- 8 months ago
Norris and Joe speak with Joanna Popper of Hewlett-Packard, and get an inside look of HP’s new VR headset, Reverb.
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00:00hey welcome back to checkpoint xp esports and gaming radio we are here at the national
00:10association of broadcasters conference in beautiful las vegas nevada in fact we are at the las vegas
00:15convention center we'd now like to welcome joanna popper to the show she's the head of virtual
00:20reality and location-based entertainment for hp global joanna thank you so much for giving us some
00:25of your time today thank you for inviting us we're excited to be here all right so we're going to
00:28start with just some real basic questions i gotta ask because at the end of the day we all have
00:32some level of gaming in our background so what is the best video game of all time of all time oh my
00:40gosh i guess i'm like old school like a ms pacman lady there is no wrong answer it's old school old
00:46school i won't say there isn't any wrong answer there's some wrong answer a wrong answer
00:52we can't do it without the corporate overlords getting angry if i say it now
00:58i'll say this ms pacman is not the wrong answer it is not ms pacman's amazing answer yeah all right
01:05women power og you gotta you know absolutely that's right all right so let's talk about virtual reality
01:10as a concept there have been multiple attempts dating dating back all the way to the 90s to make
01:15vr stick but this time it does seem to be more than just that kind of passing fad why do you think that
01:20is well vr actually went back even earlier than that i went back to the 50s 60s at that point was
01:25very much in the academic institutions and in the military okay but at hp we see virtual reality and
01:32immersive computing as the next wave of computing so we see it much you know we love it for gaming and
01:38we love it beyond gaming so we have a focus both on location-based entertainment and gaming as well as
01:43on enterprise and so it's being currently used in training in architecture engineering and construction
01:50in product dev so the the great cars that you're that your gamers are buying or you know lifting
01:57around in sure they you know many of those designs are being created and being brought to life using
02:04virtual reality as part of product design so it's not just a gaming thing now and so i think it's
02:09important here is that we see it as the next wave of computing so today you know we're all in our
02:14mobile phone wave right we all are attached to our phone if you go all the way back hp you know was
02:19very strong in that you know desktop wave that pc wave even further back the mainframe wave you know
02:25the the origins of hp comes from two founders in a garage 80 years ago with walt disney creating the
02:32movie fantasia so really really i had no idea palo alto for you know one of the first silicon valley
02:38companies two founders in a garage creating products for fantasia so really really cool
02:44legacy around media around entertainment or um which you know nab is all about and so for us we've
02:50always been a bit about inventing and reinventing the future in technology and so vr is an immersive
02:56computing we see as that next wave of what computing will be and speaking of that next wave though is
03:01that a lot of consumers and especially that we've heard from a lot of our listeners and viewers is that
03:06there's still that you know cost prohibition that goes into vr you know what is hp doing to sort of
03:13combat that and sort of make vr a lot more accessible to consumers sure so the area that i particularly
03:18focus on is called location-based entertainment that would basically be anywhere you go to do vr
03:22outside your home so it could be in a movie theater it could be at a park a theme park it could be at
03:27an arcade it could be in museum it could be at a retailer and one of the things that i think is
03:33important i think that most people will have their first best virtual reality experience in a location
03:39based entertainment experience so something you couldn't do at home so a type of game whether
03:44because it's it's a it takes a large space or it's multiplayer so something that you can you know
03:49fun that you can have taking down zombies taking down ghosts taking taking uh you know petting
03:55aliens or you know interacting maybe not petting but you know interacting right or interacting with
04:03dinosaurs maybe we all like we want to pet aliens interacting with dinosaurs and doing that with
04:08your friends and family and so we're working really closely with some of the leading location-based
04:13entertainment players like zero latency spaces nomadic two-bit circus vr studios dave and busters to bring
04:20them the best technology so that when you come and you and you you interact with virtual reality with
04:26your friends and family for the price of just the ticket so you're them not you know you don't have
04:30to buy all the hardware set up all their hardware at home troubleshoot the hardware if that you know if
04:34you're not so technical and so we're working closely with them to give you that great experience so
04:39we're also working we also do have uh consumer products as well that are that you know are the right
04:44price for consumers that you can buy at lots of retailers right so essentially what you're talking about is
04:49like you go to the smithsonian and they have a specific exhibit maybe about you know dinosaurs
04:55you put the vr headset on and you get to see you know in full scale what the size of the dinosaur
05:00might be and in motion that's an example where do you guys live detroit detroit detroit awesome so
05:06there's i'm sure there's a lot of great arcades in detroit like imagine going to a you know here we
05:13are in vegas right so let's talk about vegas in vegas at the mgm there's an experience by zero latency
05:18and you go in with up to like six friends something and you are doing a there's one where
05:25you're like shooting zombies there's another one where you're doing a p versus uh you know person
05:29versus person right pvp and so you're you know it's very much that competitive spirit of who has
05:35the high score who got more kills and so you can do that right now today putting on a backpack a vr
05:41backpack and putting on a vr headset and come away seeing who has a high score i will tell you i did it
05:47a lot just last week with a bunch of friends and industry colleagues i did not have the high
05:51score i know you guys are upset i did get killed we are i did that question was coming next the company
05:57and he somehow seemed to beat me i don't know what's that about well i would have a golf handicap
06:03tech thing in some vr i would never suggest that you let him win i mean no no i mean just to be nice
