Stanford University lab creates fatigue-fighting VR headset (Tomorrow Daily 222)

And today's show Disney research have some amazing algorithm that might change the way you shoot videos on your smart phone. A really cool VR headset just got announced, but not from anybody you're probably thinking of. And this guy cast is way better than any technology that I own. That's right, Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] greetings citizens of the Internet, welcome to Tomorrow Daily. The best geek talk show on the Internet. I'm Ashley Esqueda, that guy over there is Khalil Anonymous. And, were gonna tell you about some awesome science Science stuff. So you ready to do that? It's Thursday! I feel like we should get right into it before the show goes off the rails early. So let's have the headline. Kale you're gonna be our headset enthusiast. I'm wearing them right now. Aren't I in VR right now? You are. You are actually in a Virtual Reality simulation you just don't know it yet. This sounds really cool. Because, I mean, As it is brand new technology, its crazy that we're still making advancements before we even have consumer ones out. Official consumer ones. So there's a new VR headset that has been kind of announced, I guess presented. It's a prototype. It's from Stanford University, of all places. When you see new VR headset, Stanford or any university, it's not necessarily what you think of first. But they're calling it light field stereoscope. And this is pretty interesting, because it's designed to reduce fatigue and also Reduce sickness, motion sickness. Hallelujah! Nausea from all the stuff. And they do this in a really interesting way, so right now-- That's all terrifying, by the way. All these, yeah, these images you're gonna see is, like, they give you all these-- [CROSSTALK] Okay, so let me try to explain. So, right now, let's take Oculus for example, its an OLED screen, and its 2D, so it's a flat plane, it's just one screen that you're looking at. And it's a stereoscopic image so your eyes have to figure out exactly what the depth is of all of the objects and do a lot of work. So that means your eyes get tired a little bit sooner than if you were seeing something naturally. Okay. So now we have that out of the way This is how the Stanford's VR Headset works. They stack two screens, two LCD screens and not Oled and that's a little bit of an issue and I'll explain why in a minute. But they've got a spacer, two panels sandwiching the spacer, and then what they do is, they show two different images. That allow the eye to view them as actual depth. So you're seeing two images. One in the back. One in the front. And it's allowing you to get a front and rear focus on an item. So just like the human eye. You'd be able to look at something quickly and focus into it, and then look at something closer and focus into that quickly as well. If that makes sense. So this is kind of the idea of what that would look like. They use a lens and then they look through the headset and that's what you would be seeing. So that sort of simulation of how the eye would shift focus from background to foreground, and vice verse. So, in doing so, They're giving the human eye a much more natural depth perceiving experience inside this headset, therefore reducing fatigue and motion sickness. Okay. Because your eye is not freaking out trying to decipher this 2D image and turn into a 3D image. If that makes sense. Right. Okay? So now we're all on board. The one thing that a lot of people are kind of confused about with this, is they chose LCD screens as opposed to OLED OLED, which, OLED was chosen because less ghosting, there's not a lot of stutter, blurring, latency issues, they can drop all that down. So maybe in the future, they'll be able to do this with OLED. But yeah, this is the idea behind this headset. They're actually gonna show it off at Siggraph 2015, which is a conference, which is here in LA next week. oh cool So it will be here in LA next week maybe we might be able to get in, I don't know. Like we'll see if we can't like drop by and like see if we can check it out but it's a [INAUDIBLE] if you're going [INAUDIBLE] and you check it out, let us know. Or maybe if you like work at Stanford if you're a grad student there working on this project, email us That's all I'm saying, tomorrow at Cnet.com. Maybe we wanna come see it, but it's super cool. And I loved that Stanford even is like working on VR. They're like, hey we still have some challenges. And really, would you also agree that fatigue and motion Motion sickness are the two big challenges of VR headsets, like long-term fatigue? Yeah, I mean, that's gonna be a huge hurdle as people wear