My Taiwanese XR Chronicles part 3: Vive Pro Eye hands on, meeting with iStaging, Lyra VR and Women in XR!

In this third and last article about my trip to Taiwan (here you are the links to my first and second one, if you missed them), I want to tell you about some other amazing XR stuff that I did there. Do you know for instance that I have tried the Vive Pro Eye?

iStaging

iStaging is one of the companies that I loved the most in Taiwan. It is based in Taipei since 2014 and its purpose is letting people create high-quality content in a fast and effective way. This translates for the moment with a complete software solution that lets you create virtual tours easily.

I have tried its software in my office before going to Taiwan and then also had a live demo of some of its features in iStaging’s beautiful office. I have still to write the review here on my blog (eh, I have a backlog of at least 10 articles! :O), but for now I can tell you that it really delivers what it promises. It is a high-quality easy-to-use product for virtual tour creations. It lets you create virtual tours by taking photos both with expensive cameras and with a cheap mount that makes your smartphone rotate so that you can shoot 360 photos by just using your phone. You then go to the web interface, assemble the photos, set the interest points with a simple interface, and the tour is ready to go live in whatever website you want.

iStaging solution has even the feature of guided tours, that was live demoed to me in Taipei: basically, the real estate agent can call via the iStaging app its customer (that must have the app installed as well), and guide him/her in all the tour, setting the point of view of the photos, selecting interest points and so on… so that the virtual tour becomes like a tour in real life, where everything gets described live and by voice.

I was also told about some future features of the product, but I can’t tell you much, or the CEO will kill me and use my meat to stuff some xialongbao. Let me just tell you: “not only photos”.

I was so impressed, that my company has decided to become partner of iStaging (and that’s why you can obtain a 10% discount on the iStaging plans using the discount codes that you find in the banner of this blog (or that you can request me via e-mail)).

Apart from the demos, it has been also interesting talking with iStaging about the virtual tour business. We VR enthusiast know about virtual tours a lot, so we may think that it is already a saturated market, but actually it is not (and by some tests that we did in Italy, I can confirm that). There are still lots of companies and people interested in having one and even a lot of them that don’t know about their existence and go WOW when they try them.

iStaging people told me that selling their product worldwide, they noticed that actually, every market has its specific behavior. For instance, in Europe, its product is sold mostly to photographers, that shoot the photos and then propose the virtual tour service to real estate companies, while in Asia, the real estate agencies want to own the platform and manage everything themselves. This shows how you have to adapt your VR business to the various markets you are entering in.

Another smart point of the company has been the implementation of cross-platform. iStaging tours live in the web and can be exploited via phone, PC and VR headset. They made this choice so that even if the VR market grows slowly, the tours are still enjoyable using traditional devices and the company can survive.

Regarding the real estate market, iStaging told me that virtual tours are used mostly for mid-range houses. Cheap houses (e.g. 100K$ flats) are so cheap that virtual tours are not necessary. Very big houses (e.g. 10M$ villas) want pro services like drone videos and full 3D reconstruction with laser scans. The in-between range is the one that is interested in 360 photos virtual tours to sell better.

I really enjoyed my time in iStaging, from both a personal and professional side. I want to thank Rene, Andria, and Stella for the time spent together.

Vive Pro Eye

When I visited HTC’s Headquarters in Taipei, I didn’t only get some exclusive info on the Vive Cosmos, but I have also been able to try the Vive Pro Eye.

The Vive Pro Eye is the latest enterprise product by HTC, that is a Vive Pro with embedded the eye tracking by Tobii. I think that eye tracking is a disruptive technology for VR since it can enable a better UX, where you have just to look at objects to activate them (so you don’t need to rotate your head or move your hands every time). It also enables better data analysis on what the user is doing (Eh Zuck, you want our eyes’ data… I know that!) and this is fundamental for instance if you’re designing a new supermarket and want to see where the users usually look. It can also be useful for training, to see where the user is looking and check if he is paying attention to the elements he must care about. This shows you how the Vive Pro Eye can offer a lot to enterprise users.

I can’t write a full review about it because I have just tried it for some minutes, but I can give you my first hands-on impressions. The Vive Pro Eye is identical to a Vive Pro, with the difference that there are two eye–tracking inserts around the two lenses. Nothing else changes (apart from a little azure ring around the two front cameras, so that you can distinguish it from the original Pro). This means that if you already have tried the Vive Pro, you know what to expect: a comfortable device, with a very good OLED display and high-quality audio. The Vive Pro is already appreciated by all professionals because it is a great device, and its only problem is that it is quite expensive.

