Video calls will soon be 3D meetings

Google's latest video-calling solution is a combination of technologies that offers life-like immersive experience. It feels as though person is talking to another across window, not a glass screen

What was once the most normal activity is now a special effort. Meeting people in person was considered important and necessary until video calls began. Today video meetings are becoming the norm. While

in-person meeting is no longer the first option, much value is still attached to a face-to-face chat.

Video calls and meetings have become easier with better connectivity but still can’t match the human connect of meeting over coffee. 

New technologies which use artificial intelligence (AI) are set to further reduce the experience gap between an in-person and a video meeting. 

Google has unveiled the latest version of its Starline Prototype, a 3D video meeting service. The video-calling solution is a combination of technologies that offers a life-like immersive experience. It feels like a person is talking to another across a window rather than a glass screen. 

“Project Starline works like a magic window where you can talk, gesture and make eye contact with another person, life-size and in three dimensions. The system uses advanced AI to build a photorealistic model of the person you’re talking to, and projects that on to a light field display with a unique sense of volume and depth,” wrote Andrew Nartker, general manager, Starline Project, in an announcement blog. “The result is a lifelike image of the other person as if they were right in front of you.”

Google says that the previous Project Starline prototypes took up an entire room, requiring complex hardware such as infrared light emitters and special cameras to create a live 3D model of the person you were talking to. The new version uses AI techniques that only require a few standard cameras to produce higher quality, lifelike 3D images. 

The global video-conferencing market size is projected to register a compound annual growth rate of 12.6 per cent, reaching $19.1 billion by 2027, from an estimated $10.6 billion in 2022, according to a report by Marketsandmarkets Research.

The rapid globalisation in business and the rising demand for a remote workforce are driving the growth for video-conference solutions. Telemedicine and online education are in high demand in developing nations like Brazil and India, the report says. Apart from Google, the key players in the market include Microsoft, Zoom, Cisco, Avaya and Logitech. 

These companies are investing heavily in hardware and AI-based solutions to make video meetings more and more realistic. The focus on easy-to-use solutions involves bringing high-quality video calls to every smaller device. 

For the moment, the realistic images on Project Starline support only one person on each side of the call. As the technology develops, a group of people can talk to another group with similar realistic experience. This also has applications for training, product demos and job interview meetings. To test the 3D video meet in real life, Starline has offered it to Salesforce, T-Mobile and WeWork. The objective is to get real-world experience data to remove glitches and improve the experience. 

Hardware and electronics companies that make cameras, TVs and monitors are also investing time, effort and resources to complement the advances in AI-rendered live video calls. 

From flat-image, low-resolution video calls on a screen, future virtual meetings will be increasingly realistic. Individuals and institutions are likely to leap at it and deploy 3D video meetings for work and leisure activities. The realistic video technology is still being developed but a mass product and solution could be much closer than anticipated. Consumers were promised hologram meetings for mass usage. Realistic video calls may make the experience even better.