Joel Breton is the Vice President VR Content at HTC, and I had a chance to catch up with him at the Casual Connect conference in July to talk about the different industry verticals that they’ve identified. These include commerce, games, healthcare, education, live video/events/sports, design/engineering/tools, media, military/simulation, theme parks, and social. Some of the biggest areas of adoption with the Vive have been in engineering and design companies where they’ve been able to essentially replace million-dollar CAVE systems with the Vive. And we also talk about how each of the existing video game genres have been able to be translated into VR to varying degrees of success, and whether or not he sees any new genres unique to VR emerge yet. It’s an interesting discussion about the overall VR ecosystem, and how HTC has started to break it up into these different VR business verticals.
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[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. So back at GDC in 2015 is when Valve and HTC premiered the HTC Vive, which at that point was the first room-scale VR system that had hand tracking with submillimeter accuracy. It's the first time that game developers had really had the opportunity to get their hands within the game, within the modern consumer VR ecosystem. So with the launch of the HTC Vive, it's been able to go out into industry and be used for all sorts of different applications, including in engineering and design, to be able to replace million-dollar cave systems. So on today's podcast, I have Joel Baton, who's the vice president for virtual reality content for the HTC Vive. And we talk about some of the different industry verticals where the Vive is being used, as well as what's happening in gaming in VR, some of the translations of the previous game genres into VR. some of the new genres that might be emerging. So that's what we talk about on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Fishbowl VR. Getting candid feedback is a vital part of creating a successful VR experience, but it's not always easy. Are your testers just being nice, or are they more impressed about the novelty of VR? Fishbowl VR makes getting quality feedback from VR enthusiasts dead simple. Send them a build and within 24 hours, you'll have a number of 30-minute playtest sessions. You'll discover, is it fun? Is it replayable? And what should you focus on next? So sign up to get a user test or become a tester today at fishbowlvr.com. So this interview with Joel happened at the Casual Connect conference that was happening in San Francisco from July 18th to 20th. And this was just a few weeks before VRLA, where HTC announced Viveport, which is their portal to a lot of their non-gaming entertainment type of experiences. So, with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:17.864] Joel Breton: I'm Joe Berton and I'm Vice President of Virtual Reality Content for the HTC Vive. And so, myself and my team are just really excited about VR. We're really passionate about it. We just can't wait to see all of the great ideas and content that people are going to bring to Vive and then we're working really actively with those folks to try to support them and try to figure out what they need in order to make their content really awesome and then to bring it to Vive in full room scale with full 360 degree motion ability and the ability to interact with your environment in a one-to-one way with your motion controllers and with the room scale tracking that we have.
[00:03:01.716] Kent Bye: And so, can you talk a bit more about the roles and responsibilities that you have at the VP of Content in terms of what you're giving and providing to these developers?
[00:03:12.059] Joel Breton: Okay, sure. Yeah, so, you know, actually we're pretty flexible in terms of how we can partner with folks. So, first thing we do is we just ask people when they come to us, they're like, hey, we have a great idea for VR, right? So, Then it's like, okay, what type of content is it, right? Is it healthcare? Is it education? Is it games? Is it virtual commerce? Those different areas. So once we know that, then I have specialists on my team that are focused on each of these different areas of content. So after we know what area they're focused on, then I'll connect them to the right person on our team that is really the expert in that category. And so then the next thing that they'll do is try to figure out, okay, what's the scope of this project that you're looking at? And then after we get the scope of it, you know, what do you need to really help bring it to life, right? So that could be everything from a marketing support. It could be like development support, like, oh, we can't figure out how to get motion controllers working. Can you help us there? And, absolutely, it also could involve funding support and some teams need, you know, maybe they only need 10%, 20% of their project funded. Like, they're almost there, they just need a little push to the finish line. Other folks come to us with, you know, an idea on a PowerPoint deck and they need a lot of funding to try to make this thing happen. You know, we're flexible in terms of where we can come in and help folks because, you know, being a large organization, we can probably come in and fund 10% of a project if that's all it needs. But also we can probably fund the whole thing if that's what's needed. So we're very flexible. We're trying to stay lean and mean in terms of how we operate so that we can look at a wide variety of opportunities and then give developers the most support that they possibly could have from Vive.
[00:04:54.793] Kent Bye: And so are you looking at both gaming and non-gaming applications then?
