The Potential and Reality of Remote AR: A Look at Launch Titles and Future Possibilities

As we approach the launch of various augmented reality (AR) devices, including Magic Leap's latest wave of titles, it's exciting to think about the potential of this technology. The idea of being able to interact with virtual objects in the real world is no longer just a pipe dream, but a tangible reality that's becoming more accessible every day. With the rise of remote AR, we're seeing the boundaries between physical and digital spaces begin to blur.

One of the most interesting aspects of remote AR is its ability to create immersive experiences that are unique to each individual user. Take, for example, the indie studio Phenomena's latest release, Luna Moon Dust Garden. This game takes the characters from a previous VR version and translates them into an interactive storybook that can be experienced in real-world environments. The twist? Every user's experience is different, depending on how they choose to design and interact with their space. By planting seeds in specific locations, users can influence the evolution of the narrative, creating a truly bespoke experience.

Phenomena's approach to storytelling is reminiscent of other creative apps like Magic Leap's Create app, which allows users to populate their space with objects, characters, and fauna. However, Phenomena takes it a step further by incorporating a narrative that responds to the user's actions. The result is a short story that's both engaging and interactive, making it perfect for younger audiences. As we look to the future of AR development, this type of storytelling will likely become more prevalent, allowing developers to push the boundaries of what's possible.

The design process behind Phenomena's Luna Moon Dust Garden was also fascinating to learn about. The studio shared sketches and concept art that showcased their approach to user experience. From the initial anchor point – a floating moon above the main story – users are encouraged to explore and interact with their environment. By using this device as a "totem," users can grab seeds and plant them in specific locations, which influences the narrative as it unfolds.

This level of interactivity is not only engaging but also encourages exploration and creativity. As users progress through the experience, they're able to collect resources from the gardens they've planted, which allows them to unlock new areas and enhance their story. This sense of agency and progression is a hallmark of great AR experiences and sets Phenomena's title apart.

It's worth noting that while Luna Moon Dust Garden is currently free, there may be future updates or expansions that require payment. The developers have stated that the app is intended for children under 13, although more research is needed to determine the long-term effects of this type of technology on young minds.

The prospect of a whole generation growing up with AR headsets and experiencing the world in a fundamentally new way is both exciting and intimidating. As we look ahead to the future, it's clear that developers like Phenomena are already experimenting with storytelling and interactive experiences tailored for younger audiences.

One thing is certain: augmented reality has the potential to revolutionize the way we experience stories and interact with our surroundings. With launch titles like Luna Moon Dust Garden leading the charge, it's an exciting time to be a part of this rapidly evolving field. And as we await the release of more AR devices in the coming year, one thing is clear: the future of augmented reality is bright.

Magic Leap's latest wave of launch titles will undoubtedly bring us closer to realizing the full potential of AR. As we look forward to exploring these experiences and learning more about their design processes, it's clear that this technology has a lot to offer. From interactive storytelling to immersive exploration, the possibilities are endless, and we can't wait to see what the future holds for augmented reality.

Future Possibilities: A Look at What's Coming Next

As we approach the launch of new AR devices, it's exciting to think about the potential of this technology. With the rise of remote AR, we're seeing the boundaries between physical and digital spaces begin to blur. One thing that's clear is that augmented reality has the potential to revolutionize the way we experience stories and interact with our surroundings.

The next year will be a big one for AR, with thousands of developers already applying for grants to develop software for this emerging technology. This interest in AR development is reflected in the launch titles we'll see in the coming months, including Magic Leap's latest wave of games and experiences.

One of the things that excites us most about AR is its potential to create a new type of storytelling experience. By combining virtual objects with real-world environments, developers can create immersive narratives that respond to user interactions. This approach to storytelling has already shown promise in titles like Phenomena's Luna Moon Dust Garden and Magic Leap's Create app.

As we move forward, it's likely that we'll see more AR devices that are designed specifically for younger audiences. The prospect of a whole generation growing up with AR headsets is both exciting and intimidating, but one thing is certain: this technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we experience stories and interact with our surroundings.

The Future of Storytelling in AR

One of the most interesting aspects of remote AR is its ability to create immersive experiences that are unique to each individual user. This approach to storytelling has already shown promise in titles like Phenomena's Luna Moon Dust Garden, which takes the characters from a previous VR version and translates them into an interactive storybook.

As we look ahead to the future, it's clear that developers will continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with AR storytelling. By incorporating user interactions and agency into their narratives, developers can create experiences that are both engaging and immersive.

This approach to storytelling has already shown promise in titles like Magic Leap's Create app, which allows users to populate their space with objects, characters, and fauna. However, Phenomena's Luna Moon Dust Garden takes it a step further by incorporating a narrative that responds to user actions.

The result is a short story that's both engaging and interactive, making it perfect for younger audiences. As we move forward, it's likely that we'll see more AR devices that are designed specifically for this type of storytelling experience.

Conclusion

As we approach the launch of new AR devices, it's exciting to think about the potential of this technology. With remote AR leading the charge, we're seeing the boundaries between physical and digital spaces begin to blur. One thing is clear: augmented reality has the potential to revolutionize the way we experience stories and interact with our surroundings.

