019: Virtual Reality: NSFW Boom Mic

Well guys, welcome back to another rousing episode of The Creative Genius Podcast with your host, Jim Lewin Adam. And today, we're talking about, yeah, another thing that we kind of lightly touched on, which is virtual reality, but we haven't really dove into it yet. But tonight is a night where we actually learn a little bit more about it. But first we have some news and some follow up.

And it looks like we're finally back on our schedules here for regular recording days, which is awesome, which really doesn't affect any of our listeners because we release content anyway. So no need to worry about it. So I don't know if anybody here has actually had the chance to see or play Assassin's Creed Origins, but it's phenomenal. Adam, have you happened to see any sort of trailers or anything for it or Lew?

Have you seen anything about it? All I've heard is people saying like, oh yeah, that's a good game. And I really like the game. And other people are like, I don't like the game.

So me owning the Portman's Console just a little Nintendo Switch, the Family Man's Console I guess I should say, I haven't gazed at a trailer because I won't be able to play the game. Lew, I can't imagine that you've heard too much about it. But if Assassin's Creed don't know what it is. So this is one of Assassin's Creed's most recent installments.

They've had many. They've had, let's say, three, six, seven. A Pirate One. Yeah, about 10 games now, full length games.

And there's a few in between games, smaller ones and stuff. And I've been along the journey since 2005. I got the first Assassin's Creed and I fell in love with it and it's been my favorite game series ever since then. And gosh, I really, really, really love Assassin's Creed Origins.

I really think they blew out of the park with this one. And I'm comparatively speaking to all the other ones that they made, I really feel like they really took the best parts of the franchise and put it into this game. And I'm really excited about it. Adam, if you happen to have time to play it or have someone that owns it and you can take a moment to play it, I highly recommend it.

I highly recommend to anybody who has any kind of gaming console to take some time into play this game because it's really, really good. It really makes me go back to the first Assassin's Creed games, the first and second one, the first one was Altair and the second one was Ezio where you have multiple places that you can travel to and it's just really rich in history and content. And I just really love it. But yeah, definitely recommend it.

Also, I'm drinking coffee at 8 p.m. So I'm going to rally through the night because I have homework that I got to do. And it is a light roast, apparently Adam doesn't like that one. So do you guys have any light roast there, Adam?

Light roast, too much caffeine, not enough flavor. Unless you get the flavored coffee, which is just you. I'm more of a dark roast person or cold brew, just really intense coffee flavor, if anything, espresso is my go to now. I can respect that.

I got the light roast because it does have more caffeine in it and I do plan on saying I'm kind of late this evening. I get myself caught up on homework and so forth. But generally my go to brew is a cold brew. Otherwise, I generally just kind of have a black coffee.

But I get light roast specifically to wake up and stay awake and have kind of consistent energy and stuff. But I can definitely back what you're saying on the cold brew and espresso and stuff. Lou, do you have a preference on what type of coffee you like? So unpopular opinions here.

Lou's made it 27 years into his life, tried a few coffees along the way. And so far, none have won. So I don't drink coffee on the regular. I have gone to the fancy coffee places.

I tried fills when I was up north and there was a fills close by. And even fills didn't win me over. I mean, I will say better for sure than Starbucks. But yeah, I'm not a coffee chinker.

A little biddly tea, not too much of that even. If I'm going to stay up, it sounds really awkward, but I just continuously drink water. I just don't let myself stop drinking and usually just cold water drink in large quantities will keep me awake. You drink soda though?

Yeah, I do drink soda but I won't drink it until I stay up. They won't help me stay up. At least I have never found it. I mean, I can drink soda good better, drink soda in the morning and I can drink soda pretty much whenever and I'm not going to affect me that way.

It's never kind of been a wake up thing. And I try not to drink it that often, maybe once a day kind of thing. But I'm not going to drink it like every meal kind of thing and no soda at home. So at home, if I'm staying up, it's water.

I will usually, I'll have no problem clearing like 80 ounces of water in a night if I have to stay up, which kind of also produces the problem of me having to go to the bathroom all the time, which keeps me awake too, I guess. I can't do soda anymore. Like I used to when I was younger, I used to drink soda constantly. And then kind of when I got into my early teens and I was like 13, 14, I just kind of thought away from soda and I didn't like it anymore.

It's just super sweet to me. Yeah, so I started drinking soda maybe like a year, year and a half ago now, where I would only have it like one day out of the week. And it got to the point where it was the same thing, like I would drink a soda and just like feel bad because it was so sweet, so much sugar just at once. Because when you think about it, like you're just inhaling 40 grams of sugar and it's on the spot.

And your body is like, well, that's a lot of sugar. And some people use it to stay awake, you know, but it's really bad for you. You know, so I got away from that and I just have my, you know, my sparkling waters, you know, my old man sodas I like to refer to them because it's like still having soda without having all the bad things in soda. Did you, what are those like home soda machine things Adam?

A soda stream? Yes, yes, yes, those things. No, I am not on that train, no way. Okay.

I really like carbonation. I just, not in soda, I just like carbonated water is awesome. So I have one of those, those carbonate, like make your water carbonated machines. Like those are pretty awesome.

I don't know if you guys have one, but they're pretty cool. But that's the soda stream, right? No, so, so, so stream is like, like, you know, when you go to those places that it's like, they do their own, like in-house sodas and so basically it's like flavored, like, I don't know, like orange soda, lime soda, this soda, that soda. Yeah, yeah, but can't you just inject the CO2 into the water?

Sure. Yeah, you could. So I mean, but so is it safe to say you both like carbonated water? Like you would prefer carbonated water over, or as they would say in Europe, I guess they would say like bubbly water over flat water, you know, or gas water over flat water?

Oh, yeah. I still treat it like a treat for me, right? So like soda you wouldn't have, you know, eight sodas in a day. I mean, unless you were a teenager, which, you know, I definitely did at one point.

But I treat them now, like I treated them back then, right? Or just in moderation, like, so like I'll have, I had one soda today, right? And by soda, I mean a flavored carbonated water, you know, like that was it. And that's all that I'll have.

