>> Narrator: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering NAB 2017. Brought to you by HGST. (lively music) >> Welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here, everybody, with theCUBE. We are live at NAB 2017 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. 100,000 people, all kinds of gear. If you're into video and you're into fun, this is the place to be. We're real excited to have Brian Frager on. He's a VR and AR creative producer for Technicolor. Welcome Brian. >> Thank you, happy to be on. >> And then, on your bio, you have all my new vocabulary words that I've picked up. Photo, I can't even say the stupid word. Photogrametgramatry? >> Gamatry, photogrammetry. >> Jeff: Awesome. >> Yeah. >> So, first off, welcome. >> You've been doing this PR thing, since the beginning, early days. >> It's still early days. >> Jeff: It's still early days. >> Basically, I have a film back on, a traditional film production. But when I saw these new work flows emerging in these interactive stories and really, the whole spectrum of story telling opening up from what was, traditionally, either a film or a video game. Now, there's this whole spectrum of experiences in between that are, very much, a hybrid between the two and you, as a user or an audience, have some agency and some control over how you effect the experience. I was just all in on that. I took a deep dive into coding and development and the game engines and landed at Technicolor within the last few months. >> And that's through the volumetric video response to that, right? Cause you're creating a space or correct me if I'm wrong. >> Brian: Exactly. >> And now you interact in that space. >> Exactly, so you're building a whole environment and the idea is that, the user rather than, most 360 experiences that we're seeing right now that are being shipped as VR, are, really, just from a fixed point. Even though you can look around and that's, a little bit, innovative it's still very restrictive in how you can interact with the space. We focus on real time rendered game engine experiences where you build the entire environment and so, really, you, as a user, can go walk around the whole room, look at anything, inspect things and you just have a lot more freedom to explore. >> On the story telling aspect of that, how does that now, get stitched into what's, basically, a video game engine? >> That's a great question. It is a paradime shift because rather than dictating the sequence of events or the linear story and force feeding it to an audience, you're, really, creating an open world. You want to design it in a way where they still take away a narrative experience or at least some kind of experience from it. But you need to give the user freedom to navigate that world however they see fit. It's about a lot of play testing, to be honest, to get early iterations out into user's hands and to see what they're instinct is. You have an idea for how they're going to consume something but until you see someone in the experience and see what they're impulse is and what they want to interact with, then you can build towards that. So, it's a more iterative process that's more akin to game development. >> Are you sharing any funny stories or surprises or something where you thought somebody's going to go left and they went right, just completely counter to what you built into your script if you will? >> Oh man, funny experiences. You know, so we've been to a few festivals. We premiered it at Sundance and then at South by Southwest. We've put hundreds of people thought it. There's one character that's very anthropomorphized and we had an idea that people would like to interact with it. But the minute it shows up, there's people getting on the ground next to this little water buffalo and he's just chillin and looking around. And there's people sitting right next to him and trying to pet him and do all kinds of things and you realize people, once they feel emersed in a space and they find something they can emotionally connect with, they just want to hang out there and spend some time with that as a microcosm of the experience. So, we added some little interactive elements to him. So, that was an insight. Actually, the fumiest was when I showed it to my mom for the first time. They don't, totally, understand this new world. A character appeared and she happened to be standing, you never know where the user's going to be standing in these paths. So, she happened to be standing directly in the path where the character was going to run. So, she turns around and sees the character and it just starts running straight at her and she just screams and throws the controller. (laughing) And the character just goes right through you but you know, that immersion. You feel like you're about to get hit by something. >> Right, right. So, a lot of us have played, I've got the Samsung thing I put my Galaxy in. What are some of the secrets that help people feel that immersive experience? In terms of is it, really it's not the super quality view cause a lot of times, you don't have that. But a lot of times, it's the softer things is what pull people in. So, what are the things that, really, make it connect with people from VR? >> Absolutely, there's a lot of elements because, really, you are recreating reality, sense by sense. The nice thing about VR is our visual system is so overpowering in terms of how we interpret the world around us that, luckily, that's been the access point and the entry point to this whole VR boom that we've seen. Is that, finally, mobile screens are at a point, the sensors are all packed very tight. So, we can, really, ship at a low cost. Google cardboard, for example, being the widest distribution and give people a pretty compelling visual experience. That's really step one and I'd say that's, pretty well, established and distributed. >> Visuals and audio have been married but, really, it's about bringing the other senses into VR. For example, the agency of being able to move around a space and interact with real things in the space. That's more commonly termed mixed reality and that's going to be the next wave that you're going to see which is highly interactive spaces that are more of a mixture of the virtual world and physical elements. So that, even though I'm in a headset and I see a pen, in the headset, when I reach out and touch it, there's really a pen there that's tracked in the space. That adds a whole other level of immersion that allows it to be social. Because that's a contract between you and I that this is a physical thing that one of us is holding. It allows for a whole new world of opportunities of what can be done in VR. >> How important is the social aspect, in terms of adoption? Yourself or your mom cruising around on her own versus the opportunity to bring other people in? Is that some of the stuff that's going to make this, really, the killer app to get it over the next hump? Or what