From interactive storytelling to immersive exploration, the possibilities are endless, and we can't wait to see what the future holds for AR. With launch titles like Phenomena's Luna Moon Dust Garden leading the charge, it's an exciting time to be a part of this rapidly evolving field.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody its norm from Testim it's Jeremy from testing welcome to projections our final episode of the year I believe where we're gonna talk about augmented reality or mix reality this week and specifically the magic leap one and some experiences we've played with the magic leap one since it launched we played it when it launched we used a lot of the launch titles and one of those titles was a teaser it was just in an animation from this mysterious title called dr. Gord Bart's invaders that's it invaders and is by wet a workshop yeah well but a game shop cuz they built the game specifically to make this game and I went down to LA to preview this game the day it launched people who have the magic one have been able to play it but we were finally able to get our hands on a units alone and play the game and we can talk about some of my experience and show you what it's like a little bit at least with video footage we film from the headset itself what it's like to play a shooter in a very polished shooter in AR so if you're wondering what this mysterious item over here is this is a blaster from the universe of doctor gorg board and it's an universe that existed before this game but it was never really made into any kind of interactive title I understand that it's just an invention of one of the employees at whetted is that right yeah Greg Broadmoor who is our director who's done things for like a movie district 9 and some many things with what a workshop he is the director of what a game shop and he invented this doctor of work Boris rolls called dr. G for now his artist is steampunk aesthetic it's not just the visual stack but the personality of the world is so rich that they couldn't help but turn it into some type of interactive medium they're all video gamers there as well and so over 10 years ago they sold these as collectible blasto out of that world we borrowed this one from Adam because he collects them and it gives you a real-world representation of what this steampunk Blaster could be like but as even though you may have this and it's gorgeous it's a beautiful hand prop it doesn't actually fire and that's what the promise of augmented reality is supposed yet bring into the game into our world actually so dr. G's invaders is a full-fledged game I think probably the most complete experience at least in terms of length and maybe even depth I've used in magically of the launch titles I really like the seagull Rose app and that was pretty full fledged I mean it was maybe a half hour long 40 minutes maybe and but that was as long as they got like there's a nice create app where you could place things on the wall and characters on the ground and they would fight and that kind of thing and that was all very compelling you could sort of see the promise of the technology but you're right there wasn't an app or a game that you know was the system seller or the thing that made you want to give it to other people and say you got to see this this is totally different and new and they're pushing this technology in a way that we haven't what wouldn't have expected at this level to be possible and they've been working with magic leap directly with the prototypes and learning along with magic leap what works and doesn't work with this headset specifically but also with augmented reality as a media new hololens microsoft's hololens has something similar to this they have for the name of this experience but it's like a you know it's another shooter type game where spiders and creatures come out of the wall and you played in an enclosed room and it works some extent and the promise of that is that you're basically bringing characters out into your space that you can interact with and the way you're interacting with it is you're shooting them yes but they come into your space through the wall duplicate they open up little portals in the wall and when you're in wearing the goggles it appears as though that's actually happening in your space and of course it's all customized to your space that is what this game does so well when I chat it with Greg and also with Richard Taylor founder of what a workshop about what makes this work and what are the limitations of this game because they know of course everyone's can have a different play space right how do you design a game where you don't know what the users play space is gonna be like well they described it as being akin to giving people the rules and the tools for an activity an outdoor activity I can give you a baseball bat and a baseball but you're gonna need a baseball field play it in yep and you can't expect everyone's going to have one but they would then find the locations that have one in that same way they build the rules of this game in the tool sets down but you need to have the right space it's a plate you need to have a certain amount of square footage on your actual wall on the wall as well as a space or of the floor yeah look we should explain what the game is so if you put the goggles on the first thing you have to do is calibrate you go through this experience what you're describing right now and it will tell you to look at the ground look at the walls walk around your space even if you've calibrated the headset previously previously like in the system the game itself needs to go through this calibration phase it's pretty fast it's like you're looking around much faster I think the create app does it but actually in real time you see geometry popping up and here you do see one of the limitations of the magic leap in terms of not being able to recognize mirrors or clear glass window solid walls yeah those as well so you need pretty solid surfaces without things like bookshelves you know it'll think that computer monitors are Windows friends exactly exactly and something I quickly realize is if you look in your apartment if you look at your house you may have walls with a lot of surface area but most of the time your walls are not bare your walls have something on them yep it's it's actually it took me a little while to find a room in my house that had the designated space needed for this and it actually is an overlay they they have these wireless picture frames that pop up and they say we need a four foot by six foot area that's blank to map in your space and it needs to be no higher than three feet above the ground which seems like an arbitrary limitation right but actually ties into how that becomes a portal in your world and how that opens up the world of the game so it doesn't actually matter if you have a huge space you still need empty wall space in order for the game to work and if you can't find what it needs it will tell you maybe you should try another room yeah and so I did and I and in fact this room was not good because there's so much noise on the walls everywhere that you look right so once you do have your room set up opens a portal opens on the wall out comes a floating robot pinball his name is gimble and then brings up a array of weapons you can choose three different types of guns I started later