Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Listen to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Transcripts provided with each episode.

Jan 24, 2018

How is Mixed Reality (MR) changing the way we experience the world? We explore this question with three creators using MR to entertain, connect, and assist people with different abilities. First, we chat with Mia Tramz, Managing Editor at LIFE VR, about using virtual reality to travel the world. Then we catch up with Zach Clark, a veteran who was injured in combat and is now using HoloLens to help people with visual impairments and brain injuries navigate hospital settings. Finally, Microsoft's Dona Sarkar and Spencer Reynolds take us on a tour of becoming a virtual hologram via Microsoft's Mixed Reality Capture Studios.

 

Episode transcript

JASON HOWARD:  Welcome to the Windows Insider Podcast.  You are listening to Episode 11 part two, in our series on mixed reality.  Today, we're talking to creators in the mixed reality space.

Mixed reality, also known as MR, is the term for experiences where physical and digital objects coexist and interact in real time.  We can reach these experiences through a combination of headsets, computers, and external sensors, or more sophisticated technology like the HoloLens.

Microsoft, and Windows in particular, has been a leader in enabling mixed reality experiences.  In fact, Windows 10 was built from the ground up to support innovations in mixed reality.

To learn more about Microsoft's commitment to MR, check out part one in our series on mixed reality.

Hardware and software technology are both important for mixed reality, but so is the context available on the platform.  Creators in MR are using it to tell stories, enable innovation, and even provide medical care.  We're still discovering all the ways MR could impact our lives.

Our first guest today talks to me about the challenges and opportunities of creating entertainment content for virtual reality platforms.  She's calling in from her office in New York where she develops mixed reality content for Time, Incorporated, the media giant behind more than 100 magazine brands and websites, names you've probably heard of like Sports Illustrated, and Time Magazine.

MIA TRAMZ:  My name is Mia Tramz.  I'm the Managing Editor of Life VR, and newly Time's Special Projects Editor for Time Magazine.  I develop and produce VR and AR experiences for all Time, Inc. brands.  So that includes Time, but also Sports Illustrated, People, EW, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Essence & Style, the list goes on and on and on.  And I also lead the company's strategy in both markets.

JASON HOWARD:  Wow, it sounds like you have quite the reach.

MIA TRAMZ:  I do, I do.  I get to do a lot of fun things and wear many hats.

JASON HOWARD:  So officially you are Managing Editor for VR Content.  What's a typical day like for you.

MIA TRAMZ:  On the one hand, I can sit down with the editors from pretty much any of our titles from Time to People to Sports Illustrated, and brainstorm, you know, big ambitious and smaller, quicker turn VR, AR, and 360 projects, or I can go out into the world and find projects that align well with our brands, and kind of integrate those editorial teams into the development of, you know, projects that are coming to us from the outside.  And then I also get to come up with a lot of projects on my own, which has been a really fun part of the job.

We create for and publish across many platforms, everything from Facebook 360 to Samsung Gear to our Life VR Cardboard app, which is available for free for iOS and Android -- do my little plug -- to Oculus and Vive, which are, you know, at the higher end of the spectrum.

We are also very newly a Microsoft MR launch partner, so we have a Life VR app on the new Windows MR platform.

And, you know, each of those platforms requires an understanding of what works best on that particular device, understanding the different types of production that it takes to create some effective for those different platforms.

So I get to work a bunch of different muscles, and I'm constantly learning and being thrown into new situations.  It's a really fascinating job.

JASON HOWARD:  No doubt that keeps it interesting and entertaining.

So you've mentioned, you know, the broad variety of platforms that you engage users across, like the Life brand itself has a long history of telling stories across a ton of different subjects, you know, everything from news to sports, fashion and food, of course.  How does your approach in telling stories in the virtual reality space differ from telling stories with traditional means like video or a magazine feature.

MIA TRAMZ:  Well, I'll answer that in sort of an indirect way.  Life VR is meant to be an extension of the Life Magazine brand.  When this initiative was, you know, being thought up in our company, one of the issues they were trying to solve for was going into VR as a publishing company was distribution.  It's one of the hardest parts of being a creator in the VR space right now, getting eyeballs on what you're creating.

And what they decided was instead of, you know, developing separate VR apps for People and Time and Sports Illustrated, it would make more sense to create an umbrella brand that all of that content rolls under, so that if you went to go watch a Sports Illustrated experience, you might come across a People experience that you were interested in or a Time experience while you're in that environment.  And that's what the Life VR app is.

