Nvidia Shield - A Different Take On Android Gaming Consoles

Nvidia surprised many industry observers with the launch of the Shield Android gaming console at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, but describing it as a mere Android console might not be the right thing to do.

Shield is a powerful piece of hardware, with Nvidia’s custom 64-bit Denver CPU cores and 256 GPU cores, based on the company’s latest Maxwell infrastructure. While Nvidia describes the Tegra X1 System-on-Chip (SoC) as a “mobile superchip with the soul of a console,” it still can’t go up against the latest consoles from Sony and Microsoft. However, the Tegra X1 is roughly on a par with previous generation PlayStation and Xbox hardware.

So, will this give Android game developers more headroom to develop better looking games and bring them to the living room in 4K/UHD resolutions? Yes, that is one possibility, but Shield is not about bringing expensive AAA titles to Android.

In fact, Nvidia’s first few Shield products were all about streaming PC games onto Android devices. They can be viewed as test beds at this point, with streaming capabilities as a differentiator in the oversaturated Android hardware market.

Android Gaming Consoles Dead On Arrival

First we need to take a look at the history of Android’s gaming console successes and failures, then examine the cost of developing Android games that could benefit from more powerful hardware. Nvidia Shield could end up boosting, or killing, some aspects of Android game development, and chances are it will do both.

Speaking of kickstarting, a few years ago a group of entrepreneurs launched a Kickstarter project to create the OUYA Android gaming console, which was, coincidentally, based on Nvidia hardware. A lot of people like the idea of a $99 Android console, investments poured in, but the end result was a flop. Last year Forbesproclaimed the OUYA dead – the console never had a big enough user base, so developers didn’t bother with it. There was no money to be made.

Nvidia Shield gaming tablet costs twice as much ($199 MSRP), but as an Nvidia product, it should be more appealing to Android developers. So this should help, right?

Wrong.

Very few Android developers focus on graphically intensive titles. They require a lot more resources, they don’t look as good as proper console or PC games, they’re not great for touch input, and, with a lot of eye candy, they can drain a smartphone or tablet battery in no time. The biggest games on Android and, indeed, all mobile platforms, are casual games, not so-called “AAA” titles. Rovio and King did not make a fortune developing elaborate games with photorealistic graphics, they focused on casual games that could be played on practically any smartphone. These games didn’t put much strain on the SoC and the battery, so you could kill some time without killing your mobile phone.

Throttling is another problem. Mobile phones and tablets don’t dissipate heat well, so while they can deliver great performance on paper, if they’re forced to run under a load for extended periods of time, the SoC will throttle back and operate on lower clocks to stay within its thermal envelope, thus degrading performance.

Android gaming consoles and set-top boxes don’t suffer from these shortcomings since they don’t rely on battery power and can be designed to dissipate a lot more heat due to their bigger form.

However, that does not mean Android developers will flock to create games for them; the user base is so small that developers could not make their money back since developing good-looking shooters and action games requires more resources than creating casual games like Flappy Bird. On the other hand, recent research indicates that more than 200 Android games are published each day. Most of these titles never gain any significant traction, as the market is overcrowded. With that in mind, trying to move into Android TV or Android consoles could make sense for some developers.

So What’s Nvidia’s Endgame?

Nvidia is fully aware of this problem, as are other hardware makers. That is why we don’t have a lot of Android gaming consoles and why most big brands have steered clear of them. The business model does not make much sense, either. Sony and Microsoft don’t make a lot of money on hardware, in fact at launch they tend to sell new consoles below cost, since they control the ecosystem and make money on games rather than consoles. This obviously does not, and cannot, apply to Android.

However, Nvidia thinks it has cracked this problem. Why bother developing AAA games for Android when you can use PC titles instead? Why render the content locally on the device if you can stream it? Why try to make money on hardware if you can make it on services? It may sounds like a bit of a moon-shot, but Nvidia is confident that it will work and likens GRID Game Streaming to Netflix for games.

What does this mean for Nvidia Shield’s gaming tablet, Android developers and consumers?

Nvidia Shield could allow the company to mimic Sony’s and Microsoft’s approach, by making money on games rather than hardware, but with a twist: by offering Gaming as a Service (GaaS).

