Tipatat Chennavasin is a general partner at The VR Fund, which is an early stage VC fund focusing exclusively on virtual reality and augmented reality start-ups. One of the services that Tipatat does for the community is maintain a VR Industry Landscape infographic that creates a taxonomy for the different VR industry verticals as well as where they fit in within the technology stack as being either a part of the underlying infrastructure, a tool or platform, or on the application layer with specific content. He also maintains a much more detailed Trello Board of the Virtual Reality Industry.
I had a chance to catch up with Tipatat at the Experiential Technology and Neurogaming Conference where we talked about the VR landscape, the current state of augmented reality, how he sees artificial intelligence and computer vision technology playing a role in VR, what’s happening with VR in China, and what he’s learned from doing a daily 3D painting in TiltBrush
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Here’s a copy of The VR Fund’s 2016 VR Industry Landscape from June 2016 (version 1.6). Click through to The VR Fund’s site to see the full size version:
Here’s a link to one of Tipatat’s daily Tiltbrush paintings mentioned within the podacast that makes a political statement about what’s inside of Donald Trump’s head
https://twitter.com/chetfaliszek/status/741499949662117889
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. On today's episode, I have Tipitat Chinavasan, who is a general manager of the VR Fund, which is an early stage investment fund focusing exclusively on augmented and virtual reality companies. And so Tipitat puts out a lot of great information, including the VR landscape infographic that kind of maps out the top 150 or so VR companies on the different verticals, as well as manages a Trello board that has over 400 VR startups. And so Tipitat's been tracking the VR landscape pretty closely. And so I asked him about what he's interested in investing in VR, as well as what's happening in the augmented reality realm. as well as artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, as well as what's happening in China with virtual reality. So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. But first, a quick word from my sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Unity. Unity is a great way to get involved into virtual reality development, even if you don't want to become an expert on every dimension of creating a VR experience. The Unity Asset Store has a lot of different 3D models and scripts to get you started. For example, Technolust's Blair Renaud has won artistic achievement awards using a lot of the assets from the Unity Store. I'm not actually doing a lot of modeling and art for the game. It's a lot of kit bashing, taking Unity assets, tearing them apart and putting them back together. Get started in helping make your VR dreams come true with Unity and the Unity Asset Store. And so this interview happened at the Experiential Technology and Neural Gaming Conference that happened on May 17th at the Metreon in San Francisco. And so with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:59.439] Tipatat Chennavasin: Hello, my name is Diptet Chennavasan. I'm the general partner of the Venture Reality Fund. We're an early-stage fund that invests in AR and VR companies only. Marco and I, we started this fund earlier this year. We're a $50 million fund. We've done eight investments so far, although only three of them are public, so we like to let the companies talk about themselves before we talk about them. But the ones that are public, you know, we have some great companies like Eonite, Computer Vision, Visionary VR, which is creating a new way to create storytelling in VR, like animated stories that you can create and remix and just enjoy. It's really awesome. So, yeah, I like to say we invest in what's great in VR and what will make VR great.
[00:02:36.216] Kent Bye: Yeah, is there any specific themes that you've found so far and the things that you find really super compelling in terms of some of the companies that are trying to solve some of the big open problems out there in VR right now?
[00:02:47.465] Tipatat Chennavasin: Sure, I mean, I think there's a lot, you know, again, VR is super new, so there's billion problems that need to be solved and addressed, and a lot of it's figuring out timing and what are some of the problems. For us, we really believe in that education can transform VR, but the problem that's holding a lot of these education and VR companies back is that the process of creating educational content in VR is very cost prohibitive, especially at this early stage of the market when it's so hard to sell into educational institutions. So one way of solving it is trying to tackle problems in the educational space that will have easier sell-through channels. But the other way to solve it too is also thinking about how can you be more efficient in the creation of educational content and make sure that's still very compelling and takes all advantage of what makes VR unique. So trying to solve some of that, I think, is really a lot of stuff that I've been looking for recently in terms of figuring out a couple of things, right? Like, how do you make it easier and more effective? Also finding what's the most effective part of education in VR. Yeah, and kind of going beyond and broader, like what I like to look for too is, especially in this early stage of VR, where we know that not everyone is gonna have to buy a VR headset, but what are some of the applications that are really gonna bring more audiences, different audiences to VR? And how do we expand VR beyond just gaming and some very niche applications in certain verticals, right? There's a group called The Wave, and they had a great showing at SVVR, but even before that at GDC, they DJed a party. It's a platform to create, perform, and socially experience EDM music in VR. And it's phenomenal. I feel like it's this way of bringing a different audience. You might not necessarily know or that excited about playing games in VR, but now they're like, oh, wow, I didn't know I could use this technology. And kind of bringing new audiences into VR and thinking about not just what's a cool experience to do in VR, but what's a cool experience that you will continually do in VR, that you'll want to come back to, and that could build a community, a very engaged community.
