Roy Taylor, global vice president and head of global channel sales at AMD, is at the GamesBeat 2016 event. Image Source: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat
Roy Taylor's position is vice president of corporate alliances at AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), a chipmaker that created personal computer processors and graphics chips. However, he paid equal attention to software and hardware.
That's because new virtual reality (VR) applications will ignite the huge demand for image hardware, such as AMD's new Radeon Image Processing Unit (GPU) family. So, Taylor has been busy forming alliances with Hollywood entertainment companies, VR startups and game companies. In his opinion, VR brought the dawn of a new entertainment medium.
AMD has opened an office in Hollywood and supports various activities to increase VR entertainment content. And Taylor said that he is looking forward to the future of VR technology to make us an eye-opener with images with a single-eye resolution of up to 4K - much more than the monocular 1080p pixels of existing VR helmets.
We bumped into Taylor on GameBeat 2016's AR/VR day. The following is the editing script we interviewed.
AMD's Roy Taylor and Dean Takahashi in GamesBeat 2016.
GamesBeat: At the beginning of the interview, can you please talk about your career in more detail?
Roy Taylor: In 1998, I was the founder of Nvidia Europe and I worked in Northampton, England. I moved to the United States in 2005, left Nvidia in 2010, went to a Hollywood startup, and it made me come to Los Angeles. Not long after I joined AMD. Now, I work with content creators all over the world.
Games Beat: You are famous for your role in content. You recently joined the Advanced Visual Association (ASI) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). What association are they? Why do you want to join them?
Taylor: ASI was established when stereoscopic 3D entered the film industry. At that time, some people worried that the best 3D technology was very good, but some 3D technologies were not good enough, and that would hurt the development of the industry. AIS - headed by Jim Chabin is a great man - was established to work with Jim Maynard and DreamWorks people to support the best industry practices. Now they are doing the same thing for VR, ensuring that the best VR will be very good.
GamesBeat: Tell us more about your point of view on VR. Compared with people really selling helmets, you seem to be more excited about this.
Taylor: I'm really excited. I am fortunate enough to meet the invention of the GPU. We have forgotten - everyone today has accepted the GPU as a standard and also accepted 3D. This was not the case in the late 1990s. You can't foresee all of the wealth we have today in the game. But you can see the trend. You can see the future vision. In particular, if you work with content creators and see how excited they are, you can see the future.
Edison invented the motion picture projector in 1891. However, four years later, the Lumiere brothers made their first film. Until 1907, when the jukebox appeared, the movie industry really started. I feel that we are now in a similar position to about 1895 and 1896. But the similarity is that someone can give a look at the future of the industry.
I am very lucky because I have the opportunity to chat with these people. Yesterday I was at the University of Las Vegas. With academia, teachers, and some student filmmakers watching them and talking about their ideas about VR, it made me know that this will be - like I said - this is not a big change, it will Change everything.
GamesBeat: We have already seen the first generation of VR hardware released. Can you talk about this aspect and what will happen in the future?
Taylor: I like the existing hardware on the market. Without Oculus, I wouldn't be here at all. I greatly like Palmer, Jason, Brendan and the team. Their achievements are great. However, while the helmet is great, the distance from the screen to the eye is related to the higher pixel requirements. We worked with a company in New York called Imagine who had a 4K helmet for a while. 4K is close to the eyes is really beautiful. I won't delete anything from Oculus and HTC's achievements, but jumping from the current pixel to 4K is a big deal. That will happen.
The movie industry doesn't want you to be distracted by pixels. They want to achieve 4K quickly and then achieve even higher pixels. Higher pixels will come. At the same time, prices will come down.
GamesBeat: How can we make it more affordable?
Taylor: Of course we need to be more affordable. Everyone can understand this. But there are deeper, more important reasons that need to be brought down. The production cost of one minute modern content is about one million dollars, whether Battlefield 4 or Ghostbusters. Unless we can give content creators a production value of about one million dollars per minute, this cannot be achieved.
About 12 million people will go to see Ghostbusters. Electronic Arts sold about 10 million Battlefield 4s. They can do it because of the infrastructure that supports this audience. We must lower prices so that millions of people will have helmets so that we can give the content industry a production value of one million dollars per minute. This will create AAA content and get the industry started.
