Talk Description to Me

Episode 106 - Virtual Reality Part 2

Christine Malec and JJ Hunt Season 4 Episode 106

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A few weeks back, Christine and JJ began exploring and describing the world of virtual reality. Today, that exploration continues. First they discuss the connection between the visual and physical, then giggle about childhood dreams of a real-life holodeck. Finally, the intrepid pair takes a quick trip to the International Space Station!

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JJ Hunt:

Talk description to me is Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.

Christine Malec:

Hi, I'm Christine Malec.

JJ Hunt:

And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations.

Christine Malec:

In a previous episode, we talked about virtual reality and the Oculus, we did a little chatting than we did a little demo. And there was so much to cover. And we had so much fun with it, that we're returning to the Oculus, and to VR. So we're gonna chat a bit more about some of the more refined aspects of using the technology and what it's like. And then we're going to go off into a virtual world. So from the inside, does the little screens inside they cover your entire visual field? Is that right?

JJ Hunt:

100%. Like, there's nothing there, you can't see past it. If you keep turning your head, the then your field of view changes, and it just keeps going. So you can't see the edges Ever. Which is pretty wild.

Christine Malec:

So if you had a really, really, really big screen, I guess, would, sorry. So if you're at a theater, like one of those IMAX, would that ever contain your entire visual field?

JJ Hunt:

It could. But it's still different.

Christine Malec:

Like he has this is using by an ocular vision, things to make it 3d, right. So it's not like looking at a movie screen. It says though, you're looking off into the distance --

JJ Hunt:

Exactly.

Christine Malec:

-- in a way that's just like reality. Is that accurate?

JJ Hunt:

That's right, if you do a still shot of a giant screen that has whatever environment on it, say it's an underwater coral reef, or whatever. And it's on a giant IMAX screen, and you take a screenshot of that. And you put that screen in front of you so that you can't see anything from side to side, and you keep your head still, that might look the same as if you did a screenshot of what's being seen inside VR. But it still doesn't look the same. Because the moment that you move your head even a little bit, the image, the depth perception, the fact that nothing is going to move on the screen, something that's closer to you and something that's further away, there's no there's no separation of that. Whereas it's this entire separation of that if you move your head across that space, in the virtual reality, you are seeing the things that are farther away or moving differently than the things that are close by and you are you can't see the edges, you can never find the edges. And then the fact that whatever your body does on the outside your hands or your head, it translates exactly in the VR world. Your brain very, very quickly gets used to that and treats it as real. And so the immersion is, is total, it's, it's shockingly accurate.

Christine Malec:

What do your hands do? So when you your hands appear to you? Do they look like hands? Or do they look like something else?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, they look like hands generally, they usually make an avatar of a hand and it moves kind of like your hands move. There are some slight differences. This one game that that I've played, I expect you to die, which is this early James Bond, like very mid century Mad Men kind of design, you are a James Bond kind of trainee, and you are sent on missions. And with that hand grip that I described, you do different things, you have a trigger. So that's actually shooting things. But then the way you grab is by, you know, pressing, I think it was the middle finger button. And so you see your hand in the virtual reality world, you move it to an object on a table. And in order to pick it up, you press that button on the inside, and then your, your visual hand grabs it, and so very, very, very quickly, your mind read, it changes its understanding of action and response. So you press that button with your actual hand. You make a certain gesture with your actual hand and the hand that you see, picks something up. And so that quickly becomes how you pick something up. So much so that I played this game for about half an hour, 45 minutes. And then I took the headset off I needed to, I needed a break, I took the headset off, and I went to the bathroom. And I reached for the doorknob and I stopped my hand, but four inches in front of the doorknob, and I made the action to press a button. And I so I did genuinely. And I did that for about three or four seconds before I realized, oh, wait, no, no, this is my actual hand. And I need to actually grab the doorknob. That's how quickly my brain made that. That adjustment, what is real, what my action action, what my mental thought and physical action can achieve. It was it's, it's, you are really in these spaces.

Christine Malec:

I'm feeling a bit queasy.

JJ Hunt:

Yah!

