[HN Gopher] Show HN: Making AR experiences is still painful - ha...
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Show HN: Making AR experiences is still painful - had to make my
own editor
Hey HN! My co-founder and I have spent over a decade building
mixed reality projects and have been growing more and more
frustrated with the process. From the number of tools needed, to
client sign-off, to the complex esoteric tech stacks. And
especially how slow the iteration loop is when dealing with
interactivity and UX. Two years ago we decided to stop whining and
fix the fundamental issues. Ordinary Objects [0] was built with our
core needs for AR prototyping: a very tight iteration loop between
editor and real device, real-time interactivity while editing and
clear and concise flow management + mapping. There are many things
that layered on to make all of that possible: making it multi-user
from the ground up, handling assets without a fuss, and building up
a new interaction language. From a technical standpoint we wanted
to be native on the all of the platforms that we support, and do
that as quickly as possible. Two years ago the best tool to achieve
that was Unity, and I believe that is still the case today.
Everything else is inside our custom C# Redux implementation. Our
multi-user needs are very different from games, and it helped a lot
to learn from Figma's technical notes to implement our pseudo
eventual consistency setup. Its been super nice to be multi-user
from the get go, we've been able to explore much more functionality
this way. Once the core churn eases up a bit more we will be open
sourcing this particular C# Redux setup. As it has nothing to do
with any engine code. The website has some quick examples of how
the design tool works [0]. But if you want to view a more complete
prototype here is something Gregor, my co-founder, put together
recently [1]. We now also have an easy getting started playlist
[2]. Over the past year we've been testing with closed groups, and
have been excited by what everyone is making. Now we are ready to
open it up for all of you to try! Give it a spin and let me know
what you think! And happy to answer any questions here :) [0]:
https://ordinary.space [1]:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/onlinegregor_mixedreality-spo...
[2]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_A9gShKENE&list=PLidKy8OpOy...
Author : boriskourt
Score : 147 points
Date : 2025-01-27 07:32 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ordinary.space)
(TXT) w3m dump (ordinary.space)
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| Your landing page doesn't really explain the stuff you wrote
| here. Why should I use this instead of Unity and meta simulator?
| boriskourt wrote:
| This tool is aimed at Interaction, Spatial and UX designers and
| provides a no-code way to very quickly go from idea to device.
| No technical setup needed.
|
| The core goal is to have a much faster and more affordable
| iteration loop than the current ways of doing AR and MR
| _prototyping_. Which we hope produces far better products going
| forward!
| robbbbbbbbbbbb wrote:
| I think one insight (that's maybe not obvious enough on their
| landing page?) is that their product appears to be multiplayer
| out of the box (in the same sense that Figma is) which I think
| you'd agree is a pretty significant value add over your
| proposal of Unity + Meta simulator.
| chungus wrote:
| Do you think it's just frustrating in the Meta landscape? I've
| been playing around with stuff I find on the "Linux VR Adventures
| wiki" [1]
|
| I've got a different, (not meta) VR HMD, and am running things
| using Envision and Stardust XR.
|
| Excuse me if none of this applies to mixed reality.
|
| [] https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/fossvr/
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Interesting to see this happening more and more with regard to
| diy hackit together because I couldn't find it elsewhere type
| solutions.
|
| There is also Ian Curtis from Niantic who built a ThreeJS editor
| in bolt.new over a few sessions.
|
| On-the-Fly-AI-UI here we come !!
|
| https://thebrowserlab.com/ https://x.com/XRarchitect
|
| Edit: on closer inspection this is actually pretty polished set
| of prefabed UI/interactions fit for spatial AR needs more than
| something hacked out overnight (see html23.com which is nice but
| just a slice of this project) so will need to drop in some glb
| files and play with it a bit to compare it with say a ShapesXR or
| Spline or Bezi etc but like what I see so far !!!
| GlacierFox wrote:
| This looks really impressive well done on creating the editor.
| You've explained it three times to me - in the initial post, on
| the website and here in the comments but I've still had trouble
| fully grasping the solution fully.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong but is this essentially a really simple
| to use abstraction over the common tools used to create mixed-
| reality environments? Just import your assets and pick from some
| common interaction methods to test stuff your more quickly? If
| so, this looks really great.
| boriskourt wrote:
| You are absolutely correct. We are building something that lets
| you have a much smoother and largely single tool workflow.
| We've been frustrated with how many different things we had to
| throw together just to make something simple. And of course how
| long it took to just make small adjustments and _re-test_ them
| on device.
| tmilard wrote:
| I agree 100% : Too many tools is awfull. Really. - Bugs in
| the transfert of data betwwen each, - slowness of the full
| creativ process. - new gui to learn for each tool.
|
| Good luck for your adventure
| boriskourt wrote:
| Thanks! We are just getting started! Hope to keep improving
| the workflow in new and better ways. Always looking for
| feedback if you have time go give it a spin. :)
| chaosprint wrote:
| super cool and hello from Oslo
|
| just a small comment: is it possible to provide a sign up with
| Google?