And the rest is just plain old, you know, bottled water, right? So I don't know, I still treat it like a treat. I don't like prefer to drink that over regular water, regular water. All right, interesting.

I'm a flat water fan, so I don't even do the carbonated water. All sorts of weird, Lou. Yeah, I know. It's OK.

We can all be wrong about things sometimes. Anyway, this is kind of cool. I didn't know that this was a thing, but Lou was in a documentary, which therefore makes him ultra famous. So Lou, what documentary were you in?

And what was it about? So we should correct this. I'm not ultra famous. I was in probably maybe 10 seconds worth of footage in a documentary that came out this week.

The website for the documentary is App Documentary, and it's called the Human Story. It's a documentary following, it's like Tech Adjacent, I guess you could say it's all those developers at different scales, like indie developer, medium sized, just a couple of people involved, and then fairly big developers, the guys from Panic Up in Portland. And it follows their journey on the App Store and how they're making money, their struggles, and all that. So it was interesting.

I happened to be at a place where they were filming a couple of years ago, and I had a sign release, and they caught a couple seconds of me in a room. And so you see the back of me and the side of me and a little bit of the front of me for a second or two. So it dropped this week. I guess it premiered at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference last year, and it's now out.

So I guess we'll probably drop a link to the show notes, and you can buy it. They're doing an interesting thing. Vimeo has an option, I guess, where you can, like, if you're an indie film developer, you can put yourself up on their website, and they will allow you to stream it or download it DRM-free. So it's, I think, 15 bucks if you want the film.

But I would definitely recommend going and checking it out. They are also the guys that, the same guys that shot this documentary, the same guys that generally do the live stream for John Gerber's Daring Fireball at WWDC, where he does the live talk show. So they're well known in the community, and it's soon to be pretty cool guys all around. So I got a couple of their friends, or at least one other friend in the actual movie itself, so who was kind of followed.

So that's cool. It's cool to see it's out, and it's finally here, a couple of years in the making, and a lot of work for those guys. So, yeah, so those who have followed the show religiously and listened to the blooper rail we have at the end, there's definitely a blooper where it talks about Lou buying me my dream home, which is, you know, just like this old home from the 1920s, and putting it on just a plot of land somewhere else. And that was in reference to him, you know, when he told me he was going to be in this documentary and I was like, oh, hey, cool.

But like when you're big and famous, you know, you can, you know, buy me a big old house. Yeah, I don't know how much I'm going to collect in terms of royalties or anything from this movie. I don't think I'm going to get anything. But when I get my couple pennies, I'll pass them along to you.

Don't worry. Are you featured in the credits? No, man, I didn't get that interview time. No, there's a healthy list of people that did get featured in the credits, but yeah, I did not get featured in the credits at all.

I'm not going to hold my breath for the money. Yeah, I'm sorry to lose faith in that. All right, guys, but I guess we're all just going to invest in Bitcoin because it value fluctuates pretty often, but it seems to be still on the uptick. I don't know if you guys have been, have been watching it, but it has, it went down in value.

I think like $1,000 or $2,000 and then it went back up and kind of stabilized again, but it was at its peak for like, like some crazy value of like 11,000. I don't know if you guys have been following it. Have you? Yeah.

So when it passed 10k, I was kind of following it, you know, just it's, I haven't gone into the apps that actually like give you the value, you know, and I know that there are a couple of different like banking services that will show you like cryptocurrency and like their current value and exchange rate, things like that. But I just been hearing just on podcast, I listened to like just daily news and Twitter and everything that, you know, it's been going up and up and up and then yeah, it went down for a little bit and now it just, it keeps rising. So it's, it's interesting because it's like the original, like the first mainstream cryptocurrency and its value has gone, you know, up a lot. And you just think of the people who maybe had like one or two bitcoins when it first started and now that's worth, you know, over $20,000.

You're like, Oh, hey, great. Yeah. So I kind of, I didn't buy one Bitcoin at all, but there was, I don't know, it's probably a year and a half ago or something like that. I wanted to learn a little bit more about this space.

So I had a Linda.com membership and I, I took their course on like cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, I think it was, I just learned about like the blockchain a little bit and like what that process looks like. And I was like, okay, cool. I think I'm going to go like actually try to understand this a little bit. Like I'm going to seek out something that I can buy in Bitcoin.

I'm going to actually transfer some US currency into Bitcoin and I'm going to go through the process once. I'm just going to like turn the wheel, you know, understand how it works. And so I think I transferred like $15 into Bitcoin. Like I bought something that was like $5.

I don't even remember what I bought. I just let, there's like 10 bucks and I just left that in there. And today I like open that like last weekend, it's like $100 US now. I'm like, oh, I mean, like $100 and I didn't have to do all hell of a lot.

So that's kind of nice. He's going to leave your money under the digital cushions and then just, you know, oh, hey, look at that. I mean, it's a money. It's like you and your stock portfolio.

Then digital cushions, man, the returns are good out here. Yeah, lose getting like all these crazy interest rates, you know, like investment returns, like, you don't even know it. And so like, Hey, you know, this is why I don't pay you money, man, because like you have so much money just like lying around in places that you totally forgot about. Like you don't need my money.

No, no, that's not true at all. That's a little bit. That money was still spent. It went away.

And it blows me money, Jim. This is what this is why I keep harping on Adam. What does he owe you money over? He owes me money for the hosting fees for the site.

Ha ha ha. Oh, that's that's funny. So I built the site with Squarespace. So I mean, I'm not going to take too much credit for that.

I also fixed the other things too. Like if anything, you should be like deducting, you know, like some money for the stuff that I fixed and some of the stuff I brought to, you know, like consulting fees or something. What is it? Well, yeah, exactly.

I wanted to set up AWS for storage and I set up my own server at home and said, like, hey, just upload the files here. And you're like, oh, yeah, okay, cool. Like I saved this money there, right? Like that should go off of the money that I owe you because you would just throw money on that fire.