in the game you played the beginning and then I began where you left off so I had all the guns already but they have a fire weapon a grab a weapon and a force weapon and they're all these style of guns steampunk is very stylized they get mapped to the controller or the magic clip totem here and it's pretty well tracked it's really cool to just hold that gun out in front of you right and manipulate it see all that detail lots of detail and even though you want to bring close your eyes it still has the same restriction as the magic loop system and that anything closer than about that 18 inches it'll just disappear and you just get a silhouette of that they do an interesting thing where they actually augment the actual magic leave controller yeah into 3d space when you're not using the gun and so it's always something is there and it Maps close enough it's not pixel perfect like the the drift is present but it's good enough when you do have the guns though in real life in real life in augmented reality the first time you fire that gun I found it to be just next-level kind of it's a transformative really it is really really different from virtual reality yeah so you're holding it the gun is more or less there it's a little translucent but it's jet it's more opaque than you might imagine and you fire and there's this tracer that goes through space and it's beautifully animated and then it hits your wall or your ceiling or your desk or your floor or my dog and and there's an effect as though it there's like a burn mark on the wall and it's it's like wow I just fired a gun in my house right right it's kind of scary because like you know my wife Danica was sitting on the couch and I didn't want to aim it's Ward right because I was like I don't feel comfortable aiming it and one of the reasons they were able to get that fidelity to work so well is because of course they know this physical model the dimensions of it and how you're holding it and they've matched and modeled the grip of the guns have the exact same contours Oh in here that's smart so when you're holding it you know you're not clipping through the gay model and all your hand wraps the game model completely and that's the smart spot they also have the grapple gun as we mentioned if you grapple your wall and pull it off you like pull pieces of your wall off it eventually fades away so that you don't get these all over your room but it's a really immersing game in that sense like you really feel like this is happening in your space I mean that's the promise of augmented reality right and not only in your space but also in a space that's imaginary as well and I think the game breaks down into maybe two types of gameplay right there's bringing things that are virtual into your well let's talk about how that works so once you have the gun in your hand these portals open up again and it's cool because there's these sparks whenever a portal is forming these sparks fly out so that's giving you a cue that there's you got to pay attention because something's gonna happen over here and that's a compensation for the limitation of the field of view of this headset because while you may be looking directly ahead the field of view of magic leap won't let you see what's in your natural pro ferreri right and so they have to do things like these spark cubes let you know and audio cues of course to let you know turn this direction and look at the portal that's opening up on that there's a stylized arrow that will show up too if there's danger that will like point you in this direction it's blue if it's a little bit dangerous it's red if it's really dangerous and then what's the robot's name again gimbal gimbal will tell you actual 6 or to your left and of course it's like it's a New Zealand company so there are all these guys or Kiwis it's it's a fantastic voice cast by the way and its really well script is very funny but these robots will come into your world and you you have to shoot at them and they sometimes they have this red armor on if it's a red armor you have to use the fire weapon to blast it off of them if it's blue use the force you can grapple some of their armor and yank it off of them real location damage the enemies come in really all different shapes that side they're life-sized robots I mean these these are as big or bigger than you are yeah there's human sized robots that really when they're in your personal space when you turn around and you see the robots there it can be startling I fear for my cat because I'm running backwards throughout my living room when I'm playing up yeah I think you know your own space where is the wall I can actually push against exactly that is that the portal is not going to come out of but you have to find a space that has been scanned because if you walk backwards into a space that has not been skinned you leave the game area and the game stops there's one aha moment for me because I have a open floor concept in my house and there's a wall that my living rooms get scanned in but it works with occlusion so it's scanned the opening and I can actually go between the wall the doorway essentially and hide and the occlusion work really well when you scan your room I mean with the right room if there's really next-level stuff with this game like the occlusion stuff is magical the couch you can they will walk behind couches and you won't see their Lords table and you don't yeah of course you can't shoot them either because it's occluded by the by the table you'll shoot that instead so you have to walk around and get them I have a little tiny little patio outside of some windows and I thought the windows would definitely break it but I swear to god there was a robot out on my patio and I could only shoot him through the window and otherwise he's totally occluded by the window frame and the bottom of the window and it just worked perfectly I don't know how he got out there but it was really funny I mean it really felt like there was this robot in my space which is a difficult AI challenge right if you think about it these robots have to have a logic of understanding what things are occluded yeah that's kind of marching toward you zombie like but you know some of them they do throw things at you like grapple at you they fire things out and so it gets pretty intense you're right so there are a couple different types of weapons there's there's a smaller robot that fires these missiles that are slow moving because you can grapple and throw back at the I did not know that there there are these taller robots and some of them have these magical spheres that they can throw there's these flying robots which are dis devious like those guys are fast they're a ton of fun to shoot when they do get in your personal space I found like I had really mixed feelings about that because a lot of times they would they were clip like you wouldn't be able to see the whole thing if they're really close you there right up in the in the range of the field of view of these headsets and I don't like that I don't like that I'm fighting the technology that I want to be able to see more and I can't and it's actually affecting how well I can play the game you know they're that if they're that close it's hard to play when an enemy is this close to you it's not fun when they're about 15 feet away from you and you can see a human his enemy and the full