New World Notes

Watch: Epic BattleBots Duel, Fire-Breathing Slapbox vs. SL Fave Sharko!

In case you missed it last week, here's the Discovery Channel's BattleBots fight between SlapBox and Sharko, prototyped in Second Life by Artorius Constantine, owner of SL's Nano Station Technologies store.  Sent to us via BattleBots super-fan Devin Vaughn, it is almost more brutal and merciless as a major fashion drop in SL, which is saying something.

"Overall that was one of the best episodes of BattleBots I have seen in a long time," Devin reports. "Good even matches, much spark and explosions! Sharko had a good match against a rookie bot SlapBox, and a crazy moment: Shark bites down good, but then SlapBox lifted the entire shark, all 250 pounds was lifted into the air, totally inverted and shot flames down the mouth of poor Sharko who refused to let go. Wow."

Watch above to see what happens next! As to why it happened, Constantine and his crew have a good post-mortem in Reddit's /BattleBots community: 

Watch: Light Show in Virtual Club Synced to Light Show in Real Life Club

This is a crazy cool project that links up the lighting system in a real life venue (San Francisco's venerable DNA Lounge, in this case) to the lighting system in a virtual world. As creator James Baicoianu explains:

Controlling lights in a WebXR night club using Chamsys MagicQ, a professional lighting control suite. This lets us configure a full digital twin of the real-life night club, where the light show running in the virtual world is driven by the same controller as [the real world club], and thus synced.

It's the brainchild of James Baicoianu, formerly lead engineer for the late-lamented WebXR metaverse startup called Janus VR, who tells me the system can probably work with non-WebXR worlds. As James explains to me:

How to Turn Your Apartment Into a 1:1 Mirror World for Oculus Quest

Wanted to try out @GregMadison 's recreating apartment in VR idea. This is a photogrammetry scan of my living room running and aligned on the Oculus Quest. #screenshotsaturday #madewithunity

I have to say, specially with hand tracking on, it is an amazing feeling. pic.twitter.com/blKcXVNPgm

— Shahriar Shahrabi (@IRCSS) February 22, 2020

Inspired by Greg Madison's recent demo, Shahriar Shahrabi, a developer at photogrammetry startup realities.io, created this seriously impressive mirror world of his apartment for Oculus Quest perfectly lined up his apartment in real life. Built in Unity, it's actually difficult at first glance to tell which is reality and which is virtual. On his twitter, Shahriar goes into much more step by step depth on how he created it:

Why Linden Lab's Beloved Community Manager Joined Mixed Reality Startup Ubiquity6

What you're looking at above is a demo of Display.Land, a mixed reality app from San Francisco-based startup Ubiquity 6, which just hired a new Community Lead: The tech worker formerly known "Xiola Linden", who was Linden Lab's much-loved Community Manager for many years. Just settling into her new office now, Xiola sees much possibility to create unique varieties of virtual social experiences with this technology:

 

"In my experiences with the communities I've had the opportunity to work with," as she puts it to me, "I've talked to a lot of creators who have explained to me the pain points of doing photogrammetry the old way. Seeing how the Displayland app can create a 3D representation of physical spaces and items with the use of a smartphone is so exciting to me.

 

"I think about the possibilities for social experiences within those spaces and I get a little giddy. When I saw the demo [above], I was struck by the idea that artists and professionals can revitalize their workflows with this app. When I got to play with the app, I started to think about what it could mean for creative and creator communities. You can already export your captures from Display.land as a 3D model and use them in compatible 3D software -- which is very exciting for creators of all levels.

 

"Now I am obsessed with the idea of capturing vignettes of my life and how amazing it will be to experience those memories in a three dimensional way... I've already seen some community people from SL checking it out -- which is such a delight to me. I'm really looking forward to so much to come!"

 

Speaking of which, she sees much overlap between the corporate culture of Linden Lab and this much younger startup:

 

Holiday Gift Idea: Real Life Fashion & Housewares Created By Eshi Otawara, Inspired by Her Second Life Fashion

This glorious scarf looks like an ideal gift for New World Notes readers for the holidays, because it has a great backstory: It's created by Eshi Otawara, a legendary Second Life fashion designer whose famed fish hook dress we were just discussing, based on her original SL design. She sold the SL dress in a Relay for Life fundraiser for a $1700 donation, but the scarf version is just $25 and change. (Pic below.)

