00:00SPEAKER- Brad, I hate it when I'm listening to music
00:02SPEAKERand I have a playlist that spans decades
00:04SPEAKERand the volume level of the music is all over the place.
00:08SPEAKER- Oh man, I don't think I actually realized it
00:11SPEAKERuntil you brought this up.
00:11SPEAKERI think this is a hot button issue for me
00:13SPEAKERthat has just been waiting for a cold open.
00:15SPEAKER- Man. - Go on.
00:16SPEAKER- Yeah, we were listening to some music.
00:17SPEAKERWe had, like I made a playlist of stuff
00:20SPEAKERthat we all like in the fam from the '90s and '80s
00:25SPEAKERand 2000s and 2020s.
00:27SPEAKERAnd you're in the car, you're listening to some music,
00:29SPEAKERyou're jamming out, like you listen to some like Cheap Trick,
00:33SPEAKERsome stuff that my kid knows
00:35SPEAKER'cause it was in a Trolls movie.
00:36SPEAKER- Is your daughter a Cheap Trick fan?
00:38SPEAKER- No, not really. - Okay.
00:39SPEAKER- But then you get, look, I couldn't come up with it.
00:42SPEAKERCheap Trick was just what I thought of in the moment.
00:43SPEAKERIt's not really on the list.
00:45SPEAKERBut we get to the end of the '80s song
00:48SPEAKERand then it blasts over to something that's current,
00:50SPEAKERsome Olivia Rodrigo or something,
00:52SPEAKERand it's like a thousand times louder.
00:54SPEAKER- I guess you crossed the boundary into the loudness wars.
00:57SPEAKER- But I mean, look, we were complaining
01:00SPEAKERabout the loudness wars in the '90s.
01:02SPEAKER- True, yes.
01:03SPEAKER- Yeah, it's gotten worse.
01:04SPEAKER- I'm sure it has.
01:05SPEAKER- It's bad.
01:06SPEAKER- Like all audio has gotten worse.
01:08SPEAKERI don't even know where to start.
01:09SPEAKERLike stereo down mixing is awful
01:11SPEAKERfor people who don't have 5.1 systems.
01:13SPEAKERNobody can hear the dialogue
01:14SPEAKERof what they're watching anymore.
01:16SPEAKER- Oh, the secret to that is you just have a center channel
01:18SPEAKERand you disconnect the other channels.
01:20SPEAKER- Seriously, I've got two nice floor speakers
01:23SPEAKERand that's all I've been using for 15 years.
01:24SPEAKERI keep thinking about buying a center channel speaker
01:26SPEAKERjust to be able to hear people talk in movies again.
01:29SPEAKER- We do two front speakers and a center channel,
01:31SPEAKERbut the real answer is to just get a soundbar and give up.
01:35SPEAKEROr do what Rob Zachney did
01:36SPEAKERand put some like 12 foot tall speakers in there.
01:38SPEAKER- Or you could do what I did
01:39SPEAKERand experiment with using FFmpeg
01:41SPEAKERto create your own stereo mixes of movies,
01:43SPEAKERwhich works just fine.
01:46SPEAKER- That's too much work, Brad.
01:47SPEAKER- It took a lot of work.
01:48SPEAKERI thought about scripting it across my entire Plex library.
01:51SPEAKERAll you do, I mean, literally all you do
01:52SPEAKERis tell it to mix the channels
01:54SPEAKERand boost the center channel by 30%.
01:56SPEAKERLike that's it, that's all it takes.
01:57SPEAKER- This is an audio podcast.
01:58SPEAKERNo one can see me shaking my head,
02:00SPEAKERbut just know that I shook my head
02:01SPEAKERthrough that entire FFmpeg bit.
02:03SPEAKER- But I like, I mean, that raises the question for me though
02:06SPEAKERof like, why are Plex and Jellyfin
02:08SPEAKERor your receiver or your TV,
02:09SPEAKERlike why are things that handle stereo mixing
02:11SPEAKERnot doing that themselves?
02:12SPEAKER- Why don't Spotify and Apple Music normalize?
02:16SPEAKERLike the playlists are a huge part
02:18SPEAKERof Spotify and Apple Music.
02:20SPEAKERWhy don't they normalize the volumes across those playlists?
02:22SPEAKERI don't know, man.
02:23SPEAKER- I would say the same thing for game consoles.
02:25SPEAKERLike why are some games on my PS5 way louder than others?
02:29SPEAKER- Yeah, like it's funny.
02:31SPEAKERThe first thing I have to do, so it's weird.
02:34SPEAKERI mean, streaming makes things a little bit weird
02:36SPEAKERbecause normally you just adjust to the volume you want,
02:37SPEAKERright, but like I don't ever adjust the knob
02:41SPEAKERon my headphones or the windows volume.
02:44SPEAKERI always adjust the in-game volume.
02:46SPEAKER- And really?
02:47SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause I don't,
02:48SPEAKER'cause like I play Fortnite all the time
02:50SPEAKERand I don't want to have to adjust
02:50SPEAKERthe Fortnite audio every time.
02:52SPEAKERSo everything's normal, like, okay, here's the problem.
02:55SPEAKEREverything's normalized against Fortnite.
02:59SPEAKERFortnite is my base level volume.
03:00SPEAKERThis is the problem.
03:01SPEAKER- That's a grim state of affairs.
03:04SPEAKER- I mean, look, the Gangnam,
03:06SPEAKERI know what level of a Gangnam's gonna be.
03:08SPEAKERI know when I do the say so.
03:09SPEAKERI know what it's gonna sound like.
03:11SPEAKERAnd I gotta get my Doja Cat on.
03:14SPEAKER(upbeat music)
03:25SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
03:43SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."
03:45SPEAKERI'm Will.
03:46SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
03:48SPEAKERYou sounded a little better this week.
03:49SPEAKER- I don't sound as much like Barry White,
03:51SPEAKERbut I'm still in there.
03:53SPEAKERI'm still in that range.
03:54SPEAKER- Is it worth giving up that timbre of voice
03:57SPEAKERto be coughing less?
03:58SPEAKERI would say probably yes.
03:59SPEAKER- I would do anything to be coughing less right now.
04:02SPEAKERI would, if you, like, I would do horrible things.
04:05SPEAKER- Would you pitch up a couple more octaves?
04:06SPEAKER- No, I wouldn't.
04:07SPEAKERThat's too far.
04:08SPEAKERSo like my chest isn't sore from coughing anymore,
04:12SPEAKERwhich is nice.
04:13SPEAKERThat's a good change.
04:14SPEAKERAnd I don't wake up in the middle of the night
04:16SPEAKERfeeling like I'm choking to death on things
04:18SPEAKERthat I have to then hack up.
04:19SPEAKERSo that's an improvement.
04:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
04:21SPEAKER- Yeah.
04:22SPEAKER- Quite a winter we're having.
04:23SPEAKER- It's been, this is the winter of my discontent,
04:25SPEAKERit turns out, and my discontent is phlegm.
04:27SPEAKER- Yeah.
04:28SPEAKERWell, good news for you.
04:29SPEAKER- Yeah.
04:30SPEAKER- I just found out hours ago
04:31SPEAKERthat it's fucking Daylight Savings this weekend.
04:34SPEAKER- No, this is good Daylight Savings, though.
04:35SPEAKER- Wait, how?
04:36SPEAKER- This is the spring forward one.
04:38SPEAKERWait, is that the bad one?
04:39SPEAKERThat's the one where everybody dies on Monday
04:40SPEAKER'cause a car crashes.
04:42SPEAKERBe careful tomorrow out there, folks.
04:44SPEAKERMaybe go back and listen to that Daylight Savings episode,
04:45SPEAKER'cause it was pretty good.
04:46SPEAKERPeople like that.
04:47SPEAKER- Also remember the disruption in circadian rhythms
04:50SPEAKERleads to an increase in heart disease.
04:52SPEAKERLook, if that's the thing
04:54SPEAKERthat's causing our heart disease problems.
04:56SPEAKER- It can't help.
04:57SPEAKER- I have wild misunderstandings about the impact of diet
05:00SPEAKERon heart disease in America.
05:01SPEAKER- Every little bit helps, okay.
05:03SPEAKER- Look, I gotta get out to In-N-Out after this.
05:04SPEAKERIt's the, get a burger this afternoon.
05:08SPEAKERAnyway.
05:08SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, hey, winter's over.
05:09SPEAKERYou'll be healed in a matter of hours.
05:11SPEAKER- Thank God, finally.
05:12SPEAKERFinally, our long national nightmare.
05:14SPEAKERIt stopped raining for long enough.
05:15SPEAKERI saw sun this week, which was really exciting.
05:17SPEAKERIt's rained for so long.
05:19SPEAKERMy sister was in town last week,
05:21SPEAKERso we went all over and we did the tour stuff
05:24SPEAKERthat she hasn't done on previous visits.
05:25SPEAKERSo we went to Muir Woods and she was like,
05:28SPEAKER"Can we go to the zoo?
05:29SPEAKERI haven't been to a zoo in a long time."
05:30SPEAKERAnd we're like, "Yes, we can go to the zoo."
05:32SPEAKERSo we went to the zoo and it rained the entire time.
05:34SPEAKERWe were walking around our raincoats looking at elephants
05:36SPEAKERand the animals were all kind of vaguely moist and upset.
05:39SPEAKER- The animals were depressed.
05:41SPEAKER- Yeah, the lion was roaring, that was cool.
05:43SPEAKERWe saw lemurs, the lemurs seemed to like the rain.
05:45SPEAKERThey were out playing in the rain.
05:47SPEAKERI don't know, it was a good zoo trip.
05:48SPEAKERThe giraffes were chill, giraffes are awesome.
05:51SPEAKERNo gorillas though, that was a bummer.
05:53SPEAKER- Were they hiding?
05:54SPEAKER- I mean, the gorillas don't like the rain apparently.
05:56SPEAKERThey were in their houses.
05:58SPEAKERThe gorillas have the freedom to go in and out of the pen
06:01SPEAKERinto the smaller house area.
06:04SPEAKERThey were in the house area where they have privacy
06:06SPEAKER'cause they're primates.
06:07SPEAKER- Smart.
06:08SPEAKER- They don't give the monkeys privacy,
06:09SPEAKERbut the gorillas get privacy.
06:11SPEAKERI have a lot of questions about this now
06:12SPEAKERthat I think about it.
06:13SPEAKERBut you know what I don't have questions about?
06:16SPEAKER- What's that?
06:17SPEAKER- Is what makes a good on-stage tech demo?
06:21SPEAKER- Oh.
06:22SPEAKER- So we started out talking about this episode this week
06:25SPEAKERand we both have been aware of this thing
06:28SPEAKERcalled the mother of all demos for a long time.
06:31SPEAKERBut it's a famous presentation by Doug Engelbart
06:34SPEAKERwho was at Stanford, at the Stanford Research Institute
06:38SPEAKERI think, and did a demo of his network computer
06:42SPEAKERin like 1968 I think.
06:44SPEAKERWe're gonna do a whole episode about the MoEd,
06:45SPEAKERso I don't wanna talk about it too much.
06:47SPEAKERBut it's where he demoed basically the first mouse
06:51SPEAKERand the first graphical user GUI for a computer
06:56SPEAKERand things like bi-directional network communications
07:00SPEAKERand like crazy stuff, right?
07:02SPEAKER- Basically in the space of 90 minutes
07:04SPEAKERlike it defined the future of computing
07:06SPEAKERor the entirety of what computing would be in the future.
07:08SPEAKER- Yeah, so there were around a thousand people
07:10SPEAKERin attendance at the demo
07:11SPEAKERand the most common feedback from it
07:14SPEAKERwas that like this felt like it was 150 years in the future
07:18SPEAKERand it was cool but I'm never gonna be able
07:19SPEAKERto do anything with it.
07:20SPEAKERSo I went back to, like just to be clear,
07:23SPEAKERthey weren't using glass teletypes at this point
07:25SPEAKERto talk, to do remote network computers.
07:28SPEAKERThey were using paper teletypes
07:29SPEAKERwhere you typed in on a typewriter
07:31SPEAKERand then the words came out on the other side also on paper.
07:35SPEAKER- Yes, it was the '60s.
07:36SPEAKER- Yeah, it was the '60s.
07:37SPEAKERSo this is the prototype, right?
07:39SPEAKERThis is I think the first one of these.
07:41SPEAKERI think it's safe to say that.
07:43SPEAKER- High watermark.
07:44SPEAKER- Maybe, yeah.
07:47SPEAKERBut then this kind of continued, right?
07:51SPEAKERI realize there's one we didn't put on here.
07:52SPEAKERThere's the one that started this whole conversation.
07:55SPEAKERBut before we get to that,
07:57SPEAKERI wanna talk about what makes a good demo,
07:58SPEAKERwhat makes a good on-stage demo.
08:00SPEAKERAnd I think core to this is that it has to show you
08:02SPEAKERsomething that feels like the future
08:05SPEAKERand it's something that wasn't possible,
08:07SPEAKERyou didn't think was possible when you entered the room,
08:09SPEAKERwhich is harder.
08:10SPEAKERIt gets harder every year to do that, I think.
08:12SPEAKER- Yeah, although a theme that I've noticed
08:14SPEAKERas we watch through a bunch of these for this episode
08:16SPEAKERis even the ones that took place 20 plus years ago now
08:19SPEAKERthat show technology that today is so old hat,
08:22SPEAKERyou don't even think about it,
08:23SPEAKERlike it's still possible to recapture that excitement
08:26SPEAKERwatching those if you can kind of put yourself back
08:28SPEAKERin that mindset of when that technology did not exist.
08:31SPEAKERLike the best ones of these are still fairly exhilarating
08:33SPEAKERto watch, which we'll get to.
08:35SPEAKER- Incredible, they're still incredible, yeah.
08:39SPEAKERThis topic was suggested by Wildcard.
08:42SPEAKERNot exactly this topic,
08:42SPEAKERbut Wildcard made a suggestion to kick this off
08:46SPEAKERand on the Discord and the idea was
08:50SPEAKERto talk about this Disney Vision Imagineering Lab VR demo,
08:53SPEAKERwhich I'm gonna put on the bottom of the list here
08:54SPEAKER'cause I do wanna talk about it,
08:55SPEAKERbut I think that's maybe worth,
08:57SPEAKERI'm kind of curious about this too
08:58SPEAKERin the context maybe of a larger episode about Imagineering.