Christine Malec:

So let's talk about the elephant in the room. Is this make you seasick to do this?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, it really does. There are some games that are some games or experiences that very much give you motion sickness and others not so much. So the the James Bond, one that I was describing, you're always seated, that's how they work around this. So they always put you in missions where you're at a desk or in a car or something. So you don't actually physically walk around, you move your hands and grab things. Then there are others. There's another really kind of cool game called super hot, which it's like an assassin training simulator. So you're being attacked by these angular red mannequins. And they move in slow motion, kind of like, like bullet speed and the matrix. And you have to fight them off using whatever weapons are available in the in the level that you're on. But whenever you move, the attackers move out of bullet time, and they move at full speed. So you have to do more physical action. But your feet are always more or less planted on the ground, you're not running or walking anywhere, and your actions are human, they are like the kinds of actions you would normally do. So you don't tend to get a motion sickness feeling there. However, you go to something like one of the first things a lot of people want to do is I want to fly. Because I get to do that in VR. And you can. And that's when the motion sickness kicks in. Because your brain doesn't get it. It just the it's just too much. So the going on to the International Space Station, which is one of my very favorite early things to do with this machine. You are inside the space station and you move as if you are weightless, so you don't walk, you pull yourself or push yourself you have little thrusters if you leave the space station and go on a spacewalk, you fly around the space station with using a little thrusters are charged to the right or left and that will push you in one direction or another. And it's remarkably accurate, it feels real. And you've got to be very careful because because of those thrusters in the way you pull yourself, if you maneuver yourself slide ways a little bit, if you kind of jiggle your point of view, you're no longer going down these corridors of the space station in a way that looks like there's like the ceiling is above you and the floors below you, you can tilt yourself a little bit so that now you're on a slight angle. And as soon as I get myself in one of those positions within literally within seconds. Oh, I get queasy and my stomach starts rumbling and it's it's bad and I kind of have to log off. Give it a few minutes. Yeah, there's another game my kids have called Ritchie's plank experience. And I mean, half of the game is just stepping out on two planks, like walk the plank like on a pirate ship, except the plank is at the top of a skyscraper. And you tiptoe out onto this plank. And it's you have to overcome fear to actually do this because the experience that your brain is understanding is real enough that you have to push past the thing in your brain that says don't do that. That's stupid, even though you're in your living room and stepping forward it's that real? And so you know you you do step out to the end of this plank and then you lean forward to like how far can I see around the corner of this building and and it's the you get agitated and then you can fly and the flying is where a lot of people really get get quite motion sick.

Christine Malec:

I'm having, well I'm having several disconnects. But one of them is that your point of view is yourself and I'm having trouble because I'm used to thinking of cinematography where your point of view is outside of yourself. You're seeing the main character the protagonist, ie you in this case from the outside, but When you're doing this, you're always seeing it from your own eyes, like your own point of view. Is that right?

JJ Hunt:

That's right. It's always first person view.

Christine Malec:

Yeah.

JJ Hunt:

Which is, it's interesting because, you know, so here's where we're gonna get a little trippy. Right now, as I'm sitting at my computer I have in my life, as does every sighted person, they experienced the world as a first person. So I see my hands in front of me in front of my screen, right now, when I turn my head from side to side, my view changes. And it's so instinctive, we don't notice that. And in fact, it's very, very, very difficult to paint, or to take a photograph hundreds, like every sighted person who's ever gone to a beach has, you know, they lay down on a on a, on a, on a beach chair or something like that. And they take a picture of their toes, you know, on the edge of the seat, because that's their view, and it looks so perfect to them. And the photos are always terrible. They're never right. It never captures the feeling. I've done this so many times, where I'm like, I'm gonna draw what I'm seeing right now. And it never, ever, ever, it's such a skill to make that look good. It's a very, very particular kind of artistic skill to recreate that feeling that emotion of first person, but you get in VR, and it's accurate. It's so accurate, that first person view of the world, that your brain immediately registers it as real because it genuinely tricks it tricks your brain into thinking, No, you're in a different space.

Christine Malec:

I'm curious to do a compare and contrast between your kids favorites and your favorites.

