Google’s new tech means video calls may not be the death of us after all

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Google and HP are scheduled to release this year a 3-D video communications platform that works without requiring users to wear glasses or a headset, an effort to infuse virtual meetings with a greater sense that people are together in the same space. Video calls famously turned heel in the past few years, transforming from a panacea of the early pandemic into a soul-sapping burden for workers.

Alphabet’s Google and HP think Project Starline is a breakthrough sufficient to take virtual communications to the next level. And based on a shockingly visceral remote conversation I just had at HP’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., I’d say they are on to something. I knew that the person on the screen in front of me wasn’t sitting in the room with me, but when he reached toward me with an apple, I felt as if his hand had crossed into my space.

It seemed for a moment like the apple could drop into my lap. In my demo, an artificial-intelligence model used feeds from six cameras at each end of our conversation to generate real-time 3-D video. Specialized screens called lightfield displays simulated depth by projecting different angles of the images to each of our eyes.

And Google AI tracked the positions of our mouths and ears for sound that seemed to come from our lips even as the two of us shifted positions. The Starline experience requires the lightfield displays, and won’t work on a standard display or laptop. Starline, born out of Google Labs, does work with Google Meet as well as Zoom, the companies said.