Articles by: "Jan Ozer—Independent Technology Journalist"

With HP’s entrance, the commercial VR market solidifies

August 1, 2017 Jan Ozer—Independent Technology Journalist

Some have dismissed VR as yet another overhyped technology category that will never achieve those prized hockey-stick sales projections. And let’s face it: Many consumers ignore it completely as solely for gamers. HPs recent entry into what it calls “commercial VR” may signal a new class of applications that could convince consumers to give VR another look. It should also inspire a raft of experimentation from a wide range of industries. At HP’s announcement at SIGGRAPH, HP’s partners used VR for applications as varied as creating immersive consumer and marketing experiences, to training and simulation, to curing PTSD.

HP’s announcement had three key elements. Most significant is the introduction of the HP Z VR Backpack, which is a battery powered, 10.25-pound backpack that’s driven by an Intel Core i7-7820HQ CPU, with an NVIDIA Quadro P5200 graphics card. Obviously, the main benefit of the wearable solution is the ability to move in a VR world untethered and without tripping over wires. Significantly, the unit features a dock, which allows developers to quickly transition back and forth between their desktop and wearable VR PC for virtual reality content design.

Beyond the backpack, HP is selling the HTC Vive Business Edition head mounted display (HMD). HP also plans to open 13 immersion centers around the globe to help companies experience HP VR technology and learn how to best develop and deploy VR.

Pole Position

An Audi prospect checking out the tires close-up in VR.

One early adopter of HP VR is Audi, which has developed two types of showroom-based systems. One allows potential buyers to walk around the car and peer inside all the nooks and crannies.

The other is a chair-based system that allows potential buyers to use a controller to navigate around and into the car. As they approach doors, trunks, or engine compartments in the VR world, hot spots appear to open and view inside, or sit. Audi plans to rollout the chair-based system to all dealers in the third quarter of 2017.

Magdalena Maczkowski is the Product Owner of Audi’s VR Experience/Immersion. As she explained, most prospects come to the dealership knowing which car they want to buy. Working with a sales consultant, they can configure and visualize the car on a traditional large screen display. When it comes to choosing colors and final options, they may don the VR headset to get a feel for how the panoramic sunroof looks, or the high-end 18” rims, or how the colors look at night under a streetlight. And, since Audi sells more than 50 vehicles, prospects can experience a car that isn’t on the lot.

Training and Entertainment Applications

Another early HP VR partner is Motion Reality, Inc, which develops real-time human motion capture and simulation technologies for the military, law enforcement, entertainment, and sports markets. The interface allows users of Motion Reality products to move within a virtual environment and interact with their fellow actors and surroundings by physically moving around a defined real-world environment equipped with motion capture technology.

Training and entertainment courtesy of VR.

VR for Pain Relief and Therapy

A third company experimenting with HP’s technology is Firsthand Technologies, which uses VR for medical applications ranging from pain relief to helping reduce the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or phobias. Regarding PTSD, VR can provide controllable exposure to a fearful experience, allowing patient to process and ultimately overcome its impact. “People get stuck,” Firsthand CEO Howard Rose commented. “VR unsticks them with gradual, low stress challenges.” Rose also shared that Firsthand started using HP workstations in hospitals, in part, because of their whisper quiet operation.

Over the last 12-18 months, VR has evolved from a technology focused on a small number of use cases to a tool that can be used by any company that needs to market and sell its products, train its workers, or perform any number of other functions—including, of course, delivering information and entertainment. HP’s commitment to VR adds an exclamation point to that pivot. While VR has not yet captured widespread consumer use, the addition of more options and commercial implementations can only help build interest in virtual reality experiences as a whole.

Innovation | Video

The Washington Post is focused on video. Here’s why

February 8, 2017 Jan Ozer—Independent Technology Journalist

In an era when many publications are contracting, The Washington Post is expanding, particularly in the group charged with producing and hosting web videos. To understand why, we spoke with the Post’s Micah Gelman Senior Editor, Director of Editorial Video.

