[HN Gopher] DSReality: Turns a DS game into a 3D image that floa...
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       DSReality: Turns a DS game into a 3D image that floats above your
       controller
        
       Author : Philpax
       Score  : 213 points
       Date   : 2023-07-13 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | LegitShady wrote:
       | not for DS/AR but for directx VR vorpx did it first.
       | 
       | https://www.vorpx.com/
        
       | nfriedly wrote:
       | A few comments suggest watching the video, but since it's not
       | quite obvious, the video is embedded in this tweet:
       | https://twitter.com/zhuowei/status/1671532250020683787 /
       | https://nitter.net/zhuowei/status/1671532250020683787
        
         | btbuildem wrote:
         | Thanks! This made absolutely no sense until the video
        
           | tombh wrote:
           | I still don't understand it after watching the video. Is the
           | video recorded through a VR headset?
        
             | Arnavion wrote:
             | It's a recording of the phone screen running their app. The
             | input of the app is the phone's camera, which they have
             | pointed at their hands holding their Switch. The output of
             | the app is the input plus the game overlaid on top of the
             | Switch.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | cubefox wrote:
       | This makes me think, is there a Nintendo 3DS emulator for VR by
       | any chance? Unfortunately non-VR screens which are able to
       | display stereoscopic 3D are getting increasingly rare again.
        
       | senkora wrote:
       | It would be cool to see something like this that could handle the
       | 3D slider on the 3DS.
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | I've been thinking about making a stereogram viewer for my
         | Hololens 1, I think you can make a left and right texture in
         | Unity.
        
       | HanClinto wrote:
       | This is extremely impressive! I was very confused until I saw the
       | video, and then it all made sense.
       | 
       | Excellent work!
        
       | secretsatan wrote:
       | With ARKit you could probably get it to recognise and track the
       | controller using it's object recognition, there's sample code
       | here :
       | https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/arkit_in_ios...
       | Then you wouldn't have to strap the phone to the controller
       | 
       | I'm not so sure about RealityKit, I found it doesn't have the
       | flexibility and finer grained options of ARKit, it's annoying
       | that Apple make 2 frameworks for AR but don't have the same
       | features in both
        
       | jonhohle wrote:
       | I was hoping for some polarization and high frame rate trick to
       | allow a passive, reflective screen to show the top screen.
        
       | xwdv wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | dagmx wrote:
         | You're basically describing the looking glass and it's been
         | available for several years now with a Unity 3D framework if
         | you did want to build games for it
         | 
         | https://lookingglassfactory.com//
         | 
         | And as others have said, please don't be so dismissive of other
         | people's work. "Meh" is a dismissal, not even critique.
        
           | xwdv wrote:
           | No, I mean more along the lines of the Voxon, not looking
           | glass.
        
         | spookie wrote:
         | It was a single person doing it, pretty cool
        
         | SoKamil wrote:
         | I smell some imposter syndrome here
        
         | dang wrote:
         | " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
         | people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
         | - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
         | 
         | Your comment would have been just fine without that first bit.
         | More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36713413.
        
         | yboris wrote:
         | "Meh"?
         | 
         | Please consider what it would feel like to be the sole
         | developer working on this project and then to hear this
         | response from someone _in person_ who you excitedly share the
         | idea with. This is not a nice way to respond to someone in
         | person, and it isn 't a nice way to respond online.
         | 
         | Consider a rephrase: "This is awesome. I am really looking
         | forward to the world when holographic displays make this
         | possible without AR".
        
           | xwdv wrote:
           | I actually _was_ very excited to see what 3D images
           | "floating" above my DS was supposed to be. Imagine my
           | disappointment when I find out I've been clickbaited. Nothing
           | is floating here, it's just an AR app.
           | 
           | "Meh" is exactly how I feel. Indifferent. Unmoved. Unexcited.
           | I left quickly and spent an hour reading about the technology
           | behind the Voxon display. _True_ volumetric images floating
           | before your very eyes.
        
