Ingress

[P3nT4gR4m]

Defo a group game. We've got a pretty good setup here in forth valley. Three 8's on my manor, keeping it blue, 5 guys across the river in alloa and a couple in stirling. The local toads are alright as well but only one of them is worth a fuck on comms and he's been away on holiday for the last fortnight. Further afield we've got good connections in Glasgow and Edinburgh and one of our team makes regular visits to perth and inverness so we're hooked into uk ops and some of us (not me - I need to prove myself first and do trial by burning knives or some shit) have connections with global ops.

Game is a perfect fit for me. I'm a video game geek but I like being outdoors and now they've turned outdoors into the map for a video game. I'm already having wet dreams about where this is headed once the Visor display platform matures a bit.

You seen Clandestine Anomaly?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Defo a group game. We've got a pretty good setup here in forth valley. Three 8's on my manor, keeping it blue, 5 guys across the river in alloa and a couple in stirling. The local toads are alright as well but only one of them is worth a fuck on comms and he's been away on holiday for the last fortnight. Further afield we've got good connections in Glasgow and Edinburgh and one of our team makes regular visits to perth and inverness so we're hooked into uk ops and some of us (not me - I need to prove myself first and do trial by burning knives or some shit) have connections with global ops.

Game is a perfect fit for me. I'm a video game geek but I like being outdoors and now they've turned outdoors into the map for a video game. I'm already having wet dreams about where this is headed once the Visor display platform matures a bit.

You seen Clandestine Anomaly?

No but I want it. Want want want.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Not sure I really fancy waving my phone about trying to see what's going on but once hololense or magic leap release 2nd or 3rd generation wearables, this is the kind of shit I'll be playing. Every time I think about that I have a spontaneous nerd-gasm 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Not sure I really fancy waving my phone about trying to see what's going on but once hololense or magic leap release 2nd or 3rd generation wearables, this is the kind of shit I'll be playing. Every time I think about that I have a spontaneous nerd-gasm 

I've been playing it today and so far, it's pretty good. But then again, I have no problem with looking like a complete fool in public.

[P3nT4gR4m]

My default is looking like a complete fool in public or in private but it's the limitedness I'm against. Even MS 1st gen hololense aint going to cut it, with what amounts to a small screen sized window in the middle of your field of view. I want my digital imagery seamlessly overlaid on my IRL, 20/20 or GTFO.

I'd rather wait 5-10 years than make do with a half assed solution right now. I was like that with laptops and I was like that with mobiles. I'll make an exception with Oculus VR cos I've tried the prototype and it's good enough. 1st quarter 2016 is when I drop of the face of the earth for a couple of months

[Junkenstein]

Is google glass still a thing? Because it looks like the kind of thing that would be perfectly suited for it.

I'm actually surprised there isn't a range of peripherals yet. I would have thought Nintendo or some-such had enough experience with the Wii/ancient light gun tech to try something innovative here.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Glass has been quietly promoted to standalone department in google, it was previously under x-labs experimental projects. After google acquired magic leap speculation is rife that glass 2.0 might be a lightfield display, in which case - holy fuck, prepare to be amazeballs! Meanwhile MS is launching hololense next year as an untethered unit (all the processing is onboard) but the display size is apparently pretty shit. Windows 10 has hololense support built in. Meta have been plodding away with regular community circlejerks and the like but, out of the three, it's looking more and more like they'll be arriving late to the party.

All in, 1st gen AR looks like it's going to be pretty shitty unless glass2/lightfield makes an appearance. As yet glass is in stealth with nothing but speculation on what they're releasing next.

[Junkenstein]

Glass has been quietly promoted to standalone department in google, it was previously under x-labs experimental projects. After google acquired magic leap speculation is rife that glass 2.0 might be a lightfield display, in which case - holy fuck, prepare to be amazeballs! Meanwhile MS is launching hololense next year as an untethered unit (all the processing is onboard) but the display size is apparently pretty shit. Windows 10 has hololense support built in. Meta have been plodding away with regular community circlejerks and the like but, out of the three, it's looking more and more like they'll be arriving late to the party.

