Skyrim VR and Oculus

I mentioned a while back that I received an Oculus for my birthday. So far, I have been very pleased. It took me a while to find a program that I would go to on a regular basis. That program is Skyrim VR. I played Skyrim a decade ago for a while, but since they released it in VR form, I’ve found it even more fascinating than the first time.

Skyrim VR is runs under StreamVR. I did finally shift from using the Oculus PC interface program to Virtual Desktop Streamer. This program greatly enhanced the reliability and the capabilities of the wireless interface to Oculus.

If you have never played Skyrim, it is a very large world:

A view of the map from a corner of Skyrim

The destinations do not show up on the map until you have visited them. So, you can see I have visited a few in this area.

A view going down a mine

The views outside can be spectacular — this is not one of them, but it does show that you can see far into the distance, until the fog obscures the view (in this case). These pictures were actually a bit difficult for me to take, since I had to remove the headset to see the keyboard and moving the headset shifts the view to a different perspective.

The Oculus itself

The one area that I have been disappointed in the programs available for the Oculus is in the area for free .STL display. I have yet to find a program that will take an STL file and show it in virtual reality. The best I have found is taking STL files over to OBJ file. I have found a few Open Source projects in the works, but not one that I’ve got working. Since I do quite a bit of 3D design, I thought it would be interesting to see it in a virtual world as well.

By the way, Facebook just announced that: “A Facebook account is no longer required to use Meta VR devices. Instead, you’ll need to set up a Meta account, which lets you log into your VR devices and view and manage your purchased apps in one place.” Considering how often Facebook accounts get hacked, I know I will be switching over to a more VR focused account soon.

Received an Oculus for my birthday

Though my birthday is still a few weeks out, it arrived. I have been playing around with virtual reality and augmented reality concepts for at least a decade and even have some patents in this space so it is probably time I had a VR headset I can play with on my own.

Oculus Quest 2

I have found some interesting free programs out there including Google Earth VR, which was surprisingly interesting to play with.

The only real issue I have come across is the complexities associated with running PC based games. Although the Oculus Quest 2 does have a totally wireless mode (airlink), I have found it a bit bug ridden – it is in beta. When connected with the PC it will work for a while, if I switch back to a headset driven program and then try to switch back to a PC one, it will lose track of the headset and I have had to reinstall to get it working again. StreamVR had its own set of issues as well. I have not seen that losing track of the headset behavior with a wired connection.

Overall, I have found it positive and entertaining. Now I need to find some useful software (that works) for looking at STL files… for it.

My son and daughter were here and though my daughter could play without any difficulty, my son started getting queasy after 15-20 minutes – and I didn’t even put them through any rollercoaster simulations which are rough to sit through.

I need to find an interesting project that would require me to write some code for this.

Six thoughts on mobility trends for 2018

Let’s face it, some aspects of mobility are getting long in the tooth. The demand for more capabilities is insatiable. Here are a few areas where I think 2018 will see some exciting capabilities develop. Many of these are not new, but their interactions and intersection should provide some interesting results and thoughts to include during your planning.

1. Further blurring and integration of IoT and mobile

We’re likely to see more situations where mobile recognizes the IoT devices around them to enhance contextual understanding for the user. We’ve seen some use of NFC and Bluetooth to share information, but approaches to embrace the environment and act upon the information available is still in its infancy. This year should provide some significant use cases and maturity.

2. Cloud Integration

By now most businesses have done much more than just stick their toe in the cloud Everything as a Service (XaaS) pool. As the number of potential devices in the mobility and IoT space expand, the flexibility and time to action that cloud solutions facilitate needs to be understood and put into practice. It is also time to take all the data coming in from these and transform that flow into true contextual understanding and action, also requiring a dynamic computing environment.

3. Augmented reality

With augmented reality predicted to expend to a market somewhere between $120 and $221 billion in revenues by 2021, we’re likely to see quite a bit of innovation in this space. The wide range of potential demonstrates the lack of a real understanding. 2018 should be a year where AR gets real.

4. Security

All discussions of mobility need to include security. Heck, the first month of 2018 has should have nailed the importance of security into the minds of anyone in the IT space. There were more patches (and patches of patches) on a greater range of systems than many would have believed possible just a short time ago. Recently, every mobile store (Apple, Android…) was found to have nefarious software that had to be exercised. Mobile developers need to be ever more vigilant, not just about the code they write but the libraries they use.

5. Predictive Analytics

Context is king and the use of analytics to increase the understanding of the situation and possible responses is going to continue to expand. As capabilities advance, only our imagination will hold this area back from increasing where and when mobile devices become useful. Unfortunately, the same can be said about the security issues that are based on using predictive analytics.

6. Changing business models

Peer to peer solutions continue to be the rage but with the capabilities listed above, whole new approaches to value generation are possible. There will always be early adopters who are willing to play with these and with the deeper understanding possibilities today new approaches to crossing the chasm will be demonstrated.

It should be an interesting year…

HaloLens – my interest is peaked

Augmented reality has always interested me and I finally got around to signing up for Microsoft’s HaloLens community. I used to do quite a bit of work with Microsoft (somewhere around here I have a crystal cube for the ‘lasting contributions’ to Visual Studio 2005) but I’ve not exercised those skills in a while – so HaloLens seemed like an ideal opportunity.

The hardware shown looks powerful and flexible. I’ll need to come up with some use cases that can exercise its capabilities. I am sure that somewhere between ham radio, data analytics, 3d printing and my other interests there must be something.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I’ll make it to a build event but hopefully I’ll get my hands on one somehow.