Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Michael and Michael enjoy spending an extended Saturday afternoon discussion with their friend Ian “epredator” Hughes on a wide variety of topics.

Staring off with the recent space news on the Perseverance rover being powered by the same processor as a 1990s iMac and the SpaceX Starship, the team quickly gets into Microsoft Mesh, with a detailed assessment of what Microsoft’s latest announcement means to mixed reality experiences.  With an HTTP-esque approach to incorporating multiple technologies, Microsoft’s latest foray clearly builds upon the HoloLens experience and moves the state of the art forward with many different hardware devices such as laptops, VR headsets from Oculus and HTCVive as well as mobile phone operating systems to draw people into the such virtual and augmented experiences.  A proof of concept experience for Pokemon Go gets attention from the panel, as do a number of other user experiences in other technology settings, from Volkswagen’s new ID.4 UX, to bananas being used for control devices.  The banana reminds Ian and Michael R of the Makey Makey experience, which just so happens to have a banana in their logo! 

Drones inspired by nature and efficient electrical engines as well as games such as Doom and Diablo II are discussed.  Apple’s DTK return program gets a few minutes, as does the reported 1,200 new German words from the Coronazeit.  LEGO brings this episode to a close with an animatronic version of Jeopardy! and a reminder where to find epredator online (hint, it’s at Feeding Edge with the link below!) and a promise not to let it be another year before this team gets back together to record another episode.

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Selected Links

Gizmodo article: A 1990s iMac Processor Powers NASA’s Perseverance Rover — https://gizmodo.com/a-1990s-imac-processor-powers-nasa-s-perseverance-rover-1846380844 

The Verge article: NASA’s latest Mars rover has the same processor as an iMac from 1998 — https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/3/2/22309412/nasa-perseverance-mars-rover-processor-cpu-imac-1998 

The Verge article: SpaceX lands Starship prototype for the first time — and then it blows up — https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/3/22311916/spacex-starship-prototype-landing-successful 

The Verge article: Microsoft Mesh feels like the virtual future of Microsoft Teams meetings — https://www.theverge.com/22308883/microsoft-mesh-virtual-reality-augmented-reality-hololens-vr-headsets-features 

Microsoft Mesh — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mesh 

AltspaceVR — https://altvr.com 

OceanX — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanX