Brief summary

Extended Reality technology — XR — has had a lot of hype in recent years thanks to the concept of the metaverse. But bold visions of the future can obscure the reality of what engineers and organizations are doing today.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, the host Scott Shaw and Birgitta Boeckeler are joined by Cam Jackson and Kuldeep Singh to discuss the XR work Thoughtworks has been doing with clients. Together they explore what it means for engineers and how the future of the technology might evolve.

We discussed following

• What does X and R stand in XR?
• Do I need to have a headset to experience XR?
• is phone only means for Augmented Reality or Cardboard kind of things are still being pursued?
• What are the industrial side of XR?
• Are there ways to get started that are cheaper or easier in XR?
• Can I get started just on the web? Can people just access the web through these devices?
• If I was just a React developer and I wanted to start working in 3D, is there a migration path for me?
• I know React, I know JavaScript, but it’s probably not that one-on-one transferable. What are the different challenges?
• JavaScript and the browser don’t immediately make me think suitable for real time, right?
• You must have had to address continuous delivery issues like how do you deploy to a device like that?
• A gaze click would be: I look at something and then something happens in the glasses, yes?
• What are the testing practices?
• Suppose I was a developer and I wanted to get started doing this, what skills should I learn? Do I have to learn Unity or what’s the basics?
• Do the frameworks shield you from some of that? I would have thought that would have been worked out already?
• It seems like it’s almost like an architecture problem, as opposed to design like visual design. You’re designing spaces, aren’t you?
• What is it that’s stopping it from more general adoption?
• You think the hype is becoming reality?
• Metaverse is like cyberspace; we’re living in cyberspace, but we don’t call it cyberspace.

Listen here

Thoughtworks Podcast : XR in practice: the engineering challenges of extending reality