[00:04:47.831] Kent Bye: Do you think at this point in the evolution of VR as a technology that you're a lot more interested in investing in companies that are doing things on the software level or do you feel like there's still room and opportunity for a hardware player to come in and make a difference in some way? Sure.
[00:05:03.819] Tipatat Chennavasin: So, you know, I think this is a very interesting, you know, there's still opportunity for certain types of hardware plays, but at the same time, you know, I think, you know, it's very clear that there's at least three very large companies, four, five, six, that are taking VR very seriously. And that the opportunities in VR, like, it's going to be very hard to be another headset company right now with You know, Oculus with the Vive with, you know, the gear with Google and with PlayStation all building really high quality products. So unless you can do something that is a huge leapfrog over what they're doing, it's not enough to be. hey, I can create almost as good an experience but cheaper. Like that's not where VR is right now. VR is still in the formation stage, it's not in the optimization stage. And so the companies that are most compelling in that are who's really taking VR to where we hope it can be and not necessarily who's making what the current state of VR is and trying to make it cheaper. Because I feel like VR needs to be experience-driven and not cost-driven, especially in this early phase. The one thing I did want to add, too, is we know about the companies in the US, but also there are going to be major efforts in VR coming from large electronic and entertainment companies in Asia as well, and we're going to see huge efforts by them. Yeah, I will say there's a lot of interesting challenges I think left to be done in VR, but it's not necessarily as, hey, I'm going to take this and build a headset. It's just like, OK, you know what? If I've come up with a way to do, let's say, a high resolution display, I've come up with either a way of making OLED displays higher density so that they can be like 16K displays, or I've come up with a way to do light projection into your eye. The path to market is not, hey, I'm going to take this and build a headset and try to compete against Oculus. It's, no, I will then license this to Oculus and Samsung. And that's the way to think about it. Because at the end of the day, too, these headsets are not hardware or just hardware. It's hardware coupled with software. And so can you create an SDK? Can you create a platform, a store? And you'll see that it's not as easy as one would like to think.
[00:07:07.330] Kent Bye: Yeah, it really is a whole ecosystem that they have to build out. And so it goes beyond just a technological innovation that they may have. And so now that you have started the VR Fund, I'm curious about the story about the moment when you decided to go out on your own and start a VR Fund right now.
[00:07:21.663] Tipatat Chennavasin: Oh, sure, sure. A lot of it was figuring out what was happening in the space. I felt like I was spending a lot of my time helping to just educate other people about VR, whether they were corporations or other investors, and then just trying to figure out, OK, how do we get more people excited and really thinking about VR? And I felt like there was an opportunity to create an organization that was really going to be just devoted to AR and VR, and to really push the conversation forward. And so, you know, a lot of what we do, beyond just advising and investing in companies, is also, you know, I do things like the Trello board and the landscaping, and that's really to help the whole entire ecosystem. You know, we believe in VR, we want to make everyone feel comfortable enough to start investing. We want to feel like, you know, if you're a startup and you want to get involved in VR, you can look at your partners, look at your competition and get a good understanding of like what's out there. So you're not always just starting from scratch. And that's a lot of like how we're trying to provide value and really help out the VR community as a whole. And so I felt like that was the one thing I couldn't do before that I can do now with what we've set up with the Venture Reality Fund.
[00:08:29.609] Kent Bye: Yeah, your virtual reality landscape visualization that you did for the VR Fund, I think, was really interesting for me to really dive in and look at. And as I was putting together my talk at SEVR, I looked at that, trying to summarize and make sense of the 400 plus interviews that I've done for Voices of VR. For me, it looked like a big logo graveyard of all of the different companies that were out there, but yet it was a little hard for me to really truly wrap my head around, and that kind of catalyzed me to go in my direction of really focusing on the human experience as the baseline of trying to explain all the different dimensions of VR. But I guess it's a challenge for you to really put together a map of VR, because there's a lot of companies that have been around and doing VR for 20, 30 years in some cases. When you look at the landscape, are you really looking at the startup scene? As this develops, it's going to be kind of untenable to really keep mapping that on a single page. So I'm just trying to figure out your intention behind it and then how it's going to evolve over time.
