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Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

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Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#151

Post by RandallBrown »

billyhoffman wrote: post #109
Fuzzwah wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also highly recommend: The Mongoliad semi-fictional view of mid-thirteenth century Mongol invasion of Europe Reamde MMO gold farming, social networking, criminal methods of the Russian mafia, Islamic terrorists

ugh. Reamde. Reamde starts off with a lot of interesting ideas, and then morphs into quite possibly the worst watered-down, airport-paperback, fourth-rate-Tom-Clancy-triller nonsense I have ever read. Avoid it at all costs. Unbelievable plot and character motives. ick.

I really liked Reamde. It's a close second to Anathem as far as Neal Stephenson's books go for me.

If you can suspend disbelief at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, it's pretty awesome.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#152

Post by pfisch »

Cushman wrote: post #145
pfisch wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I don't agree with this at all. We had like 160k with kickstarter for Road Redemption and have made a game on early access that has sold enough to easily continue development. The problem 100% was that Neal Stephenson was incapable of doing the project himself and was just hiring devs to do it and then ran out of money. It was poorly managed because they had lots of traction and risked basically no capital on dev…

This wasn't a game, it was an engine. A novel motion control scheme, more satisfying to wield than any one currently extant, and a realistic and historically accurate simulation which supports different sword fighting styles. I know a thing or two about motion controls, and game development, and sword fighting for that matter, and I am dramatically less convinced than you that this is trivial. (Even if you are able t…

I don't really think it was an engine so much as a peripheral with some mediating libraries. I would do that plus write a C# interop to make it compatible with unity so you could make your die by the sword clone quickly.

What they were trying to make was basically a better wiimote, and a wiimote is essentially an arduino with a single accelerometer hooked up to it and a bluetooth receiver. I think without the budget restrictions of a wiimote you could probably use better/more responsive parts and then basically just mimic a wiimote with the wiimotion plus(which is just a single gyroscope) and call it a day. Or you could add several of each of those components and then average their output or do other clever math with their separate outputs. I think this would take a little more than a year if the person who was doing it knew what they were doing.

Then you need to make the game/demo which you would do in parallel with a team of 3-4 additional people.

"Even if you are able to donate a year of developer time, valued in the six figures"

See this is where misunderstandings with kickstarter begin. We assumed almost no risk in making Road Redemption. In addition to salary we get 100% of revenue less distribution. So not only did we get to draw salary during development, now we get all the sales revenue and we own the IP. It is a crazy good deal, nobody needs to donate anything.

It is basically like you get a bunch of VC money and also the VC's have no equity interest.

The problem comes in when someone who is unqualified tries to middleman the operation and takes a bunch of money but is totally incapable of doing what they said they would do. Now they both don't have enough money to actually get the shit done at cost, and don't want to give away all the equity. The biggest problem though is that they are unqualified to discern who is capable of doing the task because they don't know anything about how to actually do things. So they fritter away the money and then the project falls apart.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#153

Post by WalterSear »

rasur wrote: post #125
NotOscarWilde wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved The Diamond Age as well, although I remember mostly bits and pieces now: * cult sex scenes * a forced-participation theater that humiliates you using Occulus Rift-technology * the Kill Bill-esque ending * ... and, most of all, the idea of continous education using an immersive Minecraft-like book/world that expands in complexity as your education grows. Too bad we (the hackers) never completed even a crude ve…

Someone endowed of clue should get going with a kickstarter for at least a film version of TDA, if not a lot of what was described therein :) Damn, I'm going to have to read it again now. Still, it's about time for a refresh...

IMHO, it would do better with the Studio Ghibli treatment, than a live action movie.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#154

Post by scoot »

carloscm wrote: post #10

This is notable not just because of Neal Stephenson, but because his blog post contains what I think is the most detailed public description of the tech so far: --- Here’s where you’re probably expecting the sales pitch about how mind-blowingly awesome the demo was. But it’s a little more interesting than that. Yes, I saw something on that optical table I had never seen before--something that only Magic Leap, as far…

> his blog post contains what I think is the most detailed public description of the tech so far

Gizmodo would beg to differ: http://gizmodo.com/how-magic-leap-is-secretly-creating-a-new...