JJ Hunt:

Oh, that's a good question. So we all liked this James Bond one. That's good, because they're good puzzles that you work out in the design is so amazing. The actual the opening credits for that game are some it's some of the best animation I've ever seen. It's like living inside the madmen opening credit sequences animated, the music is really cool. The lyrics are a little cheesy, but it's so the design is so beautiful, the way your hands move, that's great. This this assassin training simulator, that's a really cool one that we all like, I'm not a big fan of the first person shooters, I don't like them in general, just on any video game platform, they're not my bag. And I particularly don't like the idea of a first person shooter when everything looks and feels real. I actually don't want that experience. Like there are some of these first a lot of images because it's first person you are attacking other beasts. And there, there are horror ones, there's a game that we none of us have played. That is it's like a ghost ship, like so. You know, I think it's a post apocalyptic. There's a ship that's floating around in the sea, and it's been taken over by zombies or something and you're on that ship. And I remember we talked about it, I think it was in the in the Northern Lights episode where I talked about having the headlamp, and it scared me. So it's the same thing where they put a virtual headlamp on your character. So you are in VR, you can only see the pool of light from your headlamp. So as you turn you reveal, so you might be inside the hull of a ship, and you hear something to your right, but it's in the dark. And it's not until you physically move your head, and your headlamp goes over to it. And it exposes that there's some zombie that's attacking you. And then you have like an axe and you're supposed to like chop down. And that's too much for me, I don't want that. I don't want that idea in my head of holding an axe and chopping just feels wrong. So none of us have done those but my kids have they're kind of okay with that idea. They think I'm weird and old, which I am like, What do you mean, you don't want to just shoot it's doesn't it's a computer thing? It doesn't matter. Like that doesn't cause real violence.

Christine Malec:

Right. Right. Right.

JJ Hunt:

That doesn't work. We were so Lois and I -- my wife and I -- were far more interested in the exploring the International Space Station and the kids were they thought it was cool. They were done with that in 10 minutes. Whereas we could keep going back to it over and over again. And then the real separator and this is this is where I admit to being a total dork. I when I first put the headset on, they hadn't my kids hadn't loaded a game for me. I was just in the headset. And so the first thing that happened was I basically found myself in what I would describe as inside a virtual geodesic dome.

Christine Malec:

Hmm.

JJ Hunt:

And I loved it. Oh! Ha ha! It was nothing. It was just black. You can only see the faint outlines of the pattern around me. But it was it was like being inside of the holodeck, when, when a character on Star Trek would go into the holodeck before the program loads, it wasn't a it wasn't a dome, it was a was a boxy shape. But it felt like I was inside. And I knew -- the anticipation, I'm going to load a virtual program and it's just going to pop up. And this is going to change from being... it's like being inside a computer, and I loved it. And my kids killed themselves laughing. It's like,"Dad, we haven't even turned it on. There's no game!"

Christine Malec:

Ha ha ha!

JJ Hunt:

And I'm just standing in the living room. My jaw hanging open spinning in circles, like looking at nothing looking at the inside of this...

Christine Malec:

Framework! Ha ha ha!

JJ Hunt:

It was so ridiculous looking at this, like nothing space, this virtual placeholder.

Christine Malec:

So we have talked about a demo. Are you ready to slip the goggles on? And describe your way through some seasickness?

JJ Hunt:

Totally. So I'll get I'll get my kid involved so that they can they can set me up and I'm going to switch mics because I gotta have to be, I gotta be moving around. So so I'll set that up.

Christine Malec:

Get the barf bag ready!

JJ Hunt:

That's right! Ha ha!

Christine Malec:

You know where I want to go? The International Space Station is what it's all about for me.

JJ Hunt:

So the international space station it is. And I am likely. I mean, I love this space station. It's very cool. And that one I probably did my very first time spent like, half an hour there happily. Okay, so the way this starts, is you're in space and you float toward an absolutely photorealistic you float past the space station. And you're not tethered to anything. It's just an introductory This is like the opening. Wow. Yeah, it is like it's the opening credits, basically. And the way they do the opening credits is just the space station, you float past it before anything else happens. And and it's pretty spectacular.

Christine Malec:

Does your nervous system want you to be standing? Because this one doesn't require your movements? Right? Is it tempting to just want to sit down or lie down? Does your body wants to be standing?

JJ Hunt:

This one actually very much does require your movements?

Christine Malec:

Oh, it does? Oh!