[00:09:30.503] Tipatat Chennavasin: First, apologies to all the companies that are not on there. There are a lot of great companies that didn't make it. And again, I'm continually updating. I'm trying to have at least like a monthly or every other month cadence for at least the graphic part. But the Trello board that backs it, that has the deeper information, that I try to update at least weekly. And so that has, you know, the landscape graphic has maybe 100 companies, but the Trello board really has like 400 or 500 companies listed. And part of it was not necessarily to like pick winners or losers or whatever, but really just to highlight and create a taxonomy and a way about thinking about these companies. Because I'd seen other landscapes that were done and they were comparing apples to oranges. And you're like, well, yeah, I don't know if you really compare a Unity to a Jaunt. They're very different companies. Yeah. they're kind of related, they are in the VR space, but I wanted to show specifically where in the value chain they were, and build a taxonomy that would be relevant, not just for investors, but also for VR startups themselves, and anyone that's interested in the industry, just to think about, okay, if I wanted to create VR, what are the tool sets? Oh, what are the different tools I can use? Okay, what are the distribution channels? Oh, okay. If I was interested in investing in VR and healthcare, oh, who are the interesting companies, and where do they work? So, it's like, different people can approach it in different ways, but hopefully it would be helpful, and not just, conflating different areas together. The other part too that I wanted to do with it was really, I did want to highlight a certain level of companies. So these were companies that, it's not an entire landscape, it's not a lot of the early stage startups that I look at, or the stealth startups of course, but this idea of on the Trello board, the majority of companies have either raised money or have gotten significant press, so that they're notable in certain ways, right? Because I wanted to be like, I didn't want to be like, okay, two-person startup. I'm going to put them on here, but I don't know how they're going to do. I don't know how they're going to go. And I want to at least be like, okay, well, you know, these are companies hopefully that have enough runway that if you engage with them, you can actually do something significant.
[00:11:16.860] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so how do you understand the landscape of virtual reality then?
[00:11:20.362] Tipatat Chennavasin: Sure, sure. You know, it's a lot of stuff going on. I think that's the one thing that's really interesting. You know, there are a lot of people out there that are like, okay, this is VR or this isn't VR. And there's a lot of like trying to like claim territory or separate territory. And the way I think it needs to go is, you know, we should be inclusive. It should always be, this is VR. Oh, and this is also VR, right? Like I think there's this hot debate about like, is 360 video VR? I can understand the reasons why people say, oh, it's not because you actually don't have full six degrees of freedom. You don't feel true presence. But at the same time, I do feel like, for me, a lot of what VR represents is the VR headsets themselves. Is it a better experience? Is it more immersive? Do you feel like this is something different than other mediums that's come before? And I feel like 360 video on an iPad is not interesting, but 360 video and a headset can be very interesting. So I feel like in those ways, I think 360 video needs to be considered and has to be looked at seriously and not just dismissed. And in that same way too, I feel like a lot of people are like, oh, VR content, oh, it's either this or that. But I feel like it's this and that, and this and that. And so I'm always trying to say, How can we include enough to really make it relevant so that we can start building those connections, right?
[00:12:33.830] Kent Bye: Now what's happening in the AR space because at this point we have meta two glasses We have the HoloLens and we have a magic leap which are kind of the big players in terms of the augmented reality But from your perspective what else is happening in the AR ecosystem?