these headsets for longer and longer periods of time, I've tried on the newer headsets, and they seem to be We're resolving that issue, with the ghosting and having to look around and what not. But, adding that extra layer of being able to change depth is gonna make you feel like you're actually there and that you have actually control. Yeah. And there, instead of being beholden to Then whatever the presentation is so yeah, I mean and the OELD, I'd have to see that for myself to find out if that's really that big of issue because if they're promising that it's gonna make you less sick and then it still makes me sick cuz it's not an OELD. But this is cool, it's a cool step. I'm looking forward to checking it out if I get it. Interesting concept. So that's what's going on over up and Stanford and potentially at Steigrad next week, which is pretty cool. Yeah, neat. Well, here's what I got for you. This is a pretty quick story. Breaking your leg sucks, I think we can all I'll agree on that, but it doesn't suck for Mike North. He's from Outrageous Acts of Science on the Science Channel, and in the making on YouTube. And [UNKNOWN] is a big science guy, and he broke his leg, and he No. I don't wanna go with the standard broken castings that are either walking cast but no travel or crutches cast with travel. So this is Tomorrow Daily, you know it's got some cool tech in it. Why don't you show us that tech? So basically, you scan his foot and made a custom fitted cast allowing him to bear weight And travel, and what's even better he's like well I'm a science and tech guy, he added an Edison chip that powers a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, and a pressure sensor so he could see if his leg was healing, if it was swelling too much. Oh my god. And he's like, I'm not done yet, I want to go Iron Man status with this. He added a Bluetooth speaker to turn on music from his cast.>>But he can't dance, so I don't know why he did that.>>Yeah.>>That's really weird.>>You've been talking about that the whole time.>>I find that so ironic. He's like, hey, let's add music to my broken leg cast.>>But there's also there's even sensor lights, I mean, this thing is an incredible feat of technology. And I say feet because he broke his leg. Waa waa. Amazing. File that. That's an Ashley joke. That's an Ashley levels of bad ones. Actually, that was much better than your joke. Offensive. Wow look at this little speaker! But anyway, so there you go. It's a pretty cool tech. It's obviously not open for you broken leg enthusiasts. To get your hands on, or your feet on, but it's a, yeah, there you go. It looks pretty cool. That is a pretty rad [INAUDIBLE] I like that it's a way to also track how well your foot is doing, but that, there you go. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Thank you very much to Mike North and your cool foot Yeah, sack. You're really breaking the mold. That was pretty good, alright, I'll give you that, that was pretty good. Just FYI, he works with Fathom studio for this, like he 3D printed it. It says Fathom on it. And I saw a quick clip of him explaining I guess like it would track his foot as it was healing and if he was putting too much weight on it or if it got too swollen it would send information to his doctor. It would email his doctor, it was just kind of weird. That's pretty cool. That's pretty amazing. Cool. You love recording video on your phone and I'm going to tell you how You might, Disney might change that forever, make it even better. Alright, so, Disney research, we found on the show, Disney research kind of comes up with crazy stuff. Some creepy, some crazy, cool, just all the adjectives. It's all the things. So, Disney research back in the news with this algorithm that they're saying could turn traditional special effects upside down. That they, we could bring, kind of Even better special effects to just about everybody. And here's how they gonna do it. So through, again I have to kinda explain how this works. You can see some of the video and what it does here. But, when you have special effects in a video, you need accurate depth sensing, it's a must have. And you have to have these highly controlled environments You have these sort of depth censors that create invisible markers inside. And then that's why you see all the little ping pong balls in the different markers when people are doing special effects and visual effects. Because they need to be able to see what the depth is, so that they can build or remove, or add things to cyan and so on. So, what they've done is They have published a paper explaining how they have created an algorithm that can reverse engineer scene space, which scene is basically the depth data. So they are creating a scene space. So here's this input, you can see it's super, Like loud, noisy, messy. You can see in the chairs there's a lot of artifacts and stuff. This is with scene-space video processing. There is just about none of that. Which is pretty incredible.