apple – Suraj at Samsung

Day 44

Down -Up:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-cause-uncertainty/

https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/afdc3/HowWhy_Laddering.html

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sg.bigo.live&hl=en

https://www.frogdesign.com/techtrends2017

https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/focus/tech-trends/2017/mixed-reality-applications-potential.html?id=us:2el:3dc:dup3708:awa:cons:tt17

https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-disruptive-technology-trends-2017

https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/technology/articles/tech-trends.html

https://www.leanservicecreation.com/

http://progressivepunctuation.com/

Videos:

Day 42 – Birth of the Resources Page

Long day.

The mind-mapping around spatial sound did not help much with figuring out a domain as it was centered around technical concepts. I started to map out everything in my research so far because that has helped in the past.

Spoke to Mannu about this and Atul had given an idea on how to proceed: Remove the visual sense and talk to people who are visually impaired because sound is the primary source of immersion for them. and then decide how to proceed with the insights from that. This seems like a good idea, but the root for this is a little vague for me.

Spoke to Rohan about this, and he asked why I was shooing away thoughts and ideas related to music. He was right. Being open at this stage means including music as well. And I still have the passion and get excited when I talk about music. Keeping my eyes and ears open.

The next plan of action is to settle on a domain by tomorrow EOD or by the weekend so that I can prepare my primary research materials faster and accelerate my research process from here on.

Music, Healthcare and Education. My mind has been circling around these now, and I don’t know why.

Speaking of Healthcare, came across a VR app for Physiotherapy when we were shooting random ideas off our heads. It also featured on Physiospot.

I was going through all my posts so far and went through some of the important articles again. I have created a ‘Resources‘ page here in the blog where I have started putting the links that I am frequently referring to. Found a great Medium article titled “UX pointers for VR design” that also deserves to be on this new page just because of the links it has.

I found this great book for VR design called “The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality (Acm Books)“. Have raised a request with the KMC and in the company.

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Video time:

Get the iPhone X Notch On Any Phone by Unbox Therapy
A collection of Ads where Samsung makes fun of Apple
Samsung Galaxy S9 – STAR
Cinema 4D to After Effects
Rick & Morty – Morty’s Mind Blowers – S03E08

I was reading about Blockchain and Bitcoins.

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Day 39

Started the day off by watching

This is the presentation in PDF.

Yes, how the actual dev flow goes for ARKit and ARCore.

Was checking out SceneKit, SpriteKit and Metal. Haven’t gone through the Human Interface Guidelines of ARKit completely.

Read a bunch of VERY useful articles on Medium:

A Facebook intern’s take on VR design – Very interesting and useful. This also took me to User Journey Maps.
VR sketching templates (resources).
VR Market Ecosystem Map – Useful again.
Templates for UI design in VR (resources).
A Facebook employee’s advice on becoming a VR designer.
No Coding VR Prototyping with Newton VR.

Mannu had shared an interesting article from the Verge titled “Weaponizing sound: could sonic devices have injured diplomats in Cuba?“ Brought back ultrasound and infrasound.

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In other news, started the Machine Learning Course in Coursera, yet again. Hoping to take it till the end this time.

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Day 37

App list - daydream

Good day! Music and work! Came late. Stayed till 1130ish.

The iMac is gone. Full Daydream day. Lots of apps.

Acrophobia VR – Have to show this to Arumani and Maya. The height changes can be felt, but the jump scare at the end was not a good idea, especially for someone with acrophobia.
InBody VR – This was very an interesting way to learn about the body, but the visuals and audio were not as synced as I would have expected. There were gaps when the audio would go like “Look at that…” and we would be looking around for what is happening, and since this is in VR, we would be looking around everywhere and the moment would have passed already. No proper cues. It was a little claustrophobic. Loved the eye chapter and the inverted image. The entire experience was of a low resolution, probably because this was made for the Cardboard.
Dark Walls VR – This was very scary, even though the renders were of a low quality. I could feel my heart rate increase with every passing moment. I kept looking behind me to see if there was something creeping up on me from behind. That was very interesting. VR is the best place for horror. It was so immersive because even when I turned back, I couldn’t see the real world, which would be the case usually when playing on a console or PC.
Google Spotlight Stories –
1. ‘Special Delivery‘ was brilliantly done, making use of space, music and art to deliver a very fun, Christmassy experience. It used the ‘Scooby Dooby Doors‘ well, the name of which I found out from here. What I did not like initially and then liked later was that I did not get to turn my heard around 360 for the full experience. It was kept in a comfortable range, which I am guessing is slightly more than the FOV of a human being. I also happened to stumble across the making video. It was made with the UPA – United Productions of America style of the 1970s.
2. The Simpsons – Planet of the Couches was the couch gag of the 600th episode of the Simpsons, done in VR. This was also interesting. It starts off with a frame and Lisa and Bart keep asking Homer “Is it VR yet?” and he keeps saying No when suddenly the trademark clouds fill up the screen with the titles coming in. We are made to rotate 360 with the title repeating itself, with a subtitle running with us saying “If you don’t have VR glasses, you miss everything”. Once inside, we have some interactive elements like Moe and more, who shoot out dialogues or sounds when we look at them. Triggered animations or sounds.
3. The third one was a VR video by the Gorillaz of Saturn Barz. The colors were wonderful and lots of action took place everywhere. The depth was really good. The train sequence was great.