09:01SPEAKERAnyway, so like there also has to be an element of risk,
09:05SPEAKERright, so that's a big part of it is.
09:08SPEAKER- Or well, let's say there doesn't have to be,
09:10SPEAKERbut like if there's not kind of why are you bothering,
09:13SPEAKERyou know, 'cause there's plenty of tech demos,
09:14SPEAKERyou know, we'll kind of touch on some of these
09:16SPEAKERlike motion controls in the mid-aughts on game consoles,
09:19SPEAKERstuff like that, where like,
09:20SPEAKERif you're just gonna do a big manicured produced,
09:22SPEAKERlike we shot this on a sound stage in a fake living room
09:25SPEAKERwith not real game footage, you know,
09:27SPEAKERlike why are you even bothering like concept stuff
09:29SPEAKERor, you know, like the Xbox 360 connects stuff
09:33SPEAKERthat turned out to not be real, you know, stuff like that.
09:35SPEAKERIt's like people see through that stuff immediately.
09:38SPEAKERSo like there should,
09:39SPEAKERlet's say there doesn't have to be an element of risk,
09:40SPEAKERbut there practically does.
09:42SPEAKER- Like the ones that are good,
09:44SPEAKERI feel like always have an element of,
09:46SPEAKERwe're doing this live in front of an audience
09:48SPEAKERand stuff might go wrong, right?
09:50SPEAKERLike it's like when you used to watch the guy
09:53SPEAKERbring the tigers onto Johnny Carson and you were like,
09:56SPEAKERmaybe Ed McMahon's gonna get mauled.
09:57SPEAKERThat would be good TV, I'd watch that, right?
10:00SPEAKERSo there's an element of danger and like sometimes,
10:05SPEAKERbut sometimes the tech is so far ahead
10:08SPEAKERthat you're like, I don't care.
10:09SPEAKERThe AT&T You Will ads, classic example of this.
10:12SPEAKER'Cause it's like, we were watching these in the early nineties
10:15SPEAKERand they're like, there's a whole series of things
10:17SPEAKERthat they promise and you're like,
10:19SPEAKERnone of this could possibly ever happen.
10:20SPEAKERAnd then like 10 years later at all, it happened.
10:22SPEAKER- It's amazing.
10:23SPEAKERSo we will publish the show notes for this.
10:25SPEAKERLike we've been doing recently,
10:26SPEAKERpeople seem to like being able to follow along with links.
10:28SPEAKERWe've got links to pretty much every demo
10:30SPEAKERwe're gonna be talking about in here that you can watch.
10:31SPEAKERBut we did not put the You Will,
10:34SPEAKERthis is the AT&T You Will commercial campaign
10:37SPEAKERfrom the early nineties.
10:37SPEAKER- Have you ever bought a baseball tickets
10:39SPEAKERfrom an automated teller machine?
10:41SPEAKER- Yeah.
10:42SPEAKER- You Will.
10:43SPEAKER- Wait, is that your Tom Selleck impression?
10:44SPEAKER- No, it was Tom Selleck, right?
10:46SPEAKERYes, it was Tom Selleck.
10:47SPEAKER- So I went back and watched all of these.
10:48SPEAKERI was, A, I had forgotten it was Tom Selleck narrating.
10:51SPEAKERB, I did not realize David Fincher directed all of those,
10:54SPEAKERwhich is wild to think about.
10:56SPEAKERI guess he went from that to music videos
10:58SPEAKERto making "Effing 7."
11:00SPEAKER- Well, he did commercials and music videos for a long time.
11:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I knew that.
11:03SPEAKERI just didn't like, you know,
11:04SPEAKERthese actually kind of have that distinctive Fincher look
11:06SPEAKERnow that I think about it.
11:07SPEAKERBut anyway, watching those things,
11:10SPEAKERit's like, okay, it's a lot of video conferencing.
11:12SPEAKERIt's a lot of sort of early pre-internet.
11:15SPEAKERLike, have you ever checked out a book
11:17SPEAKERfrom thousands of miles away?
11:19SPEAKERIt's a lot of connectivity, a lot of telephony type stuff.
11:21SPEAKERBut the crazy thing watching those things
11:23SPEAKERis that every single one of those things came to pass.
11:25SPEAKER- In like not that much time.
11:27SPEAKERAnd I also-
11:28SPEAKER- By and large within like a decade.
11:30SPEAKERBut I'd say the most forward-looking one
11:32SPEAKERthat kind of took me by surprise was,
11:34SPEAKERhave you ever made a phone call from your wrist?
11:37SPEAKERAnd it's somebody talking into a watch to make a phone call.
11:40SPEAKER- Wow.
11:41SPEAKER- I'd say that's probably the longest lead
11:43SPEAKERin all the ideas they present in there.
11:44SPEAKER- 'Cause that was like 2014 or 2013, I guess.
11:47SPEAKER- As well.
11:47SPEAKER- That's when the Apple Watch came out.
11:49SPEAKERThere were other watches before that though.
11:51SPEAKER- Maybe 20, yeah, 20-ish years on that one.
11:53SPEAKERLike every one of the ideas in those commercials
11:56SPEAKERnot only happened, but is like super old hat these days.
11:59SPEAKERLike there was nothing remotely futuristic
12:02SPEAKERor advanced or unbelievable in those commercials.
12:05SPEAKERLike they were, I guess what I'm trying to say
12:06SPEAKERis they were like, they were shockingly conservative
12:10SPEAKERin the ideas they promised in there
12:12SPEAKERbecause all of them were probably
12:13SPEAKERin some early stage of development at that point.
12:15SPEAKER- They felt like the distant future of the year 2000
12:18SPEAKERwhen you saw those ads.
12:19SPEAKERAnyway, don't want to go on.
12:20SPEAKERSo another example,
12:22SPEAKERVal's mixed reality trailer for the Vive.
12:24SPEAKERThe thing that they put the group,
12:25SPEAKERthey did the camera tracking so they could superimpose
12:28SPEAKERthe things that people were seeing in VR
12:30SPEAKERon the video screen behind them
12:32SPEAKERand on top of the people was really, really cool.
12:35SPEAKER- I don't think it, I don't think it, sorry, Chet.
12:36SPEAKERI don't think it hangs for this.
12:37SPEAKERIt was really good, but, but it,
12:41SPEAKERwell, it did promise something that felt like the future.
12:43SPEAKERIt was because of the way those videos had to be made.
12:46SPEAKERThey were pre-baked and felt pretty safe, right?
12:48SPEAKERIt was like, it was clearly a manicured experience
12:52SPEAKERto design, you know, of course all of this is designed
12:55SPEAKERto sell something.
12:56SPEAKERThis is the thing to remember.
12:57SPEAKER- I mean, that one, I'm kind of of two minds
12:59SPEAKERbecause A, yes, it is all faked and kind of manicured
13:02SPEAKERand a little too slick, but on the other hand,
13:06SPEAKERyou can't show what's going on inside a VR helmet
13:08SPEAKERfor the person in it.
13:09SPEAKER- Oh. - Like there's no way.
13:11SPEAKER- It was brilliant for ways to show the VR
13:14SPEAKERand like the shots where they show the camera view
13:16SPEAKERon a screen and then you can see the person walking around
13:19SPEAKERthe green screen in the back are really, really good.
13:21SPEAKERIt's really smart.
13:22SPEAKER- Yeah, like, yeah, while it is a person on a green screen,
13:24SPEAKERlike it does give you an idea of what the head tracking
13:26SPEAKERand positional tracking would be like if you were in there.
13:28SPEAKERSo like, I think it gets the idea across
13:30SPEAKEReven though it's easy to look at that and say like,
13:32SPEAKERwell, you're just faking a bunch of stuff.
13:34SPEAKERThis is whatever.
13:35SPEAKER- As a side note on the VR front,
13:37SPEAKERof all the VR demos I did in the early days of VR stuff,
13:40SPEAKERthe behind closed doors vive demo at GDC 2015, I think,
13:47SPEAKERwere the gold standard.
13:49SPEAKERLike that was one of those moments for me.
13:51SPEAKERIt was a C, I was locked in a small room
13:54SPEAKERwith another person.
13:55SPEAKERIt wasn't on stage, but it felt high risk
13:59SPEAKERbecause we had to strap on this thing.
14:01SPEAKERYou had to wear a belt that had
14:02SPEAKERyour controllers connected to it.
14:05SPEAKERLike there was a person in there to make sure
14:06SPEAKERyou didn't trip and fall or yank the cables
14:08SPEAKERout of the wall or something.
14:10SPEAKERAnd the demos were all incredibly high risk, right?
14:14SPEAKERLike they didn't show any shooting games in that demo loop.
14:17SPEAKERThey showed the underwater thing with the whale.
14:21SPEAKERThey showed Tilt Brush.
14:22SPEAKERThey showed, what else?
14:24SPEAKERThey showed, Tilt Brush is a painting app
14:28SPEAKERfor people who don't know.
14:28SPEAKERThey showed some stuff where like the shop
14:33SPEAKERfrom Dota got torn up around you.
14:36SPEAKERThey showed a bow and arrow game.
14:39SPEAKERThey showed a thing where you could spit balloons
14:40SPEAKERand they'd float up to the ceiling.
14:42SPEAKERIt was all stuff where your verbs
14:45SPEAKERas a player weren't shooting.
14:47SPEAKERAnd it felt like that felt so shocking
14:50SPEAKERthat you didn't even realize you hadn't played a gun game,
14:53SPEAKERwhich at that point, every VR demo
14:54SPEAKERhad ended with a gun game pretty much.
14:56SPEAKERSo anyway, and then I think there's an element
15:02SPEAKERof theatricality here.
15:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I'd put that in there.
15:05SPEAKERThat's just basically the Steve Jobs factor.
15:07SPEAKERLike that's what brings this to mind.
15:10SPEAKERAlthough, I mean, there's a bunch of stuff
15:11SPEAKERwe'll talk about on here.
15:11SPEAKERLike there's the Xbox 360 first demo
15:14SPEAKERthat was with the tilted stage
15:15SPEAKERand the Jay Allard sitting cross-legged.
15:17SPEAKERWe did a 360 episode with Deep Dive last year
15:20SPEAKERor sometime if you wanna go.
15:21SPEAKERWe talked way more about that stuff there.
15:22SPEAKER- Yeah, but the Jay Allard one is like,
15:24SPEAKERthey're trying desperately to do the thing
15:26SPEAKERthat Jobs did, and they're just not good at it.
15:29SPEAKER- There's like the Google Glass one, which we'll get to.
15:32SPEAKERMaybe the worst example of this.
15:33SPEAKER- No, no, no, the Elon Musk ones are all,
15:35SPEAKERthe Google Glass one looks like a Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
15:38SPEAKERcompared to any time Elon Musk has been on a stage.
15:40SPEAKER- Fair, fair, you know, weirdly,
15:42SPEAKERI've never bothered to watch any instance
15:44SPEAKERof Elon Musk on a stage.
15:46SPEAKER- Good God, they're terrible.
15:48SPEAKER- But it's the thing that a lot of people attempt
15:51SPEAKERand that like Jobs did effortlessly.
15:53SPEAKERAnd I feel like I always need to provide this disclaimer
15:56SPEAKERlike Jobs is a huge asshole.
15:58SPEAKER- Yeah, not a nice person.
15:59SPEAKER- A bunch of aspects of Jobs' personality, complete shit.
16:02SPEAKERBut like he had an unbelievable effortless ability
16:06SPEAKERto be a salesman on stage in a way
16:09SPEAKERthat was relatable and effective.
16:11SPEAKER- Well, and he had like, I don't mean this dismissively,
16:15SPEAKERbut he had like Carney level timing.
16:17SPEAKERHis timing was brilliant.
16:18SPEAKERAnd he would do like, there's a moment,
16:21SPEAKERwe'll talk about this.
16:22SPEAKERActually, we can talk about it now if we want,
16:23SPEAKERbut there's a moment when he's doing the MacBook Air reveal,
16:27SPEAKERthe first one, when like he's on the stage,
16:29SPEAKERhe's talking about other laptops,
16:32SPEAKERother thin and light laptops.
16:33SPEAKERAnd he's like, well, here's the stuff,
16:34SPEAKERlike here's the category, right?
16:36SPEAKERIt's like Sony has this one.
16:37SPEAKERI really like the Sony one.
16:38SPEAKERIt's a good one, blah, blah, blah.
16:39SPEAKERIt's three pounds.
16:41SPEAKERThe screen's kind of small.
16:43SPEAKERIt's this processor's too slow.
16:45SPEAKERThe keyboard's compressed.
16:47SPEAKERSo it's like, they fit into this space,
16:49SPEAKERbut it makes a bunch of compromises.
16:50SPEAKERAnd at this point, you're like,
16:51SPEAKERwell, they're about to show something
16:53SPEAKERthat they don't think has any compromises.
16:55SPEAKERI mean, those of us who bought one of those MacBook Airs
16:57SPEAKERknow the compromises were real.
16:59SPEAKERBut the point is, he gets to this whole thing
17:01SPEAKERand he's like, and you know,
17:03SPEAKERhere's how it fits into the,
17:06SPEAKERhere's the physical profile of this Sony laptop that I like.
17:11SPEAKERAnd then here's the physical cross section
17:13SPEAKERof our MacBook Air, and it's smaller.
17:16SPEAKERAnd it's not just smaller when you line up the wedge,
17:19SPEAKER'cause it's wedge shaped like a piece of cheese.
17:21SPEAKERIt's not just smaller when you line up the cheese
17:23SPEAKERthe same way, but if you flip the cheese around
17:25SPEAKERso the thick side is next to the thin side of one,
17:28SPEAKERit's smaller that way, too.
17:30SPEAKERAnd then he does this thing where he gets the manila envelope.
17:34SPEAKERHe's like, it's so small.
17:35SPEAKERIn fact, you can put it in the manila envelope.
17:37SPEAKERThey put the manila envelope up on the screen.
17:39SPEAKEREverybody laughs.
17:40SPEAKERHe waits a beat.
17:41SPEAKERAnd he says, in fact, I'm gonna go, let me show you one.
17:44SPEAKERAnd he walks over and he grabs one
17:47SPEAKERthat's been sitting there the entire time
17:48SPEAKERon this high boy table on the stage where his water is.
17:51SPEAKERAnd he picks up the manila envelope, and he waits a beat.
17:56SPEAKERAnd the audience kind of does an uneasy chuckle.
17:59SPEAKERThey're not sure if they should clap
18:00SPEAKERfor the manila envelope.