We all know that, right? So I'm just like preventing money from being thrown on a fire, essentially giving you that money back, right? So that's like paying you, right? I'll give you a if you so choose, you could you could you could pay 50% off your first year fees, but it has to be paid by the end of December or you can or you can choose to pay any time after January one and it's the full price.

How about that? Anytime after January 1st? Yeah, anytime after January 1st, we'll start a Korean interest. So interest, you know, you're not a bank.

Hey, man, you're like, I'm lending you the money one way or another, the bank of Lou. I didn't sign any like loan document, like saying you were going to charge me interest on this thing. Anyway, I owe you money. I will pay you at some point in time.

That time will be undetermined and then follow up, you know, in a future show. We'll discuss when I pay you. I'll just start nagging at him and every show now. Yeah.

I'll tell my kids like, sorry, kids, you don't get any Christmas presents this year because Lou needs money. I like this. I like this. Yeah, Mr.

Grinch over there. Mr. But Lou, it's Christmas. Ah, I'm bug.

I like that I get to be a spectator in all this. Yeah, right. I think that's the best place to be because partially it's me just trolling. I mean, that's just my nature, but part of it's also like, there's some legitimate claims to be not being able to pay this.

Like I'll roll with that. Just hang on to those little claims Adam. Yeah, the little ones. Like, oh man, the car like unexpected expenses, you know, month we had to replace the engine mounts on the van like, oh, there's just my mom's flying out, you know, for Christmas.

So we had to, you know, spend $47 in gas to, you know, go pick her up from the airport and drive her back. Oh, it's just. Holidays are crazy, man. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Stop asking me for money on the holidays. Adam's only three months late.

Only three months late. We're like 13 months late. Pretty much. It's, it's fine.

It's fine. I love how Jim's mediating is. It's okay, guys. It's only $47.

It's okay. No worries. Well, we can open a tab, right? Yeah.

Well, it was $48. I didn't pay you a dollar. So I mean, you're no longer a current interest on that $1. So Adam, I am curious to know how your yoga is going.

So yoga is going well for me. I kind of got off like my, my routine when I went down to San Diego, just because like I brought my yoga mat and like with full intention to do all these workouts, but just by the end of the night, like just, we were saying to my mom's house and smaller house because she just moved and like, I didn't want to be like the guy to like, okay, let me roll out this yoga mat and stick here with my headphones and do yoga in front of you while you guys have to sleep on the couch. You know, I didn't want to be that guy. But I plan to do a yoga routine tonight after we finish recording.

So usually like I want to say it's every third day is when I do my yoga and then just like daily stretches throughout the day, like I'll do those at work and just kind of here and there, but it's going well. I still enjoy it a lot. And the fun thing about yoga is that it never seems to really get easy if you're doing it right. Like it's always hard because like you just learn to stretch more or go further or hold the pose for longer or whatever it is, but it never really gets easier.

And I'm not to say that it's like, and the yoga I do isn't like super intense like hot yoga, you know, like I'm sweating, you know, anything like that, but it's just, it feels good. It's hard to describe, but I really like it still. That's awesome. Lou, do you have any, do you have any fitness things that you're doing right now?

Not really actually I'd say at the holidays I tend to slack off a little bit January. I usually kind of pick back up. So as of right now, I'm making it to the gym a few days a week, but usually I would say back in October and November, I was probably going more like three or four days a week and I'm probably making it like one or two right now. That just happens in solid days.

What can I say? I can certainly relate, you know, I mean, you know, working out and doing all this and Adam, I really commend your consistency with it. But you know, with all this, it's really about like being healthy and stuff. I think as long as you're keeping healthy and stuff like that or moving or doing something that's actively training something, I think that's what's important.

So what I do is I tend to meditate and I write a lot just to kind of keep the creative logo going into to help me bring focus because I don't, unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of time during the day right now with all the schoolwork that I'm having to do. And I'm trying to keep up with that. But hopefully I'll be able to get back into the gym and running like how I used to here pretty soon. Jim, do you have totally seen me like trying to close my rings though at different points?

Like Jim and I were together at one point and Jim just sees me like essentially walking up and down a parking lot, just like one row of spaces, just up and down and up and down and up and down, just trying to like close some rings. And I'm like, dude, I'm just trying to close the rings. I'm just trying to close the rings. I definitely still try to close the rings even though I am like not going as much.

It's not like a slack off that way. But I'm just not completing an activity workout as they would say on my Apple Watch. So I think that was probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen this year because I'm coming out of work and it's nighttime. So it's really dark.

And in this particular parking lot, there's not a whole lot of lighting. And so I'm just walking on towards my car, got my backpack on. I'm just totally not sure. Talking to one of my friends.

And I just see, it's not a small man, like he's tall, you know, you're big and I just see him peering out of the shadows, just having a puffing trying to close his rings. And it was seriously one of the funniest things that I just yelled at. I was like, hey, you close your rings and you just like to be, yeah, what else am I going to do? And it was just, it just was really funny.

It made my night. I also think like, it wasn't like simultaneously when you pretty much said that to me that the notification came up on your watch that I had closed my rings. That's how I knew it was you walking up and down the parking lot because I looked at my watch and said, look close your ring. I saw you and I was like, that must be loo.

I like it. I like it. I entered off the activity sharing notifications. I got so tired of it.

So, and so, you know, finished a workout. I don't care. So, and so finished work. I'm like, I don't care.

This goes back and so the notification thing from Twitter fatigue from last episode that we talked about, right? So, I'll go into activity when I close my rings at the end of the day, right? And I'm looking at everything. And then I'll go look at the activity sharing and I'll see other people's.

But I don't want to be notified when loo closes his rings. But it's kind of funny. You mentioned like, oh yeah, so loo just closes rings and there's a weird big guy huffing and puffing down a parking lot. Either do I start running now or oh no, it's loo, it's fine.

It's loo, it's fine. He's just closing his rings. Oh, don't mind that guy. He's just closing his rings.

Well, I mean, loo used to play football and you know, I'm not like an abnormally large guy. Like I'm very average. You know, I don't even think I'm six foot but, but loo, he's taller than I am and I just, he I'm just hustling up that hill and it just, it was good. It was good.