[00:12:47.437] Tipatat Chennavasin: It's amazing right now, I think in the AR VR, March and April was just an amazing time. Launch of high quality consumer VR headsets with the Vive and the Rift. And at the same time, Microsoft was finally shipping out the first high quality dev kit to developers for AR. you know, this is the DK1 moment for AR, right? Because what happened with VR, and the reason why a lot of us are here is because Oculus was super smart. They released their headset, you know, a dev kit three years ago. It wasn't perfect. It didn't do everything that we even would want it to, but it was enough to prove that people could develop interesting experiences in the medium of VR, and now Microsoft has done it with the HoloLens dev kit. It's really of that high quality where when developers get it, they look at it, they use it, and they're like, okay, Yeah, field of view could be better, but you know what? Even with the flaws, just like how the DK1 for Oculus didn't have positional tracking, didn't have all this stuff, but it had enough to say, I could build something significant. I could build something compelling with this, and that this is no longer just science fiction, and that something is on the horizon. And hopefully with Meta as well, once they start shipping theirs, it's going to get in more developers' hands. It's just going to help AR get to where it needs to be. But in that same way, it took three years from having the DK1 to actually having CV1. And I feel like for AR2, it still could be as long, if not longer. what's nice is that there's a great ecosystem now of developers that are already thinking about spatial visual computing and Immersive computing that can translate to create AR experiences. So you're not starting from scratch But at the same time it's not necessarily a one-to-one correlation of like, you know If you can do VR then you can do AR because I think they're very different design challenges and interface issues Oh, and one of the things that's interesting too about where AR is right now is I do think one of the best things about, let's call it, immersive spatial computing, AR and VR, is that, you know, N5 shows this the most, right? Where if it feels natural, it just works. The interface disappears and you put someone in Tilt Brush. and they're so quick to pick it up. This is also because of brilliant UI design work by Skillman and Hackett, but just that perfect one-to-one gesture recognition control, and then looking around the space and just that one-to-one, how natural it feels, just makes it so much more compelling. And right now, at least with the HoloLens, they still do an abstraction for the interaction paradigm to make it work, but it's not a one-to-one gesture control. So even though I see a hologram in space and it looks awesome, I can move around it, walk around it, see it from all the different angles, and I feel like it's on the table exactly where it's supposed to be in space, I can't grab it like how I'd want to naturally. And I feel like solving that, and I think Meta is trying to address more of that, but figuring out ways to bring that same kind of natural interaction with your hands as well as with the way your eyes take the information is going to be important. Where you are with AR and VR, I feel like If you're a developer and you're looking to develop products for consumers, like, you know, it's really VR is where you should focus your attention. But, you know, if you're a developer and that you are interested in kind of being in working out hard problems about design and all these other with technology, then I think AR is a very exciting place to play.
[00:15:56.850] Kent Bye: Yeah, you talk about this immersive spatial computing, to me it starts to bring up this thought that I've been having a lot lately, which is that we're moving from the information age into the experiential age, and that we're moving away from these abstractions into direct experience, and also moving away from vast data streams of information and moving into visceral emotions. In terms of our attention that we're putting into different technology, I feel like there's going to be this paradigm shift from what we used to be paying attention to and valuing and where it's going to be moving into with a lot of these immersive computing platforms with AR and VR especially.
[00:16:30.441] Tipatat Chennavasin: No, I agree completely. It's funny, some people are like, oh yeah, one of the problems with VR is that it's fully immersive and it cuts you away from the rest of the world. And I'm like, actually, that's kind of the beauty of it. This idea of presence also connects you to being present in the moment, which is something that we've so lost touch with. And I think being able to reconnect with that and retrain our brains to really appreciate that and not be overloaded with this random stream information overload that's kind of come up where you become addicted to information, I think that's kind of problematic. having this kind of almost zen-like quality where I can just focus on one thing and what's in the virtual moment with me, I think that brings up something very interesting. You know, one of the most exciting things about this whole VR, you know, spatial immersive computing, is how it affects our cognition. and how it affects our neurosystems. So we're here at the X-Technology event, and it used to be called the Neurogaming Convention, and what's interesting for me is how these new technologies evolve the way that we see cognition. And this is total anecdotal, but on Reddit, you notice there are a lot more people talking about lucid dreaming, and they're saying, oh, because I've been doing more and more VR, I'm now able to lucid dream. And if you think about what that means, and like, I like this idea of like, there are a couple crazy people out there, they'll be like, I'm gonna be in VR for like 100 hours or whatever. But just this idea of being in VR, two hours a day, three hours a day, every day, does that slowly start to change the way that we think about the world? Does it improve it? Does it make it worse? I don't know, it's interesting. But I know I spend at least an hour or two every day, and I'm trying to cognitively think about this. But for me, like when I first got my HTC, and I was like, okay, I'm going to be in Tilt Brush at least 15 minutes, half an hour, do something. And it's totally changed the way I think about things. And it's really interesting. I don't know exactly where it's going, but I can see gears clicking. I could feel like, OK, I think about information differently now because of this. And so I'm excited for what that can be and how that really comes in. And a lot of why I'm investing is because I really believe in this and I want to play in it all the time. And I want to see where it takes us.
[00:18:32.418] Kent Bye: Yeah, so you're doing this Tilt Brush drawing of the day. And so, you know, you're spending 15 minutes, 30 minutes, up to an hour drawing every day. You know, you say that you've been coming to some new realizations. What kind of new insights have you had since you started this project of drawing something every day in Tilt Brush?