But the reason they gave it the Life name I think is really interesting.  They went back and found the original prospectus that Henry Luce, who founded Time and Life Magazine, wrote for Life.  And if you read it, it reads like a VR pitch.  He's talking about taking you to places that you couldn't see otherwise, to see the shadows on the moon and the depths of the jungle and to walk through walls.

And if you think about the format of Life Magazine, you know, it was those huge, beautiful, printed pages, and gorgeous, huge photographs.  It was about as immersive as you could get with a print product.  And he was giving you a window onto the world that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

So I think in creating a Life VR brand we were taking the legacy of our storytelling, which was to transport our readers to all the places in the world that they can't get to otherwise, and really fulfilling what we think the promise of VR can be with the brands of storytelling that we're so well-known for.

JASON HOWARD:  So how would you convince somebody who normally prefers traditional media, for example, like a print magazine or whatnot, to give this virtual reality thing a try.

MIA TRAMZ:  This is a person I have to convince that I am physically with, I would just show them a few VR pieces, and that's something that I do a lot in my job.  I do a lot of VR demos.

And my thought there is it's pretty immediate when you see a good VR experience for the first time.  There's not much selling that I would have to do.  You kind of just get it.

But in terms of our readership, this is something that we think about a lot.  There's a lot of consumer adoption hurdles when it comes to VR.  If I make a project and someone comes across in like their Facebook feed, or if they're hearing about it from a friend, that project needs to be interesting and compelling enough that they're not only going to go out and find the app to watch it and that they then have to download, but they're also either going to find or buy a VR headset to watch it in, and then they're going to take some of their TV time to sit down and watch this thing that I've produced.

So from the get-go the projects have to really excite the viewer enough to do all of those things to watch them.  And then once they get through all those hurdles, you have to kind of deliver on what the promise of the projects seem to be.

So for example, instead of turning out a high volume of content that maybe isn't quite as ambitious, what we've focused on is tackling really big projects that if you came across them on any channel that you're getting your content from, or if you heard about it from a friend, if you heard about this project, you would feel like you had to see it.

So, for example, Capturing Everest was one of our projects that we released with Sports Illustrated in May of this year, and it's the first bottom to top climb of Mt. Everest in VR as a documentary VR series.  We released it in four episodes, and we start by following three really amazing climbers.  One of our climbers is Jeff Glasbrenner.  He was the first American amputee to summit Everest with our climb.  Then we have Lisa White, who's a cancer survivor.  She was in chemotherapy while she was training to climb Everest.  And then after she finished, therapy went straight to Nepal in order to climb.  And then we have some really amazing Sherpas and mountaineers that are helping them reach the summit.

That project was both a VR experience, it was a print story and a cover story for Sports Illustrated.  We published it as a series of 360 videos on Sports Illustrated's website.  And then there's also a whole augmented reality feature that we launched with that issue of SI.

If you came across that project, my hope is that it's so cool and it's so exciting that you're willing to go through all of the hurdles needed to actually watch it.  It's really about capturing people's imagination and making the case to them that this is worth your investment of time, regardless of whether you're familiar with the technology or not.

JASON HOWARD:  So obviously making the path and taking the trek to go to Everest is something that while some people do, there's a lot of people that won't have that opportunity in their life.  Which kind of leads me into the next thing that I want to ask you about.

Life VR has done a ton of work for travel publications, including recently a virtual experience for Vancouver, BC in Travel & Leisure Magazine.  Can you tell us a bit about how virtual reality will impact the future of the travel industry.

MIA TRAMZ:  I think what's really amazing is we can give you a sense of actually being in that place in a way that you can't get with video or with text.  And I think the other really exciting thing is with Travel & Leisure in particular, it's not so much about hotels or cruise ships or things like that, there really is kind of an adventure, some spirit there that we can tap into.

JASON HOWARD:  I can see how that would make a big difference in getting people excited about travel.  How do you see virtual reality technology changing entertainment like television or film.

MIA TRAMZ:  Where I think VR becomes really interesting in the film industry is when filmmakers use it as a standalone tool for storytelling as opposed to something that's augmenting a film that they're creating anyway.

So I think the best example of that and the most interesting example of that right now is Alejandro Iñárritu's piece CARNE y ARENA, which is installed at LACMA in Los Angeles.

