Neil Schneider is the founder of the Meant to Be Seen forum at MTBS3D.com and he talks about how his failed business led him to deal with his depression by playing video games. He wanted to have more and more engaging and immersive experiences, which eventually led him to getting into 3D gaming with shutter glasses and CRT monitors.
Neil talks about his journey of being the 3d game evangelist within the film and video circles who were also getting into 3D. What he ultimately wanted was to have a more immersive gaming experience, and he decided that in order to do that then he’d need to cultivate a community online to demonstrate that there was indeed demand there for game developers and technology manufactures gain enough confidence that there was a market who could support the required software and hardware.
He talks about how Palmer Luckey was a moderator on the MTBS3D forum, and the famous thread where Palmer first announced the Oculus Rift and how that lead to connecting up with John Carmack and other forum members who went on to be a part of Oculus VR.
In hindsight, Neil’s efforts to help consolidate and organize gamers interested in stereoscopic 3D immersive experiences seems to have had a pretty significant impact on the resurgence of virtual reality. He says that gamers are usually the early adopters of these technologies, and for the longest time they were discounted and ignored by the major 3D hardware manufacturers who were more interested in trying to cash in with the expected boom in 3D televisions in the home. Obviously that didn’t work out as planned, and Neil cautions that virtual reality isn’t destined to succeed and may face the same fate if there isn’t enough compelling content that draws people into buying their own virtual reality headsets.
Neil also talks about the history of the non-profit that is called The Immersive Technology Alliance, and it’s mandate to help make immersive technology successful with technologies ranging from virtual reality, augmented reality and stereoscopic 3D. He also talks about bringing immersive technology events like Immersed to places beyond the hot beds of technology and entertainment in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.
Neil talks about some of his GDC highlights, whether it’s too soon to talk much about interoperability, whether there will be an effort to control the platform & distribution, and what he sees as a concerted effort to have more collaboration and open communication amongst virtual reality hardware manufacturers.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.079] Neil Schneider: My name's Neil Schneider. My main responsibility is I serve as Executive Director for the Immersive Technology Alliance, but my bigger claim to fame is being the founder of Meant to be Seen, or MTBS3D.com. How I got into virtual reality, it actually got me into virtual reality. It didn't happen by design. Originally, Meant to be Seen, MTBS3D.com, it started as a website focused on stereoscopic 3D gaming. Back in those days. This is okay. We have to go back several years MTBS was launched in March of 2007 but prior so I'm thinking like 2006 you see I was Let me put it this way. I had a previous business life that didn't work out and You know, I had some ideas to do continuing medical education through the internet. I raised money from the pharmaceutical industry. I put a lot of personal money into a venture, but ultimately it failed because I miscalculated what the industry was willing to do at the time. So, you know, anyone who's ever had a business that they put their heart and soul in knows that when things don't work out, You know, it's hard on yourself, it's hard on you as a person, and you know, that's how it is, but you learn from that. Well, what happened was, during this phase, I was depressed, and my wife said, you know, Neil, why aren't you playing your video games? So, you know, I explained that my computer was too out of date, like anything I'd play on it was either not compatible or just wasn't going to work well enough. So she went back to her grandmother and her family and she explained and actually she became my wife but my girlfriend's grandmother that they sent money through so I could buy myself a new computer. So first I got a computer and I thought, wow, this is pretty good, but it could be better. So then I got a computer with a graphics card. And then I got surround sound speakers, and each time I'd say, wow, this is good, but it could be better and better and better. And I was so hungry for my next fix that I heard about these 3D glasses. Now this is before modern 3D. I'm talking about stuff that you'd buy off eBay. Even then it was out of date. So, I got these glasses, and out of everything I bought for my computer, I was just really enamored by them. It just blew me away as to how much more it added to my video game experience. Well, the thing is, in those days, to make the 3D glasses work, they were called shutter glasses. You needed to have what was called a CRT monitor. Now, I don't know if you remember what CRT monitors are, but these were these big honking boxes with a screen. They were heavy. If you wanted to, I guess it could keep your car from rolling down the driveway. That's what they tend to be used for now. And you needed those for the shutter glasses because that's all that was capable of supporting the refresh rate needed for the technology to work. But what happened was they were being replaced by flat panel displays, or LCD monitors, which is now commonplace. So this was killing the 3D industry. You know, the 3D was literally going extinct. And there were other problems too. There was viable 3D, there were 3D solutions out there, but