[00:04:58.458] Joel Breton: Yeah, absolutely. So I've spent 20 years developing games myself, so I'm actually a professional game developer. So I'm very excited about VR for the gaming aspect, and obviously that's a huge category, VR. But we're looking at actually about 10 different categories of VR, right? And so I'll run those down for you really quick. So we've got virtual commerce. We've got games, obviously, which is probably the number one category. Then we've got healthcare and education, right? Those are both very, very big areas and kind of leading the charge behind there. Then we've got live video and events, right? Like live streaming of events. So we're kind of calling that the video category. Then you've got design and engineering and tools, right? So that's your Autodesk, your Dassault Systems, your Maya, these kind of programs. Those are all coming to VR. And as well, Unreal and Unity are now bringing their editors to VR. So that's in the design and engineering category. And then as well, we have sports, we have media, and we have military. And we have simulations, theme parks, and social. So all of these together, like as you can just imagine, there's just an amazing amount of companies that are focused on all these different areas. And they're bringing us pitches for like how we can help them bring their content to VR. So we're super excited to give these guys all the support that they can because we want a really wide portfolio of content on Vive. And then we think that the features that we have with Vive really lend themselves to a lot of these other applications, especially design. For instance, instead of working on a car on a 2D desktop screen to design it, so you'd need to design the next Tesla or the next BMW, why not actually have the car in your room at full scale size and you walk around it and then actually open the hood and look and see where that part goes and see if it fits properly. So as a design tool we feel VR is absolutely a killer app.
[00:07:05.035] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know that looking at the history of virtual reality, you can go back to 1968 and see a lot of the different funding from a lot of work that Ivan Sutherland was doing as well as Tom Furness, both from military sources. And so military research and funding within VR goes back to since the very beginning. And I know one concern that they have is in terms of really having these ruggedized headsets to be able to use out in the field, as well as with the theme parks, being able to do digital out-of-home entertainment with these headsets, needs to have a little bit different specifications for what the military may need to some of the environments that they're using them in. So I'm curious if these are requests that are coming in to create more ruggedized versions for digital autofilm entertainment for the Vive.
[00:07:49.683] Joel Breton: Absolutely. You know, there's a lot of requests coming in, right, for the different use cases, and we're just absolutely open to all of these ideas, and we're taking them back, and we're looking at them, and we're trying to figure out what can make sense. You know, we're looking at VR as like a hundred year roadmap and horizon, right? It's not like, this is month three of commercial premium VR, right? And then, so there's a long ways to go, but the fact that we've been able to bring essentially what, for the military and what, for the design companies, for Jumbo Jets and so forth, has been like a million dollar VR cave, which actually was still only a 180 degree cave. It didn't account for what was behind you. And the fact that we've been able to bring that plus even more where it's full 360 and you get to interact with your environment down to like an $800 platform from a million plus. These designers and these military contractors are just beside themselves that they can actually buy a Vive and put it at everybody's desk. and not have one at the end of the room that people have to reserve time for and try to figure out how to get on there, right? So they are absolutely jumping in with both feet essentially to commercial VR now that it's here and at a price point that will allow them to deploy it to all their designers or tens of thousands of their troops for training. So yeah, they're leading the charge again. And there are things that they would like, like bigger tracking areas, like warehouse size tracking areas. That's definitely a common request that we get. And absolutely, we're looking at those and trying to figure out how we can help enable what their best uses are for VR.
[00:09:25.398] Kent Bye: Well, just looking at the two major different approaches for tracking hands using lasers versus camera-based solutions, it seems like that the laser-based solution is a lot more robust and being able to more accurately track with some millimeter accuracy in much larger and larger spaces. And so I could see how you could start to move towards giving the right coordination with the lighthouse units. But the thing I'm really curious about is this ability to track your hands to that submillimeter accuracy. It's enabling all sorts of new things. And I'm just curious to hear some of the things that you've seen that have just been really surprising or interesting in terms of what people are doing with this tracking now.
