Sounds really interesting - post it on HN whenever you publish?
I like the idea of VR/AR user interfaces where light rays bend interactively according to controller/gaze position. So for example by looking at the edge of an object the light rays bend so you see behind it. Or by looking off into the horizon the entire landscape folds over like in these photos. Possibly vomit-inducing and useless, but I still want to try it.
our taxes are much higher meaning people and companies have less disposable income - more money is in the public sector rather than the private sector. Structural is the way our society is set up, there are lots of public services so people rely on that more than on personal savings. We don't have as many venture capitalists as America, we don't have the same number of startups, the wealth in our nation is tied up in the hands of a few large corporations rather than spread out among many businesses.
Our taxes aren't that high compared to some states. California's are definitely higher. Toronto's housing market is stupid though. Would be better off in Waterloo, or Ottawa
For non-games I agree. I'm working on a VR design tool and I've given myself the constraint that user are sitting in a swivel chair with elbows on armrests most of the time. I'm hoping that it'll give enough room to do interesting stuff without straying too far from keyboard-level laziness.
For games, I've been playing VR archery since I got the Vive almost a year ago and I still love it. It is tiring but so are traditional sports and people do those.
A lot of us are working on 3D interfaces for design tools, but the difficult part seems to be making it bearable for longer sessions (hours). Some examples:
"The final thing I’ll say is that government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with.
So sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences -- setting aside my Syria and Yemen portfolio -- then I think those suggestions are terrific. (Laughter and applause.) That's not, by the way, to say that there aren't huge efficiencies and improvements that have to be made.
But the reason I say this is sometimes we get, I think, in the scientific community, the tech community, the entrepreneurial community, the sense of we just have to blow up the system, or create this parallel society and culture because government is inherently wrecked. No, it's not inherently wrecked; it's just government has to care for, for example, veterans who come home. That's not on your balance sheet, that's on our collective balance sheet, because we have a sacred duty to take care of those veterans. And that's hard and it's messy, and we're building up legacy systems that we can't just blow up."
UX and UI before that was a thing - it was one of the best software packages to use, but was 20 years ahead of its time...
Context -
You could keep the same view of your model - but you could swap between tools (the way you interacted with the model - and all your menus etc on either side by hitting the F keys.. it allowed super fluidity. Then they had nurbs and clay and all sorts or stuff... what killed them was that MAYA was better at rendering (I THINK, i may be wrong - its an old code sir, but I think it checks out))
Just to clarify, Alan is only 'running CDG' insofar as he is supporting and representing it as a sister lab to VPRI. The various research groups there are completely autonomous and as far as I can tell not publicly identified.
A lot of the news coverage is claiming that he had a role in recruiting specific people to CDG, and even names some of them (eg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-29/sap-looks-... ), which would be more than just lending his support even if he's not really running the place. I certainly can't confirm if that's accurate though.
There seem to be two CDG branches: LA with Alex Warth (Jonathan Edwards also), and Bay Area with Bret Victor (Toby is also there). They are both doing really good work.