Above: AMD positions the 470 as a must-have for 1080p60 games. Image source: AMD.
GamesBeat: As a chip maker, you recently opened an office in Hollywood. Why is it important?
Taylor: It's true. We are at 6600 Sunset Boulevard. VR consumes chips. Whether it's ours, Intel or Nvidia, VR is great for us. You need a lot of high-performance processors to deal with content creation, and, of course, content consumption. But that cannot be achieved, this huge market opportunity unless there is content. So there is a direct link between our ability to help produce content and consumption.
I don't want to wait 12 or 16 years. Our competitors do not want to. We opened an office in Hollywood because we want to support content creators - and we are fortunate that there are many in Los Angeles - to speed time to market.
GamesBeat: You recently started talking about "VR as a service."
Taylor: This really surprised me - VR was used where it was completely unexpected. People are using VR as a safety training, for example. Boeing is using VR for very real safety training. We also see VR applications in medicine. At SIGGRAPH, we saw Skip Rizzo from USC on the stage and talked about how he used VR to treat PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). We also see retailers using VR. We also see VR applications in design and manufacturing.
This is important because it will take us beyond the first wave of consumer experience. Even if it took a long time for us to create something that was absolutely terrific, VR as a service -- above or in other applications -- will continue to keep VR going.
GamesBeat: You have seen both positive and negative sides. In today's VR, where do you see the most investment?
Taylor: Now we see that the largest investment in VR content is in Hollywood. For example, the Martian, Paranormal Activity and other great experiences - we call VRE, or VR experience. We have seen more than 160 such likes made. In our estimation, about $70 million is used to make those devices. We realized that there are 200 pieces of equipment coming. Hollywood is not waiting. They are only producing. They are using content to promote traditional forms of film.
GamesBeat: AMD has just announced that there are some new stitching solutions for the 360 ​​Panorama VR. How do you see these advancements compared to game engine-based VR? Should we focus on one of them?
Taylor: Soon, the game engine will reach a suitable quality level that can be used in movie production. It's not too far away. That's important, because 360 ​​- most of the entertainment industry like 360 ​​panorama, because they are like a camera. The quality is very good, especially if you suture well, this has always been a problem to be solved. This is why we have been researching our suture solutions. However, ideally, you want 360-degree panorama quality and engine interactivity.
We believe that these two will be combined together. That is not a problem that can be solved simply, but we believe that, for example, the acquisition of light fields and modern computers—here we put the computer in front of the camera—will allow us to combine these two worlds. Now they are separate, but they will merge into one. Once we achieve this, it will be better for everyone.
GamesBeat: You haven't mentioned augmented reality yet. why?
Taylor: I love AR, but I'm a bit scared because I think consumers need time to adapt to the mix. We are playing Pokemon jokes here, but the sad reality is that some people have lost their lives. The two children fell off the cliff. That's not funny at all. If someone watches culinary classes in augmented reality and then cuts off his own fingers, it is also not funny at all. We need time to adapt to new technologies.
We are a strong supporter of companies like DAQRI who apply AR to industrial applications and automotive vehicles. I really like what OSG is doing. But we need time to evolve.
GamesBeat: Did you worry about VR? What can we do?
Taylor: It is very likely that the most powerful APP is not an APP. It's social. It may finally be found that Mark (Facebook founder Zuckerberg) is the smartest person. I'll talk to you about this idea. My mother and I said, "Roy, can you send me a VR helmet for Christmas?" My mother is 72 years old. I said, "Of course. What do you want it to do?" She said: "In VR, I can return to youth." Then I thought to myself, God. In VR I want six packs of abs. Then I realized another thing. If no one can see it, how about six abs? So I actually want to use VR to get all my friends together. I started to want to show off my new stuff.
This is true. We can create an environment where we can become our own better, more sexy and more beautiful version. This can be very shocking and may even be addictive. I'm not sure what we can do about this, if our virtual life is better than real life.
The AMD Radeon RX 480 is a little overheated. Image Credit: AMD.