             | yboris wrote:
             | Perhaps this is an age thing, but I've been (following)
             | around technology long enough to know what's likely /
             | possible, and a leap into a fully-visible hologram on a
             | handheld device isn't likely in the coming few years (at
             | the very least we'd see some precursors to it first).
             | 
             | It's ok to feel indifferent, and you may even express that
             | in person if someone is talking _directly_ to you, but
             | adding  "meh" in a message you're choosing to write when no
             | one asked you seems not nice to me.
             | 
             | I'm not even insisting people don't do it -- I'm
             | recommending one reflects more deeply before one speaks; it
             | might seem hard at first, but with practice it will likely
             | filter out unpleasant-to-others gut reactions you may used
             | to have.
        
           | pdntspa wrote:
           | Let people express their true feelings. We shouldn't be
           | blowing smoke up each other's asses. Criticism is a fact of
           | life and we can't culture our way out of it. There is "nice"
           | and there is honest. And neither are kind (though honesty is
           | much more likely to be kind)
        
             | dang wrote:
             | Yes but there's a difference between just putting down
             | other people's work and making substantive criticisms that
             | the creator(s), as well as us readers, can learn from.
             | That's why the HN guidelines say: " _Please don 't post
             | shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
             | good critical comment teaches us something._" -
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
             | 
             | We definitely want good critical comments here, so in that
             | sense you're correct--but we _don 't_ want shallow internet
             | putdowns. Those grow like weeds, choking out interesting
             | conversation and eventually degrading the entire ecosystem.
             | 
             | Your phrase "express their true feelings" is interesting in
             | this context. Shallow internet putdowns aren't true
             | feelings. Often they're a kind of side-expression of
             | someone's bad mood, frustration with life, or whatever--
             | feelings which are actually about something entirely
             | different than (e.g.) AR or holographics or whatever the
             | topic at hand is. Those feelings get displaced into
             | internet swipes because the latter are cheap, risk-free,
             | and bring a slight temporary relief. But they're not "true
             | feelings". If they were, they'd be much more interesting
             | reading.
             | 
             | The GP comment actually included a great second paragraph
             | saying something about what they'd really like to see, and
             | that was interesting because it was rooted in genuine
             | curiosity and enthusiasm. But there was no need to put down
             | someone else's work for not being that.
        
               | pdntspa wrote:
               | Calling every curt response "dismissive" is throwing the
               | baby out with the bathwater. The original comment
               | personally resonated with me, and while the linked
               | project is kinda neat I guess there is a growing
               | contingent of us that see AR as an inadequate stopgap on
               | the way to holography. My response would have been very
               | much similar.
               | 
               | But I also take issue with this because it sort of
               | compels people to be wordy and force them to use awful
               | gentrified business-bullshit speak where everything has
               | to be couched as positive. There is value in being blunt
               | and direct, and there is value in an economy of words.
               | Just because someone may not be feeling bothered enough
               | to couch their language in pleasantries, or they are
               | incapable of formulating the words in a satisfactory
               | manner, shouldn't mean that they also shouldn't speak at
               | all.
               | 
               | I get that some sorts of negativity "sprout up like
               | weeds" but if we truly want an arena of thoughtful,
               | critical discussion then perhaps we should give such
               | comments more benefit of the doubt.
        
               | dang wrote:
               | "Meh, just AR, not true holographics" was such a classic
               | shallow dismissal that it should be easy to understand
               | why so many readers, including me, reacted negatively.
               | 
               | No one is calling every critical response dismissive nor
               | compelling anyone to use gentrified business speak, false
               | pleasantry, or any of the other things you're worried
               | about.
               | 
               | Edit: one thing that you and the GP appear to have in
               | common is a pre-existing understanding of "AR as an
               | inadequate stopgap on the way to holography". Ok, that's
               | interesting! but the context that pre-exists inside your
               | (or anyone's) head doesn't communicate itself to others.
               | It needs to be explained explicitly. That can be done
               | without putting down the work of someone else who happens
               | to be working on (say) AR.
               | 
               | If you express the point only as a putdown, without the
               | surrounding information that would make it meaningful,
               | then you're going to _feel_ like you made a substantive
               | comment (because for you it 's resting on a substantive
               | foundation that you're taking for granted) but it's going
               | to land with readers (who don't have that internal
               | context) as a shallow dismissal.
               | 
               | By "you" I don't mean you personally, but all of us--we
               | all take our own internal state for granted. For HN to
               | function well, though, commenters (all of us) need to
               | work on not doing that, but rather explaining enough
               | relevant background to make our messages interesting
               | instead of empty or mean. The GP's second paragraph did a
               | great job of that--just not the first bit.
        
