Tag Archives: VR

October 3, 2024 · 08:41

As history catches up

On the first of February 2022 I wrote ‘The opportunity for 2022’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/01/the-opportunity-for-2022/) where I set a stage for augmented reality, at a later stage I also set it for glasses and windows (an actual window pane) and with that I started a thought process that could revitalise malls on a global scale. I initially covered tourism, but soon thereafter I covered commerce, advertising and awareness creation. The focus for me was the Eaton centre (Toronto) as it was a clear case of awareness improvement. There were a few other sides for mobiles, but this stage was explored by my mind and last week I was given a jolt of energy as Meta (at https://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/introducing-orion-our-first-true-augmented-reality-glasses/) gives us the Orion, previously codenamed Project Nazare, as I kind of envisioned it. I thought that Google and/or Amazon would have picked it up, but no, it was Meta. So as I see it Meta now has a clear advantage over advertising and a new realm of awareness creation. So whilst Amazon and Google were cutting staff, cutting all kinds of enablements Meta now has more than the inside track. They can whisk advantages in advertisement, tourism, awareness creation and a few other directions. This is what sets them apart from the wannabe innovators. And I left all the evidence all over the internet, as such I can truthfully see myself as an innovator. As I see it, the one part not grabbed by Meta is the mobile layer where they can grab the attention of jewellers on a global scale. I am not merely talking about the small players, I am talking about Pandora, Harry Winston, the Swiss Richemont Group, Bernard Arnault and his LVMH scoundrels (as the expression goes) and a few other players. They all become very willing players in this realm. A stage that wan’t open to many of us, now becomes a new stage of revitalisation. And the malls need them and as such Meta gets to surpass Google with YouTube and Amazon with whatever they have. I actually didn’t think to be this ahead, I was in some believe that this was 5-10 years away. History catches up with me. Oh, and I was thinking also a bigger picture. You see this could work well for publishers and book shops as well. As the jeweller has its domain, the domain of books could equally profit from augmented reality. 

Meta already has the skills to put in place the technology to set the domain for advertisements and with that the malls could revitalise soon enough. For me it is another moment of bliss. Whilst several people made claims that I was nuts, the technology now exists to make larger parts of my ‘delusion’ a reality. I feel awesome, those shouting I was a nutcase have just exposed themselves to be nothing more than wannabe’s with a lack of creativity. 

And later today I will add another story, it will be all about books. Well one in particularly. Have a great day.

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November 25, 2023 · 02:11

Stopped making sense

Yes, at some point my mind stops making sense. Even to me. The weird part was that I had no idea whether it was simply a dream, the setting for a video game, a script or even the future. OK, the last speculation was definitely not the case. 

I was on trip with a motorcycle, riding the roads and taking trains in or around Switzerland. The roads had gotten so bad that bikes were allowed on trains (for an extra fee). I was being hunted by an assassin with a chrome coloured .22 with a silencer and that dweep was really accurate with that party popper. I had escaped his vision and I got somewhere around Lausanne (I had to look it up). The thinks that make it all unreal was in the first the bike, which was the bike Kaneda drove in Akira. The second part was the hotel outside of Lausanne. I had room 25334. I have never ever seen or been in a hotel with numbers that high. My mind filled in the blanks from trips to that region. 

The thing that is the most elusive were the roads. The roads had to a larger degree collapsed. They were pretty good in Switzerland, but with Germany’s economy collapsed the roads in Bavaria were dismal, no mentionable repairs had been made in close to a decade and certain seismic shifts broke the roads even further. 

There was a stage where it could have been the setting for a new game, gaming with a difference. You see GaaS (or streaming service) allows for a larger stage of gaming. Consider that a game has more than one side. Consider the setting where you have a management game for infrastructure on your mobile. A match 3, or a Tetris, or puzzle game (or all) that gives you funds for your infrastructure. The results comes into play in the larger game. If you do not do that (always valid) you aggregated average of a cluster of gamers is what the game uses to improve infrastructure and utilities. This would show in all kinds of ways. The hotel was perhaps a reference to the collapsing cities. As economies go bust many buildings will lack maintenance. The cities would become deathtraps. Certain ‘luxury’ hotels would be available all over the world for those who could afford it and local hotels in places that still run would be the envy for those who could not afford to stay there and boosting local economies for those who could. 