This glorious yellow scarf is also available, based on her Aria Pompadour ensemble -- SL pic also below. It's also available as a throw blanket, a wall tapestry, and beyond.

This line of items reflects not just her acclaimed artistry in Second Life, but her current work in the real world fashion industry:

Watch: Real World Location Virtually Recreated to Scale in Minutes

This is a pretty impressive tech demonstration from 6D.AI, a startup that's creating a 3D mirror world of real life from the input of standard smartphones.

"Building a 3D model of the world means fusing crowdsourced scans into huge models and here's a demo of that in action," 6D CEO Matt Miesnieks explains. "The model is a SLAM map, it improves [with] every scan and map coordinates are real world coordinates." In this particular demo, he goes on, "The ~5000 square foot space took 3 minutes for 4 people to scan.... these are regular phones, no depth cameras involved. Scans can be from one phone doing partial scans over many days, or lots of people scanning at once. The fused model will figure itself out and assemble based on any new scan that overlaps a previous scanned area."

The implications are pretty amazing and open-ended: This potentially means that, say, a whole city block could be slurped up and imported into a virtual world/MMO in a matter of days or weeks. And if the smartphone capture works as well as presented, the potential is far more staggering:

Watch: Piloting A Drone in Real Life While in Virtual Reality

This latest mixed reality demo from Toronto's mix reality mad scientist Lee Vermeulen is an update from a recent one from June: He is flying a Tello drone with a Unity-based controller that is hooked up to his Vive VR headset and Knuckles hand controllers. So the inset video you see is the stream from the drone's camera. This time, however, the heads-up display which shows what the drone is seeing is transparent -- that way, you can still pilot the drone even when the HUD display used to navigate seems to temporarily block the drone in real life.

Oddly enough, this really feels like a killer app for VR/AR headsets. To the extent that drones have multiple killer apps (and they do), they need a way to be controlled with a high degree of precision. And what better way to do that than being able to see what the drone is seeing (so to speak) while also able to see what the drone pilot is seeing?

Watch: Creating and Sculpting Physics-Enabled Objects in AR/VR

Creating and interacting with physics-enabled objects that seem to exist in the real world -- another dazzling feature to Modbox, a multiplayer sandbox game from Toronto developer Lee Vermeulen, who's rigged his Vive VR headset to display an AR experience. (Read all the details on his blog.) 

"This 'Hull Brush' idea was added to TiltBrush by Jeremy Cowles back in July 2018," he explains. "Pretty brilliant way to sculpt 'game ready' assets! Low performance cost and creates low poly objects with convex physics (which also means easy shattering in Modbox).

Watch: Piloting a Drone With a VR Rig While Still Seeing the Drone in AR

This latest brain-expanding mixed reality hack from Toronto developer Lee Vermeulen is a bit difficult to process visually, but it's basically this: He is flying a Tello drone with a Unity-based controller that is hooked up to his Vive VR headset and Knuckles hand controllers. So the inset video you see is the stream from the drone's camera.

However, he's not navigating the drone completely through the VR headset, because he has its AR passthrough function enabled. That way, he can still see the drone in real life while also seeing through the drone's video camera:

Watch: Modbox Sandbox Game Includes Mind-Bending "Mirror World" Mixed Reality Feature

This demo video makes my brain slightly melt:

This was created in the latest update to Modbox, a multiplayer sandbox game from Toronto developer Lee Vermeulen. This particular demo uses a ZedMini camera with an HTC-Vive set-up, and while it may seem like a massive leap to incorporate a mirror's reflection into an augmented reality experience, so that real objects seem to move back and forth into a "mirror world", Lee tells me it's available as a default feature for Modbox: "Literally no special programming /setup at all. I am hoping within the next 2 months the update will be out."

And yes, this is the same platform that makes The Abyss/Terminator 2-style fluid physics possible in VR. More about Modbox on the homepage and on its Steam page. The feature list is insanely robust and exciting: