The Big Show

We do a lot of live demos. Our VR software is in alpha and we sometimes run into bugs, but we pride ourselves on showing the true state of things instead of slides and videos. It’s often a build with radical changes created just a few moments before. And yet the most common trouble is the unpredictable network connectivity one finds at demo venues. Our folks have done quite a few tethered to a cell phone.

But this demo from Sony is in a whole other class. Ouch. I’m sure we’ll all have great hand controllers within a year or so, but right now, hand controller hardware really sucks.

By the way, I think their IK looks great, and I especially like the jump. But notice that the avatars are stuck on a pedestal instead of moving around. I haven’t seen anyone combine IK with artist-designed animations the way we have.

About Stearns

Howard Stearns works at High Fidelity, Inc., creating the metaverse. Mr. Stearns has a quarter century experience in systems engineering, applications consulting, and management of advanced software technologies. He was the technical lead of University of Wisconsin's Croquet project, an ambitious project convened by computing pioneer Alan Kay to transform collaboration through 3D graphics and real-time, persistent shared spaces. The CAD integration products Mr. Stearns created for expert system pioneer ICAD set the market standard through IPO and acquisition by Oracle. The embedded systems he wrote helped transform the industrial diamond market. In the early 2000s, Mr. Stearns was named Technology Strategist for Curl, the only startup founded by WWW pioneer Tim Berners-Lee. An expert on programming languages and operating systems, Mr. Stearns created the Eclipse commercial Common Lisp programming implementation. Mr. Stearns has two degrees from M.I.T., and has directed family businesses in early childhood education and publishing.

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