[00:10:03.151] Joel Breton: Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I think training is one of the areas where it's most significant, right? That just really, really perfect sort of accuracy as you move around and design. So those two areas that we were just talking about. So military training, again, if you're firing a weapon and you've got a target, you know, 200 virtual feet away, but that is giving you scale, you've got accuracy that needs to be there, right? And especially if you're trying to train somebody to be like, okay, after they take the headset off, I want them to feel like it's exactly like it was in the training scenario. And then for design, same thing, like if your jumbo jet part is, you know, a few millimeters off, like the whole thing's gonna have problems as you, you know, magnify that over time and over different pieces. So design to me seems like is where they really need the accuracy and as a matter of fact I've seen almost a hundred percent adoption of vibes for that reason by you know all the design studios that I've been at because they first of all they do need the full 360 and they do need room scale because they need to be able to move around the environment and collaborate with other users for their design. So I think those two are probably the the most exciting ones. And then for gaming, it's obviously critical, but not as critical, right? If you're a few millimeters off with your shot against the alien, you know, you're probably still going to hit him. So gaming, I think, is a bit more forgiving in the uses that it needs to be. But design, especially when you're doing something that's, you know, commercial, like if you're building a bridge, everything's got to be spot on. So that's where they need 100% accuracy.
[00:11:37.502] Kent Bye: And because you come from a gaming background, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about some of the genres that are being ported over from previous mediums of gaming, and which ones are completely new and unique to VR, and how you kind of think about the gaming space from a genre perspective. Sure. And also ones that work and don't work. Okay.
[00:11:56.885] Joel Breton: When I first started working at Vive here earlier this year, that was kind of my first thing is like, okay, what genres are going to work for VR and which ones aren't? So I started just going through, even before I had seen a lot of the games that were in development, I started going through and trying to figure out, yeah, by genre, you know, what works in VR and what doesn't. And so far, I've been able to pretty much figure out how to adapt each different genre that are the key ones, which are like, you know, racing, sports, shooters, action, RPGs. Like, all of those can actually be adapted for VR, I found. Now, whether they should be is another question. And whether they'll be incredible in VR or need to actually come to VR, that's another question as well. So I think that's where we're at now. Certainly you can figure out how to adapt a sports game or a RPG or a shooter to VR, but which ones are going to be the best? So shooting seems to be leading the charge. It's fairly easy to do if you're already in 3D. With your shooting game, then it's not that much of a stretch to take that into stereoscopic and make it, you know, make it fun. Racing is great, but obviously has the challenges of motion and, you know, what you're doing. Like, if you're going really fast, like, that could also present a challenge. But I've seen some people doing some amazing things there, so I do feel that that's a challenge that we will overcome. in terms of being able to have best practices around how to make racing work in VR. So there's great racing games already coming. So I feel that's looking pretty good. And then open-world RPGs, I think, are just fantastic because they give you this very big world to explore and a big story that you can go and progress along. And really just give you stuff that you could just play for hours and hours and hours. And really, you can only come out when you're tired or need to go to the bathroom. But my favorite, you know, it's not even a genre, but my favorite feature for VR right now is, as I was just saying in the panel, is multiplayer. Because multiplayer equals infinite replay. As long as the gameplay itself is fun. Like, you can play it all day, you can play it all night, you can come back tomorrow and you can play it again, right? So I think some of the early examples of that that are doing great are Hover Junkers, which is just totally unique, designed from the ground up for VR, multiplayer. So that's proven to be a really popular game with the audience on Vive. And then Pool Nation VR, which came out more recently. has proven to be super popular and we became a top seller on Steam, which is great. And I myself just love playing it. I just like multiplayer games where I can just have voice chat. I'm just talking to somebody. He's telling me what the weather's like in Brazil or Tokyo or France while we're playing pool and trying to beat each other, right? So that's really great. And then raw data from Servios just came out this last weekend and shot to the top of the Steam charts in terms of sales. And what that showed me is that there's people just waiting for great content in VR. They've already got their vibes. They're sitting there just waiting for the great content to show up. And right when it does, they're there to download it and get in at day one. So it's a good time to be a developer. If you can come out, I would say, you know, in this first year of actual, you know, premium desktop, VR, there's a lot of people that are hungry for great content, and there's not as many great pieces of content as there would be on a console that's been out for several years, right? So, it's actually this nice little period of time where developers can actually create a new franchise, like Raw Data is now a franchise that those guys created by being there right at the launch of the platform. And so now, the fact that it's being well-reviewed, that people are loving it, people are playing with each other online, Now that franchise is established as a new thing, right, in VR. So that's, again, that's a great opportunity for developers to come in and hit in this first year and then create something that can compete with the likes of Activision or Electronic Arts because they're sitting on the sidelines waiting for the installed base to be large enough for them to jump in with.