they were limited to the research and development markets, or the business markets, and they were very expensive. So I was, you know, I was reading on the forums and NVIDIA of course was huge in 3D, so they had a dedicated forum and there was Stereo3D.net and there were other websites and they had these forums filled with people who were equally frustrated as myself. You know, we all wanted the 3D to work, but the game developers weren't supporting the technology, you know, display manufacturers obviously weren't supporting the technology, and gamers like myself were frustrated. So what I decided to do is I said, well, you know what, if I launch a website and build a community big enough and demonstrate that there's demand for this technology, then the display makers will start to put out 3D, the game developers will support 3D, and gamers like myself would be very happy. So that's what happened. So when I launched MTBS, I raised the initial sponsorship through a company called iZ3D. Unfortunately, they're no longer around, but very innovative company. And, you know, MTBS was launched in March of 2007. Well, what happened was, you know, in those days, it just so happened that 3D cinema was launching at the same time. And when 3D cinema was launching, they started having these 3D conferences. Well, I joke that I was the Forrest Gump of 3D because they had all these cinema people and broadcast people, but there were very few experts in the 3D world. So, you know, I kept getting called to go conference to conference to conference. It wasn't that, you know, I was particularly, you know, like a magic man in 3D. I joke I was like the only person out there. So anyway, so I was invited from conference to conference. And it was in 2009, I was speaking at NAB. You know, it's funny how things work. That too was an act of frustration. I was working with a company called Blitz Game Studios. You know, they realized that you could support stereoscopic 3D gaming on console. So they were one of the first console makers to support 3D on both PlayStation 3 as well as Xbox 360. So I wanted to share the news at NAB. So I was on the panel, surrounded by panelists that were in broadcasting and film and so on. And I was talking about how, you know, we have this wonderful console game for gamers. And one of the panelists was like, gamers, they're under tables with wire cutters. And ironically, that was from Sony. That was so many pictures, image works I was doing the talking. So what happened was, you know, when I heard that and I realized, you know what, I'm the only one talking about this, I'm going conference to conference, gaming is like the side topic out of everything else that's out there, when in fact the gamers are the early adopters for these technologies. I decided something needed to be done. So what I did was I founded an organization called the Stereoscopic 3D Gaming Alliance, or S3DGA, as a non-profit corporation. So, you know, a non-profit is just that. I mean, it's not that money doesn't come in. The idea is that money comes in and money has to go out. You know, that's the nature of being a non-profit. and there's responsibilities and so on. So we had to set up a board of directors, an advisory board, a whole structure, and you know, really, I learned a lot in doing that. So, sure enough, S3DGA was founded in 2009, it was announced at Seagraph, very successful. We had Electronic Arts, Panasonic, I mean a whole series of members joined up. Now, we kind of know how 3D went, right? I mean, 2D conversions came out, there was 2D plus depth introduced in the video game market. I think a lot of the things that made stereoscopic 3D exciting were eroded away because, you know, a lot of companies wanted a quick buck. They saw the money in 3D and they were rushing out content that really wasn't ready to be put out there. And consumers, you know, they were disenchanted. I mean, we had a wonderful opportunity, and I really think it was blown long-term. And we could face similar challenges with VR and AR. It's all the same, you know, if things are mishandled. So that's how I got into 3D. Now we'll fast forward a little bit to VR. On Meant to be Seen, while it was founded as a stereoscopic 3D community, we also created a do-it-yourself community, which later became a virtual reality community. And in this VR community was Palmer Luckey, who was a moderator in our discussion forums. And all kinds of rampant discussion about VR, like experiment Computation hardware really bold ideas and it just grew and grew it was like the secret community that was just growing and growing of really sharp-minded people were very proud of you know all the ideas that came out of MTBS and You know how the story goes that Palmer shared schematics and ideas for a new type of head-mounted display and which, you know, of course John Carmack was a member as well and they collaborated and, you know, of course Oculus blossomed, you know, very successfully as did other companies that started out there. And, you know, it became clear that, you know, even though the Stereoscopic 3D Gaming Alliance was founded for stereoscopic 3D, You know, we had all the contacts, we had all the experience, we had the means to have a formal organization for immersive technology. It did not make any sense whatsoever to be limited to stereoscopic 3D gaming. There was so much more we could accomplish. So in 2014, well in March 2014, actually it was earlier, but it was announced in March 2014, the organization was renamed to the Immersive Technology Alliance, or the ITA for short. It's the same organization, it's just that the mandate was expanded and the membership expanded too. So that's how I ended up working in VR.