Good time. Taking a blue, he has a drone and he does awesome drone stuff which I recently saw some footed off. And loo, I had a, if you care to share, I thought that was really cool. I do want to talk a little bit about some of the cool drone stuff that you did the other day.

I'm talking about it a little bit. So there's this time of year a street, I feel like a lot of communities have this but like a street that goes kind of all out with the Christmas routine. They do the lights all over every house on the street and it kind of becomes a spectacle and of course a lot of people from the community come to check it out. So at least where I live, there's a street that does this and they have set up repeaters on the street and there's a radio station, they broadcast a series of songs that are all Christmas themed and the lights are all kind of, you know, tied into the audio and it's, you know, syncing to that and it's pretty cool to see the audio and the lights on the street just kind of sync up and it's really pretty.

So I kind of had a bright idea, I was like, hey, I want to take the drone, I want to fly the drone over the street and I want to go ahead and see if I can find some way to record the audio at the same time and in post-production, the wonders of post-production, do a little bit of syncing and you know, align those tracks. And so that's exactly what I did. I put my iPad in the car and I turned the car on, tuned it to the radio station and then just took notes of roughly when I was recording and so I had a rough idea of when to align the tracks and started flying and push record and went up and down the street, got a good five or six minutes of video and then post-production, lined them up. But what it made for was a super cool video that Jim happened to see this week that showed him of, you know, all these houses and everything.

But funny part to me was, this street is just like chocolate full, right? There's cars, there's people walking up and down it through a park from like streets away to walk to it and the people seemed more excited about my drone flying over the street than they were the houses, so that was kind of funny. But it turned out well, I was pretty happy with it. I thought the funniest thing that I saw in that video in terms of, you know, things that are laughable.

I mean, the drone footage was awesome and it was great and I loved it. But you see like seriously just all of these houses just lit up, everyone took time into setting up their houses and it looks great and there's just one house on the corner at the end of this road that is totally dark. Just does not want to be associated with the rest of the neighborhood at all. Clearly doesn't want all these people around.

And it just was a funny thing because it's just this one little dark spot in the whole chain of it and it just really made me laugh. Yeah, there was actually a couple, well, I mean, most houses were pretty good but there was one or two that was like, you know, definitely tell they were, they were, they were budget decorating or something. You know, it was not the normal like go overboard that everybody else was doing on the street. So it's interesting.

But I would say the vast majority of houses, I think there was probably maybe 25 houses on the street or something like that. And I would say 22 of them probably committed to going all out. So it was pretty neat. Well, definitely with some awesome footage.

And so I think this kind of kind of gets us into our actual show here. So we're going to be talking a little bit about virtual reality, not to be confused with augmented reality. And so I think it'd be a good place to kind of start off and kind of separate virtual reality from augmented reality. So what do you guys find to be the major differences between the two?

Well, I mean, my trivial understanding is that, you know, augmented reality involves you seeing the actual world around you. Virtual reality, you are completely sort of cut off from the world that is around you and everything you're seeing is indeed fake or drawn or, you know, is some alternate reality. Yeah. So essentially with AR, you're, you're still seeing your current reality and just overlaying stuff on top of that, whereas with virtual reality, you completely cut off from the rest of the world and into this virtual space to kind of live and play there.

So augmented reality, which is more of mixed reality, right? Which you can kind of phrase that as well, where you still have your, you're still in your living room, you know, you're still looking at your couch. There's just something on your couch, right? Or you're still at the park and outside, but there's a Pikachu, you know, like to your left with 10 feet, but virtual reality is like, oh, no, you are in, you know, the Kanto region and you are Ash Ketchum and all you see, wherever you look, they're a Pokemon everywhere, but you're not looking at your living room or a park.

You're looking at this virtual space that they've given you to play in. Yeah. So I mean, I think that's, I think that's a really, I think you guys put it in really good terms. So I mean, this really makes me, this really makes me think of the Matrix.

I'm sure that it does for most people to where you, you know, you hook up to this machine. I'm not sure if, if in the future is going to be as invasive as, as what the folks in the Matrix in the Matrix did, but I mean, I would assume it's, it's very similar to that. So that's where you talk about like living in a simulation, right? Where maybe, you know, it's just gotten to the point where virtual reality is so good that we are actually living in this, this Sims, you know, 15, whatever, you know, version they're up to for some other species or for some real budget to be their batteries, right?

Which that whole, the whole series, the Matrix, you know, just gets weirder and weir as it goes on just the first films, all that you need to watch ever don't watch the other two is just not worth the seven hours. But yeah, right. Like I think that's probably the most, one of the most modern examples and I know Jim, you have another one that you keep mentioning for stuff that, you know, Lou and I haven't read yet, but ready player one definitely comes up a lot in this, in the sense as well. So I, I don't know if you can tell, but I really like ready player one.

In fact, it happens to be one of my favorite books and there's, we actually had someone on our show, Riley, who actually introduced me to that book and her fiance, Aaron, who also really loves this book too, they both introduced me to it and it's really a phenomenal book and it really has a lot to do with this sort of stuff. Where basically there's this guy who has this, has this machine that kind of puts him into this virtual reality place called Oasis and it's a free to play game. But it's kind of, it's more than that. It becomes kind of how people actually live and like people go to school there and people, they have some kind of, they have a form of trade there and they have currency there and and all these other things.

So it's, it's completely immersive and it's a totally different world than the actual fiscal one that you live in. But, but yeah, if you have the time, definitely give it a read. And so, you know, this kind of gets us into, you know, who's actually, who's actually doing virtual reality, right? So I mean, there, we, you know, we kind of see it and headlines over the place.

And I think one of the biggest names in this is probably going to be Facebook's Oculus Rift. I personally don't know a whole lot about it. I haven't investigated their technology, but would either of you happen to know a little bit more about what Facebook is doing with Oculus Rift? And I think, I think that's a pretty recent development that's not something that was originally that way.