Let’s see how this approach helps the company:

• Ecosystem — Nvidia would be able to control the ecosystem by supporting select games, creating a walled garden.
• Hardware — The games would be rendered solely on Nvidia GRID servers, so the company could eventually become its own biggest hardware customer.
• Longevity — As long as the consumer has hardware capable of streaming GRID content, there will be no need to upgrade it – Nvidia would do it on the server side, using more of its own hardware.
• Efficiency — Instead of marketing expensive graphics cards, Nvidia could sell processing power and utilize installed hardware more efficiently than individual consumers.
• Piracy — There is no risk of piracy, which should appeal to publishers.

Consumers also stand to benefit from GRID streaming, but there are some drawbacks as well:

• Convenience — Consumers would no longer have to bother with upgrades, patches, updates and drivers.
• Value — instead of buying an expensive gaming PC and upgrading it on a regular basis, consumers would be able to pay as they go.
• Choice — Lack of choice might be a problem, as Nvidia will only stream select titles, so consumers interested in niche games and genres probably would not be catered to, at least, not initially.
• Geography — GRID services would not be available globally, and servers need to be in close proximity to the client in order to keep latency down.

As for Android developers, Nvidia Shield is a mixed bag to say the least. There are some potential benefits, but it’s not all good news:

• Power — If the concept takes off, Android developers would finally have some more powerful hardware to play with, on a bigger install base.
• TV — Shield is all about bringing Android to the living room in 4K, so developers could also create applications specifically designed for this purpose (just in time for next generation smart TVs).
• Exposure — Focusing on console and TV could give developers more exposure than the oversaturated mobile Android segment.
• AAA — If successful, Nvidia’s initiative could make high-budget Android games even less viable, and they’re already not profitable for most publishers.
• Enterprise — Nvidia has already partnered with VMware, so in the long run Android could be employed for enterprise as well, but this is a hypothetical scenario and would take some time to become viable.

Like what you're reading?

Get the latest updates first.

No spam. Just great engineering and design posts.

• 
• 
• 

How Nvidia Shield Works

I won’t waste much time explaining the finer points of Nvidia’s GRID technology, but in case you are not familiar with the concept, a brief summary should come in handy. If you are interested in the finer point of GRID and GRID SDKs, Nvidia’s official documentation is extensive and available online.

A GRID server essentially operates like a remote vGPU, or a virtual gaming machine. The client side provides the input via graphic commands, which are then handled by the host interface and rendered on low-latency hardware. The frame buffer is then encoded on a low latency hardware decoder and sent back to the client in the form of a compressed video stream.

The original spec called for H.264 video, but the latest iteration of Nvidia’s SoCs, the Tegra X1, supports 4K H.265 (HEVC) at 60fps. This means the stream can be stutter-free and allow fluent framerates.

What about latency?

This is, perhaps, the biggest problem facing Nvidia GRID, and cloud gaming in general. Streaming video from the cloud is one thing, but rendering original audio and video content, based on user input, is something else. High latencies are not something gamers can live with; online multiplayer gaming has been around for years and Nvidia put a lot of time and effort into resolving the problem.

Nvidia estimates server-side latency at 30ms, network latency at 30ms and client-side latency at less than 16ms. The client decode API is designed for low latency of about 1 frame. Nvidia’s plan is to deploy dedicated GRID servers in telecom data centres and “flood the map” with servers to cut down latency. The company also designed partner middleware solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Nvidia has done a lot to create an infrastructure, but it may be a while before all corners of the globe gain access to low-latency GRID services.

Where Does Nvidia Shield Leave Android Developers?

Nvidia’s gaming tablet approach offers a few opportunities, and downsides, for Android developers. Big developers focused on creating the Android equivalent of big-budget AAA games could face more competitive pressure from Nvidia GRID, which can offer vastly superior quality at a premium.

However, small or independent developers focused on casual games and other apps have nothing to worry about. To the contrary, Nvidia is opening another door, in this case the door to the living room and big high-def screens. Coupled with H.265 and VP9 capabilities, Shield offers a range of opportunities, but ultimately it is up to developers to create a new generation of killer apps for 4K TVs, be it on Shield or Android TV.