JJ Hunt:

Because in order to get through in order to move through, you have to either engage your thrusters or you grab on the handles on the wall and hold yourself through. Yeah, and so I just I don't want to rotate. That's the one thing that like is a killer for motion sickness is the rotating. All right. So I'm starting out inside the space station, and it is not 100% photo realistic. So for example, there's some coiled cables, and they're not perfectly round, the coils are not perfectly round. They're a little bit Angular. But the attention to detail inside this space station is extraordinary. There are warning labels and stickers. And here's how to open this hatch. And someone's put some magnets on the wall that you can interact with. And, and just like there would be in the real space station. There are handles everywhere. And so the way you move a boat, is by grabbing onto the handles, and then pulling more. I mentioned that thrusting my hips before. Yeah, you put your grab onto the handles, and then you pull and because it's it's the game, this space is mimicking zero gravity. As soon as you push yourself in one direction, you just keep going. You just float. Oh, gosh. So you really are simulating, okay. That experience you're simulating the floating 00 gravity.

Christine Malec:

So could you push off like swing yourself in one direction? Keep going and hit some kind of? Yeah, well like because there's no inertia, like you'll just keep going. We'll just, we'll just make you hit something.

JJ Hunt:

That's right. So right now I'm in along like the space station is kind of a series of tunnels a series of tubes. And right now I'm in one of those tunnels there are several bays so you kind of go through these, these open window ways these open doorways from one space to the other. And there are just to make it fun. They've got these floating bundles all over the place that you can pick up and push around and there are computers, laptops that are attached to posts on the wall and so when I'm going to do is I'm going to see how far I can fling myself to go to see if I can go in a straight line to see how many of these little sections I can get through before I bunks something. Oh, so here we go. I'm grabbing on and I'm going to pull myself through crura well Oh no, I got too high too high too high. Oh, I bumped my head. And now I feel queasy. Like it's really unnerving.

Christine Malec:

Okay, is it the sudden stop the visual looking sudden stop?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, totally. Okay, I'm in a. I'm in a room full of patches. So it looks like all the different missions like everyone. Oh, yeah, has been from different missions has Oh, I just accidentally knocked a bottle of ketchup off of a table. And so now the ketchup is floating. I'm going to throw the ketchup out of the way. There we go. I've just tossed the ketchup. And it's floating away. In. Yeah, because it's it just floats and it will keep floating. According to the rules that have been established, there's a big bundle in front of me, I'm going to punch it. And it's Yeah, so it's like a huge square pillow that I just punched into the next room and it's going to just float there until it until something stops it. Okay, so now I've come to a part of the station where they have the spacewalk suits are available. And so I'm going to go in... Want to go on a spacewalk?

Christine Malec:

Squeal! Oh my gosh!

JJ Hunt:

Proceed to go on a spacewalk. Yes. Hmm. Okay, so right now I am floating beside kind of underneath part like I'm floating underneath the hatch, the exit hatch of the space station. So I do have little thrusters. Oh, there's the Canada Arm right there.

Christine Malec:

Yay!

JJ Hunt:

Okay, so I'm holding on to the side of the, the space station, but I don't have to, I can just push away. And I can float under. So the sun is in the sky above. Or there's a there's a Japanese module there. Okay, I'm getting a little far away. And I'm gonna have to say I use my thrusters, I'm going to try and get myself there. Okay, I've just grabbed on to the end of the Canada Arm. Oh, and the solar panels are to my left. And to my right, the main station is behind and above me. And if I if I push off of the Canada Arm, I think I can get all the way to one of the solar panels. Because they just float I don't stop until I hit something. So if I aim myself correctly, I'm gripping with one hand the arm. And I'm going to pull it back toward me and then let go. And that will thrust me forward. Yeah. Towards so now I'm just floating through space. And to me, this is the exciting moment because I have to grab on as I pass. Otherwise, I'm going to just keep going into space. That's a fun little game to play. So now I'm underneath one of the solar panels. And I can pull back and peek up. So I'm looking straight up the solar panels to the stars beyond. And I can turn around and see the entire space station. And then the thing I haven't even mentioned yet is of course, the space station isn't just floating in space. It's above Earth. So as I look down, instead of seeing the floor, or instead of seeing space beneath me, I'm, I'm seeing the surface of the earth.