GamesBeat: We will soon see a Ready Player One movie. Those of us who are a little older still remember reading Snow Crash (editor's note: "Avalanche," the first Internet novel featuring online personality and virtual reality) and how it inspired us to explore VR. How long do we have to get this kind of thing?
Taylor: For people like us, it's not fast enough. There are many important elements that need to be combined. One of the most important ones is Jason's mention of social networking, and the fact that there are only a few thousand people in the environment and not many tens of thousands of people. If you think about the computational power we need to achieve this - we need to do a lot of rendering in the cloud. We will need local rendering.
Combining all of these can be a big challenge, but we will do it. I don't know how long it will take. For many years, it was obvious. The question is whether there are five or several decades? If we study the pay model - here I'm going back to what I was just saying. We must lower the price of VR. We can't do thousands of dollars for PCs and achieve tens of millions of users. We can only do a $500 PC. When we implement that installation base, people can say: "I want to build Oasis, which will cost me 250 million U.S. dollars, but I will build Oasis, sell real estate, and charge for interplanetary travel." I assume you read Over this book. If we want to make the novel come true and let someone really burn $250 million to do it, we must have an installed base to run what he invented. We must lower the price.
GamesBeat: How do you distinguish between AMD and other hardware companies in terms of VR?
Taylor: I will concentrate. We have great respect for our competitors. I worked for our competitors. They are a big company and they work very hard to make our life difficult. They sometimes do a great job. The difference between us is that we entered VR earlier. We take it more seriously. We invest in it in activities and engineers. We introduced Liquid VR in January 2015. This seems like a long time ago. We are very focused on the community and content creators.
The next Sergei (Editor's Note: One of Google's founders), the next Mark may only be 15 or 16 years old. I met a young filmmaker named Sam Wicker at Chapman University. His idea is absolutely superb. In fact, we are very much involved in the activities of Chapman University, NFTS in the United Kingdom and Beijing Film Academy in China because we hope to find those who will create content.
So, the biggest difference is understanding that we need to unite with content creators and adopt a different perspective. We could have published our most recent graphics card for $350. We deliberately do not do this because we understand that our opportunity is to create an industry. This is longer than earning short-term added value. For anyone, if you want to find partners, we have a good competitor. They are good people who work hard. But I did not believe that we are more focused on VR than anyone else.
GamesBeat: We don't know which VR activities are worth it. There are so many activities now. The party has matured into fairs and conferences. GDC announced its own VR conference. How do you clarify these activities and know which ones to look for?
Taylor: It's really an exaggeration now, to the point of one or two games a day - I mean it really - we were invited to attend and speak, or usually sponsor another VR event. We focus on where content creators are. If you are not a content creator directly, can the audience connect with them? That is our only concern.
If we are invited to participate in an activity and talk about how good AMD is, I think you already know how good AMD is. We don't need to say it again. We want to know who can introduce us to the next Larry or Sergey. That is our focus.
GamesBeat: What's the best thing you've seen in VR right now?
Taylor: We have also been asked this question, and I said, then my inbox is all: "Why don't you say ..."? So pamper me, let me say two or three. The most frightening VR I have ever played is Paranormal Activity. scary. The best game for VR content is Ubisoft's Eagle Flight. Do not let me spit. Let me laugh and have fun. I really like it.
My best entertainment product is The Martian. The interesting thing about The Martian is that it is 30 minutes long and it feels like five minutes. I will next talk about some of the things we experience in VR. We did some research with a professor at a big bull school.
Question: Will you think that VR may enter a vertical canyon, and if we really get into that situation, how can we get out?
Taylor: This is directly related to the speed with which we create revenue models. The ability to sell content on the Steam and Creators web pages is great, but, again, I'll go back to the points I mentioned earlier. We must give Michael Bay, James Cameron, and Andy Wilson (Editor's note: these three are Hollywood movie directors) a minute and a million dollars. This is not possible unless we create revenue models that produce millions of dollars.
Location-based VR will be a big part. If we can give people a chance to try VR - those who cannot afford VR or are unlikely to be home-installed - and make them curious enough to make them want to pay for it, we can create real gains. If we get revenue, we can get production value.
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