[00:16:02.706] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think the thing that's really unique about VR is that people are able to use their natural intuitive motion so that even if they're not gamers and they don't know how to operate an Xbox controller, they can jump into VR and just use their natural emotions to be able to interact with the experiences. The other thing about VR is that there's all sorts of completely new genres that could not possibly work in previous mediums. And so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the landscape of new genres that are emerging within VR.
[00:16:32.595] Joel Breton: Yeah, got it. Then just to your last point real quick, like what I also love about VR that, especially with room scale, instead of pushing the X button to jump, you actually jump, right? Instead of pushing the Y button to duck, you actually duck. And then, so just that immersion, you know, it doesn't pull you out of the experience anymore. You're actually, you are the hero. And it's like, it's what I call, we started in 2D with Sonic and Pong and like all these different games, right? There were like 2D games. Then we went to 3D with Virtual Fighter and Wolf and Steam and Duke Nukem and all of those, right? But now with VR and with room scale, we've gone to full D. Like we just skipped past everything and went to where you have full dimensionality around you. You're completely surrounded by the action. So that's super exciting as a player and as the game creator. But then back to your question about new genres, you know, I haven't really seen very many new genres that haven't already existed. I would say one thing that people are innovating that's going to be great in VR is around kind of the social spaces to where you can actually go, for instance, and invite your friends and then watch a movie together on a massive video screen and you're sitting there just voice chatting back and forth with each other, right? So that's pretty compelling and of course you could kind of do that maybe with Skype and get a Netflix window going and you know you could kind of make that happen technologically but now it's actually just ta-da you know and then it's easily just network in on the PC. So I think these kind of social experiences is where some really cool innovation is happening. And then the collaborative multiplayer play and gameplay that you can now have inside these spaces, like with Modbox and Altspace and some of the others that are coming down the pipeline shortly. That's kind of what I'm really excited to see where those go, because essentially each of those will have additional content inside of them that developers can keep feeding in there, so you can have a chess table at the, you know, in the environment and you can walk up and two people go, hey, you want to play chess? Okay, yeah, let's play chess. And you can just play chess. Meanwhile, other people are playing volleyball around the corner, right inside the same space. So these kind of massive multiplayer or collaborative spaces where you can just kind of play a game, stand up and go play something else with someone else. That's beginning to feel more and more like a, you know, a real world environment. Like if you'd go down to the Central Park, and then just like play or interact with other people in a social space. That's pretty compelling.
[00:19:03.231] Kent Bye: Yeah, when I think about the games that are in VR or experiences that are in VR that only would work in VR, that to me starts to point to some of these new genre experiences. Some that come to mind for me are things like Kibibo and Loon, which is kind of like this experience of building a fort within VR. Or his game Blarp, which is really based upon you throwing a ball and capturing other balls, but it's really about the motion of kind of throwing, which is a very unique mechanic within VR and wouldn't really work on any other way. And then there's Irrational Exuberance, which is another example of an experience where it's a little bit more of this narrative experience that you're interacting with and that isn't necessarily a game per se, but it's still kind of like this immersive experience. And then you have these other world-building games like Fantastic Contraption, or in some ways Job Simulator is another one of these, I don't know how you would even characterize it, but you're a character in the world and you're doing these active active jobs. That again is another example of something that's very unique to VR and really literally wouldn't work on any previous medium. And so I think we're seeing some of these experiences that really take in the affordances of being able to have your hands tracked and your body and have this sense of presence.
[00:20:19.357] Joel Breton: As you were saying, where those wouldn't be necessarily compelling on a desktop experience in 2D, because you're not the hero of the action, you're not in the middle of it, right?
[00:20:27.342] Kent Bye: It just wouldn't work, because you really need to have the immersion, the first-person perspective of immersion.
[00:20:32.404] Joel Breton: Yeah, correct. Yeah, so you're right. And then I think the music, some of the things that I'm seeing people do with music, rhythm, those, again, that's a popular genre, so that's why I don't necessarily call it new, but how it will be great in VR will be new, right? How you'll interact with it. And then, you know, perhaps it will become even more compelling as things go. Like, Audio Shield is just fantastic. People really love that game. I myself love it. But I can see where there's a lot of room for expansion on that basic mechanic that they have with the two colors, right? There's definitely a lot more that could be done there. And then The Wave is another really great one. There's DJs all around the world that are jumping in here and want to do their shows in this VR app. And as a matter of fact, I think the first VR rave is supposed to be in there this weekend, if I'm not mistaken. So, you know, that's super exciting. And then that just came out of nowhere, right? These guys were just like, guess what we could do? We could mix music with VR and make this, you know, music editor slash mixer slash turntables. And then they totally innovated, really, right there. So I'm very excited about that one myself, because I love music and I love VR, so that's a good combination that they've come on.