               | giraffe_lady wrote:
               | Hey while you're at it can you remove my rate limit
               | please. If I'm not meant to post then you should ban me.
               | This reduces my ability to fully participate but does not
               | at all reduce my ability to make fun of cowards.
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36411009
        
             | dagmx wrote:
             | "Meh" isn't critique let alone criticism. It's dismissal.
             | 
             | It's not even relevant to this project because what are
             | they expecting them to do? Make bespoke hardware for it?
             | It's a link to a GitHub page
             | 
             | It's like if someone posted a new Tesla and someone replied
             | with "Meh, should have been a Jetpack". It's just
             | completely irrelevant if one were to take as
             | criticism/critique. It's pure dismissal
        
               | pdntspa wrote:
               | ...which is a criticism. "It doesn't excite me"
        
               | Kerb_ wrote:
               | [flagged]
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | which is a dismissal. It adds nothing of value, provides
               | no actionable task, doesn't do anything beyond saying "I
               | want something else" which is like "okay but that's not
               | within the realm of what this singular person can do so
               | is irrelevant"
        
               | pdntspa wrote:
               | This is semantics. If I present something and the
               | response is "meh" then that is important information to
               | me.
               | 
               | Let people express themselves without policing it.
               | 
               | Attitudes like yours create echo chambers of sycophants.
               | I personally hate an environment where the only feedback
               | allowed is positive-to-neutral. Negative things, like
               | dismissal that you seem to hate so much for some reason,
               | are feedback too.
               | 
               | Welcome to the thunderdome.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | You're missing the point. Nobody is saying don't critique
               | it. Critique is constructive. Meh is dismissive
               | 
               | Be as brutally critical as needed but criticism should be
               | something of value.
               | 
               | "Meh" is the equivalent to "neat". It adds nothing, but
               | unlike neat, it takes away pride.
               | 
               | Also if we're taking the meta discussion, then you're
               | doing the same thing you're saying not to do. People are
               | just giving feedback , but unlike the original comment
               | it's constructive feedback.
        
               | xwdv wrote:
               | I don't get it. "Nice job", "Meh", and "This sucks." are
               | _all_ dismissals, but they are also feedback, which is
               | just as important as long form critique.
               | 
               | And I didn't merely say "Meh", I followed up with some
               | more text and added a new dimension to the discussion.
        
               | coding123 wrote:
               | Not to mention that Dang often tells people to not be
               | dismissive. If you don't like it, click back and see
               | something else. Or do something more important like
               | prepare for standup.
        
       | esjeon wrote:
       | I think this type of _camera control_ has some big potential in
       | the AR market. It 's not fully submersive, but (1) (almost) no
       | nausea because you're peaking into the world (2) screen
       | everywhere (3) can be used in many genres ranging from casual to
       | RPGs and actions (4) feel more natural to existing gamers.
       | 
       | Somehow this made me more convinced with the future of AR, but
       | not VR.
        
       | apetresc wrote:
       | Now that would be a compelling day one Vision Pro app.
        
         | frameset wrote:
         | It would be, except Apple don't allow emulators inside their
         | walled gardens.
        
           | mholm wrote:
           | I can load up an emulator on my mac just fine. Whether the
           | Vision Pro allows installs outside of the App Store is still
           | unknown.
        
             | cubefox wrote:
             | It's very unlikely Apple would allow side loading in MacOS
             | if it was released today rather than 22 years ago.
        
           | hospitalJail wrote:
           | Don't use the marketing phrase 'walled gardens', its pro-
           | corporate marketing jargon.
        
