Immersive technology is all around us. It’s still very early days, but soon immersive tech will be such a part of your day, you’ll forget what life was like before it.
Let me paint a picture for you.
You’re sitting on the couch at home. The TV is on. Let’s say you’ve got a decent size smart TV. An LED or something like that and let’s say you’re watching the footy.
So the action is on. It’s a pretty normal TV experience so far. Except outside of the dimensions of the screen, something else is happening. On the surrounding wall, you can see player stats, and real-time player tracking.
This information covers your entire wall. And as you glance on the arm of the couch you see that it’s actually a touch pad. Not a real one, but like a projected image of a touch pad on the arm of your couch. Around that image are numbers, and controls. Basically everything you need to control the TV and the information surrounding it.
Later that night after the footy, a documentary comes on. Something with David Attenborough narrating. Maybe the plains of the Serengeti or something like that.
There’s the TV feed that you see on the TV, but you feel more immersed in this doco for some reason. That’s because your entire room now looks like the plains of the Serengeti. The grassy knoll from which the lions stalk their prey extends across the entire wall. You look to the ceiling and can see the clear blue sky and the piercing light from the sun.
Over to your left a zebra casually walks towards the kitchen door. And then like you’re in some giant bubble, the whole room moves with the action as the lion hunts the zebra.
You aren’t watching TV anymore, you’re immersed in it.
You might think the above sounds amazing. And it is. However, you might also be thinking I’ve had a few too much to drink over the weekend and that’s just crazy talk.
Well it’s not.
As I’ve said before immersive tech is much closer than you think. And it’s because of all the sensors, processors, cameras and microchips that make it all happen.
Oh did I forget that there are companies that can do what I just described, right now?
Microsoft [NASDAQ:MSFT] last year demonstrated to the world their IllumiRoom. This was a projector that made the boundaries of your gaming console (specifically the Xbox) extend beyond the TV screen.
Well Microsoft have just taken it one step further with SurroundWeb.
The SurroundWeb research report from Microsoft can be viewed in full here.
But in short this is the part of the abstract that caught my attention:
‘We introduce SurroundWeb, the first least-privilege platform for immersive room experiences. SurroundWeb is a “3D Browser” that gives web pages the ability to display across multiple surfaces in a room, adapt their appearance to objects to present in that room, and interact using natural user input.‘
Basically Microsoft research just described immersive tech.
You might say they only describe web pages in that extract. True, but last time I checked I can watch Netflix, BBC, ABC iView and others all through web pages.
But it’s not just tech giants like Microsoft developing this kind of technology. Because there’s more to something like SurroundWeb than the brand name.
In order for something like that to work you need countless amounts of processors, sensors, cameras and GPUs.
And someone has to make all that technology. Here’s the thing, Microsoft doesn’t make a lot of it. But there are some pioneering companies that do. Some of these companies I’ve already recognised and have tipped for our Revolutionary Tech Investor subscribers.
Of course I can’t name them here, because our RTI subscribers pay good money for that privilege. But what I can tell you is that the opportunities that immersive tech presents are enormous.
The fact is Microsoft is developing this kind of tech now. And right now it’s applicable to rooms. But technology is moving forward at an astounding rate. It’s all based on a new law that’s shifted the very fundamentals of technology.
And it means that technology is using other technology to make new technology. It might sound a bit funny but it’s going to open up more opportunity in the next 10 years than the previous 250 years.
Microsoft’s SurroundWeb is just the beginning. Soon it will be your living room, kitchen surfaces, bedroom…your whole house that’s interactive.
Then you’ll notice your digital life blends seamlessly and is frictionless with your car. Then your office. And finally your entire day-to-day life.
This is how technology progresses, and it happens quickly. So quickly you barely notice it. It’s almost invisible to you. And that’s what good technology does, it improves your life in ways that you don’t realise. Then one day you look back and wonder, how did we ever manage before all this?
Regards,
Sam Volkering+