This piece is different in a few ways.  It's a physical installation, so it's an experience that you are walking around in.  You are watching what is essentially a documentary film in VR.  He has recreated an encounter between border agents, immigrants, and refugees at the Mexican-American border, and he's recreated an interaction that actually happened.  You are in a way stepping into a documentary film, both visually and physically.

And when you think about that, and then you perhaps add in the layer of what if you could do that sort of experience with let's say four or five or your closest friends, and you could see each other in the experience, I think the opportunities that opens up for a filmmaker get really interesting.

And I think that the resources that the film industry has in terms of producing something that at that level, with how much it costs, the technology that's needed to pull that off in the way that you would want to see it, it's something that the film industry will be able to do with VR that no other industry really has the infrastructure to tackle in such an interesting way.

JASON HOWARD:  So we've talked here about the film industry and previously we mentioned a little bit about the travel industry.  What other industries do you see virtual reality having a broader impact on.

MIA TRAMZ:  Well, I think healthcare and education are two really big ones, and they're ones that I'm working on within Time, Inc.  I think it's important for your listeners to know that VR is not a new thing.  It's been around for over three decades.  And it has historically been used as a teaching tool.

So for example the military and NASA have used VR for decades to train soldiers and astronauts.  It's been used to treat PTSD.  It's been used to provide stress relief.

And I think in the medical industry now some of the more interesting applications are using VR instead of anesthesia, using VR to help patients have a better overall experience at a hospital.

There's some really interesting applications where VR can have inherent value as a tool as opposed to being a means of entertainment.  And I think there's been a number of studies conducted by Professor Jeremy Bailinson at Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab around VR in education as it applies to elementary, middle school, and high school.

When you get into how could it enhance education on the school level, how can it enhance healthcare, both from a training perspective and a patient experience perspective, I think that there is a ton of promise there for those two industries.

JASON HOWARD:  Well, I have to say this has been a fascinating chat.  Hopefully, our listeners have learned a thing -- I know just from the conversation with you I've picked up a thing or two along the way, so thank you for that.

MIA TRAMZ:  You're welcome.

JASON HOWARD:  But before we close out, is there anything else you'd like to share.

MIA TRAMZ:  You know, I would love to encourage your listeners to seek out our content, either from the Life VR app, which is something you can download onto your smart phone if you have iOS or Android, or of course on the new Windows MR platform.  We have a really fun, new application for that headset where you actually get to step into a 3D world that is inspired by the Life archive and see some of our most famous covers as huge buildings.  It's a cityscape built out of Life Magazines, and then you can explore some of our other experiences in that environment.  It's pretty cool.

JASON HOWARD:  Awesome.  Well, Mia, thank you so much for your time.  It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

MIA TRAMZ:  You, too.  You, too.  Thanks for having me.

JASON HOWARD:  Mixed reality has the potential to transform so many industries.  And like Mia mentioned earlier, healthcare is just one of the fields that could see big changes with this new tech.  Take, for example, this Windows Insider who is developing a HoloLens app to help people who have severe brain injuries.

Zach Clark is a veteran who sustained a brain injury while serving as a machine gunner in the Marine Corp.  A machine gunner is a highly dangerous combat position, and Zach was wounded while serving in Iraq.  Now he's working to help people with similar conditions through mixed reality.

Zach, welcome to the podcast.  Tell us about your background and how you got started on this project.

ZACH CLARK:  A little bit about myself, I've always tinkered with computers, even before the Marine Corp.  I would always take stuff apart, and somehow we'd lose parts.  And so I became pretty good with computers.  My family wanted me to find something in the computer job, and I wanted to -- you know, I wanted to fight instead.  And obviously that's where it got me to where I am today dealing with my injuries and my issues.

JASON HOWARD:  What was your experience in combat, and how did you get injured.

ZACH CLARK:  One of the big pinnacle moments there, being part of a regimental combat team, we encountered a boxed laser.  And they would point the lasers at the gunners that they attempted to ambush.  And this is kind of like one portion of the story, because this still affects me emotionally to this day.

So they hit me in the eye with a high powered box laser on the back of a truck, less than a second, and it blinded me in my right eye.  It melted the film around my Oakleys.  And so it really kind of messed with the medical teams, and they didn't know how to treat laser injuries.  I think I was one of the first to get hit on a truck.

