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Vaughn

Category: AR...MR...XR

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· January 27, 2025 · 1 minute to read

I had the pleasure of writing another little article for The Bezark Company on the proliferation of devices in parks and other experiences and how we might use them to expand the worlds we create. Take a look! https://blooloop.com/theme-park/opinion/phones-in-theme-parks/

#themeparks #blooloop #themedentertainment #design

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· October 9, 2024 · 1 minute to read
Synth Riders by Synth RidersSynth Riders (synthridersvr.com)

[vc_row][vc_column][rev_slider_vc alias=”main-home-countdown-1″ enable_paspartu=”no”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row disable_element=”yes” row_content_width=”grid” css=”.vc_custom_1592943790819{padding-top: 187px !important;padding-bottom: 119px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1533819326488{padding-top: 83px !important;}”][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_empty_space height=”71px”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_empty_space height=”71px”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_empty_space height=”71px”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″ offset=”vc_col-sm-offset-2″][vc_empty_space height=”71px”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_empty_space height=”71px”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_content_width=”grid” content_text_aligment=”center” el_id=”buy” css=”.vc_custom_1644353160589{margin-top: 30vh !important;margin-bottom: 30vh !important;}”][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][vc_column_text] • MUSIC FOR EVERYONE with 73+ free songs and 67 optional DLC tracks feat. a-ha, Gorillaz, Bruno Mars, K/DA, Lindsey Stirling, Muse, Caravan Palace and more… • PLAY YOUR WAY with cross-platform Multiplayer, Spin & Spiral, and more modes • BURN CALORIES in a unique combination of […]

Enjoying multiplayer mode!

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· May 3, 2024 · 1 minute to read
Walkabout Mini Golf (mightycoconut.com)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Really enjoying a little VR mini golf as a relaxing end to the day. Ready for a little multiplayer if you are.

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· April 25, 2024 · 1 minute to read

Ok so VR fitness might be a thing… #vr #fitness #supernatural

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· April 25, 2024 · 1 minute to read
SUPERHOT VR (SUPERHOT VR - Multi-award winning, smash-hit truly FPS)
You've never felt so cool in the video game before. Dodge bullets in mind bending slow motion, control the action, destroy boundaries of time.

A tremendous VR experience.

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· March 20, 2024 · 6 minutes to read
A group of people wearing various VR hardware looking up.
Image by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, Public Domain

Well well well, it’s been an interesting start to 2024. While most of tech, big and small is chasing the AI rabbit (using those initials very loosely) it seems our old friend is back on our minds…and faces. Apple, of course, launched their face computer and if we ignore the folks just trying to get clicks on the Tik Toks and the You Tubes there is actual revived discussion about the reality of VR, AR and the other R’s. Let’s agree to continue calling it Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, or collectively eXtended Reality as that is what we’re talking about whether you’re gaming, creating, or just computing. There are a lot of parts and pieces tangled up in this XR conversation. The hardware is improving, the software is evolving, and the social experiences are…still figuring it out.

The physical bits of plastic and metal and glass and electrons

It is truly awesome that we can now strap a fully functioning computer to our faces and dive into new worlds and have those worlds mix with our existing world. There are some great tear downs of the most recent options available (Quest 3 and VisionPro) that illustrate just how much tech is squeezed into them. This is only a recent development and it will only get better. Before that we were tethered to metal boxes with beefy graphics cards. There was a time before that when no one really talked about VR BUT before that we needed a small crane to support the hardware that we “wore” on our heads lest it crush our puny skulls. We’ve been talking about this stuff for a long time and we ALMOST stopped talking about it again until the shiny new thing showed up. It’s going to be some time before the hardware “disappears” if it can at all. It’s very likely we’ll need to adjust our social norms for when and where XR hardware is appropriate even if it scales down to something less intrusive than what XReal and Rokid are building now. All that to say we’re still at the beginning.

The digital bits that talk to the physical bits

There is something to it. XR demos REALLY well. People put the hardware on and are instantly transported, instantly fooled, and sometimes instantly sick…but that’s getting better. It convinces us so completely that some can’t walk out on a virtual plank of wood 10 stories above a virtual city even though they know they are safe in their living rooms. But that’s a parlor trick. I’d argue the software is missing the big innovations that the hardware has seen over the last few years. There are some classic games that play really well in VR. There are some cool MR experiences rolling out that show promise. Accessing your computer and making the monitor really big is neat but really only useful in a few tight spaces (airplanes, and trains for the rest of world who understands the value of well maintained rail transit…) There’s still no compelling reason to keep heavy-ish hardware on your face for a long time and the software may not catch up until the hardware evolves sufficiently to where it’s hardly noticed.