Meizu Pro 7 Rear selfie screen.

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/tips-and-tricks-for-googles-daydream-view/

https://www.wired.com/2017/01/google-daydream-vr-feels-human/

https://virtualrealitypop.com/a-month-with-the-google-daydream-view-fd6c77e74cb4

http://voicesofvr.com/423-vr-design-best-practices-with-google-vrs-alex-faaborg/

https://www.androidcentral.com/vr-game-unthethered-makes-your-voice-controller

Day 36

Dolby Atmos has released plugins for sound design in VR with Pro Tools. I love the explainer video and want to do something like it.

Unbox Therapy binging after watching the iPhone launch last night:

Have to watch these videos:

Came to know about Satoru Iwata.

Some articles about the event last night:

Spent a lot of time checking out apps on the Daydream View HMD. Learnt something from all of them.

VR Spaceship – Immersive and an infinite experience. Lots of branching routes and my OCD got to me. Reminded me of ‘Give Yourself Goosebumps‘. Sound design was good. Also reminded me of Quake II because of the setting and immersiveness, and that is saying something.
VR Cave – Very similar to VR Spaceship, but in a cave. The navigation is a little irritating, especially with all the ads. You cannot skip the navigation points and have to go linearly. The music was suiting the visuals, even though it would seem unrelated to the visuals when heard separately. The world would have been far better with some level of interaction with elements, even something like opening a chest or file in the case above.
The Turning Forest – Very colorful. The initial dark screen to the forest was a little startling to the eyes because of the sudden brightness. The spatial sound could be felt and that added to the experience. This one was by BBC.
Audio Factory – This one is by Google to show how their audio engine works, and I must say, it is good. The spatial sound can be felt very clearly when the sound sources are closer. That is expected because the farther away the source is, the more distributed the sound becomes by the time it reaches us. The colours and ambience were good. The elevator giving us railings every time it went up adds to the realism.
Damnfields – A pixel art game, this made use of the controller very well. A few sessions with a game like this will increase the hand dexterity and could be used in an onboarding experience. It could also be used to switch hands from left to right or vice versa in the middle of play to add more depth. The controller has an option in the settings for that which could be toggled in-game itself.
Moat Boat – A beautiful low-poly game that used the controller as a voice input device, bringing in a megaphone when we hold it near our mouth. The idea is around the creation of worlds. It reminded me of Amit’s Dream recreation concept.
Also found an article titled “Degrees of Presence in Virtual Reality” in their Medium profile. It lists presence as Visual (Eyes), Manual (Hands) and Social (People). It talked about the Tribes Model of Networking (PDF Resource).

Good day!

Day 35

https://www.theverge.com/tech/2017/9/11/16291334/soundgym-panning-challenge-stereo-hearing-game

https://www.soundgym.co/contest

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/05/17/google-releases-new-daydream-sensory-demo-audio-factory/

https://www.apple.com/apple-events/september-2017/

https://www.wired.com/story/an-artist-uses-an-iphone-to-visualize-sounds-in-ar/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5420376/

Day 33

Started the day reading about the Virtual Boy. I am very curious. And I cannot help but think of how cool it would have been at the time. Read this article which took me to a video review by the Angry Game Nerd. It took me to Game Over.

Found this Sea Hero Quest VR, a game that helps detect the first signs of dementia. VR companies are slashing prices of high-end headsets like the Vive and Rift. Meanwhile, Google is giving away free Daydream headsets with back-to-school offers on the Pixel. Reminds me of my school days when we used to get pencil boxes with school bags or the classic, socks with shoes. I got to reading about Mindfulness Tech: Meditation VR which I had also seen in my Rift text a few days back. Research house IDC has made a claim that the worldwide revenues for the AR/VR market will increase by 100% in the next 4 years. This is the detailed report.

Saw this gob-smacking video from the WWDC earlier this year about Unreal Engine, Star Wars, and the Imac: 3 things that I love.

Spent around thirty minutes with the Gear VR headset. Tried out GrooVR, Music Driven VR. The experience was incredible, even though the rendering wasn’t very good. The reflections gave a satisfaction. VR-ready Everydays is still pending, and this just might have been that push.

Found this article pitting ARCore and ARKit against each other. It gives a pretty clear idea of how similar they are and why Google chose to launch ARCore just before the September 12 iPhone 8 Event, which is also confirmed by the way.

Read more about the VR Headset by Huawei, and how similar it is to the Gear VR.

Spent some time downloading some ACM papers to read, and went through some of them.

Watched a video about Jack Ma.

Have tos:

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