[Music] okay welcome back everyone it's thecube's coverage here in monaco i'm john furrier host of thecube monaco crypto summit presented by digital bits uh media partners coin telegraph in the cube a lot of great stuff going on here digital bits and the ecosystem around the world come together to talk about the next generation uh nft environments metaverse uh blockchain all the innovations going up and down the stack of the decentralized world that will be soon a reality for everybody we have a great guest david lutzkach here who's the co-founder of aftermath islands metaverse which i got a little sneak preview of but david thanks for joining me thanks john great to be here uh we had dinner the other night at nobu it's great to know you get to know your background you've got a stellar uh pedigree um you've run public companies you've been involved in tech media across the board again this is a ship we're seeing like we've never before perfect storm technology change cultural change business model transformation all around deep decentralization crypto token economics decentralized applications metaverse i mean come on we haven't digital identity there was identity which you're involved in take us through what are you working on take a minute to explain what you're working on and then we'll get into it so aftermath islands is is really a culmination of three things uh digital identity the ability to prove who you are because we think the internet and i think everyone would agree the internet's broken you know um nefarious actors bad actors can be anywhere um hacks fake spots so by being able to prove that you're a real person not necessarily verifying your identity but prove that you're a real person um can add a lot of benefits to everyone in the ecosync system second thing is we combine that with avatars nfts and credentials because i'd like to represent myself as a little more buff than i am and maybe a little taller and then the third thing is we put it in a unreal engine so real realistic photo realistic game engine metaverse that requires no downloading it's all pixel streaming just like you'd stream netflix you can stream the game i want to ask because this is i know it's a hard problem because i've asked a lot of people the same question the unreal engine is really powerful and the imagery is amazing like gaming we all know what it looks like it's hard it's not everyone's getting it right what makes it so special how are you guys cracking the code well i think it's our experience i mean we've worked for major entertainment companies major technology companies major sports companies so um as i just use your word because it being i want to be humbled by this but we do have a great pedigree we've also brought great people to the table so having a platform isn't enough we've got great creators and uh we've got great storytellers so we've got the anisiasa brothers one mariano is is a illustrator and former special editor uh project center at marvel and his brother fabian is our storyteller who's the co-creator of deadpool so we've got great people and with unreal engine 5 we've really taken it from the ground up we've looked at it and and we've really combined it with new gpu cloud serving and pixel streaming so that you're so the individual that's that's involved engaged immersed is now really playing it without having to download a graphics package yeah and also you drop some names there and some and some brands i know there's a lot more at dinner we've talked a lot about them you you know all the top creators and again i love the creator culture i mean that's the new buzzwords around but ultimately it's artists people building stuff application developers in the software world movies and film art art and code is kind of coming together it's the same kind of thing media and coding it's like the same mindset you know creative exactly crazy good smart in a good way in the blockchain it's harder because you've got all this underlying infrastructure and stuff to provision and build often created say oh man it's like doing chores it's like i just want to build cool stuff i don't want to get in the weeds of all the tech right this is like whoever cracks the code can unleash that heavy lifting so the artist can like feel good about kicking ass well i'm i'm being a slot a little sly here because we've sort of broken it into three areas and we've used blockchain to book and the platform so we still think that that gaming in the interactive platform has to have centralization it has to have decision making we have a great community um between twitter and discord we have over 30 000 people and we have organizations that have already um spawned um themselves up or spun up to manage our landowner ownership and some of our guilds for some of our professions but at the same time they're allowing us to make decisions based on what the community wants i mean i've heard recently um i don't want to say it's a horror story but it's been difficult that consensus-based models for development have to get consensus and not everybody agrees you still need the leadership i mean you still need sort of a captain on a ship to make sure that the dictatorships are work and well and linux um tried that and they've worked for a while but when they moved over to we're going to make some decisions have an opinion right whether it's centralization it's faster yeah consensus systems can be diverse and time-consuming well they can be political as well i mean you can you can it can become problems so at the front end we've got digital identity and that's all blockchain based and at the back end we have over 20 services including dids and did com which is decentralized identifier communication and all our services are blockchain based but in the middle um connected to nft's blockchain and everything else and to our teacher identity we have a game or a game platform or a open world platform that is centralized built in unreal engine so that we can make those decisions that spur on individual development it's an architecture it is i mean this is essentially an operating environment exactly you can have the benefits of the decentralized all your data on your identity okay and then have the middle be the playground and built right now that has to get done faster and you're constantly iterating exactly so you need to have that exactly so what are people saying about this to me i think that makes a lot of sense people are very intrigued um we're getting a lot of traction first of all unreal engine in the middle um brands love it because it provides a realistic view of a brand brands have spent you know hundreds of millions of dollars building brand equity and they don't necessarily want a cartoon representation of their brand so brands love it um uh we showed a video here at the monaco crypto summit of some and our videos available online on youtube but we're showing realistic we can create realistic avatars so people are really excited about what we're doing you know david i think one of the things i've had controversy statements in the past that got all the purists going back to 2018 you know throwing tomatoes at me but other halfs like loving it because at that time there was dogma around block change got to be done you know it was slow and gas so why i can use a database now we use the blockchain for smart contracts right which you that's what you want to do you want to have that locked in you want immutability so again this opportunity is to advance faster and not have to get stuck in the dogma but maybe get it back to it later database is a great example i agreed i think i think over time the community will take over the entire platform but i think at the beginning you have to have again you have to have a rudder on a ship to make it go somewhere it's called product market fit exactly you got to get to the market exactly with a product you've got that i want that exactly i mean unreal engine is hard i know what are some of the people you worked with because i think i think what i like about what you're working on is that you are and i think a great poster child of in terms of the organization of a group of people that are pros that want to do great work in a new world with the kind of experience and tools that they had in their old world right faster cheaper better more control when we were there at web one we're there at web two and now with web three we have the ability to fix some of the things that we thought were wrong with web one and two so and move into the ownership economy and and really um for us we've got a great team of people you know around the world that we work with and we're starting to bring in larger organizations to support us i mean our digital identity we're really working with the backbone at ibm and digital identity is very different in blockchain than is crypto and we're working with great people in crypto now we announced today that we're minting our native token dubs with digital bits so we're really excited about that yeah yeah let me ask you a question because i love the fact that you brought multiple ways of innovation again i've mentioned on that with shared experience there different different ride for different waves what have you learned and shared to folks who are going to dip their toe and get on their surfboard so to speak use the california metaphor for both californians what is web3 wave like how's it different from two what's the learnings can you share scar tissue experience observation anything around what you're doing now so they can get insight into this wave well you know web 1 and web 2 were broken i mean you could never go in i think we had this discussion you could never go into an electronic store in the real world write your information down on a piece of paper and expect that you'd walk out of the store with the purchase but we can type in information that is non-verified until i could take my friend's credit card know where they live and use it by using digital identity at a front end we create one user one account that user can have thousands of verifiable credentials around them and hundreds of avatars so i think what we've really learned is the ability to progress in a way that that really puts data back in the hands of consumers and makes them the owner of their identity by starting there we have a world in front of us that is valuable to marketers valuable to brands and valuables to individuals and whether it's education whether it's government services whether it's retail everything can be built on that simple premise that i am myself it's interesting there's a constant technology we're called presence you know you're present at an event you're present at a store you're present and some reality physically and you have credentials around that presence contextually exactly you're saying you can have one nft one digital identity or identity and have multiple identities that have contacts all stored i'll store it in an avatar it's like changing your suit hey i'm going into the apple store i'm now my apple john and and think of it this way um brands can now connect with you and give you promos give you product based on the information that you're willing to share with them about your real person and your avatar becomes your intermediary so your payment information stored within your digital identity and your avatar not at the retail level so this is a concept we've been working on for a long time i think we're talking about dinner but i want to bring this up for you for you to come and get a reaction to is that if what you just said is true that means if i'm the user and i have power to control my data the script flips now i'm brokering my data to the brand exactly not the other way around exactly or some intermediary i'm in control exactly and i could demand based on what my contextual relevance is to the