I knew we would do the demo in a desert setting so I wore a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. Nope, there\u2019s no way of looking cool in VR \u2014 and the removing-the-mask-from-my-face feature worked about 20% of the time. Image Credits:<\/strong> Screenshot of the Kokomo \/ Canon app in VR<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Once you\u2019ve gone through the setup process, you place your phone at waist height and take a few steps away, don a VR mask and dive into a conversation. The phone uses its front-facing camera to capture a live picture of you, while the VR headset shows your fellow caller. If everything goes to plan, it\u2019s telepresence at its finest, without the vast expenditure of typical telepresence systems.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the theory \u2014 and what Canon is working toward with its platform. I\u2019m loving the vision, but the reality of the current system isn\u2019t quite there yet.<\/p>\n

In practice, things are not quite smooth. In my test call with the Kokomo team, I\u2019m rather generous if I say I saw the other person in the call refresh at about three to four frames per second. That\u2019s not enough to make the call feel smooth, and it rather got in the way of feeling the presence of the, er, telepresence. The avatar I was speaking to was also two-dimensional, which is something we haven\u2019t seen in VR for a while \u2014 in effect, it feels like the person on the other side of the call is an animated cardboard cutout. That, combined with the low frame rate and the haphazardness of the VR mask removal (it appeared and disappeared at regular intervals), did everything it could to ruin the immersion.<\/p>\n