>>Yeah.>> And they're saying they've done this with this algorithm that can reverse engineer that information, depth information, that maybe is not even existent. Like so, even if you didn't create it with the intent of adding special effects to it. This algorithm can now suss out that depth information. It's taking rain out! Taking away rain. Look at that. Scene-space umbrella, they're calling it. Wait, it gets even better because they deblur video. So here's a blurry video, blurry cam video ew, terrible blurry cam. This is a patch, okay a little better, here's scene-space, literally almost none. LIke ridiculous, like the middle, in the middle of scene-space they are [UNKNOWN], amazing. Yeah that's really cool. They also do one with a guy like Jumping behind a lady and they literally just erase him from the video. Now, that's insane. He just goes away. They just get rid of him. So, they're saying that we can get this information regardless of whether or not it was created that way. So, that's the depth map that they can create without without having that information up front. They can just look at a video, and say we're going to create this depth information by, sort of, looking at the video, and the algorithm is going to understand, like, what exactly it is. So yeah, theoretically, this technology could trickle down all the way to to your smartphone, so pretty amazing. So, here's one they, they're going to create a mask here, and they're going to erase this horse. You can still sort of see it, because it's not perfect, but they erased that horse. Now is this a post thing? Here's the thing with- It's post right, this is all post? This is an, yeah, an algorithm that can read stuff, and then they're saying make it really, really easy for you in post. Like, this is something that would take a person in After Effects like a long time to do And they're saying they can make it, with this algorithm, you can do stuff very quickly and easily with it. So there's that guy, running right, it looks like he's wearing an invisibility cloak, right? Like if you can sort of see a shadow of him going by.>> [CROSSTALK] Yeah, he's a [UNKNOWN] This is incredible, because, now that everyone has a camera on their phone, we're getting a lot of footage that we wish was a little bit better. Yeah.>>Now, if we could only switch it from this, Make it- So this. Make it landscape. But yeah, no this is incredible. It's pretty great. I don't know why they're focusing on this but that's cool. Did you say focusing? [LAUGH] You're doing it, you don't even know. What a champion you are at bad puns. I love it. But yeah so that's your headlines, I hope you're entertained. You got lots to talk about with people over the weekend, all kinds of good stuff. But now we have to talk about what everybody over at CNET and Gamespot are playing right now, so check out, play this, and we'll be right back. Hey folks, you're watching Play This, the show where Gamespot and CNET editors tell you what you should be playing this week. So I'm playing Life Is Strange. It is an episodic game about a young girl with time bending powers. She can rewind time and stop time to solve puzzles. I've been playing Journey on the Playstation 4. It is my first time playing through it, and it is stunning. Recently I've been playing a game called No Pineapple Left Behind. And what that basically is is a A scathing critique of the No Child Left Behind Act. For me personally, it's King's Quest, A Night to Remember. The first episode in the new King's Quest series. I was a big fan of King's Quest back in the day and it's coming back in a really nice way. She has just gone back to her old home town and reunited with her old best friend. And they're trying to solve this weird murder mystery. And there's a lot of crazy stuff going on. and it's generally kind of weird, but also shows young women in a very sweet way. I really like the way the characters interact with each other. And it's pretty well-written. It's definitely worth checking out. [MUSIC] Visually it's a masterpiece, it's a work or art. If you get the chance, I definitely recommend giving that a try. [MUSIC] In the game, you're constantly pushing for turning children into pineapples because pineapples are more uniform and more Consistent in the children and how you're constantly firing teachers when they get to exhausted because they're trying to teach so