Tag / VR

by dilanshah

The Future of Augmented Reality Glasses

Meta

  • Five years ago, plans were announced to create AR glasses to blend the digital and physical worlds.
  • Orion, the latest AR glasses from Meta, aims to enhance presence, connectivity, and empowerment.
  • AR glasses offer unrestricted digital experiences with large holographic displays.
  • Contextual AI integration allows for proactive addressing of user needs.
  • Orion stands out for its lightweight design, indoor/outdoor versatility, and emphasis on interpersonal interactions.
  • Orion represents a significant advancement in AR glasses technology, combining wearability with advanced features.
  • The groundbreaking AR display in Orion offers immersive experiences and a wide field of view.
  • Orion’s unique design maintains a glasses-like appearance, allowing users to see others’ expressions.
  • Orion’s capabilities include smart assistant integration, hands-free communication, and immersive social experiences.
  • While not yet available to consumers, Orion serves as a polished product prototype for future AR glasses development.

OP: Introducing Orion, [Meta’s] First True Augmented Reality Glasses

Snap

Sophia Dominguez, the Director of AR Platform at Snap, discussed Snap Spectacles and the company’s AR initiatives at the Snap Lens Fest original post here.

  • Snap Spectacles can be connected to a battery pack for extended use beyond the standard 45 minutes, with a focus on B2B interactions that directly engage consumers.
  • There is a push for Snap to collaborate with various businesses, such as those in location-based entertainment or museums, to expand the Snap Spectacles ecosystem.
  • Sophia Dominguez has been involved in AR for over a decade, starting with Google Glass, and now oversees developers and partners creating lenses on Snapchat.
  • Snap’s approach to AR emphasizes personal self-expression as a catalyst for AR lenses, transitioning to world-facing AR lenses like those in Snap Spectacles.
  • Snap’s long-term vision is to make AR ubiquitous and profitable for developers, aiming to integrate digital objects seamlessly into the real world.
  • Snap’s focus on consumer-level AR use cases includes self-expression as a core feature, offering a variety of options for users to engage with AR content.
  • Snap’s AR platform also caters to enterprise and B2B applications, collaborating with stadiums, museums, and other businesses for unique AR experiences beyond consumer-facing lenses.
  • Snap’s technology, like Snapchat cam, is designed for venues to integrate into large screens or jumbotrons, focusing on consumer desires for virality and joy rather than just enterprise solutions.
  • The company aims to increase ubiquity by making lenses fun and approachable, partnering with entities like the Louvre to explore augmented reality possibilities in a consumer-friendly manner.
    HTC Vive has delved into location-based entertainment more than Meta, and Snap is prioritizing connected experiences, ensuring fast connectivity and optimizing for various use cases like museum activations.
  • Snap collaborates closely with developers, offering grants and support without strings attached to foster innovation in the augmented reality space, aiming to be the most developer-friendly platform globally.
  • Snap’s Spectacles have evolved over the years, from simple camera glasses to AR display developer kits, with the latest fifth generation focusing on wearability, developer excitement, and paving the way for consumer adoption.
  • The company has revamped Lens Studio to encompass mobile and Spectacles lenses, emphasizing ease of use and spatial experiences, aiming to create a seamless ecosystem for developers across different platforms.
  • Snap values feedback and collaboration with developers, striving to provide pathways for monetization and support for creators building on both mobile and Spectacles platforms.
  • Snap’s Spectacles offer a unique immersive experience, leveraging standalone capabilities and spatial interactions, aiming to enable emergent social dynamics and experiences not possible on other devices.
  • Developers are considering the length of time users spend on devices like Zoom calls or workouts, with a focus on creating a seamless experience for users on the go.
  • The new SnapOS manages a dual processing architecture for Spectacles, with Lens Studio being the primary pipeline for developers to create content for the device.
  • Snap is actively listening to developer feedback and working on enabling WebXR on Spectacles to support a variety of use cases and experiences.
  • The operating system for Spectacles includes features like connected lenses, hands and voice-based UI, and social elements out of the box to facilitate easier development.
  • The ultimate potential of spatial computing is envisioned as a way to break free from the limitations of screens, allowing for more natural interactions and connections in the real world.
  • Snap aims to empower developers to explore the possibilities of augmented reality and spatial computing, emphasizing ease of use and continuous improvement based on user feedback.

by dilanshah

Traversal of Immersive Environments | HoloTile Floor from Disney

If you’re new to The Latent Element, I write about future market development narratives or things of interest to me, hence the name “latent” element. These views are not representative of any company nor do they contain privileged info.