18:02SPEAKER- There's a bit of a lean forward in your chair.
18:04SPEAKER- Right, they're like, something's gonna happen.
18:06SPEAKERBut the thing, and he does this all the way through it.
18:10SPEAKERHe does it in the lead in for the segment.
18:11SPEAKERHe's like, there's something in the air.
18:13SPEAKERAnd everybody's like, oh, here it comes.
18:15SPEAKER'Cause at this point he's trained them
18:16SPEAKERto wait for the thing at the end that's the good thing.
18:19SPEAKER- Carney really is the right word.
18:21SPEAKER- I mean, it is Carney, P.T. Barnum timing, right?
18:25SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.
18:26SPEAKERI mean, even there you can see the contrast
18:28SPEAKERbetween when he's talking about the Sony laptop,
18:29SPEAKERit's a bunch of boring dimensions and stats
18:32SPEAKERand numbers on screen and diagrams of thickness.
18:35SPEAKERAnd then when he's ready to show their product,
18:37SPEAKERhere it is in front of you in this very stage managed,
18:41SPEAKERit's almost like a magic trick.
18:42SPEAKERIt's almost, hey, I'm gonna pull a laptop out of this hat.
18:46SPEAKER- So he does this all the way through, right?
18:48SPEAKERHe does it when he starts the segment,
18:51SPEAKER'cause he knows that people are waiting
18:52SPEAKERto see if there's gonna be the one more thing at the end.
18:55SPEAKERAnd it's like, it's again, it's the Carney timing.
18:57SPEAKERHe's giving, he's established the norms.
18:59SPEAKERHe tells them what they're excited about.
19:01SPEAKERAnd it shows at the end when he puts a manila envelope
19:05SPEAKERup on the screen and people aren't sure
19:06SPEAKERif they should clap for the manila envelope.
19:08SPEAKERIt's also, as an aside, I don't think a 25 year old
19:13SPEAKERwho's just entered the workforce sees one of those things.
19:15SPEAKERLike that was the most common, mundane thing
19:16SPEAKERin the world then.
19:17SPEAKERAnd now I haven't seen it in our office memo envelope
19:21SPEAKERin like 10 years at this point.
19:22SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, so I stuck the 2007 iPhone reveal
19:25SPEAKERright at the top of this
19:26SPEAKERfor all the reasons we have just described.
19:28SPEAKERI'm sure people have seen it quite a bit and remember it
19:30SPEAKERand we don't have to get too deep into it,
19:32SPEAKERbut he kicks it off with another one
19:33SPEAKERof those great stage tricks of, first of all,
19:35SPEAKERthis was the, was this a Macworld keynote or WW, or did-
19:40SPEAKER- This one is maybe its own thing.
19:41SPEAKERIt was in March.
19:42SPEAKER- Okay, the context I don't have for this
19:44SPEAKERis what people knew going into this.
19:46SPEAKERI don't know.
19:46SPEAKER- We knew that there was something coming.
19:48SPEAKERWe knew that they were doing a phone,
19:49SPEAKERbut we didn't know a whole lot else other than that.
19:51SPEAKER- Have they said they were doing a phone?
19:53SPEAKER- No, of course not.
19:54SPEAKER- Okay, that's what it is, so-
19:55SPEAKER- No murder was in full effect.
19:56SPEAKER(laughing)
19:57SPEAKER- Right?
20:00SPEAKERFrom the Apple code of silence.
20:02SPEAKER- It was Macworld, just Macworld 2007 in May of 2013.
20:07SPEAKER- Yeah, so he does another one of the stage tricks of,
20:09SPEAKERhey, we're actually announcing three products today,
20:11SPEAKERa touch, a widescreen touch iPod,
20:15SPEAKERa revolutionary new mobile phone,
20:18SPEAKERand a never before seen internet communicator, whatever.
20:20SPEAKERIt's like there are icons on the screen
20:22SPEAKERfor all of these things, and then there's a quick-
20:24SPEAKER- He goes through each one, like each bullet point, right?
20:26SPEAKER- Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
20:27SPEAKERBut I mean, it's again, it's like,
20:29SPEAKERGod, it's like Carney magician shit.
20:30SPEAKERI mean, it's almost literal sleight of hand
20:32SPEAKERon the screen of the icons whirling around each other
20:36SPEAKERuntil he's just like, are you getting it yet?
20:38SPEAKERThis is actually one product.
20:40SPEAKER- Look, man, in the naughtiest twists were really hot.
20:43SPEAKERM. Night Shyamalan was just blowing up.
20:46SPEAKERWe were all about that twist.
20:47SPEAKERWe had people we're excited about, lost, whatever.
20:50SPEAKERI don't know.
20:51SPEAKERBut yeah, it was, he played the audience.
20:54SPEAKERHe played to the audience in a way that typically
20:59SPEAKERnerds in business suits at computer conventions did not.
21:03SPEAKER- Yeah, it makes me wonder watching that moment.
21:05SPEAKERI mean, it's so incredibly obvious in hindsight
21:07SPEAKERwhen he says, hey, we're doing three products.
21:09SPEAKERLike, it's so obvious he's talking about an iPhone,
21:10SPEAKERbut at the time, without the context of what the iPhone was
21:14SPEAKERand would become, like, I wonder how many people,
21:16SPEAKERand it's like a five minute spread,
21:17SPEAKERbut I wonder how many people bought that
21:18SPEAKERfor the five minutes between him saying,
21:20SPEAKERit's three products, no, it's one.
21:22SPEAKER- Well, but at the time, like the widescreen iPod,
21:26SPEAKERlike that was a huge screen for a mobile device.
21:28SPEAKERThe fact that you could have a full web browser
21:31SPEAKERin your pocket was shocking.
21:33SPEAKERAnd like, you know--
21:36SPEAKER- And also phones didn't do all the things
21:38SPEAKERthat he was saying this would do, you know?
21:39SPEAKERLike smartphones as defined by the iPhone,
21:42SPEAKERlike as music players, as video players, as web browsers,
21:45SPEAKERlike, you know, it was not immediately obvious
21:47SPEAKERthat he was talking about one phone.
21:48SPEAKER- Look, when he showed the visual voicemail stuff
21:51SPEAKERwhere you could like connect to your voicemail system
21:54SPEAKERand see a list of all the voicemail message you had
21:56SPEAKERand hit play on a touchscreen,
21:58SPEAKERdo like just the multi-touch seemed like magic.
22:00SPEAKERThat was novel.
22:01SPEAKERBut like, hey, you don't have to dial star whatever
22:04SPEAKERto get your voicemail and then listen to a menu
22:07SPEAKERand be like, press one for the next one, press two to delete.
22:10SPEAKERThat was amazing.
22:11SPEAKERThat was like, that was the reason I wanted an iPhone,
22:14SPEAKERhonestly, 'cause he got a boatload of voicemail at the time.
22:17SPEAKER- Yeah. - Anyway.
22:17SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, watching this,
22:19SPEAKERit's pretty easy to put yourself back in the 2007 mindset
22:21SPEAKERbecause they show off all the competition at this point
22:24SPEAKERand they all have giant plastic keyboards
22:25SPEAKERtaking up a third of the form factor.
22:27SPEAKER- Yep.
22:28SPEAKER- You know, they have to rule out,
22:29SPEAKERdoes this, do you need a stylus for this or not?
22:30SPEAKERNo, we've created something called multi-touch.
22:32SPEAKERLike that's how early this was that, you know,
22:34SPEAKERnone of that stuff was in the common language at that point.
22:36SPEAKERYou know, there was also the moment where like,
22:38SPEAKERhey, it runs OS X, by the way.
22:40SPEAKER- So to contrast that with the famous, the iPhone 4,
22:45SPEAKERI think it's WWDC in 2009, probably,
22:51SPEAKERwhere he tries to do the demo
22:53SPEAKERand show the page running on the,
22:55SPEAKERpages running on two iPhones and the wifi stops working.
23:00SPEAKERAnd the wifi stops working because in three years,
23:03SPEAKERthis is two and a half, three years from that iPhone launch,
23:07SPEAKERevery single person in this keynote address,
23:10SPEAKERor not everybody, but he said there were
23:12SPEAKER570 some wifi hotspots, little boxes with a cellular radio,
23:18SPEAKERa wifi antenna, and a battery
23:21SPEAKERthat people were using to get internet for their laptops
23:24SPEAKERso they could do live blogs and whatever
23:26SPEAKERin this keynote address, which was really funny
23:29SPEAKER'cause like two years before that, I had gone with Brian Lamb
23:34SPEAKERof Gizmodo and we had done the first live blog for,
23:38SPEAKERwith photos using one of those same hotspots
23:41SPEAKERand we were one of three people who had one
23:42SPEAKER'cause nobody knew they existed before them.
23:45SPEAKERAnyway, but he handles the demo fail pretty well.
23:48SPEAKERLike he doesn't flip out,
23:48SPEAKERhe doesn't throw a tantrum or anything.
23:50SPEAKERHe says, we'll come back to this later, moves on,
23:53SPEAKERand then comes back and is like, hey, here's the deal.
23:56SPEAKERIf you wanna see this, we can, if you don't wanna see this,
23:59SPEAKERit's fine, but if you do wanna see this,
24:00SPEAKERsome of you have to turn off your wifi hotspots
24:03SPEAKERso that I can do the demo 'cause it's not like,
24:05SPEAKERwifi does not work with 500 radios in a small amount,
24:08SPEAKER500 access points in a small amount of space.
24:11SPEAKERIt's an interesting contrast.
24:14SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure.
24:15SPEAKERAnd it highlights that element of risk, right?
24:17SPEAKERLike there's a case where the risk kind of didn't pay off,
24:20SPEAKERbut also I kind of feel like the bona fides
24:22SPEAKERthat are established by something failing on stage
24:25SPEAKERare almost worth it.
24:27SPEAKER- Well, it's like look at the uncharted two one, right?
24:29SPEAKER- Yeah, is that the one where the controller
24:31SPEAKERdidn't disconnect it or the Bluetooth failed or something?
24:33SPEAKER- They had to do a fail, they had a failover.
24:35SPEAKERLike they were prepared for it, right?
24:37SPEAKERSo they, part of their planning was
24:38SPEAKERwe're gonna have multiple machines set up
24:39SPEAKERin exactly the right state.
24:40SPEAKERWe can just switch to the failover one
24:42SPEAKERand it'll be fine, right?
24:46SPEAKERNow to contrast that with the Google Glass unveil
24:49SPEAKERat the Moscone Center, this one is interesting
24:53SPEAKERbecause it has an actual element of physical danger.
24:55SPEAKERI think this is the only one of these
24:57SPEAKERthat we have on this list
24:58SPEAKERwhere people could have actually died.
25:01SPEAKERAnd it's maybe the most tedious of them all.
25:04SPEAKERSo, Sergey Brin's on the stage.
25:07SPEAKERHe cuts in to somebody else's presentation
25:10SPEAKERmidway through this reveal.
25:13SPEAKERAnd he's like, "Hey, sorry, we got some stuff
25:14SPEAKER"that's time dependent."
25:15SPEAKERAnd then has to wait like three minutes
25:17SPEAKERfor the thing to be ready to go, right?
25:21SPEAKERSo you're like, "Hey, I gotta cut in.
25:23SPEAKER"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry."
25:25SPEAKERAnd then wait some more.
25:28SPEAKERWhat he's waiting for is for some people
25:30SPEAKERin squirrel suits to get their dirigible
25:33SPEAKERin place above Moscone Center
25:35SPEAKERso they can jump out of the dirigible
25:37SPEAKERand then zoop down and parachute
25:40SPEAKERonto the roof of Moscone Center.
25:41SPEAKERNow, that sounds cool 'cause they're like,
25:43SPEAKER"We're gonna do this, the parachutists
25:45SPEAKER"are all wearing Google Glass
25:46SPEAKER"and we're gonna hang out with them
25:48SPEAKER"so you can be able to see exactly what they see
25:49SPEAKER"like you're there."
25:50SPEAKERNow, it was 4G, internet, the video quality,
25:55SPEAKERmaybe not the best.
25:57SPEAKERBut it did work and it was cool.
25:59SPEAKERThat part was cool.
25:59SPEAKERYou're like, "Man, this is awesome.
26:00SPEAKER"A lot of waiting, but this is cool."
26:02SPEAKERAnd then they land and you're like,
26:03SPEAKER"Oh man, they almost hit the Intercontinental Hotel
26:07SPEAKER"'cause it's new and it's down there."
26:08SPEAKERAnd they gotta swerve around the building
26:10SPEAKERand that looks scary.
26:11SPEAKERMan, what if they miss the building?
26:12SPEAKERThese guys could really die.
26:13SPEAKERThis seems really dangerous.
26:14SPEAKERMoscone is a tall building.
26:16SPEAKERIt's not like if they miss the roof
26:19SPEAKERand get hooked up or something.
26:20SPEAKERIt could be really dangerous.
26:22SPEAKERSo then, they land on the roof
26:25SPEAKERand Sergey's like, and because,
26:28SPEAKERand they have this whole framing for this stunt, right?
26:32SPEAKERFirst off, the only thing that they're showing
26:34SPEAKERis that they can do Google Hangouts
26:36SPEAKERwhile you're doing this.
26:37SPEAKER- Right.
26:39SPEAKER- They have this whole framing for the stunt.
26:40SPEAKERThey're like, "I gotta get my headset back
26:42SPEAKER"from my bro on the dirigible with the squirrel suit on
26:45SPEAKER"ready to jump out and land on the building
26:47SPEAKER"that I happen to be in."
26:49SPEAKERAnd they're like, "We're gonna have some bicyclists run
26:53SPEAKER"'cause the building's really wide
26:55SPEAKER"and we're gonna have the bicyclists take the package
26:57SPEAKER"and run it along."
26:58SPEAKERSo they ride the bicycles.
27:00SPEAKERThey do some sick flips and stuff
27:02SPEAKERbut there's clearly jumps placed there for them
27:04SPEAKERbecause, you know, absolutely a stunt.
27:07SPEAKERAnd then they get to the edge of the building.
27:08SPEAKERYou're like, "Oh, thank God.
27:09SPEAKER"There's probably a stairway or something."
27:10SPEAKERNo.
27:11SPEAKERNo, they got the repellers.
27:14SPEAKERThey got the repel people
27:16SPEAKERand they clip in on the side of the building
27:18SPEAKERand they run down the building.