Coincidentally, Taiwan-based chipmaker, MediaTek, will provide SoCs for the first generation of Android TVs, and the first chip was announced at CES 2015, just like the Tegra X1. MediaTek’s MT5595 SoC is based on 32-bit Cortex-A17 and Cortex-A7 cores, but its GPU can still handle HEVC and VP9 and 60fps, just like the Tegra X1. Android TV is a different topic, and I do not wish to discuss it in depth, but there is clearly a lot of overlap as far as developers are concerned.

Developing Android applications for big 4K/UHD displays is the next big thing, while Android Wear is, literally, the next small thing.

While it may sound like another challenge and another hardware platform to master, don’t forget to consider the benefits of developing apps designed specifically for the living room, for Android TV and devices like Nvidia’s Shield:

• Fewer software and hardware platforms to take into account.
• More powerful hardware available.
• Power efficiency is a non-issue.
• You only have to deal with one aspect ratio.
• Apps will be designed to run in just two resolutions (UHD and FHD).
• UI layout will be more or less standardised.
• User experience should be nearly identical across a number of different products.

Alternative Applications

So far, I have talked about Nvidia’s foray into the living room, but what about other potential applications? With so much processing power available on demand via GRID, surely there has to be a way to use it for something other than games?

This is a tricky one and I can only speculate, but a few things are already clear. Gaming is just one aspect of Nvidia’s parallel computing efforts – enterprise virtualisation is another, although it does not have much to do with Android, or the living room.

Devices like Nvidia Shield, or upcoming Android TV sets, could serve as a hub for many other devices, expanding the abilities of our smartphones to double as smart remote controls, transforming cheap tablets with fast wireless into “second screens”, offering new ways to distribute and consume content.

Shield stands out by virtue of its streaming capabilities and impressive processing power, including powerful and programmable CUDA cores that can be put to use for things other than graphics. Nvidia has already demonstrated that even its mobile GPUs, used in the latest Tegra chips, can be utilized to create 3D maps of surroundings, do rudimentary motion tracking and more. This means that in the future, Android devices could offer Kinect-like capabilities, seamlessly integrated with other Android devices. How about interactive fitness routines in the living room, backed by motion tracking and fitness wearables? Or games designed solely for big screen TVs, smart home control hubs, or new Virtual Reality (VR) capabilities?

VR and Augmented Reality (AR) might also benefit from such devices, and especially from Nvidia’s GRID technology. Google is also said to be working on Android VR, which will join Android Wear, Android TV and Android Auto in the future, but details are still sketchy. (I discussed the potential applications of streaming on VR and AR headsets in a previous post.) In the meantime, a number of companies have announced new or updated VR products and technologies, and all this happened in a matter of weeks at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Valve, Samsung, and AMD are just some of the big names worth mentioning.

But if Nvidia Shield could use streaming on home consoles, either via GRID or locally, why not use it on mobile devices as well? It sounds like a match made in heaven, with most of the computing being done in the cloud, offloading mobile devices for other tasks and improving battery life in the process.

Unfortunately this is not practical at this point. Few people would need access to such processing power on their mobile devices, which are already good enough for casual gaming, and even for some titles with truly staggering graphics. Bandwidth and latency would be another problem, as 4G/LTE is still not widely available across the world and in some scenarios it would not be fast enough. In addition, modern integrated modems are relatively complex; they often take up more room on the SoC than the GPU, or all CPU cores combined. Besides, running the modem at full blast, and crunching all the numbers to decode and display high resolution content, is not good from an efficiency perspective and would inevitably take a big toll on battery life.

In theory, it would be possible to use the same approach for some enterprise applications built around the same infrastructure, or for niche devices that could be used in some industries; but all this is a long way off, and such proprietary technologies should not concern the average Android developer, anyway.

So what should Android developers interested in Nvidia Shield gaming tablets, streaming, and Android TV, focus on? It is hard to say at this point, but the potential market for a new generation living room apps is huge and should not be overlooked. Who knows, maybe our posts will motivate some of our readers to look into this emerging market and come up with the next killer app, in which case I just want you to know one thing: a bottle of Blue Label would be nice.

The original article is from Toptal. Find more gaming resources here.