brand and the brand is willing to pay for that because if you think about it today um social media unfortunately is plagued by fake accounts you know and issues and and so brands are spending all this money and they're getting slippage and breakage and that's spent if they know your real person they're more likely to want to give you an incentive to engage with them because it's a one-to-one transaction that creates value that's a great point you mentioned twitter earlier look at elon musk uncovered all the bots on twitter um and if they ever did the facebook i'm sure there's a ton of different accounts on facebook but you know it's out there these walled gardens have nefarious bad actors man it's not truth isn't what's the truth i mean gaming has this right now it's like you're anonymous you can go down or you got to go real name so we've got a hybrid you can do anonymously verified so because we use biometrics to verify that you're a real person so you can stay anonymous but we know you're a real person because your biometrics belong to you well david great to have you on thecube you got a great insight and experience thanks for sharing thank you john uh what's next for you guys you want to put a plug in for what you're working on you're looking for people funding more action what are you guys doing right well we've we've self-funded to date and we're we're finally going to be releasing um opportunities for people to engage with us in tokenomics and that's why we've we're working with digital bits but we're also looking for great people and great partners we're creating an interoperable open um uh world where we want to bring partners to the table so anyone who's interested reach out to us all right david guys thanks for going on thecube all right more coverage here on thecube we're all over this area going back to 2018 we brought thecube to all the events been covered on siliconangle.com since 2010 and watching this wave just get better the reality is here it's a metaverse world it is a decentralized world happening to everyone monaco crypto summit here in monaco thanks for watching we'll be right back with more after this short break you

(upbeat music) Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We have George Watkins, the product marketing manager, cloud gaming and visual cloud at AMD. George, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> Love this segment, accelerating game development. AWS cloud, big topic on how the gaming developer environment's changing and how AMD is powering it. Let's get into it. So streaming remote, working remote, flexible collaboration, all powered by the G4ad virtual workstations, it's been a big part of success. Take us through what's going on there. >> Yeah, certainly. So obviously from a remote working perspective, there was a huge impact on collaboration and productivity for many industries out there. But, a collaborative environment like game design, it was even more so. First off, happy to have these big bulky workstation ship to local artists, so they can actually carry on working was a massive nightmare for IT management. Making sure that they have the right hardware, the right resources, the right applications and security. So it was a real mean task. And on top of that, working remotely also brings in other efficiencies when it comes to collaboration. So for example, working on a data sets, as I mentioned before, it's a huge team collaboration effort when it comes to game development, and using the same dataset happens very very often. So if you're actually working remotely and an artist, for example pulled a dataset, from a server, worked on it, then took it back up into the cloud. I'll tell you now, it takes some time to do. And at the same time you might have one or two other artists trying to use that data set. The problem or the big issue that comes here is version control. And essentially because these artists are using the older version, there's creating errors, and keeping that production timed longer. So it's very very inefficient. And then this is where the cloud really comes to end zone. First off the cloud, and then obviously in this case, the AWS cloud, with G4ad instances, really does bring the whole pipeline together. It brings the data sets and the virtual workstations, obviously, as I mentioned, G4ad, as well as all the applications into one place. It's all centralized. And from an IT perspective, this is fantastic. And actually sending out a workstation now is really really simple. It's log in details into an email to your new staff, and there's some really great benefits as well from a staff perspective. Not only are they not tethered to a local workstation, they have the flexibility of work where they need to, and also how they like to. But it's also really interesting about how they work on a day-to-day basis. So a good example of this is, if a artist is using or working on a very very heavy dataset and the configuration from their VM or virtual workstation, isn't up to snuff because of the such a large dataset, all they need to do is call up IT and say, I need more resource. And literally in a couple of minutes time, they can actually have that resource, again, improving that productivity, reducing that time. So it's really really important. And just a final note here as well, with having all that data and all that resource in the cloud, version control tools, really do help bring that efficiency as it's all built into the applications and that data sets really, really exciting staff and ultimately, bring in that productivity and reducing that time and errors down. >> I could see your point too because, when you don't bring it to the cloud, people are going to be bored, waiting for things to happen. And they say I want to take a shortcut. Shortcuts equal mistakes. So, I can see that the G4ad with focus for artists is cool because it's purpose-built for what you're talking about. So take me through how you see the improved efficiencies in the development pipeline with cloud computing around this area because, obviously it makes a lot of sense. Everything's in the cloud, you've got the instances there. Now what happens next? How does the coding all work? What's going on around the game development pipeline? >> 3D applications today, particularly at use in the game industry, I'll be honest, they are still based on legacy hardware. And what I mean by this is that the applications typically require higher CPU Hertz the typically single threaded, maybe some kind of multi threaded functionality there. But generally they are limited by what the traditional workstation has been. And obviously why not? They've been built over the last 10-15 years to access that type of data. Now that is great, but it's not accessing what could be, all the resources that are available in the cloud. And this is what's really really exciting in my part. So ultimately what we're saying is that is that you have this great virtual workstation experience. You have all your applications running on there, you can be efficient, but then there's these really specific and really interesting use cases that aren't accessing the cloud. And I've got a couple of examples, so first off there's a feature inside Unreal 4 engine, called Unreal Swarm. And this feature helps actually reduce the time it takes, in this case and to bake light maps into auto scale, to bake light maps into a game. And this is done by auto scaling, the compiling in AWS cloud. So for example, after making the amends to a light map, we're ready to essentially recompile, but instead of doing this on the local workstation, using the traditional CPU and memory resource, which you would expect to see in a workstation, and actually in this case, it takes around about 50 minutes to do. When you actually use Unreal Swarm, you can, the coordinator as part of this functionality, bursts the requirement or the actual compiling into the cloud. And actually in this case, it's using, like, 10 C5a instances. So these are all CPU high-performance computing instances. And because you have this ability to auto-scale, you actually essentially bring that time, that original 50 minutes, down to 4 minutes. And this type of kind of functionality or this type of task that you would typically see with a 3d artist or with a programmer, basically happens multiple times a day. So when you start factoring in a saving of 45 minutes multiple times a day, it starts really bringing down, the amount of time saved, and obviously the amount of cost saved as well for that artist's time. So it's really really exciting and, certainly something to talk about. >> That's totally cool. I got to ask you since you're here, because it brings up the question that pops into my head, which is okay. What's the state of the art development trends that you're seeing because, on the cloud side, on non gaming world, so shift left to security. You start to see more agile kind of methods around what used to be different modules, right? So you mentioned compiling, acceleration, what's going on in the actual workflows for the developers? What are some of the cool things that you could share that people might not know about that are important? >> Well certainly it's really about finding, those bursty computational expensive and time consuming processes, and actually moving them to the cloud. So really, from a compiling standpoint, they are usually CPU bound. So essentially the GPU does all the work when it comes to the view pole, all that high rendering frames per second, that's what it's really designed for. And it does a very good job with that. But actually the compiling aspect, the compute aspect is all done on the CPU side. And, the work that we've been doing with AWS and the game tech team is actually finding certain ways of actually helping to reduce the compiling nature because ultimately that is always restricted by the amount of calls that you actually have on a local device. So again, another example is there's a company out there called Incredibuild, and they specialize in accelerating the development of that programming code. And obviously in this case, it's the game code. And if an artist, entered a clean source code built on unreal engine full, it would take approximately around about 60 minutes to do on a local machine. However, using the Incredibuild solution to accelerate that type of workload, you can complete it in just 6 minutes. Because again, it's auto scaled out that compiling to several in this case 16 C5a large instances, which essentially reduces all that time for the artist freeing them up to do more stuff. >> And the more creativity is just the classic use case of the clouds, beautiful thing. It's just reminds me of how good this is, because, when you think about what you guys are doing, pushing the envelope for cloud with the creators. gaming is such a state-of-the-art pressure point to make high performance come better. It really is putting a lot of pressure on AMD and everyone else's to get faster and stronger because, it truly is pushing state-of-the-art in general. It's always been that way. If you look at the gaming world. This is a whole 'nother level. I mean, you starting to see that. What's your view on that? If you look at the gaming as a tail sign for the trends and the tech side, better, faster, cheaper processors and speeds and feeds, and how codes work in between processes GPU's and CPU's, all this is cool. All kind of new, if you will. New patterns, new usage, what's your view on that? >> Well certainly, cloud gaming is a really exciting topic and, we believe that cloud gaming with the introduction of various key elements are reading revolutionalize the way that some people are actually using their complaint gamings and interacting with games. And what I mean by this is like, today we can do cloud gaming, it's a fantastic experience. You're