As if my reality wasn't mixed up enough already

When Google Glass first launched, I was excited. Despite the unfortunate (and, I think, unfair) stigma that became attached to Glass it felt like a first step to long awaited augmented and mixed reality devices. So I built a Glass app for KitchMe. And, being one of the first to launch, got my company some nice, pre-glasshole press. I spoke to Robert Scoble about it. Helped cook something for the WSJ. And then it was dead. And I was sad.

Then, suddenly we have a sudden explosion of VR / AR / Mixed Reality devices to play with. I picked up a copy of the Occulus Rift dev kit and played around with that. Tried out Google Cardboard and project Tango. Read whatever I could find on Magic Leap.

And now I'm monkeying around with HoloLens and I love it. It is what I had thought Glass would be, or might become. I have no opinion, as of yet, as to which devices, platforms, or paradigms will win... or if any of this first generation will. But I'm happy to get started with whatever is available.

To start, I went through the various Holographic Academy projects, downloaded the technical preview of Unity for HoloLens. Went through a bunch of free tutorials as well as some paid one's like this Make VR Games in Unity with C# - Cardboard, Gear VR, Oculus.

While not strictly necessary, I also downloaded and learned a bit about Blender. Picked up a Matter and Form 3d Scanner and learned how to make some, barely, competent scans.

For me, this was almost all entirely new. Which is to say it has been a lot of fun learning a whole range of new apps and skills. To go along with all of this I was listening to Tim Ferris interviewing Kevin Kelly and this comment struck me:

Right now there are no experts in VR, we have no idea how it will work – what content, equipment, consumer breakthrough, etc. So anyone has the chance NOW to become that future expert

He discusses how to go about this: get the tools and start monkeying around (paraphrasing). Which is what I am doing, so, uh, confirmation bias I guess.

Anyway, I thought I would go ahead and lightly blog my various comical attempts at building various mixed reality projects! Hopefully, leading to a little self improvement if nothing else. Fun for me, if not for thee.