Canon CES 2023: Canon Resets Virtual Storytelling
The Canon CES 2023 press conference wasn’t about digital cameras or scanners. Canon uses its long-time leadership in fixed media to establish itself as a comprehensive provider of visual storytelling tools.
Canon partners with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan to demonstrate the use of their Kokomo and AMLOS products in complex real-world situations, such as making a film. Shyamalan brought Canon’s tools to bear on his storytelling process. Canon will bring Shyamalan’s work to CES as they present their technologies in a booth designed around his upcoming film Knock at the Cabin.
AMLOS (Activate My Line of Sight) is a collaborative technology that seeks to narrow the gap between physical work—such as brainstorming on a physical whiteboard or examining a physical model—and bringing in people from various locations to weave a cohesive experience. AMLOS is camera system, but not the type of camera people think about when they think of Canon
Canon will also release their Kokomo platform over the next several weeks, which brings virtual worlds to virtual reality—visual places where people can meet, from mountain vistas to comfortable cabins—and, in the case of Shyamalan’s film, not-so-comfortable cabins.
“With Kokomo, we’re tapping into Canon’s innovative spirit and heritage of high-quality imaging to enable people to have real, authentic interactions when they get together in VR. Every ImmersiveCall should be a memorable experience,” said Kazuto “Kevin” Ogawa, president and CEO, Canon U.S.A., Inc. “Kokomo will enable people to create memorable, meaningful connections.”
Here is a trailer for the Canon booth:
mreal
The other technology that Canon discussed was mreal, Canon’s mixed reality headset. Canon demonstrated the headset that works without controllers to bring people into virtual experiences, from opening doors to sitting down.
Free Viewpoint
The final technology of the Canon press conference focused on the sports applications of Free Viewpoint, which transforms complex, interactive human movements, such as those in a basketball game, into data. That movement data, which the NBA has been tracking for years, becomes the foundation for re-visualizing events. Watch the game, for instance, as the Point Guard, or fly through a play as the ball.
Free Viewpoint Canon Cinema EOS-based 4k system has been installed in Rocket Mortgage Field House in Cleveland (Cavaliers), and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York (Nets).
Unlike 360-degree video, which only captures the surface of activities, Free Viewpoint leverages the data model to rebuild the activity. It allows the experience designer to select which camera they become—and that experience designer will eventually be consumers. Right now, they are working with the NBA, but I could see this applying to any sport—and to other business applications like construction. Imagine tracking home construction and seeing the home-building process from the point of view of the carpenter, the plumber or the glass installer.
Canon CES 2023: Analysis of Canon and the Future of Work
Canon put a new stake in the ground on visual storytelling. The technologies aren’t all new, but I think the integrated vision, at least the articulation of the vision, is new. It was clear Canon was going all in on these visual storytelling tools.
What differentiates Canon from the likes of meta or HTC is that Canon is already a visual storytelling leader. They understand stories and how complex stories can and perhaps need to be. While they also understand lenses, fields of view, and other factors related to headsets, their core competency is technology support for visual storytelling, not just the components. They demonstrated in the press conference an understanding of how to apply these technologies to situations that matter to people. Most XR companies have a fundamental problem connecting their story to the stories of others.
Because most humans work best in a world that is an integrated whole, Canon’s work points at a future where the fragmentation of digital experiences disappears. Gone will be the faces in boxes—replaced with virtual representations of real people in their entirety, able to interact with others in a variety of environments. Imagine the Free Viewport applied to a home office, then combined with AMLOS so the person working remotely becomes a spacial entity in the remote work space.
As with all virtual reality-derived technologies, we remain in early days. There are plenty of pundits at CES telling companies to jump in now or be left behind. There should be no sense of urgency. There is plenty of time to figure out a virtual strategy because no platform dominates. Competing platforms will battle for a long while, and early deployments may well be replaced by platforms that learn and apply early lessons faster than the legacy metaverse platforms.
We may also see walled gardens as the first path, as we did with the Internet. I see meta and others not as the replacement for the Internet but as the Compuserves, AOLs and Prodigies of the next wave of innovation. Just because they are cooler than dial-up doesn’t mean they’ve looked for the answer to the future interaction model yet. All those early information services had big backers and plenty of money. They just had a business model that was overrun by openness combined with emergent commerce models.
The metaverse platforms of today have no better clue than those information service pioneers. They are going off into new territory. I find it interesting that a company like Canon is now diving in. As strategic as these technologies could be, they are, in reality, expensive experiments and well-funded learning opportunities. Canon’s strong understanding of visual storytelling should be watched across the industry. Even if their technology doesn’t end up winning the day, they will likely be much closer to understanding how and why people will want, and more importantly, will use immersive visual environments than any technology company, regardless of how much research they conduct.
As a marketing aside, I’m not a fan of the Canon CES 2023 theme Limitless is More because it doesn’t make semantic sense. Limitless is, by definition, more. I don’t mind “limitless collaboration” or other terms associated with “limitless,” but unfortunately, the main tagline not only didn’t resonate with me, but it distracted me from what they were trying to say. If they said Canon Removes Limits, I would get that, or simply, Removing Limits. As I said, this is an aside, but when the press conference starts with a phrase that doesn’t make sense, it takes a little while to get into the narrative flow.
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