The Immersive Wire - 21 March 2021 (Sunday edition)

SUNDAY READ EDITIONCurated VR/AR analysis every Wednesday and Sunday 

// 21 March 2021

Connect with the Igloo Vision team on LinkedIn.

Let's talk about the ramifications of Facebook's research on wrist-based hand tracking. 

In case you missed it

, Facebook unveiled some of its work on new hand gestures for both VR and AR devices, and it's got my brain whirring. Some benefits of the work include: 

• Accessibility for impaired people: As one example, a person born without a hand can control a virtual version because the wrist device tracks neural signals. The ramifications are immense, opening the doors for more people to access their tech. Only a good thing, from my perspective. 

• Fast interactions: While typical hand tracking requires good cameras and lighting, with a slight lag, neural interactions can cut the delay. It is worth noting that the same benefits can come with haptic gloves as well. 

• Better interactions for AR glasses: No-one wants to wave their hands in front of their face while traveling or commuting. Having a wrist device works simply with a future version of the specs. 

Tracking neural signals prompts privacy concerns, which Facebook Neuromotor Interfaces Director Thomas Reardon

comments on

: "Neural data like this is really quite personal and we treat this issue as part of our research set. The problem of how to deal with information that is this personal and engage in a way that is pro-human and on behalf of users. I will tell you that we are deeply committed to transparency as scientists, to engaging in the world of publishing and the world of public engagement, so that we can explain to people why we use this data, how we use it, and what kinds of user experiences are actually enabled by it."All of this is a long way from public release, but it's interesting to see the company engineer its vision of spatial computing across multiple different approaches. It also reinforces my belief on the most important component of immersive devices: the control method. It acts as a gateway to all experiences, as a finicky substitute would ward interested users away. But get it right, and you have a new interaction device on the same level as the computer mouse for PCs. 

New: Share an article version of the above with your colleagues: 

Share

Sponsored message from Igloo Vision

Delivering an immersive project at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t an easy challenge, but one our team at Igloo was more than ready to take on. We worked with VISYON to install a custom immersive system for the Holy Quran Academy. Check out 

the case study here

.

Q&A with... a VR YouTuber

Casandra Vuong, Owner & Content Creator of the 'Cas and Chary VR' YouTube channel

Why did you start on YouTube?We started the channel without any expectations, it was purely out of our passion for the tech and we wanted to see if we could somehow get more people into it as we wanted to share the love. We really didn't expect people to actually watch the videos.We were just intrigued by Virtual Reality technology ourselves. It was in 2016 when we just bought our first VR headset and we were completely sold. Discovering worlds and playing with it every day. However, we soon noticed that there was a lack of information available online. This was mostly at times when we were looking for information on games or had technical issues. That's when we thought, why not share what we learn and see if it will help others? And soon, we noticed that our videos would get traction and that gave us more drive to just keep going :)How has been your growth, and what helps it?I think our growth has been slow, but steady. What has helped our channel the most is when I started to work full time on the channel. Back when we started, we both juggled our full-time jobs with the channel so that didn't leave much time to think about what our value proposition is, like what exactly our target audience would like to see.When I saved up enough and quit my job, I had much more time to do research, planning, and promotion. That's when I noticed that people were also looking for informative videos on both software and hardware. I used to work as a software developer, so figuring out software was already my thing. I started making more technical and informative videos alongside our game reviews. So there was a bit of a shift in our channel. We have now become kind of a hybrid channel of informative videos while staying cheerful and playing games as we still love that. Chary was happy too as she could spend more time on the creative side and go more behind-the-scenes. That's what worked for us and has helped our growth tremendously.What's been your most insightful take from the last few months?There is no doubt that Virtual Reality is here to stay and will accelerate out of the pandemic with remote work becoming the new normal, Valve looking into brain-computer interfaces, NFT's becoming mainstream, the ability to make money while playing games on the blockchain. This all indicates to me that a 'Ready Player One' future is much closer than we think. But, maybe, just maybe, I am living in my own bubble, but it excites me and I think that's important. Staying excited about what you do, as that's in my opinion, the only way you can spend so much time on it without losing motivation.

If you would like to learn more about Cas and Chary, check them out on their YouTube channel.

Refer a friend today

Enjoy the newsletter? Consider sharing it around! Just one referral gives you and the referred a free PDF copy of The Immersive Reality Revolution. Just share the link below, and you get the book. 

Copy and paste your personal referral link to others:

That's all for this week! Want to have a chat, let me know about a news story, or talk business? Either reply to this email, or contact tom (at) virtualperceptions (dot) com. Have an excellent day!