They medevac'd me out, put an eye patch on.  They didn't realize that the optical nerve ripped.  So sent back to the truck, and I started doing convoys again, looking like a pirate.

And one day I was on top of a 7 ton, and loading up our machine gun, which was an M2 .50 cal, and I was trying to set it down, and something with the optical nerve shorted out my brain, and I ended up going head first, falling about eight to nine feet, and then having a .50 cal slam down on my neck as well.

They dealt with that.  They couldn't figure out why I fell.  They said the impact just from the laser itself causing the tissue to retract caused portions of my lobes to contract so hard they scarred up.

And so that was kind of a pinnacle point in my life, because that's when everything kind of went downhill.

JASON HOWARD:  So what has been the result of that accident for you

ZACH CLARK:  The memory, it's unstable.  I'm on about 15 to 20 different meds a day.

And so working with the Insider program and doing all that has kind of kept a consistent thing for me, and that's helped my memory.  But some days I can't walk, some days I can't get out of bed, all the way down to where I would be puking every day, but, you know, pardon that detail.

JASON HOWARD:  You spend a lot of time trying to work with your community and give back.  Part of what you're doing now is developing an app for HoloLens, right.

ZACH CLARK:  Yes.

JASON HOWARD:  Can you tell us about how that project came around and what you're doing.

ZACH CLARK:  So that project came around with my own issues actually.  I would get lost.  I would have an issue with remembering my medications, remembering which area of the hospital I needed to go to that day.

And so I've been kind of messing with mapping tools, geolocation, and I'm trying to develop almost like signal indicators for the hospital so that someone with my issues can put the headset on if they're in a wheelchair or whatever, and it will help guide them through, it will help remind them that they need to do this or they need to do that.

I'm doing that because I had a huge issue with it, but I also still have a pretty big issue with it.  And I wanted to help people with eyesight issues to where there's somewhat of a proximity.  I knocked down the Christmas tree a few years ago, the tallest Christmas tree at the Crown Center because I didn't see it.  I mean, there's not a lot I could do back then, but now being able to have something to develop on and develop with, I can apply my own struggles to prevent others from having that issue.

JASON HOWARD:  So obviously you're taking your own experience and your own situation and trying to use technology in a way that will help make that experience easier for yourself, but it also sounds like the whole concept of mixed reality can support other people, either those who are elderly or other people who have some sort of disability.  It seems like there's a natural pathway here.

ZACH CLARK:  Exactly.

JASON HOWARD:  So personally it sounds like you've had quite the life experience so far.  What are some of your goals for the future.

ZACH CLARK:  Goals for the future is get the app up and going, at least help one person a week.  And right now, I mean, I'm just helping people day-in and day-out.  I want to feel better, both mentally and physically.  But my main goals are going to continue helping, and I will do that.

JASON HOWARD:  Talking to Zach and Mia about the merging of digital and physical worlds got me thinking.  How does one become a hologram?  Turns out Microsoft has production studios devoted to doing just that.  We asked Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider program here at Microsoft, to investigate.  Listen as she goes on location to Microsoft Capture Studios and walks us through the technical process for capturing mixed reality content.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  I'm Spencer Reynolds.  I'm the Stage Manager here at Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Studios.  We have a stage here in Redmond, and we have stages in San Francisco and also a partner stage in London that we just opened both of those latter two stages within the last month or so.

DONA SARKAR:  So Spencer, you and I know that mixed reality best reality, but do you want to describe what that is to other people.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  So basically what we're capturing here is really just living things.  We're creating human holograms and living things.  And so knowing that mixed reality is an awesome platform, it's that much more familiar and exciting to be in when you're there with living things that you can recognize and they look living.

So what we're really exciting about capturing and creating here is people, and making holograms out of them.  So that way when you're in one of these experiences, it's not so much just an environment or an experience that's all CG, you can really be in that environment with a person that you recognize or an incredible performer or any other sort of living thing that makes it that much more tangible.

DONA SARKAR:  What kind of living thing.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Any kind of living things.  We've had all kinds of stuff between dancers and educators and undead zombies and weight lifters and, you know, baby tigers and animals are always fun.  People always -

DONA SARKAR:  Did you just say baby tiger.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  I did say baby tigers.  Baby lions, sloths, llamas, all kinds of stuff.  Big and small, animals are fun.  But they are animals, so sometimes they're -

DONA SARKAR:  So they're unruly.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  They can be a little unruly.  They don't take direction quite as well.  But they are still quite fun.