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Post Details

Read time:

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Table of Contents:

  1. The Challenge
  2. Early Solutions
  3. Disney Research HoloTile Floor
  4. Closing Thoughts
  5. Sources

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by dilanshah

How can mixed reality drive more engagement in movement and fitness?

Fitness is one of the most robust categories under discussion, across Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality devices. For whom does this movement level merit the moniker “fitness”? And what timeline are we working with to see the sweeping adoption of fitness via spatial computing (the term widely known now due to Apple’s Vision Pro announcement and curving of the terms VR / AR / MR collectively)?

I’m seeing new unlocks particularly as it relates to the comfort of the device, spatial awareness afforded due to camera passthrough, and greater respect for ergonomic polish among developers.

The video seen here is a clip taken November 8th, 2023, showing a first-person view of a Quest 3 experience that allows for gestures, hand tracking, and movement to be used as input to an increasing number of games.

The title is built by YUR, the app name is YUR World.
by dilanshah

RealityKit Motion Capture and Apple’s future iPhone including a time-of-flight camera

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claiming in his latest report that two of the 2020 iPhones will feature a rear time-of-flight (ToF) 3D depth sensor for better augmented reality features and portrait shots, via MacRumors.

“It’s not the first we’ve heard of Apple considering a ToF camera for its 2020 phones, either. Bloomberg reported a similar rumor back in January, and reports of a 3D camera system for the iPhone have existed since 2017. Other companies have beaten Apple to the punch here, with several phones on the market already featuring ToF cameras. But given the prevalence of Apple’s hardware and the impact it tends to have on the industry, it’s worth taking a look at what this camera technology is and how it works.

What is a ToF sensor, and how does it work?

Time-of-flight is a catch-all term for a type of technology that measures the time it takes for something (be it a laser, light, liquid, or gas particle) to travel a certain distance.

In the case of camera sensors, specifically, an infrared laser array is used to send out a laser pulse, which bounces off the objects in front of it and reflects back to the sensor. By calculating how long it takes that laser to travel to the object and back, you can calculate how far it is from the sensor (since the speed of light in a given medium is a constant). And by knowing how far all of the different objects in a room are, you can calculate a detailed 3D map of the room and all of the objects in it.

The technology is typically used in cameras for things like drones and self-driving cars (to prevent them from crashing into stuff), but recently, we’ve started seeing it pop up in phones as well.”

The current state of ARKit 3 and an observation

Screen Shot 2019-07-29 at 12.07.16 PM.png

ARKit 3 has an ever-increasing scope, and of particular interest to me are those AR features which under the hood rely upon machine learning, namely Motion Capture.

Today, ARKit 3 uses raycasting as well as ML Based Plane Detection on awake or when the app using ARKit 3 is initially opened in order to place the floor, for example.

Check the video below. In it, I’m standing in front of my phone which is propped up on a table.

In this video, I’m using motion capture via an iPhone XR. My phone is sitting on a surface (namely the table) that it has determined is the floor plane, and as a result, you’ll notice that our avatar, once populated into the scene, has an incorrect notion of where the ground is.

Screen Shot 2019-07-30 at 1.27.20 PM

It’s the hope that new ToF sensor technology will allow for a robust and complete understanding of the layout of objects in the room and the floor. Such that, for the same context, the device is able to tell that it is sitting on a table yet, the floor is not that plane but the one further away in the real world scene before it.

 

Source:
The Verge, “Apple’s future iPhone might add a time-of-flight camera — here’s what it could do”

by dilanshah

Acceleration and Motion Sickness in the Context of Virtual Reality (VR)

As I traveled around the world with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, universally first-timers would be fascinated, but a bit woozy after trying VR. What contributes to this? One possibility is the vergence-accommodation issue with current displays. However, the subject of this post is locomotion and the anatomical reasoning behind the discomfort arising from poorly designed VR.