usually hardwired, using a broadband connection to actually play those games. And you tend to try and be close to an actual data sensors, to try to reduce that latency. However this is only going to get better with the introduction of 5G coverage and also just, as important edge computing. And because of these two elements, what we're going to be seeing is very high speeds wirelessly, and more importantly, low latency. And this is very important for, that very dynamic cinematic gaming experiences. But not only this, what it can actually do is bring, 4k, 8K gaming to people wirelessly. It can also bring VR and AR experiences wirelessly, and also it can access, these new emerging technologies that are making higher fidelity gaming experiences like hardware retraces. All this can be done with these new technologies. And it's incredibly incredibly exciting. But more importantly, what's really great about this is, from a game publisher perspective, because it's actually helping them simplify their business processes, particularly from a game development standpoint. And actually what I mean by this is, if we take a typical example of what a game developer has to do for a mobile game, there's certain considerations that they need to think about when they actually comes to developing and validate. First off they'll have to understand what type of OS to account for. And actually what type of version of that OS to account for. What type of IPA they're going to be building on. And also finally, what type of resources, are actually on that end point device. So there's a lot of considerations here, and a lot of testing. So ultimately a lot of work to get that game out, to those gamers who might be on a couple of these different mobile platforms. However, when it comes to game streaming, it really does kind of change all this because ultimately what the game developer is actually doing is that they're developing and they're validating on one source. And that is going to be the server that is essentially pairing that game streaming service. Because how game streaming works is that we essentially trans code the actual game via H.264 to a software client on any end point device. So this could be those mobile devices I just mentioned. It can also be TVs, it could be consoles, it can be even low powered laptops. And what's very exciting is that, from an end user perspective, they're getting the ultimate in gaming experiences and usually these types of solutions are traditionally subscription-based. So you're actually reducing the requirement of this kind of high-end thousands of dollars gaming solution or simply a high-end next gen console. All of this is actually been given to you and delivered as part of a game streaming service. So it's very very exciting and, certainly we can see the adoption on both the game development side, as well as the gamer's side. That's a great way to put an end to this awesome segment. I think that business model innovation around making it easier, and making it better to develop environment, that's just how they work. So that's good, check. But really the business model here, the gaming as a service, you're making it possible for the developer and the artist to see an outcome faster. That's the cloud way. >> Thank you >> And they doubled down on success and they could do that. So again, this is all new and exciting and certainly the edge and having data being processed at the edge as well. Again, all this is coming in to create more good choice. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing that insight with us from the AMD perspective. And again, more power, more speed, we always say, no one's going to complain, they get more compute, that's what I always. >> Absolutely absolutely. >> Thanks for coming I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> theCUBE coverage here at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Hello and welcome to a special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE on theCUBE. We're here in Sundance 2018 at the Intel Tech Lounge for a panel discussion with experts on the topic of The New Creative. We believe a new creative renaissance is coming in application development and also artistry. The role of craft and the role of technology and software coming together at the intersection. You're seeing results in the gaming industry. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality. A new wave is coming and it's really inspiring, but also there's a few thought leaders at the front end of this big wave setting the trends and they're here with us in this special panel for The New Creative. Here with us is Brooks Browne, Global Director of VR at Starbreeze Studios, a lot to share there, welcome to the panel. Lisa Watt, VR Marketing Strategist at Intel, Intel powering a lot of these VR games here. And Winslow Porter, co-founder and director of The New Reality Company. Many submissions at Sundance. Not this year, but a ton of experience talk about the role of Sundance and artistry. And then we have Gary Radburn who's a director of commercial VR and AR from media within Dell, Dell Technologies. Guys, welcome to this panel. Lisa, I want to start off with you at Intel. Obviously the Tech Lounge here, phenomenal location on Main Street in Sundance. Really drawing a massive crowd. Yesterday it was packed. This is a new generation here and you're seeing a younger demographic. You're seeing savvier consumers. They love tech, but interesting Sundance is turning into kind of an artistry tech show and the game is changing, your thoughts on this new creative. >> Yeah, it's been amazing to watch. I've been here for, this is my third year coming back with VR experiences. And it's really just been incredible to see. Sundance has been on the leading edge of exploring new technologies for a long time and I think this is, I feel like you know this feels like the break out year really. I mean, it's been successful the last few years, but something about this year feels a little bit different. And I think maybe it's the people are getting more familiar with the technology. I think the artists are getting more comfortable with how to push the boundaries. And then we certainly are getting a lot out of seeing what they're doing and how we can improve our products in the future. >> We were talking yesterday, Lisa, about the dynamic at Sundance. And you were mentioning that you see a few trends popping out. What is the most important story this year for the folks who couldn't make it, who might be watching this video that you see at Sundance? Obviously it's a great day today, it's snowing, it's a white day, it's beautiful powder, greatest snow on Earth. But there's some trends that are emerging. We had a march this morning, the Women's March. You're seeing interesting signals. What's your view? >> I think there's a lot less desire to put up with subpar experiences. I mean I think everyone is really starting to push the boundaries, I mean, we saw a lot of 360 video which we love for a linear narrative. But they're really breaking out and really exploring what does it mean to have autonomy especially in the virtual reality experiences, a lot more social is coming to the forefront. And then a lot more exploration of haptics and the new ways of extending into more 4D effects, etc. So I think it's very very exciting. We're really excited to see all the new innovations. >> Winslow, I want to ask you, if you can comment, you've been an active participant in the community with submissions here at Sundance. This year you're kind of chilling out, hanging out. You've been on the front lines, what is your take on the vibe? What's the sentiment out there? Because you're seeing the wave coming, we're feeling it. It feels early. I don't know how early it is, and the impact to people doing great creative work. What's that take? >> Well yeah, it's kind of like VR years are like dog years, you know. Like a lot can happen in a month in the VR space. So I had a piece here in 2014 called Clouds. It was an interactive documentary about Creative Code, but that was back when there was only two other VR pieces. It's interesting to see how the landscape has changed. Because CCP Games had a piece there. An early version of E Valkyrie. And unfortunately in the last three months, they had to close their VR wing. So, and then Chris Milk also had a Lincoln piece with Beck. Which was a multi camera 360, actually it was a flash video that they recorded to the DK1. And so that was, seeing that everyone was, saw the potential. The technology was still pretty rudimentary or crude even, we should say. Before any tracking cameras. But every year people learned from previous Sundances and other festivals. And we're seeing that Sundance kind of raises the bar every year. It's nice that it's in January because then there's all these other festivals that sort of follow through with either similar content, newer versions of content that's here, or people have just sort of learned from what is here. >> So I got to ask you. You know, obviously Sundance is known for pushing the boundaries. You see a lot of creative range. You see a lot of different stuff. And also you mentioned the VR. We've seen some failures, you've seen some successes, but that's growth. This market has to have some failures. Failures create opportunities to folks who are reiterating in that. What are some of the things that you can point to that are a positive? Things that have happened whether they're failures and/or successes, that folks can learn from? >> Well, I think that this year there's a lot more social VR. We're connecting people. Even though they're in the same space, they're able to be in this new virtual world together. There's something amazing about being able to interact with people in real life. But as soon as you have sort of a hyper reality where people are able to be experiencing a Sufi ritual together. Things that you wouldn't normally... That they're not possible in the real world. And also, I think that there's issues with lines too. Obviously every year, but the more that we can have larger experiences with multiple people, the more people we can get through. And then more impact we can make on the audience. It's really... We were in claim jumper last year. And we could only get one person in every 10 minutes. And that makes things pretty tricky. >> And what are you doing at Sundance this year? You've obviously got some stuff going on with some of the work you've done. What's your focus? >> So yeah we have a company called New Reality Company where we produce Giant and Tree. It's part of a trilogy where Breathe is going to be the third part. We're going to be completing that by the end of this year. And right now, I would say the best thing about Sundance is the projects, but also the people. Being able to come here, check in, meet new people, see partners that we've been working with in the past. Also new collaborations, everywhere you turn, there's amazing possibilities abound. >> I want to talk about empathy and social. I mentioned social's interesting in these trends. I want to go to Brooks Brown, who's got some really interesting work with Starbreeze and the Hero project. You know, being a pioneer, you've got to take a few arrows in your back, you've got to blow peoples' minds. You're doing some pretty amazing work. You're in the front lines as well. What's the experience that you're seeing? Talk about your project and its impact. >> Well for us, we set out with our partner's ink stories, Navid Khonsari, a wonderful creative, and his entire team to try to create that intensely personal experience kind of moving the opposite direction of these very much social things. The goal, ultimately being to try to put a person inside of an event rather than a game style situation where you have objective A, B, or C. Or a film