Microsoft HoloLens Review - Bridging The Gap Between AR And VR

Microsoft has a long tradition of spicing up relatively dull product announcements with compelling tech demos, and the Windows 10 announcement was no exception. The software giant used the opportunity to create a fair amount of buzz about the HoloLens, a futuristic headset that offers a glimpse into the future of Augmented Reality (AR). However, Microsoft also has a tradition of spectacular hardware flops, which peaked under the Ballmer regime. Remember the Kin phone? Neither do I.

The introduction of HoloLens probably won’t be such a flop for a number of reasons. First of all, the HoloLens still has a long way to go before it becomes a commercially viable device - it could be about a few quarters, or a couple of years. Secondly, the concept behind it is sound, and builds on a few promising emerging industry trends, such as wearable tech and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets. The HoloLens is trying to be somewhat different by bundling a lot of functionality into a single device, but in this Microsoft HoloLens review we will take a look at what’s already out there and what is in the works.

Since this is an engineering blog designed for VR professionals and other engineers, I won’t spend much time answering the question “What is HoloLens?” and explaining the difference between AR and VR. Augmented reality technology has a range of potential applications in various industries, but limited applications in entertainment. Virtual reality is more geared towards entertainment, although it has some professional applications as well.

Both technologies still have a lot of limitations, and numerous technical challenges have to be overcome in order to gain mass market appeal. This is a gradual process that will take years rather than months. The technology needed to create such products without breaking the bank is simply not ready, but it’s slowly getting there.

Let’s take a look at what’s out there and what’s missing.

Hardware Limitations - Google Glass vs. Oculus Rift vs. Microsoft HoloLens

Google Glass was announced in early 2012 and started shipping a year later at a cost of $1,500. The high price tag meant it was reserved for a very small niche – early adopters described as “explorers” by Google’s PR and marketing machine. The device offered limited AR functionality, and contained a small prism projector with a resolution of 640x360 pixels, powered by an outdated processor.

While it managed to captivate the public for a while, Google Glass can hardly be described as a success. App developers who were keen to jump on the bandwagon started losing interest, along with “explorers” who appeared to get over the fad in a matter of months. The latest rumours point to a new version of Google Glass with Intel silicon inside, so it might be a bit too early for an obituary. Either way, Google Glass was not a big success no matter how you look at it.

Oculus Rift is perhaps the most talked about VR system at the moment, but unlike Google Glass, it has yet to launch. Oculus VR has been working on the device for years, and in the process the company went through two generations of development kits. The consumer version is expected to launch sometime in 2015, with a revised spec. In March 2014, Oculus VR was bought by Facebook for more than $2bn in cash and Facebook stock.

Samsung’s Gear VR offers a different approach, as it utilises the Galaxy Note 4 phablet in lieu of a built-in screen, but it relies on some technology developed by Oculus. I find the modular concept interesting, as a similar approach could be employed with a range of mobile devices from different vendors that would allow users to effectively upgrade hardware every time they got a new phone. Qualcomm’s Vuforia platform boasts some promising features for mobile devices and potential AR/VR applications.

So, what’s missing? The simple answer might be processing power, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

The problem with both concepts is that they are still ahead of their time, and the technology still needs to catch up. Microsoft’s HoloLens is bound to suffer from the same teething problems, but Microsoft’s concept is somewhat different, and therefore stands a chance of overcoming at least some of these issues.

Google Glass was designed as a lightweight wearable, which resulted in a number of compromises. The device featured a single display on a thick prism in front of the user’s right eye. The resolution was very limited given the field of view (FOV). For example, smartwatch displays tend to feature similar vertical resolutions for a device that takes up just a couple of degrees of the user’s field of view. Google Glass was based on an antiquated System on Chip (SoC) and had limited battery life.

Designing mobile devices is not easy, and always involves a number of trade-offs. Higher resolution displays require more GPU power, necessitating the use of bigger SoCs with more powerful GPUs working at a higher load, which then requires a larger battery and so on. It’s a fine balancing act, and an AR headset is simply too small to accommodate a large battery like those used in high-resolution tablets.

At first glance, Oculus Rift does not appear to suffer from similar shortcomings on the hardware front, since it does not have compromises for the sake of battery life and portability. It does not rely on an integrated SoC, and a 1080p display sounds desirable; but, in reality it’s not nearly enough for photorealism. The device has a very large FOV, and pixel density is still insufficient.