With VR you typically occupy a larger virtual space than that of your immediate physical surroundings.

So, to help you traverse, locomotion or in other words a way of sending you from point A to point B in the virtual space was designed. Here’s what this looks like:

Image result for teleportation vr gif

Caption: This guy is switching his virtual location by pointing a laser on the tip of his controller to move around.

Movement with changing velocity through a virtual environment can contribute to this overall feeling of being in a daze.

That’s why most creators smooth transitions and avoid this kind of motion (i.e. blink teleport, constant velocity movement from Land’s End). Notice how the movement seems steady and controlled below?

Image result for lands end vr gif

Acceleration and Velocity

‘Acceleration’ is, put simply, any kind of change of speed measured over time, generally [written] as m^-2 (meters per second, per second) if it’s linear or in rad^-2 (same but with an angle) if it’s around an axis. Any type of continuous change in the speed of an object will induce a non-zero acceleration.”

The Human Vestibular System

When you change speed, your vestibular system should register an acceleration. The vestibular system is part of your inner ear. It’s basically the thing that tells your brain if your head is up or down, and permit[s] you to [stand] and walk without falling all the time!

Internal ear diagram that show the semi-circular cannals where the acceleartion forces are sensed.

Fluid moving in your semicircular canals is measured and the information is communicated to your brain by the cranial nerves. You can think of this as [similar to how] an accelerometer and a gyroscope works.

[This] acceleration not only includes linear acceleration (from translation in 3D space), but also rotational acceleration, which induces angular acceleration, and empirically, it seems to be the worse kind in the matter of VR sickness…”

Now that you have this grounding for our anatomical system of perceiving acceleration the upshot is that often viewers in VR will experience movement visually but not via these semicircular canals. It’s this incongruence that drives VR sickness with current systems.

Some keywords to explore more if you’re interested in the papers available are: Vection, Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS), and Self-motion.

via Read more on the ways developers reduce discomfort from the author’s website.

by dilanshah

Rapid Worldbuilding with Probuilder

Rapid Worldbuilding with ProBuilder

ProBuilder is totally free available through the package manager.
If you’re using 2017 or 5.6 you’ll get critical bug fixes. However, from 2018 onwards there’s more support, using 2018.1.0b3 I dealt with a considerably severe crash bug, so update to b12 IMO.
Polybrush and Progrids are things you’ll have to go get individually from Unity.
To replace Probuilder objects with polished geo you can play around with the Unity FBX exporter

Real Quick Prototyping Demo

  • Main Probuilder window (found by going to tools>probuilder>probuilder window) – has tools and Probuilder is designed so that you can ignore it when you’ a new to using Probuilder
  • Face, Object, etc. mode – will allow you to touch only the variable selectable
  • A good way to learn the tool is to go through the main probuilder window and check the shortcuts
  • It really helps to keep things as simple as possible from the get go. Don’t add tons of polys
  • Shape selector will help you quickly make stuff
  • Connect edges and insert edge loop
  • Holding shift to grab multiple
  • ‘R’ will give you scale mode
  • Extrude is a fantastic way to add geometry
  • Grid Size – keep at 1 for 1 meter this is important for avoiding mistakes when creating geo and knowing your angles
  • Use the ortho top down view to see if your geo fits your grid
  • Detach face settings is a way to split geo selected but it’s still part of your item
  • Detach face using a different setting to create a new game object
  • Pivot point needs to be rejigged often (solutions: object action or set it to a specific element using “Center Pivot”)
  • center pivot and put it on the grid by using progrids
  • Settings changes become the default
  • Use the Poly Shape tool to spin up a room + extrude quickly
  • Merge objects
  • think in terms of Quads
  • try selecting to vertices and connect (Alt + E) them
  • select hidden as a toggle is a great option, because in 3D you are seeing an orthographic projection so you will click on the thing that is drawn closest to the camera!
  • Crafting a doorway, can be done using extrude and grid meter changes, toggle the views (X, Y, and Z) to help with that
  • hold v to make geo snap; this will save you time later on
  • Alt+C will collapse verts (as in the ramp option where the speaker started with a cube)
  • Weld vs. Collapse — weld great for merging to hallways, or collapse which is more like pushing all verts within a specific distance together
  • Grow selection and smooth group