[00:09:10.823] Kent Bye: And so over the last couple of years since you know those first posts on the meant to be seen forum to the Kickstarter and then to you know the DK1 and the DK2 and Crescent Bay and then here we are at 2015 and GDC and what's it been like for you to kind of watch this go from you know a little inkling desire to you know the frustration that you were so isolated to being here this year?
[00:09:34.584] Neil Schneider: Well, okay, so first off, it's amazing to see. I mean, you know, to see what started as a forum post over a handful of years suddenly became, you know, this industry being formed up. You know, everywhere I look, there's an Oculus Rift, there's Morpheus, there's obviously Valve is new on the market as well. They've actually been at this a lot longer than we give them credit for, but in the public, they're You know, they're out there. You know, obviously, you know, I'm very proud that something came of this community. You know, that we had this space that people could talk and do amazing things. And some amazing things have been done and more amazing things will be done. So I'm very proud of that. But I also have to think that, you know, stereoscopic 3D had a very similar cycle. And 3D was only within the last few years. It's not ancient history. We're talking, you know, within the same decade. So we have to learn from that. And it's so important for this industry to talk together, whether it's privately, publicly, whatever it is, because what happened in the 3D days was everyone saw the potential. Everyone, you know, they smelled the money. That's literally what happened. They smelled the money and they tried owning platforms and limiting what software would go with what hardware and the whole thing. And I would be gravely concerned if we saw something similar happening in the VR world, because nothing is invulnerable to what 3D went through. Same challenges. I mean, in fact, VR as a technology is even more complex than 3D. There's a lot of responsibility that goes with this. But I, you know, I mean, looking at the ITA and looking at what the vendors have been doing, I think these responsibilities are acknowledged and there is a, you know, more of a willingness to talk than there was. So I feel hopeful about it. But really, I mean, as far as GDC is concerned, it's been amazing. And, you know, if the next GDC is the same or better, then, you know, that would be a very good thing.
[00:11:34.545] Kent Bye: Yeah, and it seems like that there is this element of cooperation and collaboration that is happening within the VR community. You know, it seems like you look at Valve and Oculus, you know, and even you see pictures of all the different people from the different companies trying each other's HMDs out, and you know, there's some semblance of like there is some cooperation and collaboration that's happening between people. maybe behind the scenes, but also it seems through either the Kronos group or the standards and this underlying infrastructure to kind of create this interoperable ecosystem to have everything just kind of work with each other. And so, you know, how do you see that kind of playing out? You know, is it looking back to the 90s when things sort of went up and down and didn't happen? It may have been a little bit more competitive. And do you see that part of the success for virtual reality this time around was because of that cooperation?
[00:12:24.735] Neil Schneider: Well, I wasn't personally around in the 90s, like, from an industry point of view. I mean, the technology was far more rudimentary then. It was much more platform-based. There was little to no interoperability between, you know, the different vendors and the different software options. Nowadays, when a game developer or a content maker is putting technology out, they are actually saying, oh, you know, we're going to support product A, B, and C. In fact, I was speaking with AMD just the other day. They have this Liquid VR platform, which they're promoting. Of course, NVIDIA, I'm sure, is going to have their own. And they're saying, you know, whoever wants to work with us, come to us and we'll add your hardware to our API. So there's definitely a willingness for content to be spread out. Corona's group, they specialize in open standards. So OpenGL, OpenCL, WebGL, and so on. And there's this misunderstanding or this expectation that standards are all about this interoperability. When we're going through this phase where platforms are discovering themselves and people are still figuring out what VR is or what good VR is and what the hardware requirements are. So it's still very early to talk about this interoperability. But what's more important, you see, the way I think of standards, and there's all kinds of standards, you know, language, specifications, you know, expectations, quality, there's all kinds of standards that people are still considering, but this is really It's a catalyst. Yeah, it's an end result, but what's more important is it's an opportunity for discussion. And it's the discussion that's most important. So, I think you were at the public portion of the ITA meeting, Samsung was speaking, you heard from the likes of Crytek, and Kronos, and AMD, and there's all kinds of players. Even John Gato is in the audience. I mean, this is the golden opportunity. This is that space where people could talk to each other and learn from each other and there's little to no posturing because there's no room for that. There's huge responsibilities attached to this. Standards, of course, are important, but it's not just so much important for the end result. It's important because it's a very good excuse for people to talk and to get together and work toward goals and ideas and to put the building blocks together. I think that's really what's key.
