e388 – Does the metaverse have legs?

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legs and feet
Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

Andy and Michael R get a running start to this week’s episode with all things metaverse, kicking things off with stories related this week’s Meta Connect event.  Discussing whether the metaverse has legs now is easy, when a lead announcement from Meta Connect was the introduction of legs and feet.

Continuing with news from Meta Connect, John Carmack does not tiptoe around whatsoever with what he’s grumpy about.  The former Oculus CTO and current Meta executive advisor walks through his frustrations with the state of the hardware and software powering the experience today.  An article from AdWeek highlights how Walmart is leveraging the Roblox Livetopia platform to drive users to Walmart Land in order to build brand.  A tweet from Gregory Ng brings Decentraland into the conversation.

Going back a step to last week’s episode on Google’s exit from Stadia, the co-hosts discuss the new Chromebooks designed for cloud based gaming.  

Continuing with the overarching VR theme, Andy and Michael make the jump to outer space with an experience  designed to engage the public with the scientists and engineers who worked on the James Webb Space Telescope.  When you walk up to the portraits of the scientists in the experience, you can hear their interviews, and when you walk away, you hear other elements of the soundscape depending on where you are in the space.  The LEGO Ideas entry for the JWST hits 10,000 supporters (again).  And one more LEGO innovation – a step by step set of instructions for constructing a LEGO powered submarine with automatic depth control.

What would you want to see in your ideal metaverse environment?  Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know! 

Selected Article Links

Kotaku article: Facebook’s Legs Video Was A Lie

Ars Technica article: Carmack: “There’s a bunch that I’m grumpy about” in virtual reality

AdWeek article: Two Weeks Into Its Metaverse Debut, Walmart Sets Up Shop In Roblox’s Livetopia

TechCrunch article: Google introduces Chromebooks geared for cloud gaming

Popular Science article: A new VR exhibit takes you inside the James Webb Space Telescope’s Images

Brickfanatics article: James Webb Space Telescope hits 10K supporters on LEGO Ideas (again)

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e387 – Meta-Verged

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robot behind a microphone
Photo by palesa on Unsplash

Everything metaverse from Horizon Worlds to @character_ai to Virtua Fighter to mid-1800s 3D photosculpture scanning & back again to the Matrix’s Bullet Time. + &

Starting things off for this episode, Michael and Michael reflect on how people are using the Stadia hardware controller for other platforms in a call back to last week’s show.  Then they go full metaverse with a series of articles from the Verse, Terrence Eden and Hackernoon to work through idea concepts of using your own tools to make your tools better (Horizon Worlds), to ideas from Terrence on what ideas may be great for a VR experience, to the nature of operating systems to efficiently allow humans to interact with the computing hardware (metaverse operating systems).  

In an AI exploration, Michael R creates a Games At Work AI in Character.AI and interacts with it.    This exemplar is amazingly advanced from the early days of chatbots, and reminds Michael and Michael about the concept of ingesting/seeding a chatbot’s corpus with, oh, say a decade plus worth of text-to-speech podcasting.  Longtime Games At Work listeners will remember intriguing discussion about this topic going all the way back to 2012.  See the links to episodes 26 and 218, 328 and 366 in the show notes below for prior discussion on this theme.

Stable Diffusion raises its head again, this time in the form of modernizing the 1993 Virtua Fighter video game, and some high res examples of what the characters (not Character.AI) might look like.  Although a combination play between video game characters and Character.AI would be an interesting thing.

In the everything old is new again theme, an article from Hackaday show how the visual effects from the Matrix had origins in the mid-to-late 1800s with photosculpture scanning using 24 cameras in a circle around the subject.  Amazing.  

What video game character(s) would you like to see Stable Diffusion or Character.AI applied to?  Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know! 

Selected Article Links

The Verge article: Stadia fans are finding ways to use its controller wirelessly with other platforms

Metaverse

The Verge article: Meta’s flagship metaverse app is too buggy and employees are barely using it, says exec in charge

Terence Eden’s Blog post: Would you go to the Job Centre or DMV in the Metaverse? 

Hackernoon article: The Metaverse Needs an Operating System

AI

Character.AI

GamesAtWork on Character.AI

Wikipedia: Eliza chatbot

Games at Work e366: MetaMoney

Games at Work e328: Classic BMW

Games at Work e218: Virtually Married

Games at Work e26: Business Process Management and Immortality

3D

Ars Technica article: Begone, polygons: 1993’s Virtua Fighter gets smoothed out by AI

Hackaday article: In a way, 3D scanning is over a century old

the Matrix Wiki: Bullet Time 

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e386 – Too Many Brits

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cityscape of London with Big Ben and a double decker bus
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Special guest Ian Hughes joins Andy and Michael R for this edition of Games at Work, altering the British:American ratio for the weekly discussion on all things tech.  They get the party started with some examples of 3D mapping following on last week’s session.  Epic’s Unreal Engine-powered Twinmotion is available to subscribers of Autodesk Revit, allowing for faster collaboration and access to the 3D assets. 