[00:18:48.337] Tipatat Chennavasin: So a lot of it comes back into like, you know, why in VR or what's interesting about this medium that you couldn't do in others. And, you know, at first I was just like trying to get control of the tools and trying to draw something that was what was in my head. And then I started thinking about, OK, well, now what can I only do in this space or how do I use especially like. With room scale, how do I create room scale art and what does that mean? And I've seen other people do creative things. I forget the name of the artist now, but he did this one beautiful piece. It was a Tilt Brush art show that I saw. It was a campsite and there was like a little tent or a teepee in the middle. And you look at it and if you just observe the scene, you're like, oh, that's really cool. But then someone's like, oh, no, no, go look inside. And there wasn't really anything that told you to. But if you actually did, then you see the inside of the tent was beautifully rendered, too. But it was like one of those things where I would not necessarily think to do that if it was like a painting, right? Maybe if it was a sculpture, but then it's like, could I go through a wall like a ghost? And so that inspired me to do a little like political cartoon that I created about Donald Trump or Donald Drumpf. And this was this idea of, it was a caricature of Donald Trump at the podium. But then if you go inside his head, you get to see what's inside Donald Trump's head, which to me is a mini Hitler. And it is kind of an easy joke to make on certain levels, but I do feel like a lot of the way he's like setting himself up with that kind of hate speech, the demagoguery, the kind of bully tactics that he uses is very... Parallelisms between him and Hitler are much more than your typical, oh, he's just evil, so he's Hitler. But going back into like, whoa, why in VR? It's like, okay, you would just see this kind of ugly caricature of Donald Trump, right? But the fact that now in VR, you could actually go inside and it does this thing where you're like, not only am I moving in a way that I couldn't have done before, but it tells a story. It's like, what is inside his head? And it reveals something that you're like, oh, okay, that's at the core. For me, not that it was the end all be all, but I felt like that was a step in a direction of what a VR cartoon or a VR narrative using Tilt Brush could be like. And so thinking about those kinds of things is really what's helped me come through, especially like, you know, using Tilt Brush a lot, being in Tilt Brush and being inspired by what other people are doing in Tilt Brush. And then how can I be part of that conversation? I feel like that's what I love about VR and where we are, whether, you know, you're creating games, creating art, creating anything. It's just like everything's so new. There's so much possibility. And to be able to contribute to that dialogue in a way, not just by talking, but by actually doing something, that's awesome.
[00:21:05.582] Kent Bye: Another realm that seems to be really exploding right now is artificial intelligence with a lot of open sourcing of different deep learning networks and machine learning and NVIDIA's GPUs. You know, a lot of VR developers have really souped up GPUs that have the capacity to train AI networks. And so, from your perspective, how do you see this combination of artificial intelligence and virtual reality moving forward?
[00:21:28.932] Tipatat Chennavasin: It's interesting, I think, especially with IBM opening up Watson, and letting developers work, and really trying to court the whole VR community, and there's so many different ways that AI can power and transform, not just what a VR experience is, but how we create VR experiences. What's cool is, of course, the idea of having AI-controlled characters that you can talk to and have real conversations with, and feel like you're interacting with them in powerful ways, I think that's really interesting. especially on the side of education, where not only could you have a teacher that actually will teach at your level, like personalize the teaching. Oh, you're struggling here. Spend more time here. Oh, you got this really quickly. Let's move on and make it more efficient and effective. That's really cool. But I think the best way to learn is to teach. So imagine I have an AI teacher, it's teaching me, but then I then have to teach an AI student that was younger or not as experienced, and so that way it closes the loop in a new way and it turns tests and assessment into something that's more natural and fun and not just tedious and rote. I think that could be fantastic and a really great application of AI. But, you know, we talk about other uses, though, too. There's a great company called Artimatics, and what they're doing is they're taking AI and applying it to creating computer graphics. So, a lot of this idea of, like, you know, we talked about this earlier, so, building these virtual immersive worlds, it's very expensive. Well, how can you make it less expensive? Well, maybe AI can help do some of the lower-level art tasks, not to remove artistry away, but think about, instead of having to Paint every single stroke have an AI kind of do the tedious stuff and then you art direct it, right? And so they do some really really cool stuff They won that Nvidia GPU prize last year But what you'll see is like using these kinds of technologies to transform the workflow I think are going to be another great example of how we can use AI to really make VR and AR happen in a compelling way
[00:23:21.372] Kent Bye: Are there any other big technologies out there that you think are kind of like a fundamental building block to the future of technology? One that comes to mind is cryptocurrency and the blockchain. But if there's any other things out there that you see that are coming down the pike that you think are going to have a big impact on AR and VR?