But also, yeah, I mean, in addition to animals and educators and all that good stuff, you know, we find that it's not just entertainment that we use this for, we're really trying to target this for anything that you use video for today in terms of entertainment but also education and commerce and even personal memories.  It's one of the most innate things that people see when they come through the stage is they're like, I want to bring my kids through, I want to bring my grandparents through, and try to get sort of a memory of somebody that's in their life that they love.

DONA SARKAR:  That's amazing.  Who's the most famous person that you've had in here.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  It's a pretty good list at this point.  I'm trying to think of some of the ones that are public at this point.  We had Russell Wilson come through.  We had George Takei come through, Billy Corgan, which was just recently announced.  A few more coming down the pipe that are not quite out there yet.

DONA SARKAR:  Ooh, a secret.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Yeah, secret, secret.

DONA SARKAR:  That is so cool.

So what is the weirdest thing you've recorded.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  That's an even longer list, but yeah, all kinds of wacky stuff.  Weird is one thing, but definitely just exciting or interesting.  There's been lots of stuff where we've been recording, and I just can't help but shake my head while we're doing a capture, just like I can't believe we're here doing this.

But I wouldn't say grumpy cat is weird, but definitely -

DONA SARKAR:  Definitely weird.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  -- definitely an odd experience seeing grumpy cat out on the stage.

But yeah, I mean, also just the wide variety of like, you know, people in cosplay costumes and people just kind of being themselves doing amazing things of performance, you know, Cirque du Soleil performers, just kinds of all wild, wacky stuff where every day it's just, wow, I can't believe we're actually here capturing this wide variety of stuff.

DONA SARKAR:  That's amazing.

So why do they come to you?  What are they trying to achieve by coming in here to the studio.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Well, I mean, really this is one of the few places in the entire world where you can capture holograms of humans.  And so our goal with this project is really just to create more of this content, because mixed reality is great and mixed reality again is that much more palpable when you have content that makes sense that people can relate to.

A lot of our projects are both Microsoft internal projects, but more so recently external projects where it's either an agency or a creative group that wants to come through and capture somebody that's recognizable, somebody that they're going to be using for their experience.

And so part of that also is just getting more of these stages accessible and out there.  We don't want to own and operate stages that only we're the gatekeepers for.  It's really about getting more of these stages, and also having more partner stages so that around the world these stages just become more and more accessible to people that want to get this kind of content.

DONA SARKAR:  That is so cool.

The Windows Insiders and the two of us are giant nerds.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Likewise.

DONA SARKAR:  Talk to us about how this works.  How does it work?  Can you describe the process for how you capture footage for mixed reality.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Yeah, certainly.  We have a huge stage with 106 cameras.  And half of them are color cameras and half of them are infrared.  So we basically record performances of the people who are out onstage, and while we're recording that, it's about 10 gigabytes of data a second.

And then we take all of that data, and we put it to a render farm.  And then as we process it, we basically extract out a video file that's on the order of 10 megabits a second.

DONA SARKAR:  Wow.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  So it's a pretty big compression, but what that allows us is basically to stream this content, and sort of deliver it to a wider variety of audiences, and also across a number of platforms.  It's not necessarily just for Windows or HoloLens or anything like that.  I mean, obviously it looks great on HoloLens and mixed reality devices, but we like to remind folks that it works out touch devices, it works on mobile, it works on desktop.  Pretty much any platform where you can change the viewpoint, this content works just as well there.

We look at this technology not as something that's going to replace motion capture or replace computer graphics or anything like that, it's just another tool, it's another way of creating the content.  There are definitely like pros and cons that each one of these technologies has, and so it really is fun to sort of explore those as we make more of this type of content.

DONA SARKAR:  All right.  Let's have a walkthrough.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Yeah, indeed.  Come on up.

I'll warn you there's a sticky floor.  We've lost a couple kids there; they get stuck.

DONA SARKAR:  Wow, look at this.  This is very green.  Yeah, this is very, very green.  So why is it green.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  A couple reasons.  The main reason that this stage is green is because green helps with determining what's in the stage and sort of what is the background.  And that's really important for us as we do processing is knowing sort of what's in the foreground and what's in the background.

