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If you loved Andy Weir’s The Martian, let me tell you it’s 10 years since publication.

Even better, Andy Weir wrote a “lost chapter” for the book that you can read here.

Via Kottke

I find it interesting that the CEO of Meta/Facebook is reviewing the device of the competition in a public way. I mean, would you ever see Tim Cook reviewing the Meta Quest 3?

And the video is quite good.

The final conclusion is that Meta Quest 3 is on par with the Vision Pro if you take the price and intended purpose into consideration. I didn’t yet test the Apple Vision Pro, but I can imagine based on the reviews I’ve seen that Zuck is not that far off course.

Anyway, here it is, on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)

In 2012 I started a gaming company called MavenHut. It was making Facebook canvas games. About 2 years after we started we needed to change platforms to mobile because Facebook games were dying.

Well, there’s a chance mobile gaming will similarly die as well:

I believe that mobile games could be facing the same deliberate death-by-a-platform as games Facebook suffered a decade ago. We’re like frogs being slowly boiled alive. The temperature is gradually increasing due to all the privacy changes. But the changes are happening relatively slowly. So, we’re not jumping out of the water to save ourselves from impending death.

This is a really good article at Deconstructor of Fun.

I feel that crossplay mobile/MR will be the way to monetize free-to-play games and increase distribution on the Mixed Reality platforms.

Niantic and Meta partnered to fund three multiplayer mixed reality demo games that run in the browser and support both Quest 3 and mobile.

The demos were built over a ten week period using Niantic’s 8th Wall web-based AR engine, which has a fully in-browser editor and offers cloud hosting for built projects. Niantic is the company behind smartphone AR games like Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

The condition of the funding for the three teams was that their projects use 8th Wall’s multiplayer module, which can enable cross-play between headsets and traditional mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

More here.

I recently found out that if you use Cloudflare, you can do a domain redirect with them, rather than needing to create a blank website with a 301 rule in Apache or something similar.

So here it is (as much for anyone that needs as for me when I surely will forget about it):

The documentation is here with more examples.

Here’s the rule I used to redirect the old “.ro” domain to this one:

This is as big as it can be. While a duopoly between Meta and Apple on headsets wouldn’t be the best in the world, this still opens up the industry. Hopefully Google will come on board as well.

First, the company said that it will make the operating system behind the Meta Quest headsets, Meta Horizon OS, available to other companies to create third-party hardware.

It already has a handful of partners on board to make headsets, with ASUS Republic of Gamers creating “an all-new performance gaming headset,” while Lenovo designs one optimized for productivity and entertainment.

Meta also said it will create a limited-edition Meta Quest headset “inspired by Xbox,” and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested in an Instagram post that one could make a VR headset bundled with an Xbox controller and Game Pass so players could play on a virtual big screen TV wherever they happened to be.

From here.

We’ve already seen this trend in video gaming, where co-op games are becoming more popular. I mean, It Takes Two is one of the best games I’ve played in the last few years and one of the reasons for that is that I played it along with my wife.

I learned recently that Scrabble has a co-op version now (called “Together”) and I want to play it. We love Scrabble in our home and it sometimes gets a little bit too competitive.

Ray Adler, vice-president and global head of games at Mattel, said: “Scrabble has truly stood the test of time as one of the most popular board games in history, and we want to ensure the game continues to be inclusive for all players. For anyone who’s ever thought ‘word games aren’t for me’, or felt a little intimidated by the classic game, Scrabble Together mode is an ideal option.”

Adler said the game still allows players to celebrate the “wonder of words” but also “brings people together”.

Brett Smitheram, 2016 world Scrabble champion, said the new game “speaks to a trend in younger people who want to avoid competitive games and sense of losing, instead favouring teamwork and collaboration working towards a fun goal together”.

While I still like competitive games, I found myself more open and drawn to co-op games lately, games where I can take the time to chat with friends and enjoying a slower pace.

Source: The Guardian

I have to say I don’t know what to make of this (article here):

Tim Cook just officially announced that more than half of Fortune 100 companies have bought at least one Apple Vision Pro headset.

Also, this:

“We see Apple Vision Pro as a tremendous value-add that will improve our fleet availability and operations,

Training our employees with spatial computing will lead to fewer costly errors because the most current information they need to do their job is there in front of them as they perform the task. This means we not only get vastly more efficient in our work, but also provide a better work environment for our employees to succeed.”

– Bob Tulleken, KLM’s vice president of Operations Decision Support

I mean, I can understand using VR in training, but I don’t see the specific value Vision Pro is bringing to the table. Maybe the training apps require a lot of processing power? But wouldn’t that make a PC and PC VR the better tool?

I mean… I’m as happy as anybody can be that more people use the Vision Pro, I just can’t see how sustainable is the business adoption of the device (especially at this price level).

Or maybe some Fortune 100 companies know more than we do and they expect a cheaper Vision sooner than we thought?

I wanted to buy an iPad Pro 11′ with OLED screen for a long time. The only issue? Until today there was none.

But starting today, the iPad Pro line has OLED screens across both devices.

Adding in the mix the new M4 processor, this iPad will be used 5-7 years from now as well. Seeing that now I still use a 2018 iPad Pro, it wouldn’t surprise me, frankly.

Other things announced today:

• iPad Air 13′
• Apple Pencil Pro
• camera on the long side of the device

There are other things you might be interested in, including Final Cut Pro changes, but the above are the things I care the most about.

I’m pretty bullish on Mixed Reality being the future of computing and how we’ll interact with our devices in future (including our phone). I’m not just saying, as you might see soon enough…

A friend showed me A16Z’s newsletter with the 5 VR trends they noticed. A16Z also considered crypto the tech of the future and it didn’t pan out (yet), so you shouldn’t believe everything they say. But I’m convinced there’s something happening in the eXtended Reality space.

Here are the trends they mention and my opinion on them:

1. Both Hardware and Software Will Become More Inviting

I agree with this. I think we’ll have glasses soon enough (3-5 years) . Even if it’s a device connected to your phone (like an Apple Watch). The battery is the biggest issue so you can’t put all the processing power in glasses for the moment.

2. The Roblox Generation Is Coming

The friend that sent me the link to this article asked me recently what should his kid use to learn coding. And I suggested Roblox. Coding, marketing, sales, you have it all. The “kids” that learned to code there are coming to every other platforms soon. With an attached audience as well. Will they come to XR? I think it’s easier for them to go to mobile devices and PC, rather than headsets, but we’ll see.

3. Smaller, Faster Devs Will Break New Ground

Oh, do I believe this? Yes, yes I do. A lot!

4. More Cross-Platform Experiences

Some games on the headsets already allow some crossplay with mobile phones. We’ll see more cross-platform development for sure.

5. VR is here to stay

If we consider VR being Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality as well, I agree.

But if you think of VR as the experience where it replaces your environment completely, I don’t think it’s gonna flourish to the level of a computing device. For that, you need the Mixed Reality devices (like Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro).