The AR revolution

Ok, so in my new vein of writing about things that I think are rad (and really, when it comes down to it, isn't that what any writer wants to do?) I decided to start with something that really excites me: Augmented Reality.

 Here's the thing. There is a spectrum between Reality and Virtual Reality. Reality is, of course, completely real, meaning not affected by digital technology at all. This is specifically in terms of the way we experience the world through the 5 senses. Reality means there's no tech in between our senses and the real world. Obviously you could argue that glasses and contacts and the like "augment" our senses, but that's not really what I mean. I mean computer-like tech. So, in terms of gaming, LARPing is basically as "reality" gaming as you can get. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Virtual Reality. That's where 100% of the world with which you interact is virtual. All video games are basically virtual reality, but generally what you think of when you think virtual reality are things like the Oculus Rift, which is actually really cool. VR tech is exploding right now in the wake of the Rift, and is starting to expand past the base of just visual virtual reality to include wearable motion sensors and things like the Virtuix Omni, which is billed as an "omni-directional treadmill", which basically means you can walk on it in any direction and it translates your movements into the game.

These things are incredible, and I'm super excited about them. Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to be a bit of an escapist, and the more immersive my chosen escapist destination, the better, in my opinion. Combining the Rift, the Omni, and whatever flavor-of-the-week motion sensor to completely immerse oneself in a video game is a nerdy wet dream.

However, and this is a big however, for now, we kinda have to return to the real world periodically. No matter how immersive this tech may be, it's not going to provide nutrients or relieve your bowels for you. Maybe if you're lucky you can find a way to make money by staying in a virtual world all day, but that's not going to work for the rest of us.

Sometimes, the more immersive a game is, the harder it is to come back to the real world. That's how I feel about some books, movies, and TV shows sometimes. When they're well-made, you feel as though you've actually entered the universe they're depicting, and leaving that can be hard, especially when the world you come back to is so mundane. No interstellar travel, no magic, no clear-cut battles between good and evil, light and dark. Just boring jobs, small apartments, junker cars, and homework, or, in other terms: THE LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO ESCAPE. So, wrapping back around to Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality falls around the middle of the Real-Virtual spectrum. The concept of Augmented reality is to put a layer in between the real world and the senses of the user. This has been around for a while in some form or another, of course. Ever since smart phones have had cameras, there have been apps that use the live camera feed and add different elements to the image. I had a game for a while where you were a gunner shooting down TIE fighters. As you moved the phone around, you could see various TIE fighters flying around in your very own sky and you were supposed to shoot them down. Simple, of course, but neat. Most games take you into a different world, but Augmented Reality brings a different world to you.

The problem with the cell phone-based AR is that it isn't very immersive. (Immersion really is going to be a buzzword for this topic, since that's been the goal of video games for the last decade or two). So, what do you do? How do you make augmented reality better? Vuzix has had different video eyewear, including "see-through" video eyewear for a couple of years now. The issue is that it's basically still the same concept as the smartphone: a screen depicts the camera view and a program adds elements to the image. Vuzix's stuff is neat, but most people don't really want to walk around with what looks like a slimmed-down pair of nightvision goggles on their face, looking at the world through a camera. Enter Google's project Glass. Glass is trying to be the augmented reality that doesn't block your reality, and they're appealing to a wide market. Their product is really similar to a bluetooth headset: basically it's trying to be an unobtrusive way of providing hands-free access to functions currently offered by your cell phone. Where bluetooth headsets only really offered you a hands-free calling, Glass is trying to provide hands-free picture-taking, video-recording, information-gathering, and video-chatting, among other hyphenated actions. The issue is that Glass is little more than a corner-of-your eye HUD. Basically it sits really close to reality on the real-virtual spectrum. The position of the screen doesn't allow glass to do much to augment your entire reality; rather it tries to provide useful information and features more conveniently than pulling out your smartphone. In a nutshell: NOT IMMERSIVE. Neat idea, to be sure, but NOT IMMERSIVE.

I want immersive AR. I want to have every aspect of my real world augmented by a virtual one. I don't want a HUD in the corner of my eye. I want to see the virtual world intermingling with my real world. So, I did some searching. The first thing I found that looked incredible was a product produced by a company called Meta. Their AR glasses sounded like the exact thing I wanted. It uses tech based on the kinect sensor (their prototype legitimately had a kinect sensor mounted on top of it) and projects images to the screen of the glasses. Since it has a separate projector for each eye, it's capable of showing 3D images out in the space of the real world. The kinect-like sensors allow you to interact with this virtual world using hand and motion tracking. Supposedly, you can create and place virtual objects "in" the real world and the glasses would be able to track your motion relative to the fixed real-world point where the virtual object was placed. If that's a little confusing, imagine this: You design a virtual vase and place it on a real table. Then, as you walk around the table, changing your view angle, the vase stays put. You could decorate your whole house like this, but that's small potatoes. I'm imagining how you could use this for some sort of IRL combat situation. Imagine you and your friends out in a field somewhere with some sort of motion-sensing laser tag-esque weapons. The glasses are projecting virtual enemy combatants running along the surface of the real world, hiding behind real trees and walls and rocks, pathing around real objects. You throw a virtual grenade that bounces off of real world objects and explodes, sending out virtual shrapnel that interacts with both virtual and real components of the game.
That sounds pretty incredible, right? One issue: the Spaceglasses, as the website is called, have to be tethered to a computer, and probably one with some relatively serious processing power. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to strap on your back when you're running around. Obviously, at the rate tech is progressing, computers will get smaller and more portable, and maybe, if we're real lucky and all eat our wheaties and obey our parents and look both ways before crossing the street, batteries will get better too!

