The problem with hats.

A look at making HMDs fashionable.

70 minutes in heaven with the HTC Vive

Where the HTC Vive taking us?

The Myth of Virtual Reality

Let me give you a few examples of making common technology instantly dissatisfying by renaming it to something that contains lofty promise...

AKIRA in VR. (aka, working with large illustrated novels in VR.)

Spent a little time on working with a large collection of comics / illustrations in VR and this was the results. My primary interest is working with large bodies of materials and quickly being able to find a particular point of interest by visually looking for it in a 3D space.

Marketing VR in the year 2016 - Beyond Imagination

I've been thinking about VR's commercial launch. Not cardboard. Not a developer kit, no. I mean the honest to God, real deal, commercial release.

Ballroom Dancing

You build a beautiful VR ballroom and invite everyone to come. Everyone does, they wander around the ballroom, dance a few waltzes and exclaim that "Why, this is simply splendid! Isn't it dear?"

The Oculus Rift and Swimming Pools.

"I believe that VR won't play nice with our existing entertainment, it is a ravenous platform that will consume and utterly replace huge chunks of our current media and technology."

The hollow face illusion in VR.

VR strongly supports the exact same visual illusions that trick us in the real world. So, it is well worth studying these types of phenomena and seeing where they might be leveraged in VR.

Wednesday 30 July 2014

DK2 CONFIGURATION DEMO: Now with a splash of color.

[ Note:  Had an issue with the original texture file being altered by Blogger (should have seen that coming!)  New link to full file available below.)


https://mega.co.nz/#!a5QnATYS!CR1J-2MYeYmQdnzwaruaIwRtW5I0V5vC17iBcdlSLjA


Great week so far.  DK2 is better than anticipated in many ways.  I would expect that the average VR immersion time per session will be going sharply up over the next short while.  The device works and it works very well.  Great work by Oculus on the engineering and on the current (very smooth) roll out.

I've been quite engaged by the included demo scene with the Oculus Configuration Utility.  It works well as a demonstration of positional tracking and I enjoy the concept of a virtual desk.  I spend most of my reality sitting at a desk, I might as well spend my virtual time at one as well.

With that in mind, I was somewhat surprised at how bare a desk we've been given to stare at, so I took it upon myself take it a bit further this evening.  I'm very pleased by how well the DK2 handles text!



[ UPDATE:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6IyTNi03SA  5ess was kind enough to create a video this morning, to show this in action.  Thank you 5ess!  (Spanish) ]




Here are a few awkwardly taken pictures to give you an idea:











If you want to try this out on your own machine, it will take you about only a minute to get setup.  Here are the steps:



1.  Download the modified texture file (please the the end of this post.  18mb!)

2.  Change the write permissions on the following folder:
      C://Program Files (x86)/Oculus/Tools/Resources/DeskScene

This folder should be read only, you must set it to WRITE (right click it and view properties.  You will want to use the Security tab to change permissions.  You may need to be running Windows explorer as Administrator in order to make this change. [right click windows explorer, choose "Run as Administrator.")

3.  Make a backup of "ConfigUtilDeskScene.png" so that you can restore it later.

4.  Overwrite "ConfigUtilDeskScene.png" with the new texture file you downloaded in step one.

5.  Run the demo!  Enjoy!

 ( I hope you like xkcd.  Keep a sharp look out and use the positional tracking to your advantage:  there are a number of hidden things in the scene to be found! )


(if you have any problems getting this to work, please let me know in the comments below and I will try to help you out.  I can also be reached on Twitter at most hours of the day and night at:  @ID_R_McGregor)


All images and photos used here are for entertainment purposes only and belong to their respective and highly talented creators - of which there are many.

Texture file link:


https://mega.co.nz/#!a5QnATYS!CR1J-2MYeYmQdnzwaruaIwRtW5I0V5vC17iBcdlSLjA