#77 Impressions of the Crescent Bay Demos at Oculus Connect by Morris May & Kent Bye

Morris May is the CEO of Specular Theory and he gives his first impressions of the Crescent Bay demos from Oculus Connect from September 20th.

One of the the most comprehensive overviews that I saw of the 13 Crescent Bay demos was from Josh Farkas of Cubicle Ninjas on this Reddit Post: “Another perspective on Crescent Bay!”

Here’s some more reactions of the Crescent Bay demos from Road to VR:

Here’s an extended review of the Crescent Bay prototype from Norm at Tested:

crescent-bay-prototype

Rough Transcript

[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.

[00:00:11.935] Morris May: Yeah, my name's Morris May. I started coming across Specker Theory. We create virtual reality content. I'm just having trouble composing words by how, you know how when you see something so amazing your eyeballs like widen a little bit? I feel my eyeballs are still widened. like three minutes after coming out of the demo, it's just, I'm that blown away. I was literally speechless. I mean, I have never had something touch me on such an emotional level as far as really being in a scene and being involved. I mean, things happen there that I obviously will just absolutely never forget. And being a developer of DK2 for since its inception, I never expected the jump in quality and experience to be that much more immersive and that much more better. I mean, I literally was blown away. I was emotionally involved and literally felt the arm hairs tingle and raise when a dinosaur came at me in a way that I never thought was even possible. So it really did live up to the keynote from this morning, it is that next level of absolute, complete immersion without nausea, without discomfort, and it really did deliver. So I can't, I can't really even put it into words. I'm actually just still completely shocked at how amazing that was.

[00:01:23.755] Kent Bye: Yeah, so what we're talking about here, obviously, is the next prototype leading up to CV1. It's called the Crescent Bay. We're at Oculus Connect. And so, I also had a chance to be one of the first batches to experience it. So, let's unpack this a little bit. So, one of the things that I found really interesting was that, first of all, there was absolutely no screen door effect that I could perceive. No pixels at all. So, what were some of your thoughts of the resolution and in terms of being immersed in that way?

[00:01:51.068] Morris May: I was blown away by the resolution. I literally did feel presence. I literally was so involved in it. And believe me, it's really difficult for me, obviously, being a developer, because I look for problems. I mean, that's what I do, is look for problems. I mean, some of the experiences, the lighting was a little bit CG. But the experience on a whole was far more than I could ever imagine it would be. Like you pointed out the screen during the resolution, but all of those key factors are there. You can really feel the head tracking works better. You really feel, and to me actually the most amazing thing was just the optics. Like I really felt for the first time that I had a field of view that was wider than I could see, or at least as wide as I could see. At least I wasn't even aware of it. And there was no distortion. I saw no... corners of the edge distortion or any kind of distortion anywhere, I really felt like I was in this space. So however they have solved that problem, it is an important piece of the puzzle that they clearly have solved because I really, really felt like I was there.

[00:02:44.400] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the things in this prototype, it wasn't sort of set up for people wearing glasses. I had to take my glasses off and near the end of the demo, I actually had to kind of put it and put my eyes right into the center because it was a little out of focus. But how was your experience with wearing glasses and you wear glasses but not being able to wear them well?

[00:03:02.038] Morris May: mine actually. Mine are a little bit smaller and I shoved them in there and it was a tight fit but I managed to pull it off. No, I was very comfortable. The audio was amazing. Yeah, I'm still half speechless. You enter in a new world when I don't think people fully grasp what truly being somewhere else is really what that does to you and it really does impact you in a way that has caused this whole thing to explode. Once you experience that, you just want to work on it. You want to bring that to the masses. You just want to be part of just the magic of the whole thing and seeing it all go down. I mean, I really, a dinosaur stepped over me and, you know, I wasn't watching a television screen with a dinosaur on it. It was a dinosaur in front of me and it stepped over me and I wanted to duck and I was scared and that was just, that involves you in story and immersion in a way that I never, is even more impactful than I imagined. So, it filled me with excitement to get back to work and go back to, you know, creating these things because it's really going to be a new world that we live in.

