Philpax

So, here we are: a mere ten years and twenty days since my last blog post. That's one-and-a-quarter AAA game development cycles. That spans the rise and fall of cryptocurrency in the mainstream. And, most painfully, that's two full website rebuilds without any new content. Let's see if I can fix that this year.

It is 2025. Technology has always had a dramatic impact on the world, but it's hard to overstate to what extent that will be demonstrated over the next five years: we are on track for a 2030 that will redefine what our everyday life looks like, facilitated by inventions that have been the realm of science-fiction until recently. I am, of course, referring to AI, but I also believe that XR will "come of age" in this timespan¹Quite literally, given that 2030 will mark 18 years since the Oculus Rift. On the other hand, I made a five-year bet in 2021 about the same thing and I'm on track to lose that, so we'll see., and the two technologies are likely to combine to create a fascinatingly different future.

My goal is to document these changes, speculate on what's next, and demonstrate interesting projects along the way. But before I do that, let's clarify where I stand and what I've been up to.

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Several months ago, my family found ourselves in the most tedious of quests: searching for a new house. Our old house was showing all the signs of advanced age: weakened structural integrity, cracks in the walls, failing appliances - and there was only so much we could do to patch around the fundamental issues. "Enough," said we, "it's time to go."

So with high spirits and higher expectations, we plugged in our basic criteria into a real estate website - and then felt the despair rise as hundreds of results flooded in. This simply wouldn't do! None of us had the time or will to individually appraise over four hundred houses, especially when we'd have to keep looking at new houses as they entered the market.

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The Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 is Oculus' latest virtual reality headset available to the "public." As the name suggests, it exists to allow developers to produce and test experiences for the eventual consumer version.

My own DK2 arrived several weeks ago, giving me the chance to try out several interesting experiences and to start work on my own VR applications. To that end, what follows are my thoughts on the headset and a few of the demos and games I've tried out.

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I've always wondered what could be done with the C preprocessor. The existence of projects such as Boost Preprocessor and the infamous Brainfuck interpreter are a testament to its wide-ranging capabilities.

Of course, the best way to learn is to do, and I felt like indulging in some masochism. So - onwards!

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