In this episode, AMT Lab guest contributors Carol Niedringhaus and Katie Winter review VR experiences using Google Cardboard and Mozilla Hubs. Google Cardboard is, as the name indicates, a cardboard headset in which you can place a smartphone and engage with VR-based apps, such as Google Arts & Culture. Mozilla Hubs allows you to “share a virtual room with friends” on your browser.

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Transcript

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Angela: Hello, AMT Lab listeners, and welcome to a special episode brought to you by the Arts Management and Technology Lab. My name is Angela Johnson, and I’m the Podcast Producer. In this episode, AMT Lab guest contributors Carol Niedringhaus and Katie Winter provide reviews, analysis, and a comparison of VR experiences using Google Cardboard and Mozilla Hubs. Hope you enjoy.

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Carol: Katie, why don't you get us started and tell us a little bit about Google Cardboard?

Katie: I'm really interested in how more arts organizations can kind of implement these Google Arts & Culture tours into their normal operations. When I was at Carlow University, our art gallery had the opportunity to go into Google Arts & Culture and create a space there, and it was always an interest of ours to creative virtual space. It just never happened, at least while I was there, especially with Covid happening my senior year. But I've always kind of had an interest in that, so I decided to do my review on Google Arts & Culture and how it utilizes Google Cardboard. I bought Google Cardboard. I have it here with me. I know you all can't see it, but I have it here with me to do, like, an in-person, I-got-the-product-in-my-hands review of it. And, you know, overall, the consensus is that it is cardboard. That's what it is.

Carol: It's just a piece of cardboard.

Katie: Yes, so there's, you know, a lot of different hot takes on this, which we will definitely dive into.

Carol: Yeah, so I decided to do Mozilla Hubs. I have my own personal experience with Mozilla Hubs, so it was really, it was really fun to look at a lot of these reviews from people who actually know about tech, because their experiences with it and their take on it is very different. So, yes, do you want to give a little bit of background on kind of how your product came to be, what it's supposed to be used for, and that sort of thing?

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. So, Google Cardboard was released in around 2014, and at the time, it was just Google's attempt to kind of get in on the virtual headset. They also kind of were aware, though, that this was a more beginner headset, and a lot of reviews definitely acknowledge that. This was something that Google Arts & Culture just released to kind of get in the VR space. It was meant to be used with the phone. It wasn't a full on VR headset. And, to be honest, I think it serves its purpose. It's a great way for people to buy a headset, get involved with it, and just try it out. A lot of reviews and a lot of people argue that this is definitely meant for kids more so than it is for adults. However, I still think that the overall target audience can be for anyone who's interested in just trying it out. I think that it was great to get started with it, play around with VR, and be introduced to it. Especially as someone who came from a more arts background with not a lot of technology, I really enjoyed just playing with it and getting introduced to Google Arts & Culture through it. And I think a lot of parents who are buying this for their kids, or their kids want it, or even teachers, also are kind of the target audience in that sense that they can also go to the museum too through Google Arts & Culture. So, it's not just the kids. It really is an awesome opportunity for adults, too, to go on tours. Now even Google has introduced actual tours of national parks that I would, you know, I would check those out.

Carol: I played around with it too, and yeah, some of the national parks that you can go into—gorgeous. It's gorgeous.

Katie: Absolutely. And that's what my specific experience with it was. I did the tour of the Temple of Borobudur, and it was this really neat thing. It actually kind of broke my expectations of Google Cardboard, because I kind of expected to go into it with this museum, that I was going to walk into a museum, I was going to see paintings on the wall, that was going to be it. And there is a lot of opinions on that. A lot of people had said some negative things about Google Arts & Culture and the fact that, you know, these Google Cardboard tours are simply: you walk in, see the stuff on the wall, you can't zoom in and out, you can't always choose your route. But, I thought the tour of Borobudur was actually really neat in that that you climb up the temple. You know, you still are kind of limited to, you know, their route that they take you up, but as you kind of navigate up through the temple, you do go up higher and higher on each level of the temple. And so at the top, you are at the top, and you can kind of see the surrounding area. Honestly, for someone who's afraid of heights, I did feel like it really kind of felt real. You know, the headset in itself has some issues. But, otherwise, I still thought the experience was a really neat way to just get into the VR, kind of, realm of things, and I think Google Cardboard served its purpose for that.

Carol: Yeah, that's true. I mean, I found it uncomfortable. But, also, it's something that I might, like, want to play with in the future, just because it was really cool and there are so many Google Arts & Culture things that you can do in there, which is really, really cool. I know that you did the temple tour; did you explore any of the other things that were in Google Arts & Culture while you were playing with it?