[00:14:48.428] Kent Bye: And so what is the mandate for the Immersive Technology Alliance then?
[00:14:52.090] Neil Schneider: Well, okay, so our reason for being is to make immersive technology successful. I mean, that's the core ideal. And how we do that, we do it through several ways. Well, we do it through industry building. So for example, we have relationships with all kinds of conferences like FMX. It was announced that we have a business relationship with Seagraph, like we have a strategic partnership for Seagraph 2015. We provide an opportunity for the members to connect with other members, so like a lot of new business relationships have been built through the Alliance. It's not public, but I mean a lot of relationships have been built up that way. We've done research, so for example, a couple years ago, In the 3D days, there was a concern that the criteria for stereoscopic 3D gaming was based on the film industry. So creative ideas and expectations were being set according to what was understood in 3D film. There was very little information available for 3D gaming. So what we did, we had an initiative called the IGO 3D Research Initiative, where we raised over $600,000 of cash and in-kind from government as well as industry to do academic research, modern research, so game developers would have more modern information to go on when creating 3D games. So we're very much problem solvers. Most recently, this past November, we held an event called Immersed, and I'll explain why this Immersed came to be. You know, we're at GDC, we just had the other night, I mean, SVVR, they had this wonderful mixer. I mean, there was like hundreds of people there, I think you were there. Absolutely amazing. In Silicon Valley, there's this wonderful benefit where everybody's here. I mean, I'm personally envious because I live just outside Toronto. I wish there was that kind of market there. But if you go to the East Coast, it's actually harder because the technology is based, you know, either overseas or out west in California. there isn't that connectivity to get businesses and ideas launched. So what we did was in November we launched Immersed and the idea was the investment community was there, the media was there, the technology makers were there and you know it's unheard of to have something like this. So this is like an example of things that we do. So we work to bring out the best in our members and we work to build the industry.
[00:17:11.188] Kent Bye: Great. And so, yeah, what were some of the things that you saw here at GDC this week that kind of stick out for you as, you know, different experiences or technology?
[00:17:20.036] Neil Schneider: Well, for sure, OK, so Epic and Crytek had amazing demos. I was really very impressed. Sony Morpheus, looking back at the past few months, I think they were underestimated as to what they're capable of because they're running off a console versus, you know, a PC with multi graphics cards. and they really showed their stuff, so that was very impressive. What I really was happy to see were there were a lot more Crescent Bays on the show floor, and the DK2 is probably what developers have been using. Crescent Bay is the stuff that they usually show at, let's say, Oculus Connect, or only a handful of people get to see it, but clearly they put out an effort to get more Crescent Bays on the show floor so people could get that much fuller VR experience, so I was very happy to see that. I was very happy to hear about Valve and the HTC Vive, I still have to get my hands on it, because clearly Valve knows what they're doing and they have access to sharp minds and I've only heard good things, so we have a lot to look forward to there as well. And again, it's really good to see as, you know, when you walk down the street on the way over to GDC, you know, people are from all over the world and they're speaking all kinds of languages. And every so often you hear, you know, da, da, da, da, da, and then you hear VR. And, you know, it's really something to hear like all of these developers thinking and talking about virtual reality and immersive technology. It's being taken very seriously. There's nothing to complain with about that. That's just amazing.