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#155

Post by Cushman »

pfisch wrote: post #152
Cushman wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't a game, it was an engine. A novel motion control scheme, more satisfying to wield than any one currently extant, and a realistic and historically accurate simulation which supports different sword fighting styles. I know a thing or two about motion controls, and game development, and sword fighting for that matter, and I am dramatically less convinced than you that this is trivial. (Even if you are able t…

I don't really think it was an engine so much as a peripheral with some mediating libraries. I would do that plus write a C# interop to make it compatible with unity so you could make your die by the sword clone quickly. What they were trying to make was basically a better wiimote, and a wiimote is essentially an arduino with a single accelerometer hooked up to it and a bluetooth receiver. I think without the budget…

Have you written software for motion controls before? Like not gestures, but actual physical motion? I expect they quickly found out that Wiimote+[0] is not good enough for swordfighting the way they wanted it. Nothing on the consumer market is. The Razer Hydra came closest, which is why the thing they released wound up targeting it, but even then it was hard to find and too unreliable in typical use for a fun experience. (Now that the STEM is finally shipping, this may have changed.)

It's a garbage-in, garbage-out scenario that is really, really hard to solve in software. And come on, why am I explaining this to you? Why are there zero compelling or realistic Wii/U sword games?

It also doesn't sound like you've put any thought into the challenge of simulating realistic swordplay as a generic engine that supports different historically accurate fighting styles, with all the nitty physics, kinematics, and for that matter historical issues to be dealt with.

But I don't know why I'm having to defend the concept that software costs money. I think I'll just quote Neal's apology:

"Members of the team made large personal contributions of time and money to the project before, during, and after the Kickstarter phase. Some members, when all is said and done, absorbed significant financial losses. I am one of them; that has been my way of taking responsibility for this. The team had considerable incentives--emotional and financial--to see CLANG move on to the next round of funding. They showed intense dedication and dogged focus that I think most of our backers would find moving if the whole story were told. I will forever be grateful to them. In the end, however, additional fundraising efforts failed and forced the team to cut their losses and disband in search of steady work." https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/posts/9...

These were intelligent people, working with passion, on something hard. I'm glad your Kickstarter was a success, but maybe a little humility is called for.

[0] As in accelerometer+gyro, in general. It's fundamentally flawed, and you can't buy your way out of it with better parts.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#156

Post by pfisch »

Cushman wrote: post #155
pfisch wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think it was an engine so much as a peripheral with some mediating libraries. I would do that plus write a C# interop to make it compatible with unity so you could make your die by the sword clone quickly. What they were trying to make was basically a better wiimote, and a wiimote is essentially an arduino with a single accelerometer hooked up to it and a bluetooth receiver. I think without the budget…

Have you written software for motion controls before? Like not gestures, but actual physical motion? I expect they quickly found out that Wiimote+[0] is not good enough for swordfighting the way they wanted it. Nothing on the consumer market is. The Razer Hydra came closest, which is why the thing they released wound up targeting it, but even then it was hard to find and too unreliable in typical use for a fun experi…

Wait this is even worse. They didn't even build any hardware at all. So just to be clear in less then a year they spent half a million and used other peoples hardware and didn't even have a real gameplay demo.

"It also doesn't sound like you've put any thought into the challenge of simulating realistic swordplay as a generic engine that supports different historically accurate fighting styles, with all the nitty physics, kinematics, and for that matter historical issues to be dealt with."

You are controlling the sword so I'm not really sure what you mean. You need to mocap a bunch of moves from someone fighting in a historic style for the AI and then have the AI randomly jump between a half dozen attack sequences. Before our kickstarter we had a great animator and a bunch of playstation eyes and were able to get good motorcycle fighting animations for a price in the thousands.

