Disqus - Latest Comments for seraph

Re: Test and Switch: testable yet high performance cross-platform libraries

Ben Reierson — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 21:28:58 -0000

Pretty cool, but I suspect the hours (days?) it would require to convert an app to this approach would result in no noticeable change in performance. It's a tough sell. I'd love to see an example that demonstrates the actual UX impact.

Re: Community Download: Which VR Games Keep You Coming Back For More?

Ben Reierson — Sun, 03 Sep 2017 19:40:09 -0000

Superhot until I finished all the challenges, same with Robo Recall. Gorn is a big one now. And I still play Dirt Rally and Elite once in a while.

Re: HTC Vive Backtracks On Fallout 4 VR ‘Exclusively’ Comment

Ben Reierson — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 19:53:22 -0000

It will be easily bypassed, don't worry.

Re: The SoulKeeper VR Update Boosts Performance And More

Ben Reierson — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 19:51:44 -0000

I think the system doesn't allow for enough sharing of the actual state of the game. It's either early access or not. I would be nice if there were 'stages' of early access. Games like PUBG are basically done, whereas games like this are looking for funding and feedback with a much less polished product.

Re: SIGGRAPH 2017: Optitrack Reveals Tracking Puck For Full-Body VR Immersion

Ben Reierson — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 22:37:09 -0000

Not sure if you're trolling, but did you read the article? Optitrack is a system targeted at large commercial vr installations like The Void. So, when you say 'people look for simplicity', I don't think that really applies here. Players do not have to deal with the complications of setting up a system like this, they just put on the trackers with assistance from staff.

Re: SIGGRAPH 2017: Optitrack Reveals Tracking Puck For Full-Body VR Immersion

Ben Reierson — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:11:16 -0000

You realize this isn't targeted at consumers for mass adoption, right?

Re: Oculus v1.15 Update Adds Full Room Scale Support, Rolling Out Now

Ben Reierson — Wed, 10 May 2017 20:47:44 -0000

It likely just improves things for people who didn't have perfect tracking yet. I think the last few versions have been about improving imperfect setups as much as possible, without degrading existing experiences (like 1.11 did).

Re: Rock Band VR Expands Guitar Support In New Update

Ben Reierson — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 19:07:39 -0000

Wonder if you can trick it into letting you use the 360 GH guitars?

Re: 7 Things We Can’t Wait To Stick The Vive Tracker On

Ben Reierson — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 18:33:40 -0000

I was going to say the same thing as the last paragraph. Valve and HTC would do the community a great service if they made these trackers usable without a vive hmd. Afaik, there is no issue with interference between rift and lighthouse, so I see no reason this couldn't be done.

Re: The Crowdfunded Hardlight VR Suit Lets You Feel Your Virtual Experience

Ben Reierson — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 00:16:42 -0000

Yes, you can set it up to filter for specific information (like rear suspension bumps over a certain g-force threshold). That said, it's quite dependent on the data the simulator is providing; some provide more than others. Vibration feedback is always limited in its realism as compared to something like a full motion rig, but those aren't really an option for room-scale VR.

Re: The Crowdfunded Hardlight VR Suit Lets You Feel Your Virtual Experience

Ben Reierson — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 00:13:58 -0000

I have two subpacs I use in tandom every time I play certain games. I can certainly see myself using this. Certainly it will be somewhat niche, but so is everything in VR right now.

Re: See This Famous Masterpiece Recreated in Virtual Reality

Ben Reierson — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 16:30:26 -0000

Thank you for continuing to collect/share these.

Re: Xamarin.Forms, MVVM async Constructor

Ben Reierson — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 19:20:54 -0000

This is pretty cool. In my case, I was doing the second 'bad' version of using an async initialize method. The thing is, I don't actually want to bind to the result directly in my UI, because I do some filtering of the result before displaying it, but it's still helpful. Wondering if it would be worth adding specific events to the watcher rather than just relying on property changed events. Did you end up extending NotifyTaskCompletion at all?

Re: 3DRudder Wireless Is A Cross-Platform Foot Controller That Lets You Move In VR

Ben Reierson — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 22:19:09 -0000

I have the stinky board and have rarely found it very useful in games, tbh. It's actually found new life as my music controller while in seated-vr.

Re: James Cameron Still Doesn’t Think Much of VR and Its Movies

Ben Reierson — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 20:01:44 -0000

This is more about your expectation for the type of story-telling you're looking for. If you want to sit back and relax with a passively delivered story, the traditional movie may still be best, and I certainly don't want them to go away. Similarly, reading a book is still better than a movie in a lot of contexts. Video games have long been delivering experiences that include story, but require a lot more interaction and attention. There's very likely interesting stories to be told that basically split the difference; that reward wearing a headset with an experience that is best delivered that way.

Re: James Cameron Still Doesn’t Think Much of VR and Its Movies

Ben Reierson — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 19:56:28 -0000

He doesn't say it's a joke, and he actually does a pretty good job of describing why traditional film-making techniques don't work well in VR, he's just saying the tech isn't where he thinks it needs to be yet, and he's leaving open the idea that new forms of story-telling will be developed that fit the medium. It's Gale Heard who completely dismisses it, which is just sad.

Re: James Cameron Still Doesn’t Think Much of VR and Its Movies

Ben Reierson — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 19:51:52 -0000

The sticking point here seems to be trying to re-use the word 'movie'. We don't need to call narrative VR experiences 'movies' any more than we needed to call movies 'flat theatre', or video games 'pixelated pinball'. As you said, if we can tell an interesting story, and evoke emotion, there's value there. It's a shame Cameron doesn't think it's worth his time yet, but it's not overly surprising he'd have difficulty seeing how his style of story-telling would map to this medium.

Re: The Job Decision Matrix

Ben Reierson — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:42:41 -0000

This definitely seems like a valuable process. I'm going to try this out. Thanks for the post, and kudos for sharing your own matrix.

Re: Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both

Ben Reierson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:40:12 -0000

You're posting a lot of good stuff lately. Leading up to this weekend's event, or something else?

The platform exercise is interesting. Just going through the various apps on my phone, none disprove your points, but Dropbox and Twitter stick out to me.

Dropbox has been famously called a feature rather than a product, but it definitely prioritized user experience from the start. If being a great sync platform was the key, Microsoft's Mesh (or foldershare, or skydrive, etc) would have won. But it's always _felt_ like a platform to me. It's just something I use to make all my other apps work more seamlessly, it's not about the dropbox app(s) themselves.

Twitter is arguably the other way around. They were originally about being a mechanism for mass texting. Their 1st party apps have always sucked compared to the 3rd party stuff. It seems it was their platform strategy that really drove their success.

Re: Experience = Stuff / Time

Ben Reierson — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:02:07 -0000

This is a useful way of looking at things. I'd be interested in more of your thoughts about how to smooth out the barriers and transitions between these various aspects of experience.

For instance, how do you go from watching a tv show to interacting with it on a device? How do you find the song your friend recommended? How do you remember to research the product you happened across in a store?

There are a host of technologies that attempt to make these things easier (qrcodes, OCR, shazam, bump, etc), with limited success. They usually seem to be 3rd party efforts bolted onto brand marketing, rather than consciously integrated into the overall experience.

Re: If Windows 7 \"Simplifies\" the PC, What Does Windows 8 Do to It?

Ben Reierson — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:09:48 -0000

Actually, the 'right' way (as in, what Microsoft suggests, and what provides the best experience) is to press the physical power or sleep button on your PC. Or close the lid on your laptop. Or press the sleep button on your keyboard.

Btw, in case you've ever used an iPad or iPhone, where is the software access for 'shutdown'? There isn't one. You hold the power button until you get a prompt. There is no indication to the user that this function exists. Why? Because you shouldn't have to do it very often, if ever.

Re: Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman: Why you should do a startup right now (and not one in a ‘stinky, little niche’)

Ben Reierson — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:47:58 -0000

I enjoyed this talk very much and I agree with most of Glenn's points. However, I think saying that most startups fail because they have terrible ideas is a gross oversimplification at best. I would be interested in Glenn's thoughts on experiences like this:
http://www.coderholic.com/m...

I think we've all seen great ideas fail several times before they succeed. In fact, most truly innovative ideas spend time in a failure loop before the right set of people, circumstances, and technology enable them.

Re: Editorial: Don't call it an ultrabook

Ben Reierson — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:35:11 -0000

Totally agree with the last paragraph. I too, can't wait to see some truly adaptable devices.

Re: http://pocketnow.com/android/how-well-does-ice-cream-sandwich-face-unlock-work

Ben Reierson — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:25:49 -0000

Clearly this isn't meant to be a highly secure means of locking your phone, but it's more secure than nothing and would definitely help with some of the most common issues people have with unwanted access. For example, if you forget your phone somewhere, a random person picking it up with not know who you are or have a picture of you. I may use this for my primary unlock, since my sensitve work data (email/appts/etc) are protected by a pin in touchdown.

Re: Google+ has made Twitter boring, here’s what Twitter should do about that

Ben Reierson — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:50:35 -0000

Fair enough, I was more talking about how they haven't incorporated much of what I thought made FF (the product) unique. I understand they were more motivated by the talent.