[00:03:53.473] Kent Bye: Yeah, they had mentioned this morning in the keynote that all of the demos were in Unreal Engine 4 and that there was a number of scenes, probably, I don't know, 12 to 16 scenes, I don't know. It just sort of was overwhelming. It was like, wait, there's more, there's more, there's more. For me, some of the ones that kind of stuck out were when you were in the room and you could see your face and it was like this mask and you were kind of just, it was a mirror and you can really just sort of move around and see a reflection of your face. Because most of the other demos did not have a body at all, that was the thing. There's no, your hands weren't in it at all and so you were a bit of a disembodied entity which I thought was Taking away from the potential of being fully present for me I think that was actually kind of like holding you back from being completely and fully immersed because and all the demos there's no body so

[00:04:40.962] Morris May: That is completely interesting. And you remember the keynote this morning, they talked about smell and touch, you know, these other things. And a lot of those other things to me were just so off in the future, but seeing how much progress they've made, we, we will see, I bet you'll see full body capture real soon. I wouldn't be shocked if the people just simply rig up connects or some kind of simple device to get that working. And yeah, it's a great point that part of the missing puzzle, you know, standing on the ledge, I didn't see my feet, but I was still legitimately scared. I was going to fall off the edge. So yeah, just unbelievable.

[00:05:08.125] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a couple of scenes where you're standing on top of a building and you see all these blimps and sort of a sci-fi futuristic and you you can kind of lean over and that was the thing you can kind of lean over and look over the edge and there was a sense of getting a little bit of vertigo when I was doing that.

[00:05:22.755] Morris May: Yeah, I mean, there's a really good mixture of demos, too. Some things are a little bit more photoreal. Some things were scary. Obviously, the big finale at the end, the Unreal 4, you know, walking through, things exploding. I'm sure you'll be a big fan with the gamers. But some of the little kid miniature things with little planes flying around, every level of the immersion has been improved dramatically. The optics, the head tracking, the latency, everything has really come that next level to fill those gaps to really make you feel like you're there. So I'm still speechless. I'm not able to describe it, basically.

[00:05:52.549] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the things that was happening in that very last finale demo, which was you're walking through this street scene and there's these explosions and rocks and bullets flying at you, and I found myself really starting to duck and dodge and being like, oh no, there's rocks and I need to like...

[00:06:09.090] Morris May: It really is like that. I mean, it's hard to, it's something you can't, it's hard to describe. I wish everyone could see it, but you really do reach that point, which Michael Albrecht talked this morning, is that you feel like you have to convince yourself you're not there. Like when I saw a bullet coming in my head, I wanted to duck. I ducked. I literally felt like I was there. I had to step out and say, okay, wait a minute, this isn't happening. And I have to say, after seeing that demo too, I've kind of always felt this way a little bit, but Oculus having not a certain release date, and them saying, hey, we're going to wait until it's right. I mean, that demo clearly, beyond a reasonable doubt, confirms what I've already felt, that just wait until it's really there and you're there. It's worth the wait. It's going to be such a game changer. It's worth the wait until it's absolutely perfect, because that total sense of you're there is really going to change everything as we know it.

[00:06:59.486] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the first scenes that you're in is like in this submarine type of room. And you kind of have an opportunity to move your body all around and sort of look around. And I did actually get this sense of like, wow, I was just laughing to myself because it was like, I really feel like I'm in this submarine type of space. And I'm just sort of like ducking down and looking up and looking all around. And it just has that sense of presence of really transporting into those other realms. One of the other ones that I thought was interesting was you're a microscopic entity with these little capsule things floating around with this insect that's right in front of you.

[00:07:36.469] Morris May: Really well done. Really done. Like I said, I have to repeat it again, hands off. Every demo filled a different purpose. And that one, science visualization, or learning, or science. But seeing things sort of at the microscopic level displayed that large, I mean, oh my gosh. Just the potential of that is just phenomenal. It's really reiterated the work that we're doing too, is just being able to interact with actors that look photoreal. When someone talks to you, once you really feel you're somewhere, and you really forget that you're in a virtual experience, and a really photorealistic person speaks at you, and you interact with them, or you see some kind of thing happening, that's going to really involve you emotionally in a way that's never been done before. So I'm extremely excited for that.

[00:08:14.698] Kent Bye: Yeah, there was a scene where you're actually on a planet and you're interacting with this little gray alien and someone mentioned afterwards that they found it that was really interactive. I was sort of looking all around and watching the spaceship slide. Were you interacting with the alien?

[00:08:26.608] Morris May: You know, I have a little bit, I was interacting with the alien. I have a little bit of the problem that a lot of CG artists have, or virtual reality artists, is I do that too. I want to look for flaws and look around rather than just being immersed in the experience, but it got me. I looked around a little bit like you did, but I also looked and interacted with the alien. I literally was so involved in the story that I was like, wow, he's talking to me, I'm talking to him, we're talking to each other. We're having, in the same place, having a communication. When that gets fully flushed out, I mean, the potential is unbelievable to, you know, speak to, to have it recognize your voice and talk back to you in interaction with different characters and things is just going to be absolutely, completely another level of mind-blowing.

[00:09:01.123] Kent Bye: Yeah, since I sort of was checked out and not really paying attention to the aliens, what was the interaction like?

[00:09:06.527] Morris May: You weren't really interacting with him, but he was definitely talking to you. And I felt like I was making eye contact with another being. I mean, that's a whole level of, and again, all the demos really fit really well to take you to a different type of experience. And that was literally someone's talking to you. They're making eye contact with you. And I did, I felt like, Oh, I, I got to listen to this. Somebody talking to me. I got to listen to him. What's he saying? You know? So that just blew my mind completely.

[00:09:30.990] Kent Bye: Yeah one of the demos was there's kind of a miniature city and you kind of like have to lean in and look at it and then there's like this fire truck shooting water on a fire and then somebody comes up and has a UFO picks up and beam somebody up and that sort of flies off but I think that was one of the ones that I remember reading about from the valve room that some of the people thought was really compelling to have all these little creatures in miniature world that you're kind of this omniscient god-like being looking down on this world and seeing all these different events unfold and leaning in like that I think was a unique experience that I really hadn't had in a lot of times in VR.

[00:10:09.971] Morris May: I had the exact, I went through the exact same thought pattern and thought the same thing, like leaning in to look at something miniature. I always think of things as, oh my God, T-Rex is really a T-Rex size, but seeing something miniature and really feeling like it's miniature and reaching in. And I couldn't help but think that, you know, what is the world gonna be like when we all grow up with these headsets? I mean, a child's story told that way? Are we gonna tell children's stories that way? Like they're gonna look in to see little miniature things playing around? I mean, it was, I love when the plane, it was one where the plane kind of went by and you literally had to duck as it kind of went over you. Storytelling is just going to be a completely new genre as we move into this, so it's very exciting.

[00:10:44.899] Kent Bye: One of the ones that I was really excited about was one of the ones that started to get into a little bit more of a data visualization. You were standing in this space where there was a number of grids that were going up and then there seemed to be like this almost like data visualization of some cityscape and I leaned down and was just seeing like the many different levels and being able to look underneath at this same type of representation of data. It felt like pointing to, like, some sort of urban planner where they have, like, this color-coded, like, these colors could mean something, but I could just imagine stepping into a cityscape like that and starting to look at this data, be able to make decisions upon things.

[00:11:26.263] Morris May: The number of possibilities are endless. I mean, we could talk about this for 18 hours. I mean, imagine you build a city to scale, you're in virtual reality, you look, it's 12 o'clock noon. You can set the time to be 12 o'clock noon, teleport from room to room inside the city and figure out where the light is and how to position things based on light in a matter of minutes. Something that would take days of planning and drawing and building models, and there's still going to be some pre-production to make that work, but you can make logical decisions about data in a way that's never been possible before. I would argue this is the next level of big data. Just like you're saying, you can walk into some data, and just by being able to move it around and look at it in a way that's never been done before, you're going to see things that you never thought were even possible immediately, just by physically. I mean, it's still an example, but It's been said a hundred times, but look, surgeons are going to operate on my arm. Are they going to study hours and hours of flat drawings of where blood vessels are? I can open a body, a 3D model of my arm, tear away the levels, spin around it, and have an understanding of it in moments versus the hours of reading textbooks. So the potential to change learning as we know it is just astounding.

