Coffee table diorama
Nerdforge builds a coffee table, that contains a mini library inside.
I do love the idea of buildings and everyday objects with hidden surprises in them or furniture with whimsical designs.
Ray cast audio
Audio in games has always been a bit of a cheat. In the earliest days of games, a simple pre-recorded sound was replayed when a gun was shot or step taken. Bit rates went up and the quality increased. Audio could be played in stereo to help isolate location of the sound. Games then added full 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound and binaural sound. They now even take into account the material of object collisions such as metal on concrete vs metal on carpet – but it’s not fully dynamic.
Moving forward, what if we could fully simulate sound in a dynamic virtual location? We could take into account how sound reacts with different materials, walls, and shapes in the environment automatically. The idea is not new – but the compute required was far too high for realtime games.
Vercidium has tried to re-create the idea using modern hardware. What is unique is the idea of using this system for visually impaired people. This isn’t an idea that is limited to virtual worlds, but what if alarms in real life had such visual projection (lasers, lights, etc). Interesting.
There’s also some interesting comments in the video discussion that can lead you down different implementations and ideas.
Why aren’t blue states winning?
In many states (such as California, New York, Oregon, and Illinois) Democrats control all the levers of power from governor, to house of representatives/senate, and even city government. They run the government. They write the laws. Yet, in key areas, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states.
Oregon is one of those states. Despite one of the highest funding rates per student in the country, Portland Public Schools are nearly dead last – much worse than southern red states on all metrics of student achievement. Despite record spending on homelessness, Portland has some of the worst homelessness in the country. Oregon has some of the worst mental health systems in the country. Many blue states are some of the least affordable despite decades of rent programs and development restrictions. The list goes on. What’s going wrong?
New York Times dives in to find out why.
Continuous Scene Meshing On Quest 3
The Quest 3 lets you scan a room and build up an internal 3D mesh that represents the world you are in. This can take from 20 seconds to minutes and requires the user walking around the area – and is not able to change dynamically to opening/closing doors/etc.
The Depth API provides live depth frames up to 5 meters in distance – but how to use that to build up the environment in real time?
Julian Triveri‘s multiplayer mixed reality Quest 3 game Lasertag does just this. It takes the live frames and uses an open-source Unity implementation of marching cubes. Apple Vision Pro and Pico 4 Ultra already use this method – but have hardware accelerated depth sensors to help. Quest 3 developers need to do this computation themselves.
See the code on GitHub.
https://www.uploadvr.com/developer-implemented-continuous-scene-meshing-quest-3-lasertag
Difficult conversations
As always, Adam Savage has a bunch of good observations about working together in creative teams.
Dealing with university students – some who can barely see outside their own personality while others are already racing to take on the world. I don’t know what it’s like to address so many different kinds of people.
Confrontation is an investment. If I tell you something isn’t working well, it’s because I’m investing in this relationship. If I don’t care, I just won’t say anything or move on. If the response to that confrontation is to lie, misrepresent, minimize, etc – then I realize how much they value and are investing in the relationship and I can then act accordingly.
I, Robot
In 1983, Atari created one of the first 3D filled polygon games I, Robot. You play as a robot that gains sentience and rebel against big brother by turning red squares to blue and destroying big brother’s eye.
Fast forward, and Atari has paired with Jeff Minter to re-create this odd classic with Minter’s classic trippy style. I half wonder if the idea for this came when both Minter and many of the Atari folks were at Portland Retro Gaming Expo in 2024.
The scariest things
In real life, the scariest things are not ghosts or ghouls – it’s running into other people alone and in a place where there is no help or law. The most horrible things can happen.
This urban explorer runs across a homeless guy in the depths of an abandoned factory at 22:00. To say he is extraordinarily lucky nothing happened is an understatement. When working with homeless, it is vitally important to understand that many suffer from serious mental health issues, could be on reality distorting drugs, and are so often assaulted that many have learned to aggressively defend themselves/attack others if someone approaches them at night. In this case, he simply backs off and leaves without incident.
Even more frightening is what he didn’t see at the time. Homeless often spend nights in groups as a safety measure. If you encounter one person, you may have just walked into a group of folks in the area. As it turns out, later in the video after he did analysis, at least one other person is seen behind a pillar he didn’t even notice and walked within 10 feet of them.
He could have very easily been robbed, assaulted, or killed. It’s a reminder that the dangers of an abandoned location are not just the mold, asbestos, toxic chemicals, and structural hazards – people can be some of the worst dangers.
25% of all new code at Google is AI generated
Google’s CEO revealed that AI systems now generate more than a quarter of new code for its products, with human programmers overseeing the computer-generated contributions. The statement, made during Google’s Q3 2024 earnings call, shows how AI tools are already having a sizable impact on software development.
Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey, over 76 percent of all respondents “are using or are planning to use AI tools in their development process this year,” with 62 percent actively using them. A 2023 GitHub survey found that 92 percent of US-based software developers are “already using AI coding tools both in and outside of work.”
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/10/google-ceo-says-over-25-of-new-google-code-is-generated-by-ai
Bigscreen Beyond 2 VR Headset
This new VR headset proports to fix a lot of common VR issues. It boasts 2560 x 2560 micro-OLED displays at 75hz native and a hugely wide 116º diagonal FOV that claims to have 100% edge-to-edge sharpness all in a much smaller package than current VR headsets. It comes in a dramatically lightweight 272 grams compared to 518 grames of a Quest 3.
Bigscreen Beyond 2 isn’t cheap – it costs $1019
This is a pretty good review. He’s most impressed with the groundbreakingly amazing lenses, comfort due to light weight, and using some methods that help reduce the jitter that normally makes quick left-right head turns disorienting.
The CEO is clearly a technically knowledgeable fellow who likes talking about the factors that make this device good – a wonderful change from Apple’s ‘magical’ marketing and Meta’s shotgun approach. He talks about the challenges and promises of newer approaches like foveated rendering.
Traversing Norwegian Winter storms in a van
Norwegian Xplorer has some great videos of driving around the extreme portions of Norway in winter. In this video, he travels through a polar vortex storm as he drives between Vadso and the extreme northeastern city of Vardø. He braves closed roads along the artic ocean. It’s pretty amazing.