Cardboard and Continuation of Learning

My Google Cardboard arrived about a week ago. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I'm not sure what I was expecting in the first place, and it wasn't any better or worse than whatever that was. It looks a little like a high-tech ViewMaster toy, and it's clear that it's just a proof of concept and not a consumer device, but it definitely does its job. I've also found some software that may make it compatible with the Unity graphics framework and Durovis Dive (a similar device) SDK. I think I can work with this. Other than that, I worked on the counselor recommendation survey and learning more about Android.

Such a Wide World

I am sure that I have mentioned before in one of my longer posts how wide a world the world of computer science is. Now, I am getting a first-hand look at just how wide it is. I researched the different virtual reality solutions on the consumer and developer markets this weekend, because actually getting my hands on a device would be essential to developing real VR and AR applications. In the end, I ordered a Google Cardboard, a "device" that is intended to work with any appropriately-sized Android smartphone. Essentially, as its name implies, it is a cardboard frame that contains a slot for an Android and some Velcro to hold it shut, an NFC (Near-Field Communications) chip to tell the phone when it is placed inside the Cardboard, a ring magnet to act as input when the touchscreen is inaccessible, and, most importantly, a pair of simple glass lenses. Paired with the Google Cardboard Android app, a Cardboard allows the user to watch YouTube, explore Google Earth and Google Maps Street View, and enjoy a host of small miscellaneous demos in immersive VR. Best of all, Google Cardboard only $20-35 on Amazon, while most more dedicated VR devices, like Oculus Rift, Sony's Project Morpheus (not even released to outside developers yet), and the Durovis Dive (which works on the same principle as Google Cardboard, but is made with higher-quality materials) range anywhere from $150 to $500. Later on in my project, I may upgrade to one of these more professional options, but for now I am entertaining high hopes for my budget solution.

Lastly, applications for Google Cardboard (much like Android applications) are developed primarily in Java, a programming language with which I am already familiar, and the Java-based SDK used to develop for Cardboard is publicly available. I suddenly find myself needing to finish learning how to develop Android applications, and that is what I worked on today.

Counselor Visit

Ms. Marberry, our school counselor, visited today to give a long talk on college applications and college decisions that lasted most of the period. As usual, it was both edifying and reassuring. Thanks, Ms. Marberry! I worked the short remainder of the period to learn to write JavaScript, which will complete my knowledge of the Holy Trinity of Web Programming (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.)

Invisibility

A quote on which my senior thesis may draw considerably:

When technology reaches that level of invisibility in our lives, that’s our ultimate goal. It vanishes into our lives. It says: ‘you don’t have to do the work, I’ll do the work.'

- Astro Teller, head of Google X

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/06/googlex-head-of-moonshots-astro-teller-technology-should-make-you-feel-more-human-not-less-human/

Humble and Scattered Beginnings

Casual Introduction:

I have always loved technology and its applications, and have always been an avid reader, gamer, and fantasy/sci-fi geek. Finding escape in worlds other than the real one is the basis of most of my favorite pastimes, so of course when I heard of the Oculus Rift and its promise to make those fictional world, where I sometimes felt just as much at home as in the real world, visible not only to my mind's eye but to my physical eyes as well, I was captivated.

Knowing that the field of virtual reality allows one to mesh imagination with reality, I could go on and on about virtual reality games and their future as the world's only gaming medium, but that would end up as nothing but a summarization of other people's research in my voice. No, for my senior thesis I wanted to do something (at least relatively) new. Architecture, another lifelong passion of mine, and virtual/augmented reality are a winning combination that has not, in my opinion, received enough attention. My senior thesis will focus on the impact that VR/AR technologies will have on the architectural design process and architectural designs themselves as VR/AR technologies enter the commercial (and eventually the consumer) mainstream.


Dramatic Introduction to Virtual Reality:

In these times, the world of technology is a world of literally infinite possibilities. Technology has advanced to the point that we can create whole worlds out of zeroes and ones, worlds that, soon enough, we will find difficult to distinguish from the real one by the believability of graphics alone.

Emerging virtual reality technologies are much like good books in their capacities to transport us to completely imaginary worlds, but are polar opposites to their ancestors of paper and ink in the way that they go about it. The words in a book are symbolic representations of settings and concepts, of sensory input, that are in turn interpreted and given meaning only in the reader's mind. However, a true virtual reality is just as its name suggests. True virtual realities are worlds in which a person can be directly immersed, not through the use of his imagination and his skills of interpretation, but with his physical senses. They are worlds that are said to be imaginary but that can actually be seen. Virtual reality technologies are in a nutshell the best demonstration since the invention of the written word that human creativity cannot be bound by a physical world.