is the killer app, I guess, beyond cruising around half the time? >> 100%, I think it's making it social. How to open up that world. Because right now, it is a very isolating experience. There's no reason that it has to be, necessarily, it's just that the user base is not congregated around individual platforms. Facebook made a big opening salva last week when they released their Facebook spaces. That allows you to bring in people from the real world into your virtual experience. By being able to, through Facebook Messenger, I can call out while I'm in VR, I can call out to anyone who has Facebook Messenger's app installed. Then, I get a little video feed and they see me as an avatar on their phone screen. So, it's those hybridizations of connecting people in VR to people who are outside in the real world that's going to, really, hit the inflection point of wide adoption. >> There were some early versions of that in the past right? Where you had these virtual reality spaces inside the computer but they were not nearly as immersive as the ones that we have today. Why did those not, really, take off What was the one of them? I can't think of the name right now. Let's say it's Second City but that's not it. >> Brian: Oh, Second Life? >> Second Life versus today's world. What changed? >> Sure well, I wouldn't characterize Second Life as a failure. It had it's heyday. >> No, not a failure but I mean, it was an early attempt at what you just described, really, in the Facebook Messenger which is what triggered the thought. >> And funny enough, the Second Life team is now creating the virtual version of that called High Fidelity. So, they have their own attempt. There's a couple of other like ALTSpace Nobody has the install base of Facebook. And so once you plug in to that community, you're already connected with your friends. It just takes away the friction. The friction of VR is, really, what's holding back people. That and the isolation, I'd say, from wide adoption. Which is that, it's just not a seamless experience. Going in, finding the app I want, connecting with people easily. Being an early adopter, I've tried to run meetings through the Oculus social spaces. There's just a lot of friction with technical issues and people dropping in and out. It improves. They do releases all the time. All those issues are being worked out and the friction's just going to slowly going to go away to the point where it will be more convenient for us to take a meeting where we can sit face-to-face and read each other's expressions then it will to try to get the same amount done over the telephone or something like that. >> I have to laugh cause every time, whether you're on WebEx, pick your favorite meeting tool. It's still technical issues. I was thinking that YouTube video. One of the greatest YouTube videos ever. >> New medium, same problem. >> Yeah, same problem. Is Bob even here? He checks in at the end of the meeting. So, that's very cool. As you look forward and I know it's a fast moving space. What are some of your priorities? What do you see as some short term changes that are going to make a big impact? And what about, say a year from now. I don't even want to even guess much further out than that, that you see coming down the pike that's going to have a huge impact on the adoption of VR? >> Sure, so at the low end, we're starting to see inside out tracts mobile solutions. Meaning that, you can get that same kind of freedom to wander around a space that you can on a Vive or an Oculus but with a mobile headset. So, because the price point and the buried entry is so low, everyone already has or they'll have soon enough, a phone that's capable of running an experience like that. I think that will be an important first step. At the Technicolor Experience Center, which is Technicolor's new VR and AR and mixed reality focused wing, they're really betting that these immersive stories are the future of entertainment and how that will trickle across different market adjacencies and verticals to apply to medical and education and sports and fitness. The applications are just endless. I think we're seeing early Enterprise adoption right now. And then, on the consumer side, gaming is, really, where they found the early niche and there is a modernization model. But what we're, personally, interested in is showing people the very, very high end of what VR can be. Because once we show them the high end, they have a compelling reason to familiarize themselves with whatever it can be to them today. We're working on very high fidelity tract spaces where social and networks and we can be geographically together or remotely beamed in together but we feel embodied in that space in a way that's more immersive than currently available. In terms of being able to move lens and interact with the objects around us. That's what we're trying to prove out at Technicolor is how do we build high end entertainment experiences around those technical infrastructures that are not widely deployed today but they will be coming. I think, for monetization on those models, you're going to see a lot of installed spaces that people will, hopefully, flock to to get these high end experiences. >> So, what's your favorite high end experience right now? >> Well, I did get the chance to do the Void, the Ghostbusters VR Experience after Sundance and that was pretty incredible. It was a lot of fun. Just cause you're in it with someone else. It's like a new version of laser tag. It can apply to other areas, that was just a shooter game. Just that shared experience where we are both in the space together and we just know that we're getting access to this virtual world that no one else is seeing is a really special thing. >> It's just amazing how powerful the social aspect is to all these things. >> You want to talk about it with people. >> You want to talk about it. You want do it with somebody. You want to share it. It's such a powerful impact. >> Yeah and, I think, even on the mobile side that will help open up the world a lot because right now, if it's on a Vive or an Oculus, you can plug it into a monitor or a TV and I can see what you're doing in it. So, that's easy enough for me to feel like I'm, at least, participating in your experience. But when you're in mobile right now, you're, pretty much, locked in and I, really, have no idea what you are doing in the experience. So, I think, making it easily shareable across traditional channels or just me being able to opt into your experience or jointly share one, those are all things that are going to make it much more compelling for us to just say, hey, we have 10 minutes, let's dive into VR and do something together. That would be fun. >> Right, right, very cool. Alright Brian. Thanks for stopping by out of your busy day. >> Of course. Great to talk. >> Alright, Brian Frager. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from NAB 2017. Thanks for watching. (lively music)