Episode 162 – Seeing is Believing

Michael and Michael are excited that it is that special time of year again, the one where you can buy Thin Mints, and Caramel deLites, and all manner of Girl Scout cookies.  And they are even more excited about the kickstarter game being developed by the Girl Scouts where the cookies take center stage, and the scouts learn all about the various development platforms: MIT’s Scratch, iOS & Android to create the game.  Nice touch, by the way, that the Kickstarter video uses virtual audio reality with positional sound. Turning from the savory to the visual, Michael and Michael discuss … Continue reading

Episode 161 – Virtual Audio Reality

We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. — intro from the 1960s US television show, The Outer Limits We will control the audio. After many episodes discussing virtual reality and augmented reality, Michael and Michael place their focus for this show on the auditory. Not just 3D sound, but positional sound — location based sound. Sound that makes you look. The binaural sound demo from the BBC starts off the conversation (be sure to have your headphones or earbuds at the ready for this), demonstrating how audio engineers crafted a head that looks like a villager from … Continue reading

Episode 160 – 3D OBD

src = obdii.com Car? Whar? Over thar! Michael & Michael get together to talk about one of the original examples of augmented reality, the Head Up Display (HUD) for cars, and explore the example of the Hudway Glass, an ingeniously simple Kickstarter product that allows a user to place their phone on the dash and have the phone’s display reflected back to the driver. Michael R remembers an app with this kind of capability from way back when called V-Cockpit. Keeping with the pretty clever car theme, the pair then move to the innovation that Ford is bringing to the … Continue reading

Episode 159 – Virtually Secure

Michael R and Michael M, go deep on virtual assistants and the security storm around WhatsApp in the news recently. We also look at how an old virtual world shopping experience may be coming to life in virtual reality. The duo start with the Facebook/Oculus tour of the White House and think about whether movies and television shows have the layout and rooms of the building right.  Michael and Michael quickly then turn to Amazon’s focus on virtual reality shopping experiences stemming from articles from TechCrunch and Variety.  Michael R shares his experiences in developing just this kind of experience … Continue reading