Posts

Free Roam VR is as immersive as it gets

Image
I recently visited Zero Latency — a Virtual Reality company specialising in free-roam experiences. I was expecting a fun, entertaining, but overall gimmicky experience. I was blown away. From the moment you put on the headset, you are immersed . What makes the experience so unique is the way that you have to physically interact. It starts when you pick up your gun. It’s really there, physically in front of you on the ground. And when you pick it up, you can see it in the game. You can see it and you can feel it. Then, you look around at your teammates. They are really there — physically and virtually. How far away they look is how far away they really are. You’re even guided by proximity warnings to stop you bumping into them. This actually increases your senses, essential when your eyes and ears are completely covered. The social element makes it so much fun. It’s hard to believe that’s a real person standing next to you. Not like in an online game where they’re miles
Post a Comment
Read more

The Possibilities of Augmented Reality

Image
  The creative potential of Hololens and "Mixed Reality"is huge. There are a wide variety of applications we can develop for it. I believe the demos shown so far are barely scratching the surface of what we can do with the Hololens. Once the imagination of the development community warms up, we're going to see world changing ideas. Industries will be turned upside down, lives will be changed, and millionaires will be made. I'm going to make some assumptions on its abilities, but try and highlight some of the many directions we can take in creating for the interface of the future. Presence Sharing One of the most interesting uses for the Hololens is allowing others to share your experience, and interact with it. This opens up many prospects for communication and collaboration in virtually every industry. Think about how cool GoPro cameras are and what we're able to do with them. Now imagine seeing the video live and being able to interact with
Post a Comment
Read more

R18 certificates are not an excuse for being a bad member of society

Image
I've been a gamer for 3 decades, seeing the games industry mature from dots on a screen into a prolific mainstream industry. I'm not afraid of controversy in games. I want to make it abundantly clear: I'm not advocating banning anything.  I've seen many disturbing titles, far worse than Grand Theft Auto. But this was when games were a cult market, and the technology was so basic, it was easy to dismiss the phenomenon. Now, games have matured. They can do more and they reach more people. Like movies and other entertainment, they have the power to influence society. With this influence comes some level of responsibility. It's not an obligation - games are art and should be able to push boundaries - but rape in a video game is not art. It's gratuitous indulgence in a sickness, a sickness that hides behind freedom of expression. If we're going to get philosophical about it (and I guarantee the proponents will) you could ask “where does it end? Should we
Post a Comment
Read more

Guns Might Be the Least of Our Worries

Image
Whatever side of the gun debate you sit, it's important to remember why this is such a potent issue. It's not so much that guns kill, it's that they empower. Weapons have always elevated humans above other species and their peers, but none quite so much as the gun. And the ability to instantly kill without fail has been a game changer in our social order. This empowerment goes a long way in shaping our entire civilisation. In some countries, it is used to completely control the population in fear, in others, the same idea but a more subtle effect, we are forced to pay taxes and obey the law for threat of arrest at gunpoint. Guns tip the balance of power because of the ability they afford us. That it's the ability to kill is in no way insignificant, but the ability could be anything. They are an enabling technology. Enabling technology elevates individuals and shifts society's order. In the past, this has been fairly limited to weapons; guns, nuclear mis
3 comments
Read more

The Ethical Implications of Dismantling the Planet Mercury

Image
George Dvorsky's article about How to Build a Dyson Sphere was absolutely fascinating and I feel the concept deserves much further exploration. "By enveloping the sun with a massive array of solar panels, humanity would graduate to a Type 2 Kardashev civilization capable of utilising nearly 100% of the sun's energy output. A Dyson sphere would provide us with more energy than we would ever know what to do with" Now, this is the kind of ridiculous, overambitious idea that that really captures my imagination. It would be a hyper structure, like the Hoover dam but on steroids, where we would create unfathomable devastation, calling on the skills and labour of thousands, enduring the harshest that nature can throw at us in order to tame it - all in the name of energy. Where the Hoover dam transformed a country, this would transform our entire solar system. But it's not without cost. And that's what I want to discuss. In order to get the materials to
5 comments
Read more

Corrolation, Causation, and Prediction in a World of Data and Memes

Image
As image memes gain popularity on social networks and forums, they are fast securing their place as a defining cultural aspect of the early tweenies...(unlike the word "tweenies", thankfully). Most of these images are humourous, as this is great for virality, many are profound, some just witty nuggets of wisdom. And then there is the propaganda. Intended to illicit an emotional response to a political idea, propaganda memes are used to affirm or reaffirm a political bias or dogma. They are often aimed at a very particular niche. If you have any particular political or activist persuasion, you will no doubt have seens endless streams of these one-sided affirmations. At best, they are intellectual masturbation. At worst, it's pseudo-scientific social engineering. The worst form of this that I have seen is data correlation inferences. Just because something happened on a certain date does not mean it caused something else that happened around the same time. It
Post a Comment
Read more

Distributed or Centralised Infrastructure?

Image
Distributed infrastructure, such as that provided by the internet, allows for more reliability - if one node is damaged, it barely affects the rest of the network. It affords more freedom - less reliance on a centralised 'grid' controlled and manipulated by the elite. It is more in-line with nature, creating a symbiotic entity where the sum is greater than its parts, and each participant compliments the rest with cooperation but doesn't burden the whole either. However, the centralised systems we are used to, those which provide our public infrastructure, still have a place, because they can often be more efficient than a distributed system. For example, it would be difficult to run a train system with solar panels on the station roof, so the train taps into the main grid. When assessing and managing the Earth's resources, a global inventory would be important. We would need to decide on the most efficient solution between distributed and centralised infrastructu
Post a Comment
Read more