27:19SPEAKERBut one of them, some of them go to the ground
27:22SPEAKERbut one guy stops at the third floor where the keynote is
27:25SPEAKERand then he gets in and hands the headset back to another.
27:29SPEAKERSee, you look bored with me just describing this.
27:31SPEAKERThis is taking way less time than it took them to do it.
27:33SPEAKER- It's like 15 minutes, right?
27:34SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like 10 or 15 minutes.
27:35SPEAKERHe hands the package to another bicycle guy
27:38SPEAKERwho weaves in and out through the crowd
27:40SPEAKERof the actual attendees all on the Google Hangouts
27:45SPEAKERand then they get to the stage.
27:46SPEAKERAnd when they get to the stage,
27:47SPEAKERthey cut back to the real camera.
27:48SPEAKERYou're like, "Oh, thank God I can see stuff again
27:50SPEAKER"'cause everything was not blocky and shitty."
27:52SPEAKER- And two frames a second.
27:54SPEAKER- Yeah, and five frames a second.
27:55SPEAKERSo they take something that should be super cool
27:58SPEAKERand just stretch it out
27:59SPEAKERand put this stupid framing thing on it.
28:01SPEAKERAnd also they only show one cool thing, right?
28:04SPEAKERThe Google Hangouts from the plane was cool
28:07SPEAKERfor like while they were parachuting down
28:09SPEAKERand then no other point was, anyway.
28:11SPEAKER- Hangouting while parachuting sounds cool on paper
28:14SPEAKERbut sometimes when you're planning your stage demo,
28:17SPEAKERmaybe you step back and think through the implications
28:19SPEAKERof the stunt you're trying to pull off
28:20SPEAKERand not whether you can do it or not,
28:22SPEAKERbut whether you should.
28:25SPEAKERWhether it's actually going to be entertaining
28:26SPEAKERfor people to sit there and watch what is required
28:28SPEAKERto make this happen.
28:29SPEAKER- Oh yes, the Goldblum conjecture.
28:32SPEAKER- Yes.
28:33SPEAKER- So okay, so here's another good one though.
28:35SPEAKERWe got some good ones.
28:36SPEAKERThe source engine demo
28:37SPEAKERfrom the Half-Life 2 E3 press conference.
28:40SPEAKER- Yeah, so there's like a short list here
28:42SPEAKERof ones that still work for me in a modern context
28:44SPEAKERin terms of are they exciting to watch or not.
28:47SPEAKERI didn't expect this 'cause I saw this live at E3
28:50SPEAKERand of course a video came out
28:52SPEAKERthat I watched a hundred times after that.
28:53SPEAKERBut yeah, the source engine slash Half-Life 2 demo
28:56SPEAKERfrom 2003, I think actually tops my list on here.
29:00SPEAKER- It's still rad.
29:01SPEAKER- Like, and part of that, I mean, part of it is
29:03SPEAKERlike there's so much advanced video game technology
29:06SPEAKERthat you basically had never seen before
29:07SPEAKERin the space of about 10 minutes.
29:09SPEAKERIt's not any one thing, it's all of it
29:11SPEAKER'cause there's like eight different new things there.
29:13SPEAKERBut the other thing is like,
29:15SPEAKERwhy aren't more games doing this stuff today?
29:18SPEAKERLike, I mean, I know some of the practical answers to that
29:21SPEAKERare, you know, it's a lot of work
29:22SPEAKERand maybe there's not as much demand for it now,
29:24SPEAKERbut like the material system, the advanced physics.
29:29SPEAKER- Well, everybody does material system now, right?
29:31SPEAKERLike most of the stuff is just table stakes now.
29:35SPEAKER- But the level of different materials
29:38SPEAKERbeing simulated in this,
29:39SPEAKERmaybe we should describe briefly what it is
29:42SPEAKERbefore we get into it.
29:43SPEAKERLike they, it's split up into two chunks.
29:45SPEAKERThe kind of back two thirds of the demo
29:48SPEAKERare them just playing scenes from Half-Life 2.
29:50SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the least interesting part of it though.
29:52SPEAKER- I guess, but it's really the first like 10 minutes
29:53SPEAKERwhere they have, they basically made a custom map
29:55SPEAKERthat is just kind of a fun house
29:57SPEAKERof engine technology features.
29:59SPEAKERAnd that's the stuff that's exciting.
30:01SPEAKERBut like, so it's a lot of physics simulation.
30:04SPEAKERIt's like deformable terrain.
30:07SPEAKERIt has a lot of materials which tie into the physics
30:08SPEAKER'cause there's like breakable wood,
30:10SPEAKERthere's breakable glass, there are mattresses that deform.
30:13SPEAKERAnd that's kind of what I was getting at is that like,
30:14SPEAKERyou're not seeing that range
30:15SPEAKERof material simulation these days.
30:18SPEAKERIt's mostly like some things are breakable
30:19SPEAKERand that's about it.
30:20SPEAKERBut like games where like all the wood can be broken
30:23SPEAKERand the structures fall apart or, you know,
30:25SPEAKERlike this whatever kind of soft body mattress thing
30:28SPEAKERthat they're doing is, you know,
30:29SPEAKERlike you don't see as much of that these days.
30:30SPEAKER- So a lot of games have the soft body stuff
30:33SPEAKERand they just don't, you don't have verbs in the game
30:35SPEAKERthat let you see the things that like the gravity gun
30:37SPEAKERand Half-Life let you do.
30:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it's fair to a degree, I guess.
30:40SPEAKER- Yeah, the destructible stuff is hard
30:44SPEAKERbecause you have to make multiple stages
30:46SPEAKERof destruction, right?
30:48SPEAKERSo you're multiplying your art assets.
30:49SPEAKERSo it's a triple A thing rather than an indie thing.
30:52SPEAKERBut like this demo opens on the-
30:57SPEAKER- G-Man.
30:58SPEAKER- G-Man, thank you.
30:58SPEAKERI was gonna say cigarette smoking man, but that's X-Files.
31:01SPEAKER- That's the one they ripped off.
31:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it starts off with like the 1997 Half-Life 1 version
31:07SPEAKERof him and then it cuts to the source engine version
31:11SPEAKERwhere he has like muscles under the skin.
31:13SPEAKERHe has deformable mesh face.
31:15SPEAKERHis lip flap is tied to phony muse, his eyes glint
31:18SPEAKERand he has saccades and all the things
31:20SPEAKERthat make him look more like a real human.
31:22SPEAKER- Like there's eye tracking with the camera, you know,
31:23SPEAKERlike it's just all this stuff that you had never seen
31:25SPEAKERin human characters in video games up to this point,
31:28SPEAKERall happening in one character.
31:29SPEAKER- And it's a full like minute and a half
31:31SPEAKERof you just looking at the face.
31:32SPEAKERIt's intense.
31:34SPEAKER- This video we linked is from GameSpy.
31:36SPEAKERFrom way back then they recorded the video
31:38SPEAKERor the demo while they were in there.
31:39SPEAKERAnd you can like, you can literally hear people gasp
31:41SPEAKERwhen they cut to the 2004 G-Man.
31:44SPEAKER- But then they go to like deformable,
31:46SPEAKERthey show some deformable terrain.
31:47SPEAKERThey show the collision on the terrain deforming
31:50SPEAKERat the same time, which was, that was a lot back then.
31:54SPEAKERAnd then they show like you using destructible brushes,
31:59SPEAKERbasically like shooting pieces of wood
32:01SPEAKERto make things happen in the world that are physics-y.
32:03SPEAKERSo like knocking some barrels into the water,
32:07SPEAKERplaying pachinko that they've set up on the wall
32:09SPEAKERby rolling barrels down a ramp
32:11SPEAKERand into a series of pegs on the side of the wall.
32:14SPEAKERAnd then they whip out the gravity gun
32:16SPEAKERand start winging stuff around.
32:18SPEAKERAnd you're just like, wait, what?
32:19SPEAKERThis is, I've never seen anything like this before.
32:22SPEAKERThey show like specular surfaces, all different reflections,
32:26SPEAKERdifferent ways lighting affects things like glass and water.
32:29SPEAKER- I mean, I love this bit where they just made a bunch
32:31SPEAKERof extremely fake arbitrary slabs hanging from the ceiling,
32:34SPEAKERjust to show off different shader effects.
32:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:37SPEAKER- Like it's like the artificialness of it
32:40SPEAKERis what makes it so exciting to me.
32:41SPEAKERIt's not like, hey, here's all this stuff
32:43SPEAKERin context in the game.
32:44SPEAKERHere are extremely blatant, obvious examples
32:48SPEAKERof how it works and why.
32:49SPEAKER- Well, so a lot of times you'll do these demo levels
32:52SPEAKERto show how you can use stuff.
32:54SPEAKERSo your artists can show each other,
32:56SPEAKERhey, I figured out a new way to do something cool.
32:58SPEAKERYou should check this out.
32:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, there's one room in here,
33:00SPEAKERlike the least likely thing you would probably ever do
33:02SPEAKERwith this stuff is a person made out of water.
33:05SPEAKER- Yeah, well, except for the abyss.
33:08SPEAKER- Unless you're making an abyss game.
33:09SPEAKER- Yeah, or that Janet Jackson music video with Busta Rhymes.
33:13SPEAKER- Fair, fair.
33:14SPEAKER- Yeah, so yeah, this was, I remember sitting through this
33:19SPEAKERand it was all I could do.
33:21SPEAKERI was just writing down notes furiously the whole time
33:24SPEAKERI was watching this at E3 and I couldn't stop.
33:29SPEAKERLike I couldn't keep up to the point that I missed
33:32SPEAKERthe first couple of minutes of this Half-Life demo
33:34SPEAKER'cause I was still trying desperately to write down
33:36SPEAKEReverything that they had shown in the engine side.
33:38SPEAKER- It's a really insane encapsulation
33:40SPEAKERof the entire future of video games in less than 10 minutes.
33:44SPEAKER- Yeah, and like I said, it's all stuff that's table stakes.
33:46SPEAKERNow, the one thing that nobody does is the physics weapon
33:49SPEAKERbecause it's a pain in the ass, makes testing really hard.
33:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought about throwing the Doom 3 demo
33:55SPEAKERfrom around this era.
33:56SPEAKERI think it was 2004 maybe in there.
33:59SPEAKERIt's funny, like at the time I was more wowed
34:03SPEAKERby the Doom 3 demo, but it's purely graphics.
34:06SPEAKERIt's like shadow, it's lighting and shadowing
34:07SPEAKERand like the really detailed environments
34:09SPEAKERand like environmental animation and stuff like that.
34:11SPEAKERBut it's not the character stuff.
34:13SPEAKERIt's not the physics as much.
34:17SPEAKERLike the Half-Life demo is much more of a total package
34:20SPEAKERof here is advanced technology that's going to affect
34:22SPEAKERboth look and the gameplay and the Doom 3 stuff
34:25SPEAKERis a lot more just look.
34:27SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I mean, the thing about Doom 3
34:30SPEAKERis he shows a lot of moving lights and dynamic shadows.
34:33SPEAKERAnd that was novel.
34:35SPEAKER- And a lot of heavy machinery animating in the environment
34:37SPEAKERwhich was also pretty novel and advanced at the time.
34:39SPEAKERBut like going back now, like watching that Half-Life 2 demo
34:43SPEAKERis still kind of exhilarating.
34:46SPEAKERLike it's still kind of easy to remember being in that time
34:49SPEAKERand seeing all that stuff for the first time
34:50SPEAKERand feeling like you were like the AT&T stuff,
34:52SPEAKERit's like you're literally looking at the future.
34:54SPEAKER- Well, and it was stuff that impacted gameplay,
34:56SPEAKERjust not just what it looks like.
34:58SPEAKERYou know, at the end of the day,
34:59SPEAKERthat Doom 3 demo showed you more Doom
35:01SPEAKERwhere you run through quarters and you shoot stuff.
35:03SPEAKERAnd the Half-Life thing showed you a world
35:04SPEAKERthat you could interact with
35:05SPEAKERin a way that we'd never interacted with video games before.
35:07SPEAKERWhich was cool.
35:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and characters, human characters also
35:10SPEAKERthat felt realistic and interactive.
35:13SPEAKER- People we could talk to.
35:15SPEAKERWhat do you want to do now?
35:16SPEAKERYou want to go to a PlayStation Move maybe?
35:19SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so.
35:21SPEAKER- In my head, this is the Jeremy demo.
35:23SPEAKER- Okay, sure.
35:24SPEAKER- This is a GDC 2010 unveil and they did it.
35:28SPEAKERThey showed a canned trailer first
35:30SPEAKERand then they showed some like stage demos.
35:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so the canned trailer is,
35:34SPEAKERI think is probably a good example
35:35SPEAKERof the fake living room style of thing
35:37SPEAKERI was talking about before.
35:38SPEAKER- Yeah, this was definitely informed by the Wii,
35:40SPEAKERthe early Wii ads where they were showing grandmas
35:42SPEAKERplaying bowling and conducting the orchestra
35:44SPEAKERand stuff like that.
35:45SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, there's a hole in the press conferences
35:48SPEAKERand demos and trailers from this era
35:50SPEAKERshowing motion controls of various types
35:52SPEAKER'cause that was the thing.
35:53SPEAKER- Throw pickle at wall.
35:55SPEAKERYeah, everybody had fun.
35:56SPEAKERLook, I'm not gonna lie,
35:58SPEAKERI took my Wii home several Christmases in a row
36:01SPEAKERand the whole family, including the grandmother,
36:03SPEAKERwould stand up and we would bowl
36:05SPEAKERand we would play tennis and we would play baseball.
36:06SPEAKERIt was great, it was wonderful.
36:08SPEAKER- Who didn't do that?
36:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it was maybe that and karaoke revolution
36:12SPEAKERare the two times I've had fun playing video games
36:14SPEAKERwith my entire family.
36:15SPEAKER- Yep, yep, 100%.
36:17SPEAKER- But this one was pretty good because they,
36:20SPEAKERso they were late, right?
36:22SPEAKERLike the PlayStation move was three years
36:24SPEAKERafter the Wii had launched.
36:26SPEAKER- Four years after the Wii had launched.
36:27SPEAKER- Yeah, Wii was late 2006 and this was 2010 for the reveal.
36:32SPEAKERI don't remember when the move came out.
36:33SPEAKERYes, they were late, yes.
36:35SPEAKER- There's a whole sequence of this
36:37SPEAKERafter they show the trailer and they show like ping pong
36:39SPEAKERand they talk about how awesome ping pong is.