I'm sorry but this project was obviously mismanaged. The extreme detail that went into designing the arenas seemed to consume all the resources of the project. Look at the videos of what they had. It is like 100% artistic detail and 0% gameplay.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#157

Post by mattmanser »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #134
mattmanser wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading Snow Crash at the moment for the first time. The beginning is actually really tough going as a completely new reader today. It's just so ridiculous. I can see where he was coming from, as I grew up in that era, but it's actually pretty bizarre now given the reality is nation states, religion and banks turned out to be so much more powerful than corporations. Which is one of the perils of predictions in ag…

> Snow Crash is by far the most dated book All cyberpunk is like that, for reasons that are pretty obvious. > Even Ringworld and the foundation series were better. Of course. Physical reality changes much more slowly.

I mention other cyberpunk that's not dated, I've read 2 or 3 of the Neuromancer series and that hasn't fared anywhere near as badly, the only glaring plot point I noticed in that is that no-one had mobile phones.

And when I refer to Foundation & Ringworld I meant that they are from the 60s and so have some weird cultural ideals as well as some (unintentional) misogyny & racism in the foundation series.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#158

Post by chriswarbo »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #122
rasur wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not read 'The Diamond Age'? IMO it is one of his best works. Nanotech/Networks/Crypto for the masses to understand. I read, loved and was caught up in the VR fever of the 90's via Snow Crash, and love his other books, but TDA is the one I'll never get rid of.

I loved The Diamond Age as well, although I remember mostly bits and pieces now: * cult sex scenes * a forced-participation theater that humiliates you using Occulus Rift-technology * the Kill Bill-esque ending * ... and, most of all, the idea of continous education using an immersive Minecraft-like book/world that expands in complexity as your education grows. Too bad we (the hackers) never completed even a crude ve…

TDA is an interesting take on the issues a post-scarcity world might face. Unfortunately my immesion in the book was broken in several places by cringe-worthy "computers will never be able to do X" tropes. For example, the Primer must get a human to read its text aloud because "computers will never be able to reproduce a human voice"; this is in a world where atomically-precise, molecular diamond nanocomputers can be essentially 3D printed for free.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#159

Post by NotOscarWilde »

chriswarbo wrote: post #158
NotOscarWilde wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved The Diamond Age as well, although I remember mostly bits and pieces now: * cult sex scenes * a forced-participation theater that humiliates you using Occulus Rift-technology * the Kill Bill-esque ending * ... and, most of all, the idea of continous education using an immersive Minecraft-like book/world that expands in complexity as your education grows. Too bad we (the hackers) never completed even a crude ve…

TDA is an interesting take on the issues a post-scarcity world might face. Unfortunately my immesion in the book was broken in several places by cringe-worthy "computers will never be able to do X" tropes. For example, the Primer must get a human to read its text aloud because "computers will never be able to reproduce a human voice"; this is in a world where atomically-precise, molecular diamond nanocomputers can be…

* > computers will never be able to do X*

I like your point; it compliments itself nicely with my previous one. Soon enough, computers may be able to do many things very well -- however, hackers are not catching up to corporations.

What I mean: if I remember correctly, in the DA world TV and big companies have as big as a grip on general populace as they have to day, but hackers are able to create alternatives, like the mentioned Primer for children's education.

In the real world, "hackers" (or those with the technical know-how to be one) love Apple and Google as much as the rest of the populace does, and leave the big things (OS, main APIs, maps, voice assistant, their personal data, ebook stores, videos available to young children) to them with very little opposition.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#160

Post by oldpond »

mcphilip wrote: post #73
tomp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupid question: Who is Neal Stephenson, and why is he famous? Wikipedia suggests that he's a sci-fi author, is there a particular reason for his fame, could you recommend some of his works?

As others have mentioned, Stephenson is known for his fiction. However, his nonfiction piece from 1996 for Wired magazine is my personal favorite piece. It recounts his trip around the world investigating undersea fiber-optic cables and speculating on what it all means for the future: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html

This quote: "Cable layers, like hackers, scorn credentials, etiquette, and nice clothes. Anyone who can do the work is part of the club. Nothing else matters. Suits are a bizarre intrusion from an irrational world. They have undeniable authority, but heaven only knows how they acquired it." Love it!
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