Katie: Yeah, so, I do have some kind of cons there, and I want to talk about the accessibility feature here. You know, whenever you go into the app—and one specific critic of Google Arts & Culture brought this up, too—is that it's hard to get oriented to. You know, when you order them...first off, Google actually discontinued selling them themselves. So, about 19 days ago, actually, as of March 22, so just the beginning of March...beginning of March of 2021, you have to buy it from kind of a third party. So, you're buying it from a third party, so you're not really getting instructions for the headset. They kind of come by themselves. They have a little kind of QR code on the bottom that you can scan and view the profile of it, but otherwise, it doesn't really come with, like, any sort of, like, rigid instructions, like, "Download the app, here's how to do it, here's how to open it, put it on." You are kind of left to do that on yourself, which, obviously, it's technology. You should be able to use Google if you're buying it, but I think at the same point, now as the audience for these goggles becomes more younger generations, they're being incorporated into more classrooms, I think there's still an accessibility issue at that in the sense of, like, when you download the app, to actually putting the glasses on and using them...there's a gap there. So, for me, when I first got onto the app, they have, like, a test thing that you can put the headset on and it tests it. And it's supposed to be some sort of, like, two-dimensional animated, like, landscape, and for me, that one just did not work.

Carol: I never got it to work, either. It was, like, flicking through a bunch of images. It was very strange.

Katie: Yeah, so already at that point, I'm like, "Oh, I'm not using this right. There's an issue here." And that was just the test run, so I spent another, like, 10 minutes on Google making sure I had it set up right and making sure I could do it. And then there's also the issue that when you go on to some of these tours, you are limited in what you can do in them. So then you're kind of wondering, "Why can I go that direction? Am I doing this right? Am I on the right tour? Is this the wrong tour?" And then the accessibility issue there that one critic brought up is that you can't zoom in on stuff. Google allows you, in some tours, you know, if whoever created that tour adds it, you can go up to paintings and maybe look at the information there, if there's an information template that you can kind of hover over. But otherwise, you can't really zoom in. So there is that kind of accessibility issue if you are someone who is hard of sight, you know, sight impaired. You're not able to zoom in so the text only gets so big. Especially with the headset on, you can't really access your phone, so you can't, like, zoom in on your phone screen, as well. And then there's the issue of the double vision thing too, which I don't know if you...

Carol: Oh, man.

Katie: You felt that, as well?

Carol: I did. It was so blurry. You couldn't focus on anything at all.

Katie: Yes, that was such a thing. And, you know, after the fact, I researched it and there were so many articles that came up about this concept called IPR, which is "interpupillary distance." So, everyone, I guess, has a different distance between each of their pupils, which is how you go about seeing the world and how your pupils kind of see one image and, you know, focuses on that thing and it translates into your brain. But, whenever you kind of put your phone into the app, there's no changing the range of the image you're seeing on your screen. So a lot of people brought up the fact that there's no way to change that, so if you're someone with a more narrow set of eyes or someone with a wide-set set of eyes...even the difference between most males and most females, their set of eyes are different spaced, and the fact that Google Arts & Culture and Google Cardboard, more specifically, isn't always set up to handle that. So, because of that, with varying phone screens, even, you might have a smaller iPhone that fits in there or you may have a bigger iPhone that fits in there, so the distance between those images that they're projecting are going to be different almost every scenario. So there's no perfect way to view it for the most part. So everyone's going to have some level of that kind of double vision, almost, to a degree. And some people go in there and experience nothing. Some people said, "No, I don't see it," you know, or maybe some people said, "Yeah, it's really limited at first, but then once I'm on it, you know, I get used to it." But, unfortunately, because of the nature of the fact that it is cardboard, it's not kind of integrated into the phone—you just kind of slip your phone right in there—there are some of those issues to it.

Carol: Yeah, definitely. That's really interesting because I didn't know about that concept, and that totally makes sense. I mean, nobody has the same shaped face, you know, so if you're trying to make a one-size-fits-all VR kind of experience, then yeah, you're going to get that weird, double-vision video quality. And it's on a phone. You're not, like, looking at it from something super duper high quality, you know?