[00:21:40.699] Kent Bye: Yeah, I've played The Wave and I really love it as well, and I think I kind of classify The Wave into this category of world-building, because it's content creation in a certain way. Yeah, so something like a Tilt Brush as well in ModBox, they start to get into this. And you can even throw in there the Unity Toolkit to be able to build VR while in VR, as well as Oculus Medium, as well as Quill from Oculus. as well as epic games, so all these games where you're actually in VR doing content creation. Sculpt VR and the games that's more about you actually building things in the world, even like Fantastic Contraption would probably be classified in that realm, but I kind of think of them as world building and content creation and really unlocking our creativity to be able to work in this 3D immersive space and do things that we couldn't do in any other medium.
[00:22:30.638] Joel Breton: Oh yeah, definitely. And Chunks is another one. I don't know if you've seen that, but like, it's just basically dragging your controller to create a roller coaster track, you know, around the space. And you can do, you know, all kinds of mountains in it, and dips, and dives, and spins, and corkscrews. I mean, it's just so easy, just because you're just dragging, you know, the coaster track is following your controller as you move it physically around the room. And then as soon as you're done, you just double-click on the track and the coaster appears, double-click on the coaster car and you're actually in it and riding around the roller coaster that you just created in probably like a minute and a half. And then if you like your coaster, you can of course save it and share it and invite other people to come ride your coaster. So like you said, we call that user-generated content. And that's probably a killer app for VR in the terms of, A, it's very easy to design in VR because you've got that motion control and ability to move around the room. And then, of course, it's on the PC, so to save it and share it and invite other people into it is native, right? That's just easy to do. So I think UGC and then multiplayer UGC, which is like I build it and then I invite the world to come and enjoy it, that's going to be fantastic.
[00:23:45.604] Kent Bye: Yeah, another sort of genre or category of games is casual games, and we're here at Casual Connect, and I'm curious to hear some of your thoughts. My personal ones are that I'm kind of skeptical that casual games will work in VR, just because it actually takes a lot of commitment for you to dive into a VR experience. It's not something that you're kind of doing for 30 seconds. Alex from Google kind of likened it to reading a book. You don't just read a book for 90 seconds. If you're going to read a book, you kind of really have to dedicate the time to really be present to show up to the full breadth of the experience. But just curious to hear some of your thoughts on whether or not you think that some of these more casual games will work and, you know, maybe there'll be longer play sessions or Or if you see if it's just something that kind of goes against the natural behavioral patterns of how people are using VR.
[00:24:37.425] Joel Breton: Got it. Well, yeah, so I think, you know, on the casual side, there is, you know, there's, let's say, the sort of, you know, match three and puzzle type games. Right? Which are designed for like, you know, maybe five minutes session length. So those are probably, you know, be suited more for mobile VR. And then that seems like, again, because you're just kind of putting it up and playing and then you're putting it down and not strapping yourself in and getting ready to launch. But I think some of the mid-core games that are mobile and tablet would suit themselves very well for VR. And then, you know, I'm talking about more like the combat city builders, right? Like Clash of Clans. And, you know, the card battle games genre, which is, again, it's more mid-core or core in terms of the genre of what we're calling it. But certainly those are out on mobile and tablets, and I think those kind of games will lend themselves very well, because I can already visualize how to play those type of games, right, in a big room where, you know, I'm the general and I'm controlling my troops. So, they will need to be adapted. It's not like they're going to be able to just quickly take that same game and pop it into a headset. But the gameplay and the mechanic and what you're doing, I think, is going to be very adaptable to VR. And actually, I'm personally looking for teams that are interested in doing that. I think Card Battle and Combat City Builder are the two that's fairly easy to visualize how to adapt. And so I'm actually talking to a lot of folks here about potentially bringing some of those to Vive. And if any others hear this podcast, feel free to get in touch with us.
[00:26:18.342] Kent Bye: What do you think about the e-sports genre? Because I think that to me feels like it has something that could kind of replicate some of the existing e-sports, but also potentially have a whole other new branches of e-sports within.