body of it and even the NPC even even dr. Gore report himself when he's narrating when you see it then it feels real absolutely absolutely and by the way there's a whole separate mechanic I didn't even know about because you played the intro and I didn't I had to text you I said how do you pick up robot bits part of the challenge of each level is you need X number of robot parts that were defeated using these three different guns so once they fall to the ground you have to hold up your left hand or whatever is your non-dominant hand I assume so you have the official controller in one hand if you hold your other hand which has no tracking on it whatsoever it's purely done with the inside out tracking the headset visual tracking yeah cool like Doctor Strange you know circle appears around your hand and you do this awesome thing like from ready player one where you're getting the coins and everything comes to your hand and it also becomes a shield as well you can deflect the blast so you're really it's a two-handed it's a full-body you know game you're ducking your you're crouched in you're sidestepping you're shooting and then you're also blocking and so really it's a workout you do and so you're constantly like I'm reorienting yourself to where these portals are opening getting through the level eventually you reach the end and it oddly it just turns into it like a puzzle you'll always get this cute little puzzle the end of a level where another portal opens up with a hatch on it you grapple it you pull it out this contraption comes out of your wall and then you can grapple on to these different levers and you can press buttons it's always a little bit different I don't know if it's procedurally generated or what it reminded me a lot of the first valve er yeah experience where you're pairing robot repair the robot repair and I think a lot of the the what a game shop employees and designers our fans what valve have done in VR and even to the extent that you have physics-based puzzles like with the you know the portal gun or the the antigravity gun in half life 2 you have echoes of that except the fact that now it's interacting with your real space and you live into the fact that this mechanism is a puzzle to open up another portal and that's the second half of this game where the potential of knowing that you have a big space inner wall let's the game open up another world that you can peer through and you have perfect parallax to that world it's not it's like a door size portal that opens up at that point yeah and those portals get bigger and bigger as the game progressed oh really where later on it is it is massive oh wow now because we've talked about some of the technological limitations of all going around the challenges of different focal planes right of the accommodation convergence problem yeah near field objects are very difficult to get a perfect focus on without having something already locked to that plane but things in the distance in near infinity actually fit in pretty well with your vision of that world so when you have a portal that opens up to the invaders world and it is almost doorway sized and you are 20 feet away from it it looks convincingly like a window is that warm and you can shoot into it Oh 100% 100% and and there are puzzles within there - you have to hit the correct button with the correct kind of gun you grapple things in that world eventually you reach the boss you know thing in that and you have to defeat them I just wanna graphically this game surprised me I did not expect a mobile processor to produce this kind of fidelity even like the smoke effects in the buttons that you press when you're calibrating your room everything about this game the motion the texture on gimble it all just screams Russian quality high production quality it's it's extremely well done and I mean the physics I'm talking about smoke effects that are that are affected by your space your tables your walls the things that the buttons are surrounded by it all you know lands on and is diffused by your space and that's what makes sets us apart that's what says a are apart from VR and I can imagine it being an enormous task to develop software for an infinite number of environments right impossible almost and and so I forgive them when there are bugs and I experienced my fair amount of bugs I had robots that got stuck in the portal so they the game stopped like I had to find where they were stuck and like shoot between the hole in order to get the the foot of the robot if you take the goggles off and put them back on it has to recalibrate it has to rescan the world even though it's already done it I also recognize that that's what had scanned before well yeah but sometimes it just wouldn't like it would not it would not resume the game and even though like I see that it's been scanned already it wanted me to continue scanning and it just said it couldn't find a space that worked which was odd because I was just playing it there but I like the game is so next level in terms of like this is a new experience yeah that I forgive those those faults and I'd feel like it's a taste of the future in because once this becomes robust once the field of view is bigger I mean once the bugs aren't there I mean this is clearly something that people are going to want to do this is a game that I want everyone to try it's a $2,300 headset so no very few people are going to be able to play this time the game but it is definitely the kind of thing that we are going to be playing over the next several years it's magical and you know to their credit they had years to work on this and to have it as a semi close to launch title in this launch window it's just really impressive because even in VR we didn't have games with this level of polish and this understanding not this Alonso technology this close to launching may also makes me think about what multiplayer would be like what a social experience would be like with this is it two people in the same space wearing headsets seeing the same characters that's a very logical understanding of multiplayer in ER or is it that you're on the other side of the portal and your space is scanned and the portal opens and I get to see you on the other side and we shoot into our other spaces right right like what does that mean because your scan of your environment could translate into something from my perspective like maybe it's just that warped 3d geometry but at least I can sort of see your space and I can hide behind things in and that's what remote AR could be like it just makes me think about the potential and VR which I think all of these launch titles are supposed to do and it's free so well if you have that right yeah also out this week for the magic leap in the second wave of these launch games is a small game called Luna moon dust garden from the indie studio phenomena now if Luna sounds familiar and you have played VR there was a VR version with these characters of this game and they've taken those characters and created what's essentially a store experience an interactive storybook in all when it reality it's not a free app but it's a cute story of animals and the islands and the gardens and it's up to you to plant some of these structures for them to to play in and see the story evolve and it evolved 'z based on your pace the pace that you want to go at it's a