and it’s beautifully made but I really wanted Apple to completely reinvent the watch, rather than evolve it.

Evolution or revolution, they couldn’t avoid the issue of battery life and to conserve energy, Apple ensured the screen only turned on with a finger tap or turn of the wrist. Both actions annoy me. I want to be able to glance at my watch (often subtly) to tell the time, not tap it or bend my wrist at an unnatural angle.

It’s as this traditional timepiece that the Apple Watch suffers. I’m not entirely comfortable wrapping something around my wrist that so many others are wearing, even if the $1,500 Hermès model is available online this week. I still wear a watch and think of it as an extension of my personality, as an accessory that says something about me – but that’s not the future market for this device, or smartwatches in general.

My 6 and 10 year old daughters think most of the watches I test are brilliant and would happily wear one. Their views of conventional watches haven’t been tarnished by obsolescence and they haven’t replaced watches with a smartphone screen. They like the shiny interactive stuff and they’re very much the future smartwatch audience.

What about the rest?

Will.i.am PULS

The year didn’t begin well… Will.i.am’s PULS didn’t arrive in stores but it had potentially the worst user experience of any device, ever. So that’s probably not a bad thing. Will get’s a point for trying, but loses the rest for making a mess of everything else.

Michael Bastion ChronoWing [Update]

Although I love the look of this watch, I gave this a pretty poor review last time. I felt I owed you all an update. Not only did the watch stop working altogether on several occasions, but the metal started to permanently scar my wrist. The strap finally came undone and it fell off! I have never lost a watch in my life, so at least the Chronowing has one first to its name. A slow hand clap for HP.

Cogito Classic (Black Metal)

I’ve always had a soft spot for this watch and tried a couple of earlier models with rubber straps. The main watch design looks great and the concept of analogue hands over a digital face makes perfect sense to maximise battery life. The metal strap boosts the perceived quality but the ‘smart’ part died on me, again. RIP Cogito.

Samsung Gear S2/S2 Classic and Moto 360 Sport

What a difference a year makes! Although Samsung have actually been in the smartwatch game for years, they’ve never really made an impression on consumers. The audience wasn’t ready for the Galaxy Gear and there certainly wasn’t any glamour surrounding the launch, but the Apple Watch changed all this. Samsung, like so many others are now basking in the halo effect of Apple’s range, fashion connections and interactivity.

I originally got my hands on both Samsung models (S2 and S2 Classic) at IFA in Berlin last year and I have to say I’m impressed – with the quality of materials and both the product and on-screen design. I prefer the regular model with its contemporary approach but the Classic is a much nicer conventional watch design than the heavy-handed LG Urbane or Huawei Watch.

Interaction is controlled by a mixture of touchscreen inputs and a rotating bezel. This outer ring essentially replicates the Apple Watch crown or pinch-zoom action and I quite like it.

Motorola’s new Moto 360 Sport needs very little description other than to say it’s similar to the S2 but lacks the outer ring and gains iOS support.

Fitbit Blaze

Another established player enters the battle for the wrist. Fitbit have followed Apple’s fashion/custom format with a variety of straps. The centre of the watch is actually removable so it can be used in activities that don’t require a watch - although a wrist worn strappy thing seems the obvious choice to me. I like the form factor and it gets points for that but it isn’t going to set the world alight.

TAG Heuer Connected

Not wishing to be left behind by all the Silicon Valley new money, TAG introduced its $1,500 high-end smartwatch last year, partnering with Intel and Google (the new money). It looks and feels great, then you turn it on and it runs Android Wear which in itself isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a cheap thing. Also, the standard watch faces all mimic TAG designs and they could have tried harder, or at least attempted something stylish AND contemporary. 

Casio WSD-F10

Let’s get one thing clear, I think this smartwatch has an awful name. Now that’s out of the way, it’s only good stuff. Casio are following their own path, rather than multiple models and styles, they offer 4 colours, all with the same tough rubber strap, running Android Wear but with bespoke faces displaying an array of action data. It looks tough and backs that up by playing tough. It's water and shock proof and connects to Casio’s action-camera to operate it remotely. I’d happily add this to my (albeit pretty shoddy) collection.

Olio Model One

I fell for this watch the first time I saw a photo. Ironically, I was sat in a secret Apple Watch development room in Cupertino with the Olio on my screen, so a slightly awkward moment!

When most viable competitors are striving to set up and control their own app stores, Olio has taken a different tack. They’ve dismissed the idea of a store, preferring instead to only offer the essentials.

Whether this strategy works or not remains to be seen but Olio expects to sell far fewer watches than its rivals anyway, adopting a more traditional approach to timepiece production. Mine arrives at the end of this month. Until then, I’m sporting an analogue watch. Crazy.

So, is there hope for Dawn of The DumbWatch 3.0? I’ll be talking about ‘Hearables' next time, when the info goes in-ear. But I can’t tell you about that yet…

If you want to fill in any more gaps, all the CES and smartwatch gossip is on The Digital Loop.