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Studying Narratives in Small Spaces, Part 3: Conversations
At the Augmented & Virtual Reality roundtables at GDC 2015, there was consensus that moving a player through space made them uneasy. While in the future, I’m sure we’ll discover interesting tricks to ease the transition, what if we aren’t worried about that, and instead an entire interactive narrative experience happens in a single space?…
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Books Read 2017
The absolute coolest book I read this year was Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky ________ Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Jan 12, 2017 Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke – Jan 27, 2017 The New Bottoming Book – Dossie Easton & Janet W Hardy – Feb 14, 2017…
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Wonderful Projects I Did With Microsoft’s Kinect
RIP the Kinect. Literally changed the direction of my research/career/life/art. Gave it more DEPTH. — Dustin Freeman🚁LAX (@dustinfreeman) October 25, 2017 Microsoft has ceased manufacturing the Kinect. Here’s some projects, art and research, academic and industrial, that I could only have done with the Kinect. The Role of Physical Controllers in Motion Video Gaming, 2011:…
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Nomadic Immersive Digital Experience Creator Kit
15″ 2015 Macbook Pro (the last one before USB-C) 2x lighting cables. Second one is 2 metres long; helpful for AR debugging. Wired mouse (helpful for 3d modelling or level design work Various chargers, including a battery charger 3D printed phone stand (critical for AR work, thanks @philnelson) Bridge HMD + Structure Sensor + Charger…
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Immersive Theatre Roundup: D&D Yoga
Yesterday, I saw/experienced the show “D&D Yoga”, in the Toronto Fringe Festival. This is a literal combination these two things, which worked in some surprising ways, didn’t work in some surprising ways. It is a yoga class, run by a real-life yoga instructor Christine Desrochers, during which you go on an actual Dungeons and Dragons…
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Splitting a big, single-page pdf into print-size pages
Context: I’m currently putting together a grant application. This means I need to get together documentation and press for what I’ve done. I need to submit this all on printed physical paper. URLs or pdf files by themselves are not enough. I’m on macOS. Normally, you can just print a webpage to pdf from the…
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Git LFS Sucks the Least: Prototyping and Version Control with Large Binary Assets
Here’s a story of my struggles with version control at Raktor as I push it to the limit for a variety projects in the Unity engine. Pour a drink and commiserate with me. I love git. My background is in handling large, complex codebases that go all the way down to the metal, so distributed…
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State of Virtual Reality Venues in Toronto
For the last few years, I’ve been a “VR tech professional”, which means I have, on my desk, various pieces of Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality equipment. These will get cheaper, but at the moment are dubious buys for the average person. Despite companies’ best efforts, set-up is still a confusing pain. VR still has so many goddamn…
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Proposing the (Bill) Paxton Number
The Erdős Number measures how far you are from mathematician Paul Erdős via coauthoring academic papers*. The Bacon Number measures how far you are from actor Kevin Bacon via costarring in films. In honour of the late Bill Paxton, I now propose The Paxton Number. Bill Paxton has the totally-not-dubious honour of being killed, on…