relatively short experience but it is certainly you know an example of what augmented reality can do and how you might translate the VR experience to AR which is completely it's like surprisingly different from a fundamental standpoint it's to me seemed like it took a lot of the with the create app in magically did which was to let you populate your space with objects with characters with fauna yeah and add a narrative to that and it so it was a different way of telling a short story in this case a fox that needs to find its gardens and because you're planning the gardens in your own space everyone's experience of this short story is gonna be different and when we that went over to their offices to take a look at some of their design Docs and laying they had some sketches on the walls and and it was kind of cool to see how they thought about how people would use this right you start off with this anchor this moon that floats above their main story and then from there you kind of branch out and you grab using this device using this totem grab these seeds and plant them in spaces and they won't let you plan on the ceiling you can't plant on the wall but you plan on the ground and encourage you then to get up close to it and experience the story from these characters scale and then you'll scale you can sort of collect your resources from the gardens that you've planted in order to plant more yep I don't think that the interactivity is off the chart with this title yeah it's really simplistic but it is a it's a nice story it's like it's Pleasant I would imagine kids would love this app that's that's I think what you know without them saying explicitly I think that's what who they made this for but of course there's age gates for these just like there are for VR headsets because I'm you know your kids wear this I can't but but like its there's no science on that yet I wouldn't recommend it I mean I there's certainly a world of people out there who have done it and we don't know if there's any thing to worry about in terms of you know convergence and whether or not the eyes are appropriately spaced for these kind of headsets and what kind of you know training you're giving your eye muscles but you know it's something that that the developers of the hardware definitely say is not right for anyone under 13 right right at least right now but we know anyone developing for AR has to consider this yes they know that eventually these will be devices that kids will use just like your smart phone is a device kids use now what does it mean when you have a whole generation of people growing up with headsets like this with augmented reality headsets and you need to build content for them and it's in these Studios like phenomena who are experimenting in storytelling for for I think a younger audience honestly well the younger audience is gonna need a substantially cheaper headset yes I can tell you that from your parents point of view it's certainly adults starting a less expensive headset so I look forward to I feel like again a taste of the future even more so than VR this is a taste of what's to come beyond 2019 mm-hmm and judging by magically what they recently did was offer applications for grants for software development and how many people had applied thousands of developers have applied we know there's a huge amount of interest out there for people who want to develop an AR and this is just a taste of the things to come so we're and the year of being optimistic about augmented reality excited by the potential event we're still of course very optimistic about virtual reality but next year we're hope to see a lot lot more thank you so much for watching projections with us this year we back next year with some hardware reviews some game demos and reviews and interviews and until then happy holidays Happy New Year everybody youhey everybody its norm from Testim it's Jeremy from testing welcome to projections our final episode of the year I believe where we're gonna talk about augmented reality or mix reality this week and specifically the magic leap one and some experiences we've played with the magic leap one since it launched we played it when it launched we used a lot of the launch titles and one of those titles was a teaser it was just in an animation from this mysterious title called dr. Gord Bart's invaders that's it invaders and is by wet a workshop yeah well but a game shop cuz they built the game specifically to make this game and I went down to LA to preview this game the day it launched people who have the magic one have been able to play it but we were finally able to get our hands on a units alone and play the game and we can talk about some of my experience and show you what it's like a little bit at least with video footage we film from the headset itself what it's like to play a shooter in a very polished shooter in AR so if you're wondering what this mysterious item over here is this is a blaster from the universe of doctor gorg board and it's an universe that existed before this game but it was never really made into any kind of interactive title I understand that it's just an invention of one of the employees at whetted is that right yeah Greg Broadmoor who is our director who's done things for like a movie district 9 and some many things with what a workshop he is the director of what a game shop and he invented this doctor of work Boris rolls called dr. G for now his artist is steampunk aesthetic it's not just the visual stack but the personality of the world is so rich that they couldn't help but turn it into some type of interactive medium they're all video gamers there as well and so over 10 years ago they sold these as collectible blasto out of that world we borrowed this one from Adam because he collects them and it gives you a real-world representation of what this steampunk Blaster could be like but as even though you may have this and it's gorgeous it's a beautiful hand prop it doesn't actually fire and that's what the promise of augmented reality is supposed yet bring into the game into our world actually so dr. G's invaders is a full-fledged game I think probably the most complete experience at least in terms of length and maybe even depth I've used in magically of the launch titles I really like the seagull Rose app and that was pretty full fledged I mean it was maybe a half hour long 40 minutes maybe and but that was as long as they got like there's a nice create app where you could place things on the wall and characters on the ground and they would fight and that kind of thing and that was all very compelling you could sort of see the promise of the technology but you're right there wasn't an app or a game that you know was the system seller or the thing that made you want to give it to other people and say you got to see this this is totally different and new and they're pushing this technology in a way that we haven't what wouldn't have expected at this level to be possible and they've been working with magic leap directly with the prototypes and learning along with magic leap what works and doesn't work with this headset specifically but also with augmented reality as a media new hololens microsoft's hololens has something similar to this they have for the name of this experience but it's like a you know it's another shooter type game where spiders and creatures come out of