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Here's what Apple's doing to get you excited about AR
I wouldn't buy a $2000 foldable iPhone, let alone Samsung's Galaxy X
Cool things from the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG we'd like to see in Cyberpunk 2077

Here's what Apple's doing to get you excited about AR

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 07:30 AM PDT

The future of augmented reality headgear and smartglasses is still very much in flux. The long-awaited Magic Leap might emerge this year. Microsoft's Hololens has hung in a state of enterprise limbo -- one from which it may finally emerge next year. Little smartglasses like ODG's might get better with Qualcomm's next chips, but don't expect miracles.

Then there's Apple. As CNET reported in April, Apple is working on a powerful headset capable of both AR and VR. Whether that version is a "what if" prototype or something akin to what Apple may ship in 2 years is anyone's guess. But you don't need to wait until 2020: Apple's plans for virtual magic are playing out in real-time, right now, on the iPads and iPhones that your currently own.

Apple showcased its upgraded augmented reality toolkit, ARKit 2, alongside iOS 12 at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month. And it already has a surprising number of key upgrades that vastly improves how iOS can handle augmented reality. These bits and pieces, combined, are a roadmap for where AR needs to head if it's to move from nerdy plaything to Fortnite-level mass market adoption.

Now Playing: Watch this: Apple's Greg Joswiak says AR is going to be huge

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Apple's AR doesn't live on a headset (yet) but according to Apple, that doesn't matter. "We think the big deal right now is we've got it on hundreds of millions of devices, iPhones and iPads," Apple's Greg Joswiak, Vice President of iPhone and iPad product marketing, told CNET. "We think that's an unbelievably great place to start because a lot of us are already carrying iPhones in our pockets."

apple-wwdc-2018-ar-kit-ii-swiftshot-1569 — Playing AR slingshot games at a table with two people, which means holding up a phone/tablet.
James Martin/CNET

Multiplayer shared worlds

If a set of layers on top of our world are going to be a part of our future, then everyone needs to be able to see them. Shared AR worlds are a relatively new thing: Google demoed its first multiplayer AR apps a month ago at its own developer conference, and Apple's multiplayer support in ARKit 2 does similar things.

Now Playing: Watch this: Apple's ARKit 2 goes multiplayer on iOS 12

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My first hands-on experience of multiplayer AR in iOS 12 was really impressive, although holding an iPad upright for a long time can get tiring. Same-room gaming in a real space feels completely fascinating, but this also opens up collaborative projects or persistent virtual objects that many people could visit and interact with. For now, it's Lego kits on tables that blend physical pieces and virtual ones. Think shared augmented-reality site-specific theater pieces of the kind that William Gibson dreamed of years ago. Or the next wave of holograms in classrooms. Or experimental art projects, such as Google's group AR doodle app that's already live.

Object detection, with pop-up info

Going back to Google Glass, the future fantasy of magic glasses is that they'll somehow show head-up annotations to things seen in the real world. Google Lens, a part of Google's Android Oreo OS last year and Android P this year, can recognize objects through the camera and automatically search for related information. ARKit 2 can also be used to not just see objects, but to pin information to them. Maybe it's purchase information, or someone's name floating over their head, or the name of a dinosaur, or player stats hovering over athletes at a future sports event. The above demo by a developer shows promise.

Face and eye tracking

Eye tracking is coming to VR, allowing better graphics and more ways to control things with simple eye movements -- or even make direct eye contact for shockingly intimate social experiences. In AR, it could be used to control hovering interfaces, change events based on emotions or expressions, or map avatars to do things puppeted by facial expressions.

ARKit 2 can track eye movement using the iPhone X's front-facing TrueDepth camera, which will also likely end up on Apple's other iPhones arriving later this year, and maybe Apple's next iPad Pros. The results, based on developer experiments seen on Twitter, are already impressive. This could be a test run to evolve where Apple's future eye-tracking tech goes next. Maybe it'll be in headsets eventually. Or it'll be used to find ways to not just read what we're looking at and make eye-controlled hands-free interfaces, but turn our expressions and emotions into information. Or it could help make a whole new wave of Memoji-like avatar puppets.