[00:12:30.057] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's another scene that I thought was interesting, which was a very low-poly scene with a couple of animals, a reindeer and a fox. What were some of your thoughts on that?

[00:12:37.860] Morris May: That was actually my least favorite scene. I thought it was an important part of the demo to step into Playmobil world, but it didn't blow me away. I was glad it was there, because like I said, it really did fit every possible niche of the things that you were interested in. There was a demo for it. That was one where they kind of encouraged me to walk around. So it was, I can't stand a world where everything's going to always explode all the time. So it was the peacefulness of like being in Playmobil was definitely interesting.

[00:13:02.447] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the other ones that I heard about the Valve demo in the Valve room, I was excited to see, was one of the demo scenes, which is taking one of these things that are only 64K in size and expanding out to full virtual reality. You're kind of in this sci-fi futuristic world where you're just kind of like floating in this etheric space with lots of dynamic action happening. What were some of your thoughts on that?

[00:13:25.236] Morris May: with the blue kind of orb one, I was actually blown away with that one. I was really impressed. And my immediate thought was, we've spent four or five years designing UI and user experiences and buttons and labels. And as those things kind of moved toward me, I realized, oh my gosh, we're really going to be in this world where we're going to make user experiences and menus and information more interactive and more interesting than has ever been done before. That's what kind of went through my mind, because as those panels were moving by, I was like, well, this could be a button, and this could be information, and this could be that. Having it move forward through me was just absolutely blew me away.

[00:13:56.348] Kent Bye: Yeah, that was one of the ones where I kind of deliberately like stuck my head out to put it through the wall to see what would happen and

[00:14:03.157] Morris May: But did you find that you had to convince yourself that you had to do that? Because that's how I felt. I literally felt like I was so in the environment, I had to say, wait a minute, OK, I can do this. I can stick my head into this beam coming by.

[00:14:14.462] Kent Bye: Well, that was the thing is that some of the other ones, like when the dinosaur was sort of walking over me, it was a sense of like, oh god, I need to kind of make sure I don't get stepped on here. But for that one, it was like, I'm going to contradict what my natural inclination is and actually do something that doesn't feel natural just to see what it feels like. And so that was the one where I was breaking the tendency to protect myself and to really see what it would feel like. And it did feel a little awkward. And in some ways, it may have took me out of the scene of saying, oh, wow, this isn't real. So when you do that, when you deliberately stick your head through walls, it does take you out of it a bit.

[00:14:51.983] Morris May: Yeah, yeah, it might have been just the rendering of that because it's a stylized rendering, you know, you sort of this futuristic like foggy blue glowy world, you think, oh, that can't be real, I can stick my head through it. So, you know, and definitely a couple things occurred to me is that, you know, I think a lot of the things I'm digesting from this morning is You know, Unreal Engine, incredible, beautiful graphics. But a lot of those things like there, a lot of the tricks that we use in cinema and visual today is really designed toward making things look like they were shot with a camera. So, you know, vignetting, strobing, color bleed, all those things are really, really more pleasing for your eye to see. because that's what we're used to seeing in the cinema on a camera. But if I look around this room, I see very little lens flares and color bleeding and all those kind of tricks that you typically use in CG to lens distortion and things like that we don't see in the real world. That did reiterate in my mind we are going to see a whole new type of computer graphics and a whole new language for telling stories in VR that are really geared more toward really creating things from the eye and not from the camera.

[00:15:51.685] Kent Bye: One of the other things that's new in this prototype is being able to turn around a full 360 degrees. At the same time you did have wires and so there was a sense of like being reminded that you weren't completely untethered you know that was for me a little bit of like a reminder of like oh I'm in this room and not in this other place. But yeah, what was your experience of having that sort of being able to look around a full 360 degrees?

