Day 37

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

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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:

1. iPhone X Face ID Unlock Fail

2. The $26 Upgrade That Could Save Your Laptop…

3. My New GIANT Computer Monitor!

4. 5 Cool Gadgets Under $10

5. Essential Phone Unboxing – Is This Your Next Phone?

6. Unboxing The $20,000 Smartphone from Sirin Labs

7. The 4 Dollar Android Smartphone

Have to watch these videos:

1. Diablo: A Classic Game Postmortem

2. Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill – Secrets of Successful from an Interview with the Devil

Came to know about Satoru Iwata.

Some articles about the event last night:

1. https://www.wired.com/2017/09/everything-apple-announced-at-its-2017-iphone-event/
2. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16291244/new-iphone-x-photos-video-hands-on
3. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16290080/apple-keynote-2017-iphone-x-8-event-news-recap
4. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16287932/apple-iphone-8-plus-photos-video-hands-on

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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 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.

1. How Do Developers Create Massive Open Worlds For Exploration?

2. Why Everyone Was Shitting Themselves Backstage While Steve Jobs Was Launching the First Apple iPhone

3. How to Make and Self-Publish a Game in 12 Months

4. Top 10 Games made by One Person

Have tos:

1. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-vr-motion-sickness-a-real-issue-but-not-as-/1100-6425698/
2. http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/articles/industry/wces_1995/mike4-5.html

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Day 28

Salary Day!

Fairly good day. Lot s of learning.

Started off the day with a lot of articles from Medium –

1. Our redesign of Medium’s Claps…and why they may not have chosen to do it this way

2. Choose the right VR gear for you
3. Why sleeper hits are waking up the film industry
4. The Creativity of Cameras – have to share this with Sai
5. 7 habits you need to adopt if you want to write more
6. How to create a morning routine that will make you thrive

Found http://750words.com/ along the way. Got the printer set up for my system and printed out a lot of research papers and journals. Got the timeline printed as well. ^_^

Got a whole load of stationery (whiteboard, post-its (not yellow :D) and highlighters. This couldn’t have been a better day.

Back to the Pomodoro, but it wasn’t quite successful because I was actually off the system for a while.

Called Jignesh to no reply. Called Natallia. She said we could speak after 8:30 PM.

Read and watched a lot of things related to AI.

Saw the Sirinlabs phone.

Mannu showed me Horizons on the Daydream headset.

Spent a lot of time with the Daydream headset and controller. Found a cool, addictive game called “(fill this blank tomorrow)”. It was a fighter game and crazy. Very immersive experiences. Had a bout of VR sickness after.

Watched a lot of videos:

1. Sherlock – How creative transitions improve storytelling
2. Composition in Storytelling by Channel Criswell [Primal and Artifical Control]
3. 10 Skills that are hard to learn, but will pay off forever
4. TED – Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth
5. TED – The incredible inventions of intuitive AI | Maurice Conti
   1. Dreamcatcher
   2. Google Deepdream
   3. AI’s growth
      1. 1952 – Tic Tac Toe
      2. 1997 – Deep Blue vs Kasparov
      3. 2011 – Watson played Jeopardy
      4. 2016 – AlphaGo

Things to see:

1. Microsoft’s Hololens Controller
2. Linux Phone
3. Privacy in a Virtual World

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