Remember the Google Starline project, the “stand” of 3D videoonduction which gives you the impression of speaking to the other person as if they were standing in front of you, looking directly in your eyes? After several years of decrease as an impressive demo of research project, Google finally makes the technology available as a commercial product.
RephanCée at Google I / O 2025, Project Starline is now called Google Beam. The technology giant has filled all the necessary technology – a light field screen that creates the visual depth for a person on a call and six cameras integrated into the three surrounding glasses for the tracking of the head – in what is essentially a 3D television without glasses.
During a video call with media one day before the developer’s conference, the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai said that Beam uses AI to merge several 2D video flows from a person in a “3D bright field with perfect follow -up”.
I did not try Project Starline or Google Beam, but from what I gathered people who have, human avatars are approaching the suffocation of the valley. Instead of the eyes of a person looking at the bottom, under a webcam, at a computer screen window, it’s as if they were looking directly.
A new feature for Beam is real -time vocal translations between two appellants. Although it is not exclusive to the bundle – the functionality is launched in Google Meet for Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra Subscribed from today, in the process of making vocal translations almost live while establishing visual contact for a more significant connection via a 3D screen. I receive the attraction – I really do it, but the equipment and the power of treatment of the AI will not be cheap.
Although Google has not said how much a beam unit costs, the fact that it is associated with HP to bring the first bundle device to companies “with some customers later this year” tells you who is intended for. Read: Companies that can abandon cash major on the experimental technology of new generation video calls. In other words, the beam is intended for the use of the company. Google also says that it works with companies like Zoom and organizations such as Citadel, Deloitte, Duolingo, Hackensack Meridian Health, NEC, Recruit and Salesforce have shown interest and intend to “bring it to their teams”.
Look, if Google Beam is at the E / S, and it is as breathtaking as the people who tried it say it, I could be influenced. I love the chance to see the future – Today. But as a consumer technology journalist who has seen more than its fair share of high -tech corporate products that could have consumption applications if only the cost was not so expensive, I would say reduce your excitement – down. Beam is a commercial product for large companies, and until it changes, it is difficult to get excited for something that most people can probably never live. And even if you work in a company that could have a bundle in a conference room somewhere, will you really do everything possible to use it just to have a more “natural” and realistic video call? I don’t know anyone who really likes to be on a video call, and you ask them to want to leave someone even more in their personal space? Something tells me that the novelty will not be worth it when our laptops can make video calls from anywhere, not just in front of a large and heavy 3D television stand.