Christine Malec:

Gasp! Is it rotating, like what are you seeing on the earth?

JJ Hunt:

It's very... it's probably rotating at something that is akin to what I'm still literally by the way, I've got my arm in the air as if I need to be hanging on. I'm gonna let go now because my arm was getting sore. That's ridiculous. But the earth is rotating slowly, ever so slowly, and you're above the clouds. So we can see down over through the clouds as a green is that Italy? That might be Italy. There's a recognizable kind of strip of land. That could be the boot of Italy, but I don't know. I can't I can't tell exactly where I am. And you can see the edge of the curvature of the earth. Oh, okay, so now I've got myself to the other side. This is fascinating. So I'm floating in front of the space station here. And the to the left is the Japanese module. And it's clean and neat and and it looks new. And to my right is the old as the Russian it's Russian. It's got Russian flag in Cyrillic writing, and it's older and looks, it looks dirtier and aged, it looks worn. And you can that's clear. Okay, I'm just going to stop my grabbed on and I can stop myself. So Chris, you have any questions you want me to do? Is there anything you want me to do while I'm here or turn to Or try to?

Christine Malec:

Like, oh, gosh, I have so many questions. When you look at the Earth, is it explicitly clear that you can distinguish land from water?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, yes, definitely. So the land is, I mean, everything's like a got this mist of cloud over it. So it's not 100% bright, like it's not bright blue and bright green or bright brown or anything like that. It's a little bit dull. Because you're looking through cloud and mist, but the waters are definitely a bluish color. And the, in the landforms. From here are our greens. I'm sure if we were over different parts of the world, the landforms, the land masses would be browns, but here they are. Greens Clear, clear delineation of land and

Christine Malec:

In our episode on the about the moon, which I water, though. think was 44. Um, we talked about Earth rise from the moon, if you can remember those images? Is is it reminiscent? Is there anything similar? Is this like orders of magnitude better? How do those compare?

JJ Hunt:

There are some definite similarities here, and one is that you're seeing the edge of the earth. So the This one's got a slight curve to it really, from this point of view, it looks like I'm floating over a giant dish. Because it looks like the Earth is a flat disc beneath me from this point of view. But if I'm looking just in one direction, then the, what I would call the horizon, which is the edge of the Earth is slightly curved. And that slight curve of the earth I remember when in that describing from the the earth rise from satellite cameras, you could I think I mentioned you could see the curvature of the moon when looking at the Earth beyond. And that is an experience here that I've got looking at the curve of the of the of the edge of the earth. And beyond that is just space is just stars in the sky.

Christine Malec:

Is there any way you can rotate your head or your body so that you're not seeing the space station or earth where you're just looking out into space?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, totally. So I've got thrusters, and I'm going to thrust above the space station. So that it's beneath me. So yeah, now, the space station is kind of behind and beneath me, and the sun is really, really, really bright. And they've done a beautiful job. So as I move my head there are like, Sun Shadows. Sorry, I just got a note from Mission Control that I was too far from the space station. So I have to back up a little bit.

Christine Malec:

Naughty, naughty. Heh heh heh.

JJ Hunt:

I know. It's hilarious. Yeah, so the sun is so brilliantly rendered that there are kind of the I don't know what they're called. But they're like optical echoes, little rainbows that the like traces of the bright sun as you move away from it. So the sun is bright and yellow. And I would never be comfortable looking at the actual sun that's this bright for this long, like that would be too much. It would really hurt or even damage the eyes.

Christine Malec:

Can you turn away from the sun as well, so that you're just looking into a star escape?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I'm doing so right now.

Christine Malec:

And how does that compare? Obviously, you've seen images from satellites and spacecraft that show you that view, how does this compare to those images?

JJ Hunt:

So that's interesting. So one of the things that makes this a less convincing is that there are so many stars if I'm in a in a in a dark, you know, remote place, and I've got access to a beautiful starry sky. I get this The sky is littered with stars. From here, you're there's no light pollution at all, you're above the earth. And so the number of stars it's extraordinary. It's it's, it's, I would never ever ever get to see this. So it doesn't look like my personal experience from Earth. It's too. It's just too much. It's ridiculous.

