3D scanning/VR—formerly @nianticspatial, @puzzlingplaces, @uploadvr. Perpetuel typos. Opinions my own
San Francisco, CA
Joined November 2010
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Today, I did some aerial photogrammetry from a plane!
Due to the cabin being tight and my cam’s viewfinder disp. not rotating, i had to get clever. Using the HDMI input on my @FatsharkRC FPV goggles, I had a clean feed of my camera, which worked super well!
using my Steam Frame to create a Gaussian splat was NOT on my bingo card
this is truly awesome! @arcturusvision, with its steam frame add-on camera has a fork of Spirula Studio that lets you train a high quality splat of any space, for FREE, on windows/macOS/linux!
you scan bu recording a video with the Arcturus Vision Camera app, then transfer it to your PC (they have a utility for it, to do it via USB or over wifi), then train with their fork of Spirula Studio on your computer
more info here arcturus.vision/apps#sync
I got an early look at this recently and loved it
It reminded me of 2016/2017, an era where 3d artists and shader wizards were DEEP in vr, building insane installation pieces experimenting with hyper-dimensional, tangible, multi sensory mixed reality experiences
I truly miss the creativity of that era.
It got drowned out by funding drying up, PC VR fizzling out, and vr gaming becoming the main thing
If you’re curious to explore some of those creations, I highly recommend @MuseumOR on Steam
Azad Balabanian retweeted
you know how parents say "I forget how SMALL my kids were..."
im convinced that if you have kids (and are a nerd), you should buy a Steam Frame w/ Arcturus cam or an Apple Vision Pro to record spatial videos of them
watching them in a 3D spatial video is truly the only way you can re-experience how smol they were!
it's truly so, SO cute
Azad Balabanian retweeted
the fact that this was written … last year … breaks my brain
There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.
Azad Balabanian retweeted
Do you have a MacBook Pro? With an SD Card slot?
Your slot now has an API. Write to a file, blink the lights.
Or let your agent use it to get your attention.
More into sidepulse.io/pro
LED Animation Format: github.com/inteliwear/sidepu…
Azad Balabanian retweeted
The K-pop industry is moving quickly with 4DGS. Shot and processed by @4DV_ai
Azad Balabanian retweeted
In my first minutes with Steam Frame, I have: played a real PCVR game, run a StereoKit app, installed Claude Code, built a StereoKit app, compiled the StereoKit SDK from scratch and installed a custom SteamVR keyboard.
All I can say is I really wish Linux VR had happened sooner!
Azad Balabanian retweeted
Someone built a flying butterfly using an ESP32-C3
Meet ESP-FLUTTER, an open-source robotic butterfly that actually flies by flapping its wings.
It uses a tiny Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 and two digital servos to move its wings.
Unlike a regular RC plane, it doesn't use propellers. It uses the same basic idea we see in real butterflies.
You can control its wing movement, speed and turning.
It is amazing to see how a small microcontroller and a simple mechanical design can recreate something found in nature.
Azad Balabanian retweeted
Gaussian SplattingのPLY、中身が何だったか分からなくなりませんか？僕はよくなります。
なのでWindowsのエクスプローラーでPLYファイルのサムネイルを出すツール「SplatThumb」を作りました。アングルも設定できます。
無料・オープンソースです
github.com/VoxelKei/SplatThu…
#GaussianSplatting #3DGS
Azad Balabanian retweeted
Happy Halloween. 🎃
We at NXT/WebXR just dropped a free creepy VR experience for the night: Die Hände. Control a rogue undead hand straight from your browser.
Put on your headset and find it for free on @NxtWebXR
Azad Balabanian retweeted
Alright so we now have opensource versions of
1. on device multicam egocentric visual inertial odometry
2. multi-iphone recording software (that are timesynced with ntp)
3. Gaussian splatting at acceptable FPS in @rerundotio
I decided to take some data I had previously collected that was quite messy and see how far Opus 5.5 could fix it with the rerun mcp and the context of all of the different projects I've worked on so far.
I'll break this down into multiple parts (Today just part 1)
1. hardware <- this thread
2. collection
3. time and spatial alignment
4. Post processing
5. Data cleaning
Splatting is going to be a critical part of the ego collection pipeline IMO, so I'm working on improving our current official support.
code here - - <github.com/rerun-io/examples…>
The current shipped version does well for less than 1M splats, but not so much for larger ones such as the iconic garden scene (5.2M splats). I ported over brushes kernels to @rerundotio and now on my M5 I'm getting ~40-50fps when recording or a solid 60fps when not. This is basically a 10x improvement from the current version and this huge improvement that wouldn't have been possible without all the verification loops we've added with the rerun skills and MCP. I'll break down what was required to make this work ⬇︎
Azad Balabanian retweeted
Here is a little video of the booting process from SteamOS on Pico 4
The speed up part is ~90 seconds irl
I’ll try to make myself a better screen recording tool, so I can get better in-headset shots
Azad Balabanian retweeted
Oh yeah, I forgot to show this EXTREMELY important part (sorry for the messy desk)
Full Mario 64 in Mixed Reality! Running in real 3D (no stereoscopic crap) natively at 90FPS and also running on my desk! 😋
Again, Opus 5.5 + PICO CLI combo made it quite straightforward.
Such a bliss to play an oldie at 90 FPS in 3D.
Disclaimer: I own an original physical copy of Mario 64. This project is not associated with Nintendo or PICO.
Really looking forward to @raven_computer’s launch event tonight!
Linux running on HUD glasses!
SteamOS, Omarchy, and now this.
Are you getting it yet?
Pond, our linux operating system, is now available for anyone to try!
Our updated website includes the installers and a detailed look at the operating system
butterfly.so/pond
It also has
- dark mode
- and a real time train map of the full Judah line, rebuilt entirely with MapLibre + OpenFreeMap instead of embedding MUNI’s real time map from their website (which uses the same stack but is not customizable)
Crazy this is being framed as a “PROTECT MUH PRIVACY” angle
Messages in public servers have always been public. Idiotic.
What this story is actually about is addressing discord’s worst aspect: its lack of searchablity/indexing by google.
Thousands of mods, tools, answers to support queries are buried in rambling, sequential channels, CONSTANTLY being re-asked by new users. Idiotic.
Today, I still find useful answers on forums from 15-20 years ago. Likewise with Reddit threads.
It should also be the case with discord
Discord will soon make public server messages searchable on Google
The feature will be enabled by default for US adults, but users can opt out in their privacy settings
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Discord's update is limited to future messages (mid-Dec 2026+) from public channels in Discoverable Servers only (a subset of ~63k specific public servers with 1k+ members); not all servers or past messages. Users/admins can opt out.
discord.com/blog/making-co…
support.discord.com/hc/en-us/artic…