Katie: Yeah. And that's the thing, too, is so many critics have came and said, "Listen, at the end of the day, this is something that's great for teachers to use," right? It's a great tool for teachers to bring into the classroom and introduce this concept to students. That, at the end of the day, is the best served purpose for it, is just to introduce people to the technology. If you want a more clear, accurate, you know, engaging VR experience, then you're going to need to update to, you know, a nicer headset that, you know, has the screen inside, is going to format to your face, is going to fit your eyes better, where at Google Cardboard is simply a cardboard box. You slip your phone in, everyone has...you know, I have cracks on my screen, so I was really able to see that too in the tours. So, at the end of the day, it does what it's intended to do. Not in the best way, but it is something neat that if I was a teacher and educator, I would probably bring one or two sets of these in—I mean, you know, in a Covid-free world—and allow students to test them out, try it out, see it, and introduce the concept.

Carol: Yeah. Well that's really cool. I think that really kind of covers the the pros and cons of that non-technology technology, which...that's kind of how I've been describing it to myself.

Katie: Do you want to dive into Mozilla Hubs on that same note?

Carol: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, in its essence, Mozilla Hubs is just a social VR app that was started in 2018. Mozilla just wanted to dip its toes in there while VR was kind of becoming more and more popular in the market. And it's specifically described as a WebXR social app, so it's like a mixed reality, rather than specifically a VR or augmented reality. And I think that's because you don't have to have it on a VR headset. You know, you can use it on your phone, you can use it on your laptop or desktop. You can use it on basically any device. So this thing that I kind of kept coming across was this idea of a global metaverse, and this is important because this is really, like, Mozilla's..they called it in one of the articles a "master plan."

Katie: Oo!

Carol: I know! It sounded, like, super nefarious, but it's really just this idea of creating what is called a metaverse. So I had to go look it up, because I had no idea what that meant. And so I found this Forbes article by Cathy Hackl, and as a definition, the metaverse is an "alternate digital reality where people work, play, and socialize." Basically, another quote, "it's a future interpretation of the internet made up of persistent shared 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe." So, think Ready Player One. You know, you can just kind of log in, you have access to buying products. I think she had an example where it's like, oh, your spouse goes to the store and they forget what to get, and you can, like, link into the metaverse and send them what type of product they need to get in, like, a visual way. Yeah, it's a cool concept.

Katie: This is very fascinating.

Carol: Yeah, it's kind of hard to, like, wrap your head around, but the argument here is that it's coming. It's coming very quickly, and it's going to have a lot of implications for our society moving forward in, you know, things like economics, culture, retail, entertainment, because people are going to be able to interact with brands in a visual way, rather than just, like, Twitter or Instagram or Facebook posts, which, while they can be personal, are still...you're not interacting with a human. And so Mozilla Hubs wants to be a major player here.

Katie: This is very interesting. I almost wish that was integrated into Mozilla Hubs', like, homepage or something, where you could click on a little button to kind of learn more about it. Because it's making more sense now.

Carol: Yeah, yeah. Because you go into Mozilla Hubs and it seems like it's just, like, another virtual platform to just, like Zoom. Like, we're doing this, you know, on Zoom, and it seems like it's just trying to be like a more complicated Zoom. But that's not really the idea. And along those lines, actually, they launched a Hubs Cloud version back in April 2020, and it is really the first open web-based metaverse. So, basically, what that means is that they are creating this decentralized system where you can pay to, basically, host the foundation of their platform and run it on your own company's servers and have your own private domain be able to do a lot more customization. Which is really interesting, and it brought up this idea of the whole, like, decentralization of the metaverse, which is almost a whole other podcast in and of itself. It is basically that Mozilla doesn't want to control it, whereas, you know, we're having all these conversations right now about how, like, Google and Facebook kind of have this monopoly on the internet and how, you know, now that we know that the internet has such influence, government back in the 90's would have been more interested in controlling it. So, this Hubs developer, his name is Greg Fodor, said in an interview that, for them, that decentralization is really important, you know, because anyone who owns this metaverse will have incredible global influence, and so it shouldn't be in the hands of just one developer. So that's kind of what Hubs is looking to be, is just a platform.

Katie: Wow. I was going to say...I did not realize there was such an other kind of deeper level to Mozilla Hubs when I used it. I immediately got frustrated by it and I was like, "This doesn't make any sense to me. It's just another Zoom, another Hangouts, but I probably won't use this again.” But now that you're explaining this, it does seem to make sense why they even created it in the first place. It has a lot more of a deeper purpose at least to me now.