[00:26:34.124] Joel Breton: You're absolutely right. So we are, there we're super engaged. We're talking to teams that even have stuff that they feel is great for, you know, eSports and VR, and we're actively looking for more. So, yeah, we want to get aggressive there. Because again, I think as you mentioned, it's a natural fit. And then I actually like the idea of eSports where there's people on desktop or mobile battling against somebody that's in a headset, but they're all networked on the same server. Because that's actually pretty easy to do. Technically, it's all just networking layers, and it's just a matter of which output device the visuals are going to. So there's no real challenge in doing that technically. So it's just it's more of a challenge in the design. Like how do you make that fair? How do you make that fun? How do you make that awesome? So that's, I think, where the challenges lie. But absolutely, the potential is there. And, you know, we've We've got some exciting ones that are probably too early to announce, but that we're talking to and trying to help figure out how we can support. But I would say by next summer, there will be some things launching that will really, really shake up the esports business in VR.
[00:27:48.807] Kent Bye: Yeah, and just in having a couple conversations with VReal, I'm starting to look at, like, thinking about virtual reality games that are actually interesting for spectators to watch and experience in kind of shared social environments. And so I think when I, after I did that demo, it made me really think about, like, oh, wow, game designers are going to have to really think about not only what does their game feel like for the person who's playing it, but is it interesting to watch? And that sort of spectator element, I think, is kind of a natural fit for some of these eSports, which my understanding is that it's a little elusive into coming up with all the different ingredients that actually make a successful game that people want to play competitively, but also watch.
[00:28:28.452] Joel Breton: No, that's right. It will be a design challenge, like figuring out, OK, it might be fun for the first guy or the two competitors or the three or four, like how many ever the game can support. But then what about the audience both at home, about the live audience, about the stadium audience, right? And then for e-sports, that's key. If that's not exciting, then it's not going to work for e-sports. It might be a fun competitive multiplayer game, and that's one thing. But is it compelling and exciting to watch one team or one person try to bash the other guy? So again, like I said, I've seen some stuff that is super exciting there. And we're working as hard as we can to help those guys bring it to market because I think that that will be another really, really killer app for VR to both show people that maybe don't have a headset yet, but they can see what it's like to have it. That will be a, oh my God, I'm gonna save up, I'm gonna get myself one of these, I'm gonna buy one for my son at Christmas, that kind of thing.
[00:29:29.388] Kent Bye: So what do you want to experience in VR then?
[00:29:32.109] Joel Breton: Yeah, so I think for myself, I mean, I'm a huge traveler, and so I can already envision, like, basically with VR, you can essentially, you know, place the user anywhere in the universe and throughout all of time, right? So for me, that's super exciting because I wasn't born in, you know, I wasn't on Earth in 1820, unless it was a previous life that I don't know about yet. And then I'm not going to necessarily probably be here in 2250. So, you know, traveling through time to go back to maybe the Revolutionary War, going back to World War II, going back to the... Actually, the thing that has shown me that this is absolutely going to be compelling is the Apollo 11 experience, right? Like, I blasted off to the moon and I went and walked around the moon and I was blown away with the sense of presence that I felt there. because that's something I've always wanted to understand is what that's got to be like. Now clearly it's not the same because I didn't train for 20 years and so forth, but I got a really good sense for like how awesome that feeling was as the rocket blasts off and you're going to the moon, right? So the fact that we're going to be able to do this with just name your experience through history and name your experience through in the future of what's gonna happen and then it's just up to us as content creators to create those experiences and we'll be able to put millions and millions of people in them so that that's what I want to do is really time travel go back in the past go out into the future and then actually space travel which is go around the world to places I haven't been like the Taj Mahal is being put in VR right now excellent I haven't been there yet so it's gonna be a shortcut I'm going to go ahead and get to go there. Angkor Wat is another place I haven't been. It's super high on my list, probably one of the coolest temples that's around on the planet today. I don't know how soon I'm going to be able to get there, but if I can find a team to go ahead and go in there and shoot that in 360 and put an adventure in there where you go through and try to find some treasures, that's going to be awesome. I'd love to do that. So those are kind of some of the things I'm super interested in.
