Hi, everyone. Thanks, Albare.
My name is Greg. I'm a Partner Development Manager at Google Play,
and I lead a lot of our VR and AR focused efforts in Europe.
So, this talk will be so philosophical a little bit,
a little bit practical. And the idea is to give you
a taste of our vision for what we now call immersive computing,
which we see now emerging through the frameworks of AR and VR.
And, perhaps most importantly,
give you a little bit of inspiration
and a way of thinking around this topic,
and what this might mean for you as a developer.
Then, explain some of the tools that we have in place today
to help you succeed in this area.
So, let's start with the vision.
So, ultimately this comes down to
making technology work a lot more like we do.
And does anyone know roughly what year this photo is from?
-60s? No, 40s.
So, that's a computer punchcard from the 40s.
So, that's obviously not the most frictionless and intuitive way
of interacting with a computer. I think you'll all agree with that.
And so, I think it's fair to say that smartphones
were truly the first breakthrough
in terms of, kind of, innovation and interfaces and accessibility
with computers and what they can do.
And still, the level of abstraction remains, right?
So, when you call a friend on your phone,
you don't really see them like you see them in real life.
You see this flat, lifeless version of them on the screen.
And equally, when you're looking for a restaurant,
your phone doesn't really walk you to the restaurant.
You still have to look at your phone
and see this blue dot and then find a way of navigating there.
It's not ideal. It's getting better but it's not ideal.
So, with immersive computing,
we're saying that, instead of staring at our screens
and constantly checking our phones,
we'll be able to interact with the world
and computers in a more natural way.
we'll be able to hold up our heads
to the real and virtual world around us.
Okay, that's kind of the high-level philosophy
as to how we think about this. So what is immersive computing?
So, the way we think of this is really as a spectrum
with AR and VR as two points on it.
So, on the very right,
you have virtual reality which is fully computer-generated.
On the very left, you have reality or you can call it,
real reality, as what we're taking part in, right here.
And in the middle, the sort of the middle part
is augmented reality,
and this layer of computer-generated reality
that comes on top of our real world.
Another way to put it is,
virtual reality can take you anywhere
as this beautiful image shows.
And augmented reality can bring anything to you.
So, this is all kind of intuitive.
So, let's take a look at some of the efforts and the latest things
that we've done in the augmented reality space.
So, if you think back ten years ago,
that was one of the first Android devices.
Computers as phones have become a lot more powerful
and sort of interesting in terms of what they can do,
yet their understanding, contextual understanding of the world
around them has become pretty limited.
With AR, this equation will be changed dramatically.
This will really bring the next big shift
in terms of computers understanding the world around them
in a completely different way.
So, at the most basic fundamental level,
this is about providing timely and relevant
digital information in the context of the real world.
So, here you've got an example of da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine,"
where the very first version of the painting
didn't even have the ermine.
And then, you can see the progression to the very final version
where actually the face of the lady
has changed dramatically. And that's a really rich and interesting
digital, contextual information that
you just wouldn't have access to in the same way without this AR technology.
So, what are some of the other use cases?
Well, shopping is a really obvious and fun one and
kind of immediately practically useful where you can
essentially overlay any digital object
into a physical space and see what this is gonna look like.
You can learn about real-life objects
in a completely new and interactive way
which is kind of shown by this high-end coffee machine
where you can kind of learn and interact in this way.
So, games is obviously a huge use case, and you know,
as we all know, Pokémon GO has really planted the seed in this space.
And we are only gonna see more and more amazing stuff coming
in terms of gaming and AR.
And last, but not least, the example that I used early,
in terms of the navigation.
It becomes this contextual window onto the world
where instead of holding down your phone, and figuring out how to relate to it,
how to relate to your external world with an external object,
you'll actually be using the phone as a window and
be able to see contextual information around you,
and navigational prompts in a much more intuitive way.
So, at Google, as a lot of you know, we started our AR efforts
with Tango in 2014. Now, Tango was a hardware play,
as intrinsically everything hardware is a lot harder to scale and distribute.
So, two months ago, we've announced AR core,
which is all about AR at the scale of Android.
So, let's take a quick look at what this can do.
So, motion tracking. This is a really fundamental aspect of AR.
So, it knows where your phone is in space.
Secondly, environmental understanding.
So, as in this case, it knows that a table is indeed a table
and then you can place objects on it. The same goes for walls and ceilings.
Light estimations, super important, too.
So that, as is in this example, the object knows
when the light in the room is switched off
and it can adjust accordingly.
Right now, this is running on Pixel devices and Samsung S8,
with more OEMs coming on board very quickly.
And we're expecting over 100 million devices very soon.
The way we think of this is really as both a feature and a foundation.
Meaning that, we certainly hope that you are able to integrate ARCore
and AR experiences within your existing apps.
And we hope that this will give, kind of, birth to whole new types of experiences
that are natively AR.
Let's take a look at some of this in action now.
And play the video.
[Music]
Amazing! So, that's for AR.
And let's move on to VR now and see what we've done there
in the last couple of months or so.
So, last year in November,
we've launched Daydream, which is all about
basically high-end, premium VR experiences at the scale of Android.
interactive experiences and comfortable headsets.
Then, this year, we've announced
even more devices that are supporting Daydream.
So that you can use Daydream on almost any high-end Android device.
Most notably Samsung S8 is now supporting daydream as well.
And we're expecting even more OEMs to come on board in the next year or so.
In terms of software and hardware, and, by the way,
the new Google Daydream View, with more colors and even more comfort.
In terms of software, we have even more apps than before.
So, the momentum is quite strong.
You know, let's keep in mind that developing for VR,
and let's be honest about this, is still very hard and quite expensive.
So, we're trying to be very careful as to how we bring this to market.
Having said that, all Android developers are now able to develop for VR,
and we're seeing a lot more organic titles coming to the store,
which were supporting through featuring.
In terms of the product itself and what daydream looks like inside,
we've made it even easier to discover, interact with,
and share experiences in VR.
So, let's take a look at what this means. In terms of discovery,
Daydream Home has an updated look.
With these new tabs at the top, which makes even it easier to engage users
and keep user users in VR for longer.
Therefore, kind of developing this daily use of VR,
which we think is so, so important by taking it sort of mainstream.
Dashboard is extremely powerful as well.
So this enables you to interact with your Android notifications
without having to take off the headset.
Casting, that was one of the most ask-for features.
So, the power of Chromecast and Daydream
now enables you to stream or cast your VR experience
in the headset onto any large screen.
Therefore, making the experience a lot more social.
Screenshot and video capture is also here.
So that you can now share your experiences
on all the usual channels,
making it more accessible for users to see what you're actually up to
in your VR environment.
Last but not least, and this is a really cool one,
YouTube co-watching. So, you can actually experience YouTube
on Daydream concurrently with your friends.
So, we've talked a lot about the philosophy,
what we've done with AR and VR on the product side,
and I wanna leave you with a kind of a taste of the future.
So, this convergence of AR and VR, those two points in the spectrum,
is pretty inevitable.
And we think, this will enable a new type of devices to come to the market.
First one such device is the Lenovo,
all-in-one headset that will come to the market early next year.
This will use part of the AR technology,
such as motion tracking and depth perception,
and will be obviously running Daydream.
So, you can interact with your VR experiences
in a more richer and kind of untethered way
with more functionality, and more freedom to move.
So, beyond that, we've all heard the term mixed reality.
And so, let's see what shape that takes,
most likely in form of devices that will combine both AR and VR in one.
And so, immersive computing and its future,
and present, frankly, is pretty exciting
and we're only just at the very beginning.