36:41SPEAKERAnd then they have Jeremy come out
36:45SPEAKERoff the side of the stage and he plays ping pong
36:49SPEAKERfor maybe 25 seconds each.
36:51SPEAKERLike he plays each game for like 25 seconds.
36:53SPEAKERThey do table tennis, you see him playing,
36:57SPEAKERthere's a fern in the background so you know it's real.
37:00SPEAKERIt's like, it's around the 24 minute, 25 minute mark
37:03SPEAKERof that Sony press conference video in the show notes.
37:07SPEAKERThe best one though is when he gets out
37:10SPEAKERand I think he has Nancy play PlayStation move party
37:14SPEAKERwhich is like their party game where you have to like
37:15SPEAKERget your picture in the picture frame,
37:17SPEAKERyou have to say your name, you have to do all the stuff
37:18SPEAKERthat you have to do to make a party game.
37:22SPEAKERAnd then poor Nancy is playing for like,
37:27SPEAKERshe does each thing once and then he's like,
37:28SPEAKERokay, we gotta move on to the next one,
37:30SPEAKERwe gotta move on to the next one,
37:31SPEAKERwe gotta move on to the next one.
37:32SPEAKERAnd they're just hammering through these demos so, so fast.
37:37SPEAKERIt's like, hey, we have exactly 60 minutes
37:39SPEAKERbefore we have to clear this room.
37:41SPEAKERAnd if we go over one minute and also we're already running
37:44SPEAKERsix minutes late on this 60 minute conference.
37:48SPEAKERSo yeah, it's a trip, this one, I'm...
37:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I also, I threw what I think is a famous tech demo
37:56SPEAKERon the far other end of the spectrum from this,
37:58SPEAKERwhich is Johnny Lee, who I think was a researcher
38:01SPEAKERat the time at Carnegie Mellon.
38:02SPEAKER- God, that one's so good.
38:03SPEAKER- You remember this?
38:04SPEAKER- Yeah.
38:05SPEAKER- I feel like I remember this just like setting the,
38:07SPEAKERthis was like kind of pre social media
38:09SPEAKERor maybe when social media
38:10SPEAKERwas just really starting to take off.
38:12SPEAKERThis kind of set the internet on fire.
38:13SPEAKERIt's the guy who set up infrared based head tracking
38:17SPEAKERwith Wii remotes and basically just off the shelf technology
38:21SPEAKERthat he cobbled together.
38:22SPEAKER- This came out after the Wii had been on available
38:25SPEAKERfor like a year.
38:26SPEAKER- Right.
38:26SPEAKERAnd it's head tracking with the TV as a view port.
38:30SPEAKERAnd like, we're not talking about a VR headset of any kind.
38:32SPEAKERIt's literally just him basically strapping a Wiimote
38:34SPEAKERto the side of his head and walking around
38:36SPEAKERin his living room or in this case, the camera.
38:38SPEAKERHe straps the Wiimote to the camera.
38:40SPEAKER- I thought he did a sensor bar, doesn't he?
38:44SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, the sensor bar is involved.
38:45SPEAKERSo it's for the...
38:46SPEAKER- Yes, he puts a sensor bar in his head
38:47SPEAKERand- - Oh, is that what it is?
38:48SPEAKEROh, you're right, you're right.
38:49SPEAKERIt is the other way around.
38:50SPEAKERIt's the Wii remote is attached to the TV.
38:52SPEAKERThe sensor bar is the thing that moves.
38:54SPEAKER- I mean, 'cause the sensor bar is just two infrared LEDs
38:56SPEAKERthat are a fixed distance apart, right?
38:58SPEAKERThere's nothing fancy about it.
38:59SPEAKERBut basically it allowed the game to render perceptual 3D
39:06SPEAKERbased on your head position in space,
39:09SPEAKERwhich was really, really novel at the time.
39:12SPEAKERSo that he could make it look like things were popping out
39:14SPEAKERof the screen, you could interact with them,
39:15SPEAKERwhich was really cool.
39:16SPEAKER- That really comes across in that video.
39:17SPEAKERIt's still fun to go back and watch this
39:19SPEAKERfor a couple of reasons.
39:20SPEAKERFor one thing, like I said,
39:21SPEAKERit's on the complete other end of the spectrum
39:23SPEAKERfrom all these stage demos,
39:24SPEAKERbecause it's literally him in his living room
39:26SPEAKERwith his laptop set up under his TV.
39:28SPEAKERI mean, it says no frills as it gets,
39:30SPEAKERbut that effect still works.
39:31SPEAKERLike even an old low res YouTube video.
39:34SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it's fabulous.
39:35SPEAKER- And not being in the room.
39:36SPEAKERI mean, like you still feel like you can see
39:38SPEAKERthose little red and white targets floating out of the TV
39:41SPEAKERas he moves around.
39:42SPEAKERLike it's kind of like the ultimate example to me
39:44SPEAKERof the tech bringing all the goods.
39:47SPEAKERLike it doesn't matter what the demo is like
39:49SPEAKERwhen the tech is that good.
39:50SPEAKERThat's all that matters.
39:51SPEAKER- Well, and it's funny 'cause it's the ultimate example.
39:55SPEAKERLike this whole thing is kind of the example of,
40:00SPEAKERthis is the version of this.
40:02SPEAKERI don't know if you've ever seen those guys
40:03SPEAKERthat do the chalk drawings on the sidewalk
40:04SPEAKERthat are like really stretched out and along.
40:06SPEAKERAnd when you walk up to the street,
40:06SPEAKERlooks like there's somebody standing there.
40:08SPEAKER- Yeah, the perspective stuff, yeah.
40:10SPEAKER- So anyway, the thing that I do like about that move demo
40:14SPEAKERthat I really like is that they don't come out and say,
40:16SPEAKER"Hey, we have gyroscopes and our stuff is gonna be better
40:19SPEAKER'cause we have a gyroscope."
40:20SPEAKER'Cause of course the Wii Motion Plus
40:23SPEAKERwas coming out around that time, I think.
40:26SPEAKERBut it wasn't super common.
40:28SPEAKERIt was an accessory you had to buy.
40:30SPEAKERAnd they were highlighting it
40:33SPEAKERand they were framing it in the way
40:35SPEAKERthat you would play the game, not as a technological thing.
40:38SPEAKERSo they were saying, "Hey, look, with this,
40:39SPEAKERyou can put top spin on your table tennis serves, right?
40:43SPEAKERYou can come over the top and the controller,
40:45SPEAKERwe'll pick that up.
40:46SPEAKERYou can do things like grab the,
40:49SPEAKERyou're not just waggling to reload stuff or whatever."
40:52SPEAKERIt was interesting.
40:53SPEAKERAnyway, I love the Johnny Lee remote demo.
40:58SPEAKER- That's great. - It's so good.
40:59SPEAKER- It's great, it's still fun to watch.
41:01SPEAKER- What else we got?
41:04SPEAKER- Let's see, we've got a fair amount of like,
41:06SPEAKERhere are some new video game console footage reels,
41:11SPEAKERI guess I would say.
41:12SPEAKERLike here are the game consoles
41:14SPEAKERand what they can do in some nondescript footage
41:16SPEAKERthat may or may not be a game,
41:17SPEAKERor in some cases is extremely clearly not a game.
41:21SPEAKER- Like, and just to be clear,
41:23SPEAKERwhile I love and like really miss the days
41:28SPEAKERof some poor bastard from the game studio,
41:30SPEAKERhaving to stand behind people from Microsoft
41:32SPEAKERand do connect dancing or whatever in the background,
41:36SPEAKERwe're not gonna talk about that.
41:37SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.
41:38SPEAKER- Those were bad for the most part.
41:40SPEAKER- These are good demos.
41:41SPEAKERThese are legitimate demos.
41:43SPEAKERAll of these, I remember being quite exciting.
41:44SPEAKERI very much miss this style
41:47SPEAKERof new video game console tech demo.
41:50SPEAKER- Yeah, people don't do it anymore, really.
41:52SPEAKERIt's mostly reels.
41:54SPEAKER- Yeah, like maybe it's just because of the standards
41:57SPEAKERand the bar are so much higher that,
41:58SPEAKER'cause like you remember the UE5 demo that they put out
42:01SPEAKERwhere it's like, it's a very manicured,
42:03SPEAKERI mean, it's legitimate footage,
42:04SPEAKERbut it looks like a CG movie.
42:05SPEAKERIt's not like, it's not as, you know,
42:08SPEAKERlike we will talk about in a minute,
42:09SPEAKERit's not a bathtub full of 8,000 rubber ducks
42:12SPEAKERflying everywhere.
42:13SPEAKERIt's a much more like,
42:15SPEAKERhere's something that looks like a video game.
42:16SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
42:17SPEAKER- Well, yeah, it's funny you say that
42:18SPEAKER'cause like UE3 did,
42:20SPEAKERlike Unreal's done this for a long time.
42:21SPEAKERLike they did the Samaritan demo for UE3.
42:24SPEAKERThey did the thing with the,
42:26SPEAKERlike with the bandana man from Gears of War
42:29SPEAKERrunning down the busted ass street.
42:31SPEAKERLike, anyway, yeah, so I wonder if these were a product
42:36SPEAKERof just, hey, we have to come up with something
42:37SPEAKERthat shows off what the hardware can do
42:39SPEAKERand here's the five assets we have in three days
42:42SPEAKERto put this together, right?
42:43SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess, you know,
42:44SPEAKERsome of these do feel pretty bare bones.
42:46SPEAKERAnd also again, the bar was lower back then.
42:47SPEAKERLike any amount of new technology, it was impressive.
42:50SPEAKER- Yeah, like in the era when we were moving out
42:52SPEAKERof early 3D stuff especially,
42:54SPEAKERlike anytime you got like,
42:56SPEAKERwhen you got texture filtering on your 3D consoles,
43:00SPEAKERthings suddenly started looking a lot better.
43:01SPEAKER- Right, right.
43:03SPEAKER- So what do you, you wanna start with Space World?
43:04SPEAKER- Yeah, like the key examples of this to me
43:06SPEAKERare the 2000 Space World,
43:08SPEAKERShoshinkai was the show that Nintendo used to put on
43:10SPEAKERin Japan to show off their new games
43:12SPEAKERand technology in their own setting.
43:16SPEAKERIt's the extremely famous-
43:17SPEAKER- Wait, they've been doing this that long?
43:18SPEAKER- No, no, well, no, they stopped a long time ago.
43:21SPEAKERGod, when was the last Space World?
43:22SPEAKERI can't even remember, like, 2001 actually.
43:26SPEAKERThe one after this was the last one.
43:28SPEAKERThey only did it for a few years.
43:30SPEAKERWell, '89 to 2001 actually, I'd bring back Space World.
43:33SPEAKERSpace World was cool.
43:35SPEAKERBut it's this 2001, I mean,
43:37SPEAKERlike everybody's seen this footage, no clip.
43:40SPEAKERIn their efforts to archive a bunch of old tapes
43:42SPEAKERin higher quality, just put up footage of all this stuff
43:45SPEAKERI think last year sometime in much higher quality.
43:47SPEAKERThat's pretty exciting to go watch.
43:49SPEAKERThere's two components to this.
43:51SPEAKERThere's the very quick, like what was meant as B-roll,
43:54SPEAKERsizzle reel, which is like some actual footage
43:57SPEAKERfrom Luigi's Mansion, I think some Pokemon stuff.
44:01SPEAKERBut of course the one everybody remembers
44:03SPEAKERis the realistic Zelda footage
44:04SPEAKERof Link and Ganon fighting each other,
44:06SPEAKERwhich was not a game like that.
44:08SPEAKERThe Luigi's Mansion stuff, it was stunning.
44:11SPEAKERYeah, yeah, yeah, it all looks good, for sure.
44:13SPEAKERWell, 'cause it showed deformable polys.
44:16SPEAKERLike they were smooth, Luigi was smooth.
44:24SPEAKERAre you saying Luigi is ever not smooth?
44:26SPEAKERI'm just saying that prior to that,
44:27SPEAKERLuigi had polygonal faces and they were doing,
44:32SPEAKERI assume like normal maps or something to make him,
44:34SPEAKERor tessellation to make him look smooth
44:38SPEAKERin that video and it looked real cool.
44:40SPEAKERYeah, for sure.
44:41SPEAKERI mean, all the footage in there is impressive.
44:42SPEAKERThe reason that Zelda footage is infamous
44:44SPEAKERis because they never actually made a game out of that.
44:46SPEAKERInstead, we got the Wind Waker three years later,
44:49SPEAKERwhich was an upgrade.
44:51SPEAKERThe second best Zelda game of all time?
44:53SPEAKERLike the Wind Waker was an upgrade over this,
44:56SPEAKERwhatever, it'd been cool if they did both, but like.
44:59SPEAKERWas the official branding for GameCube two words,
45:02SPEAKERgame space cube?
45:04SPEAKERThat shouldn't be, no.
45:06SPEAKERIt's on this video.
45:08SPEAKEROh, that might have been pretty interesting.
45:11SPEAKERThat was probably pre, like we've finalized
45:13SPEAKERall the branding and marketing around this era.
45:16SPEAKERThis is super random.
45:18SPEAKERMaybe I'll try to dig this link up.
45:20SPEAKERSomebody actually found the GameCube from this demo.
45:23SPEAKEROh wow, really?
45:24SPEAKERAnd like came into possession of it.
45:27SPEAKERAnd like, it did an exhaustive breakdown
45:30SPEAKERof like the early IO ports on it
45:32SPEAKERthat were not in the final and stuff.
45:33SPEAKERIt's like a prototype GameCube of some kind.
45:35SPEAKERI don't know where they got that.
45:36SPEAKERI'll try to find that link.
45:39SPEAKERThe 128 Mario thing I'd never seen before, I don't think.
45:42SPEAKERSo that's the end of this.
45:43SPEAKERYeah, the Zelda stuff, it was cool to see the Zelda
45:46SPEAKERlooking like that.
45:46SPEAKERAnd of course, controversy around Wind Waker, whatever.
45:49SPEAKERBut the Mario 128, I'd always refer to this
45:54SPEAKERas 128 Marios, I guess.
45:57SPEAKERBut I found it in the real one.
45:58SPEAKERIt's actually Mario 128 is what they call it.
46:01SPEAKERIt's the sequel to Mario 64, twice as good.
46:04SPEAKERExactly.
46:05SPEAKERLike, it's two Mario 64s taped together.