the wall and you played in an enclosed room and it works some extent and the promise of that is that you're basically bringing characters out into your space that you can interact with and the way you're interacting with it is you're shooting them yes but they come into your space through the wall duplicate they open up little portals in the wall and when you're in wearing the goggles it appears as though that's actually happening in your space and of course it's all customized to your space that is what this game does so well when I chat it with Greg and also with Richard Taylor founder of what a workshop about what makes this work and what are the limitations of this game because they know of course everyone's can have a different play space right how do you design a game where you don't know what the users play space is gonna be like well they described it as being akin to giving people the rules and the tools for an activity an outdoor activity I can give you a baseball bat and a baseball but you're gonna need a baseball field play it in yep and you can't expect everyone's going to have one but they would then find the locations that have one in that same way they build the rules of this game in the tool sets down but you need to have the right space it's a plate you need to have a certain amount of square footage on your actual wall on the wall as well as a space or of the floor yeah look we should explain what the game is so if you put the goggles on the first thing you have to do is calibrate you go through this experience what you're describing right now and it will tell you to look at the ground look at the walls walk around your space even if you've calibrated the headset previously previously like in the system the game itself needs to go through this calibration phase it's pretty fast it's like you're looking around much faster I think the create app does it but actually in real time you see geometry popping up and here you do see one of the limitations of the magic leap in terms of not being able to recognize mirrors or clear glass window solid walls yeah those as well so you need pretty solid surfaces without things like bookshelves you know it'll think that computer monitors are Windows friends exactly exactly and something I quickly realize is if you look in your apartment if you look at your house you may have walls with a lot of surface area but most of the time your walls are not bare your walls have something on them yep it's it's actually it took me a little while to find a room in my house that had the designated space needed for this and it actually is an overlay they they have these wireless picture frames that pop up and they say we need a four foot by six foot area that's blank to map in your space and it needs to be no higher than three feet above the ground which seems like an arbitrary limitation right but actually ties into how that becomes a portal in your world and how that opens up the world of the game so it doesn't actually matter if you have a huge space you still need empty wall space in order for the game to work and if you can't find what it needs it will tell you maybe you should try another room yeah and so I did and I and in fact this room was not good because there's so much noise on the walls everywhere that you look right so once you do have your room set up opens a portal opens on the wall out comes a floating robot pinball his name is gimble and then brings up a array of weapons you can choose three different types of guns I started later in the game you played the beginning and then I began where you left off so I had all the guns already but they have a fire weapon a grab a weapon and a force weapon and they're all these style of guns steampunk is very stylized they get mapped to the controller or the magic clip totem here and it's pretty well tracked it's really cool to just hold that gun out in front of you right and manipulate it see all that detail lots of detail and even though you want to bring close your eyes it still has the same restriction as the magic loop system and that anything closer than about that 18 inches it'll just disappear and you just get a silhouette of that they do an interesting thing where they actually augment the actual magic leave controller yeah into 3d space when you're not using the gun and so it's always something is there and it Maps close enough it's not pixel perfect like the the drift is present but it's good enough when you do have the guns though in real life in real life in augmented reality the first time you fire that gun I found it to be just next-level kind of it's a transformative really it is really really different from virtual reality yeah so you're holding it the gun is more or less there it's a little translucent but it's jet it's more opaque than you might imagine and you fire and there's this tracer that goes through space and it's beautifully animated and then it hits your wall or your ceiling or your desk or your floor or my dog and and there's an effect as though it there's like a burn mark on the wall and it's it's like wow I just fired a gun in my house right right it's kind of scary because like you know my wife Danica was sitting on the couch and I didn't want to aim it's Ward right because I was like I don't feel comfortable aiming it and one of the reasons they were able to get that fidelity to work so well is because of course they know this physical model the dimensions of it and how you're holding it and they've matched and modeled the grip of the guns have the exact same contours Oh in here that's smart so when you're holding it you know you're not clipping through the gay model and all your hand wraps the game model completely and that's the smart spot they also have the grapple gun as we mentioned if you grapple your wall and pull it off you like pull pieces of your wall off it eventually fades away so that you don't get these all over your room but it's a really immersing game in that sense like you really feel like this is happening in your space I mean that's the promise of augmented reality right and not only in your space but also in a space that's imaginary as well and I think the game breaks down into maybe two types of gameplay right there's bringing things that are virtual into your well let's talk about how that works so once you have the gun in your hand these portals open up again and it's cool because there's these sparks whenever a portal is forming these sparks fly out so that's giving you a cue that there's you got to pay attention because something's gonna happen over here and that's a compensation for the limitation of the field of view of this headset because while you may be looking directly ahead the field of view of magic leap won't let you see what's in your natural pro ferreri right and so they have to do things like these spark cubes let you know and audio cues of course to let you know turn this direction and look at the portal that's opening up on that there's a stylized arrow that will show up too if there's danger that will like point you in this direction it's blue if it's a little bit dangerous it's red if it's really dangerous and then what's the robot's name again gimbal gimbal will tell you actual 6 or to your left and of course it's like it's a New Zealand company so there are all these guys or Kiwis it's it's a fantastic voice cast by the