Tell us about the recent expansion in the video department.

We recently posted close to 30 new jobs in the video department to expand our efforts in two basic ways. First, we want to present videos with our news stories when it’s complementary to the story. Second, we’re developing content for over the top delivery, and delivery in UGC and social media sites, to position The Washington Post as a video destination.

Let’s look at the first focus. Where does video fit in for a newspaper?

The Washington Post produced six hours of coverage of the Women’s March with over 8.3 million views. (Editorial note: per Facebook statistics, the Post had over 4.1 million views for the election and inauguration, and over 8.3 million views of the Women’s March).

Video has become a core part of our mission to present readers with a full 360 view of the news; it’s complementary to the written story, not either/or. Some news is inherently visual, so we present video as part of the story. Sometimes video enables a deeper dive into the content, so we present that.

Sometimes, the story is live and we produce that as well. For example, we broadcast the recent presidential election on Facebook Live for eight and a half hours, the inauguration for about nine hours, and the Women’s March for about six hours. Each event drew millions of viewers.

Overall, we want to become a one stop shop that presents our readers with the story produced in all the formats that it should be in.

What percentage of stories do you cover directly as opposed to using footage from other sources? How will this change over the next 12 months or so?

Today, about 40% is original, and 60% is from other sources. However, even when we use third-party video, we put our own editorial package around it, adding reporting, annotations, and other elements that makes it original. Over the next 12 months, we’ll double the size of our video staff and that’s probably going to flip to 65% original content.

Though our base is in DC, we’ve sent video journalists to North Korea, China, to cover multiple terror attacks overseas, as well as covering stories all over the United States. Our readers are global and so is our video coverage. And this will expand greatly over the next few months.

Can you elaborate on your over the top strategy?

A Washington Post YouTube video discussing how quotes from 1984 are relevant in 2017, dramatically boosting sales of the book.

The next phase of growth is to position The Washington Post as a destination for video. We want to change the perception of The Washington Post as a legacy newspaper with video, to a video-first enterprise, essentially re-imagining The Washington Post as a video destination, not only on Facebook Live, YouTube and other social media sites, but also over the top via Apple TV, Roku, and Fire TV.

Editorially, what works well in an article page typically isn’t as effective as a standalone video consumed on a living room TV. So, we’re producing longer, more scripted pieces with studio quality production value. We’re adding YouTube-style personalities, and producing video to distribute not only through our own OTT apps, but through other channels as well. Again, it’s video as the destination.

How do you market OTT content?

That’s the key question. We have to use all available megaphones to call attention to what’s new and what’s different and promote our discoverability, to let our readers and viewers know what’s available.

Talk about what you’re doing on social media.

We’re producing 150 to 175 events a month on Facebook Live, YouTube Live and our own website. While it’s easier to monetize video on our own site, Facebook Live and YouTube Live provide scale because we’re attracting an audience that wouldn’t come to our site. So, it’s very valuable to us to be on both sites, and other social media properties.

How does Facebook Live compare to YouTube Live?

Facebook has been very aggressive in their own repositioning to a video destination, which obviously YouTube already was. YouTube viewers are on that site to watch multiple videos, which is obviously good for us, while Facebook viewers are a bit more passive and on the site for a range of content. They’re both really valuable audiences to us in different ways.

Can you briefly describe the tools you use to capture/edit/encode/deliver your streaming videos?

We shoot either using DSLRs, or with Sony FS5 cameras, which are 4K and deliver more broadcast quality. We use LiveU on-camera transcoders/transmitters for sending live feeds from the field, and edit in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Tell us about your staff.

We have about 40 on our video staff, almost all capable of shooting and producing events, with about 32 regularly shooting and producing. Fortunately, we’re far enough along in the evolution of video journalists that many of our staff have experience in other places. Otherwise, we have staff who worked in TV, some who came through photography, and some that were trained as multimedia journalists.

Innovation

Will PlayStation bring VR to the masses?