Virtual objects live everywhere

The persistence of virtual things -- where you "leave" a virtual teddy bear on a real-world table, and it's still there when you return in a later AR session -- looks like it's ready to leap across apps. iOS 12 can handle AR in-browser or anywhere else thanks to a new common format developed with Pixar, called USDZ, that will be how Apple turns 3D files into AR-ready objects.

For now, it's aimed at going across all iOS devices. It could vie to be a universal format everywhere, but that might be a bigger battle. ARKit 2 can also make these virtual things look better: 3D AR creations can now reflect real-life objects in them. That, plus realistic shadows, can make that everything feel like it's even more present.

iPhone AR now, headset AR later

We won't know much more about how Apple's AR vision really feels until iOS 12 arrives in its final form with a lot more supported apps. And who knows: Maybe the new iPhones, expected in September, will have a few hardware enhancements to make AR even better (think TrueDepth 2 cameras, for instance).

But here's the thing: That fabled Apple headset, whenever it arrives, becomes less and less of a heavy lift with each present-day ARKit advancement. At a certain point, the headset comes down to design considerations, battery constraints and hitting a viable price. Because it will really be the guts of an iPhone 13 (or whatever the 2020 iPhone is called), just crammed into a different shape.

After all, Apple already has a lot of this AR stuff working on your iPhone and iPad already: It just needs to figure out how to strap it to your head. There's a long way to go, but working from the inside out seems like it might be the smartest path.

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I wouldn't buy a $2000 foldable iPhone, let alone Samsung's Galaxy X

Posted: 16 Jun 2018 09:01 AM PDT

When the Galaxy X, Samsung’s first foldable phone, launches next year it’ll surely be one of the most exciting handsets released. It’ll have a total of three screens, if rumors are accurate, allowing you to switch between a smaller phone form factor and a tablet-sized phone. Samsung, of course, isn’t the only company in the world working on such devices, but it might make the first foldable gadget that actually looks good. Yes, the ZTE Axon M still sucks and I wish it never existed.

That said, I would not pay $2,000 for a foldable iPhone X if it launched next year. So there’s no way in the world I’d even consider buying a Samsung foldable phone.

Yes, money is the main reason why I wouldn’t even consider first-gen foldables. Sure, the first foldable phones in the world will be costly because it’s not easy to manufacture them. But the price should drop in the coming years, as component suppliers further refine parts production and improve yields.

With Samsung, it’s not just the price. It’s the way Samsung operates its mobile business.

Think about it: Samsung is developing a new form factor based on Android without controlling the underlying operating system. That means Samsung will have to invent a new user interface and features to take advantage of all this extra screen real estate without waiting for Google to do it.

It’s just like Android vendors launching handsets with iPhone X-like notches early this year well before Google adopted the notch. It’s possible, but it’s easier if Google bakes notch support in Android.

Image Source: The WinCentral

Take the edge display on Galaxy S and Note phones, a design almost nobody else copied. Samsung devised an entire UI and apps for the edges, trying to convince users they’re actually useful. What the edge design does well is to maximize the screen real estate of those phones and reduce the side bezels. But that’s about it. Even Samsung reduced the curvature of those edges in the Galaxy S9, to increase the phone’s durability.

Similarly, the Galaxy X’s main feature will be, well, the fact that it can become more compact than a phablet. But other than that convenience, we’ll be waiting for someone to make a compelling case as to how foldable screens may be used in tablet mode. Will Samsung be the company that defines the foldable phone given that, as it is now, Android isn’t as tablet-friendly as iOS?

But wait, there’s one more thing.

Let’s fast forward to summer 2019 now, when Android R rolls out, possibly with some features that support foldable smartphone designs. How long will it take Samsung to update the Galaxy X to the latest Android version? In theory, this year’s Galaxy S9 and Note 9 should receive Android P a lot faster, because they support Google’s project Treble. But Samsung doesn’t have a great track record issuing fast software updates for its flagship phones that are used by millions of people. At $2,000, the Galaxy X is unlikely to sell millions of units. So what would be Samsung’s incentive to prioritize Android updates for a device that’ll have a few hundred thousand users at best over the Galaxy S10 and Note 10?

