Games At Work dot Biz

e493 — A VR Merry Holiday

By Michael Martine | December 16, 2024 - 06:33 |December 15, 2024 Podcast

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festive lights — Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Published 16 December 2024

e493 with Andy, Michael & Michael — all things VR, from #AndroidXR & Project #Moohan to #GorillaTag to the #NFL #Funday crossovers with the #Simpsons and a whole lot more!

Andy, Michael and Michael are back together again, and have a whole episode full of VR, AR, MR and XR stories to discuss! The team starts things off with the mixed reality partnership between Samsung and Google. Dubbed “Project Moohan”, stemming from the Korean word for infinity, the cohosts consider a couple of articles on this MR exploration. According to the YouTube video, these corporations are considering the seamless movement from a headset (VR) to glasses (AR) as part of the overarching operating system powering each. The video gives an intriguing example of what the user experience may be to watch a baseball game, complete with statistics, news, ball trajectory and much more. The viewing and fan participation in such mixed reality experiences lend themselves to rich engagement.

Michael R marvels at the recently released UltraWide mode for the Apple Vision Pro, granting an amazing worskpace vista to users. Andy shares the Espresso display concept of laptop users having a second screen that they can take with them on the go.

Then things take a weird turn. An article about Gorilla Tag prompts Michael M to check out the embedded video to better understand what this game is all about. The recording of an older player interacting and asking for help from younger players to buy in-game virtual goods is a challenge to watch, not only for the user experience requiring so many steps to buy a digital bow tie, but also because of the interactions between the players of the game. Next up, the co-hosts take a look at the NFL’s crossover events with The Simpsons and the Toy Story characters in the VR space. Having the analysts and color commentators as VR driven cartoon characters in the style of the Simpsons was interesting, however, Michael and Michael found the ball and player tracking without mo-cap suits especially intriguing. The ability to keep track of the ball and so many players in real time hints at the future for sports viewing. The team also found it interesting how the NFL is using this technology to potentially broaden their viewership and generate additional fan engagement.

Wrapping up this week’s episode are a couple of hardware stories, the last of which speculates on the potential for the Apple Vision Pro to gain the advantage of an Apple modem to enable cellular connectivity. This sparks a spirited discussion about hotspots vs native cellular connectivity to close out the recording. Maybe mesh communication is the answer.

Would you prefer your computing devices to have their own cellular connection or tether to a hotspot from your phone? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Links

Visualizing MR

AndroidXR visualization of a Major League Baseball user experience — https://youtu.be/Pn5uG1ys-pE?feature=shared&t=80

So how many months/years do we think it’ll be before #Android XR is abandoned like Tablets, Stadia, etc., etc., etc.?

— Al Sutton (@alsutton) 2024-12-13T19:05:18.124Z

Android Authority article: Samsung’s ‘Project Moohan’ takes shape as the first Android XR headset

omfg it's beautiful 😂

— Casey Liss (@caseyliss) 2024-12-11T20:54:12.488Z

Espresso Displays

Github AVPEnterpriseAPI-CameraStreaming

9 to 5 Mac article: Analogue is the first 3D immersive collaboration app for Apple Vision Pro, Spatial 3D design app coming soon

MR Weirdness

Road to VR article: How ‘Gorilla Tag’ Became a $100 Million VR Success on Quest

Gorilla Tag

Good Morning America article: ‘The Simpsons’ take over Monday Night Football

What’s on Disney Plus article: “Toy Story Funday Football” Becomes Most Watched Live Event On Disney+

CNBC article: What’s next for Meta’s metaverse

VR Hardware

The Verge article: Apple and Sony are working on Vision Pro support for PSVR 2 controllers

9 to 5 Mac article: Apple is reportedly exploring cellular connectivity for Vision Pro, and that’s a great thing

Games at Work e238: Walkman and Walkbot

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

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e492 — Flexi Festivus

By Michael Martine | December 9, 2024 - 06:18 |December 8, 2024 Podcast

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LED holiday string lights — Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Published 9 December 2024

e492 with Michael & Michael — holiday desktop decorations, AR, immersive video in sports, user experience and interaction and a whole lot more!

Michael and Michael start off the show with a couple of holiday links to get everyone in a festive mood. The Festivitas app provides an opportunity to decorate the Mac desktop and menu bar with festive lights. NASA contributes an 8 hour video of a fireplace with the Space Launch System’s four RS-25 engines and a pair of boosters to provide additional holiday cheer.

Turning to the AR & VR stories for this episode, the cohosts consider the rumors of whether smart glasses may turn up at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event in February next year. Then Michael and Michael turn to the possibility of live-streaming a Real Madrid match in Santiago Bernabéu by upgrading the cameras in the stadium.

Next, the pair discuss the Flexbar kickstarter for Windows and Mac computers which brings a skinny 10 inch color OLED screen, dynamically configured with shortcuts, buttons and tools, similar to the Touch Bar from earlier Macs. After touching on the MacOS & iPhoneOS phone mirroring capability, the team concludes with a story on recycling cables.

Do you have a drawer full of cables to be recycled? Are you ready for the feats of strength? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Links

Season’s Greetings

Festivitas

MacStories article: A Fun Way to Add Holiday Cheer to Your Mac

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-released-a-fireplace-video-for-the-holidays-and-its-hilarious

— Winchell Chung ⚛🚀 (@nyrath) 2024-11-30T10:55:16.564Z

AR / VR

Laptop Mag article: Samsung may debut an all-new product during January’s Galaxy Unpacked event

acquired.fm season 11, episode 6 Qualcomm

9 to 5 Mac article: Apple in talks to upgrade a sports stadium for live Vision Pro immersive video

Games at Work e490: Codename – “Amelia”

Hardware

The Verge article: The Flexbar resurrects the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar as a standalone device

512 Pixels article: iPhone Mirroring is Very Good

Vox article: Your drawer full of old cables is worth more than you think

Gazelle

Bonus Articles & Stories

MakerWorld article: Mac Pro Case for the M1/M2 Mac Studio and Mac mini

Welp. The future of #3dPrinting just dropped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEgwnhLHy3g

— Kyle Davis (@linux_mclinuxface) 2024-12-02T06:39:33.614Z

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:24 — 46.5MB) | Embed

e491 — Geospatial Bricks

By Michael Martine | November 25, 2024 - 06:24 |November 24, 2024 Podcast

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miniature model map of Tokyo with points of interest — Photo by Thor Alvis on Unsplash

Published 25 November 2024

e491 with Michael, Andy & Michael — #AI training data from authors & #Foursquare #OpenSourcePlaces, #SamStones, #VR experiences from #Lapz, #MSFlightSimulator, #GOG like #Elite & #StarWarsTheOldRepublic and a whole lot more!

Michael, Andy and Michael start off the show with a discussion on Google Lens’ new image recognition and search functionality to comparison shop on price and availability at nearby stores. Next up is a brief article on an opportunity for HarperCollins authors to opt into an agreement to license their books for training an AI language learning model.

Then, staying on the AI training theme, Andy shares his thoughts about the Foursquare Open Source Places data set, replete with the point of interest data from years of Foursquare and Swarm users. This data set according to a Foursquare blog post contains 100mm+ global places of interest and is available for commercial use under the Apache 2.0 license framework. Interestingly enough, the very first episode of Games At Work from January 2012 features Foursquare as an example of the intersection of business and social technologies. Rounding out the geospatial conversation, Michael R shares the example of SamStones, a way to remember Sam Cohn’s love of travel.

Switching gears to VR, the cohosts discuss the beta version of Second Life’s mobile application. In the show notes below, you’ll find an example from Michael R where he ran a mobile Active Worlds experience from his Treo 750 back in May 2008! The team then shares a story about Lapz, a Formula 1 racing experience for the Apple Vision Pro. Then, they take to the skies with the recent launch of the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

Wrapping up this episode are stories about GOG (Good Old Games) work to preserve games, Star Wars the Old Republic celebrating 12 years and Mark Moxon’s work to document the Elite source code for Commodore 64. It seems like only yesterday when Mark was on the podcast, even though it was four years ago on e292: Elite British Gaming!

