Nice. Looks like arstechnica is now blocking my VPN, so I cant read their news.

From S tier to F tier, just like that.

The HP Dimension is coming this year, and the price tag is a predictably hefty $24,999.

Google Beam calls for a lot of advanced hardware, so the high price isn’t a surprise. The HP Dimension uses six high-speed cameras positioned around the display to capture the speaker from multiple angles. This visual data is then fed into Google’s proprietary volumetric video model, which merges the streams together into a 3D reconstruction of the speaker.

We got a glimpse of it at Google I/O, and it really does look like the person you’re talking to is on the other side of the table.

Google and HP claim that Beam’s 3D video makes meetings more efficient, with better display of non-verbal cues and participants experiencing improved recall of details versus a regular 2D chat.

I don’t know if it will make meetings more efficient or not, but I’m going to predict widespread use in pornography applications.