Augmented reality 📲

Ever since Pokemon Go, AR seems to have worked its way into the “parlance of our time“. Truth be told we’ve actually had loads of examples of AR apps for years now, just not combined with a cultural phenomenon like Pokemon.

I think it’s fair to say it’s highly likely there’s about to be a bit of an explosion in AR apps, at least on iOS. With the release of ARkit to developers and very impressive demos from both Weta and Apple on what can be done, it’s not difficult to imagine a new wave of apps in the works from third party developers.

In fact just oneish week out from ARkit’s beta release, developers are already starting to show some impressive progress playing with the tech. Take a look:

 

 

 

 

Git ⬆️

Git Logo
Since I

‘m learning VR it seemed a good idea to finally learn Git properly. In the past, I’d used GitHub just to play around with git conceptually. I liked it, but couldn’t really justify a paid account for private repos.

Over the past few days I’ve learned a few important things to know when you’re first getting started with Git:

  1. I’d noticed on the Udacity VR slack channel other students mentioning an alternative service called GitLab. The key feature here is private repos as part of the free account. So if you’re like me and just use git for personal use/education, take a look at GitLab.
  2. You don’t have to know the command line to use Git. There are plenty of desktop Git clients, many of them free, for all your versioning needs.
  3. There’s a couple of files to add to your repo early on. .gitignore to exclude files and .gitattributes to list off file types to store in Git LFS. As I said it pays to do this early on in a repos life. The effects of these two files only apply from the time the files are added to the repo.
  4. If you’re looking for inspiration for what to put into .gitignore, consider searching for common uses for the types of work you’re doing. For example in my case, Unity 3D projects create plenty of files on load or at runtime. So a common .gitignore for unity 3d projects would look something like this:
# =============== #
# Unity generated #
# =============== #
[Tt]emp/
[Oo]bj/
[Bb]uild
/[Bb]uilds/
/[Ll]ibrary/
sysinfo.txt
*.stackdump
/Assets/AssetStoreTools*
*.apk
*.unitypackage
 
# ===================================== #
# Visual Studio / MonoDevelop generated #
# ===================================== #
[Ee]xported[Oo]bj/
.vs/
/*.userprefs
/*.csproj
/*.pidb
*.pidb.meta
/*.suo
/*.sln*
/*.user
/*.unityproj
/*.booproj
.consulo/
/*.tmp
/*.svd
 
# ============ #
# OS generated #
# ============#

.DS_Store*
._*
.Spotlight-V100
.Trashes
Icon?
ehthumbs.db
[Tt]humbs.db
[Dd]esktop.ini
Corridor/Library/ShaderCache/
Corridor/Library/metadata/

I ❤️ VR

I’ve been studying VR development for a few months now. As I advance in the course I’m having to choose a specialisation. I’m more interested in high immersion VR, like the stuff seen in the below video. Unfortunately, the cost of a VR setup is around $5k, which is quite prohibitive.
One of the challenges of online study over a more traditional on-campus model is having access to gear. Lucky for me I’ve managed to get some loaner hardware from my local public library. I couldn’t be more grateful as I couldn’t do this without their support. More on this later.

Siri 🤖

I’ve just been reading this really interesting post on the possibility of a vastly improved Siri.

It’s funny how even Apple fans get into a panic whenever a competitor brings out something fancy. I don’t see much value in speculating on this stuff. Apple has never been open about their plans. It’s better to complain about public things that are actually weak (I’m looking at you iCloud), not stuff that might be going wrong, maybe, someday.

I’m hoping some cool stuff is in the pipeline. As much as I worry at times Apple might be dropping the ball, for the most part, they’ve not let anyone down in recent history.

I’m excited at the possibilities of WWDC 2016, but I also seriously doubt anyone’s socks will be blown off… unless Siraacusa gets his filesystem of course.