|
| I found myself spoiled by this shortcut already
| jaustin wrote:
| Did you look at Mattercraft? https://zap.works/mattercraft/ - the
| team that are building it have been delivering mixed reality
| experiences across platforms in Zappar for a long time and it's
| very complete.
| boriskourt wrote:
| Yes we did! That team is doing some super cool stuff! Early on
| we laser focused on the more traditional UX / Interaction
| Design workflow by helping with state management and opening up
| more complex interactions. So it is not just about the content,
| but how the user experience flows across many different moments
| in a product.
|
| We've also focused on a no code solution, to give designers the
| tools to prototype AR without having the overhead of learning
| programming.
| fanssex wrote:
| While this looks super cool and impressive but if I were to
| choose a tool for my next serious project, Mattercraft still
| gets my vote without hesitation
| robbbbbbbbbbbb wrote:
| Yeah, to be fair to Boris ordinary.space looks like a much more
| appropriate tool for interaction design than Mattercraft, which
| looks much more like a drag-and-drop tool for building
| relatively static, single user 3D scenes. Mattercraft also
| looks to be pretty bloated with random content features (3D
| Text?) in comparison.
| macguillicuddy wrote:
| While Mattercraft has some drag and drop elements, it's
| predominantly a development environment for content,
| featuring TypeScript and NPM support. So it's a bit like a
| 'Unity for the web'. Many of the features (e.g. physics,
| particles) are provided as optional additional NPM modules.
| The 3D text support is included in the base 3D module because
| it only adds a few kb and Mattercraft's built-in bundler
| doesn't bundle it if your project doesn't use it. (My team
| and I run Mattercraft )
| robbbbbbbbbbbb wrote:
| Thanks for the extra context. I haven't actually looked at
| what you at Zappar are doing for a while. Would you care to
| comment on what the key differences are between Zapworks
| Studio [1], Zapworks Designer [2] and Mattercraft [3]?
| Their elevator pitches on those pages feel like they have
| pretty complete overlap with each other tbh.
|
| [1] https://zap.works/studio [2] https://zap.works/designer
| [3] https://zap.works/mattercraft
| macguillicuddy wrote:
| It would be my pleasure :-)
|
| Zapworks Designer - it's our no-code tool focussing on
| AR+VR. It's targeted at folks without scripting
| experience and is very much 'drag and drop'. Our
| customers typically use this for bringing simpler
| interactive content to, e.g. menus, posters and also for
| Learning & Development.
|
| Mattercraft - this is our complete 3D development
| environment for the web. We took everything we'd learned
| from Studio and built MC from the ground up embracing the
| web ecosystem. It has a fully featured animation system,
| scripting, built-in bundler, live preview, collaborative
| editing - the works :-) Our customers use this for
| building high end campaigns and content for consumers.
|
| Zapworks Studio - this is our previous generation of
| creative tooling. It was originally built to target
| native platforms but we ported its runtime to the web.
| Mattercraft is the 'spiritual successor' to this tool.
| MutedEstate45 wrote:
| Great work! The visual elements are very impressive. Would you
| say this tool is suitable for prototyping, especially for someone
| with development experience but no prior AR experience?
| boriskourt wrote:
| Thanks! We are focused directly on prototyping, you should be
| able to get up to speed with the AR concepts very quickly as
| you can immediately test a project and get a feel for whats
| happening. I've been recording a playlist [0] to hopefully help
| ease getting into it.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_A9gShKENE&list=PLidKy8OpOy...
| mouse_ wrote:
| this is the first site ever that has made my phone lag
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| The price for watching into another world with your seeing
| stone- is to turn your palantir to slag
| macguillicuddy wrote:
| Great work :-) Sending love from the Zappar team - we're firm
| believers that AR/VR needs more great tooling!
| boriskourt wrote:
| Thanks! Love what you do! Excited to see all the cool stuff
| that people will make in AR over the next year :)
| verdverm wrote:
| I really liked the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) that was co-built
| with the Hololens. So sad Microsoft canned the hardware and the
| team at the same time. Still feel like they were ahead of the
| time, still my favorite VR/XR/AR experience hands down.
|
| Talk on prototyping AR experiences:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wythtg38o0M
|
| Some people keeping MRTK-Unity alice:
| https://github.com/MixedRealityToolkit/MixedRealityToolkit-U...
| harrison_clarke wrote:
| is there a reason that this is a stand-alone tool, rather than a
| pile of Unity editor scripts?
|
| i always liked the immediate-mode UI in unity. some people can't
| stand it, so i can see that being the reason
| mncharity wrote:
| One nice thing about global state management (re "our custom C#
| Redux implementation"), is you can backtrack and replay altered
| input logs. So inputs with diverse latencies (eg keys with speech
| or vision or gestures) can be combined (silly example: click item
| while saying "trash"). You can react promptly to a click action,
| and then backtrack when 1000 ms later you find out that was
| instead a click+"trash" action. Or when incremental tts updates
| from "launch the missiles" to "lunch is mussels, in butter".
| Animats wrote:
| Ad.
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