[00:16:12.804] Morris May: I have to be honest. I was so I was so into it. I didn't even I'd forgotten that was a limitation. I just completely forgotten I Think I'm gonna go home and start back with a DK2 and be disappointed that I can't do that It was exactly like you said the only moment I realized that I was in trouble was I sort of wrapped myself in the cable a little bit and you know, maybe it'll be wireless or who knows just

[00:16:33.607] Kent Bye: Yeah, what do you think of the screen resolution in terms of, you know, I do have a guess of what type of resolution that might have been.

[00:16:39.009] Morris May: I don't have a guess, I have no idea, I don't know what, I don't think there was any announcement or anything, it was clearly high enough resolution, like you said, I did not see pixel, I did not see screen door, it really did feel like I was there, and the brightness of it, I got a feeling that's something special that we haven't seen before.

[00:16:56.520] Kent Bye: Yeah, I don't sense that there was a pentile arrangement of the pixels. It didn't get a sense of, like, being able to perceive it at all.

[00:17:03.324] Morris May: Of course, there were no photographs involved, and I was, you know, doing the best I could to see what computer they were running, and I have to say, it looked like a normal computer, which really warmed my heart. I didn't see, like, 15 graphics cards in there, and liquid-cooled, overclocked. I mean, that may be what it was, I can't tell you for sure, but to my naked eye, that was a typical computer with a typical graphics card in it.

[00:17:25.238] Kent Bye: Well, I do have a hunch that it was the latest graphics card of the 980s. Well, it's something that just got released yesterday, the Maxwell. So, you know, I suspect that Oculus has been working with NVIDIA and that some of these new hardware gears were using some of the latest technologies.

[00:17:42.063] Morris May: But it's definitely great to see, though, that it's not the valve room. It's not a bank of computers or a bank of graphics cards. It is achievable, too. And obviously, with everything being twice as fast every year, we're in a good spot. It is happening, so it's exciting.

[00:17:56.707] Kent Bye: Was there any other moments within this series of demos that you haven't talked about that come to mind?

[00:18:01.848] Morris May: We covered most of them. Which ones? I mean, I got to say the last one really appealed to gamers. I mean, that clearly was, you're in a game. And I got to say, I literally thought, my background is more visual effects, and we've been doing a lot of gaming stuff. But that did move me on a gaming level. I mean, when I saw a guy standing next to me with a gun with his back to me, and the level of photorealism there, it really did move me to look at, oh my gosh. You're gonna be, it's kind of like if we played, like it was said this morning, if you played Call of Duty inside the headset, you really wouldn't be running around with a gun. You would lay in a bunker and lie down and protect yourself. I literally felt, okay, I'm scared for my life. I have all this stuff going around for me, so that definitely was something that's kind of key to talk about is that, you know, being in a real war scene where you really feel like you're in a war, even though they were a little bit stylized and mechanical kind of costumes, that's going to change things. And it's a really interesting psychological perspective. Imagine you really, I mean I love to shoot things, I love video games, I love it, I love to shoot things, but when you really feel like you're really shooting someone, that might change your perspective about shooting someone. So that really is an interesting effect. I mean we'll still be science fiction and fantasy and it'll be a blast, but the realness of bullets flying at my head definitely caused me to stop and think about a lot of things. It's amazing.

[00:19:20.056] Kent Bye: Well, I think the interesting thing about that is that you're in a world where physics is slowed down to be, you know, you're walking in slow motion through the scene and things are flying at you, not at normal speed. And so it is this sort of surreal dreamlike experience where you're like seeing these rocks flying at you and I was just sort of dodging them and looking at them and being in awe, feeling like I was in the Matrix, you know, and there was a car that was there that had an explosion, and again, it had this sort of like, you know, breaking the sonic wave ripple of energy coming out.

[00:19:55.793] Morris May: I definitely ducked. I was actually literally completely in the moment and completely ducking. So, yeah, I mean, and obviously it's just slowed down because it works better in the riff. It was full speed, obviously, but, you know, it is, it has been said before a million times, it is a new form of storytelling now. It is a new form of displaying things. So what, you know, people are asking like, well, how are you going to cut? How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? It's like, my God, when you're standing there and you feel like you're there, you're not worried about cutting to another scene. You're physically present in a new location, experiencing it. That's really going to change entertainment. So it was exciting.

