I’m tempted to say Josh and the team at The Verge saved the best until last in their video series from the Underground Tour of Microsoft – but that’d be doing a dis-service to all of the other places and people they met recently. However, a step inside of the Applied Sciences Lab and a chat with Stevie Bathiche is always a treat. I’ve taken a dozen people to this lab in the last few months and everyone, literally everyone, has the same reaction that Josh did when he sat down at the first demo and realized what he was seeing – “oh Jesus” is what you hear Josh say. I’ve heard more and less polite versions of the same thing but everyone is blown away by what this team is doing. They are genuinely on a mission to build the magic window or a “holodeck”.
To deliver what was shown in the opening frames of the Office 2019 video takes a ton of tech – some of which we thought was impossible only a few years ago but when you amass an amazing group of researchers and give them free reign to explore their imagination, this is what you end up with. It’s a brilliant lab to walk through as Stevie steps you through some basic optics, explains the importance of The Wedge and then show what it’ll take to complete the input and output elements of that video.
Another thing that often happens in this lab is visitors ask Stevie when this will arrived and I love his answer – “I want you to make that assessment by the time I’m done here”.
Touring around with Josh and Chad was a real pleasure. In Josh you have a real geek who “gets” what people like Stevie and the folks in Microsoft Research are up to and with Chad you have someone who knows jus what to capture and the team puts out stunning looking video content. I’m glad they took the time to come visit us…and hope they’ll be back as there is much more to show.
If you missed the earlier videos, be sure to check out
