designed_reality Brian Mullins, Mike French, Nick Sherman

After a brief hiatus, Brian and Nick are back in the studio ready to drop another design principle (“Everything is malleable”) and talk about all that’s happened so far in 2019. They start with the circle of life of AR companies going under (Meta, ODG, Blippar) and the emergence of some new ones beginning to make waves (nReal). Then they talk about the shift towards enterprise as evidenced by what was seen at a fairly lackluster CES 2019 and companies putting AR onto hard hats (Trimble, Mira). Oh, and they dive deep into what they know about the Hololens v2.

After briefly recounting their experiences at TechCrunch Disrupt ’18 SF and a new micro-amusement park called Two Bit Circus, hosts Brian Mullins and Nick Sherman explore this week’s design principle as they unbox and experience a Magic Leap One: Creator Edition.  Nick loves the 3d sound of the device and compares it to the binaural nature sound recordings profiled in his documentary about Gordon Hempton while Brian comments that “sound is haptic feedback for your emotion.” After a helpful description of the difference between tracking and mapping, Brian delights in showing Nick what happens when he stands in front of his AR menus.  They briefly discuss the 80’s hit by Aha, Take On Me, and the role it might play in an upcoming release by Magic Leap.  They don’t do drugs while experiencing Tonandi, but they do take the headset outside to see how it performs in direct sunlight.  Finally, they discuss Palmer Luckey’s and others’ negative reviews of the device and why it’s important to focus on experience instead of technology.

We reveal another Design Principle and explain it by taking the listener through the history of augmented reality as seen in the movies. Along the way, we discuss why the famous scene in Minority Report isn't AR but if it were it would have have benefitted from micro gestures. We celebrate Iron Man's amazing HUD and discuss why cognitive load might be a factor if it were ever used by a normal person. We look for the first example of AR in cinematic history, and find it in an almost forgotten cartoon from the 50's. Then we take a look at Kingsmen and Brian tells us how color affects Field of View. Then Mike introduces Creative Control and we explain why accurate representations of Field of View are nearly impossible to do in the movies. Finally, Nick gets film-schooly and talks about what he means when he refers to a 3rd Person POV shot. We also talk about The Bionic Man, Robocop, They Live, and Black Mirror.

After playing a few of their favorite VR games (Bit Slap and Beat Saber), the hosts discuss how today's VR can help us improve as human beings either by helping us enter into flow states faster, learn new skills, or to cultivate empathy for others. They reveal another Design Principle and describe how and why great AR creates something that couldn't be any other way. They discuss what they love about an app called Element 4D and get philosophical about the value of AR gold and a new form of immersive narrative storytelling that hasn't quite emerged yet.

The hosts discuss a range of topics including what they liked best about Augmented World Expo 2018 (AWE 2018), why people are starting to refer everything as XR (and what the "X" stands for), what's so cool about Lucas Rizzotto's VR experience "Where Thoughts Go", and the latest news from Google about ARCore's new image tracking capabilities. Oh, and they reveal yet another mind-blowing Design Principle.

In this inaugural episode of the Designed Reality podcast, Brian Mullins and Mike French explain why now is a critical moment in the development and implementation of augmented reality and other mixed realities. They also reveal a list of design principles that they've distilled from 10+ years of developing applications for AR. Finally, they discuss some of the exciting news coming out of Google I/O 2018, including the addition of picture recognition and shared AR anchors to ARCore.