that's a very, very hyper linear narrative. What is that sort of middle ground that VR itself has as unique medium? So we built out our entire piece. Deep 4D effects, everything is actually physically built out so you have that tactility as you walk around. Things react to you. We have smell, temperature, air movement, the audio provided by our partners at DTS is exceptional. And the goal is ultimately to see if we put you in a situation... I'm doing my best not to talk about what that situation is. It's pretty important to that. But to watch people react. And the core concept is would you be a hero? All over the world, every day people are going through horrific stuff. We're fortunate because we're the kind of people who, in order to experience, say a tragedy in Syria, we're fortunate that we have to go to Park City, Utah and go in virtual reality to experience something that is tragic, real, and deeply emotional. And so our goal is to put people through that and come out of it changed. Traumatized actually. So that way you have a little bit more empathy into the real world into the actual experiences they went through. >> And what's the goal? This is interesting because most of the some stuff you see, the sizzle out there is look at the beautiful vistas and the beaches and the peaks and you can almost be there. Now you're taking a different approach of putting people in situations that probe some emotional responses. >> Yeah. It's a big deal to us. The way Navid like to put it, and I'm going to steal this from him, is you see a great deal of people prototyping on hardware and all of these things, and it's great cause we need that. We need to be able to stand on the shoulders of those giants to be able to do these things. But you see very few people really prototyping what is the concept of story as per VR? We've been doing, at Starbreeze, we've been doing location based for some time now and I've been getting thousands upon thousands of pitches. And whenever you get a pitch, you can pretty much identify, oh you come from a film background, you come from a games background. There's very few people who come down that middle line and go, well this is what VR is supposed to be. This is that interesting thing that makes it very deeply unique. >> What's the confluence and what's the trend in your mind as this changes? Cause you mentioned that gamers have affinity towards VR. We were talking about that before we came on the panel. You know, pump someone in mainstream USA or around the world who does email, does work, may not be there, you're seeing this confluence. How is that culture shifting? How do you see that? Cause you're bringing a whole nother dimension. >> We're trying to go back to a little bit, something about this Sundance being a little bit different. I think in general in VR, you're seeing this sort of shift from a few years ago it was all potentiality. And I think a lot of us, the projects were great, but a lot of us who work in VR were like oh I see what they're trying to do. And people like my dad would be like I don't. I don't see what they're trying to do. But that is shifting. And you're seeing a larger shift into that actuality where we're not quite there yet where we can talk about the experiences every day Americans are going to have. What is the real ready player one that we're actually going to have existing. We're not there yet, but we're much closer every time. And we're starting to see a lot of these things that are pushing towards that. Final question before I go to some of the speeds and feeds questions I want to get with Intel and Dell on is what is the biggest impact that you're seeing with your project and VR in general that will have the most important consequences for societal impact? >> Well, we were fortunate yesterday we had a number of people come through Hero. And a number of them simply actually couldn't handle it. Had to come out. We had to pull people out. The moment we took the headset off, they were, tears were streaming down their face. There's a level of emotional impact VR is extremely able to cut through. It's not that you're playing a character. It's not that you're in a separate world. You are you inside of that space. And that is a dangerous but very promising ability of VR. >> Winslow, could you take a stab at that, I'd like to get your reaction to that because people are trying to figure out the societal impact in a positive way and potentially negative. >> Yeah I mean, so with that, whenever you traumatize somebody else or have the ability to possibly re-traumatize somebody... In Giant, we made sure that we gave them a trigger warning because yeah these things can be intensely intimate or personal for somebody who already has that sort of baggage with them or could be living in a similar experience. In Giant, we witnessed the last moments of a family. As they're convincing their daughter that the approaching bomb blast is a giant that actually wants to play with her. And so we put haptics in the chair so the audience was also surprised. But we let them know that it was going to be taking place in a conflict zone. So if that was something that they didn't want to participate in, that they could opt out. But again, like we didn't know... We had to go and buy tissues like right off the bat because people were crying in the headset. And that's kind of a... It's an interesting problem to have for the sake of what are sort of the rules around that? But also it makes it more difficult to get people through the experience in a timely fashion as well. But yeah, but we're seeing that as things become more real then there's also a chance to possibly impact people. It's the... >> So it's social for you? You see it as a social impact? >> Well, I mean if everyone's experiencing the same thing that can be social, but again if it's a one on one experience, it's sort of like up to the filmmaker to make sure that they have the scruples that they are playing by the rules. Cause there's right now most every piece of content is being released through Oculus, Steam, or Viveport. But there will be... It's heavily regulated right now, but as soon as there's other means of distributing the content, it could take a different sort of face. >> Certainly some exciting things to grab on, great stuff. I want to get to the commercial angle. Then we're going to talk more about the craft and the role of artistry in the creating side of it. Gary, you're the commercial VR expert at Dell. You're commercializing this. You're making the faster machines. We want faster everything. I mean everyone... Anyone who's in VR knows that all the graphics cards. They know the speeds and feeds. They're totally hardware nerds. What's going on? Where's the action? >> Okay, that's such a large question. I mean we've had some great stuff here that I also want to comment on as well. But inside the commercial side, then yeah everybody wants bigger, stronger, better, faster. And to Winslow's comment about the dog years, that really puts the pressure on us to continue that innovation and working with partners like Intel to get those faster processors in there. Get faster graphics cards in there so that we can get people more emotionally bought in. We can do better textures, we can get more immersion inside the content itself. We're working a lot around VR in terms of opening peoples' eyes for societal impact. So VR for good for instance. Where we're taking people to far flung corners of the Earth. We work with Nat Geo explorer Mike Libecki to show the plight of polar bears in Greenland and how they're gradually becoming extinct for an edutainment and a learning tool. The boundaries are really being pushed in entertainment and film. That's always been the case. Consumer has always really pushed that technology. Commercial's always been a bit of a lagger. They want stability in what's going on. But the creation that's going on here is absolutely fantastic. It's taken what is essentially a prosumer headset and then taking it into that commercial world and lit it up. 360 video, its very inception, people are using it for training inside of their businesses and so that's now going out into businesses now. We're starting to see advances in 360 video with more compute power needed. Where, to the point about immersion and getting people emotionally bought in. Then you can start doing volumetric, getting them in there. And then we're also working with people like Dr. Skip Rizzo who was on our panel yesterday where we're starting to go into, okay, we can treat PTSD. Help people with autism, through the medium of VR. So again, that buys into... >> These are disruptive use cases that are legit? >> Yeah. >> These are big time, market moving, helping people... >> Absolutely. And that where it becomes really, really powerful. Yes, we want our companies to embrace it. Companies are embracing it for training. But when you start seeing the healthcare implications and people crying inside of headsets. That's effecting you deeply, emotionally. If you can make that for good, and change somebody's trigger points inside of PTSD, and the autism side of helping somebody in interview techniques to be able to be more self sufficient, it's absolutely awesome. >> This is the new creative. So what's your take on the new creative? What's your definition? Cause you're talking about a big range of use cases beyond just film making and digital artistry. >> Yeah, absolutely so the new creative is like with all the great work that's here, people are looking at film and entertainment. Now the world really is the oyster for all the creatives out there. People are clamoring out for modelers, artists, story tellers, story experiencers to be able to use that inside their commercial environments to make their businesses more effective. But they're not going to have a 360 video production company inside of their commercial organization. And it's then leveraging all of the creative here and all of the great stuff here. Which is really going to help the whole world a lot. >> Lisa, I want to get your thoughts on this cause you guys at Intel here at the Tech Lounge have a variety of demos, but there's a range of pro and entry level tools that can get someone up and running quickly to pro. And so there's a creative range not only just for digital artistry, but also business we're hearing. So what's the... Cause AI's involved in a lot of this too though. It's not just AI, it's a lot of these things. What's the Intel take on this. >> Well I think it's really an interesting time for us at Intel because one of the things that we have that I think probably nobody else has. We have this amazing slate of products that really cover the end to end process. Both from the creation side of the house all the way to the consumption side. And we talk a lot about our processors. We worked on an amazing project, a couple of huge scenes inside of the Sansar environment. Which is a great tool for really democratizing the creation of spaces. It's a cloud hosted service but it utilizes this amazing client-server architecture. We created four huge spaces in a matter of eight weeks to launch at CES. And some of the technologies that Gary was referring to just in pure processing power like two generations old processors were taking three hours to render just a small portion of a model where our newest generation Core i9s with our opting technology took that time to 15 minutes. So when we think about what we can do now, and those technologies are going to be available in even portable laptop form factors. We've got the piece where we were working here SPHERES. They were able to actually make some corrections and some tweaks basically immediately without having to send them off to some render farm. They were able to do those things. And I know Winslow has talked about that as well. What does it mean to you