It is an evolving idea, but the premise that this is an optional truth coming to us in the near future has been a driving force in gaming for the longest of times. What does matter is how we push that future. I believe that streaming systems will become the future. By being inclusive in more than one direction is one way to go, not the only one, but one direction that many game makers have ignored (for too long). There is also the other side (one I am not ignoring) not all lie the match 3 games. They are algorithms that are designed to make you almost succeed. I hate them. But there are other directions, other games you could play on your mobile. So how to connect them? How to get another game to entice people to play and then connect them to the stage of the larger game? This is not always an easy task, but it is a challenge worth meeting. 

Then there is another path that occurred to me and that one is specifically for Ubisoft. Sony had the Playstation Home (2008-2015) and many miss that open simplicity. Ubisoft has/had AC Brotherhood, AC Black Flag, AC Origin and AC Mirage. Just 4 out of a lot of options. Any person can get an account and can select a world and they end up being in that world owning a house (partially random) and for $1-3 a month the can have a house in a second location. There is also the upgrade. As you select for the upgrade in location one (a more unique setting) you get the second location for free (or the second location upgrades the building in location one). It allows for a new setting for fans. A place they loved they can live there, walk around that town or city and  live to some degree in that temporal environment. Now consider that Ubisoft adds a VR engine. Now the AC fans will get a jug of lemonade from places they revere. And there as an additional setting. It is an environment where Ubisoft has exclusive marketing rights. A place where they can evolve NPC characters and it is in a system where there will be millions of fans. All the places we ran through, but now we can call Alexandria, Aaru, Aten, Duat, Krokodilopolis, Baghdad, Firenze, Rome, Venice, Monteriggioni or Havana our home. As these places evolve and as our systems evolve, we could end up with an actual address that can be wielded in the real world. 

As such our secondary address could become an actual address. These are services now laughed at, but 25 years ago web addresses were laughed at, now over 1,500,000,000 people have one and they are holding onto this for dear life. Ubisoft lost (read: squandered) so many IP options, perhaps it is time to look back in seeing what they could regain and it is their advantage, the graphics are already there. The places to see are already theirs.

Just a though and it might not make a lot of sense, but in 1995 a web location made no sense at all either. Evolution is where you see it.

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September 2, 2021 · 01:15

Two weird moments

This just happened, the second weird moment can onto me, I got woken up from it as someone called me, but it is still shaking me. It started the night earlier, I do not know what set it iff and I did not realise why it happened, so I pushed it away, yet with what just happened, the previous event also plays and now I need to find the words.

Day 1
In day one, I faced some initiation, it was all about a mine-cart (like in Indiana Jones 2) and I was would be taken through a tunnel, pulled on one side, after the corridor, which was made with the use of pallets and smeared with clay and dirt, covered in some writing to the other side, it was about trusting the boss. Yet the boss was setting the stage as the person in the kart would be fed to a massively large snake (not an Anaconda), yet he believed that the snake was related to a snake god (yes, people are that crazy, just look at anti-vaxxers if you doubt me), so as I was unaware I went into the cart, the journey would be around 300 meters and there was a bend, but no track change was possible. As my journey started I saw the writing, the symbolism and I also seemingly saw the imagery change, and as the journey took me past the bend, the massive python like snake attacked and it took its non-poisonous teeth deep into my left shoulder. The pain was hard, but the fear of seeing the snake just over the left shoulder shook me to my core. I woke up and I had to change the sheets, they were drenched in sweat. It was only 6 degrees, but I was sweating like it was a 40 degree sunny day. I woke up and shrugged it away, but oddly enough my shoulder was still hurting this morning, so I actually had to take a pain killer. 

Day 2
Only hours away, it was time for another team building exercise. This time it was against 3 fellow employees and the track which we had to do wearing our Virtual Reality goggles, the rules were simple, never take off the goggles, it would be an automated fail and the winners, the two highest would be in line for management promotion. So as we started at the bottom we had to run up, we had to follow the path and the tunnels and stairs were where the normal stairs would have been, and over the track we were filmed. We saw the tracks change from down to up, to up to down and as we followed the course the land changed to meadow, fog filled meadow with lights. We were on a track that would take almost 30 minutes, and there I was, exhausted at position two. The person in front of me was on her knees and it was the last part, I looked over the ridge and the building was below me, close to 2000 feet below me, the note was clear “fall from here, but do NOT jump”, I had given up, I would rather be dead than lose and I rolled over the ledge falling to my death, I no longer cared and that is when I felt a rush and a slowing fall, it was the virtual reality, I fell into a net from 4 stories high, not thousands of feet, I saw the boss who was walking up to me and then the phone rang. That was it, or was it?