[00:20:27.070] Kent Bye: Yeah, and having a big giant robot boss-like thing looking at you, I can only imagine, because this was a cinematic on-the-rails experience, there's no interaction, you're just sort of witnessing it. So there's a bit of, you're not fully engaged of having any agency in this environment, you're just sort of a passive witness to what's unfolding. I thought that was sort of a, I was definitely noticing that and also noticing like I didn't fully believe that there was a giant robot enemy machine guy like right there and putting his big monster face in my face and sparks flying at me. It was sort of like for me that was like going a little bit too far in terms of what my mind was willing to believe.

[00:21:07.596] Morris May: Yeah, we have that in visual effects a lot of times. We work on movies like Spider-Man where you see something that's so superhuman, even if it's well done, you just don't believe it. So I think that's kind of what you're pointing at. It was funny, I find myself noticing that I didn't... I knew when I looked down I wasn't going to see my body, like you said, and that took me out of it a little bit. But I really did expect to see myself in reflections, which I didn't see. And that just was something you, it's one of those weird mind tricks where I, when that robot came close to me, it's like, I need to see my reflection in that robot. And I didn't. And that took me out of it. So there are little things that you don't necessarily aren't first break the immersion that bring you back. So even as better and better as we get it, there'll be more things to kind of deal with.

[00:21:46.895] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think that's the next phase, because there was a number of scenes that had reflective surfaces and mirror-like things, and there was no mirroring of any of my arms or limbs or body or anything. There was just one scene where you were looking in a mirror and your face was being tracked and looking around, but having a full body and being able... I did lift my hands up, even though it was sort of like I knew I wasn't going to be able to see my hands. It was still of like, are my hands here?

[00:22:11.400] Morris May: I couldn't help myself. I know my hands aren't there, but I have to look at them. And again, it goes back to this thing where it's really a key thing to understand, a key point that was pointed out this morning, I have to point out again, is that when you put a DK1, DK2 on, your brain tries to go pretend you're in the environment. That's how I am, at least. I put it on and I go, I try to pretend like I'm in the environment. I never have to really feel like, trick myself into realizing I'm not doing it, if that makes sense. Did I explain it well? But in that room, I literally had to trick myself to remind myself it wasn't actually happening. And when you cross that barrier, that's a really key thing that isn't conveyed on this, you know, by talking about it. It's something you really have to experience.

[00:22:53.022] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think with the combination of the low persistence screen in addition to like at least a 90 Hertz frame rate, I think that, you know, it gave a sense where looking around I get the total sense of being there. The one thing that I did see is a couple of times it would be like this jumping or judder. I don't know if that's what that is, where it just sort of jumps. I don't know if you experienced that at all.

[00:23:13.258] Morris May: I experienced that on the rail when I was looking over the city room. And I think that's head tracking error, but I'm not the scientist to determine that. But I got a feeling. Was it when you were looking kind of dead sideways?

[00:23:26.311] Kent Bye: It was just sometimes when I was sort of leaning around and moving around a bit, it would just sort of jump. And it would sort of be like, oh, that's a little disorienting. But it wasn't horrible, but it just sort of took me out of it a little bit.

[00:23:36.400] Morris May: I think that was head tracking, but I can't be for certain. Who knows?

[00:23:40.863] Kent Bye: It's early prototypes. I'm sure they'll be things.

[00:23:42.984] Morris May: I mean, hands off to Oculus, too. I mean, for God's sakes, like, to unveil it, to really, one of the big successes of it is their involvement with really developers and helping developers to unveil it here with the developers first and not, you know, the media and the big game companies and the press. Like, we're the first people here to try it. It's just a good move because we're all going to go home and really be excited about creating the next level of entertainment. So it's exciting times.

[00:24:06.756] Kent Bye: Great. Any other final thoughts?

[00:24:10.418] Morris May: My last final thought is, when you see something that surprises you, your eyeballs widen. Mine are still widening. It's been about how long we've been talking? 10 minutes? That's my final thought. OK. Great. Thank you.

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