46:08SPEAKERYeah, you flip the cartridge halfway through the game.
46:11SPEAKERYeah, but this is a perfect example
46:12SPEAKERof what you were talking about of like,
46:14SPEAKERoh God, let's just get the assets we have
46:16SPEAKERand put together a demo as fast as we can.
46:18SPEAKERIt's literally, we have this one Mario model.
46:21SPEAKERNormally we only do one Mario in a game,
46:23SPEAKERbut this time we're gonna do 120.
46:24SPEAKERI mean, didn't they make a game like this at some point?
46:27SPEAKERIsn't it like the Mini-Me's Mario,
46:28SPEAKERlike 128 Marios doing stuff?
46:30SPEAKERNot really, they should have.
46:32SPEAKERI can't remember.
46:33SPEAKERThey absolutely should have turned us into a game.
46:34SPEAKERArmy of Marios.
46:36SPEAKERAnd there is a longer, it's in the show notes here,
46:38SPEAKERthere is a longer like interactive demo
46:41SPEAKERof this being driven on stage
46:43SPEAKERthat apparently looks like IGN put up back in the day.
46:47SPEAKERYou know, where they actually move camera around,
46:49SPEAKERlike spawn more Marios in.
46:50SPEAKERThis thing is a nightmare.
46:51SPEAKERThey deform the surface that the Marios are standing on,
46:54SPEAKERso it gets both concave and convex and stuff happens.
46:57SPEAKERThe Marios are inside boxes.
46:58SPEAKERIt's pretty good.
46:59SPEAKERYeah, it's a good just raw-ass tech demo
47:03SPEAKERof the type I was talking about earlier that I miss.
47:06SPEAKER- Same era, the PS2 one, right?
47:10SPEAKER- Yes.
47:11SPEAKER- I'd never seen this one before.
47:12SPEAKER- The PlayStation 2 rubber ducks,
47:14SPEAKERlike famously from the era when I think it was the PS2
47:16SPEAKERthat they were pitching as Toy Story quality graphics
47:19SPEAKERor something along those lines.
47:20SPEAKER- Everybody was pitching Toy Story quality graphics
47:22SPEAKERin the early 2000s, yeah.
47:23SPEAKER- I would say the PlayStation 2 rubber duck
47:25SPEAKERis almost right up there with the PS1 T-Rex
47:28SPEAKERand the kind of pantheon of PlayStation tech demos,
47:31SPEAKERbut it's basically water physics.
47:32SPEAKERIt's basically like, "Hey, look at the transparency
47:33SPEAKER"on this water and the ripples,
47:34SPEAKER"and the fact that we can simulate fluids to some degree
47:38SPEAKER"and have this rubber duck and this little battleship
47:39SPEAKER"bobbing around in there."
47:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it's pretty good.
47:42SPEAKERThis is a cool demo.
47:43SPEAKERThis was like 1999.
47:45SPEAKER- Yeah, this was kind of in the run up to the PS2.
47:48SPEAKERAnd then of course they, and this is another thing,
47:50SPEAKERthis like kind of goes to what I used to love
47:52SPEAKERabout the PlayStation and the way they used to pitch it
47:54SPEAKERwas that you kind of add to the mystique
47:57SPEAKERand the visual language
47:58SPEAKERand the kind of like memeification of your ecosystem
48:02SPEAKERby doing stuff like this,
48:03SPEAKERwhere it's like the T-Rex and the rubber duck
48:05SPEAKERare like part of the sort of PlayStation family.
48:07SPEAKERThose are things you can reference later
48:09SPEAKERin things like Asterisk Playroom.
48:10SPEAKERBut they did that in the run up to the PS3.
48:12SPEAKERThere is a video out there of Phil Harrison on stage
48:15SPEAKERwith the rubber duck demo for the PS3,
48:18SPEAKERwhere they basically just say,
48:19SPEAKER"Hey, remember the rubber ducks.
48:20SPEAKER"Look what we can do with it now."
48:22SPEAKERAnd what they can do with that is spawn a lot of ducks
48:25SPEAKERinto this bathtub at one time instead of just one of them.
48:28SPEAKER- I like that they're driving the duck around.
48:30SPEAKERI just, I don't,
48:32SPEAKERI wonder if we don't do this anymore
48:33SPEAKERbecause the hardware is all basically the same.
48:36SPEAKER- That's possible maybe.
48:38SPEAKERAnd again, like I was saying earlier,
48:40SPEAKERI think like some of this is just kind of old hat now.
48:42SPEAKERLike they wanna show something that looks like a video game
48:44SPEAKERand not just, hey, look at how much better
48:46SPEAKERthe fluid physics are.
48:48SPEAKER- 'Cause yeah, it is fair to say at this time
48:50SPEAKERyou would buy one game when the game came,
48:52SPEAKERthe system came out and then it'd be like a year
48:54SPEAKERbefore anything else interesting came out a lot of the time.
48:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
48:58SPEAKER- This Phil Harrison, oh, here's the battleships coming in.
49:01SPEAKERI love that you can fast forward
49:02SPEAKERand see when the ducks start to really, really come in
49:05SPEAKERby what's most replayed.
49:07SPEAKER- There's something slightly vulgar about the stream of,
49:10SPEAKERthe stream of rubber, yellow rubber ducks
49:12SPEAKERpouring out of the ceiling into this bathtub.
49:14SPEAKER- I wouldn't have never ever thought about that, Ren.
49:17SPEAKER- Well, hey, that's what I'm here for.
49:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
49:20SPEAKER- Anyway, these are just fun raw tech demos.
49:22SPEAKERLike I said, I miss stuff like this.
49:24SPEAKERThey're not, they don't have quite the stage presentation
49:27SPEAKERaspect of things, but at a time when the technology
49:30SPEAKERwas pretty limited, it was a nice fun way to just show like,
49:32SPEAKERhey, look how much better this stuff's getting.
49:33SPEAKER- Now, okay, so if you didn't have a good demo,
49:37SPEAKERthe other thing you could do is just come out on stage
49:39SPEAKERand be real, real sweaty and yell a lot,
49:43SPEAKERwhich is what Balmer always did.
49:45SPEAKER- Fair.
49:46SPEAKER- Like this, we can't do this without having Balmer,
49:53SPEAKERtalking about Balmer coming out and saying developers,
49:55SPEAKERdevelopers, developers, when he is just drenched with sweat
49:59SPEAKERat Bill, I think this was a build or win, heck,
50:01SPEAKERI can't remember, but yeah, developers shout out,
50:04SPEAKERshout out to Steve Balmer, owner of the Clippers, I guess.
50:08SPEAKER- Sure.
50:08SPEAKER- Good, good job, Steve.
50:09SPEAKER- Yes, well, you know, if you're,
50:11SPEAKERif you're up there to hype up, it was like .net,
50:13SPEAKERI think is what they were promoting there.
50:15SPEAKER- Well, what they were hyping up was, hey,
50:16SPEAKERwe have a better developer ecosystem than Apple.
50:20SPEAKER- Well, that's the thing.
50:21SPEAKER- Yeah.
50:21SPEAKER- It's like, you're not gonna,
50:22SPEAKERwe have a big stage demo of like new APIs or.
50:25SPEAKER- Oh, they did.
50:25SPEAKER- Well, I'm sure they did.
50:26SPEAKERI'm sure they did, but.
50:27SPEAKER- You might not think you're gonna see
50:31SPEAKERa two hour presentation about the 30 new APIs
50:34SPEAKERthat are coming to Windows this year.
50:35SPEAKER- Not fair.
50:36SPEAKER- But you will.
50:37SPEAKER- I'm sure there was plenty of that, but.
50:38SPEAKER- You will, Brad.
50:39SPEAKER- In terms of, in terms of a theatrical presentation,
50:42SPEAKERI guess a very large sweaty man,
50:46SPEAKERskipping and jumping around the stage,
50:48SPEAKERyelling at the audiences is about the best you can do.
50:51SPEAKER- Well, there's a real, like there's a real
50:53SPEAKERinteresting contrast, 'cause this is around the same time
50:54SPEAKERthat Jobs was standing up on stage talking about
50:56SPEAKERthree things that were gonna change, you know,
50:58SPEAKERselling a new, three new products.
50:59SPEAKERIt's announcing three new products this year, right?
51:01SPEAKERAnd their approach was, we're gonna just do this
51:04SPEAKERthe same way IBM and Microsoft have done this
51:06SPEAKERfor a hundred years, and we're gonna do it harder
51:08SPEAKERand yellier than we ever have before.
51:11SPEAKERAnyway.
51:12SPEAKERThe, now that did start to change
51:15SPEAKERwhen they were at more consumer focused shows
51:16SPEAKERlike Comdex and stuff like that, or CES,
51:18SPEAKERthey would do, Microsoft would do like big fake
51:21SPEAKERliving rooms and present you there.
51:24SPEAKERAnother great Microsoft moment is Bill Gates at Comdex
51:29SPEAKERin Chicago, when it was still in Chicago,
51:31SPEAKERdemoing Windows 98 and how USB would make
51:35SPEAKERdevices plug and play.
51:36SPEAKER- Oh, right, this is the infamous one, right?
51:39SPEAKER- You plug in the device, you, it'll install
51:44SPEAKERthe drivers automatically and it's just gonna work.
51:47SPEAKER- So, Bill Gates is standing on stage,
51:49SPEAKERhe's on Windows 98 PC, he's there with Chris Capocello
51:52SPEAKERwho is demoing, like doing the actual demo,
51:56SPEAKERand Chris is all, hey, plug and play devices
52:01SPEAKERare gonna change everything in Windows 98.
52:03SPEAKERWhen you install a device, you just plug the USB port in
52:05SPEAKERand it's just gonna work, it's gonna install the drivers
52:08SPEAKERand you're good to go, and he plugs it in
52:10SPEAKERand it gets like halfway through installing the drivers
52:12SPEAKERand it just fucking blue screens.
52:14SPEAKER- Like the whoa, like you can hear his jaw turning
52:17SPEAKERto rubber, he's in the middle of his spiel
52:19SPEAKERand he's just like, whoa.
52:21SPEAKER- Well, so there's a pause and like, I assume,
52:25SPEAKER'cause Bill Gates, everybody knows this,
52:27SPEAKERbut Bill Gates has had a reputation of yelling at people
52:29SPEAKERwhen he thought they were doing something stupid.
52:32SPEAKERAnd like fucking up the Comdex demo,
52:34SPEAKERprobably pretty high on the things that you can do
52:36SPEAKERthat are stupid list, but he recovers really well.
52:39SPEAKER- I started to say in the moment, he's got a smile
52:42SPEAKERon his face, but it's not an amused smile.
52:43SPEAKER- It's not, it's a you're gonna die smile.
52:46SPEAKERYeah, I would not want that smile.
52:48SPEAKER- It's very much a how angry is this guy right now?
52:51SPEAKER- Yeah. - Probably very.
52:52SPEAKER- So, but he says, he says, well, that's why Windows 98
52:56SPEAKERisn't shipping yet.
52:57SPEAKER- Ah, that's not bad.
52:59SPEAKERAnd like, frankly, it helps that the blue screen
53:02SPEAKERgets a roar of applause from the audience.
53:04SPEAKERLike the, you know, the audience makes it clear
53:06SPEAKERthat they are in on the joke and they're not judging this
53:08SPEAKERor it's, you know, it's something everybody can relate to.
53:11SPEAKER- Well, and like in the modern context, you would,
53:15SPEAKERlike you would not probably put the demo
53:17SPEAKERthat could blue screen out.
53:18SPEAKERBut at this point they probably said, look,
53:20SPEAKERthere's a one in 10 chance or one in 20 chance
53:22SPEAKERor whatever it's gonna blue screen.
53:24SPEAKERThis driver is particularly stable, blah, blah, blah, blah.
53:26SPEAKERAnd they'd cooked it as best they could.
53:28SPEAKERAnd then it crashed the one out of 20 times.
53:31SPEAKERNow it's worth mentioning Chris Capocella ended up
53:33SPEAKERbeing the CMO of Microsoft.
53:35SPEAKERSo he didn't get fired into the sun.
53:37SPEAKER- Sure, probably just fine.
53:39SPEAKER- Yeah, he retired last year.
53:41SPEAKERSo congratulations, Chris.
53:43SPEAKER- Yeah, also let's be real at this time,
53:45SPEAKERthere was no demo with the 0% chance of blue screening.
53:48SPEAKERLike the reality of Windows at this time
53:50SPEAKERwas there was always a chance.
53:52SPEAKER- Especially Windows 98 betas.
53:54SPEAKERThey were, Windows 98 betas were rowdy.
53:57SPEAKERLet's see, a couple other mentions that we,
53:59SPEAKERso we asked people for suggestions on blue sky
54:01SPEAKERand on Discord and somebody on blue sky suggested
54:07SPEAKERthe BB-8 unveil at Celebration, which was really good.
54:10SPEAKERThey had shown some footage from the movie.
54:12SPEAKERThey showed this ball robot, the ball R2D2 rolling around.
54:16SPEAKEREverybody's like, man, that is a cool robot.
54:17SPEAKERAnd then at Celebration, they're introducing the cast.
54:21SPEAKERCelebration's Microsoft Star Wars,
54:22SPEAKERnot Microsoft, Disney's Star Wars event,
54:24SPEAKERor both Lucas's Star Wars event,
54:26SPEAKERbut now it's Disney's Star Wars event.
54:28SPEAKERAnd they roll out a real life BB-8.
54:32SPEAKERLike it rolls across the stage, it does all this stuff.
54:34SPEAKERIt's basically a huge Sphero.
54:35SPEAKER- Right.
54:36SPEAKER- And people lose their shit.
54:38SPEAKERIt was really, really a good moment.
54:39SPEAKER- Now like at that time, they made it clear that on set,
54:41SPEAKERthey had a functional robot that they were using.
54:43SPEAKERLike people just assumed they were puppeteering
54:45SPEAKERa fake thing on set.
54:46SPEAKER- People assumed it was like people underneath the set
54:49SPEAKERdriving the robot across or CG or something, you know.
54:53SPEAKER- Yeah, and so that means it was way before people realized
54:56SPEAKERthey were soon going to be able to just pay,
54:58SPEAKERgranted a large amount of money,
54:59SPEAKERto have one of these in their homes.
55:01SPEAKER- Well, so they don't,
55:02SPEAKERI don't think they ever made full size ones.
55:04SPEAKER- Well, no, no, but I mean,
55:05SPEAKERbut the principle is the same though.
