Through the Interface

Happy Halloween!

Halloween nearly passed me by completely, this year: the kids did dress up on Friday night – and we had some trick-or-treaters come by over the weekend and this evening – but things have been so hectic, lately, that we didn’t hold our (in recent years) annual Halloween party. Next year we’ll hopefully have the energy to do another one. To celebrate the occasion in a modest way, at least, I found a nice pumpkin model on the Fusion 360 gallery and uploaded it to Vrok-It: You’ll find it on the left-sash at the top of the list (for... Read more →

AR and VR in Zurich

I had a really excellent day, yesterday. I’d flown in from Munich, the night before, and stayed at the charming Zum Guten Glück restaurant/hostel in Zurich. After collecting my key I met Rob Morgan – who was also due to speak at the next day’s Expanding Immersive Design conference – and we headed out for the pre-arranged dinner together. After a slight Uber-snafu (there are two restaurants named Markthalle in Zurich – who knew?) we found the right place and had a very nice meal, enjoying highly engaging discussions with our fellow speakers. Yesterday morning – rather than heading... Read more →

Forge Accelerator in Munich

This is the second time I’ve been at a Forge Accelerator this year in Munich, and it seems it won’t be the last: there’ll be another one in early December, adjacent to the European DevDay being held here, and I’m pretty certain I’ll be back across for that. It was a fun, whirlwind three days. The weather was nice when I arrived at the office on Monday morning – here’s a view across towards one of the nearby buildings. We had lots of participants, which was great. Here’s one of the rooms we occupied: The weather was nice enough... Read more →

Sharing a hologram between multiple HoloLens devices – Part 3

Over the weekend I managed to wind down nicely after giving 10+ hours of HoloLens demos on Thursday and Friday at our Design Night events (it may well have been less, but feels like it was much more). In advance of the Design Night, I’d recorded a video that I ended up putting on a loop during the event. It was an effective way for people coming near the HoloLens exhibit to understand what it was all about. What was particularly interesting to me was whether people understood – or even thought to question – how this video was... Read more →

Autodesk Switzerland’s first Design Night

It was a first for the Neuchatel office, so we really weren’t quite sure how it was going to turn out. But yesterday’s Design Night ended up being a huge success, with around 400 people attending. Wow! I was asked to be part of the core team organising the event several months ago. Aurelia, Olivier and Sokhanita – three colleagues from the Neuchatel office – and I have been meeting on a weekly basis since the beginning of June to plan the event. My role was largely “technological” – in that I was there to help out on all... Read more →

The robots are coming… to Design Night Switzerland

Yesterday afternoon I popped down to the Case à Chocs in Neuchâtel to see the first of the robots being set up for tomorrow’s big event – Design Night Switzerland, celebrating 25 years of Autodesk’s presence here. (At the time of writing, there are still tickets left: get yours from here.) The first arrival was courtesy of Rollomatic’s Humanoid Power division: they’ve configured one of their robots to perform that most important of tasks, serving beer. Prospective drinkers get to choose between a “Blonde” and an “Eve”, two products from the Cardinal brewery in Fribourg. I’m already know which... Read more →

Sharing a hologram between multiple HoloLens devices – Part 2

It was an interesting week, last week, getting two HoloLens devices to coordinate. After talking about the network infrastructure, last time, today we’re going to look at other levels of the problem. Logistically there’s a requirement to have two devices: it might be possible to get it all working with a mix of devices and emulators, but that seems like a stretch. And you’d need – in any case – to test with physical devices at some point. The good news is that HoloLens distribution is gradually opening up – with devices now available to pre-order in Australia, Ireland,... Read more →

Demonic possession

Our Silverdraft Demons arrived from L.A. yesterday – they’ll form the core of the VR installation in the Autodesk Neuchatel office. Today I had the chance to swing by the office to check them out: they were in our IT area being installed and bound to the network. I do like the idea of binding demons to a corporate network: hopefully they’ll stay within our control, this time. The Silverdraft people included some fun schwag in the shipment. Here I am sporting a Demon beanie and a couple of stress balls. I’m definitely more excited than stressed, for now,... Read more →

Sharing a hologram between multiple HoloLens devices – Part 1

I’ve been starting to work on extending the “Dancing Robot” HoloLens project to have a shared hologram: basically to have the position changes shared between devices, as well as the angles and speeds of the various parts of the robot arm. There’s quite a lot to this. There needs to be a server somewhere that coordinates the messages sent between the various devices. There needs to be a shared concept of space, so that devices that are in the same room but in different locations – which is all of them, at least for the usage scenarios I’m currently... Read more →

Autodesk LIVE now supports VR

I’ve been waiting for this piece of news for months: Autodesk LIVE – the “one-click” publishing workflow from Revit to high-quality, interactive 3D visualization courtesy of Stingray – now supports VR via the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via a public beta. Admittedly it’s more like two (or even three!) clicks, but the clicking does seem altogether painless. Here’s a video showing what’s what: This is great timing, as I’ve just heard that my Demons are at the doorstep (well, Zurich airport). I’ll for sure be kicking the tyres on this workflow over the coming weeks. If you’re curious... Read more →

Design Night Switzerland on October 20th

The countdown is on… the first Design Night Switzerland is being held at la Case a Chocs in Neuchâtel on October 20th, 2016 to celebrate Autodesk Switzerland’s 25th anniversary. (It’s actually very timely, as la Case has celebrated its own 25th birthday, this year). The theme for the event is robotics: as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, some of the first automata – in fact the ones that inspired the movie Hugo – were invented in la Chaux-de-Fonds (also in the canton of Neuchâtel), so there’s a long history in the region. And with the world about to... Read more →

A few days in the South of France

Our eldest son has caught the scuba diving bug, big-time. He’s a fourth generation scuba diver on my wife’s side – my side’s full of landlubbers – and as he’s just completed his PADI Junior Open Water it was important for us to find a good diving location for this October’s break. We chose a small town just south-west of Cannes, as the local diving centre – le Centre de Plongée de la Rague – is run by friends of friends originating from the Neuchâtel area. We’ve been here since Sunday and will leave on Friday – a short... Read more →

Madeline Gannon at the Design Museum in London

My father used to take me to the Design Museum in London when I was a child: he was a graphic designer and deeply passionate about typography and all other things design-related. I have fond memories of those visits. When visiting The Boston Build Space a few weeks ago, I had the chance to meet with Madeline Gannon, who (it turns out) was working on an upcoming exhibit for the newly relocated Design Museum (it’s moving from Butlers Wharf to Kensington High Street, and Madeline’s exhibit will be one helping inaugurate the new space in an exhibition entitled “Fear... Read more →