October 24, 2016 Jan Ozer—Independent Technology Journalist

In a word, no. In the short term, Sony’s new Playstation VR (PSVR) headset will dominate sales in the console-based headset market, but this group is comprised of early adopters in a closed market. While significant, the gaming market is too small to be called a mass market, and PSVR sales to early adopters doesn’t even assure that VR will become a killer app in gaming (Kinect, anyone?). Overall, VR is in the early stages, and still seeking killer apps that can drive true mass-market adoption.

VR Headset Market in a Nutshell

The VR headset market breaks into three categories: phone-based, console-based, and PC-based. According to projections from researcher Strategy Analytics, phone-based headsets will account for 93% of overall sales in 2016, with console-based units at 6% and PC-based units at 1%.

So why are PC-based sales estimates so low? Because the GPU requirements are so high. Though some researchers put the number of VR-capable computers as high as 16 million by the end of 2016, all those aren’t owned by gamers. And other projections put the number as low as 3 million.

In contrast, the installed base of VR-capable PlayStation 4 consoles is projected to reach 53 million by the end of 2016, which is between 3-17 times larger. If Sony sells the 2.6 million PSVR units some analysts anticipate, it’s an attach rate of just 5%. Apply that to the most pessimistic estimate of VR-ready PCs owned by games, and that’s only 150,000 high-end units.

Even if PSVR sales smash projections, these are all sales to early adopters, which are essential to mass market success but an inaccurate predictor thereof. Beyond the console-based market, PSVR can’t trigger a mass market in PC sales because the installed base of VR-capable PCs is tiny. It will do little to impact phone-based VR headsets because the experience is so different; no one expects to get PSVR performance from a smartphone.

Hunt for the Missing Killer App

VR won’t achieve mass market success unless and until sufficient killer apps become available to stimulate broad-based use. Certainly, gaming may be one of them, but it’s only one, and its impact will be felt most in the console market.

For PC-based units like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, potential breakthrough applications will come in markets where users can afford the high-end computing requirements and expensive headset costs. Manufacturing is a great example. For example, a recent PWC survey found that 36% of all surveyed US manufacturers are either currently adopting VR, or plan to do so in the next three years. Over a third (37%) planned to adapt augmented reality technology in the same period. The two most promising applications were product design and development, and safety and manufacturing skills training.

A recent article in The Economist describes how real-estate companies in China use VR to show prospects apartments in London. The article reports that China has largely ignored VR-based gaming to focus on business applications like sales, design and education. Medicine is highly touted as another market that can benefit from the enhanced training that VR offers and and afford the costs.

Phone-based units are more for experiencing VR as opposed to heavy-duty gaming. Here the likely short-term applications are watching entertainment-based or utilty-based VR, interacting with social media and simple gaming. For example, the NBA just announced that they are streaming live games in VR for the 2106-2017 season, but only to the Samsung Gear VR headset. Facebook recently announced Carmel, a VR web browser that will enable simple VR experiences like putting you inside a car for a test drive, or shopping in a VR simulated store on Oculus devices, but also on some smartphone-based VR devices. Google’s new Daydream View will have more than 50 “experiences” by the end of 2016, and will also work with Google Play Movies, YouTube, StreetView, and Google has created VR tours of many historic locations. Whether any of these rises to the level of killer app remains to be seen.

What Does the Future Hold?
Everyone involved in VR, whether hardware or software developers, or industry analysts, are drinking their own PR- and demo-fueled Kool-Aid, and will point to any success as proof of market viability. However, even a rudimentary analysis leads to the conclusion that even if PSVR sells 5 million units in 2016, it means very little for markets outside of console-based gaming.

No matter where you fit in—investor, software-developer, or potential buyer—you need to work hard to separate the signal from the noise. We’re in the early days of VR adoption, and success in any single market doesn’t portend mass market success. The best news is that the major hardware vendors; Facebook, HTC, Samsung, Google and Microsoft, can stay the course long enough for the technology to evolve and become affordable, and for those killer apps to emerge.

Jan Ozer (@janozer) is an experienced technologist and author who specializes in streaming media.