The Vive Pro Eye adds to it eye tracking. The addition of the eye tracking doesn’t change the comfort of the device at all. Since the sensors are embedded into the device, they don’t risk being a bit uncomfortable as other eye-tracking devkits.

For what concerns the software, I’ve just tried an avateering demo, and the calibration. Because yes, even the eye tracking by Tobii requires a calibration step to be used: the first time that a new user wears the headset, he has to put it correctly on his head, then look at some points on the screen (up, down, left, right, etc…) to calibrate the tracking algorithms for the particular user. It is not a long step (30 seconds – 1 minute are enough), but it represents friction for mainstream usage of eye tracking. I know that some corporate customers don’t like it at all, because maybe they want a lot of people to use the VR experience and so don’t want to waste time with calibrations.

The UX of the calibration offered by Tobii is incredibly neat. I found it a bit more elegant than the one offered by 7Invensun. It guided me perfectly in all the process, by also resulting nice to be seen.

After the calibration, I was able to try the avateering demo: it was a simple demo where I had a mirror in front of me, and looking at it, I could see my face as being the one of a beautiful blond anime girl (I guess that the Virtual Cast guy would be so happy of trying it). It was incredible that the eyes of the woman were able to follow mine perfectly. And also the eye blink was perfectly tracked. I tried closing one eye, moving my eyes, moving my head, etc… and my blonde alter ego was able to follow me perfectly. The demo also featured some light bulbs around the mirror that lighted up if I looked at them. Even them worked very well.

I had the impression that the eye tracking of the Vive Pro Eye was very smooth and reactive. It was incredibly good. Regarding its downsides: as the one of 7Invensun, it has the issue that if you look in the very peripheral region of your eyes, the tracking may become a bit more unreliable.

Dilun and Luca

I had a wonderful night eating at the night market with Dilun of LyraVR and Luca from XPG. We ate amazing food and talked about VR: since Luca is Italian, I was also able to speak my language… even if in the end speaking a bit Italian, a bit English and a bit Chinese I was getting a bit crazy 😀

Lyra VR is an interesting startup focused in offering a VR experience that can mix music and technology: it is creating a tool to let you create (and share) your symphonies in VR, in an innovative way. Dilun has told me also about all the other projects that they are making and distributing and all sounded interesting.

Luca has instead told me a lot of interesting things about OSVR, since he worked at the project some years ago. If the name OSVR is new to you… well, it was a project with a lot of potential that came out in the period of the Oculus DK2. It was a headset made by Razer, completely opensource, from hardware to software. It was fully hackable. So, for instance, if you didn’t like the display, theoretically, you could disassemble the device and substitute it with one that had a higher resolution. Impressive, isn’t it?

Unluckily the project died a long and painful death for various reasons (one of them: it was the least comfortable headset that I have ever tried). But Luca told me that it has been fundamental for the history of VR. Since it was completely hackable, it has been used for the preliminary tests of various VR products… that have so been able to come to light thanks to it (I can’t tell you the names of this products, sorry, it was a confidence). OSVR has been one of the forgotten silent heroes of the technology that we love so much. Now Sensics, one of the companies behind it, is actively working on the OpenXR standard thanks to the work performed on OSVR, and so the soul of OSVR will continue living inside OpenXR… and so it will be the basis for another fundamental VR element.

Women in XR

I also had the great pleasure of talking with two girls of a local XR community. I had so the occasion to talk with them about the local VR market and how it is being a woman in XR. Time spent with them was very nice.

Regarding the Taiwanese market, the girls told me that in Taiwan there is interest for VR and the local government is investing in the technology. But the internal market is quite little, so VR companies there try to make business with foreign companies. VR in Taiwan is usually used for selling houses (virtual tours), creating art experiences (like the one by Hsin Chien Huang), for being a V-tuber and for enjoying virtual characters. There are similarities with Mainland China, but the Mainland is of course bigger, faster and richer.

I have asked them how it is being a woman in XR in Taiwan. They told me that it is really ok, they see no discrimination of being a woman in the field. Yes, there are mostly men, but this is not a problem. They reported me two issues:

• Most VR games and experiences are tailored at men;
• Usually, girls earn less money than men or have more difficulties in getting investments.

These are the two points that every woman in XR has told me until now… so I guess that this is what we all should work on to create more equality in our ecosystem.

In the end, they left me a link to their local Facebook community, and invited me to join. I leave it here to you, so that if you want to join a vibrant XR community in Taipei, you can.

In Taiwan, I met a lot of amazing people and tried so many interesting technologies. It has been a wonderful journey and I miss being there sometimes.

I hope you liked going on a virtual journey with me… and if it is the case, please consider sharing this post with your friends! (and supporting me on Patreon…)