I could be wrong, but, um, you're correct. Yeah, they bought them. It was either a year or two ago, but it was, Oculus was founded by, I believe this guy's name is Palmer Lucky, who's a very unique individual, if you ever, you know, follow the people who make these technologies and things like that. But yeah, Facebook, that was a recent acquisition for them.

Got it. Yeah. And I don't really know what their, their game plan is with it. What do you mean?

How do you not know what their game plan is? You know, how do you not know what their game plan is? You just talked about ready player one being the place where you want to escape to and live and go to school and do everything and see all your friends like that's what Facebook is aiming for. Okay.

Well, I guess that's what it is. Thanks Adam. Just to add a point, that's kind of what Facebook is already, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's this little digital you that you get to escape to.

And a lot of times our digital profiles are, uh, you're just talking purely from a psychological standpoint, it's oftentimes the person that you want to present to people, you know, it's, it's your best foot forward always. And so I think this is a very natural step for Facebook because this little rectangle that you look into when your digital profile is already super addicting. So why not fully immerse yourself into that digital self and put your best foot forward? Yeah, that makes sense to me.

I, I, I agree. I mean, when, when they bought it, a lot of people were kind of like up in arms, right? Because VR was a space that, you know, was traditionally used just for gaming, right? That's, that's as far as people had taken it at that point, like, Oh yeah, Oculus is going to be great for gaming.

Like all the demos that they had, everything there. So when Facebook kind of comes out of there and, you know, buys this kind of like, wait, Facebook's not a gaming company. Like what are they going to use it for? Like, I'm always on Facebook.

They want me to, you know, escape into virtual Facebook where, you know, if my friends are online and they're virtual too, like we can go have a virtual hangout and like some random bar somewhere and we can be on, you know, other ends of the planet and still be like, we're quote unquote right next to each other, but our digital avatars are. And there's some really, really good pictures. I'll have to find them and put a link in the show is but when I believe when Facebook shortly after they bought Oculus, they had like a keynote presentation or one of the companies with these VR headsets where they had the entire audience put on VR headsets and Mark Zuckerberg walked through and then appear on stage afterwards. And the, the image is, is really iconic because it's everyone in these headsets looking up, you know, just at who knows what, right?

Because we can't see what it is. And then just the one guy without a headset, you know, who owns this company walking through the middle of them with a spotlight shown on him is just really interesting. That is really interesting. That's super interesting actually.

Yeah, it kind of, when the picture was first taken, you're like, okay, yeah, well, that makes sense. And then all the comments come afterwards like, yeah, look at like, there's almost kind of like 1984, you know, all over again, right? Where you have just all these people just like staring at this, you know, monitor and this one guy walking through and there's a lot of parallels that can be drawn or a lot of similarities and things that people will jump to. But all I have to say is that Facebook buying this, it was unexpected, but then once you found out they did, you're like, okay, well, that makes sense, right?

That's a natural evolution of their product and their whole tagline. I think their mission statement is connecting the world, right? Like they want to connect everyone to everyone else on the planet. And this is just another way that they can do that.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm literally, have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think it has some, you know, I mean, as I'm saying, the connecting the world, I think it has some cool implications in terms of the abstract. I really kind of struggled to see that.

I've never been that kind of person to sort of visualize the abstract. But even if it's just connecting the world in the sense of like, hey, I've got friends or family that's across the world and it gives us a more realistic way to sort of video chat or something like that, you know, that to me would seem cool if we're doing that in VR. And I can understand how that depth of dimension or whatever can kind of give us that next level of connection. So it will be interesting to see where it goes.

And I think it's a little while off, but hopefully it's here sooner rather than later. Now, as much as I like what Facebook wants to do with it, they really, I think they're focusing on kind of the social aspect or I would assume they're probably going to focus on the social aspect of it, like what Adam said with, you know, you can have these hangouts and everyone can kind of commute in this one place. And that's what I'm saying. I think that's a Google trademark, you know, but yeah.

Oh, I didn't realize I apologize. Or you know, kind of just a social gathering on Facebook's Oculus Rift. However, something that I'm actually quite intrigued by with what Google is doing because they, you know, they have Google Earth. And I'm assuming that they're eventually going to have some like Google Mars or something.

And I'm sure that exists in some form somewhere in Google. But they're going to do a thing called Earth VR where basically you go on Google Earth on your little Google headset and the tagline for it is go anywhere, Google Earth VR puts the whole world within your reach. And I think that's a pretty amazing thing that you can do with VR is that if, you know, if you don't have the money to go travel somewhere and put on these goggles and you boom, you're right there and you're, it's, if it gets to where it's good enough, it's like you really are there. Yeah.

And these are like one of the practical uses for VR where it's like, okay, well, take something that we have right now, right? Which is people love to travel, people love to see different things or people want to see different things. And how can you make that more accessible to everybody? Let's say someone who has travel limitations or what have you or they don't want to do.

They don't want to deal with all the people, all these different things. Like now you have a technology that can kind of bring that to you and Google Earth. Remember when that was a standalone application and people would just download and say, yeah, I want to drill into, you know, like this desert out in the middle of, you know, nowhere. And just, I want to see the world without having to leave my space and why I said my space kind of together.

And that's, that's throwing me a little bit. Let's talk about it. Yeah, let's talk about it. I don't want to talk about my space.

Tom, you were my one friend. You'll always be my one friend. And that's all we have to say. So, but VR right in Google, especially since they have all this data, they have all this mapping data.

It makes sense. Sure, I want to go to the Eiffel Tower and like walk around and look around. And if I can do that just with a VR headset from my couch, I'll carve out like three hours of my day and just go like browse around somewhere. And that utility is really appealing to me, right?

Whereas the social aspect of VR, like I'm pretty anti-social when it comes to it. This is probably like one of the more frequent social gatherings I have is this podcast. But the idea of being able to go somewhere, you know, and not have to actually like leave the couch is great. And especially for places like out of the country that would maybe take a long time to get to or cost a lot of money to get to, you know, putting that in the hands of people who just have to buy this headset.