To overcome this problem, VR devices would have to use higher resolution 4K/UHD displays, or even 8K displays at some point in the future. The technology is almost there, but it does not come cheap, and is anything but portable.

If you want to run the latest AAA games on a 4K display with the highest possible detail settings, you need two high-end discrete graphics cards. For example, Nvidia and AMD cards based on flagship Maxwell and Hawaii generation GPUs. To eliminate frame tearing (using technologies similar to Nvidia’s G-Sync or AMD’s FreeSync) you need a bit more power, and to do proper 3D for both eyes you need even more GPU power.

The bottom line is: to power a 4K VR device using currently available technology, you would need at least two GPUs with a total of 12-14bn transistors in 28nm, consuming 350W to 500W of power, not counting the CPU and rest of the system. This is a conservative estimate, based on currently available GPU and CPUs - and let’s not even discuss the idea of powering two 4K screens, one per eye.

Nvidia’s latest mobile SoC, the Tegra K1 64-bit used in the Google Nexus 9, features 192 CUDA cores based on Kepler architecture, not the more efficient Maxwell. The company’s current flagship discrete graphics cards sport 2048 Maxwell CUDA cores running at higher clocks than Kepler cores in mobile Tegra SoCs.

Portable VR devices with photorealistic graphics are clearly unavailable for years to come, and even wired devices like Oculus Rift have a long way to go. The overall platform cost is another concern. Gaming PCs capable of pumping out playable frame rates at 1080p are relatively cheap, since mainstream GPUs are fast enough to do the job. But at 2160p you need four times the GPU muscle, backed by more memory and a faster CPU.

There is another way of tackling this problem, and I will go over it later.

So What Did Microsoft Get Right?

Remember Facebook’s Oculus Rift deal I mentioned earlier? Just a few days after it was announced, it emerged that Microsoft bought intellectual property (IP) assets related to augmented reality and wearable computers from the Osterhout Design Group (ODG). Some of the patents covered “see-through near-eye display glasses” with a partially transmitting optical element.

In other words, Microsoft bought the IP needed to create HoloLens; and the deal reportedly covered dozens of ODG patents, including a few dozen more patent applications in progress. Meanwhile, Oculus VR is said to have just a single patent, which vaguely describes “a virtual reality headset”.

Microsoft appears to be trying to get the best of both worlds – a wide FOV usually associated with VR devices, and a transparent display surface suitable for AR applications. The approach should allow HoloLens to utilize a lot less processing power than VR devices, while at the same time offering more functionality thanks to the wide FOV. Instead of trying to render photorealistic content, HoloLens could get away with a slightly lower resolution and image quality due to the limited opacity of displayed content. There is no need to create an illusion of reality, so there is a lot less hardware overhead involved. A lot of off-the-shelf technology could allow the HoloLens to reduce or eliminate aliasing and generate good looking composites, since the backdrop is already there.

This fact limits HoloLens’ appeal in the entertainment niche, as opposed to true VR headsets; but, it opens up a number of possibilities in other industries, ranging from engineering and healthcare to architecture and defense. HoloLens could be used to assist healthcare professionals, engineers, operators of industrial machinery, soldiers, and law enforcement.

However, HoloLens still has applications in the consumer space. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer said HoloLens needs to be a successful standalone product, adding that the company is already looking into ways of using it in unison with PCs and Xbox One consoles. The device could serve as a heads up display (HUD) for gamers, or even for fitness buffs in gyms.

HoloLens Hardware Conundrum

Microsoft has not revealed the exact hardware specifications, so we still don’t quite know what to expect. There is no word about display resolution, GPU GFLOPs, connectivity, or battery life. This leaves a lot of room for speculation, which the tech press is happy to fill with column inches and clickbait, but nothing is official yet.

Like I said, HoloLens should not require nearly as much GPU power as the Oculus Rift and similar VR products. However, this does not mean that Microsoft can get away with a cheap SoC, like the ones commonly used in mobile products. Microsoft currently uses a range of chips from different vendors – Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs with integrated 4G/LTE for mobile phones, Intel chips for Surface Pro tablets (along with Nvidia SoCs on defunct Surface RT products), along with custom AMD APUs in the Xbox One.