[00:23:37.668] Tipatat Chennavasin: Definitely computer vision, without doubt. Computer vision to solve the problem of inside-out tracking. That's one very concrete example. Positional tracking right now, the way it's done, you have to do it with external sensors. It's either the lighthouse or the Oculus Constellation camera. Because it's external, it can't be self-enclosed, it's hard to set up. If you could really solve it elegantly with a camera that's connected to the headset that's facing outwards, then you can actually compare images as it changes as you move around and then triangulate how much has changed based off how much the image has changed. then that's one of the holy grails. John Carmack is supposedly, hopefully making some great breakthroughs in that. But also a company we invested in called Eonite, Stanford Computer Vision PhD, they have one of the most accurate algorithms for doing inside-out positional tracking, solving this problem in a huge way. But then going beyond and thinking about how, especially for AR, what you want to do is look at the world, understand the world, and then get information overlaid based on top of how the intelligence perceives the world. And so understanding that, this whole idea of perceptual computing, saying, okay, I see not just a person, I see Ken. Oh, this is the information regarding Ken. All of that needs to be coming in at a computer vision standpoint. It has to be able to understand the data it sees and logs it in. There are a couple of interesting companies doing this idea of visual search engines, right? Annotating the world in a way where right now, if we have to do a search, we have to type in information, but if you're wearing these glasses and you're getting all this visual information, how do you organize it and sort it in ways that'd be really cool and compelling? If you think about like, if you want to do AR and you want to do things like, okay, I have this room. I want to understand not just that these are like flat surfaces and horizontal surfaces, vertical surfaces. I want to understand, oh, this is a desk. And then I can remove or replace the desk or I can color the desk or change the desk and recognize the objects and what's there and what's not. Microsoft Research actually has a really cool demo where they go in and they kind of scan a room and they recognize that, oh, that's like a lounge chair. And then you can actually take that lounge chair and you can change colors and do things. And it like does it in a way that's supernatural with very little manual processing. And those are the types of things where you're like, okay, there's going to be some really interesting things with computer vision, computational photography, artificial intelligence that like just makes the world and the way we intake the world smarter.
[00:25:59.219] Kent Bye: In SVR, you're on a panel about VR in China. So what's happening with virtual reality in China?
[00:26:05.422] Tipatat Chennavasin: Oh gosh, VR in China, it's amazing. So I just got, earlier I was in Shenzhen and I gave a three hour presentation about VR there. And what was interesting to me was, you know, VR is very big. There's a lot of companies working on VR. You know, there's a lot of excitement for VR. You go to the mall. And they will have these VR pods that you can go in. They're terrible experiences. But at the same time, you go in, you sit, you pay $5 or equivalent of $5 for a five-minute experience. You put on the headset. But what's funny is it was so bad. It was nauseating. It was just awful. But supposedly, it's very popular and it's doing well. And the appetite for VR, even bad VR, is so huge. It's kind of shocking. And the one thing I'd seen, and I couldn't really quite get it until I was really there, was, I mean, you hear about this idea of like, you know, China, its scale is so massive. The appetite for, I think someone explained this best to me, where like, it has the fastest growing middle class. So there's 300 million people in the middle class in China, and that's about the population of the entire US. I mean, that's insane how many people have the buying power to enjoy leisure activities and to spend. So it's like there's this huge consumption economy that's going to overtake economies of the rest of the world entirely. It's like on orders of magnitude different kind of scale. And so when you see that and you combine that with what's happening and what's possible, you see what's funny is for so long in China, I felt like the VR, there'd be different Chinese companies, I don't want to call anyone out, but they would come over here to the US at CES And you're like, wow, the quality of these Chinese headsets are pretty terrible. They can't compete against Oculus, let alone a Vive. And what's funny is for so long, I didn't quite get it. I was like, don't you guys see what the quality is? These guys have set the bar. But because of the way it works in China, it is kind of isolated from the information. I think it's hard to get access to an Oculus. It's much easier to get access to a Vive, but even then, it's only until recently. So there are companies in China that have been working on VR products for two years already. And so they've kind of been working on it almost in its own vacuum. And so it's going to be interesting now that Vive is getting out, Oculus is getting out more to see how can they really compete. But what's also interesting too is most of those companies have been smaller companies, right? Now in China, the larger companies, so everyone always calls like in China, it's Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are the main giant tech entertainment media companies. And so they are paying attention to VR in a big way. along with Huawei and other companies that are going to really invest in making VR. And they understand what it takes to make good VR. So I'm excited for this idea of people have been underestimating Chinese VR, but that's also because the B team has been playing kind of in an information blackout. Now that the A teams are coming in and that the best of what we're seeing already here in the rest of the world is going to be coming to China as well. It's going to be a much more interesting game.
[00:29:02.269] Kent Bye: And it seems like, you know, the quality of life of living in China, that virtual reality could, for a lot of people, make a much bigger impact of someone's experience of life than perhaps someone in the United States, which may have, you know, more access to different types of resources and space and all sorts of different things. So maybe you could comment on how you see that kind of playing out.