All in, 1st gen AR looks like it's going to be pretty shitty unless glass2/lightfield makes an appearance. As yet glass is in stealth with nothing but speculation on what they're releasing next.

For a given level of shitty, perhaps. Either way it'll still be an impressive leap. It's within our lifetimes that Asteroids and Doom were considered the height of gaming entertainment. Even first gen tech here will be impressive, no matter how crippled or what the issues are. With another 10 years of open development it's going to fly.

For example, PC games went from this in 1994:



to this in 2011:


And that's not even a game that makes a huge point of selling point of graphics, really. Another 15 years or so and we'll probably be looking at a similar leap in quality for AR/VR.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Defo. the good thing with AR/VR is the starting point is already based on current gen GPU's, so gfx wise we're talking 1280p per eye, full pixel shading aniostropic dof whatever the fuckery. The GFX rendering quality is state of the art. Cracks appear around the viewing angle which, in first gen iteration, is somewhere around the 100-120^o mark. What this means is no peripheral vision, kinda like you're looking down a tube.

I've seen it. It's not pretty but, IMO, it's something I can live with. Same as I could live with 8 bit gfx back in manic miner days. The head tracking and the refresh are seamless. 90fps is enough to fool the clunky, 10 million year old gpu I have in my head. The billion year old reptilian modules are convinced they're actually there. I can have fun with this shit.

AR can wait. I dunno enough about how lightfield works other than - "something... something... it pings photons into your eyeballs exactly the same way IRL does..." so I dunno if it suffers from narrow FOV issues but I think it'll make more of a difference with AR because the effect is overlaid on 180^o eyeball-vision. So you're seeing picure in picture which is a lot harder to believe than a little tunnel vision.

As a replacement mobile display, coupled with a decent NLP assistant, I'll be an early adopter but I can't see me playing many games on it. Basically just save me the hassle of taking my mobile out my pocket.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My default is looking like a complete fool in public or in private but it's the limitedness I'm against. Even MS 1st gen hololense aint going to cut it, with what amounts to a small screen sized window in the middle of your field of view. I want my digital imagery seamlessly overlaid on my IRL, 20/20 or GTFO.

I'd rather wait 5-10 years than make do with a half assed solution right now. I was like that with laptops and I was like that with mobiles. I'll make an exception with Oculus VR cos I've tried the prototype and it's good enough. 1st quarter 2016 is when I drop of the face of the earth for a couple of months

It's not really an either-or. I want to play fun games that have me running around outside now AND in 5-10 years.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not really a gearhead, I'll take whatever's available.

[P3nT4gR4m]

My default is looking like a complete fool in public or in private but it's the limitedness I'm against. Even MS 1st gen hololense aint going to cut it, with what amounts to a small screen sized window in the middle of your field of view. I want my digital imagery seamlessly overlaid on my IRL, 20/20 or GTFO.

I'd rather wait 5-10 years than make do with a half assed solution right now. I was like that with laptops and I was like that with mobiles. I'll make an exception with Oculus VR cos I've tried the prototype and it's good enough. 1st quarter 2016 is when I drop of the face of the earth for a couple of months

It's not really an either-or. I want to play fun games that have me running around outside now AND in 5-10 years.

Defo. I'm just as happy playing with older, more mature platforms while the new stuff is going through it's clunky/crappy phase. Something like Ingress but with some decent combat mechanics and base management would suit me fine in the short term. The non-ar bits of that Clandestine vid look great I could just do without the whole half arsed Ar display part.

[Edward Longpork]

We're starting to see actual VR centers open up using a similar model to laser tag - play a video game with your whole body. Get the gamer off the couch and into a social setting.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Last night's shenanigans. Operation: Dougie's Double Trouble. 9 layers, 3 covering Glasgow and 6 over Edinburgh. 5,716,888MU, two platinum illuminator badges. 20 agents. Biggest op I've been involved in yet. Totally stoked we got it done!