It looked like I could grab the apple. Jason Lawrence, a Google researcher, sat across from me holding the fruit. I could see it, it was red and shiny, and my brain was telling me it was right there. But Lawrence and the apple were actually in a different room – they were just projected in front of me by Google’s Project Starline.
Project Starline is Google’s next-generation 3D video chat booth, first revealed at Google I/O 2021. Slip into a booth and your image is said to be projected onto another booth in real-time, as if you were actually sitting inside someone else at a table. In a heartwarming video, Google showed family and friends happily connecting via Starline, and the virtual replicas looked remarkably lifelike. “It was overwhelming,” says one person in the video. “I’ve seen a lot, but I’ve never seen this,” said another.
But for the year since, Google has largely kept the project under wraps — until now. The company invited me to try Starline for myself and I was curious if it would live up to the hype.
“We believe we have a breakthrough in communications technology that makes you feel closer and more connected to people who could be anywhere in the world,” said Andrew Nartker, Starline’s director of product management. Nartker sat across from me at a table in one of Google’s conference rooms for a standard face-to-face meeting. He described the Starline experience as “a magical window” that makes you feel “connected and together” with other people.
Eventually we moved on to testing Starline. The machine was crammed into a small conference room, taking up most of the space. To one side was a long wooden bench with a seat cushion right in the middle. On the other side, a display showed the empty cushion in the other Starline booth. As I sat down, more than a dozen cameras and sensors were trained on me. It was nerve wracking – I could tell my every move was being tracked.
But once Nartker slipped into view at his Starline booth, the technology largely faded and we were able to resume our conversation immediately, as if we’d been moving from table to table.
Starline does an excellent job of creating a 3D representation of the person you are speaking to. Both Nartker and Lawrence looked the same as they did when I shook their hands a few minutes ago. Virtual shadows behind both helped sell the effect. It was even possible to estimate how far Lawrence’s apple was in front of his body.
The whole thing felt much more natural than a Zoom call. There was no discernible latency in their movements or our conversation, so talking just felt like talking. There was no weird audio or visual lag. It was easier to believe I was actually with someone because I was making real eye contact with full-sized virtual people instead of squinting into a tiny zoom window.
Part of the reason Starline is so compelling is that you’re not just looking at a screen, you’re looking at a set of lenses in front of a screen, or lenticular grid. The principle is similar to holographic cards, which can show a different image or 3D effect if you move them back and forth, Lawrence said. Starline goes one step further by tracking your eyes to know where to point the images it shows you.
The illusion wasn’t perfect. Looking closely, one could see that the person was newly created; For example, a head might not be perfectly round, and Lawrence’s hair ends might get pretty edgy. When the person you’re talking to moves to the limits of what Starline was actively reconstructing (Nartker estimated it was about a cubic yard of space), they blur, break down into faulty polygons, and eventually disappear entirely.
Starline is impressive and has definitely improved video chats. I can imagine it being useful for one-on-one calls, especially in places like a doctor’s office or a customer service environment. But Starline clearly has some limitations. Starline’s stand is huge and crammed with technology that is likely to be expensive. Nartker declined to share a price when I asked, and you need two to even use Starline.
Still, Google is leading the way with Starline by always expanding who can try it. This week the company announced it would be installing Starline booths for select corporate partners. Companies like Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile and Hackensack Meridian Health will test the technology as part of an early access program. Google employees have already put in thousands of hours, Nartker said, and the company said it invited “more than 100 corporate partners” from industries like media, healthcare and retail to try Starline at Google’s offices.
“It is not a product at this time”
There’s still a long way to go before Starline is generally available – if it ever is. “It’s an early-stage technology that we think is very exciting and a breakthrough in this space,” said Nartker. “But it’s not a product at this point.”
Throughout our conversation, Nartker talked about how Starline greatly improved telepresence because it mimicked a face-to-face conversation. Having experienced Starline myself, I’m now on board with the idea that better telepresence can have a meaningful impact on virtual interactions, and I feel like something like Starline must be in our future – albeit that future hopefully years away isn’t a huge video booth.
The same day listening to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s interview The edge, I was amazed at how he made a similar pitch across a range of very different devices. “The magic of VR for people who have experienced this is that it basically instantly convinces you that you are in a different place and with the people that are there,” Zuckerberg said. He talked about how the interview might be done with him as a hologram in the future, which was essentially what just amazed me about Starline.
I found it remarkable that two of the largest tech companies in the world are trying to improve virtual presence. Of course, both would benefit from this; Meta is banking on its concept of the metaverse while Google is pushing hard to acquire the company. Chat booths and expensive mixed reality displays aren’t practical or desirable for most people just yet, but perhaps what really takes off happens somewhere in the middle.
Nartker ended our Starline chat with a virtual fist, something he said he does at every demo. As with Lawrence’s apple, I logically understood that I wouldn’t actually feel Nartker’s knuckles hitting mine. But as we approached the bump, my brain expected my fist to make contact anyway, and my hand felt sensation anyway. As our hands ghosted together, we laughed at the moment together, even though we were rooms apart.
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