Carol: It does, it does. It has a much deeper purpose. And just, if you're talking just straight up functionality of having, like, a Hubs Cloud, which is paid for, you have to pay for that service, obviously. But, you have the foundation of the server so that you can operate your own virtual spaces, you can customize it, they can write their own code, and, actually, they want it to be open source so that when people are creating those codes, they can actually contribute code back to the Hubs Cloud project and it can be integrated into future iterations of the foundational software, which is kind of interesting. I will say that, as interesting as it is, it's really impractical, at least for our purposes. You know, according to Hubs by Mozilla, their site, I tried to look up, like, a cost breakdown, and it is really complex. It is not written for a layperson. I don't understand what they mean by a lot of the things that they were talking about with the costs. And just from how they're talking about it, it made it seem like it could very quickly add up and become very expensive unless you know how to really, like, almost game the system and, like, turn your domains off when you're not using them. Or you just have to be having enough events that it's really worthwhile having your own domain. So that was kind of interesting. It was, like, you know, if you're a small organization, you're not going to want to spend the money to do this. Like, you need a dedicated IT team to even set this up.

Katie: Yeah, you know what? That connects really good with the concept of Google Arts & Culture and the fact that, you know, when people want to create these tours, they want to create these sites, it's time. It's a lot of time and that's a person, that's a photographer, that's an editor, that's someone to upload. And I feel like, just with the Mozilla Hubs, I mean, this is a real issue, I think, for smaller organizations. You know, this tech is becoming a big boom and, like you said, the metaverse is becoming such an interesting concept in our society and probably going to become bigger. But, how do these organizations kind of get in on that?

Carol: Yeah, and a lot of the reviews of people who are actually using this...they're not coming from people who are using this Hubs Cloud. They're just using the free version. You know, it seems like Hubs Cloud really is meant for tech companies who have a dedicated team of people who can actually understand what the heck these instructions are talking about and, like, what a "stack" is.

Katie: It's the issue of time, that a lot of new technologies, they take a learning curve to them.

Carol: Yeah, they do. They really do. When we're talking about reviews, like I said, it's really the free version which was the most interesting part to me because I wanted to see whether other people having the same experiences. And, honestly, most of the reviews of the regular, like, free version of Hubs are super positive.

Katie: Wow.

Carol: People love it. I read this interesting article by Detlef La Grand that was comparing Spatial.io to Mozilla Hubs. They both have similar functionality, but Mozilla, according to this reviewer, has better ease of use, better hardware support, better safety as far as privacy, and price compared with Spatial.io. I guess, like, after a while, you do have to pay for Spatial, but you can choose to just never pay for Hubs. Both of them are catered to very different audiences with Mozilla Hubs being the more wide use, where Spatial.io is really just kind of like a brainstorming area. So that was interesting to see where people were like, "Yeah, I use Mozilla Hubs. Like, that's pretty cool. It is easy to use and has great hardware support." And I'm like...really?

Katie: So your kind of final review is that it's not as easy as people make it out to be?

Carol: No, no. I will get down to my final review, but I did not agree with that at all. And that kept coming up in these reviews, like "It's so easy to use, it's so easy to use." And I did not find it easy to use as someone who is not a technology person. But I think that a lot of really what these reviewers were talking about was the fact that you can customize the environments and avatars on the free version, even, through something that's connected to Mozilla Hubs where you can do the design. But even for that, like, it's hard. If you don't actually know how to use that system, you know, you'd have to do the research to figure it out. The other thing that people really like is you don't need VR glasses for Mozilla Hubs to work, which is convenient, and I do agree with that one, because it was a VR experience that we were able to do without having a VR headset.

Katie: Yeah, so did you do this on a mobile device or desktop?

Carol: I just did it on my laptop.

Katie: Oh, your laptop. Okay.

Carol: So I use my laptop. I used the keyboard commands to kind of move in the space because I found that actually using my mouse was harder, which is very strange to me. It would be interesting to see...I never got my Google Cardboard to work well enough to even try with my phone, so it would be interesting on, like, a real VR headset, how it would interact. They actually recently did an update of the platform to improve their ease of use and functionality on mobile and desktop. That was what most of their users are using to interact with their interface, which is great, except that when I was looking for, like, videos to, like...you know, tutorials or whatever, it's all old design.

Katie: So they need to update those kinds of videos.

Carol: Yeah. So, I mean, we kind of talked about some of these cons with, like, the private domain: it’s a lot of people, you need a lot of time, you need a lot of effort, you need money to set up a private one. For the free version, it's like, "Oh, it's free," so you take away that money aspect, but I still think that there's a huge time commitment to be able to set up something that would actually work. And then you have to be able to communicate how to utilize the interface to people who have never used it before, which is another, like, added layer of complexity there.