[00:18:53.633] Kent Bye: Yeah, and a couple of other things that I saw that really stuck out were both the lightsaber demo from Sixth Sense to be able to actually get your hands in the game and feel that extra level of immersion, and also the haptic, which was sort of like this haptic gun where you actually are shooting and just giving it haptics or having, you know, that haptic gun actually had a tracker, a Sixth Sense stem tracker on it as well, so it was positionally tracked so that when you move it around, And so just that feeling of, you know, your actions are taking place and being present within a virtual space to me sort of gives it an extra level of presence. And so I'm not sure if you had a chance to try out any of those as well.
[00:19:30.913] Neil Schneider: Yeah, you're talking about, okay, so Sixth Sense uses a magnetic system. It's actually, that technology's been around for a long time, but they've been very good at, of course, improving it and making it available for end consumers. The one thing, in my opinion, what they did really well was for Gear VR. Samsung Gear VR, a very popular HMD add-on for Samsung smartphones, I would call it orientational tracking. It tracks the way your head is positioned, but not how your head is positioned in relation to how your body is moving around. So, you know, that's a limitation of the Samsung Gear VR. But, call it a proof of concept, but what Sixth Sense did was with their stem add-on, they made it possible that your Samsung Gear VR could have this full positional tracking. Plus, the Gear VR is a sharper resolution than Oculus' DK2, so that added more to it. So it is very appealing that these trackers can be repurposed, you know, to add features or abilities that aren't inherently there. So what's key is, you know, will the developers support it? And, you know, if they will, you know, good luck to them. I mean, I think that would really help complete the experience.
[00:20:45.985] Kent Bye: And so when I did an interview with Palmer Luckey, one of the things that I asked him about was Mod Retro, which was a forum that he was a part of, which was about, you know, modifying technology and kind of like taking these things and kind of putting together. And in seeing the Valve list of different technologies, there's this sort of theme of like taking technology that's already out there and sort of modifying it to create these different virtual reality systems. And so There seems to be within the history of virtual reality, the consumer VR at least, is that taking stuff that's out there and just sort of mixing it up and mashing it together to get it to work. And so I'm curious of your take since you're kind of seeing that whole evolution of that sort of mod ethic.
[00:21:27.138] Neil Schneider: Well, it's not so much a mod ethic. I mean, it's a group of engineers, really. I mean, the key is to have a vision of what you want to achieve, and you pull up the bits and pieces you have access to to make it happen. I mean, it's really actually... I mean, it's very entertaining if you go through the old forms and pictures and all the crazy... In fact, there's actually a thread from Palmer, you know, the first version of the Rift before it was called the Rift, and it was like this motorcycle helmet, you know, with parts of it cut out. It was humorous. I mean, it was actually almost a joke. We didn't know if he was serious or not. Of course he was. So yeah, I mean, that's the nature of it. And you know, we look at these products on the show floor, which, by the way, are still prototypes. I mean, you know, it's amazing. People are still talking, oh, this product's better, or this product's better, or this has higher resolution. They're just prototypes. I mean, they're just clean, well-printed, or 3D-printed prototypes. I mean, who knows what the end result is ultimately going to be? I think it's far too early to place final judgments on the different solutions. But nonetheless, I mean, as clean as they look, as sharply well put together as they look, I'm sure all these companies have really messy labs that we don't get to see.
[00:22:39.610] Kent Bye: What are some of the VR experiences that you want to have? Well, that I want to have?
[00:22:47.051] Neil Schneider: Well, I'll say this. When I've been going on the show floor, originally with, let's say, the earlier Oculus Rifts, the DK1, the DK2, they were very much experiences where you're in the game, you're in a cockpit. Let's say you're a fighter pilot and it's natural to do that. But when it came to walking games or games that involved your character physically moving around, you didn't achieve presence. And when I'm saying presence, I mean that point where your mind may say, oh, you know what? This isn't real. Don't worry about it. But your body seems to have a different opinion. So presence would be like you're on a ledge of a building. And in your mind, you're saying, oh, you know what? This ledge is real. Walk ahead. Don't worry about it. But you try to step forward, and your knee says, I don't know. Not so sure about it. So that's what presence is, exemplified. Now, what happened was when Crescent Bay was introduced, we immediately started to see these demonstrations where it's not games, but they're actually like these fast experiences to show you what Immersive is capable of. So, you know, we saw Epic Games with the Hobbit and, you know, with the dragon. Crytek has this wonderful demo where you're sitting in a patch of eggs and, you know, you've got to move your head and your body in different ways. But we have yet to see story-driven VR, and that's going to take more time. And one of the big challenges with these technologies is once we're in that stand-up walking position where we can achieve that presence, you have that limited space of the mattress. So that's a big challenge, right? How are we going to get around that mattress? How are we going to be able to have our entire story and gameplay within that small space? you know, we're no longer going to have the joystick moving around in wide spaces. How do you create stories in like a rubber mat? So that's what I'm going to be interested in seeing. I don't have the answer for you, but I'd like to see what kind of story-driven stuff they're going to do in that limited physical space.