It is a little later and my mind is working things out, you see, Augmented reality and Virtual Reality can dupe the mind, as long as it can acclimatise to the new settings it can be fooled and it can be done so a lot easier then when you are alert in the normal world. So what happens when this becomes an interrogation and torture device? You see, we tend to fear the extremists and their suicide approach. But in Virtual Reality they are a lot more easily pliable. Their conservative values can fall under VR faster than in the normal world, a lot faster and I think that my mind is telling me that this could optionally make for a nice movie. Consider movies like Truth or Dare, and Nerve. We have similar settings where we entice the audience to accept hat is there, yet in VR it is all fake and the mind cannot completely deal with it and as long as no real boundaries are broken, the mind adjusts. So what happens when that becomes a case, it is seemingly small but it is in the core of us and there the small change flips an entirely new track, one we have never seen before and the brain changes from decider to spectator and there the intelligence required is up for the taking. Now 2-3 years ago it would be some sloppy wannabe kiss, yet with the evolutions in VR, Quantum computers (IBM) and deeper learning it becomes a new ball game. We can get the suicide bomber in a stage where he feels to press the button, but it is an augmented VR button, and after that whatever he sees is fake, but in that stage he will divulge EVERYTHING, he accomplished his goals. And now we get the rundown on what we needed to know and this has the option to be one hell of a rollercoaster movie. Even in my sleep my creativity continues and now that this is written, I can look at some information that ABC has for us all, it is all about doubters, but that does not matter.

