Our Communication Hall on the JAXA Sagamihara Campus has got a cool new exhibit! Step inside this dome and you’ll see a video of the #Hayabusa2 spacecraft touching down on asteroid Ryugu! You have a choice of 4 buttons that lets you change your view, and in June, there’ll be controls to let you try your own landing! It’s been designed with #VSP (Virtual Space Program) who are a group in Japan who develop really outstanding #VR content.
#Riven (the sequel to #Myst), one of my favorite games of all time, has a realtime 3D and #VR remake underway. It was announced recently that it's planned to ship sometime this year, and is now available to wishlist on #Steam and #GOG!
"In 1838 Charles Wheatstone published a paper describing a curious illusion he’d discovered. If you drew two pictures of something – say, a cube, or a tree – from two slightly different perspectives, and then viewed each one through a different eye, your brain would assemble them into a three-dimensional view. Wheatstone created a table-size device to demonstrate the effect: the world’s first stereoscope."
Nice post on the history of #immersion & #VR (from 2017):
#Apple#VisionPro#AR#VR#Privacy#DataProtection: "Meta’s Quest 3 headset has four external cameras. Apple ups that count to twelve: six “world-facing” tracking cameras, two high-resolution video passthrough cameras, and four eye-tracking cameras. It also has a TrueDepth 3D sensor and Lidar.
However, the privacy experts I spoke with felt the risks associated with AR/VR headsets come not from the number of cameras or sensors, but from the perspective they offer into a user’s life.
Data privacy expert Maritza Johnson said it’s “very common for most people in the U.S. to be surrounded by cameras and microphones.” But those devices, though ever-present, aren’t physically attached to the user. “A phone is not mounted to my head, [...] a big difference is in the intimacy of the device,” she said." https://spectrum.ieee.org/apple-vision-pro-privacy
I got some criticism that the flat rooftops looked empty. So I added randomized utility structures to them. Now even the inaccessible rooftops have something.
🆕 blog! “Beat Saber is gaming without the bullshit”
★★★★★
Several years ago, at the start of the pandemic, I tried using Nintendo's Ring Fit as an exercise method. It didn't last long. I felt I was spending too much time earning in-game currency, making choices on what to spend it on, crafting, managing inventory, choosing power-ups, and all sorts of other tedious nonsen…
Several years ago, at the start of the pandemic, I tried using Nintendo's Ring Fit as an exercise method. It didn't last long. I felt I was spending too much time earning in-game currency, making choices on what to spend it on, crafting, managing inventory, choosing power-ups, and all sorts of other tedious nonsense.
In short, I constantly felt like I was working rather than working out.
If you like that sort of game mechanic; I'm happy for you. But it just turned me off the game so much that I never completed it.
A few years later, I got the Meta Quest 2 VR Headset. Most of the games on it are pretty crappy. Nintendo Wii level graphics, screaming kids on the online experiences, and pathetic battery life. There are a few charming experiences, but it mostly sucks.
I think Beat Saber might be my personal zenith of gaming. There are no complex instructions - you slice the blocks in the indicated direction. That's it. Here's me playing a level (with my microphone muted so you can't hear my huffing and puffing).
There are no power-ups to help you cheat your way through the levels. No boss fights. No collecting or spending coins. The only decisions you're ever asked to make are "what song would you like?" and "how difficult do you want this to be?" Much like the fabled L-Game, it is the distillation of ludic perfection.
Best of all, your only opponent is yourself.
As I've previously noted, most games aren't about you getting better at the game; they're about you getting better equipment. Beat Saber is the opposite. You have to physically practice in order to complete a level.
Note - you don't have to "beat" levels in order to progress. This isn't one of those games which holds content back if you can't complete the earlier levels. If you want to skip a song, or try something harder or easier, you can pick whatever you like.
In does have in-app purchases. Far from being the sort of loot-box bullshit most games are infested with, these are brutally honest. You can buy an album of songs for between £10 - £16. If you try to buy a single song, it will warn you that it is probably cheaper to buy the multipack. If you are happy with the base songs, it won't push the premium ones on you.
And, yes, there is online competitive play if you really want to test your mettle against people younger and fitter than you. But why bother? What good does it do you to know there's some kid in Seoul who can dedicate 20 hours a day to practicing? It doesn't.
I don't know if it is making me fitter. I'm certainly sweating more. And I don't know if I'll continue playing it. But, as long as it doesn't change its basic premise, I'm finding it delightful.
What if you never ever had to put your phone down? Ever?
Eddy Burback's "Apple's $3500 Nightmare" video essay is ridiculous, absurdist, and amazing. Low key humor exploring the dystopian nightmare that VR/AR is ushering in for... reasons?
If you are interested in, less about a tech review, and more about what tech like the Vision Pro mean for humans I recommend giving it a view.
Exclusive: Virtual Boy Pro Revealed! All the Details on Nintendo's Wildest System Yet
Check out Nintendo's surprise headset and its amazing launch game, Mario Kart: Open Road!
Tried out shadow.tech for cloud PC & PCVR gaming while I'm travelling.
It worked reasonably well playing #NMS (No Man's Sky) in #VR, but I wasn't able to multiplayer Age of Mythology across our home LAN network. To first order, this is because the cloud PC isn't on our LAN, but I connected it to our other computer via "tailscale" which should have mimicked them being on the same network. I remain rather baffled as to why that didn't work... 🤔
Without a doubt, one of the most common questions we've been asked over the past week is "Will you be supporting VR?" Well, after today we can respond with a resounding yes!
We can now take on the additional resources we need to produce a polished VR experience.