Polybrush Stuff

  • Add more detail with loops or subdivide (smart connect)
  • Polybrush will let you sculpt, smooth, texture blend, scatter objects, etc.
  • Modes like smoothing
  • todo explore something prefabs
  • N-gons are bad because everything is made up of tris

Texturing stuff

Open up the UV editor
  • By default, everything is on auto which means that on in-scene handles toggle
  • When you’re prototyping this allows you to not use fancy toolbar stuff

Question

  • Why is progrids helpful? Short answer: if you’re not super familiar with 3D modeling and creation software (i.e. Maya) you can create simple geo without leaving Unity editor.
  • Why would you be obsessive about making sure your geo fits your 1 meter grid size? Short answer: This helps you avoid errors with geo creation such as horrid angles and hidden faces.
  • Can you talk a little bit about automation with Probuilder?
by dilanshah

Reblog: Google creates coffee making sim to test VR learning

Most VR experiences so far have been games and 360-degree videos, but Google is exploring the idea that VR can be a way to learn real life skills. The skill it chose to use as a test of this hypothesis is making coffee. So of course, it created a coffee making simulator in VR.

As explained by author, Ryan Whitwam, this simulation proved more effective over the other group in the study that had just a video primer on the coffee-making technique herein.

Participants were allowed to watch the video or do the VR simulation as many times as they wanted, and then the test—they had to make real espresso. According to Google, the people who used the VR simulator learned faster and better, needing less time to get confident enough to do the real thing and making fewer mistakes when they did.

As you all know, I have the Future of Farming project going right now with Oculus Launch Pad. It is my ambition to impart some knowledge about farming/gardening to users of that experience. Therefore I found this article to be quite intriguing. How fast can we all learn to crop tend using novel equipment should we be primed first by an interactive experience/tutorial. This is what I’d name ‘environment transferable learning’ or ETL. The idea that in one environment you can learn core concepts or skills that transcend the tactical elements of the environment. For example, a skill learned in VR that translates into a real world environment, maybe “Environment Transferable Skills” or ETS.

A fantastic alternate example, also comes from Google, with Google Blocks. This application allows Oculus Rift or HTC Vive users to craft 3D models with controllers, and the tutorial walks users through how to use their virtual apparatuses. This example doesn’t use ETL, but we can learn from the design of the tutorial nonetheless for ETL applications. For instance, when Blocks teaches how to use the 3D shape tool it focuses on teaching the user by showing outlines of 3D models that it wants the user to place. The correct button is colored differently relative to other touch controller buttons. This signals a constraint to the user that this is the button to use. With sensors found in the Oculus Touch controllers, one could force the constraint of pointing with the index finger or grasping. In the example of farming, if there is a button interface in both the real and virtual world (the latter modeled closely to mimic the real world) I can then show a user how to push the correct buttons on the equipment to get started.

What I want to highlight is that it’s kind of a re-engineering of having someone walk you through your first time exercising a skill (i.e. espresso-making). It’s cool that the tutorial can animate a sign pointing your hands to the correct locations etc. Maybe not super useful for complicated tasks but to kind of instruct anything that requires basic motor skills VR ETL can be very interesting.

via Did you enjoy this article? Then read the full version from the author’s website.

by dilanshah

Update; Oculus Launch Pad 2017: Future of Farming

Everything is hierarchical in the brain. In VR design for users, my hypothesis is that this can be really helpful for setting the context. For example, at Virtually Live where the VR content is “Formula E Season 2 Highlights”, meaning the one donning the headset is able to watch races. I once proposed that we use the amazing UX of Realities.io to use an interactive model of Earth as the highest level of abstraction from the races (which occur all over the world). The user can spin the globe around and find a location to load in. The hierarchy written abstractly in this example is, Globe is a superset of Countries, Countries that of Cities, and Cities that of Places. I figured that this would be perfect for an electric motorsport championship series that travels to famous cities each month. We went with a carousel design that was more expeditious than the globe in the end.