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June 13, 2017 · 18:55

E3, a first view

The E3 is in full swing for a few more days, yet let’s take an early look at it all. The first interest was of course the Bethesda show. Now, some have video blogged that it was ‘disgusting’. I do not agree! Mind you Bethesda was not strong with actual NEW stuff, but the VR edition of Fallout 4 and Doom is certainly a nice call. We saw more Skyrim, (Switch), we got to see Legend (the card game) and we got to see ‘Wolfenstein 2’ and ‘the Evil Within 2’ and more. That was not all but it was good to see all this. I agree that the show did not blow our minds to the degree it did last year, but Bethesda is delivering, I even saw some great stuff when we consider going to Morrowind online. Most of these trailers seem to be intro movies and not a lot of actual play time, but we will see more as we go to the actual Bethesdaland part of E3. Next is one that did rock da house. Yes, am talking about Ubisoft. I remain sceptic and distant when it comes to Assassins Creed, but we will get more on that later. What was stunning is the part I pounded on in 2015, yes two years ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/09/11/wakey-wakey/), I wrote in my article titled ‘Wakey, Wakey‘ “The weird part is that Ubisoft sat on a treasure, Black Flag could have been the pirate RPG Sid Meier could not make because technology stopped him and marketing relied on the AC brand to propel something that was close to utterly perfect“, now we see the announcement of ‘Skull and Bones‘ which is pretty much what I wrote about 2 years ago. However, this is not set near the founding beaches of Spicy Rum, it is in the heart of the Dutch West Indian Company, the ‘VOC’ The Indian Ocean and the beaches of Indonesia. An area where the ‘trade in spices’ was regarded as dealing in green gold; the seas that the Japanese Silk ships required to pass towards the ‘civilisation’ of Europe. As treacherous as the Caribbean’s and just as lucrative. The graphics and intro looked awesome and the game itself, for what we saw was impressive. The game offers 5v5 options as well as solo play and could be the Pirates game that Sid Meier fans have been waiting decades for. Yet that was merely small fry. Yes, small fry is literally the word. The stage started with what could be a new beginning for tactical games. The Switch game Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle will be bringing down the house. This is one of these titles that is the reason why people by a certain console. Ubisoft is delivering this time around and it could make the Switch the most popular console this upcoming Thanksgiving, St. Nicholas Day and Christmas. Even as some titles are not showing until early 2018, Ubisoft did set a quality stake of mind this year and it might be the hard needed boost they desperately required. In this Microsoft decided not to disappoint us by disappointing us almost completely. Their proclaimed ‘world’s most powerful console’ is anything except professional. The fact that they still have not learned that a 1TB drive does not bring home the bacon, and therefor pushing people to get additional EXTERNAL drives is just a near laughable bump in the world of storage. It sets the stage for the name Microsoft, which is now in danger of being a brand for micro (read: small) and soft (read: weak) gamers. So as we see the quote “Under the hood, Microsoft One X has 6 teraflops of graphical processing performance, which is 1.8 teraflops more than that of Sony’s PS4 Pro. The console uses a custom GPU that’s claimed to be more powerful than that of the Xbox One and PS4 Pro” from various sources, we see basically a lack to save what you need, so you are shifting software back and forth soon thereafter. Consider a console that is proclaimed more powerful than all others, which runs out of storage within 15 games. Is that worth the $500+ price tag? This leads me to the question on my consideration ‘what a waste of space their stand was’, it is harsh, but when you decide to not do your job in regards to the gamer in us, being soft is no longer an option. From that, the good news is that the iconic games (as I personally call them) that are out on Xbox One, and also were on the early access title list are coming to PS4 before the end of this year, so there is all manner of happy thoughts of dumping my eggbox console which could soon be regarded as a ‘has been’ before it got some actual strength, So yes, the Xbox one is less a failure than the WiiU, but not by much. Should you doubt this (always valid), consider that the Xbox One X is launched with 42 4K games, so consider that 50% of that should be maxing out the hard drive, do you still think you got a good deal? In comparison my 2TB PS4 is currently at 67% filled, none of it 4K, none of it the super high res that 4K could offer I do have a fair amount of games on it. Still, consider the games of the last year NBA (41GB), Forza5 (32GB) and Battlefield4 (33GB), 3 games using well over 10% of your total drive. Consider the AC-Unit patch (yes, patch), which was a 38GB, still feel good? Now consider that Microsoft seems to reserve 138GB on the Xbox One, I am assuming that it will be even more on the One X, but that is not a given, so the system and 3 games, that makes up for 25% of the entire storage system. Now, do you get the idea on how stupid Microsoft is regarding storage? There are games that do not require that much space, but with 4K gaming, storage will go fast, much faster than you think and that is something PC gamers have seen in the past, yet they can add drives and upgrade drives easily. An additional $110 gets you 2TB more, something consoles do not allow for. Oh, and if you like high end shooting games, space will go pretty fast.

So as we are deciding where to go, the E3 is showing us that gaming happiness is a PS4 with the Nintendo Switch next to it. Yes, this is n consoles, not PC! There is one clarity, which is me, as a deadly critic of Ubisoft is claiming now, from what ‘For Honor’ last year and ‘Skull and Bones’ showed this year, there is a need for high end PC gaming, yet the price tag is not small, but if you got the $$$, ‘Skull and Bones’ will show you why a high end PC was worth the trip. When it comes to Electronic Arts, my view is mixed. If you love Battlefield and Battlefront, you are in for a good time. Those who are not into that game category are losing out somewhat. We can churn this in a variety of spins, especially when we consider the not achieved hype that Mass Effect Andromeda got. I reckon it is a year where EA needs to figure out where it could fit and fix what was not right. Apart from that EA will launch its collection of sport games, so I reckon that the large run on the shops to get FIFA18 is not far off.

One would think that Sony rocked us all with what they had to offer, yet that is not really the case. Those who love ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ will be happy to see that a Next generation remake is on the horizon and here to we got a chunk full of VR and DLC. Last year’s new IP was shown again and no release date in sight, more spectacular God of War, now showing early 2018, so there is that to look forward to. Some other titles from last year were not shown and no release date, so will see that when it is ready.

At present the only part missing is the Nintendo presentation, yet they showed part during the Ubishow and what they showed looked amazing. I reckon that they have a few more gems, which just ups the need for the 3DS and the Switch, which is already a growing factor for all those loving a game or two.

I have to say that E3 2017 had more than one awesome surprise and those who had to really score decided to stay their hand and keep others in the uncertain dark. From that I have to admit that at present Ubisoft seems to be the winner of the 2017 show.

 

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