[00:29:22.165] Tipatat Chennavasin: Sure, sure. Yeah, it's interesting. I think a lot of people are thinking, OK, like, yeah, virtuality, you know, typical homes in Asia, not just in China, are not large enough to do like room scale VR. And so a lot of people are going to go to these like VR arcades and these centers to do VR. And yes and no. It's interesting. I think generally that holds. But when I went to Shenzhen, I was blown away by how big and how modern it was. You know, it wasn't the crazy factory sweatshop town that I had in my mind coming from America. Thinking okay, these are where iPods are made you see these like crazy factory and they live in these little dingy cells And you know, it's sad like when I went to Shenzhen, which is the manufacturing hub of China, of course I mean, there's all sorts. It's just a huge city, but there are huge populated areas where I Could easily imagine I was in any major metropolitan area, right? And so I don't feel like I It's as clear-cut that, oh, you know, it's tough to live in China and people are really going to love retreating to VR because this is so amazing. But I do feel like there's a sense of what we can do with VR, though, goes beyond just escapism. And it's a new way of communicating, collaborating, of working, of bridging cultures. And that's what's going to draw people to VR in a more meaningful way. So I do get excited about that.
[00:30:39.706] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:30:46.402] Tipatat Chennavasin: Sure, I think you said it best, this whole idea of experience age and switching from the information age. But I like this idea of the experience economy where, again, moving away from a materialistic economy where we're defined by the value of the possessions that we have, but we're defined by the value of life experiences that we've had and what that's taught us. And this idea of meeting people, experiencing different cultures, different life experiences that wouldn't be possible in any other way. A very simple example of this is traveling, going to another country and meeting a different culture and understand people are fundamentally people, right? Very few people actually get the opportunity to do that. And if VR can do that in a very natural and authentic way, I think that's going to be very powerful. Because yeah, we have the internet. Yeah, we can Skype or chat roulette with. someone in another country, but because of how there's so much abstraction in UI, the experiences become more inauthentic, and it allows for a kind of inhumanness to the interaction. And total just a hypothesis, but I feel like, you know, when I see someone in VR, and even if it's just a simple avatar that's just, you know, a headset and hands, but the way that they move and the way that they talk, I feel like I'm talking to someone, and the last thing I want to do is, like, punch them in the face or yell at them or scream at them. It's like, there's this nice empathy that you get, right? Not just because it's a 360 immersive experience, but just because, for once, I feel like there is something alive in front of me. And I don't get that when I'm in Skype as much, and especially when I'm in a flat chat room. The other things about that too is, Again, going back to this, you know, material versus experiential. But yeah, like, you know, do I really care to have a nice fancy car when, you know, I can fly in a spaceship? Right? Like, no. And so this idea of like, OK, well, you know what? Like, what is important? You know, it's not what I own. It's what I do and who I spend time with. Right. And I feel like that idea is very powerful and very interesting. I get excited for what VR and AR can bring about.
[00:32:54.700] Kent Bye: Yeah, the thing I would add on to that is that I do think there's still going to be an economy of virtual goods and avatars that are an expression of our deepest values. And I think in some ways that we're using these consumer products to do that, but yet, you know, Hilmar from CCP has this vision of creating VR to be able to change the world in the sense that if we do have this appetite to consume different objects, then maybe we can do it in a more sustainable way if they're virtual and not material. And so, you know, with this middle class of 300 million Chinese, that are gonna be demanding these types of either experiences or products, then, you know, it could be possible that the Earth doesn't have the capacity to keep up with the demand for the type of consumption that we've typically been doing with physical objects. But yet, perhaps in VR, that'll be able to satisfy that innate need to be able to consume, but also express our identity and also our values in this way that kind of expresses who we are and our identity.
[00:33:50.340] Tipatat Chennavasin: Absolutely. And the one thing I wanted to add to is change that relationship between creator and consumer. I feel like one of the coolest things about like the mobile revolution right now, everyone's a photographer. And it was like one of those things that I would never have guessed would be like one of the biggest outcomes. But, you know, thanks to Instagram. thanks to high quality cameras, everyone's taking pictures and sharing pictures. But if you went back 10 years ago, 20 years ago, who's into photography? And people are like, oh yeah, that's a really nerdy hobby and these hardcore people with their crazy $3,000 lenses and whatever. But you're like, no, now everyone's into photography, right? And in that same way, I feel like VR is going to democratize creation of so many different things. This idea of you know, the killer app for VR is creating VR in VR, right? Like for VR for general audiences that but like tilt brush is a great example where anyone jumps into brush and now I'll send their 3d artist and they're creating these amazing things that can only be consumed of your but it's like Taking people that I met so many that oh I'm not an artist and they come in and they just create these beautiful things that they're like Wow, like that's Awesome. And so thinking about how hopefully this will democratize, you know, 3D design, 3D communication, and let people create more experiences for other people to share, and not just consume experiences, I think hopefully will be a great byproduct of what VR can do, and AR.