And I'm assuming, you know, VR tour or Google's just going to mind how long you look at, you know, this feature or they'll put a little Google add up in the top corner when you get to the top of the tower, whatever it's going to be, however they monetize it. But yeah, like sign me up, you know, I'd love to take a virtual tour anytime. Just like we mentioned, you know, before like augmented reality with like real estate and like home tourism renovation, like virtual reality where you're taking me away from my space just makes sense in that arena. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put that.

I mean, especially with you Adam, because you know, you have a family and not this is like a downside or anything, but it's harder to travel when you have family, right? I mean, especially if you have young children, just makes it harder to travel. So I mean, having something like this is a really great way to kind of go experience those things before actually experiencing those things, if that makes any sense at all. It's almost like a tribe before you buy type things, right?

And traveling with kids is different, right? Like we go to places still, but your travel considerations when you have children are much different from like if you were going by yourself, right? Adam going in his 30s, you know, to Hawaii is very different from Adam in his 30s going to Hawaii with kids, right? Just because the activities you do are different, things you want to see are different.

Like I can't go to a museum and say like, wow kids, look at all the history here. But you know, how long this took to, you know, make and look how nature made this and look at this volcano, look at this volcano, look at this volcano, look at this, like when can we go to the beach, like when can we go to the gift shop, like it's just kind of the way it is with kids, right? And not to say there's anything wrong with that. Like I love being able to like, we went to Disneyland, right?

And going to Disneyland with kids is now, you know, why Walt Disney created this park, right? Like made so much sense because there's stuff for adults and stuff for kids and there's stuff for everybody. And wow, man, like to this day, Disneyland is still like the best money pit ever, you know, like people just throw money into that fire, you know, all day long. But it would be nice, right, to be able to have something for everybody.

It's like, I want to do a VR, you know, tour of this and the kids might want to just like have a VR like virtual, you know, like space to play games with the Star Wars characters or something like who knows. So. So a little side tangent for you both. If you were to have Google's Daydream and if you were able to go travel anywhere on the earth and you had some time to carve out for like a trial, where would you guys go?

I have to really think about this. Lou, any ideas or do you need to think about it a little bit? I'm thinking, you know, part of me wants to say Antarctica is wow, look at all this white. Yeah, as barren and desolate as it is, I mean, I have absolutely like no desire to go, but I would love to see it, if that makes sense.

I mean, I flew from Atlanta to Argentina and that was 10 hours and I've heard from like Argentina down, it's like another like, I was like six or eight hours past that. Like that's insane. But that seems like it would be really cool to see. I also feel like maybe like the Amazon like deep Amazon stuff.

I don't know. That's a tough one. Yeah, I would really want to go to some place that no one has been before, right? Or very, very few people have gone to before like all the, you know, major landmarks and like that is like, okay, yeah, pass.

I don't really want to see those in VR, but taking me to a place that no one has been to or it's very few people have been to, I think would be very intriguing for me. So yeah, like some deep rainforest, you know, somewhere would be great. I would really like to actually like travel below the surface. You know, I know that's pretty dark, like not much to see there, but I think it would be cool to like even take a VR exploration like through, you know, this through the planet, like even if it's not 100% real, I think that would still be really interesting as well, right?

Like journey to the center of the earth type thing, but or, you know, really deep into the ocean. I always find that stuff fascinating too, how, you know, life has basically evolved to survive in a very dark, you know, dark place with, you know, tons and tons of pressure and how these organisms have basically like learned to live and you talk about all these mysterious creatures, you know, and the depths of the ocean. Like I would love to see that. Like if there's ever a VR that's like here, explore the entire depth of the ocean, like that's what I was on up for.

That's a really good one. I like that a lot. If I were to go anywhere, and this might sound a little bit weird, but I would really like to see kind of the places that are kind of that are war torn at the moment, I would like to see what they looked like before then because I, because it's like, I don't feel like there's some place in the world. I feel like I won't be able to see in my lifetime just because of how dangerous it is.

And I'd really like to know what those places look like before they were dangerous. Yeah. And that brings up like a really good point too, right? Like, especially when you talk about like, you know, virtual space, you can create whatever you want, right?

So you could see how this looked, you know, 3000 years ago or 2000 years ago, as long as you had the data and as you know, more data becomes available and as, you know, and we'll talk about this a little bit too. And as computer rendering becomes better and better and more lifelike, you start talking about like taking yourself out of the equation and then, you know, the question of like, what's real and what's not. But it's a great way to be like, Hey, cool. Like I want to see it, how it is right today.

And I want to see it how it was, you know, 50 years ago or 100 years ago sidebar that I won't take too long on, but there's a really, really good podcast. If you guys haven't listened to called Dan Carlin's hardcore history and they're really, really long podcast episodes, but it talks like, I'm listening to the one right now, which is a blueprint to Armageddon, which is all about the first world war and kind of the lead up to that and how it looked from all these different historians, you know, points of views. So you have this guy and he's describing what the battlefield looked like and what, you know, Germany and the allied forces and how everyone was kind of set up and positioned in this battlefield and what trench warfare, you know, I kind of looked like and you have all these first hand accounts from people, you know, writing in journals and memoirs and things. It would be really cool to be like, Hey, like, take me to what that was like.

And I'm not saying like, I want to go to a world war one, but I'm just saying with all the stuff that we know, right, if we can recreate that and kind of like live in that space, you can really almost put yourself in someone's shoes and see the world from their perspective and kind of explore the world from their perspective. And I think that's just really intriguing. So I'm glad you brought up that point, Jim, where it's like, yeah, I want to see what this is like now, rather than going to a later and missing that opportunity and with technology, right? It may get to a point where you never miss an opportunity.

Yeah, I think that's I think it's kind of like your little personal time traveling machine almost and there's some really amazing buildings that are being that are currently in construction and it's like, you can look at the time lapse of that and you can even go into the future with it because it's virtual reality. It's a versus time. And so as long as you have the data to support what's happening next or what had already happened, you can build that world. You can go live in the 1920s.

I mean, everyone talks about if you could be born a different decade, which decade would have been born and you can go visit that decade. And I think that's a really cool thing. But just don't get lost, man. This is real life.

That's not real life. Right. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But, but, Lou, do you have any parting thoughts on that?