How might you use the Foursquare Open Sources Places dataset? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Links

AI

The Verge article: Google Lens will now help you decide what to buy in-store

Kayak

The Verge article: HarperCollins is asking authors to license their books for AI training

Foursquare are releasing Foursquare Open Source Places as an open data set, to be updated monthly under the Apache 2.0 license. Pretty big news for the geospatial and location data folks. https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/products/foursquare-open-source-places-a-new-foundational-dataset-for-the-geospatial-community/

— Andy Piper (@andypiper) 2024-11-19T17:40:23.494Z

https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/products/foursquare-open-source-places-a-new-foundational-dataset-for-the-geospatial-community/

— Jay Holler (@jay) 2024-11-20T04:50:54.132Z

Foursquare blog post: Foursquare Open Source Places: A new foundational dataset for the geospatial community

Games at Work e1: Wouldn’t You Like to be a Mayor Too?

SamStones.org

Virtual Reality

Second Life blog post: Second Life Mobile is here!

The Verge article: Vision Pro’s viral Lapz app put on hold after F1 complaint

lapz.io

The Verge article: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 wasn’t prepared for takeoff

Games & Gaming

My project to document the source code for Commodore 64 Elite just reached 50,000 lines of heavily commented 6502 assembler. It's getting there!
I’m *really* enjoying learning about how the Commodore 64 works. I can’t believe you can expose a whole 64K of RAM in one go! What a beast…
Here’s the source so far: https://github.com/markmoxon/elite-source-code-commodore-64/blob/main/1-source-files/main-sources/elite-source.asm
I hope you like it.
#retrocomputing #retrogaming #commodore #8bit #6502 #c64

— Mark Moxon (@markmoxon) 2024-11-21T18:42:19.103Z

GameRant article: GOG’s Game Preservation Program is a Huge Win for Classic Games

Good Old Games About GOG page

PC Gamer article: 12 years on, Star Wars: The Old Republic is still kicking, with revamped graphics and new story content coming soon

Games at Work e52: Swapping your Battery in 90 Seconds

Good Old Games: Knights of the Old Republic search results

Bonus Articles & Stories

@gamesatwork_biz have you seen this ? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brickmyworld/brick-my-world-transform-your-world-into-lego-bricks

— Epredator (@epredator) 2024-11-21T10:23:05.190Z

Kickstarter: Brick My World | Convert real-world objects into LEGO® model

The Verge article: This digital D&D watch lets you roll a fireball from your wrist

Dice by pCalc

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

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e490 — Codename – “Amelia”

By Michael Martine | November 18, 2024 - 06:06 |November 17, 2024 Podcast

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black framed eyeglasses on a white surface — Photo by Gerald Hartl on Unsplash

Published 18 November 2024

e490 with Michael & Michael — #AI, #AR, #VR, #RR (that’s #RealReality) and a whole lot more!

Michael and Michael start off the show with a discussion on how O2 is employing AI to waste phone scammers time. Check out the video in the show notes below for how dAIsy, the AI grandma works. After a quick discussion on Oasis, an AI generated game, the co-hosts then turn to an interview with professor Greg Benson on the future of coding now that natural language processing (NLP) and large language models can interpret user prompts and generate the code required to fulfill the stated need. Both Michael and Michael agree that there is high value in understanding the underpinnings of coding even where NLP can be a tremendous accelerator, much in the same way that writing algebraic proofs deepen the understanding of algorithms.

Switching to mixed reality, Michael and Michael touch on the subject of watching movies and TV shows together, prompted by the YouTube feature on Quest. Michael R expands with another article about the Vision Pro music experience from The Weekend, and shares how intimate the experiences can be when the singer is performing directly for you, up close and personal. Next up, is a story about “Metaversities” in EU and UK schools that remind the cohosts of the Second Life experiences of a video screen in SL. This spurs Michael M to share what he learned at a recent UNCSA.edu School of Design and Production lunch. The ;TLDR is that Gen Z (among others) are craving authentic and real experiences not through a lens or a screen. Following the trend of *R, Michael calls this Real Reality, and in the context of the global entertainment market, this means live performances, such as the crane dance show in Sentosa, Singapore (see video below). This reminds Michael R of an interview he saw with Robert D Putnam, focused on the importance of building community and engagement as explained in his book Bowling Alone.

The pair then turns to the Verge and Engadget stories discussing Amazon’s codename “Amelia” plans to build upon the Echo Frames platform to create augmented reality experiences that can shave seconds off of Amazon delivery drivers’ work. Wrapping up the episode, Michael R gives a quick overview of Tetris Forever and movie professor and adventurer Indiana Jones’ latest gameplay.

Would you want to ask dAIsy, the AI grandmother call your telemarketers? What Real Reality (RR) experiences are you craving? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!