Benjamin Briggs: That’s pretty impressive and it’s actually practical that you do that because people learn usually kinetically with their hands, and if you are telling them and you are showing them at the same time they have a better chance of retaining whatever it is that you are teaching.
Patrick Campaign: Absolutely, audio, visual, tactile, that’s three ways to teach.
Benjamin Briggs: Yes indeed. How do we interest the person who is not very tech savvy? How do we interest them in smart glasses?
Patrick Campaign: Well, the biggest question is how efficient do you want your life to be? Do you want to spend 3 or 4 hours at home trying to make phone calls? Or do you want to do that either while you are driving or out on the town or out walking in the park or taking videos or taking pictures? Some of the resolutions on cameras are just as high as some of the ones you purchase on professional cameras now.
Benjamin Briggs: Yes indeed.
Patrick Campaign: So, you can just make a smart little deft move on your glasses or just say “Click” on some models and it just takes a picture for you and you don’t have to worry about it.
Benjamin Briggs: The reason I ask is because the learning curve for most technology, people are uncomfortable with learning anything new. You know we have a few people who still are operating off of Windows XP Operating system. So, the learning curve, is it intimidating?
Patrick Campaign: A lot of the companies understand that the learning curve can be pretty steep especially with new pieces equipment which is why a lot of them are actually hiring neuroscientists and psychologists to try to figure out what are the most natural ways for people to interact with technology. There is one particular company; you might see their advertisements online called the Meta space glasses. Its interface is very similar to how a baby interacts with the world. If you want something, all you have to do is reach out and grab it. That’s exactly what they do. If they want to look at something closer, they bring it up to their face or try to make it bigger. That’s where the “zoom” function always resided from. They are making things a lot more natural and a lot easier to learn.
Benjamin Briggs: And, I want to get into that. It’s more virtual reality related, and we will talk about that as well. But, back to the glasses, what is the cost? What is the cost of these technological wonders?
Patrick Campaign: That’s always tough to answer. It’s kind of like asking how much does a car costs. How many spiffs do you want? What is your motive use? Am I going to suggest a Lamborghini to the garbage man or the pizza boy, yeah I don’t know about that?
Benjamin Briggs: He might have a trust fund.
Patrick Campaign: That’s also true.
Benjamin Briggs: What are the specs of the models that you are familiar with?
Patrick Campaign: Gotcha. Well, as of today, when Smart glasses first got announced about two and half years ago, there is now about 22 different types of Smart glass models.
Every one of them come out of different companies. Every one of them has different specs. If you are looking at raw price, the least expensive that you’ll find is about $400 dollars. The most expensive, which is another one advertised a lot, the Microsoft Hololens which has actually just been on sale for developers about two weeks ago, is $3,000 dollars. So, the specs range drastically from just monochrome to being multi-color, high definition, 3D vision, and can actually interact with the room around you. It’s pretty impressive, the range of all this stuff.
Benjamin Briggs: Well, I hope today has helped our fellow listeners and readers. Let’s talk about Oculus Rift.
Patrick Campaign: Ok
Benjamin Briggs: Give me something. And just for the record, Dr. Campaign and I are huge techies.
Patrick Campaign: Oh yeah, and as you mentioned about the anime convention stuff, I’ve always been huge into like the video gaming industry. I was a huge gamer growing up, so video gaming and eye care, well, that merges into techware pretty easily. Uh, Oculus Rift! Kick started back in 2012. People thought that was going to be a flounderer and all of a sudden they got two and half million dollars.
Benjamin Briggs: Two and a half million dollars?
Patrick Campaign: Holy mackerel. And, now all of a sudden, within the next one year, within the next year and a half, sorry, 15 other companies said, “Oh guess what, we’re doing virtual reality as well.”
Benjamin Briggs: Exactly.
Patrick Campaign: Huh, imagine that! Oculus Rift, great one, most emulated tech out there. Facebook purchased them. They are going to have a lot of technology involved in that.
Benjamin Briggs: What is Oculus Rift?
Patrick Campaign: Oculus Rift is the pivotal virtual reality headset available. It was the one that spurred the dawning of virtual reality today. The specs on it are really impressive. The first generation equipment is always a little costly to start out with but already they’ve been doing major improvements just over the last 3 years.