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like so many people have different learning styles, too, that for some people, you know, a simple video explanation might not be enough, or even an audio explanation. They might actually need to be kind of walked through this technology, especially for people that are kind of new to these new technologies. They are overwhelming. The first time you get into a Mozilla Hubs room, it is a little overwhelming to add stuff to the room and to resize it is just very difficult.

Carol: It's so weird. I...when I was placing the objects, I was, like, throwing them because I couldn't figure out how to rotate them the right direction, and so it looked very, like, the ratios were very strange. Yeah, so I guess that goes right into my own experience of it. So, I kind of looked at the same things that other reviewers were looking at, so ease of use, visual quality, price, and, like, the overall functionality. I've already said...ease of use: horrible. I don't understand how people find this super easy to use. Maybe they have a better background in technology, but maneuvering in the space is really difficult. You practically need a coding background to create your own designs and avatars. It's not intuitive, you know? And if it's not intuitive, it's not useful. Visual quality was okay, but it kind of reminds me of Minecraft in some ways. Some of the designs, like, were very, like, block-based. And I was, like...it's just, like, a slightly, like, higher version of Minecraft.

Katie: I agree with that, and I would actually be interested to see if someone who used Minecraft, especially with the computer controls, the keyboard controls, would maybe have a more easier time kind of transitioning into the Mozilla Hubs.

Carol: Oh, yeah, that's actually a really good thought. I didn't think about that. And, like, people who play video games a lot more than I do. Like, is that just, like, something that's easier for them to wrap their heads around? And that kind of goes with—the functionality is okay. It seems like, you know, if you know what you're doing, getting a group together on this platform would be fine. There is the issue of, like, limited participants, and apparently the audio can sometimes be buggy. But, I mean, as far as serving its purpose, I think it does okay at that and probably works a lot better if you actually know what you're doing. And then...price: it's free. The free version is free, which is great. It's really only an issue if you want to set up, like, a private server. So, overall, my bottom line is: I just think it's more trouble than it's worth. You know, if we're talking about arts organizations, especially small or mid-sized organizations, there's definitely no time or money to create their own domain, and even the free version isn't intuitive enough to easily use and set up. There's a lot of other platforms for social interaction that would be easier to utilize, like Zoom.

Katie: Yeah, we've seen more organizations kind of get on board with Zoom. You know, it's nice to see more of these organizations kind of getting on this technology curve. You know, it'll be interesting to see how many more organizations now jump onto Google Arts & Culture or even try out Mozilla now that this kind of big boom in the technology that all these organizations were forced to become a part of, you know?

Carol: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that there's definitely the potential for it to—in future iterations of both, you know, Google Arts & Culture and Mozilla—to get to the point where they're more worthwhile and they are easier to use and maneuver for people who aren't super well-versed in those platforms. But, you know, if we're going to start using them tomorrow...eh, maybe not so much.

Katie: Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that, and I think we've seen, you know, through the pandemic, with the Google Arts & Culture and Google Cardboard, more and more kind of big museums are getting on there. And they're getting their tours set up, they're getting VR tours set up, we just saw the national parks got on there, as well. And, so I think it is slowly becoming a thing. Now, how many organizations will actually have the cardboard things there for you to actually go through and explore in person, maybe? I don't know. You know, it's something very interesting to see as we get more back to in-person and more comfortable with using technology, wearing VR headsets. It'll be interesting, especially, even with the Mozilla, you know, what's nice about the Mozilla, is that you can kind of use it in a more remote sense. You don't need the VR headset. You can just go to your laptop or your desktop and use it. Whereas the Google Arts & Culture, you do have that upfront cost of under $10 to get the headset, get it to yourself, to even be a part of that.

Carol: Yeah, definitely. I think that the one thing that I super agreed with is that Mozilla Hubs has that convenience aspect to it. And, I mean, even Google Cardboard, it was a really small cost to get those.

Katie: It was, yeah.

Carol: I mean, unless you're, you know, ordering in bulk, that's probably something realistic to do. But yeah, it will be very interesting to see kind of how these morph over the next couple of years.

I think this was a great conversation. Thanks so much for sharing about Google Cardboard.

Katie: Same with Mozilla Hubs. I feel like I learned so much more about that platform that I really appreciate.

Carol: Yeah, definitely. So hopefully the rest of you who are listening learned a little bit today, and we'll talk to you later. Bye!

Katie: See ya.

Angela: Thanks for listening to the AMT Lab podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and to leave a comment. If you would like to learn more, go to amt-lab.org. That is A-M-T dash L-A-B .org. Or, you can email us at amtlabcmu@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter at Tech in the Arts, or on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn at Arts Management and Technology Lab. You can find the resources that we referenced today in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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