A generated, stylized, hyper colorful image of a young woman wearing a VR headset and some futuristic clothing.
Image by SimonWaldherr (with Midjourney and Photoshop) CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed

The Socials

Putting hardware over your eyes is an isolating experience. Less so with the lightweight AR glasses that are available but they’re still bulky enough to be a barrier between you and the other people in your immediate reality. So let’s talk about it. The Metaverse. James Wagner Au recently distilled the definition (for those who thought there was no definition) down to this

The Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of users through VR and other devices, highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools. It is integrated with the real world economy and compatible with external technology.

A drawing of a person standing before a futuristic city.
Image by KvngMxnET CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Deed

I’ve been a fan of virtual worlds for a long time and I’d still take a meeting in a place like SecondLife over a Zoom any day. There are currently many virtual worlds to choose from and each has an ideal way to access it. Disney and Epic made a big splash recently with their announcement of a Fortnite powered Disney Universe (the jokes write themselves) but it is not The Metaverse. It appears to be another silo that I’m sure will be a lot of fun and draw a lot of people but until it connects with other virtual spaces it is no different than Meta’s Horizon Worlds (also not The Metaverse no matter what they call the company). The closest thing we have to The Metaverse is Mozilla Hubs (soon to be de-Mozilla’d) and Ready Player Me. An image capture of an avatar in Ready Player Me. The avatar has reddish hair, a beard and wears a red t-shirt. They stand before a dark forest.Hubs is open source, runs in a browser, has content creation tools, can import other content standards, and can be accessed via desktop, tablet, pocket computer, or face computer. That last bit is important. You shouldn’t have to use a specific piece of hardware to access this alternate world. Ready Player Me is helping on the identity side. A user shouldn’t have to create a new avatar and new profile every time they want to visit a new world. You can imagine what the web would be like if you had to create a new profile for every page you…never mind. Ready Player Me allows the user to create a library of avatars that can be used in multiple worlds (including Hubs). These two services are still fairly basic compared to what we can imagine but we’re at the beginning.

The long beginning

These are niche devices currently serving a niche audience in the hopes that it’s the Next Big Thingtm. We all wait and see again. This all feels similar to 2017…it’s still the beginning of functional hardware, it’s still the beginning of software that really understands the world (outside and in) and works well with both, it’s still the beginning of interconnected worlds that we can actually use and exist in for some amount of time, and it’s still the beginning of creating social norms around how computers on, and in, your face are understood.

#vr #ar #xr #virtualreality #augmentedreality #metaverse

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· June 6, 2017 · 5 minutes to read

It’s been a busy spring for Augmented Reality and the last week really topped it off. The 8th annual Augmented World Expo was 3 days of vendors, developers and enthusiastic end-users coming together to talk about, demo and try on the latest AR gear. If there is to be one thing I came away with from the expo it’s that we haven’t yet agreed what to call this thing. Augmented, Mixed or eXtended Reality. Each was used almost interchangeably. It won’t matter what we call if but it sure would help the messaging if we stuck to a naming convention.

The Promise

Trying on Daqri Glasses

We all want the same thing. We want a device (or set of devices) that we can look through which will overlay information and interactive elements onto the real world. This information will be easy to access and quickly available. Creating objects and information for AR will be simple, requiring little to no programming. The hardware will be priced in the same range as a smart phone and weigh less. It will be personalized to us and allow access to our virtual assistant of choice.

The Near Future

AR Timeline So FarThis coming year is going to feel a bit like 2016 did for VR. We’re on the cusp of some interesting hardware hitting the market at attainable prices. The big, big players are making moves…Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook are all in varying stages of their AR strategies.

Google announced Google Lens at I/O in May and, assuming it works as well as it demoed, looks to be a key piece of their AR strategy. It plays to their strengths in machine learning and information management. Their continued development of Tango will make AR creation and experiences more accessible. I’d like to see Tango built into the Pixel 2 (hint, hint Google) and any other devices they make from here on out. With a likely hardware announcement in the fall, what more will come this year? Time will tell…

Microsoft released its Windows Creators Update for Windows 10. This update includes tools for the creation of Mixed Reality content. Microsoft is trying to make it as easy as possible to build content for AR (and VR) with tools provided in the OS. An interesting side note, Lorraine Bardeen (General Manager, Windows and HoloLens Experiences) used the term mixed reality exclusively in her talk at AWE. Microsoft has since announced hardware from partners Dell and Asus. We’ll see what else turns up this year…time will tell…

Facebook made it clear that AR is a priority at F8. They promise to provide a platform to create AR experiences with relative ease. It’s still unclear what exactly Facebook’s AR Studio will mean for all of us. Time will tell…

Apple announced, just yesterday, their ARKit at WWDC as a platform for bringing solid AR content to iOS. We’ll see what’s truly possible and hopefully see some hints for what’s to come as developers get their hands on it. Time will tell…

Magic Leap…(this space intentionally left blank)

The Reality

Daqri HelmetThe hardware is clunky, uncomfortable, and heavy. The experiences are neat but less than amazing. It’s ok, it’s early days. There are definite use cases for AR as it exists right now. Head mounted displays are great for industrial design, construction and manufacturing. Environments where having information available while keeping your hands free. The hardware is rugged and includes safety features necessary for those sectors.

Entertainment companies can start thinking about AR for project planning and previz. AR and VR are great ways to show a client what your project is really going to look like. ODG (Osterhaut Design Group) has a pair of glasses coming this fall for under the $1000 mark. This will make head mounted AR hardware accessible to small and medium design studios.

For everyone else, my hope is that we can break through the “3D graphics in our world” demos and applications and really start exploring what AR is and what it can be. Let’s settle on Extended Reality as the common term. Our reality should be extended in all possible ways. Not just looking through our phones at cute animations. We posses a ton of data about the world around us and this data should be accessible to everyone in a variety of forms. Whether we hold the phone up to look through the camera, use a head mounted display or wear smart clothing that tug at us when we’re near areas of interest. Existing displays in public spaces should detect our presence and provide information that’s important to us (and yes, there will probably be ads too).

We’re at the beginning of whatever this becomes. With the right mix of vision, open standards and acceptance we can enhance our everyday lives, be more productive and spend less time looking down at a glowing rectangle. We must be patient and work through the hype cycles and the low points to get to the good stuff. I’m looking forward to it…

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Vaughn
Vaughn
@vaughn@social.vaughnhannon.com
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Creative Technologist working in the Themed Entertainment and live events worlds. I've been part of the Fediverse since 2016, moved to my own instance from mastodon.social, and then in May of 2025 I moved to my own GoToSocial instance. I use Wordpress with ActivityPub (this) as my primary posting space.

Interests:
#go (the game aka #weiqi or #baduk)
#hiking
#burningman
#art
#making
#tech
#cooking
#fitness
#games

...in no particular order.

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What I’m Playing

  • Synth Riders - October 9, 2024
  • Soulmask - June 9, 2024
  • Walkabout Mini Golf - May 3, 2024
  • SUPERHOT VR - April 25, 2024
  • Zombies, run! - May 23, 2023

What I Like

  • Loops by Pixelfed • Public beta (hopefully) launching in 10 hours - Lemmy.World - October 21, 2024
  • Science and Shit - October 16, 2024
  • Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader (16 Oct 2024) - October 16, 2024
  • Dead letters - October 16, 2024
  • lashman shared a post - November 26, 2023

What I’m Listening to

  • Unprecedented Sh!t - January 20, 2025
  • Bittersweet Goodbye - YouTube Music - October 10, 2024
  • Clancy - June 7, 2024
  • Radio Free Fedi - March 20, 2024
  • Overcompensate - YouTube Music - February 29, 2024

Where I’ve Been

  • Death Valley National Park - February 28, 2025
  • Wisp Resort - December 26, 2024
  • Black Plague Brewing - October 23, 2024
  • Narrative Coffee - August 2, 2024
  • Sancho’s Tacos - June 17, 2024

What I’ve Read

  • The Bezzle - November 18, 2024
  • A hologram for the king by Dave Eggers | Open Library - February 23, 2024
  • Red Team Blues - November 23, 2023
  • The Genesis Machine: Our Quest To Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology - October 8, 2023
  • The Feather Thief - May 25, 2022

Bookmarks

  • High Protein Plant Based Recipes - May 17, 2025
  • Plant or Meat? Either Fuels Muscle Growth Equally - April 30, 2025
  • Planche progression workout - December 28, 2024
  • Vegan Myths Busted - October 5, 2024
  • 20 One Pot Vegetarian Dinners - August 13, 2024

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