How to be a ghost, without dying

How long will it be before we’re producing holographic home movies? Not long. Not long until we’re recording, lifestreaming and projecting phantom-like images of ourselves and our loved ones. Like John Anderton [in ‘Minority Report’] reliving joyful moments with his son Sean. Like John Anderton being tormented by a digital ghost.

Actually longer than I thought, because that’s a quote from a blog post I wrote a decade ago pondering the double edged sword of being able to record and relive moments of our lives in ever increasing degrees of realism. I was reminded of it when I read Clay Bavor -VP, Virtual and Augmented Reality at Google — announcing Memory Machines: VR180 cameras, and capturing life as you see it, a few months ago -

I’ve been using the VR180 prototypes for a while now. It’s easy to share the captures with my family and friends. They can… step into the moment as if they were there… Also relive them myself, in a way that makes me feel like I’m right back in each moment.

It would have been easy to dismiss that as hyperbole, just another exaggeration in an industry bedeviled by them (Magic Leap anyone?). On the one hand I was inclined to do so, because most of the 360 degree video I’d seen was anything but immersive. On the other hand I’ve been a long time believer in the 180 degree format because high resolution stereoscopic video, that could be comfortably consumed in a regular (non-swivel) chair struck me as a superior proposition to lower resolution, monoscopic 360 video that required acrobatics to view and presented logistical headaches to film (where do I hide myself?).

So I thought it was time for Simvirtua to put that belief to the test after the Lenovo Mirage point-and-shoot camera went on sale recently. This is one of the first cameras to market supporting Google’s VR180 format (read last year’s announcement on the YouTube blog). I’ll leave the detailed reviews to the tech news sites as I want to focus here on some of the things I’ve learned while putting the camera through its paces over the last few weeks.

A playlist of 34 VR180 videos recorded in Ballybunion beach in Co. Kerry.

First, the things I expected. Stereoscopic (3D) 180 at 4K resolution is far superior to monoscopic 360 at any resolution. The quality of the imagery from the Mirage, both video and stills, crosses the ‘being there’ threshold for me, while most other VR video I’ve tried did not. And the cut-off borders on the periphery of the 180 degrees don’t interfere with that unless the framing is particularly poor. I can rotate my head left and right as far as it will comfortably go before the fringes are visible. Unlike with 360, no torso rotation is required. All the more comfortable for the couch.

Now of course this is all subjective. My ‘being there’ threshold might not be the same as yours. My old neck injury might artificially limit my degrees of tolerable neck rotation. And maybe you’ve see plenty of great 360 degree video.

A playlist of 13 VR180 videos shot at Bunratty Castle and folk village / theme park.

Primary among the things I didn’t expect was the effect of VR180 stills. There’s something strangely unsettling about seeing family (including canines) frozen in place when you’re brain is telling you this is reality. My lizard brain has no problem processing VR180 video, because it simply feels real. But VR180 photographs are another matter, probably I think because they dip into the Uncanny Valley -

The Uncanny Valley was first defined by psychologist Ernst Jentsch in 1906 as an “…intellectual uncertainty between the animate and inanimate that tends to provoke a certain kind of anxiety.”

Normally in the world of computing our reference point for all things Uncanny Valley is inanimate objects looking animate. But in this case the anxiety is evoked by animate things looking inanimate! However, beyond the initial unease VR180 photos are genuinely transfixing and indeed generated the most fascination among my own family.

The other thing I didn’t expect is how weird it is to be an invisible ghost to the people I see when reviewing VR180 video in a headset. Yes, I was standing by the camera while I was filming and yes, they sometimes made ‘eye contact’ (actually lens contact), but any fleeting glimpse fails to convince my lizard brain that they can see me in the here and now. While the same brain is telling me that I’m actually there. It’s truly discombobulating.

It was only a few weeks ago that I got around to watching the 2017 movie ‘A Ghost Story’ starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck. [SPOILER ahead!]. Wistfully profound it centers around the ghost of Affleck’s dead character striving to connect with his bereaved lover (Mara) who remains oblivious to his supernatural presence. The dead trying to be with the living. It’s the exact reverse of the scenario in ‘Minority Report’ where the grieving father craves to connect with the holographic ‘ghost’ of his dead son. The living trying to be with the dead.

10 years ago I ruminated on the troubling notion of using ‘virtual reality’ to be with a ghost. I never imagined how disconcerting it might be using Virtual Reality to be a ghost.

[ James is running a workshop in Dublin on October 5th introducing people to the business applications of Virtual and Augmented Reality. He promises it won’t be as morbid as the above! Register here.]