So, really disappointed with Project Glass and slightly disappointed with Meta's spaceglasses, I kept my eyes open for new stuff. And then I found something: Lumus. Unlike Meta, Lumus is a company that's been around for over a decade, and they started the company with the invention of their optical tech: see-through lenses that reflect the image from a projector to the side of the glasses. Now, the Lumus products are actually somewhere between Glass and Spaceglasses, in the fact that they do a full-lens projection like Spaceglasses, but they have less sensors and are designed to work more like Glass. The reason they excite me, however, is because they have OEM projectors and lenses that could be incorporated into a more comprehensive product. You add a couple of cameras to those bad boys and you have everything you need for a fully-immersive augmented reality world.

Imagine walking through the real world, except with Pokemon everywhere! Imagine strolling through the park when a velociraptor runs by and a pteredon swoops overhead. Imagine having a virtual companion that can accompany you wherever you go and can take whatever form you desire. Want a pet dragon? Or a Wookiee sidekick? Want to see flying cars and 30 moons in the sky? Those are just the nifty possibilities, the games and the world-mods that are possible. But imagine the way it'd change other things. Imagine having directions to your next destination projected in the space ahead of you. Imagine getting separated from your family at a theme park and being able to look around for a big floating "they are here" arrow. Imagine travelling to a foreign country and having written and spoken words translated for you. What about being able to type on a virtual keyboard, or eschewing the keyboard altogether and having a giant, interactive computer projected into the world around you? What if you could have notifications at the edge of your vision, or teleconference with a 3D projected image of your friend or business partner? What about looking around while you drive and seeing signs for various businesses and points of interest? Would you like to have the game running in the corner of your vision, alerting you to every fantastic moment, even though you're away from your PC or TV?

Every time we've found a new way to interface with computers it has revolutionized the way we use computers. Punch cards meant computers were only good for math-like calculations. You couldn't really play games or design things in 3D. As we progressed to monitor and keyboard interfaces we began developing text-based interactions and simple graphical interactions. Then the mouse was invented and graphical operating systems. Laptops and smartphones changed the way we use computers even more. Now the next real leap is going to be wearable computers, augmenting our reality with virtual elements. Even for the non-gamer, this is going to be big. I'm an engineer, and I know that having a part that I can "see" in the real world would rapidly change how I do my job. Having a part that I can manipulate in 3D space and get a proper feel for its size and proportions without having to have it prototyped would be incredible. Being able to build assemblies and manipulate them by hand the way they'll be manipulated once realized physically would save me a lot of time. Plus, it'd be super cool.

These are exciting times in which we live. I suppose technophiles like me would feel that way regardless of the era, but for some reason I think I'd be more excited about Augmented Reality than about the three-field system. But I guess we'll never know.

Generic money rant

Ugh. I am so sick of money issues. I really am. This week alone we were hit with over $100 in overdraft fees, despite my bank's assurance that I had opted out of overdraft coverage. Of course, as it turns out, that's only overdraft coverage on purchases with the debit card or cash withdrawals from an ATM, so all the bills and the like that keep going through before I'd like keep pulling us under, and every time there's a $36 charge. I tried looking up ways to make quick money, but all the freelance writing jobs are offering a dollar or less per article and I really hate having my blood drawn. Small, deep veins, you know? Makes it tough. So here I am, writing a blog post. Maybe I should just try for a really fun blog. Something that will draw people in and generate ad revenue. I need a topic. Well, I'm not really in a position to review videogames, since I refuse to shell out the money for new games unless the price is around $5 or less, and if I review the games I have played, I'll be kinda behind the curve. I'm also not really set up to review music. I like what I like, and most of what I like is older and definitely not as mainstream as I would assume is required for traffic-generation. I could just do a kinda "news of the moment" thing where I comment on some new thing that I read about. I enjoy doing that. Maybe I'll do that.

Parking job

Ugh. I hate people. I think I've made that obvious, but I really hate people. This guy just pulled into the parking lot in his weird H3 knockoff, started looking like he was going to park in the same spot as my car, theb started backing into another spot behind him. I thought this was a little weird at first, but then I realized he was making a 3 point turn to go back the way he came. The real issue here is the fact that there was a COMPLETELY OPEN SECTION OF THE PARKING LOT NOT 20 FEET FURTHER DOWN THE WAY! Why would you ever pull your car close to other cars when the obvious owners are mere meters away when you could have driven a bit further and made a single point u-turn? What a maroon!

