On Friday, May 20th I participated in Seattle’s Creative Mornings talk to learn about what POP’s technical/creative team has been up to lately.
Creative Mornings is a breakfast lecture series for the creative community. This month’s theme is “Reality” and they invited Dave Curry, VP of Emerging Trends & Technology at POP, and Eric Rak, Associate Creative Director at POP, to talk about their recent Mixed Reality HoloLens project. POP is collaborating with Microsoft’s HoloLens team to create this “mixed” reality.
Staying with the “Reality” theme, Dave and Eric reminded us of the three main categories of technology altered “reality”:
1. VR (Virtual Reality): This type of experience uses special electronic equipment – such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors – and is completely immersive. A user steps inside a world…it’s all about teleportation. Apparently virtual reality will be used in NYC in July to promote the new, upcoming Ghostbusters movie.
2. AR (Augmented Reality): This type of experience is a bit flatter. Augmented Reality is defined as a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.
3. MR (Mixed Reality): Also referred to as hybrid reality, this type of experience blends the real world with the virtual world. Some examples are Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap and Canon MREAL System.
Dave and Eric talked about their recent Mixed Reality project and focused on all the challenges and issues that arose throughout this very new world for them.
The talk was very interesting. Though Spatial Dev doesn’t work with Mixed Reality, it was interesting to see that they had to keep in mind some of the same core principals and best practices that we use at Spatial Dev to create successful projects for our clients:
• Building the right, small core team that will lead the project to success.
• Dedicating a space in the office (“war room”) that encourages the collection of ideas, brainstorming, etc.,
• Testing the device/app. Dave and Eric both spent time explaining how the team spent a lot of time wearing the HoloLens and made sure they learned from being a user of the device.
• The importance of rapid prototyping.
• Research and studying existing demos; digging into sample code; auditing the pros and cons of similar existing projects.
• The importance of team collaboration.
The talk was very insightful and it was a great opportunity to run into a couple of old friends. I look forward to the upcoming talks this summer.