to be able to react real time. And be able to do your creative craft where you are and then be able to share that so readily. And then you know... I just think that's kind of an amazing equalizer. It's really democratizing the creation process. >> Okay the next question that begs for everyone to address is where are we in this progression? Early? What work needs to get done? Where are we holding back? Is it speeds and feeds? Is it the software? Is it the routines, libraries, art? Where's the bottleneck? Why isn't it going faster? Or is it going faster? >> I would, and I'm sure the team would agree here, I would say that one of the key things is the creator tools themselves, right. They are still somewhat cumbersome. We were talking to another filmmaker. He was like I can't even, I have to play the whole piece from the beginning, I can't just go in and edit, you know change control, being able to collaborate on these pieces with other people. I mean, if you can collaborate in a real world space, you should be able to also collaborate in VR and have change control and all those sorts of things that are necessary to the iteration of a project. So we're trying to work with our software partners. They're all doing a really great job of trying to iterate that, but it's going to take some time. I mean I think that's probably the bigger thing that's holding everything back. We're going to be right there with the processing power and the other technologies that we bring to the table. OEM partners are going to be right there with the best devices. I really think it's something we've all got to push for as far as those tools getting better. >> Brooks, comment on anything? You're in the... >> So for me, the thing that's holding back VR in general is actually the art form itself. One of the great challenges, if you look back, at say the history of film... We're at Sundance, so it's probably fairly apropo. Very early on in the early movies, aside from penny arcade machines that you'd actually stare at, they were 10 minute almost like plays that people would go to almost a playhouse and they'd watch this thing. There were not cuts, there were no angles. It was a single wide shot. Great Train Robbery came around and there was this crazy thing they did called an edit. Where they spliced film together. And if you go back and you read, and they did these dolly shots. People will have no idea what they're watching. There's no way people will be able to follow that. Like people were not happy with it at the time. Now it's stuff that children do on their iMacs at home. They do iMacs all the time, they do it on their iPhones, on their Android devices. These are normal languages of film that we have. VR doesn't have that yet. And there's not a great deal of effort being made in that direction. There's people here doing that. So I'm kind of speaking in the middle of the group, but outside of these people, there's only a handful who are really doing that and it's a significant challenge. When people who are the mainstream consumer put on a VR headset, it needs to be more than just a magic trick where they go oh that's cool. And that tends to be the vast majority of experiences. So what is the thing that is going to make someone go oh I get why we have VR as a medium. And we're not there yet. We're in the direction, but that's >> So you mentioned earlier the point where you can tell if someone's from film or gaming or whatever when you talk to them about VR. Who is the future VR developer? Is it a filmmaker? Is it a gamer? Is it a digital artist? What is this evolving? >> It's a kid in his basement who no one knows and is screwing around with it and is going to do something that everyone thinks is stupid. Like, it's going to be that. Basically every major leap in gaming is kind of the same thing. It's when we understand how ludonarrative dissonance works inside of telling how people move around a space. It's about how we do Dutch angle suddenly in film. And these things get invented. It's going to be some kid who's just screwing around who doesn't have the baggage of the language of film. A lot of the people I know in VR have been fortunate to work in film, in games and interactive or web dev. So you come from a lot of places but someone's going to come along who has none of that baggage. And they're going to be... >> Well you guys are pioneers and you're doing it. So for the first person out there that's in their basement, that inspirational soundbite or comment. How can you guys talk to that person or that group? Because this is the democratization, this is what's happening. It's not the gatekeepers. It's real creatives out there that could come from anywhere. YouTube generation, Twitch generation, gaming. What would you say to that person to motivate them and to give them that passion? >> Well it's only going to get easier, faster, cheaper, all these things are happening. But again, yeah I totally agree with what Brooks said. It's really about the culture and about educating the audience and getting them up to speed. There are some VR experiences that as soon as they put on the headset, like somebody who's never done it before, immediately will take it off cause they'll get nauseated. And then there's people, like kids who are like jet fighters. They've seen everything. You could throw like a 30 frames per second experience at them and that doesn't even phase them. They can be, all of a sudden their worlds are changing and they're like bring it because they're ready for that. So I think it's sort of about raising the bar for what the audience is comfortable with, familiar with, educating the community. There's a lot of tools right now, you know with Unreal and Unity that allow people who have very little... They don't need to know C# or C++, they can get started in a lot of like visual. What you see is what you get. Being able to drag things into a virtual room. And the windows headsets that are out. They refer to them as mixed reality, but just even having the ability to flip up the screen and transition from the virtual world to the real world in milliseconds, it allows you to be able to create things more at the speed of thought instead of coming up with an idea, coding it, and making sure it works, and then eventually putting on the headset. The sooner that we can actually be ideating inside this virtual environment is when things will get really interesting. >> So the next question is to take to the next level is what's the playbook? How does someone get involved? How does someone ingratiate into a community? If I'm an artist, I want to get, and I'm proficient with technology, or maybe not, how do they get involved? Is it community driven? Is it social? You guys mentioned seeing social's a big trend here. How do people get involved? What's the track? >> Well yeah you don't just need to go to a grad school or... There's a lot of programs out there that are popping up. Almost every single major state school has like an interactive art program now. And that wasn't the case like two or three years ago. So we're seeing that that's a big shift in the culture. But again, VR is still... It's expensive and it's you know, like VR, I refer to it's in the stage of it's almost like in the neo geo phase, maybe a little before that. But it's the really expensive thing that your friend's neighbor has. Or his older brother or something. You get to play it a little bit, you're like that's great but there's no way in hell I'm going to... You know, I can't afford that or like that just doesn't really work with my lifestyle right now so it needs to incorporate itself into our everyday, our habits. And it needs to be something that... If we're all doing it then it makes sense for us to do it together not just somebody in their basement doing it by themselves. >> Yeah feel free to comment, this is a good topic. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. So what we're doing is sort of about democratization and accessibility. So for people to get into the then they're going to need a rig, they're going to need a headset and previously it's actually been quite expensive to actually take that first plunge into it. So now by democratizing and bringing price points down, it makes it more accessible. That helps content creators because there's now more of an audience that can now consume that content. And the people that can then play with the medium and consume it now have a better reason to do it. So we're working on that. We're also working on the education pieces like Key. It's actually going out there to schools and actually letting them experience VR and play with VR. Because it is a whole new different medium. We've seen film directors and filmmakers go into the VR space and things that worked in 2D film like fast pans and whatever else so the points have already been made don't really translate into VR without somebody losing their lunch. So it is going to be somebody who's coming up who hasn't got the baggage of previous skill sets inside of 2D doing it inside of VR. So we're going to see that. And in terms of the technology, everybody's wanting things to progress. That shows the level of excitement out there. And everybody wants to get into it. Everybody wants to see it go further. And I'm reminded of the mobile phone. Mobile phone, 30 years ago? Two suitcases for batteries, a large brick on the ear and a car antennae. Okay, so where we are now, if you had a time machine and you went back in time to talk to the inventor of the mobile phone, well, I'd be a lot richer because I know sports results and all, but that aside, but you go back and talk to them and you said do you know in 30 years time, everybody is going to be carrying that device? Everybody's going to be dependent on that device? They're going to get social anxiety and separation anxiety if they lose it. And they will probably laugh in your face. >> Alright so since you brought up the phone analogy, since I love that example, are we in the Blackberry moment of VR and no one yet has built the iPhone? Because the iPhone was the seminal moment for smartphones. And you see what happened there. Is VR needing that kind of break? Or is it there? >> I think we're on the cusp. Where we are at the moment with technology, we've had the headsets, which I say have been more in the consumer space, they've been designed to hit a certain price point. We had CES the other week where we've had advancements now in the resolutions of headset that are now coming out. One of the issues was well I can't see texts, I can't read texts. So from a working environment, if you're actually using tools that you would normally use on a 2D screen, you can now translate that and read that text. However, in terms of the tools that people use, why are we trying to put 2D screens into a VR headset? We've got a whole new way of interacting with data. We've got a whole new way of doing things that are going to be more intuitive than the mouse and keyboard interaction that we're used to. Why just translate that. Let's push that envelope and those are the developments that we're pushing our partners and our ISVs to really embrace. >> So it's an evoution. >> It's absolutely an evolution. >> You guys have any thoughts on that comment. That we have that inflection point, are we hitting that, will we see it soon, is it here? >> Well I think it's a very interesting symbiotic relationship between multiple factors. So you know, we hear the cost factor, we hear the technology factor, then we have the content factor. You know I saw an interesting evolution at CES we had created this virtual booth experience so that you could still come to the CES Intel booth without actually having to be there. And I met a guy in there and I was like hey where are you? He goes I've been in here like all week. (laughter) And I was like oh yeah, where do you