Trombone Champ was even more in the news this week, with several people building a number of controller mods to allow for even more realistic trombone simulations.  Also there was an interview with the creator of the game who said it was a joke.  This ongoing story spun up several additional musical software examples, such as Instant Music (for the Amiga) and Rocksmith+.  

The team discusses gaming subscription services, including the news that Stadia is going to be discontinued in January 2023. 

In addition to the interesting examples of stable diffusion images, Michael, Andy and Ian discuss deepfake audio.  Respeecher, which uses archival voice recordings is one example.  Another story deals with Deepcake, and this story continues to evolve.

The team wraps things up for this episode with an offering from Hasbro for custom action figures and the game Hardspace : Shipbreaker.  

What deepfake of a celebrity would you most want to see?  Would you want a custom action figure of yourself?  Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know! 

Selected Article Links

Follow ups from last week

3D mapping 

The Verge article: Gamin tech can be used to walk through buildings before they’re even constructed

MacRumors article: Tim Cook: Not Too Long From Now, You’ll Wonder How You Led Your Life Without AR

Polycam app for iOS

Games at Work episode 385 – It’s only a model

Random sidelines

The Bootloader podcast: Episode 1 – Rock Stars are Just Like Us

FullControl Design Library

Trombone champ – virality and controllers

The Guardian article: ‘It’s a joke first and a game second’: how the delightful Trombone Champ went viral

muzines article: Instant Music

ubisoft: Rocksmith+

Wikipedia entry: Onlive

Stadia

Digital legacy / recreations

Diffusion Bee

Collider article: Actor Bruce Willis Becomes First Celebrity to Sell Rights to Deepfake Firm

Gizmodo article: Hasbro’s Selfie Series Action Figures Will Be Available In the U.S. Starting Friday

Ebay: Six Million Dollar Man Action Figure w/Engine Block Vintage 1975

VG247 article: Hardspace: Shipbreaker – now on Xbox Game Pass and PS5 – is an essential, searing rejection of sci-fi tropes

Feeding Edge

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e385 – It’s only a model

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architectural model of a building
Photo by Yaroslav Chaadaev: https://www.pexels.com/photo/model-white-concrete-building-9250129/

Models.  From AR to AI to fashion, this episode is chock-full-of models.  Andy starts off by using Polycam and his LiDAR equipped iPhone to model his studio, and share the object with Michael and Michael.  In a similar vein, a tweet shared by Ian Hughes shows how @ShapesXR can leverage 3D images in Google Maps to create 3D models to incorporate into mixed reality uses.  

Staying with the 3D theme, the co-hosts briefly touch on the Neal Stephenson’s Lamina1 blockchain powered metaverse.  And of course, soon after the episode’s recording, there’s a whitepaper published by Lamina1 with more specifics about the development priorities and plans.  See the VentureBeat article for more details on this late breaking news.

Continuing with avatars and mixed reality objects, the team looks at the latest news from the world of fashion, where runway models will have avatars created by the iGoodi process.  And an intriguing set of NVIDIA AI capabilities to rapidly create mixed reality objects from a prompt.  Need a giraffe with zebra stripes? No problem.  How about a hundred different motorbikes?  The co-hosts take a look at Diffusion Bee, which allows those with Apple silicon Macs to leverage stable diffusion capabilities right on their own computer.  A post from Getty Images says that they will no longer accept art that was created by AI generative models.  

After touching on ActiveLook’s Light AR platform to superimpose health and running information on glasses, the co-hosts turn to a creative and playful way to engage with the iOS 16 Dynamic Island.

Wrapping up this week’s episode with a new game called Trombone Champ, Michael has an idea to use a plastic trombone and a raspberry pi as a controller for the game.  As it turns out, some game fans have already created a VR port where the handheld controllers are used to mimic the slide action for the game.  Check out these notions, as well as the parody Sousaphone Hero from the Onion in the show notes below.

What instrument would you want to see in a game?  Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know! 

Selected Article Links

Polycam app for iOS

ShapesXR 

Wired article: Neal Stephenson Named the Metaverse.  Now, He’s Building It

Lamina1

VentureBeat article: Neal Stephenson’s Lamina1 drops white paper on building the open metaverse

Women’s Wear Daily article: Elite World Group Partners With Igoodi to Create 3D Avatars of Models

iGoogi Avatar

Engadget article: NVIDIA’s new AI model quickly generates objects and characters for virtual worlds

Venture Beat article: Nvidia Omniverse ACE enables fast deployment of metaverse avatars

Fast Company article: There’s a text-to-image AI art app for Mac now — and it will change everything

Diffusion Bee

ScreenRant article: These AR Glasses Display Your Real-Time Running Stats From Apple Watch

ActiveLook “Light AR” Platform Integrates with Apple Watch

ScreenRant article: What are ‘Pixel Pals’ For The Dynamic Island?

Washington Post article: He made a silly trombone video game. Then the internet caught wind.

Sweetwater link: pInstruments plastic trombone

Games at Work e100 – Malaria-Ebola and Freemium Games

The Onion article: Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

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