55:06SPEAKERLike the, what I mean is the, the,
55:08SPEAKERthe means of locomotion in that robot actually worked.
55:11SPEAKER- Oh yeah, and, and like, just to be clear,
55:12SPEAKERit's Sphero had done this 10 years before, five years,
55:15SPEAKERfive years before, probably 10 years before.
55:17SPEAKER- Well, have they done the little thing
55:18SPEAKERof balancing the disc on top of the sphere though?
55:20SPEAKER- Well, but balancing the disc on top of the,
55:22SPEAKERthey had not done that in a product yet,
55:24SPEAKERbut because of the way this, the robot works inside this.
55:27SPEAKERSo the Sphero, for people who don't know,
55:28SPEAKERis a hamster ball robot.
55:30SPEAKERIt's a, it's a little,
55:32SPEAKERit's basically a little guy that sits inside the ball
55:34SPEAKERand has rollers that keep it positioned in the ball
55:37SPEAKERso it doesn't rattle around.
55:39SPEAKERAnd then it has, it has articulated wheels
55:42SPEAKERthat let it roll around and control
55:43SPEAKERwhich way the ball moves.
55:45SPEAKERAnd BB-8s, you generally work basically the same
55:48SPEAKERwith scaled up version of that.
55:49SPEAKERBut then there's a magnetic thing on the top
55:51SPEAKERthat either allows you to puppet the movement of the head
55:54SPEAKERfor some of them, or just, just leans forward,
55:56SPEAKERleans back when it's rolling.
55:57SPEAKER- Right, yeah, but I mean, but you know, bottom line,
56:00SPEAKERit's a pretty potent effect to have this cool looking robot
56:03SPEAKERin your new science fiction movie
56:04SPEAKERthat you're promoting,
56:05SPEAKERand then have that robot just come out on stage
56:06SPEAKERand clearly be independent and self, you know,
56:10SPEAKERkind of self propelling.
56:12SPEAKER- Oh yeah, and just to be clear, there's now, you know,
56:15SPEAKERhere, what, five, seven,
56:18SPEAKERfive years after that trilogy ended,
56:20SPEAKERthere's a BB-8 Builders Club,
56:22SPEAKERjust like there's an R2 Builders Club
56:24SPEAKERor a Wall-E Builders Club.
56:26SPEAKERAnd like when we went to Maker Faire,
56:28SPEAKERwe saw a BB-8 that somebody had built
56:29SPEAKERand be like printed all their parts and molded,
56:32SPEAKERlike done the whole thing.
56:33SPEAKERIt was really cool.
56:34SPEAKER- That's wild, I would not have expected that stuff
56:36SPEAKERwas that easy to cobble together yet.
56:38SPEAKER- It is not easy to cobble together.
56:39SPEAKER- Not easy, but it's doable, apparently.
56:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, I mean, like building an R2,
56:44SPEAKERyou're gonna spend thousands of dollars
56:46SPEAKERand probably 10,000 hours assembling,
56:49SPEAKERbut yeah, it's a thing you can do.
56:51SPEAKERAnd somebody's written the software to control the motors
56:53SPEAKERand the whole thing, it's really cool.
56:54SPEAKER- That's cool.
56:55SPEAKEROne more coming off the PlayStation stuff that we missed.
56:58SPEAKERI wouldn't have thought of this, but you suggested it,
56:59SPEAKERand I guess technically it does fit here.
57:02SPEAKERThe PS4 how to share games with your friends demo.
57:06SPEAKER- The official PlayStation used game instructional video.
57:09SPEAKER- Is that what they call it?
57:10SPEAKER- That's what they called it.
57:11SPEAKER- That's pretty good.
57:12SPEAKER- I, my, friend of the show, Adam Boyce,
57:16SPEAKERmy understanding is that he was sitting,
57:18SPEAKERhe and Shu were sitting around
57:20SPEAKERwatching the Microsoft press conference,
57:22SPEAKERand somebody came up with the idea of doing this
57:25SPEAKERbefore the PS4 announced conference at E3,
57:28SPEAKERwhich was later the same day, or maybe the next day,
57:31SPEAKERI can't remember. - It was the same day.
57:31SPEAKER- It was like, that's kind of the famous thing
57:33SPEAKERwas that Microsoft announced the $500 price that morning,
57:36SPEAKERand then Sony literally hours later
57:38SPEAKERundercut them by a hundred bucks.
57:40SPEAKER- Well, and, and so Microsoft had announced the price
57:43SPEAKERand they announced that it needed to be always online,
57:45SPEAKERwhich people lost their minds about.
57:47SPEAKER- Yep, yep.
57:48SPEAKERThis is one of the most pronounced examples I can think of,
57:50SPEAKERof just kind of targeted corporate brutality.
57:53SPEAKEROne corporation sticking a knife in another.
57:56SPEAKER- So it hangs here because it's high risk, right?
57:58SPEAKERThere's clearly shooting something like
58:00SPEAKERin the backstage area behind the conference stage,
58:03SPEAKERor like a hotel room ballroom or something like that.
58:06SPEAKERSomeplace with black drape, pipe and drape.
58:08SPEAKERAnd basically they do, they do the,
58:12SPEAKERhere's how to share,
58:13SPEAKERhere's how to share a used video game with your friends.
58:17SPEAKER- Here's how to share a PlayStation 4 game
58:20SPEAKERwith your friends.
58:20SPEAKER- Yeah, and they do the intro,
58:23SPEAKERand then there's like a little PlayStation swirl
58:26SPEAKERthat's like with the step one, blah, blah, blah.
58:28SPEAKERYou know, it's a title.
58:29SPEAKERIt's like a really good motion graphic that they've set up.
58:32SPEAKERIt's unnecessarily long.
58:35SPEAKERAnd then- - It's step one, yeah.
58:36SPEAKER- It cuts to Shu handing Adam a disc.
58:42SPEAKER- Yeah, whoever did the editing on this
58:43SPEAKERdeserves a lot of credit for the comedic rhythm of this.
58:47SPEAKER- Adam looks at the camera and says, "Thank you."
58:50SPEAKERAnd that's it, that's the whole video.
58:51SPEAKER- Yeah, like technically is, you know,
58:53SPEAKERin terms of whether this belongs on this list or not,
58:55SPEAKERit is a demonstration of a technology.
58:58SPEAKER- Well, and so they could have done it live on stage.
59:00SPEAKERThat would have been cooler,
59:01SPEAKERbut it wouldn't have had the funny video edit.
59:03SPEAKERThe thing about this was,
59:07SPEAKERit contrasted with Microsoft's like 12 step process
59:10SPEAKERfor sharing a DRM download only video game
59:14SPEAKERthat you had bought on the Xbox with a friend,
59:16SPEAKERwhich you could do like,
59:17SPEAKERthere were all sorts of limitations.
59:18SPEAKERYou could do it like five times,
59:19SPEAKERand you can only do it
59:20SPEAKERif everybody was connected to the internet,
59:21SPEAKERand it was like the kind of thing that you looked at,
59:26SPEAKERand you were like, oh, this is designed
59:27SPEAKERso that no one will ever do it.
59:28SPEAKERAnd Tony was like, hey man,
59:29SPEAKERwe're cool if you change to share discs with each other,
59:31SPEAKERthat's fine.
59:32SPEAKER- Yeah, famously, Microsoft took such a drubbing
59:36SPEAKERfrom this situation and largely from this video
59:39SPEAKERthat they straight up reversed course on the DRM policy
59:41SPEAKERsome weeks later.
59:42SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
59:44SPEAKER- Although now quietly,
59:45SPEAKEReverybody has arrived at exactly that place.
59:48SPEAKER- Like we ended up right.
59:48SPEAKERWell, yeah, anyway, grim.
59:52SPEAKERLet's see, last one I think on our list.
59:54SPEAKERIs this it?
59:54SPEAKERHave we reached the end already?
59:55SPEAKER- I think so.
59:56SPEAKER- We didn't talk about Doom 3 at Macworld.
59:58SPEAKER- Oh, we passed over that one somehow.
1:00:00SPEAKER- Yeah, we skipped that.
1:00:01SPEAKER- Yeah, that one went with the source engine.
1:00:03SPEAKERWell, we talked about Doom 3.
1:00:05SPEAKERI think the E3 presentation I saw.
1:00:09SPEAKERThe one that we have on this list is the somewhat famous,
1:00:11SPEAKERat least at the time it was quite famous,
1:00:13SPEAKERof the Macworld 2001 in Tokyo,
1:00:15SPEAKERwhere Steve Jobs introduced John Carmack.
1:00:17SPEAKERIt was, I don't know if it was the announcement
1:00:20SPEAKERof the GeForce 3,
1:00:20SPEAKERbut it was definitely a very early promotion
1:00:23SPEAKERfor the GeForce 3.
1:00:24SPEAKERAnd of course, you know, we've talked about how
1:00:27SPEAKERtransformational the GeForce 3 was
1:00:28SPEAKERwith programmable shaders and so forth.
1:00:30SPEAKERBut it was an interesting confluence of Jobs on Apple,
1:00:35SPEAKERJohn Carmack and id Software, a new Doom, a new GeForce.
1:00:39SPEAKERLike you do not expect to see things like id Software
1:00:41SPEAKERand GeForce and Doom on an Apple stage.
1:00:45SPEAKER- Yeah, it was like we got up early in the morning
1:00:47SPEAKERor stayed up late at night.
1:00:48SPEAKERI can't remember which one,
1:00:49SPEAKERand we're watching in the conference room in future for this.
1:00:52SPEAKERAnd it was shocking.
1:00:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:54SPEAKER- And it came on the heels of Q3 tests.
1:00:56SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
1:00:57SPEAKERSo like this was about two years, I guess,
1:01:00SPEAKERafter Q3 test famously, the kind of early beta version,
1:01:04SPEAKERdemo version of Quake 3 shipped on Mac first.
1:01:08SPEAKER- By like a couple of weeks, right?
1:01:10SPEAKERThere was a long time. - At least for like a month.
1:01:11SPEAKERPeople were so mad.
1:01:12SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:01:13SPEAKER- But they wanted a very small test bed.
1:01:15SPEAKERThey wanted like a very small,
1:01:16SPEAKERmanageable amount of feedback coming in on the first build,
1:01:19SPEAKERwhich was easy because very few people could run that game
1:01:21SPEAKERon a Mac at the time.
1:01:23SPEAKERBut anyway, like Carmack,
1:01:25SPEAKERwhich I've actually just talked about recently,
1:01:27SPEAKERRomero, like they were all big Next Step fans that did.
1:01:30SPEAKERSo when OS X essentially was the next version of Next Step,
1:01:33SPEAKERthey did a lot of development on that platform.
1:01:35SPEAKERSo it made sense.
1:01:36SPEAKERThat kind of temporary collaboration there
1:01:39SPEAKERobviously did not last.
1:01:41SPEAKER- It was a very unappley,
1:01:43SPEAKERlike the fact that because it was unusual for Mac,
1:01:46SPEAKERfor jobs to promote violent video games.
1:01:49SPEAKER- Sure.
1:01:50SPEAKER- At that point.
1:01:51SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:01:52SPEAKER- That was novel.
1:01:52SPEAKER- I still have the clip I downloaded in 2001 of that
1:01:55SPEAKERon my mouse.
1:01:56SPEAKER- What was the date stamp?
1:01:57SPEAKERDo you remember?
1:01:58SPEAKER- It was February, 2001, I believe.
1:02:00SPEAKER- Something like that.
1:02:00SPEAKER- I put it in the Discord.
1:02:01SPEAKERIt still had that file lying around when I watched it.
1:02:04SPEAKERAnd I remembered how fucking blown away I was
1:02:06SPEAKERby the visuals in that thing.
1:02:08SPEAKERAnd then, you know, I guess the last thing I'll say
1:02:09SPEAKERthere is like, kind of like we're alluding to
1:02:11SPEAKERthe theatrical aspect of what these demos can be like,
1:02:14SPEAKERlike bringing somebody out who you don't expect.
1:02:17SPEAKERIt's that straight up like pro wrestling type stuff almost.
1:02:20SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like a booking, right?
1:02:21SPEAKER- Right, they didn't exactly amp it up in that way
1:02:23SPEAKERfor this particular instance, but like it's,
1:02:26SPEAKERthat's literally like, by God,
1:02:27SPEAKERthat's Sean Carmack's music type stuff.
1:02:29SPEAKEROr another one that I think of,
1:02:31SPEAKERI don't know if it actually played out this way
1:02:32SPEAKERin real life.
1:02:33SPEAKERMy memory is of the Pirates of Silicon Valley film.
1:02:36SPEAKER- Okay.
1:02:37SPEAKER- The famous Microsoft investment in Apple
1:02:39SPEAKERwhen Apple was hanging by a thread.
1:02:41SPEAKER- Oh, when Bill Gates came up huge on the screen
1:02:45SPEAKERat Macworld?
1:02:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:47SPEAKER- In the movie, they dramatize it as Jobs is on stage
1:02:49SPEAKERand then they cut to like a giant Bill Gates on the screen.
1:02:52SPEAKER- It's like the emperor.
1:02:53SPEAKER- Yes, literally like the emperor appearing.
1:02:55SPEAKERI don't know if that's exactly how it played out
1:02:57SPEAKERin real life, but you know, like there can be an aspect
1:02:59SPEAKERof like people you never expected to work together
1:03:02SPEAKERsuddenly are here sharing a stage to these kinds of demos.
1:03:05SPEAKER- I don't actually remember which way that,
1:03:06SPEAKERI didn't watch that at the time.
1:03:07SPEAKERIt would have been before my day.
1:03:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I also, I don't know if that was even like televised
1:03:11SPEAKERor even recorded for that matter.
1:03:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, there may not be video of it, but.
1:03:16SPEAKER- Also, before we move on, I'm just gonna say this now,
1:03:18SPEAKERwe should watch Pirates of Silicon Valley
1:03:20SPEAKERand do an episode about it.
1:03:21SPEAKER- I would watch that.
1:03:22SPEAKER- Soon.
1:03:23SPEAKER- The other one, I think Bill Gates coming out at build
1:03:26SPEAKERor at Alex St. John's DirectX unveil
1:03:32SPEAKERin a trench coat with a shotgun green screened
1:03:35SPEAKERinto a doom shot.
1:03:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:03:38SPEAKER- Canonically making Bill Gates the doom guy.
1:03:42SPEAKER- I don't know about that.
