[MUSIC] One of the biggest challenges for VR has always been about using it to meet other people. But how do we do this in VR and why is it difficult? Nowadays when we can't physically be together with someone, we often use video conference calls. But there is one thing we're much better at doing in person rather than through video conference calls and that is negotiation. This is because when it comes to negotiation, a lot of things are important. Relationship building, trust, our ability to read each other's body language and facial expressions and the timing of when to say what. We rely on social skills we have developed over the years to create a more positive relationship which will lead to a more desirable outcome. A lot of these social skills are very subtle and often operate at a subconscious level. So when you hear someone say, I don't think he's trustworthy but I can't quite explain why. That is actually a very reasonable statement backed up by scientific evidence. So in order to fully utilize my social skills, I will really want to be able to express myself as much as possible. If I have to do it in VR through my avatar, I will have to animate it with real-time motion capture data which captures both my gestures and facial expressions. But an obvious problem is that if I'm wearing an HMD, half of my face will be obscured. So how am I going to capture my facial expression? Having said that, I have seen devices that work inside the HMD, some designed to track eye movements and others to track facial expressions. Here are a few things that make social interaction in VR technically difficult. First, real-time facial capture. Let's forget about the fact that you're blocking half of your face with HMD for a moment. Within the most ideal situations, certain features will be very hard to track. These include eye gaze, blinking, pupil dilation, subtle emotion changes such as blushing and sweating and also any subtle facial muscle movements. We can track some of these features with volumetric capturing. But a problem is that this cannot be done in real time because it requires post processing. Again, this is not possible if the user is immersed in VR themselves with an HMD. Secondly, another challenge in social VR is that the current technology does no support socially meaningful physical contact with another person. For instance, with the current VR controllers, you cannot shake someone's hand or tap them on the shoulder. So until we have some more clever ways of tracking and giving haptic feedback when it comes to negotiation, I will still try to be there in person. Or if that's not possible, I will probably just use a video conference call instead. [MUSIC]