[00:35:10.366] Kent Bye: Anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:35:12.952] Tipatat Chennavasin: Yeah, thank you so much for what you do for the community. It's awesome. This is my second time, and I feel very honored to be a part of this. And again, what I will say is, I talk to a lot of VR companies that are always hitting me up. And I'm sorry, I'm really behind on emails and getting back to people. But work on something amazing. Get it out there. Show it to people. And we'll find each other, and I'll hopefully find a way to help you.
[00:35:37.237] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dipitet. Thank you so much for having me. And so that was Tipitat Chinavasan, who is the general manager of the VR Fund, which is an early stage investment fund exclusively focusing on augmented and virtual reality technologies. So there are a number of different takeaways that I had from this interview. First of all, you know, the Trello board as well as the VR landscape infographic are both really big services to the larger VR community. in order to start to really map out the landscape of VR, not only for other investors, but also for other virtual reality startups as they start to evaluate the competition, as well as how they might fit in into the overall VR ecosystem. Also, there are some really interesting ideas in terms of artificial intelligence and augmented reality that Tipitat was talking about. I think when it comes to computer vision and what artificial intelligence is going to be able to add to AR, I think it's going to be pretty huge, especially when you start to think about the capability that Google has in order to be able to identify all the different objects that are in your environment. Adding that into an augmented reality headset is just going to form this really rich set of context around your environment. The other thing is that just the concept of being able to test children by having them teach an artificial intelligent agent to be able to do a specific task and then be graded on how well they're able to teach other artificial intelligences. So it's really interesting to hear Tipitat really articulate that. augmented reality is really in the DK1 days. With the Microsoft HoloLens, we can expect at least two or three years before we get to the same level of evolution for these augmented reality headsets to be fully ready for release. Well, we'll see. It might come earlier, but I'm imagining that that's pretty correct. So I think there's at least a year, two or three with development and experimentation on augmented reality before it's really ready for primetime. But it sounds like there's still a lot of room for innovation when it comes to computer vision and other type of underlying technologies that are going to be able to really become the cornerstone for a lot of this augmented reality technology. Also, if you haven't been checking out Tippitat's five drawings of the day, you should definitely check out some of his YouTube videos, as well as his Twitter feed, where he often will post an animated gif where you can kind of get a sense. But just this idea of what are the unique affordances of being able to draw a 3D piece of art within virtual reality, with this idea of being able to stick your head within the mind of Donald Trump to be able to see this very political statement. is something that just speaks to the larger medium of virtual reality where you can actually just walk around and be able to look inside of different three-dimensional spaces. So I'm looking forward to see how this language of VR continues to evolve with things like Tilt Brush and some of these unique affordances that Tipitat starts to mention here. And finally, I really enjoyed that insight from Tiputat where he says that in the future you're not going to be really judged by your material positions, but instead by the depth of experiences that you've been able to have. So this is really optimistic in terms of moving away from a consumerist culture and more towards a culture that is valuing people's life experiences and the different things that they've been able to go through in their life. It just makes me think about how there's a huge population of elderly people who haven't really been able to be provided the opportunity to step into their role as an elder to younger generations. And there's a lot of isolation in the country. And so I am really optimistic for the potential to be able to use virtual reality, to be able to connect people across generations, to be able to tap into this vast wealth of experiences that a lot of people have had, but have no outlet to be able to share the wisdom that they've been able to gather. So that's all of the big insights and takeaways that I had on today's episode. If you do enjoy the podcast and would like to get together within virtual reality spaces and social VR and start to network and connect to other listeners, as well as directly ask me different questions, then go ahead and go to my website and sign up at my newsletter. I'm going to be starting to have more virtual reality meetups and kind of doing different experiments within social vr coming up here so be sure to join in those gatherings i think there's a lot of really interesting people that came out to my first one in alt space last week and yeah it just went really well and looking forward to having more gatherings and seeing what kind of experiences that we can have together in a social vr space Also, if you enjoy the podcast, then please do consider helping spread the word, tell your friends about it, recommend it, as well as if you have any extra money that you'd like to send some tips my way. 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