way and its really well script is very funny but these robots will come into your world and you you have to shoot at them and they sometimes they have this red armor on if it's a red armor you have to use the fire weapon to blast it off of them if it's blue use the force you can grapple some of their armor and yank it off of them real location damage the enemies come in really all different shapes that side they're life-sized robots I mean these these are as big or bigger than you are yeah there's human sized robots that really when they're in your personal space when you turn around and you see the robots there it can be startling I fear for my cat because I'm running backwards throughout my living room when I'm playing up yeah I think you know your own space where is the wall I can actually push against exactly that is that the portal is not going to come out of but you have to find a space that has been scanned because if you walk backwards into a space that has not been skinned you leave the game area and the game stops there's one aha moment for me because I have a open floor concept in my house and there's a wall that my living rooms get scanned in but it works with occlusion so it's scanned the opening and I can actually go between the wall the doorway essentially and hide and the occlusion work really well when you scan your room I mean with the right room if there's really next-level stuff with this game like the occlusion stuff is magical the couch you can they will walk behind couches and you won't see their Lords table and you don't yeah of course you can't shoot them either because it's occluded by the by the table you'll shoot that instead so you have to walk around and get them I have a little tiny little patio outside of some windows and I thought the windows would definitely break it but I swear to god there was a robot out on my patio and I could only shoot him through the window and otherwise he's totally occluded by the window frame and the bottom of the window and it just worked perfectly I don't know how he got out there but it was really funny I mean it really felt like there was this robot in my space which is a difficult AI challenge right if you think about it these robots have to have a logic of understanding what things are occluded yeah that's kind of marching toward you zombie like but you know some of them they do throw things at you like grapple at you they fire things out and so it gets pretty intense you're right so there are a couple different types of weapons there's there's a smaller robot that fires these missiles that are slow moving because you can grapple and throw back at the I did not know that there there are these taller robots and some of them have these magical spheres that they can throw there's these flying robots which are dis devious like those guys are fast they're a ton of fun to shoot when they do get in your personal space I found like I had really mixed feelings about that because a lot of times they would they were clip like you wouldn't be able to see the whole thing if they're really close you there right up in the in the range of the field of view of these headsets and I don't like that I don't like that I'm fighting the technology that I want to be able to see more and I can't and it's actually affecting how well I can play the game you know they're that if they're that close it's hard to play when an enemy is this close to you it's not fun when they're about 15 feet away from you and you can see a human his enemy and the full body of it and even the NPC even even dr. Gore report himself when he's narrating when you see it then it feels real absolutely absolutely and by the way there's a whole separate mechanic I didn't even know about because you played the intro and I didn't I had to text you I said how do you pick up robot bits part of the challenge of each level is you need X number of robot parts that were defeated using these three different guns so once they fall to the ground you have to hold up your left hand or whatever is your non-dominant hand I assume so you have the official controller in one hand if you hold your other hand which has no tracking on it whatsoever it's purely done with the inside out tracking the headset visual tracking yeah cool like Doctor Strange you know circle appears around your hand and you do this awesome thing like from ready player one where you're getting the coins and everything comes to your hand and it also becomes a shield as well you can deflect the blast so you're really it's a two-handed it's a full-body you know game you're ducking your you're crouched in you're sidestepping you're shooting and then you're also blocking and so really it's a workout you do and so you're constantly like I'm reorienting yourself to where these portals are opening getting through the level eventually you reach the end and it oddly it just turns into it like a puzzle you'll always get this cute little puzzle the end of a level where another portal opens up with a hatch on it you grapple it you pull it out this contraption comes out of your wall and then you can grapple on to these different levers and you can press buttons it's always a little bit different I don't know if it's procedurally generated or what it reminded me a lot of the first valve er yeah experience where you're pairing robot repair the robot repair and I think a lot of the the what a game shop employees and designers our fans what valve have done in VR and even to the extent that you have physics-based puzzles like with the you know the portal gun or the the antigravity gun in half life 2 you have echoes of that except the fact that now it's interacting with your real space and you live into the fact that this mechanism is a puzzle to open up another portal and that's the second half of this game where the potential of knowing that you have a big space inner wall let's the game open up another world that you can peer through and you have perfect parallax to that world it's not it's like a door size portal that opens up at that point yeah and those portals get bigger and bigger as the game progressed oh really where later on it is it is massive oh wow now because we've talked about some of the technological limitations of all going around the challenges of different focal planes right of the accommodation convergence problem yeah near field objects are very difficult to get a perfect focus on without having something already locked to that plane but things in the distance in near infinity actually fit in pretty well with your vision of that world so when you have a portal that opens up to the invaders world and it is almost doorway sized and you are 20 feet away from it it looks convincingly like a window is that warm and you can shoot into it Oh 100% 100% and and there are puzzles within there - you have to hit the correct button with the correct kind of gun you grapple things in that world eventually you reach the boss you know thing in that and you have to defeat them I just wanna graphically this game surprised me I did not expect a mobile processor to produce this kind of fidelity even like the smoke effects in the buttons that you press when you're calibrating your room everything about this game the motion the texture on gimble it all just screams Russian quality high production quality it's it's extremely well done and I mean the