[00:24:56.391] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see as the ultimate potential for virtual reality and what it can enable?
[00:25:03.380] Neil Schneider: Well, okay. So, you know, there's this expectation that we're going to have like real life, like full density graphics. Once this virtual reality is introduced. And that's, you know, whenever I talk to the graphics card makers, they're consistently saying, ah, that's like 15 years away. I mean, we're not going to, we're not going to have that super high definition. You know, you see the pores of the person and it's like true to life graphics. It's going to take some time. But what we do have is we do have these cinema experiences, and they're getting really, really good. And what excites me about virtual reality is that we're going to be able to share experiences with people that wouldn't be able to have those experiences otherwise. So for example, the other night I was speaking with, she's, you'll forgive me, her name misgaves me, I have her card, but she was sharing with me that she works with geriatric patients. And, you know, one of the challenges with the elderly is they're lonely people. I mean, they don't, you know, their friends are deceased or they live on their own. They're lonely. And when they get lonely, their desire to live goes away. They don't eat as much. I mean, their health deteriorates. They might even be more prone to Alzheimer's disease, which I thought was interesting because we're missing that stimulation. And what was exciting about virtual reality for her was Well, you know, maybe this is a good way for people to entertain themselves, to have these full experiences that perhaps it could improve their health and their well-being as well. So that's, you know, I think that's a very positive opportunity.
[00:26:41.137] Kent Bye: Great. And is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:26:44.798] Neil Schneider: The only thing I would say is that we're now at this point where there's all kinds of vendors, there's all kinds of brilliant ideas, whether a company is huge or we're talking about individuals, they're equally valuable to this ecosystem. And what's key is to get everyone to talk, you know, to collaborate. It doesn't necessarily require giving away trade secrets or, you know, giving away secret sauces that could cost a business. You know, something that's very important, I'll give you an example. I was at CES, like prior to GDC, so CES was in January. And you never saw so many clamshell VR technologies, like smartphones and clasps and, you know, this is VR, you know, enjoy, you know. And while the technology itself isn't to blame, you know, the software expectations aren't necessarily the same. The experiences aren't necessarily the same. And one of the big challenges we had with 3D was that one horrible experience ruined it for everybody else. I mean, you go to a lousy 2D, 3D converted movie and it doesn't matter if Avatar comes out because you're going to expect that same result from Avatar versus the reverse happened. Avatar came out and then the 2D, 3D versions came out to ruin it. In the VR world, I am concerned that the big players may want to have this top quality. In practice, That may not be the case. I was one of the judges for Seagraph 2014, where we had this immersive technology contest, where people were submitting all kinds of VR games, all kinds of VR content, and it was very difficult to find something that we wanted to rate 1, 2, and 3. Out of all the submissions, there was a lot of content that just wasn't all that good. And that's a very scary thought, because if there isn't good content, it impacts Sony, it impacts Oculus, and it impacts Valve, no matter how good their products are. And then you've got to consider that each vendor probably has their own quality expectations. You know, it's just, it's so important to collaborate and so important to be comfortable in our own skin to learn from each other because, you know, we are really interdependent. I mean, there's no, and that's why you're seeing people try out each other's HMDs and so on, because, you know, they, in a way they're counting on each other. Great.
[00:29:13.280] Kent Bye: Well, thank you so much.
[00:29:14.521] Neil Schneider: Thank you. Thank you.