             | Sardtok wrote:
             | To me "walled garden" sounds pretty negative. It's a
             | wonderful place unavailable to pretty much everyone. Some
             | pretty anti-democratic, capitalistic s*t. But I suppose it
             | carries different connotations for different people.
             | 
             | What's your preferred terminology? "Monopolist prison"
             | comes to mind as an alternative that's not possible to
             | interpret positively.
        
               | cubefox wrote:
               | Golden cage?
        
             | pxc wrote:
             | Don't call it an 'ecosystem': it's a zoo.
        
             | jaywalk wrote:
             | When has Apple ever referred to their ecosystem as a walled
             | garden? I've only seen it used negatively.
        
           | lcfcjs wrote:
           | [dead]
        
         | nirav72 wrote:
         | This might work better on the XReal AR glasses that allows for
         | multiple types of input sources.
        
       | duxup wrote:
       | I feel like we are living in the start of a golden age of
       | homemade hacks.
        
       | nickspacek wrote:
       | What I find very cool is that it's extracting scenes from the
       | running game and then projecting them into the VR space, allowing
       | the scenes to be panned/rotated in a way that isn't possible in
       | the original game.
       | 
       | If you haven't watched the video, check it out; my assumption
       | from just reading explanations here was that it was just
       | projecting a facade of the emulated device and its normal
       | rendering of the game into VR.
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | The video is wild. Now we need an AI 3D infill to block in all
         | the missing data at the edges of the view.
        
           | kridsdale3 wrote:
           | I actually originally assumed this was entirely done by some
           | AI interpretation of the original 2D projection of the game
           | scene, conjuring the entire new 3D scene. But of course, just
           | extracting the vertex data from the emulator is way better.
        
         | LegitShady wrote:
         | I remember all the way back when this round of VR was new I was
         | using a driver called VorpX to reinterpret non vr games into
         | VR.
         | 
         | https://www.vorpx.com/
        
       | mrguyorama wrote:
       | This seems like an incredibly specific demo. Even they say that
       | it doesn't work with games that aren't mario kart.
       | 
       | Unlike the NES which has only a few ways to layout the display,
       | which the 3D NES emulator relies on to get good results, the DS
       | can do arbitrary 3D stuff. It also has no API layer to reliably
       | extract the camera information to generalize this kind of re-
       | projection.
       | 
       | Neat looking trick but its sort of a dead end. It requires hand
       | written code for any game you would want to do. I'm also curious
       | about the rendering artifacts visible in the demo.
       | 
       | The DS is very much the wrong choice for this. They should try
       | something similar with Dolphin and gamecube games, because the
       | community there already does some stuff with camera manipulation.
        
         | cubefox wrote:
         | The NES also had many games with specific chips inside the
         | cartridge, so I guess it is not too unusual for emulators to
         | have game specific code.
        
           | mrguyorama wrote:
           | There's way fewer NES mappers than there are DS games. It's
           | 30ish vs hundreds. On an NES emulator, coding up just a few
           | mapper chips gets you most of the library and probably 95% of
           | the games worth playing, whereas with this, you need to write
           | a "camera and 3D asset exporter" for each and every title you
           | want to emulate. The work to give this effect to any game is
           | nontrivial. Honestly interacting with the AR library and
           | headset is probably the EASIEST part of this demo.
        
         | kridsdale3 wrote:
         | There is a fork of Dolphin for VR. I played a few minutes of
         | Zelda with my Oculus on several years ago. Pretty trippy to be
         | transported to a game I enjoyed on a CRT 22 years ago, with a
         | life-scale Link staring me in the face, 3 feet away.
        