Due to power considerations, the most obvious choice would be a Snapdragon SoC, similar to those used in Lumia phones. This does not mean that HoloLens would be as underpowered as Google Glass. HoloLens is a much larger device, with room for a bigger battery; and, the latest Snapdragon SoCs are vastly more powerful than the chipset used in Google Glass (which is significantly slower than chips used in smartwatches). Early benchmarks indicate that the Adreno 430 GPU used in Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship SoCs, like the Snapdragon 810, is a powerhouse capable of handling 4K resolutions and rendering relatively complex 3D content in 1080p.

It’s not just about sheer rendering performance. GPUs offer a lot of computing potential, and can be used for much more than gaming. Google used the Tegra K1 for Project Tango, which also deals with a number of technologies that could be very useful for AR or VR devices - automation, driverless cars, and so on. I already mentioned Vuforia, and there are other players in the GPU industry, but Nvidia has the advantage of using CUDA cores – it’s been a market leader in professional graphics and GPGPU compute markets for years.

However, we should not be locked into the “what’s out there” mindset. It will take a while before HoloLens goes on sale, and subsequent generations are bound to feature even more powerful hardware. Intel’s new 14nm Atoms are coming soon, while ARM-based 14nm and 16nm SoCs should appear a couple of quarters later. The new non-planar nodes will allow even more performance per watt, drastically improving overall performance without taking a toll on battery life.

Streaming As An Alternative

There is also an alternative which I mentioned earlier – cloud computing and streaming could be used to display complex, resource-intensive 3D content. The latest SoCs feature 802.11ac wireless and fast LTE modems, sufficient for high-resolution streaming. The downside to this approach, especially LTE, is lag.

If additional content is rendered locally, on a PC workstation or possibly even an Xbox One, lag should be limited, but remote cloud rendering could prove problematic. For example, Nvidia is trying to tackle this problem by setting up GRID servers at strategic locations, in an attempt to cover the biggest markets with low-lag game streaming. Just a few milliseconds of additional lag could compromise the user experience in an AR application.

A mobile SoC should be sufficient for most everyday tasks, such as Skype and some limited augmented reality applications. However, if an architect wants to walk into a construction site and see how the finished building will look using augmented reality, the HoloLens will have to be backed by more hardware; rendering complex scenes with hundreds of thousands or millions of polygons, advanced lighting effects, and so on.

The upside is that HoloLens could offer a lot of functionality out of the box, with a relatively powerful integrated GPU capable of handling a lot of everyday tasks, such as high resolution video streaming, browsing, and even casual gaming. On the other hand, professionals could employ 802.11ac or LTE to stream more complex content, rendered remotely.

Microsoft could practically use the same hardware platform for home users and professionals, with the latter employing local or cloud streaming for more advanced, resource-intensive tasks.

Is There A Use Case And A Market For HoloLens?

Microsoft showed off the HoloLens in a number of different scenarios. While the demos were quite interesting, they did not exactly spell out a realistic and commercially viable use case for the new device.

What I like about HoloLens is the fact that it is halfway between true wearables, like Google Glass, and wired VR solutions, like Oculus Rift. HoloLens does not have to be light and portable enough to wear on the street, but at the same time it does not have to be tethered to a computer or external power source – the best of both worlds. I also like the fact that Microsoft is choosing to lead rather than follow. HoloLens differs from existing concepts and products; it’s innovative, futuristic, and original - a breath of fresh air from Redmond.

However, this approach also raises a number of important questions about the use case for HoloLens, and the size of the market. It can’t replace a display like VR solutions, yet it can’t be used in everyday situations due to its sheer bulk and appearance. While you may see some commuters and athletes using smart glasses, you probably won’t see skiers or joggers wearing a HoloLens headset.

What could mainstream users do with HoloLens? What sort of software platforms and operating systems will be supported? What about professional applications? What about HoloLens cross-platform functionality, hardware specifications, retail price, and Bill of Material (BOM)?

A lot of questions still have to be answered, and it will probably take a while before Microsoft releases all the information.

Microsoft will have to target mainstream and professional markets at the same time, with the same hardware. Depending on the price and BOM, Microsoft could leverage its Xbox user base, as well as a segment of the PC gaming market, to bring HoloLens products to mainstream users. Marketing such a product won’t be easy if the price is too high, but the user base is there - and it is willing to spend a lot of money on new gadgets. A mainstream market approach would also help get more developers on board, thus expanding the ecosystem and creating new use cases.

