Pitches & Glitches | State of Matterless #37
We were taught never to play with fire, but nobody said we couldn’t play with magic! Lemme show you what we’ve been up to:
Dev Vlog Hand Trails
If you’ve been following our socials, you’ve probably seen the AR hand trail videos that got over 160k views. Our CTO Robin has emerged from his secret lab to spill the beans on how we plan to use them in our latest developer vlog!
Be sure to check out our previous episode with Robin, where he lays out the current state of Incos and what’s coming in the 0.7 build.
Hand Glitch Effect
Speaking of hand effects, the team has been experimenting with different effects in Incos for when your hand touches your digital pet. Currently, your hand will clip through the Inco when contact is made. We wanted to develop an effect that can obscure some pixelated artifacts that are a byproduct of current app fidelity. We also want to give users visual feedback when hand detection is at play. The clip above is a proof of concept of how a digital dog would do to react to a human hand touching it.
Our product manager Jason explains:
First, when we detect a hand, we create a game object for each “bone” in it. We added a particle emitter to each game object, which spits out square particles. On those squares, we created a custom shader that offsets the image behind it in a random direction. It’s pretty straightforward, but the effect is compelling. We’ll continue to iterate on this proof of concept by playing with the particle system settings, and continue to work on the shader to help create more glitchy effects.
Got any ideas on what effects you’d like to have your hand create? We’d love to hear your thoughts on Discord.
Reboot Blue
Last week Matterless and Auki Labs teammates Nils and Carlo journeyed to the Reboot Develop Blue conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, to pitch our Matterless magic to developers and publishers. We have both the pitch and the video we used to enter it here.
Amid the many notable attendees and speakers from companies like Unity, Rebellion, and Epic Games, our booth caught the attention of many who were there. The seeds of potential new alliances were planted that day, including companies making AR headsets (it’s still hush-huh but we hope to give you some cool announcements soon). “We got to meet with several great companies and have embarked on many new exciting partnerships,” Nils reports, “What will matterless toys and companions be like with headsets? Soon we will know!”
The conference tour continues, and the team will be heading to Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Lisbon, Portugal at the end of the month. AWE is the place for everything Spatial Computing, including Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR), collectively referred to as Extended Reality (XR); as well as enabling technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), bio-interfaces, haptics, 5G, streaming and more…
We are very much looking forward to showing what we made there.
The Floorcraft Showdown
Working with teammates is bound to bring occasional friction, whether it’s from workplace habits, creative conflicts, or arguments over pineapple belonging on pizza. Fortunately, we’ve found one way to resolve this: through glorious victory in Floorcraft! Check out the above video of one such showdown between Damir and Vidhvat to find out who triumphs and who falls.
Be sure to also check out our Floorcraft Dev Vlog to learn more about our AR racecars!
I hope you enjoyed this fun little update. Come back next week for new updates on our adventures in matterless space!
— Kerwin, Social Media Manager