           | cubefox wrote:
           | This reminds me that there seem to be few "VR ports" or
           | "cross platform VR releases" of normal games. I guess the
           | gameplay of standard games doesn't necessarily work very well
           | with the inherent limitations of VR. (E.g. nausea from moving
           | around too much)
        
             | crtified wrote:
             | The nausea thing is quite a dealbreaker.
             | 
             | If someone had told me ~15years ago that one day I'd have
             | the ability to play a VR version of Super Mario Galaxy, but
             | that, when that time came, I _wouldn 't even bother to try
             | and play it_, I'd have (1) had a hard time believing it,
             | and (2) assumed that future gaming must be _godlike_ , in
             | order to make me not bother with SMG VR.
             | 
             | But the reality of it, is so much more human and boring.
             | 
             | That is, I know from playing far-more-tame 3d motion games
             | in VR, that it actively sucks as much as it rules. The eyes
             | are saying Wow, and the rest of the body is saying No
             | thanks, in a way not experienced before++. As such, when I
             | heard of Dolphin VR last year, I didn't even dream of using
             | it. Even the mere thought of trying to do SMG levels in VR
             | is intimidating.
             | 
             | ++I grew up loving roller coasters, and was the only local
             | kid that never got sick on rough boats, but this, this is
             | something else.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | juujian wrote:
       | I mean, that is pretty cool but... It seems kind of obvious that
       | they could have just printed the QR code and taped the paper to
       | the switch instead of using rubber bands to attach a phone to
       | their switch...
        
         | riscy wrote:
         | having a spare phone is probably more common than a printer
         | these days
        
         | post_break wrote:
         | Doesn't the phone control the accelerometer data?
        
           | kridsdale3 wrote:
           | Who needs an accelerometer when you're just interpreting
           | polygon transform/coordinates in a camera view (the camera
           | that recorded the video)
        
           | juujian wrote:
           | Oh, I thought those came from the switch. Then why not do
           | away with the switch though. Ok, probably just very
           | improvised, quick demo indeed.
        
       | robobro wrote:
       | This Readme doesn't really explain anything. I don't understand
       | what this is meant to do.
        
         | thehias wrote:
         | Just watch the linked video on twitter :)
        
         | apetresc wrote:
         | It's pretty clear from the title; it's an AR app that projects
         | an emulator over top of your controller.
         | 
         | Sounds pointless if you're using a phone as your window into
         | AR, but if you were to imagine this on a headset like a Quest
         | or Vision Pro, it would basically "turn" any controller into a
         | handheld retro console.
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | > this on a headset like a Quest
           | 
           | None of the Quest give camera access to the apps, and there's
           | currently no AR target support through the cameras. :(
        
           | ImHereToVote wrote:
           | Then why isn't it running on Android? That would instantly
           | work on the Quest. Why would someone voluntarily subject
           | themselves to xcode? People need to treat themselves better.
        
             | KeplerBoy wrote:
             | ARkit presumably. Android just doesn't have an AR ecosystem
             | that's as mature.
        
               | jwells89 wrote:
               | Which is interesting, because the release of ARKit
               | doesn't pre-date that of Android's ARCore by even a whole
               | year, and as I recall Google was dabbling in AR before
               | Apple was. The difference is that ARKit has received
               | consistent attention and iteration.
        
               | sshff wrote:
               | Well, there was a clear and specific product driving it
               | in the Apple camp. Not just to get it ready for the dev
               | kit for VisionOS devices but to get their dev teams a
               | constant flow of useful data from any AR apps created in
               | ARKit along the way that have likely fed into the design
               | decisions and roadmap of the entire project.
               | 
               | I'm pretty sure ARKit has been 99.99% in existence as a
               | way of getting as much real world data as possible for
               | the headset design and 'spacial computing platform'
               | project.
        
               | bee_rider wrote:
               | This sort of stuff also just seems to be way more in
               | Apple's wheelhouse. Apple is a device company, providing
               | these kinds of developer libraries is, like, table
               | stakes. For Google, supporting hardware isn't in their
               | DNA, right?
        
         | mkoryak wrote:
         | There is a video link, but that link is not very easy to
         | notice. I missed it when I first saw the readme
        
           | robobro wrote:
           | Ah, I see it now. Kind of a cool idea.
           | 
           | Repost here so more people can see it:
           | https://twitter.com/zhuowei/status/1671532250020683787
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-13 23:00 UTC)