live? He goes oh I'm in my basement in Nebraska. But he had just, this was Friday when I met him. He'd been in there all week, but in 2D mode. And he had gone out the night before and bought a headset just so he could come back and go in VR mode. And I think, yes, all these factors have to kind of line up, but I do think that content, those experiences that are going to keep people coming back for more. Like these guys literally kept coming back to our booth. Right, to see... >> Content gain. >> To see who was there. And to them at that point, it wasn't really a barrier of cost. It was like there is something that I want to consume therefore I am going to go get what I need to consume it. And I use the analogy of HDTV, right. When we kind of moved over that hump where there was enough content people didn't really care how much that television cost. >> Sports was great. Sports really highlighted HD. >> Yeah. >> But this is a good point. This is a good question to ask. Brooks, I'd love to get your thoughts. Content drives experiences, amazing experiences, but we're building the scaffolding of everything at the same time. So where are we, what's your opinion? >> So here on the Starbreeze side, we're fortunate because we have our own headset. We have the StarVR headset we've been building with Acer. 5K all of that stuff and we're upgrading it over the next year. Our focus has been, we skipped the consumer market very much. We went straight to location based and enterprise. And the reason we did that is because there's a promise of VR at a basic, I don't want to say technology stand point, but from an experience perspective, when it comes to that resolution, when it comes to that field of view, when it comes to these things people expect. Average consumers who go to a movie and they see these giant screens. They want that translated. They don't have the understanding like we do of well, LED panels are actually a pain in the ass to build and it takes a little bit and they flip at their own speeds. Time to photon is not a thing my dad will ever see in his life. But there's a reality that people have a need for that. And it is extremely expensive. It's again the reason we went straight to LBE. But for us it's about marrying the two and consistently trying to match what's happening. So when we're talking about, as I mentioned earlier the technology and how we're standing on the shoulders of giants very very quickly, someone who's doing technology is going to see what we're doing content wise and go well I can do that better technology wise. And then we're just going to keep leap frogging. And it's very similar to the phone in the same way that we're not at the final stage of the phone. Like we're at our stage of the phone and no doubt in 30 years people will laugh at us for carrying anything. The same way we laugh about the briefcases and the giant batteries in the cars we had to pull with us. So it's one of those things that's continually transitional. And VR's in an odd, amazing place. >> Well you know, it was a lot of waves that we've all seen. You mentioned the mobile phone, that's a good one to point to. It feels like the PC revolution to me because the same culture of entrepreneurs and pioneers come from a bunch of different backgrounds. So I'd like to get Brooks perspective and Winslow's perspective on this because I think there's an entrepreneurial culture out there right now that's just emerging very fast. It's not like your classic entrepreneur software developer. So in this movement, in this wave, the entrepreneur is the filmmaker, it could be the kid in the basement, could be the gamer. Those entrepreneurs are trying to find a path. >> Yeah, it's a weird mix. VR is at this odd point where not only is it the people who are wanting to be cutting edge in terms of content or technology, but also that first mover strategy from the business side of things. And so everyone wants to be those guys who are charging ahead because in reality, if you look at the financials around all of this, VR is one of those things that you don't want to finance. It's not nearly as safe as say Marvel Avengers or the next Call of Duty. >> You've got to be, you've got to hustle. >> Yeah you've got to hustle. You've got to make... >> What's your advice? >> Start doing it. That's really it. It's the same advice I used to give to game makers when people would be like well I want to learn how to make games. It's like go to YouTube, download a thing and go do it. There's literally no reason why you can't. >> Are there meetups or like the Homebrew Computer Club that spawned the Mac. >> There are, there are infinite groups of VR people who are more than happy to give you all the terrible and wonderful opinions that come with that. There's no shortage of people. There's no shortage and it's an amazingly helpful group. Because everyone wants someone else to figure out something so they can steal that and then figure out something else. >> Winslow, your advice to entrepreneurs out there that are young and/or 14 to 50, what should they do? Jump right in obviously is a good one. >> Well yeah, experiment, break things, that's really the only way to learn. I would say watch as much VR as you can because sometimes bad VR is the best VR. Because you can learn don't do that. And if you learn, if you put all that together, you can really... It's like this lexicon that you can really follow. Also, I think we... As people in tech, we kind of get obsessed with things like resolution, frame rate, and these are very important, but it's also good to remember, or at least for me, I watch some of the best experiences from storytelling when I was a kid, eight years old on a 12 inch screen that was 640 by 480. You know, like scan lines on the VHS. But for me the story still resonated and it's important to think of story first, but obviously it's a dance between the story and the technology. They kind of have to both organically work together. And if they don't, one thing in the story that doesn't work because the tech isn't supporting it, can throw you out of the experience. >> Other concern entrepreneurs might have is financing. How do I get someone to help me build it? And then doing relationships. Finding relationships that could... One plus one equals more than two, right. So how do you? >> You have to get really creative when it comes to funding right now. Unless you're doing location based, which also requires a certain amount of investment to get it up to a bar where you want to be showing it to people with all the haptic effects when it's heat, smell, vibration, stuff like that. You know, it's not cheap to develop. But as far as like working with film foundations, we're fortunate enough to be sponsored by Fledgling Fund and Chicken and Egg. But we also were able to get partnerships with people like Intel and NVidia. And also work with people who come from a traditional film background. There's not one way to successfully fund a project. There's a million. And that's why it's interesting that the technology's innovating, but also the market place is as well. >> One of the things I want to ask is as any new industry gets building, is cultures form early. DNA forms in the entrepreneurs, in the pioneers. And one of the big hottest topics in the creative world is inclusion and diversity. So what's the makeup of the culture of this new generation? Because democratization means everyone can participate, everyone's involved. What's the state of the community vis a vis diversity, inclusion, and the role of the actors in the community. >> Well I think it's important to understand that VR has a profound ability to place you in somebody else's shoes. The trick though is to make sure that those feel like they're your shoes. But I think that we're learning a lot more about story telling techniques and we're able to empower people that their voices you know were previously not heard. The tricky thing is being able to yeah, educate all different groups of people how to use the technology, but once they're enabled and empowered to do it, it's amazing what you can experience inside the headset. >> So VR can be an enabler for education, outreach, a variety of things? >> Yes, I mean the term empathy, empathy machine gets thrown around a lot. You could do a drinking game around it. For panels when people are talking about it. But it's important to know there is a truth to that. And it's, yeah the perspective shift from looking at a screen, a 16 by 9 screen where you can look away, then dissolving the screen and becoming that person. Becoming the director, the actor, the camera person, the editor. When you're in the first person perspective, there's so much more... It feels more personal and that's a really interesting angle that we're going to continue to explore. >> So you could walk in someone's shoes, literally? >> Yes, you literally can. You just have to make sure that you got a... The tracking system's proper or else you'll look like there's... It can be come a horror movie pretty quickly if your leg is behind your head. >> Lisa, your thoughts on this, I know it's important to you. >> Yeah, I mean I think it's fascinating because I've been in tech for a really long time. And seen many, many trends. I mean the first job I had at Intel I was a PC tech and as you can imagine as a female, I think there was one other tech female in the department at the time and I would get funny looks when I would show up with my bag. They were like hi can I help you? I'm like I'm not here to deliver coffee, I'm here to fix your computer, you know. So I've seen a lot of trends and it's super exciting to me to see so much diversity cross culture, cross country, I mean we're having... We had guys come in from all over the world. From even war torn, they've escaped their country just several years ago and they're coming and they're bringing all that creativity to the market. We're seeing very, very strong female contingent from the filmmaker perspective so it's this wonderful, wonderful just primordial soup of people that I think are growing their own voice and their own power. They're breaking molds as far as how you actually get content produced. Distribution is kind of crazy right now. I mean, how do you get it distributed? There's like so many different ways. But all of those things are so important to the evolutionary and biological process of this. Yes, we need to let it go and sometimes we're frustrated. We're like where's the standards? Where's the one ring to rule them all? Where there's not going to be one. And it's good for us that there's not right now. It's frustrating from a business perspective sometimes. You're like, I can't peanut butter myself around all of these places, but I think it's just a very unique time where so many people are... The technology is accessible, that means that so many creators can now bring their fresh voice to this space and it's just going to be fascinating to continue to watch. >> That's awesome. Well two more questions and I'll give you some time to think about the last one which is your perspective on Sundance, what's happening this year, your personal view of what you think's happening, what might happen during this year. But the question I have for you now is to go down the line. We'll start with Brooks here, and talk about the coolest thing that you're involved in right now. >> It actually has to be Hero. We're debuting it here at Sundance. We've been working on it and not talking about it for about nine months. And it's been very difficult. Again it's sacrosanct to the experience that you don't know literally what you're getting in to. And the emotional response has been essentially our goal, trying to find out how far can we take that. You actually being in a space, moving around, having that interactivity, doing what you would do. But it being your story and