Musings

Turns out it is a LOT easier to write on my phone when I use the blogger app instead of the mobile website. Who knew? I think some of the reason I feel so much anger is because I'm tired and forced to spend time in locations where I don't have access to things I want to do. For example, right now I'm working on a design for a ship. I can see a lot of it in my head, but I can't really draw it, especially at isometric angles. I really want to fire up Creo and start making the model, but I can't because I'm in class and not at my computer. This, of course, makes me feel more antsy and less tolerant of my continued presence in this class than normal. I really need to get my tablet fixed so I can at least browse the internet a bit better. Even that is less than satisfying when it comes to these sorts of feelings, but at least it'd be something, right?

mean thoughts 11/12

I figured any time I feel like saying something mean or writing it on someone's post, I'll put it here, instead. A Mormon facebook page posted something about agape love, saying it was Greek and it meant unconditional love. What I WANTED to write was "The Greeks also believed that only 2 men could have Agape love and that love between a man and a woman could never be more than Eros, or erotic love." I figured that might throw a wrench in their effort to promote good values and all it really does is make it look like I'm posting to show how smart I am. And, while that may be the case, I didn't post it because I know what they're trying to accomplish, and I don't want to get in the way of that.

Mean thoughts

Sometimes I can barely suppress the urge to say the things I want to say about the idiots I run into out in both the real world and the virtual one. For example, someone posted today (Veteran's Day) "Just took a vet out for breakfast. What did you do today" or something to that effect. What I WANTED to write was "Well, I didn't falsehumblepost (it's a word now) on Facebook about how great a person I am and inviting other people to compare their lesser greatness to mine." What I DID write was nothing. Just saw some other individual post just the one word: "Miserable" as his Facebook status. What I WANTED to write was "NO ONE CARES!" What I DID write was nothing. I try really hard not to be a mean person. Well, sorta hard. It's really hard for me to NOT be mean sometimes. But sometimes I slip a bit. Today on a forum about development ideas for a game I like, someone posted something that was kinda relevant to the current thread, but wasn't a development idea at all. What I STARTED to write was something like "We're trying to have a discussion about the future of this game, not your mediocre ideas about how we can work around the current limitations of the game." What I DID write was a bit more subtle. I merely pointed out that his idea was interesting for the current limitations of the game, but that integrating something similar into the game would be a good way to go. See, I actually do control myself most of the time. But it's difficult. Really difficult. Today my Capstone project group members scheduled a meeting for the big chunk of time in the middle of the day, the same chunk that I have repeatedly mentioned is the time when I have to be at work. Apparently none of the rest of them had to work today (Veteran's Day, remember) and so doing the meeting earlier in the day was more convenient or whatever. Meanwhile, I'm feeling more and more the outsider as they continue to schedule meetings for times when I'm not available, which means the project moves forward without me. I'm not really complaining, mind you, just nervous about my grade. I've already missed out on the meetings with the writing guy that we're supposed to have, and the syllabus is unclear whether that's recorded individually or as a group. The group is meeting with the professor on Thursday, once again in the middle of my work schedule, so that's also great. I really hope I'm not required to be at that meeting, but I fear that I actually am supposed to be there. I emailed my professor, of course, but I have yet to hear back from him. I want to take these people and yell at them. I'm really not TRYING to be difficult with the whole "having to work to support my wife and 1.5 chillens" thing. No, I don't really want to be part of this group working on this project, but I'm willing to do my part, IF the rest of the guys are willing to work with my schedule, which they don't seem to be. Oh, another instance of me being a lot nicer than the thoughts in my head: Right as I arrived at work, as I was on the way up the stairs, I was stopped by a certain co-worker that I just CANNOT stand. He had a request for a project that REALLY shouldn't be my responsibility, since it's a programming thing and I'm not really a programmer, I just play one on TV, you know? But because I'm the only guy in the company, apparently, who can program in VBA, I get to do the work for a bunch of departments to which I don't even belong. That's what I get for being curious about something new and teaching myself how to do it. But I digress. Anyway, as I'm talking to him I WANT to say "No, I don't want to be responsible for that anymore, it really should be sent over to IT or teach one of YOUR engineers/interns how to deal with this crap." But instead I find myself saying "Yeah, probably, I might have time, etc." In times like this I think I really should tell them to turn it over to someone else, but I just can't, you know?

Song/poem I wrote in january and just found

Stars are born in fire
live in fury
die in power and ice
and still live so much longer
than the history of men
and mice.
our star brings light
and with it, life;
allows us to go on
and they tell us it will be there still
long after we all are gone
and yet we reach and search and hope
for more than what we see and feel
and though our senses tell us no,
we believe that there is more than what we call real
so we look for greater meaning
for more purpose, or a plan
something greater than what we know
be it God or Superman.
We dream and scheme and wish and long
to make something happen, see some sign
that what we wish and hope and dream
is more than just an errant thought in our mind
we look to the stars, implacable guards of the night
where dreams and reality overlap
and truth and perception bend.
and the stars wink back and tell us we're right
and we consider them our friends
-Z