Tag Archives: 3d

Thoughts on Meta Quest 3

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VR devices like the Meta Quest 3 are out of my priority zone right now, but I remain fascinated in the advances made with augmented/mixed reality over the last decade.

It took so much technology and so many price reductions, but now we’re so much closer to the Dennou Coil future. Some are now taking their Quest 3 headset outside and out of their homes, even to public places, risking being called “glassholes”, at least to test the limits of current mixed reality headsets.

(At the very least, Meta backed off of making heavy references to work/enterprise when launching the Quest 3, so this is likely to be more successful a device than the ill-fated Quest Pro.)

The Apple Vision Pro, when it comes out, will likely exceed the Quest 3 in polish and some technology features (I.e., the 12 cameras inside the Vision Pro). The one I look forward to the most is the “Spatial Video” format, or 3D semi-volumetric video which you can zoom in to see different angles and plays in a sort of foggy box at the edges. I’m seeing demos alleging comparative spatial video in Meta Quest 3, but it doesn’t exactly seem as apparent to me.

I’m still wondering exactly who, or which demographic, will likely afford a laptop-on-the-face like the Vision Pro, compared to the game-console-on-the-face that is the Quest 3. I guess we’ll find out.

Speech and thought bubbles in the 3D Web

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 I was thinking about the difference between synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication, and how synchronous communication has been successfully ported to fleshed-out, CGI-heavy "virtual worlds" like Second Life and IMVU (hence the oft-used descriptor "glorified chatroom" in regards to such virtual worlds).

Apparently, because of the enduring popularity and expanding capability of the World Wide Web, it isn’t likely that we’ll see a big move to a "3D Web" anytime soon, at least not in the way that we’ve seen such massive movements from text-driven mediums such as MU*s and (IRC, Yahoo, MSN, AIM) chat rooms to the modern-day virtual worlds. However, if synchronous text and voice chat have become mainstays of most active or ongoing MMOGs such as SL and WoW, then why is it that asynchronous communication – that which relies upon "boards" to contain persistent messages – has not been successfully reimagined in a 3D, CGI-heavy context? And what would a 3D Web look like?

I would think that the first measure to accomplish in the fleshout (or avatarization?) of asynchronous communication would be to flesh out the "pages" which are used to contain submitted information. Pages are text-centric documents, are presented as flat, 2D objects onto which information is appended, are encoded with a wide variety of strategically-placed visual cues (or "GUI elements") which allow for the web browser to perform just as wide of a variety of actions, and are accessed through devices which are best designed to interact with flat, 2D objects, i.e., keyboards and computer mice.

So a few ideas spring to mind:

  • Replace hyperlinked documents with hyperlinked speech bubbles/clouds
  • Augment text with 3D-native visual communication systems which drive any one person’s thoughts directly to the user without losing anything in translation or clarification.
  • Flesh the bubbles out into a 3D visualization
  • Design a variety of stationary or dynamic GUI elements which provide for smooth navigation between 3D speech bubbles.
  • Promote 3D-centric navigatory input devices

I think that Ted Nelson, the man behind the Xanadu project (also called "the longest running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry" by Wired magazine in 1996), might be right in his contention that Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s implementation of the WWW was a well-intentioned, much-too-document-centric oversimplification of his own ideas on hypertext. So perhaps a re-visualization of how we interact with asynchronous communication tools could lead to a translation of what we’ve placed into the 2D Web into a 3D structure that is much more fleshed-out and tangible.

I will think more about this idea for a 3D Web in the future.

SVG Transforms: Not competing with O3D

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Per this thread, Apple/WebKit’s SVG Transforms are NOT competing or in the same area of interest as O3D. Instead, SVG Transforms (which incorporates WebKit’s CSS 2D and 3D Transforms, CSS Transitions and CSS Animations) is meant to display and interact with flat pieces of web content (in this case, the traditionally-2D SVG) in 2.5D/3D space, while O3D and WebGL are meant to display fully 2.5D/3D *scene graphs* and *models* separately from any web content (even though both efforts are aiming for an in-browser user experience).

Interestingly, Maciej mentions that it would be possible to codify a means to join arbitrary (2D/3D) web content and arbitrary 3D models together, but that it may be "a bigger challenge than anything that anyone has done so far".

So if this same argument could also be applied to other related initiatives in both fields, from canvas(3D) to X3D, then I’m assuming that the next frontier for the 3D Web initiatives to cross is how to bridge the divide of perception between 3D and 2D in the same network-centric application. Certainly, the fact that most of us do not have 3D-ready navigation hardware (like the SpaceNavigator) is a core part of that dialogue over why the 3D Web initiatives are not scaling to better expectations of ease of use and accessibility (not to mention hardware acceleration of graphics).

So O3D or WebGL may have a future in the web browser (or at least a better one than VRML and X3D), but its not like we’re that much closer to bridging the gap between 3D web content and 3D scene content.

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Stereopsis is an effect that allows for the eyes + brain to perceive depth, and is utilized in an optical illusion that, when equipped with the right method of visual perception, allows for the viewer to perceive a sense of depth in an otherwise flat surface area.

Many methods have been devised since the 19th century to give off an illusion of depth in a media-dedicated flat surface area (a technique known as stereoscopy), ranging from "wiggle stereoscopy" to the manual side-by-side-so-cross-your-eyes stereoscopy to the iconic anaglyph image + polarized "red and blue" glasses.

Most recently, a few folks on YouTube took to demonstrating the combination of anaglyph imagery and polarized 3D glasses with MIT graduate Johnny Chung Lee’s WiiMote headtracking method (resulting in hundreds of demo videos on YouTube from inspired users) to demostrate how such a combination of anaglyph imagery with headtracking might work.

Sadly, I’m not convinced by the look of the videos. Plus, after thinking it through, I ‘ve started to think that it seems redundant to combine digital CGI anaglyphs with headtracking polarized glasses.

I mean, if you demonstrate Compiz Fusion with its Wiimote-recognition plugin for headtracking separately from Compiz Fusion with its anaglyph filter plugin for polarized glasses, you get a fairly stereoscopic view from either perception; in fact, the Wiimote plugin for headtracking seems to possess much further potential range depending upon the range of motion that the viewer has around the screen, while the Wiimote anaglyph plugin for polarized glasses gives the classic feel of being able to almost reach inside the imagery on the screen.

The drawbacks, therefore, may dedicate either method of perception to particular media and particular audiences:

  • the Wiimote headtracking method may be best for visual environments – preferably 2.5D – which concurrently allow for manipulation of the environment’s contents through interactive controls (like games)
  • the anaglyph method may be best for visual environments – namely 2D – which don’t allow for manipulation of the environment’s contents through interactive controls (like movies).

I’ll expand upon this a bit later, but here are the two demos posted to YouTube: