Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion? • Hacker News Board

Re: Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?

#271

Post by tomhallett » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #67

For the intrinsic parameters of the webcam, that is a property of the hardware and not your room, yes? If so, it seems possible to crowdsourced that information to build a database. Then for most users, it's just a matter of entering your product model rather than taking 50 checkerboard photos. It's still not convenient, but it's a much smaller hurdle to overcome.

Agreed. My first thought was - what percentage of the target market could you serve with coding to specs for MacBooks, which have deterministic hardware.

Or if the tuning parameters exist with some range, use a traversal algorithm to find them, similar to an eye exam: “A or B? [change parameter]. A or B? [change parameter]. Repeat”

Re: Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?

#272

Post by paledot » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 6:25 PM UTC

IIAOPSW wrote: post #90

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brian may love patterns and minimalism, but I am Ryan and I love chaos and maximalism.

What if I told you Ryan and Brain were the same character this entire time. Pixes music starts playing as buildings explode

I don't know what's going on, but I'm 1000% here for this Fight Club/Pinky and the Brain crossover. If it's your first time, narf!

Re: Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?

#273

Post by jsnelgro » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 12:05 AM UTC

I think this technique would be revolutionary for CAD or 3D modeling software. It always feels clunky trying to click, drag, orbit, fly, etc your way around a viewport, when all you really want to do is quickly peek around a corner to get some perspective

Re: Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?

#274

Post by frosted-flakes » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 5:02 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #262

threatofrain wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See, me personally, this is what I want in my medical device software. Minimalism is a major factor for cognitive accessibility. If you build for the lowest common denominator then of course qualities like control must necessarily take a dive. If Google gave you more controls for search then it'd be better search, but then it wouldn't be as minimal anymore. On software you have lots of room to hide complexity for t…

Hah. There's truth to that, but just on a tangent, it got me thinking about the hardware of my youth versus the hardware of today. Like, when I was 8, the coolest thing to me was calculator watches. They had either 3 or 4 rows of rubber buttons, or the fancy ones had flat buttons. They weren't trying to hide their interface under a flat screen, right? They were going out of their way to give you lots of stuff to play…

That Casio calculator watch is still sold—I saw one in Walmart yesterday. I was also admiring a digital Timex Ironman watch that had an "OCCASNS" function, including customizable calendar and time-of-day alerts, which I had never seen before on those watches. It only took me a minute or two to figure out how it worked, even with a segmented LCD and odd contractions to fit the words on the screen.

(I settled on a classic analogue Timex with a leather strap. Can't beat them, really.)

Re: Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?

#275

Post by frosted-flakes » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 5:09 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #175

ilkke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re UI, my theory is that this is partly because minimalism doesn't become dated as fast. Related, I remember that what blew me away upon seeing the 3DS for the first time was not the 3d playfield (which looked exactly as I expected), but the UI in 3D. It really felt like a glimpse into an exciting future.

The 3DS didn’t do anything for me and a large part of the population. The same goes for the 3D glasses that went out of style years ago. The main thing it did was give me and others a headache. Otherwise, this wouldn’t have been a fad. Other than this demo, the only 3D effects that actually work (ie 3D movies) are in VR

The stability of the 3D feature was greatly improved on the New Nintendo 3DS, which added eye-tracking using the front-facing camera so that you could tilt and turn it and you wouldn't see a double image. I've never personally heard of anyone ever getting a headache from it, and it would be a bit silly not to use it because it doubles the screen resolution and makes everything much sharper.

Re: Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?

#276

Post by diegomacario » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #145

A bit depressing in some ways. This is a pattern I've seen repeatedly, especially in the last 10 years or so - people want to do something innovative but shoot themselves in the foot up front by insisting it has to be in the browser. Then they discover that browsers are incredibly hostile environments for doing innovation projects, and instead of concluding the obvious (we should do it with a desktop app) they either…

Hey mike, I'm the Diego, the person who wrote this blog post and implemented the majority of it. Reading this comment, I feel the need to challenge some of your assumptions. I don't expect to change your mind, but here's my take on this:

- I have only been a developer for 7 years, and I don't have a degree in Software Engineering. I actually studied electrical engineering and upon graduating I landed my first job writing device drivers for graphics cards, which got me started writing software professionally.

- I did that for 3 years, and after discovering a passion for computer graphics I worked at Autodesk for 3 years on a desktop application called 3ds Max.

- After all those years working on that old and heavy desktop application I started seeing web-based applications like Figma as the right way to do things. Nothing beats the convenience of opening a link to launch an app, and of being able to launch an app on any device. That's why I joined Shopify's Spatial Commerce Team.

- My favorite programming language is C++, and the demos you see in the blog post are written in C++. I developed them as desktop applications, and compiled them to WebAssembly using Emscripten.

- I have never done "resume driven development." I studied computer graphics as a hobby for years because of a deep interest in it, and I was poorly paid all those years.

Thanks for your time.

Re: Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?

#277

Post by mike_hearn » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

diegomacario wrote: post #276

mike_hearn wrote: post #145

A bit depressing in some ways. This is a pattern I've seen repeatedly, especially in the last 10 years or so - people want to do something innovative but shoot themselves in the foot up front by insisting it has to be in the browser. Then they discover that browsers are incredibly hostile environments for doing innovation projects, and instead of concluding the obvious (we should do it with a desktop app) they either…

Hey mike, I'm the Diego, the person who wrote this blog post and implemented the majority of it. Reading this comment, I feel the need to challenge some of your assumptions. I don't expect to change your mind, but here's my take on this: - I have only been a developer for 7 years, and I don't have a degree in Software Engineering. I actually studied electrical engineering and upon graduating I landed my first job wri…

Thank you for your reply and I apologise if you feel offended. I was trying to summarise many experiences I've had over the years in one place and for sure, it sounds like what I've seen before doesn't apply to you.

To give a couple of examples, I've had someone tell me that they'd rather buy every dev who signs up for their platform (for free) a new iPhone, rather than write a desktop app to let them manage their API keys. I also worked on Bitcoin for a while and had to warn people that their users would lose large sums of money in avoidable ways if they implemented their idea as a web app, I was ignored because I was assured nobody downloads desktop apps anymore, and then people lost large sums of money in exactly the ways predicted. Note that Bitcoin itself was a Windows-only desktop app! This sort of thing is what I was thinking of.

Still, I'd ask you to reconsider the conclusions of your project. Yes it would of course be convenient to have it all run as a web app, but the alternative you faced wasn't a tradeoff between something more convenient and something less, it was between something a bit less convenient (albeit same number of clicks in many cases) or, apparently, nothing at all.

You clearly have the skills to try again with an alternative approach that runs outside the browser. It would be a cool feature, and even if in the end you conclude without being in-browser it's not convenient enough, it would be interesting to learn how users reacted in usability studies. I spend my time trying to make the desktop app UX as fast and smooth as possible, and if Shopify are up for the challenge then I'd be happy to work with you guys to try and build the most optimal UX possible for this project. Not every EXE is Autodesk! This kind of problem is exactly why I quit my job to make a new product for shipping desktop apps. Projects like this one don't have to wither on the vine.