The Future of Farming takes place largely in a metropolitan area, namely San Francisco. So I’ve decided that to begin, I’ll borrow from the hierarchical plan. I want to showcase an orthographic project of San Francisco to the user with maybe a handful of locations highlighted as interactable. To do this I’ve setup WRLD in my project for city landscape.

Upon selection of one of the highlighted locations with the GearVR controller, a scene will load with a focal piece of farming equipment that has made its way into the type of place (e.g. Warehouse, House, or Apartment, etc.).

A quick aside, last week I had a tough travel and work schedule to New York. I came upon a pretty bare blog post upon reading back what I wrote, so I decided, it was better to not share. One of the other hurdles I had, was an unfortunate loss of the teammate I announced two weeks prior, simply due to his prioritizing projects with budgets more appealing to him. I dwelled on this for awhile, as I admired his plant modeling work a lot. With the loss of that collaborator and weighing a few other factors, I’ve decided to pursue an art style much akin to that of Virtual Virtual Reality or that of Superhot. Less geometry all created in VR. Doing most of this via Google Blocks and a workflow involving pushing created environments to Unity which is pretty straight-forward. After you have created your model in Google Blocks, visit on an Internet browser with WebGL-friendly settings and download your model. From there, you can unzip that file and drag it into Unity Assets>Blocks Import which I recommend you create as a way of staying organized. You’ll note that Blocks imports speciate a .mtl, materials folder, and a .obj model usually. In order to have your intended Google Blocks model to show through you need to change one setting called “Material Naming” after you’ve clicked on your .obj. Change it to “By Base Texture Name” and Material Search can be by “Recursive Up”.

Unity_2017_1_1f1_Personal__64bit__-_blocks2unity_unity_-_Blocks_Tutorial_-_Android__Personal___OpenGL_4_1_

 

Here’s a look at the artwork for a studio apartment in SF for the app, as viewed from above. It’s a public bedroom that I’m remixing and you can see I’ve added a triangular floor space for a kitchen and this is likely where the window sill variety of hydroponic crop equipment will go. Modeling one such piece is going to be really fun.

 

 

View from Above

 

room

Angle View

 

 

 

In the past weeks, I’ve dedicated myself to edification on gardening and farming practices via readings, podcasts, and talking to people in business ecosystems involving food product suppliers. I learned about growing shitake mushrooms and broccoli sprouts in the home and got hands on with these. I learned about the technology evolution behind rice cookers and about relevant policy for farmers on the west coast over the last dozen years. In the industry, there are a number of effective farming methods that I’m planning to draw on (indoor hydroponic and aeroponic) that I can see working in some capacity in the home, and milieus I will highlight such as a legitimate vertical indoor farm facility (https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/19/billionaires-make-it-rain-on-plenty-the-indoor-farming-startup/).

I have asked for help from a design consultant standpoint from someone that works at Local Bushel.

To expound on why Local Bushel is perhaps a helpful reference point: Local Bushel is a community of individuals dedicated to increasing our consumption of responsibly raised food. Their values align well with edifying me (the creator) about the marketplace that I want to project into the future about. Those are:

  1. Fostering Community
  2. Being Sustainable and Responsible
  3. Providing High Quality, Fresh Ingredients

——
For interactions, I can start simple and use info-cards/move scenes based on the orientation of the users head using ray casts. Working in Oculus Gear VR Controller eventually.

by dilanshah

Reblog: Pay attention: Practice can make your brain better at focusing

Practicing paying attention can boost performance on a new task, and change the way the brain processes information, a new study says.

 

In my first blog post on the Oculus forums, I write:

“Boiling things down, I realized a few tenets of virtual reality to highlight 1) is that one is cut off from the real world if settings are in accordance (i.e. no mobile phone notifications) and therefore undivided attention is made. 2) Immersion and presence can help us condense fact from the vapor of nuance. The nuance being all of the visual information you will automatically gather from looking around that you would otherwise not necessarily have with i.e. a textbook.”

What would you leverage VR’s innate ability to funnel our attention and focus for?

from Pocket

via Did you enjoy this article? Then read the full version from the author’s website.