06:08for you know people have egos i had to let him win exactly and then there's the void is another one
06:12that's here in las vegas and they the void has great experiences with star wars with ghostbusters
06:19with uh wreck it ralph and beyond so you're actually inside the experience being fully immersed
06:25and having that interactivity with your friends and family right i'm glad you're kind of talking
06:29about this immersion based entertainment because a lot of the times one of the things that people
06:33think of when they think of vr they're thinking like okay i'm gonna go sit in a chair and i'm gonna
06:38put on a headset and maybe it'll just be like a roller coaster or whatnot you know i could get that
06:42experience by going on a roller coaster but you don't always have a roller coaster handy that that's
06:47true that's true i broke my nose on a roller coaster you did that's a story that's a story
06:52so i'll tell you that story after we're done here uh so you're talking though more about things where
06:58you are having input as much as just experiencing it you know you're putting on the backpack you're
07:02moving around yeah and that's really where vr starts to get very interesting you know we started
07:07following the the concept of the omni mill years ago this thing where you could actually strap in and
07:12move around and have your input be dictated by your feet and it's it's all about getting us closer
07:16and closer to that true one-to-one experience absolutely uh and it sounds like hp is really
07:22making some steps towards that we are we're excited about it we're really excited about what we've done
07:26so far and so much more to come so we have this beautiful headset here that we're we got to try on
07:32the headset just before we sat down and if there's one thing that we know it fit my hair first of all
07:37which is a small miracle it did all right i mean one of the things that we we run into all the time
07:43with uh the vr headsets especially uh in those first couple generations of them is they're not
07:48particularly comfortable to put on like you could never wear it for more than an hour you know what
07:52i mean like your head would be killing you this thing was very comfortable and very easy to put on
07:57which was nice it's um i'll chat about it so there's a couple of things that the the our team
08:02focused on what creating the headset so it's called the hp reverb it's already shipping late
08:06april so coming very very very soon and so there's three main things one it's inside out tracking
08:13which means that it's based on the windows mixed reality system which means that you don't have to
08:19set up a lot of tracking and outside cameras to make it work so it's much easier in terms of the
08:24setup it's kind of plug and play if you have the if you have the right the right gaming or high
08:28performance computer right so that's one two we focused on the resolution so we were hearing from
08:35a lot of our customers that they wanted much more high high fidelity and better graphics and so this
08:40is actually 2160 by 2160 per eye wow so very very high resolution so very excited about that great for
08:48gaming and great great for training great for lots lots of industries and then three as you guys
08:54mentioned it's designed really well so it's only 1.1 pounds um and and even that due to this great
09:02the the the way that it was designed in the back a lot of the weight comes off the front of the face
09:06and onto the back and as you we all noticed you could also put your ponytail through or your long hair
09:11through so this has this yeah not just a ponytail but the big thing for me was that i could wear my
09:16glasses glasses because both you guys good finally someone has figured out that hey a lot of people who
09:21like video games also wear glasses it's been diagram overlap there's a little bit of an overlap in that
09:26venn diagram so it's nice to be able to actually wear my glasses with this both these guys hair worked in
09:30it and they're both their glasses worked in it so that was that was a good feat so hats off to the
09:34engineers at hp who designed the hp reverb so i do want to hit on on esports just for a minute we are an
09:40esports show after all yes uh hp has become very active in the esports scene you're sponsoring things
09:44like overwatch league major endemic brands cloud9 counter logic gaming astralis what has it been like
09:50getting seeing hp become involved in esports and how do you think maybe vr could apply to that at
09:55some point so hp is super excited about esports you know the the team has been building out the omen
10:01brand and had you know you just mentioned a bunch of the the leagues and the teams that are being
10:05sponsored what's also not exactly small time teams cloud9 yeah clg astralis major one of the really
10:12cool things is that a lot of the people on the team actually are you know huge gamers themselves and
10:17have had some level of success at the pro level or and so that has been amazing to watch and you
10:23know we're really going out and hiring people for whom this this is their passion in work and outside
10:28of work and so we see the industry as being huge it already is huge but we see a lot of fast growth
10:34and we're really excited to keep on releasing amazing products like the obelisk the omen 15 and many
10:40many more you know the screens that we're releasing and many many more absolutely to really meet the needs of
10:44the of the the the gamer community um and then on the vr side we've already started to sponsor a few
10:49of the vr esports or v sports as some people are calling it leagues so we've already sponsored
10:55virtual athletic league we've already sponsored the um the the virtuix omni arena for a couple of their
11:02seasons and so we're trying to we're you know looking at the lessons and the growth that we've seen
11:06around esports and seeing how can we do similar things on the vr side and and really help build the
11:12industry across all facets right obviously it would take a lot of work from the the developers too but
11:18i mean i i've always pictured someday where hey if i'm watching league of legends i can put on my vr
11:23headset and be on summoner's rift watching the action happen rather than being on my couch like i feel
11:28like that'd be a really cool thing to see one day yeah and that's and that's the the sort of next level
11:33of immersion that virtual reality brings it allows you to actually be inside and be part of and impact the
11:39outcome joanna popper has been our guest here today she's the head of virtual reality and location
11:44based entertainment for hb global joanna thank you so much for your thank you for having me it's great
11:48to see you guys
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