The green isn't necessarily required, we sort of called this setup sort of the best case scenario, this is the perfect world in terms of it's very green, and you'll notice that the lights are all nice and bright and really evenly lit.  As you look around, there aren't a lot of shadows on the floor, there aren't a lot of shadows on us.

The reason that we tend to shoot with very even lights is because when we go into a HoloLens experience, we don't necessarily know what the lighting is in the world.

DONA SARKAR:  That's right.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  You don't want shadows conflicting.  So we often just kind of say, okay, you're evenly lit.

But for other experiences where maybe we do know what the environment is, we can try to recreate that environment.  And by doing that, it gives the capture a lot more detail in terms of shadows or color that maybe matches up with the world that you're going to put that character into.  And it really does take it to a whole other level of sort of embedding that character into the world.

DONA SARKAR:  So I know you all can't see this but this is the most green room you have ever seen, like Kermit the Frog green everywhere.  And the lights are amazing.  They're just like the best studio lights you've ever seen in your entire life.  And they're all over the room.  How many lights are in here, 50.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  I want to say there are 32.

DONA SARKAR:  Thirty-two.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Yeah.  So basically, and that's split across the foreground and the background.  And so the reason we have the background so far back is just because we want to make sure that the light bouncing off of that wall doesn't sort of come back in and make everyone here in the capture area more green.

DONA SARKAR:  That's right.  There are so many cameras pointed right here at the center stage.  How many cameras did you say again.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  A hundred and six cameras.

DONA SARKAR:  Wow.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Yeah.

DONA SARKAR:  That's a lot of cameras

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  They're all over.  I mean, they're 360 and they're even up top.

DONA SARKAR:  They are up top, yeah.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  And so yeah, half of them are color, half of them are infrared.

You'll see this little box right here.  This is actually an infrared emitter out of the original Kinect.

DONA SARKAR:  Oh, that is interesting.  Yeah, we've said that, HoloLens is Kinect shrunken down, on your head, advanced.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Exactly, yeah.

DONA SARKAR:  Yeah, and we're seeing it actually right now.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  So what's fun about this is this puts out just a really nice infrared star field speckle pattern onto the performers, and that's what the infrared cameras are looking for.  They look at that pattern of dots, and then they can use that to sort of reconstruct the 3D shape of the person or the object that's out here.

DONA SARKAR:  So when you had the zombie in here, what was that like?  Ned.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Ned.

DONA SARKAR:  Ned.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Yeah, Ned's the best.  We love Ned.  Ned's pretty fun.

DONA SARKAR:  Everyone, that's a zombie on a treadmill.

Is there anything you think our audience should know that I haven't prosecuted you about in this amazing green room.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  I mean, really it's just we now have these stages, they're open.  They're open to the public for projects.  And if you're interested in learning more, like we do have a website that you can just search for Microsoft mixed reality capture studio, and there's a website that's now actually out there that people can find us.

And we have several research papers that have sort of been announced over the years, and we've sort of released them and not really broadcast them.  So you'll find lots of fun links and just examples of things we've captured and groups that we've worked with, and also we'll just have a lot more projects coming up in the future that we're announcing through that page.

DONA SARKAR:  So you actually have mixed reality capture as a service.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Mm-hmm.

DONA SARKAR:  That's kind of amazing.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Yeah.

DONA SARKAR:  That is fabulous.

Thank you so much for letting us crash this space -

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  Thank you.

DONA SARKAR:  -- and showing us where all the zombie magic happens.

SPENCER REYNOLDS:  This is the spot.

JASON HOWARD:  There's no limit to the kinds of content we will see in mixed reality in the coming months and years.  It's going to be exciting to see what developers and designers come up with for this new technology.

Thanks for listening to part two of our series on mixed reality.  If you liked this episode, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and share it with your friends.  And be sure to join us next time on the Windows Insider Podcast.  Thanks, Insiders.

NARRATION:  Our program today was produced by Microsoft Production Studios.

The Insider team includes Tyler Ahn, Michelle Paison, and Amelia Greim.

Our website is Insider.windows.com.

Support for the Windows Insider podcast comes from Microsoft, empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Moral support and inspiration comes from Ninja Cat, reminding us to have fun and pursue our passions.

Thanks, as always, to our programs cofounders, Dona Sarkar and Jeremiah Marble.

Join us next month with more stories from Windows Insiders.

END