physics I'm talking about smoke effects that are that are affected by your space your tables your walls the things that the buttons are surrounded by it all you know lands on and is diffused by your space and that's what makes sets us apart that's what says a are apart from VR and I can imagine it being an enormous task to develop software for an infinite number of environments right impossible almost and and so I forgive them when there are bugs and I experienced my fair amount of bugs I had robots that got stuck in the portal so they the game stopped like I had to find where they were stuck and like shoot between the hole in order to get the the foot of the robot if you take the goggles off and put them back on it has to recalibrate it has to rescan the world even though it's already done it I also recognize that that's what had scanned before well yeah but sometimes it just wouldn't like it would not it would not resume the game and even though like I see that it's been scanned already it wanted me to continue scanning and it just said it couldn't find a space that worked which was odd because I was just playing it there but I like the game is so next level in terms of like this is a new experience yeah that I forgive those those faults and I'd feel like it's a taste of the future in because once this becomes robust once the field of view is bigger I mean once the bugs aren't there I mean this is clearly something that people are going to want to do this is a game that I want everyone to try it's a $2,300 headset so no very few people are going to be able to play this time the game but it is definitely the kind of thing that we are going to be playing over the next several years it's magical and you know to their credit they had years to work on this and to have it as a semi close to launch title in this launch window it's just really impressive because even in VR we didn't have games with this level of polish and this understanding not this Alonso technology this close to launching may also makes me think about what multiplayer would be like what a social experience would be like with this is it two people in the same space wearing headsets seeing the same characters that's a very logical understanding of multiplayer in ER or is it that you're on the other side of the portal and your space is scanned and the portal opens and I get to see you on the other side and we shoot into our other spaces right right like what does that mean because your scan of your environment could translate into something from my perspective like maybe it's just that warped 3d geometry but at least I can sort of see your space and I can hide behind things in and that's what remote AR could be like it just makes me think about the potential and VR which I think all of these launch titles are supposed to do and it's free so well if you have that right yeah also out this week for the magic leap in the second wave of these launch games is a small game called Luna moon dust garden from the indie studio phenomena now if Luna sounds familiar and you have played VR there was a VR version with these characters of this game and they've taken those characters and created what's essentially a store experience an interactive storybook in all when it reality it's not a free app but it's a cute story of animals and the islands and the gardens and it's up to you to plant some of these structures for them to to play in and see the story evolve and it evolved 'z based on your pace the pace that you want to go at it's a relatively short experience but it is certainly you know an example of what augmented reality can do and how you might translate the VR experience to AR which is completely it's like surprisingly different from a fundamental standpoint it's to me seemed like it took a lot of the with the create app in magically did which was to let you populate your space with objects with characters with fauna yeah and add a narrative to that and it so it was a different way of telling a short story in this case a fox that needs to find its gardens and because you're planning the gardens in your own space everyone's experience of this short story is gonna be different and when we that went over to their offices to take a look at some of their design Docs and laying they had some sketches on the walls and and it was kind of cool to see how they thought about how people would use this right you start off with this anchor this moon that floats above their main story and then from there you kind of branch out and you grab using this device using this totem grab these seeds and plant them in spaces and they won't let you plan on the ceiling you can't plant on the wall but you plan on the ground and encourage you then to get up close to it and experience the story from these characters scale and then you'll scale you can sort of collect your resources from the gardens that you've planted in order to plant more yep I don't think that the interactivity is off the chart with this title yeah it's really simplistic but it is a it's a nice story it's like it's Pleasant I would imagine kids would love this app that's that's I think what you know without them saying explicitly I think that's what who they made this for but of course there's age gates for these just like there are for VR headsets because I'm you know your kids wear this I can't but but like its there's no science on that yet I wouldn't recommend it I mean I there's certainly a world of people out there who have done it and we don't know if there's any thing to worry about in terms of you know convergence and whether or not the eyes are appropriately spaced for these kind of headsets and what kind of you know training you're giving your eye muscles but you know it's something that that the developers of the hardware definitely say is not right for anyone under 13 right right at least right now but we know anyone developing for AR has to consider this yes they know that eventually these will be devices that kids will use just like your smart phone is a device kids use now what does it mean when you have a whole generation of people growing up with headsets like this with augmented reality headsets and you need to build content for them and it's in these Studios like phenomena who are experimenting in storytelling for for I think a younger audience honestly well the younger audience is gonna need a substantially cheaper headset yes I can tell you that from your parents point of view it's certainly adults starting a less expensive headset so I look forward to I feel like again a taste of the future even more so than VR this is a taste of what's to come beyond 2019 mm-hmm and judging by magically what they recently did was offer applications for grants for software development and how many people had applied thousands of developers have applied we know there's a huge amount of interest out there for people who want to develop an AR and this is just a taste of the things to come so we're and the year of being optimistic about augmented reality excited by the potential event we're still of course very optimistic about virtual reality but next year we're hope to see a lot lot more thank you so much for watching projections with us this year we back next year with some hardware reviews some game demos and reviews and interviews and until then happy holidays Happy New Year everybody you\n"