[00:31:32.281] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'm really interested whenever Google launches their Earth VR to be able to go anywhere on Earth and have tour guides of getting kind of like a mythological history of different locations around the world. But yeah, so that's what I'm really looking forward to. And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:31:53.962] Joel Breton: Sure, yeah. Well, I mean, again, there's so many exciting things being done in like healthcare and education, for sure gaming and video for entertainment, you know, training and design. So it's, it's really just this multi pronged, you know, sort of environment that's growing in all directions at once. And so that's what's super exciting about it. I, myself, as a gamer, I just can't wait for the more deep, rich games that are in development now. They're going to be coming out over the next, you know, say, 3 to 6 to 12 months. That's going to really fill out the gaming side, I feel, on top of what's already there, which is plenty of excitement. But I think some of these other areas that are going to take longer to develop in terms of, you know, like education platforms and healthcare, you know, there's going to be training for Alzheimer's that's probably going to help people, right? There's already training for people recovering from strokes in VR that's just going to be super compelling. People are building, you know, wheelchair training simulators and, you know, hopefully I don't need one of those, but like there are people that do. And then that's just amazing. So it's all of these different areas that are kind of growing at the same time that is what is super exciting to me and that I can't wait to experience.
[00:33:10.100] Kent Bye: Awesome. Anything else left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:33:13.549] Joel Breton: Yeah, well, I mean, again, we're at HTC, we're really, really excited about VR. We're working as hard and as fast as we can to bring great content to the entire global market. And if folks have really compelling content ideas or demos or prototypes, you know, that they're looking for help and support, to bring to VR, then they should definitely come and contact us at HTC. We are really, really active in the community and trying to help the entire ecosphere grow for VR. So we'd be a good point of stop if you have something interesting in VR.
[00:33:51.595] Kent Bye: How's the best way to get in touch in that way then?
[00:33:53.712] Joel Breton: Yeah, so if you know anyone at the company, that's usually a good way. Just come straight in to them. Or you can meet us at different trade shows. We're basically at every single VR show. You can come to a panel or something, just like we met today. And then feel free to just come up and chat with us after the show and then get in contact. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Oh, you bet. Thanks for having the time.
[00:34:21.123] Kent Bye: So that was Joel Baton. He's the vice president for virtual reality content for the HTC Vive. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, to me, it's just really interesting to hear some of the different industry market verticals that they've identified and categorized and what's happening in that. So the names of the different verticals that he listed were, there's first of all, games, and then commerce, which I don't think we've seen a lot of commerce just yet, but I think we'll be seeing a lot more here shortly. Healthcare is one of the ones that I think is the biggest so far that in terms of market vertical opportunities, there's so many different opportunities and chance to get real revenue streams for a lot of really compelling use cases and potential revenue streams there for healthcare. To me, that's a really exciting one. Education is one that people talk about a lot but I don't think there's necessarily a lot of funding within education but yet the educational apps that end up coming out I think will be very popular. I know that Titans of Space as well as Apollo 11 and some of the new experiences that they're working on with the lecture VR. So for me, I'm really excited to see how the education space comes out, both for early education, but also higher education. I think to me, those are two completely different and distinct branches where you're really focusing on a whole set of people that's essentially giving them the same type of curriculum and then The advanced and higher education, I think, gets into a little bit more of the training and simulation, which he identified as within the military context, a lot of that training simulations are for very specific use cases. So the training is, I think, distinct from the education. Then there's live video events and sports, which I think are kind of all in the same realm. That's where there's something happening live, and things like NextVR and VirtuallyLive, and Fox Sports also has a new app out there. So whether it's just showing live sports within kind of an immersive 2D viewing area, or actually doing the stereoscopic 3D, being able to have different places that are happening within a live sports event, I think that's actually gonna be a huge thing as well as some live events that might be happening. I know that I've watched a live press conference within Samsung within their app and so it kind of felt like I was in Barcelona during their press conference and gave me essentially the same experience I think that I would have had had I been there. But for some context, like a live sports, I think you kind of want to actually feel the audience, but at the same time, you may actually get some better views and perspectives and singular perspectives within VR. And then other times there may be actually a better viewing experience to watch it within 2D. So I think that's still yet to really be determined whether or not having a live sports event is going to be a better experience. But I think certainly some people are going to want to actually have that first person perspective and feel like they're actually there. And as it gets better, I think we'll get like digital light field captures and volumetric, whole immersive capture of an experience. So you could actually like be on the field and watching plays. I'm really excited to see where the technology goes in terms of being able to do that. And