much. And it's still really rough it just ended open house under the free download online. You can go try it out. I really liked my time with it. Under the whimsical The humor. The neat puzzles. And just very accessible. Just kinda a feel good game. Really lighten up my week. [MUSIC] Hi. Welcome back to the show. Every week we like to talk to you about some of the stuff we're into. Obviously we're into all this future tech and science and stuff like that. But believe it or not there's other things we're excited about this is Into It. [NOISE] I really Feel like you should have a smoking jacket- Actually listen. We're both into video games. That's true. And I think that we both picked a video game this week. Ones that we're pretty hyped about. Mine actually is one of the sames as someone from GameSpot. Mine is Life is Strange. Ooh, alright. Life is Strange, I've heard great things. So I just got it. I've heard everyone talking about it. Mm-hm. It's very It doesn't look like one where you're like, "WHOA, it just came out, I'm gonna play it." Yeah. You had to wait for word of mouth. It's not a young girl with powers where she can kind of rewind time. It's not really about that, though, it's one of those kind of a point-and-click Type adventures. It's more focused on the story. The rewinding and fast forwarding is kind of like the catch, the gimmick to get you into it. Okay. But it's great. I'm not really into these types of games. So I find myself wanting to click on everyone and hear what everyone has to say. And, what's really interesting to me is that it's from a female perspective It's very much a lot of drama that women go through, an and kind of how that, that whole world works, and it, it's very interesting to me to get that sort of perspective. Yeah It's like, you know how girls are catty to each other, and girls will hold grudge against a girl for Especially at that age. for texting, texting a guy Yeah and like, I'm having to deal with those situations, and it's, as much as a turn off as that may seem to another guy, like, it's very interesting, it's, it's a different Yeah perspective to me, so it's It is fun to kind of see what that's like. I am having a great time. I am still only on the first chapter>> It looks good>> and the rewinding thing. Like I find myself making a decision and then rewinding. seeing the other's decision, but ending up going back with my decision. I've made a few words, like, the girl goes, "maybe I shouldn't have done that". I'm like, "well, tough." Tough, my choice. What I wanted to do. For instance, there was this girl that was having this conflict with the security guard. And then he was being really mean to her. He was like I know you did it, I know you did this thing. And the choices were took a picture or go in and stop it. And I was like well I'm going to take a picture and so I took a picture and she goes. The Kale anonymous way. Well I should have went in there and stopped it and I was like nuh-uh, this is going to help me later. I know it. At some point he's going to be like. I'm not mean. Blah blah blah. But like, picture. You're the worst. You're busted. Yeah. [UNKNOWN] So, anyway, check it out. Again, it's got the rewind thing. It's pretty good. Which would be fun if you're not really sold on it. You can buy it by chapter. Okay. So you can buy chapter one for like $4 if it's your thing, so. Try it out. Come into this week. What game are you into this week? Well, it's not really a game that is brand new, but, and I've mentioned it before because I'm obsessed with it still, but there's a huge patch coming out. Splatoon 2.0 this week, today actually. I can't believe I'm still sitting in this chair. Well, it was yesterday, but it's amazing Platoon 2.0 is huge, just a huge update. They's redone some of the maps, they've re-adjusted some of the maps for better lane. They have added a couple of new guns, they raised the level cap. So now, instead of level 20, it's level 50. It's the level cap, with a huge That's huge. Huge, huge change. You might have caught the Splatling Gun. And there's also a paint bucket. This is a paint bucket called the Splosher, that you can just chuck buckets of paint at people. So a couple of new New guns, they have new tag matches where you can actually put together a squid squad. So producer Logan are you on the squid squad? I will be soon. Yeah, he's gonna be on squid squad [CROSSTALK] No he's not, no he's not. He's gonna [UNKNOWN] so he's gonna be on squid squad when he gets back. And then, so yeah you can actually, cuz right now if you play regular battles you can't Team up with your friends at all. And so now theyre like, ok now you can tag a friend and then you can tag friends of friends as well. And you can join a match where it's like, if you're only two people, it can be any number from two to four. So you can say, oh just me and Kale want to play, but we don't want to be pitted opposite each other because in the In the Turf Wars, like Ink Zones, you, they will pit you against other people, even though they're your friends. You can join them, even though you're on the same round as they are, but they'll put them on opposite teams. So, like, sometimes Mike and I will play, I am so confused right now>> Okay so sometimes No no I am sure they get it.