Not exactly, actually. I mean, I said my piece of course. I don't know that I really have much to add there. Cool.

It looks like Adam, you dropped in HTC Vive. I'm actually not familiar with this one. Is this one pretty similar to what Facebook and Google are going on? Or do they have their own little niche piece in the market here?

No. So Vive is very similar to Oculus and what they bring to the table with their headset. I can't quote specifics or links and specifications, but I know at one point the Vive headset was more advanced than Oculus or had a better refresh rate or a better pixel density for the LCDs in front of your face. But Vive, I believe, started with Steam, right?

So Steam, when they were making VR and they were making this push, they partnered with HTC to make this Vive headset for Steam. And I believe eventually that branched out. Now Vive just, HTC just makes the headset and is compatible across a large swath of hardware providers and their SDK, I believe, is available to you to do whatever you want with. But that was one that didn't get mentioned.

I put it right after Oculus because they're just another player in the space. I personally haven't used any virtual reality headsets, so I can't comment on which one is this, which one is that. But I think when we talk about who's doing it, right? Those are definitely the two dedicated hardware manufacturers that I see right now for VR headsets.

So I just tossed that in there. Nice. I think that was a good addition to this list here. So somebody that I do want to touch on, and I know I've complained a lot about this company in the past with how they build their architecture for user interfaces.

But the vast majority of people obviously like their gaming consoles, which just happens to be Microsoft. They also have VR headset in play here. And I am actually really excited for what VR means for gaming. I think it's really going to be a big, really big, gosh, when I'm losing the word.

It's going to be a really big part of the gaming community. It's going to be really the next step in gaming that we're going to be looking for. And it's really going to be able to immerse you in your most beloved games. So I mean, I'm definitely going to become an assassin at some point, but that's definitely going to happen.

And I'm going to be able to live that dream. So HoloLens is mixed reality. So it's not essentially, it's not VR in the same terms that you're thinking of. So it still is just kind of overlaying stuff into your space.

So it's not technically virtual reality. It's mixed reality or kind of closer to augmented reality like we were talking about. I did not know that. Thank you for clarifying.

So I will not be an assassin, never mind. Well, you'll just assassinate the couch pillows or your pet of choice. No, no, not the dog. No, that's right.

Yeah, no, don't do that. That dog is. That dog's too cute. The dog is too sweet.

I love them too much. But you know, when they tell you to do something in the video game, like you got it to it, you know? I don't want to do it. Or is Assassin's Creed one of the ones where they give you choices?

You remember that when there was like a non-linear path to get to where you need to go? And you can make choices like good or evil, right? I can't remember the first games that did this, but I remember a couple. So Black and White was one of them.

Did you guys ever play Black and White? I didn't play Black and White, but I do know you're talking about Dragon Age gives you the ability to make decisions based off of what kind of character you want to be. Yeah, and a lot of like RPGs like these days, right? We'll kind of take that into effect, right?

You'll have consequences like if you decide to kill this NPC, right? Like something will happen or the shop won't be available later or you're now wanted by this group of people because you do these people harm. But kind of same thing, right? Like Assassin's Creed doesn't give you that choice, right?

Like, do you want to kill this bad guy or do you not want to kill this bad guy? Well, it's linear in the sense that they're because you're playing a different character, right? Like it's not a character that you've made up. You've created it's a storyline that's already kind of been defined in history.

So just kind of a little bit of background on Assassin's Creed is basically, you know, you're your person who lives in modern times and there's this machine that reads your DNA history and it's able to kind of go back in time. No, no, you're telling me this is the actual plot of the game as well? It's kind of the foundation. Oh my God.

So I played the first Assassin's Creed demo on PlayStation long, long time ago. Yeah, it wasn't for me. That's just me. And then, you know, the Assassin's Creed movie came out and it was on HBO.

So like, hey, you know what? Like, let's watch it. I started watching it and they talked about this machine and going back into his DNA and pulling up these memories and I'm like, what? The literal fuck is this garbage?

And now I know that it's actually from the video game. I'm like, Oh, God, no. So this is the premise of the game. Yeah.

So originally started not that we need to get super deep into this, but I'll get super deep into this. So there was a guy named Desmond Miles who was really your first character that you get to know. And he has his family's lineage happens to be related to the assassins. And there are also these other people whose lineage is to the Templars.

And so there's kind of these two opposing forces. And so Desmond has this really important character and this really important lineage that kind of shows where these pieces of either are with the Templars are after and the assassins are trying to prevent them from getting it. So we basically would make everyone just forget about violence and not be able to think for themselves and everyone be just complacent. Right.

Right. It's about it's about free will. And so the Templars want to take away the free will assassins want people to have the choice. Oh my God.

So it kind of does science and virtual reality. And but you can keep going on your Assassin's Creed, you know, TLDR plot. But well, it's I don't even remember the original point I was making now. But basically, but basically, yeah, you basically you just you're able to read their DNA and you're able to kind of trace back their history and play these different characters and play through that history on rails.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, man, I'm sorry. I interrupted you in the middle of the thing, but I realizing that the bullshit movie that Assassin's Creed was like they just ripped the plot directly from the video game made the movie out of it, right? Yeah, the movie wasn't necessarily meant to be it wasn't necessarily meant to be like a blockbuster hit.

It was really meant to raise awareness about the video game franchise. Well, okay, it meant not meant to be a blockbuster. You certainly signed a lot of blockbuster like talent. Yeah, they did.

I I personally was not a fan of the movie as much as I love the franchise. I thought the movie was the part. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so it's sidebar.

Lou, I know you don't want you to know movies. So this is kind of good for you in this sense, but there has yet to be a good video game movie. And I know as soon as I say this, I'm going to think of one that actually was decent, but what about the Pokemon? Well, I guess that's not video games.

Technically, the Pokemon movie is anime, right? Like it doesn't count. Also, that is not real life. Like let's say non animated, not CGI, because then you can say Final Fantasy 7 Adventureland was also, you know, a movie out in a video game and it doesn't count.