then there's design engineering and tools. That's, of course, something that we talked a lot about within the interview in terms of the submillimeter accuracy and what that's going to be able to do for architectural and design and being able to replace a lot of million-dollar CAVE systems. And rather than just schedule time on one of these CAVE systems, just put a Vive at everybody's desk. Media and I think that within media I kind of think of narrative and film and other journalistic documentary applications but also just media and entertainment in terms of Hollywood and I know that VR storytelling is something that Hollywood is is starting to look at a lot and starting to cultivate these new patterns of storytelling within VR. So that's one that I'm particularly interested in tracking and seeing how the storytelling evolves, both within narrative entertainment, as well as interactive entertainment, as well as within gaming contexts as well. And then I mentioned the military and simulation as being kind of like a very big market. And I think one of the big requests that come from military is to be able to do things that are a little bit more ruggedized. The military tends to want a little bit higher specifications sometimes. And so having things that are ruggedized, I think would be something that would be able to have the vibe serve both military, but also probably more of the digital out of home entertainment market where there's just going to be a high throughput of a lot of people using the headset and it just needs to be able to withstand being dropped and being handled by lots of different people. which kind of leads into the theme parks and how the theme parks might be thinking about how to do these digital out-of-home entertainment experiences that could only really be done within this context of having a much larger space. So a lot of the theme parks are about creating these whole kind of physical structures and so it'll be interesting to see how they use virtual reality to both augment or replace some of that. I don't expect that it'll be completely replaced but I know that as you're going into the line and waiting to go into a theme park experience, they're trying to, in many different ways, help immerse you into the mindset of what it's like to be in that world. So I could imagine perhaps a virtual reality experience that as people are waiting in line, or perhaps it's the whole destination where you get to the experience and it's completely virtual in some ways. So excited to see what comes of that. And then finally, the big other area is social and what people are doing in order to connect to each other and have social interactions. And I think that in terms of talking about the ultimate potential of VR, this is just something that comes up all the time in terms of what VR is going to bring in terms of these new capabilities of telepresence. And so I know with the SMI eye tracking, that's just one dimension of adding additional social interaction to be able to actually track where people's eyes are looking. The next big thing I think after that is being able to actually track someone's facial expressions and emotions because that's probably the biggest thing that is lacking from social interactions online is to give some sort of visual indication of someone's real-time emotional gestures that are happening. Yeah, in terms of some of the new genres, it was really interesting to hear Joel's characterization of things like Tilt Brush and Fantastic Contraption as user generated content. So things that you're actually generating content and using your creative expression to be able to generate different experiences and art and expressing your sense of creative presence within these experiences. And then there's the multiplayer UGC, which is you create something and then you have somebody else experience it. So it sounds like these are genres that are also existing within the 2D realm, but I do still think that there are going to be new genres that are completely unique to what's possible within VR. They're going to be much more visceral experiences that really wouldn't translate very well within a 2D environment. And it's all about just creating a sense of a vibe and a feeling. And these are the type of experiences that, from Oculus's terminology, they kind of have like the split between games and then apps and experiences. Well, these would be kind of more of the apps and experiences. Also, eSports, it sounds like, is still a big open question in terms of what games are going to work really well within eSports, both to be able to play competitively. I think if you look at some of the games that are out there, something like Audio Shield or Valve's The Lab or Space Pirate Trainer, these are all games that have leaderboards that people try to get into the top of the leaderboards. And so perhaps we'll start to see some esports competitions of live playthroughs of some of these games to actually watch people as they are at the top of their game of really being able to score these high scores and to be able to actually see them and watch them in a live environment. I think that I'd expect something like that to happen over the next year or so. And Joel himself said that there's going to be a lot of big titles that are coming up sometime in the summer of 2017 that he expects will make a big splash in terms of esports and VR. But from what I've talked to a lot of people about esports, it's something that's really hard to predict in terms of what people will want to end up playing competitively and also whether or not it'll be interesting for people to watch. I think that a lot of the VR experiences are from the first person perspective and sometimes you really need to have like a third person camera that's rendered somehow and to be able to broadcast that. So sometimes if just watching a first person perspective of as a spectator can be motion sickness inducing for some people. So just finding ways to have another camera output that might be a mixed reality experience that's streamed out to people to be able to watch and to be able to spectate. So that's all that I have for today. I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you'd like to support the podcast, then tell your friends, spread the word, and become a donor at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