But if HoloLens products are bound to be priced for the mainstream market, how will Microsoft go after the professional market, and make some money in the process?

Years ago I used to make a living in offline 3D graphics, and I can see a lot of potential in HoloLens. There are a lot of 3D/CAD users out there and many of them would agree. Does this mean that every designer will be able to pick up a HoloLens device priced for the mainstream market and use it for work? Possibly, but probably not.

There are other ways of marketing products in this space. I’ve been covering the GPU space for years, and in that time I’ve learned a thing or two about how the industry operates. Although high-end graphics cards for gamers get all the headlines, the real cash cows for Nvidia and AMD are professional graphics and compute solutions. They are the unsung heroes in this duopoly. The BOM for a consumer card and a professional card based on the same GPU is roughly the same, but professional cards cost a lot more, an order of magnitude more. They deliver huge margins, and generate a lot of revenue and profit, in spite of low overall volumes – you can check any Nvidia quarterly earning report for more info.

Microsoft could resort to a similar approach. HoloLens could use the same hardware for both markets, limit functionality on consumer models, and expand it on professional products through different licensing tiers.

Of course, this is all just speculation at this point - but that’s how this market works. Microsoft does not have to reinvent the wheel.

This article was written by NERMIN HAJDARBEGOVIC - TECHNICAL EDITOR @ TOPTAL and can be read here.

Roto - The Chair That Spins

Here is something interesting in the name of gaming and VR:



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rotovr/roto-taking-virtual-reality-to-the-next-level


Interesting idea for sure. As you need to move around in 360 using VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, this makes sense. However, you are still sitting down, and not really moving. Which is what I like about mine. Also, it's quite a pricey chair. Anyway, I wish them all the best with the campaign. :)

TreadGaming Dying Light Gameplay

New Gameplay video with TreadGaming hardware in action:



This time around I spend extra time adding images showing how I trigger things in the game. It's not exact, but will give you some idea.

Also, I'm now also using the neat functionality I just added where you can hold the top Nunchuck button (C) to trigger things with the stick. Here Nunchuck #1 (left hand) will trigger the D-Pad on a XBox 360 controller, and Nunchuck #2 (right hand) will trigger A, B, X and Y buttons using the stick. If I double click the C buttons, it will be triggering like a normal button. In this case LB and RB on a XBox 360 controller.

Exergaming Projects Out There

It's been a while since I posted about cool projects related to mine, so I though I collect a few and show them here:

This bike is sweet, but probably quite expensive. Still in concept stage as far as I know:



Golf:


Sport Simulator:




Oculus Rift + Kinect + KickR = Our Homage to Paperboy: PaperDude VR





This is nice work, but no so much "omni treadmill". He just hacked mini steppers to trigger movement. You do know that means "all" or "every" right?





Not sure how many would actually go through all this trouble, but hey, exploring limits - Draw real blood while getting hurt?



It's on Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1246820613/blood-sport-the-ultimate-in-immersive-gaming, but suspended for some reason...



CAREN ( Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment )

I would also like to highlight this wonderful site: http://www.fitness-gaming.com/

Kickstarter Campaign Successful!

What can I say... THANK YOU ALL BACKERS!





More exciting things to come for sure!

Early Kickstarter Backer Testing TreadGaming on a Bike

One of the main reasons I wanted to post this on a crowdfunding site was to see what interest there would be in what I've created here.

From what I can tell from the Kickstarter campaign, is that there is interest out there! If I had less than 10 backers or so, then I would know there weren't enough interest in this.

However, having 60+ backers, that tells me this is something people like. And this is also confirmed by all the lovely emails I get from people. Thank you!

I even had one Norwegian Backer that took upon himself to rewrite the main information page on my Kickstarter campaign for me and then we worked together improving it.

I send one of the few ones I had left back home to him because he's been so helpfull and he has a bike. That way I could get some real feedback on this product I've created. And improve it based on that feedback. Here you can see it mounted on his bike:

He was very pleased with it. You can read more what he has to say about it here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chillance/treadgaming-exercise-while-playing-games/posts/1110114