But a live action video game movie, I mean, you have the epic fails of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but I like Mortal Kombat. That has a special place in my heart because I was a kid at the right time when that movie came out. Super Mario Brothers. Wow, man, like talk about, you know, a loose premise of, you know, making a movie, but I don't know.

He goes and steps on these, you know, Koopas, you know, he's a plumber. He goes down pipes and collects coins and saves a princess. Yeah, let's make a movie out of that. How?

I don't know. We got Bob Hoskins and John Lewis on the right. Like they can make it work, right? Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I personally haven't seen a movie that was derived from a video game that's actually been decent yet. If someone has an opinion of a good one, please, please write us or add us on Twitter, you know, like tweet at us. Like we'll look at it and then we'll bring that up and follow up on another show. Thinking of movies, I don't mean I still need to make loose lists just side by side bar sidebar.

Well, that's for 2018. Like we still got to get through your school and then I still got to get through holiday season and then we can come together. And I'm sure like between the two of us, it'll only take us a couple hours. I'm assuming to make a decent list and let's just be honest, like we could, you know, do a version one list and that would be enough for Luke to never, you know, have to catch up with anything again.

Because I don't think he's actually going to watch the movies. So. Hey, man, I committed 12 movies next year. Right.

So 12 movies a year. So version one of the list, like we just have to hit some like a player games. Like I'm not going to put like, you know, citizen Kane on there or anything like that. Like this is just to like get our foot in the door so we can have some missteps here and there can be like a learning curve.

I've actually seen citizen Kane. You seen citizen Kane? Yeah, I think I was like forced to watch it in school. Oh, forced to watch it, he says.

Yeah, I pretty much wanted to stab my eyeballs out. I'm pretty sure the whole time. I mean, so that's the bad part about like school though is like, I mean, all those books I read when I was like in high school and you know, you're forced to read them. And so as much as you know, you like looking back, I actually kind of like some of the books I read in high school, but at the time, because I was being forced to do it, I was like, God, this is just, I just want to pull my hair out.

I just want to, you know, stab my eyeballs. I'm just getting really violent here. But you get the idea. It's like anything that you're forced to do, you don't really like.

And so if they approach it a little differently, I think I would have enjoyed it. And just kidding, it was like, I was forced to do it at the time. I pretty much hated it. Today, I'd probably watch it on my own again, just if it was on the list.

So since we're forcing you to watch these movies, is that mean you're going to hate it? Hey, man, I told you I would give you a like, you know, I will watch them. I did not say I would like them. But that's the whole different story.

I will watch them. But you say you want to gouge your eyes out. So I'm just saying you're going to go into this open mind, right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I'll go in open minded. And I mean, I'm sure we'll only be hold after 12 of them. I'm sure I will like a few of them and probably the good majority of them will be kind of like, whatever.

And there'll be a few I won't like. I was considering giving you an out being like, OK, if you get, you know, let's say 45 minutes into the movie and you still don't like it, then you can just stop. But I'm not going to give you that out. I'm going to say like you have to finish the movie because it's only 12 movies.

That's fine. Yeah, I'm fine with that. I mean, I can finish all 12 movies. I'm not worried about that.

I mean, all right, if I had to take a wild guess, I would probably say that there will be like two, I probably will like and there will be like eight. I don't know. Just kind of like, eh, and the other there will be like two. I'm like, no, never again, would I ever watch those again.

Such little faith in our picking abilities, man. Like we have an entire catalog to choose from. And we're like, we're basically curating a list for you. Like that should be pretty awesome.

So I'm hoping that we get better than, you know, like what did you give us? Like 20% success. I'm hoping we do a little better than that. I hope so.

But we'll see. We'll see. I don't know. By the way, that is definitely not 20%.

I think that's more like like 15, six. Yeah, I, sorry. I forgot that you said like two that you would say like, Oh, yeah, like I hate these. I just completely hate them.

So I was given a little more weight to the ones that you said, like, Oh, I've watched them. And I think it was were neutral, you know, not negative or maybe even bumping us up a little bit. It was weighted, you know. Yeah.

I got you. No, yeah. I will see. I'm actually excited for the list.

Don't come here. I'm excited to see what's on the list. Side bar of the sidebar list will be there in 2018. We're not in 2018 yet.

We're in 2017. So live in the now. Yep. And when we get to 2018, I'm sure like the first episode of the new year, we will go through the list.

I'm excited to go through this list. So we kind of, you know, we've touched on kind of the big players in the realm of who's making virtual reality. And so there are definitely some hurdles that we have to jump over. So there are some definite challenges.

And it looks like we have we have a little bit of a list going here. Of things that we think might be challenges. And kind of the first thing here is that it's kind of expensive. Yeah, it's not cheap to put all this money into a very, very tiny package at this juncture, where we are with the technology.

Right now it's tough because you got to put a lot of stuff in front of you and you got to throw a lot of processing power at something, you know. Whereas before, like I said, when a story was on rails or a world was limited, it's easy to put boundaries in place and say, like, this is how it's going to look, you know, we know that you can only move the camera, you know, this made directions. But when you're in a virtual space and things have to move at the same, you know, level that you do and have to be realistic looking enough, you start talking about a lot of compute power to be able to put this in front of you and get the latency down to a point where it doesn't make you sick. So it ain't cheap to do that.

Yeah, definitely. It's not a I think I mentioned this couple weeks ago, but I was recently in Vegas and there was this VR experience there and it was not cheap. I mean, it was a 50 bucks for I think like half hour or something like that. It was the MGM and the way it was kind of described to me, although I didn't see the equipment itself, you basically had the headset on and you're running around with a computer strapped to your back.

And I was like, just even that, the thought of running around with essentially like a laptop with a high power graphics card in it, powering my headset just was kind of off putting in enough. So it's expensive. It's clunky. It's it's it's interesting at this point.

Let's just put it that way. Yeah, right. Your daily carry for VR is, you know, I messaged your bag with a laptop in it, you know, and all these wires hook it up to your your VR goggles and then you got your motion controllers on your hands, you know, move around so you can like interact with things as another form of input. And you got to be walking on a treadmill, right?