>> I will join him in a match and I always get put in with that group of eight people, but most of the time we get pitted opposite each other, on opposite teams So we would play against each other even though we want to play as friends. Which is kind of junky. But now with tag match, you can play together all the time, you can always be on the same team and never against each other in the group of 8, which is pretty cool. Seems like they should have done that a long time ago. Anyways, huge update. Well here's the thing, huge update and I appreciate the fact that it's free, You don't have to pay for it. It's a huge addition to the game. There's a lot of new stuff that they've added. 40 something new items in the stores and stuff you can buy. And it's just all free. You just get it. It's free. It's fine. Just go download it. It's great. So if you're playing Splatoon, go and get that update if you haven't already, and if you're not playing Splatoon, what are you doing with your life? Probably not owning a Wii U. Play Life is Strange, and then go get a Wii U and get the Splatoon one, so that you can have Splatoon right there, bundled in. Cuz I, it's so good. Just saying, it's really good. Anyway. Yeah I don't know. Do you want to talk about user feedback. All right, let's do it. [MUSIC] So something a little bit different today because we didn't. We got a couple things different today. We do. Like exciting different. We do. Not just like, we're gonna say it backwards. We got some really cool stuff. So do you want to talk about Dave first? Dave, the cartoonist? Yeah, I love Dave. So check this out. Sometimes you guys do comments but sometimes you guys do some crazy cool art that's absolutely our favorite. I want to make sure we highlight that for sure. So one of the things is from Dave. You'll want to check this out. Dave drew this in response to us talking about robots and I said I would like to replace myself with a robot There is me as robot host and then somebody else has said that they would make a robot cat for me. And Dave did the honor of making robot dog, robot kitty>> I love this>> With my Walking Dead shirt on there, what does my [UNKNOWN] say? I can't tell. I don't know what it says. But Dave whipped this up. It's pretty Awesome. It's pretty great. I like that in a video. I load my phone up a few times like that and just laugh. Yeah. It's hilarious. Really great. So, Dave Abston is his name, A-B-S-T-O-N, if you wanna go check out some of his work. Yeah, yeah, if you rewind and check out his twitter account you can go and see- Stop time, rewind, go check it out. Well, we're on a video. That's true, you could just rewind- You could do it like Life is Strange style [SOUND]. If you get that, you get that if you play Life is Strange Alright, you want to talk about our second piece? So this ones really cool too. This is pretty great. So a few weeks ago we had a phone [UNKNOWN] named Carson. Carson sent in a picture and then sent us this, asked if he could have our address and we gave it to him and he wrote us a letter and he says, "Hello, It is Carson. Here are a couple of bands for you guys Here's your band, and it says Campbell's Crew on it. Campbell's Crew. Here it is for your slogan. It's Campbell's crew. I don't know if you can see it. Anyway, I'm going to put mine on. So he says they're from my nine year old little brother Campbell. He loves technology and Minecraft. Campbell has muscular dystrophy, mitochondrial disease, and cerebral palsy. He's very high spirited and wanted to share his love with you. He has a Facebook page that you're welcome to like. That is a pray page for Campbell. If you go somewhere cool please take a picture of your band in it. You can see examples in our Facebook page. Thank you so much Carson Fartner. And then his Facebook page is facebook.com/Campbell, C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L-S-K-R-U. SKU it says. So Campbell's crew was K-R-U. Okay. C-R-E-W And then, he sent this over. Apparently in September 14th through 20th it's Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week so just FYI. And