how deeply we can absolutely effect a human being. And again, watching people come out, it's one of those things, I've been doing game development, I've worked on films, I've done all kinds of stuff. And you usually get a chance when someone experiences something you've made, you walk up to them and you go so what'd you think? And that's not at all what we can do with ours. >> How has it impacted you, that reaction? >> Well, I personally suffer significant PTSD and I've had some traumas in my life. And so it's been incredibly powerful to be able to share these things with people. Share this emotion in a deeply profound, yet amazingly personal way. Which I'm amazingly fortunate to be able to be a part of it. >> Alright thanks for sharing. Coolest thing that's going on with you right now here at Sundance. >> Just the fact that I'm here at all. I mean, it's incredible right? Personally was able to be an advisor on the SPHERES project that is premiering here with Eliza McNitt. She's someone who was an Intel Science Fair winner back in high school and kind of came back to us. So just to see the evolution of an artist really from the beginning to the point where they've been able to come here to Sundance. I'm also very passionate about the work that we're doing with Sansar. I kind of consider myself one of the chief storytellers at Intel around Virtual reality and this new move into social where people are like well what's this game. I'm like, it's not a game. It's you are the game, you are the interactivity. You become the person that makes the space interesting. We're just really setting the scene for you. And there's so many... You know there's a lot of different people kind of chasing this be togetherness. But what we've been able to produce there. And just to be able to explore some of my own personal ideas has just been such a gift. Then to be working with guys like these on the panels and see what they're doing and just be in touch is really just an exciting time. >> John: Awesome. >> Probably what, other than the people on the projects, or the projects that are being shown here, we're working on our new project, which we would have loved to premiere here, but we did... Basically when you get in, you have two months to create a piece, so you have a demo and you have to finish it, so we're taking a little bit more time. This one's going to be about a year development cycle. It's called Breathe where we take you from where Giant left off, where, in Giant, the ceiling collapses on a family. They're in front of you. In this experience, we use a breathing apparatus to basically bring yourself back to life. And then you realize you're trapped under rubble and you remove the... We actually want to have physical objects on top of you that are going to be tracked. So you're moving rubble from you and you realize that you're a six year old girl. You're the survivor from Giant. And you get to witness what it's like to be a future refugee sort of in different key moments of her life that use breath. Whether it's a flirtatious moment, blowing a dandelion, seeing your own breath in snow as a drone shows you a message that your parents pre-recorded on your 18th birthday. This is all in the future, obviously, but every time you walk around an object, you actually grow 10 to 15 years older in the experience. As you get older, the world becomes smaller. And then we witness what's like for her last breath. From being six years old to being 90 years old. But it's a profound personal experience. >> John: That sounds cool, cool. Gary, coolest thing that you're involved in right now at Sundance. >> Wow. I could say it's all cool that would be a bit trite. They say if you enjoy what you do, is it really a job? And I'm lucky enough to be in that position. Because working with all these guys here and like people around the place, they're doing such great things that every day I wake up and I'm astounded of where the industry's going. In terms of what we're doing here at Sundance, then we're really starting to push those envelopes as well. I've been lucky enough to be involved with Dunkirk and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Like last year, so some great pieces there. And moving out into this year, we've got some other developments which I can't mention at this point, but we're showing things like AR and VR mashup. So we haven't talked much about augmented reality here. It's an evolutionary, it's not a replacement. Both can be used and we've started to really start to blend those two technologies now. So you can still see the outside world. Just touching on the commercial side, and health care's very big for me. That's where I think the really cool stuff is happening. Entertainment is great and that's really pushing the envelope and allowing us to then take it for the good of human kind. >> It happens everywhere, it's not just entertainment. >> Yeah absolutely. You start looking at MRI scans inside of VR or AR. Talking a patient through it so they can actually see exactly what you're talking about. You're now no longer pointing at flat things on a screen. You're now actually taking them through it. If you're using AR, you can actually judge the responses of the patient as for how they're reacting to the news. And effectively, inside of the VR, and what's really cool for me is seeing people's reaction to that content and to the entertainment content. >> That's awesome. Okay final question. This is a little bit of self serving because I'd like you to help me do my job at SiliconANGLE. If you were a reporter and you were going to report the most important stories happening this year at Sundance or really kind of what's really happening versus what's kind of being billed to be happening here. What's the story? What is the story this year at Sundance 2018 in your personal perspective? We'll go down the line and share your observations. >> Well, mine here, I'm a Sundance newbie. This is my first year of being here. I'm absolutely astounded by the community spirit that's around. I go to a lot of technical trade shows and technical presentations. People coming here with a willingness to learn. Wanting to learn from other people. It's been touched on already. It's the pool of knowledge that's available inside of Sundance that everybody that comes here can actually tap into to create better content, to learn not what to do as well as learn what to do. And I just think that's brilliant because in that community spirit, that's really going to help enable this industry quickly. >> John: Winslow, you've got some experience, what's your thoughts? >> Obviously, this Intel house, just a little plug for you Lisa. (laughter) Tech Lounge. We got that? Okay good. I mean, yeah, the people that's here. Every year we come here and see where the high water mark is. All these people are... Some of these teams first started with two people and then they grew to six and then by the end of it, there's 100 people working around the clock, pulling all-nighters to be able to give the latest and greatest of what's available with these current tools. So it's amazing because the work itself doesn't really mean anything until people get to experience it. So that's nice that they make a big splash. The people here are very attentive to it. It's a very nice audience and this will continue the momentum for future festivals throughout the year, but also will excite people that have never done VR before. People who have never been to Sundance before. We're seeing that there's a lot of new people. And that will continue to influence many years to come. >> John: So you think VR is the top story here being told? >> As far as like just to generalize, I would say last year kind of the big VR year. This is kind of the big AR year. Next year's going to be the AI year. Then after that we're going to start putting them all together. >> John: Great, great feedback. >> I think it's just exciting for Intel just to be back here. I think Intel hasn't been here in quite some time. Dell coming in here probably one of the breakout years for us to come back and really talk to creators what we're doing from the Intel Studios all the way through to the stuff you can take home and do at home. And I think coming in, we're coming back here with a purpose really, not just to be here to be seen. We're really here with real things and want to have real conversations on how tech can enable what people are doing. Not just from a brand perspective, but from a real hands on point of view. >> John: Yeah, some great demos too, phenomenal tech. >> Really just, yeah everything from the AI stuff we have to the social to the great new pieces that have been submitted here like we mentioned with SPHERES. So I think, yeah, it doesn't feel gratuitous to me you know that Dell or Intel is here this year. We've really come with a purpose. >> You guys are moving the needle, it's really awesome. We need more horsepower. >> Brooks, your thoughts on Sundance this year. Observation, the vibe, what would you tell your friend back home when you get back? >> If, for me, I think it's almost the non-story. It's like the opposite of a story. It's just the deep integration of VR into the normal Sundance flow I think has been interesting. Some people have been here for a few years. And back in the day when it was one or two, it was a lot of oh, you do VR? What's that then? Whereas now, you see a lot more people who are crossing over. Going to see documentaries, then they come to see a VR piece and it's just a part of the normal flow. And the team at New Frontier has done exceptional work to kind of make sure that they have this ridiculous high level of broad content for all kinds of people. All kinds of experiences, all high end things. But it's not that VR's here. Oh good, we have a VR section. It's a lot more of an integrated set up. And it's been really encouraging to see. >> Well you guys have been great. It's been very inspirational. Great information. You guys are reimagining the future and building it at the same time so entrepreneurially and also with content and technology. So thanks so much for sharing on this panel The New Creative. This is SiliconANGLE's coverage of Sundance 2018 here at the Intel Tech Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. I'm John Furrier thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering NAB 2017, brought to you by HGST. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we are back at NAB 2017 with a hundred thousand of our favorite friends doing everything about broadcast media. It's media, it's entertainment, it's technology, it's the M.E.T. effect, which is all the rage here at the show, because you can't really separate the three, they're all tied together. Really excited to be joined by our next guest, who's in the weeds, keeping an eye on this, trying to keep up with all the crazy trends. He's Avi Swerdlow, he's a Manager, Research and Development at the Walt Disney Company. Avi, welcome. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so first off, we talked a little bit before we went live, your first time at the show, kind of general impressions of NAB? >> Yeah, it's big, a lot of walking, is my first impression. Aside from the tired feet, it's really exciting to see all the new tech out here. From talking to other people who have been in years past, it seems like things move really fast here. So what you were seeing last year is completely different of what you're seeing this year. But loving all the different sections, everything from hardware to some of the more data-driven stuff. Noticing that a lot more things are moving digital, that a lot of demos are now on laptops instead of physical. >> Right. >> Which is exciting to see. I've been impressed by some of the bigger company, like Microsoft's and IBM's machine learning efforts. And equally impressed by some of the hardware plays at DGI and GoPro, so really, really exciting stuff. >> Yeah, it's really interesting, kind of bifurcation of the market. On one hand, you've got all this crazy high end stuff with 4K and 6K and 8K and ultra HD and all these things and 360 and all these crazy cameras. At the other hand, you've got democratization of distribution with YouTube and Vimeo and all these tools being brought down in a price point, Samsung, 360 camera, where you can be a relatively small content creator and have amazing tools at your disposal. So the opportunities from a creative point of view have probably never been richer. >> Absolutely. I think a lot of what we're trying to focus on is moving in that digital direction for some of our content. Trying to implement some of those lower end or more cost efficient tools and those distribution points to get our content to people faster while at the same time trying to keep up on the higher 4K end. Something that's interesting I've chatted with my colleagues is that things move so fast that it's hard year to year to come here and see all the new things that are completely different from what you saw last year. >> Right, right. >> Now you have to start implementing those things. So I think it's a balance between all of that. I think, given that we're a big media company, some of those lower end tools are really interesting to us. In a sense that, take news for example. It's equally exciting to go live on Facebook video as it is sometimes to do it on a traditional broadcast. So I think learning how we integrate those and integrate those well are some of what we're trying to explore. >> Right. One of the topics we talked about before the cameras turned on was this virtual reality and augmented reality, VR and AR. It is pretty interesting because you talked specifically about data infusion on top of tech. And I remember the first time I ever saw a sports broadcast where, I think it was Fox maybe, that put the score bug on the upper left hand corner. You're like what is that, you're taking valuable real estate. Now we're so accustomed to this multi-layers of data on top of the broadcast. Take like a Bloomberg channel, where some of those things, where now they have multiple feeds that are constantly going. It's a very different way to consume data but that's what people really want these days. >> Absolutely. I think that last year was kind of this year of AR, VR. Where people thought there was going to be this massive revolution all of the sudden where everybody would be, would have headsets and VR would become ubiquitous. I think that will happen eventually, it's probably going to be a slower burn, mostly because people don't have devices yet. I think there's not enough content out there, not enough devices out there. Regardless, I think that if you distill down what AR and VR is at its core, it's the augmentation of information over something else. >> Right. >> So I think a lot of people are now starting to explore, what are the baby steps you take to implement some of that technology into your workflow. Assuming that people don't have devices yet, so I think, when I look at some of the virtual sets that we're seeing around this show and the implementation of information over, let's say, news or sports broadcasts, that becomes really interesting. If you use, we were talking about photogrammetry or volume capture, if you can use some of that and do interesting stuff for instance, if you're looking at a sports game and you're able to create in something like Unity or Unreal, an asset that represents the sports game, it becomes a much easier way to understand what's going on in the game then just a set of numbers. Yes, when you saw that score in the top left hand corner that was exciting. Now imagine seeing a live 3D version of the game same information unfolding, just in a different way. I think those are the baby steps towards this AR, VR implementation and eventually you might get to a point where everybody has a headset but baby steps for the average consumer. >> Right, right. In a lot of conversations about machine learning, you said you're excited about some of the machine learning, you've got the metadata and better metadata around the assets themselves, but now actually getting into the assets at the frame level to do more exploration so that people can, it's the age old adage, find, consume and share-- >> Absolutely. >> The stuff that they're most interested in. There's a lot of new opportunities because of the horsepower of these machines here that we're surrounded by, in terms of the massive capacity, and speed of the storage systems, to do things that you really couldn't do inside the assets themselves. >> Absolutely. I think our problem at somewhere like Disney is unique. It's different than at Google or at Facebook. We're not looking at this huge well of content like YouTube. We're looking at a smaller amount of content and what's really important to us is accurate metadata about our content more so than just having metadata. A lot of what we focus on is definitely metadata extraction but to the extent that we're going to use these machine learning tools we want to have really good training sets and get back really accurate data. So a lot of what we focus on is being able to have a QA layer on top of the machine learning efforts. Being able to use machine learning efforts that can be honed towards one show for instance. >> Right. >> So only extracting a certain set of characters. We really enjoy using these tools and enjoy finding ways that we can apply them to a unique problem which seems to be different than the problem that some of them are trying to address. >> Right. >> But regardless, they're working really well for us. >> So what are some of the use cases, or can you share any of how you're using machine learning to get and score that kind of metadata. >> Yeah. For instance, we're starting to use metadata in some of the ways other people are. Some of the stuff that I can talk about for instance is facial capture, location capture. Things that other people are doing but again, they're unique to one show. For instance, a Quantico on ABC might be something where we have a set of characters that we're looking for. We're starting to use machine learning to look at things like that. >> Interesting. Now Disney obviously, great company, been around forever, huge legacy. I'm just curious to the conversations in the hallway there's just this crazy wave of technology butting up against, we still have to tell great stories. Disney has a long history of telling great stories whether it's through the original animation studios or all the vast properties in which you guys have grown up. Is there still a creative ying and yang there-- >> Absolutely. >> Is there a thread and a rebalancing about technology versus let's not forget what should be-- >> A hundred percent. >> Job one. >> Absolutely. I think that's why I really enjoy working at Disney. It's always story first. My background is actually in creative development in the film industry so I always come at it from a story first point of view. I enjoy that the rest of the company does as well. But if you look at Disney's history, it's always been technology complimenting story. Think about the multi-plane camera in Snow White. The reason Snow White was able to be made was because Disney democratized animation. He figured out the technology that made animation possible at a feature film scale. Without that machine, that would not have been possible. I think in our core history you have these certain technologies that are put to use in the service of story. I think that's pretty much how we approach everything. We're looking for stuff that's going to augment our storytelling efforts. Not replace it, not degrade it in any way but only to enhance it. That's in our legacy. >> Right, right. That's interesting, I've never heard it explained that way but that is so much the trend that we continue to be on today. It's democratization of the data, democratization of the access to the data, democratization of the analytics of the data. And then operating at scale. Which requires, in today's scale, I'm not talking about a two hour movie scale, actually be able to set animation, but massive amounts of data that are flowing through the system. So how do you-- >> Absolutely. We want to use that data to empower our storytellers. To empower anybody at the company to tell better stories. But data management it's tough. I think a lot of what we had to do is first of all put in place the plumbing to make that data easily accessible. To make it easily searchable. To make it correct. To make it authoritative. To get people out of their spreadsheets that you had stored away somewhere. And unify that data so that it starts to tell a story. We've been very successful in those efforts. But it's a massive undertaking because you have companies that have not necessarily thought from a data first point of view and are now realizing that the actual value of this data. So part of what we're doing is extracting that metadata. Doing it in a way that's extremely accurate and authoritative. But also going as far upstream as possible to try to find are there other people that are already collecting this metadata and can we have them put it into a central database as opposed to everybody having their own little corner of data? >> Right, right. Is there an effort to reassess the value of the data? Where before just raw data in and of itself was a liability. Was expensive to store, expensive to keep and there was always trade off decisions about what you keep what you throw away. Now there really is the opportunity to keep it all and there's significant data outside, maybe beyond the box office gate of the feature film with all the various distribution channels and ancillary things. Obviously Disney is way ahead of the curve in terms of licensing and realizing value beyond just the core asset. But are there new ways now that those models are being worked in so that you can justify the additional expense of all this extra metadata and storage and infrastructure which, at the end of the day, you got to pay the bill-- >> Certainly. >> To the data center. >> Absolutely. I think to the extent that we can use our data to tell our stories to gain new insights it is extremely valuable. I think there are efforts around the company to, not necessarily store as much data as possible but to find what data is valuable and where it is. We're finding more and more data that is valuable. Because when you are able to unify it with other data it starts to tell a story. That's both data about our content, about our content performance, about our consumers, that what types of stories we should and shouldn't be telling. I think it's not just taking everything but it's figuring out what data is actually valuable and then trying to derive as much insight as possible from that. >> Right. Alright so, 2017, what are your top priorities for this year? Can't believe we're a third of the way through 2017- >> I know. >> It used to be like a stereo question, I guess it's not an end of the year question anymore. >> I would say one of our main goals is really to advance our automation efforts. I think also to the extent possible to advance our metadata tagging efforts as much as possible. I'd say that's top of mind at the moment. In addition to some other things but that's some of the stuff we're thinking about. >> Alright, great. Well Avi, thanks for-- >> Thank you for having me. >> For taking a few minutes and enjoy your first ever >> Thank you, yeah I will. >> NAB 2017. Alright Avi Swerdlow from Disney. I'm Jeff Frick from theCUBE, you're watching us like from NAB 2017 at the Las Vegas convention center. We'll be back after this short break. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)