Christine Malec:

Yeah, yeah.

JJ Hunt:

But it does look kind of like use, like you said, like photographs from space of, of space, it looks pretty real. It's just not as crisp. It's not 100% crisp. But again, that might be just be about the imperfections in my eyes. Right? Not the imperfections of the technology.

Christine Malec:

Right.

JJ Hunt:

Wow.

Owen:

That lighting is called back scatter.

JJ Hunt:

Back scatter. Cool. So it's like a little rainbow. If you look at the sun, and then turn away from the sun, there's like this little trace this rainbow trace, like an like an echo, and it's called a backscatter I'd never heard of that.

Owen:

It's refracting through, like circular or spherical glass, it's curved glass. And so that's why you see it in a lot of photographs. And in this case, it's simulating that because he's having an astronaut helmet around him.

Christine Malec:

Wow!

JJ Hunt:

So I'm looking at the sun. And when I turn away, I can see these like rainbow light echoes, because they are replicating the designers have replicated the experience of looking through a rounded glass or, you know, temporary Yes, or whatever it is. face shield on a on a spacesuit that's incredible. Like, that's the kind of attention to detail that makes these experiences even if it's not as 100% crisp. Even if the space station itself looks a little bit digitized, like you know, if I saw pure photograph of this, like if I saw still image of this space station, I would know that it wasn't real, I could see that it was digitally rendered. But none of that really matters. Because the attention to detail, even if it's look slightly digital or slightly perfect, or the lines are just too straight, whatever. It's still, it's so close. And the experience is so accurate that I believe that I buy it.

Christine Malec:

I'm curious about the fact that you are supposed to be in zero G and whatever I wonder about what attempts are made to simulate that.

JJ Hunt:

So I think the reason zero G is simulated by the speed with which you move like it feels like you're moving through through syrup, like everything is just a little bit slow. And, and then comes in bursts. So if you push yourself off of something, you get that moment of energy. And then you just glide like I'm right on the end of the solar panel right now. And I am going to grab on and literally just fly up the solar panel, right to the space station. And when I do that, the smoothness of my Glide is it does, it does. This isn't the way my body moves. When I walk, my point of view when I'm walking is... there are steps.

Christine Malec:

Oh!

JJ Hunt:

But here it's just smooth. You're just floating. It's absolutely smooth in those moments. But then when I push there's a jerkiness. When I push off of something, before I get into that super smooth movement, so I think that's the speed and the and the smoothness of everything of movement of floating. It does give the it does give the physical impression of zero. Geez.

Christine Malec:

Is it reminiscent of the simulated movement underwater?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, quite a bit. But what's different there is that there's a there is a there's a pattern to that movement that's different. So that there it is, there's a smoothness to it. But then you kick and right you have that first thrust of of energy and movement, and then that dissipates because the water has resistance. Whereas here, there's no resistance. You just keep floating. And you just keep going in whatever direction until you hit an object until you bump into something. And that's super. Whoa. Yeah, I just did it to describe my way through it and then when I bumped I missed the thing I was grabbing and I ended up bumping my head so to speak.

Christine Malec:

Yeah. I don't know if you feel up to this But I wonder about going right from that reality that you're in now the virtual and don't do any of the shutdown procedures or don't go back into the space station? How would you feel about taking off the headset right now and just slamming back into your living room? Is that something you would do?

JJ Hunt:

Totally, I'll do that right now. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna move myself away from the space station. And then I'm going to with my thrusters, and then I'm going to thrust myself toward the space station. And while I'm doing that, I'll take my my VR headset off.

Christine Malec:

Oh, my God, you're brave. Okay.

JJ Hunt:

Okay, I'm going to thrust myself toward it, so that I have some movement. And then while I'm moving, I'm going to let the controllers drop. And I'm going to take my headset off. Yeah, that's a little disorienting.

Christine Malec:

Are you nauseous or just disoriented,

JJ Hunt:

Just disoriented, just disoriented. And it's in this case, it feels like what was really hard was to go from the vastness of that world, to my tiny living room. Eating Yeah, I was interrogating the movement, giving me concern like that was what was going to bother my system and I was going to feel ill. But in fact, it was going from the massive, like I was in space to my living room.

Christine Malec:

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