A foldable iPhone, meanwhile, will not only come with guaranteed iOS software updates, but it’d also pack a bunch of iOS features that Apple is devising specifically for the new form factor. And when Apple finally has the foldable phone ready, think 2020 or even later than that, it’ll hopefully be a lot cheaper than $2,000.

In conclusion, if I’m not thrilled about shelling $2,000 for a foldable iPhone fully knowing that it’ll be guaranteed to work well in both smartphone and tablet modes and that it’ll receive timely software updates, I’m definitely not excited about a $2,000 Galaxy X, no matter how courageous Samsung is about to be.

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Cool things from the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG we'd like to see in Cyberpunk 2077

Posted: 16 Jun 2018 06:27 PM PDT

Before it was a videogame, Cyberpunk was a tabletop RPG published by R. Talsorian, a classic that went through multiple editions and spin-offs. While there are 57 years between the setting of Cyberpunk 2020, its definitive second edition, and that of the videogame currently being made by CD Projekt, they still share the same backdrop of Night City and some of the videogame's mechanics are inspired by the tabletop game's rules, even down to keeping 'Cool' as a stat. Here are some of the other things we hope have survived the years.

Weird gangs

The demo showed behind closed doors at E3 included a meeting with the Maelstrom, a combat gang who are into black leather and chrome, and the trailer features someone with "Valentino's" written on their jacket, a reference to the "posergang" of the same name who are essentially cyberpunk PUAs. Both the Valentino's and Maelstrom are from the original game, which has a wealth of strange street gangs straight out of The Warriors, only with more plastic surgery and cyberlimbs.

The Philharmonic Vampyres, for instance, are pranksters in black tuxedos who hate mimes with a passion and are at war with a gang of street performers called The Julliard. Meanwhile the Bozos, biosculpted killer clowns with white skin and red noses and bombs that detonate when their heart stops, are at odds with everyone because nobody likes clowns. A few of these stranger gangs would be great to run up against in 2077.

Lifepaths

Though we'll all be playing a protagonist called V in CD Projekt's game, we'll be able to personalize them thanks to a "backstory creator". In the tabletop game character creation included a system called Lifepaths, a set of flowcharts from which you could choose or roll dice to randomly determine everything from your Childhood Environment and Most Valued Possession to your Tragic Love Affair. While it would be a bit much to include all that detail in a relevant way in a videogame (you could wind up with a family "cursed with a hereditary feud that has lasted for generations" for instance), a trimmed-down equivalent would be a fun way to make V our own.

Infamous Night City hangouts

Between the timeline of the tabletop game and the videogame a nuke got dropped on part of Night City and an entire district had to be rebuilt, but still it'd be nice if a few of the more memorable locations remained. Like Totentanz, a club that takes up the top three floors of Burleson Tower, and where a variety of enhanced "boostergangs" meet. Their meetings aren't always friendly, so "It's considered a bad night if the body count is under twenty" according to the rulebook. There's also Afterlife, a bar built in a former mortuary and divided into sections called The Antechamber, The Crypt, and Hades. It sounds goth as hell but it's actually where mercs go to find work via a marquee that acts like a bulletin board.

Rockerboys and girls

Cyberpunk 2020 posits a future where rock & roll is still the soundtrack of rebellion, and "rockerboys" like Johnny Silverhand are important countercultural figures. They were even a playable character class. In the trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 we see posters and newspaper headlines about a performer named Lizzy Wizzy, the chrome-skinned mohawk lady we also see stepping out onto a red carpet, so while rockers like Silverhand would be as old as The Rolling Stones by this point, maybe a new generation is filling that gap. Even if we can't play as a rockerboy or rockergirl this time, they'd make for interesting NPCs.

A world beyond Night City

The only hint we get in the trailer of America beyond Night City is a glimpse of a couple of hillbillies, one holding a neon shotgun. In Cyberpunk 2020 there's a whole world out there, sprawling cities separated by a full-on Mad Max highway nightmare wasteland populated by packs of travelers called nomads (many of whom are displaced farmers kicked off their land by corporations). It would be a shame to have a sweet car and not have at least a little bit of highway to test its limits on.

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