also, he sent a picture of his nice family which is delightful. Thank you Carson that was very sweet of you. And we're happy to wear your bracelets. Yeah, that's super cool, and support your brother. Campbell, bring those Endermans, man. Oof. I don't think I can handle Endermans. I would like to issue something I call the Campbell challenge right now. Oh, okay, there's a Campbell challenge? Which is, like he said, I challenge all three of us, this weekend, to see who could take the better picture with Campbell's bracelet on Okay. Whoever can create the better picture of the three of us. Alright. So it's me, Ashley, and producer Logan, checking... I got this on lock. Okay. Logan says he's got it on lock. We're gonna come-- You might be doing the most exciting thing-- On Monday, Campbell and everyone else make sure to tune in, And see who takes the best photo. I have to say, it's actually Tuesday, because we won't be here on Monday. We might periscope, but we won't have a show going on Monday, FYI. Yeah, so Tuesday, make sure to tune in and see who has the best photo I don't know, I think I might win. Think you're gonna take it? Yeah. I feel like, I might be the dark horse here, but I feel like maybe I can make it work. Yes. I think I can make it work. It's gonna be good. OKay. And I promise- Also- I won't cheat by using my dog for adorable factor. I won't use my dog. Get extra points for being cute. I don't promise that. All right, fair enough. Also, and if you're in the comments you can place bets as to who you think is going to win. Yeah, please, please. We're gonna rank them first, second, third, It's not just going to be winners. No, yeah. There's going to be a loser. There will be an absolute loser. Okay, good. It's gonna be kale. So thank you Campbell. That was awesome user feedback. Yeah, super great. Thanks Carson, really awesome. Thanks for sending over the bracelets and now it's time to talk about our last [UNKNOWN] user feedback which is our phonetographer of the day. [MUSIC] All right, so. Our phonetographer of the day is Alec, he took this with his iPod Touch 5th gen. This reminds me of like Bioshock right. yeah it's pretty cool. You know Bioshock. He said I recently went on a trip to Colorado. We decided to go to the art district to look at some art of course. And on our way to the next studio we found this alley way fenced to the world for people to only view in all it's amazing beautiful glory. I'm a big fan of your show so thank you. Yeah, great picture. I love that the bars got that cast bluish light so you can still see them, they're not totally blacked out. So that's a pretty great picture. Yeah, it's pretty cool. If anybody was wearing a Campbell wristband in this photo, they'd probably win. Definite winner. But it's not, so you can't win. You're not in the contest. But listen, really good picture, Alec. Really appreciate you sending that in. If you guys want to send in your phonetography, three things. Email us Tomorrow@Cnet.com, put your picture in there, tell us a story and then also give us permission. Give us permission. You dofus. Everyone's given us permission thus far. Yeah? Everyone's been really cool. P.S. I give you permission. It's fine. I give full permission to use my pictures. That's all you gotta say. But yeah, that's it for the show today. We got Campbell's challenge. Campbell's challenge on Tuesday. Tuesday! We will not be here, again, not be here on Monday, but if you keep tabs on Twitter, on my Twitter, [UNKNOWN], we might be periscoping, Taylor and I might be periscoping and maybe do like a fan Q&A, just come on and ask us some questions or something, from a very special location. Right. That may or may not be our new studio. Oh, that's right! You may or may not get a look at our new studio, which is like 400 times better than this one. Yeah, but we won't be in the studio part of it, but the green room is done. We'll be in there. Look, I'm just excited to be there again. It was really neat. It's really nice. Or may or may not be there. Yeah, we may or may not be there. I have to just triple check that people aren't going to get mad. That's all I'm saying. I don't care, so. Kale is all about it. So regardless, I think we'll try to do something on Monday, but just keep your eyes on Twitter for that. Anyway Find us online at TomorrowDaily.com, send a friend over. Share the show, that always helps us out. And then of course, find us online @TomorrowDaily or @AshleyEsqueda. Or @KhailAnonymous. And that's it, we'll see you guys on Tuesday. Campbell's Challenge, it's gonna be great. Great. But until then, be good humans. We'll see you guys next time. Bye. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]