1:03:43SPEAKER- He walks out, he walks out,
1:03:45SPEAKERhe walks out from behind the camera
1:03:46SPEAKERas if he's the avatar of the first person
1:03:49SPEAKERand casually mercs an alien
1:03:51SPEAKERand then talks about how important games are
1:03:53SPEAKERto Microsoft and Windows.
1:03:56SPEAKER- Well, you know, to be fair, unlike Steve Jobs,
1:03:57SPEAKERhe actually meant it.
1:03:58SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I mean, they invested in games for years.
1:04:02SPEAKERThe, let's see, I'm trying to think,
1:04:04SPEAKERthere's some other stuff.
1:04:05SPEAKEROh, the Disney Vision Imagineering one
1:04:06SPEAKERis really interesting too.
1:04:07SPEAKERSo this is the one that Wildcard actually suggested
1:04:10SPEAKERwe should look at.
1:04:12SPEAKERAnd it's an Epcot demo from 1994
1:04:17SPEAKERwhere you're, a group of people gets pulled into a room
1:04:21SPEAKERand they pull a handful of,
1:04:23SPEAKERthey talk about what virtual reality is
1:04:24SPEAKERin a very fascinating way.
1:04:26SPEAKERIt's worth watching this video if you haven't seen it.
1:04:28SPEAKERIt's for a ride called, I think Disney Vision,
1:04:31SPEAKERwhere the parrot from Aladdin played by Gilbert Gottfried
1:04:35SPEAKERlike flies you through a magic carpet thing
1:04:37SPEAKERwhere you're all wearing big giant CRT based VR headsets.
1:04:41SPEAKERAnd they do this whole talk and they explain what VR is
1:04:46SPEAKERand then like three people from the audience
1:04:47SPEAKERget to come up and try on the headsets,
1:04:49SPEAKERwhich are suspended from the ceiling
1:04:50SPEAKERso you don't break your neck.
1:04:53SPEAKERBut they don't, and they show you what those people
1:04:55SPEAKERare seeing through the cameras, but they didn't,
1:04:59SPEAKERlike, I don't know if it's 'cause the ride had to be open.
1:05:01SPEAKERLike, I don't know why this exists.
1:05:03SPEAKER'Cause I don't think this ride ever opened.
1:05:05SPEAKERI don't think they ever actually did this ride.
1:05:08SPEAKERI couldn't find anything about it.
1:05:09SPEAKERI looked for it a little bit
1:05:10SPEAKERand maybe that they changed the name
1:05:11SPEAKERand the stuff I was searching for didn't work,
1:05:13SPEAKERbut I would love to know from audience
1:05:15SPEAKERif this is a thing that actually happened.
1:05:19SPEAKER- Maybe it's because as soon as the cameras cut,
1:05:21SPEAKERall the participants walked off set
1:05:23SPEAKERand vomited violently everywhere.
1:05:25SPEAKER- Well, so they were running,
1:05:26SPEAKERthey talked about frame rates even.
1:05:27SPEAKERAnd they were like, it seemed like they were talking
1:05:29SPEAKERabout 60 frames per second per eye,
1:05:31SPEAKERwhich should have been okay with CRTs
1:05:32SPEAKERwith the image retention, I would think.
1:05:34SPEAKERBut...
1:05:36SPEAKER- Like you said, you see the footage,
1:05:37SPEAKERlike the head tracking seems reasonably competent.
1:05:39SPEAKER- It seemed okay.
1:05:41SPEAKERAnd they were doing YAGO, the parrot.
1:05:43SPEAKERLike they were showing 3D models
1:05:45SPEAKERhad been created on SGI workstations.
1:05:47SPEAKERHaving just come off of that "Doom" and "Quake" episode,
1:05:50SPEAKERthe Romero episode, it was interesting
1:05:51SPEAKER'cause this would have been around the same time.
1:05:54SPEAKERAnd tools to make 3D models like that
1:05:56SPEAKERwere few and far between.
1:05:58SPEAKERSo they were on the real edge here.
1:06:00SPEAKER- Yeah, but maybe that was it.
1:06:02SPEAKERMaybe it was just a little too technically advanced
1:06:04SPEAKERto be feasible to deploy at scale or something.
1:06:07SPEAKERYeah, to have 10, 1,000 people an hour through or whatever.
1:06:12SPEAKERDid you, the other one, did you see the walking floor demo
1:06:15SPEAKERfrom Imagineering a couple of weeks ago?
1:06:17SPEAKER- No.
1:06:19SPEAKER- Oh, I should have put this on the list.
1:06:20SPEAKERDamn, this is, so this is a video.
1:06:23SPEAKERIt doesn't, it's not on stage.
1:06:25SPEAKERIt's not...
1:06:27SPEAKER- I have it here.
1:06:28SPEAKERIs this the Disney Imagineer makes history?
1:06:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe that's it.
1:06:33SPEAKER- I think I heard, I saw people talking about it.
1:06:34SPEAKER- It's Lanny Smoot, right, the hollow tile floor?
1:06:37SPEAKER- I heard people talking about this.
1:06:39SPEAKERI did not, I did not actually.
1:06:40SPEAKERYes, that is the video.
1:06:41SPEAKERWhat is the concept here?
1:06:43SPEAKER- So the concept is a floor that you can walk on
1:06:45SPEAKERthat holds you in place while you're walking.
1:06:47SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.
1:06:48SPEAKER- So it moves in the opposite direction
1:06:50SPEAKERthat your feet are moving,
1:06:51SPEAKERbut it feels like you're walking on a normal floor.
1:06:53SPEAKER- Look at that, yeah, like they've,
1:06:55SPEAKERand then to be clear, this is the type of thing
1:06:56SPEAKERyou can only put in a Disney theme park 'cause it's not,
1:06:59SPEAKERwell, who knows, maybe in 20 years
1:07:00SPEAKERyou'll have this in your living room, but...
1:07:01SPEAKER- I mean, maybe you have this
1:07:02SPEAKERinstead of people movers at airports, right?
1:07:04SPEAKER- Maybe, sure.
1:07:05SPEAKERI mean, this is something people have been trying to solve
1:07:07SPEAKERfor like, I feel like 15 years ago at E3,
1:07:09SPEAKERI was seeing like weird treadmills
1:07:12SPEAKERhooked up to VR headsets because they want to let you,
1:07:14SPEAKERthey want to let you walk in a virtual space
1:07:16SPEAKERwhile not actually moving around.
1:07:17SPEAKER- I tried so many of those and the vast majority of them
1:07:21SPEAKERwere, hey, here's a really slippery disc
1:07:23SPEAKERthat you stand in with really slippery shoes on
1:07:25SPEAKERand you buckle your hips in and just kind of move your feet
1:07:27SPEAKERwhile you're, and none of them work.
1:07:29SPEAKERThis looks really cool.
1:07:31SPEAKERI'm interested to try this.
1:07:33SPEAKER- It seems like a good way to load people on and off rides
1:07:35SPEAKERif nothing else, if it goes fast enough.
1:07:37SPEAKER- It looks, it looks very fluid.
1:07:38SPEAKERIt looks slippery almost.
1:07:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:41SPEAKER- It's a striking effect.
1:07:42SPEAKER- At no point did he look like he was going to beef it,
1:07:44SPEAKERwhich was the other cool thing.
1:07:45SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:46SPEAKER- Also good shoes.
1:07:47SPEAKER- Yes, also the footage of him sitting in a chair
1:07:50SPEAKERon this thing and having somebody move the chair
1:07:53SPEAKERon the floor while he's stationary is pretty weird
1:07:57SPEAKERand eye-opening.
1:07:58SPEAKER- It looks like it doesn't go super fast,
1:07:59SPEAKERis the other thing.
1:08:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:08:01SPEAKER- But anyway.
1:08:02SPEAKER- Do you have a theme?
1:08:03SPEAKER- Hollow tile floor.
1:08:04SPEAKER- Hollow tile floor.
1:08:06SPEAKER- Hollow tile floor is what they call it.
1:08:08SPEAKER- Hey, there's still new technology yet to be demoed.
1:08:11SPEAKER- Yeah, like I would love to see this on a stage someplace.
1:08:14SPEAKERI bet there's, I wonder what goes underneath it is the thing.
1:08:16SPEAKERI wonder how like, how much mechanism is underneath this
1:08:19SPEAKERon the floor, under the floor.
1:08:21SPEAKERAnyway, so this will do it for us I think this week, Brad.
1:08:25SPEAKERWhat do you think?
1:08:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I think so.
1:08:26SPEAKER- Tech demos.
1:08:27SPEAKER- Tech demos are fun.
1:08:28SPEAKERThey're still fun.
1:08:29SPEAKERThey're not as many of them as there used to be.
1:08:31SPEAKERI wish there were more.
1:08:32SPEAKER- Yeah, and we're gonna do,
1:08:34SPEAKERthere's a couple of books I wanna read
1:08:35SPEAKERbefore we do the Mother of All Demos episode.
1:08:39SPEAKERSo it'll be a minute.
1:08:41SPEAKERBut I think that it would widely regarded,
1:08:45SPEAKERit's widely regarded as the thing that kicked off
1:08:48SPEAKERa lot of the innovations that happened at PARC.
1:08:51SPEAKERThe Stanford Research Institute,
1:08:52SPEAKERlike a lot of people spun out of that
1:08:54SPEAKERand ended up going to other places, so.
1:08:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't wanna burn.
1:08:58SPEAKERWe'll save it for that episode.
1:08:59SPEAKERBut looking at what was at that thing,
1:09:01SPEAKERfor as much credit as PARC gets
1:09:02SPEAKERfor inventing things like the GUI and the mouse,
1:09:04SPEAKERlike here it all was even before that, so.
1:09:06SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:09:07SPEAKER- There's a whole lineage there.
1:09:08SPEAKER- So anyway, that'll do it for us this week.
1:09:10SPEAKERThank you all for listening.
1:09:11SPEAKERAs always, Brad and Will made a tech pod
1:09:12SPEAKERis 100% listener supported.
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1:09:24SPEAKERand join the 3000 members of our community,
1:09:27SPEAKEReither in the discord or just listening
1:09:29SPEAKERto the Patreon exclusive episodes that come out every month.
1:09:32SPEAKERThe discord is full of fascinating conversations
1:09:34SPEAKERabout all sorts of things,
1:09:35SPEAKERfrom things we can talk about on the show
1:09:38SPEAKERto yesterday was a bunch of,
1:09:40SPEAKERthere was a bunch of food talk in general, I don't know.
1:09:42SPEAKERPeople were talking about TV shows they like.
1:09:44SPEAKERThere's a lot of talking about 3D platformers
1:09:46SPEAKERand like what Mario games are good.
1:09:48SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
1:09:49SPEAKER- I don't know.
1:09:51SPEAKERLike somebody posted a Super Mario Deep Dive,
1:09:53SPEAKERa Super Mario Sunshine Deep Dive that I've never seen.
1:09:56SPEAKERAnd I kinda wanna go back and play Super Mario Sunshine now,
1:09:58SPEAKERbut I don't know if that's a good idea or not.
1:10:01SPEAKER- You could maybe watch a video and be good.
1:10:03SPEAKER- They did talk about the bonus disc
1:10:07SPEAKERthat you got for pre-ordering Windmaker though,
1:10:09SPEAKERin there yesterday.
1:10:10SPEAKERDo you remember what it was?
1:10:10SPEAKER- No.
1:10:11SPEAKER- It was Ocarina of Time
1:10:13SPEAKERand the Master Quest for Ocarina of Time.
1:10:15SPEAKER- Wait, not Majora's Mask, just Ocarina?
1:10:18SPEAKER- It might've had Majora's Mask too,
1:10:19SPEAKERbut it definitely had two Ocarinas.
1:10:21SPEAKER- I can't believe I had forgotten that
1:10:22SPEAKER'cause I have that disc in the closet.
1:10:23SPEAKERI pre-ordered the Windmaker and got that disc.
1:10:26SPEAKER- Yeah, so I have that disc as well
1:10:29SPEAKERand I'm gonna go dig it out
1:10:30SPEAKER'cause I wanna play that Master Quest.
1:10:31SPEAKERI never actually did.
1:10:32SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds fun.
1:10:33SPEAKERThe Discord, let's just say,
1:10:35SPEAKERthe Discord is also a great place to go if, for example,
1:10:38SPEAKERyou get your hands on the seminal 1988 work,
1:10:41SPEAKERthe C programming language by Kernighan and Ritchie.
1:10:46SPEAKERAnd you wanna ask some programmers,
1:10:47SPEAKER"Hey, should I still read this book in 2024?"
1:10:50SPEAKER- Is it worth reading?
1:10:50SPEAKER- Are there better ways to approach C, for example?
1:10:53SPEAKER- And is it?
1:10:54SPEAKER- I was told that book was written largely
1:10:56SPEAKERas a way to get assembly language programmers into C.
1:10:59SPEAKERSo I'm gonna say maybe-
1:11:00SPEAKER- Probably not so much for you.
1:11:01SPEAKER- Might not be the angle for me to approach.
1:11:04SPEAKERI turned to a random page
1:11:05SPEAKERand it was just so much stuff about pointer arithmetic.
1:11:07SPEAKER- There you go.
1:11:08SPEAKER- And I was like, "I don't know if I have time
1:11:10SPEAKERfor this or capacity."
1:11:12SPEAKER- But yeah, so you can get anywhere from Windwaker to C.
1:11:15SPEAKERThat's what we got.
1:11:16SPEAKER- That's right, and everything in between.
1:11:18SPEAKER- You can go to patreon.com/checkpod for five bucks a month.
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1:11:22SPEAKERWe, at the end of the month, or at the end of the episode,
1:11:26SPEAKERlike to thank our supporters, all of our patrons.
1:11:28SPEAKERSo thank you, patrons.
1:11:29SPEAKER- Thank you.
1:11:30SPEAKER- And we want to give an extra special shout out
1:11:31SPEAKERto our executive producer tier patrons,
1:11:33SPEAKERincluding Paddle Creek Games Makers of Fractured Vale,
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1:11:49SPEAKER- Thank you, everyone.
1:11:50SPEAKER- Thank you all so much.
1:11:51SPEAKERThat'll do it for us this week.
1:11:52SPEAKERWe will be back next week with another episode
1:11:54SPEAKERof The Tech Pod.
1:11:55SPEAKERThank you for listening, and we will see you then.
1:11:58SPEAKERBye.
1:11:59SPEAKER(upbeat music)