Sep, 2020 - Post

XR enabled me to renovate my home!

Covid19 is still unmeasurable, and we are more or less getting adjusted to this new normal. We are eagerly waiting to say goodbye to this year 2020 and welcome the coming year of hope, 2021. Read more here to know why I call this year 2020, as the year of change. In April this year, I explained XR development from home, and that was still near shore to office, I was less than an hour away from the office.

Sep, 2020 - Post

The Learning Equation

Today, The world is celebrating teacher’s day. I wish Happy Teacher’s day to all of us! We all are teachers and learners as every one of us has something to learn from others and something to teach others. I am thinking of an equation of learning that defines my way of learning and hope it would be helpful for you too. The learning equation — Learning is proportional to Sharing; Learning ∝ Sharing

Aug, 2020 - Post

Two Thoughtful Years!

It’s now two years since I accepted a challenging change to leave the previous organization after 13 long years, and join ThoughtWorks. Any change requires sacrifices and dedication before it becomes a positive change, but the journey becomes easy when we believe in the change and accept it. A change introduces us to a new environment and enables new thoughts, and new energy. The two years journey at ThoughtWorks is no different.

Jun, 2020 - Post

The future of shopping

eXtended Reality (XR) that includes AR and VR technologies have been silently disrupting the gaming industry for more than a decade. In the recent past, the tech has gained some traction in the education and training space. Today, however, COVID-19 with its mandates of social distancing and less to no physical interactions has accelerated adoption for XR. The tech is virtual, contactless, and delivers outstanding brand experiences - perfect for the new normal that multiple industries like retail will benefit from.

Jun, 2020 - Post

2020 — The year of Change

Change is the only constant, early we accept, early we get ready for the future. 2020 is a year of change, accept it, and change our lifestyle and get ready for the future. I have been writing about the change in the past, right from accepting the change to change for good to have a purposeful and balanced life and uncover human potential in this Covid19 time. Today, June 20, is my younger son Lovyansh’s 3rd Birthday, and June month is really time to rejuvenate and celebrate for the kids when they are free from school.

Jun, 2020 - Post

The Growing List of XR Devices

In my earlier article, I have explained the fundamentals of XR and the type of XR, and the popular devices in those XR types. ARVR is not the only about Head-Mounted Display(HMD) devices. There is an ever-growing list of Google ARCore supported smartphones/tablets and ARKit is being supported in recent Apple phones. But still, when when it comes to AR and VR devices, the first thing that comes in mind is head-mounted display devices (HMD), however, the newer mobile phones/tablets are now coming with AR/VR support with a minimal set of tools attached.

May, 2020 - Post

A new form of WebXR

Accessing native XR features from the device using a web page is another form of WebXR. In this article, I want to share an experiment where I tried to control the android device’s native features such as controlling volume and camera torch from a web page. This use case can be really useful in the XR world, where I can control the feature access in the device from cloud services, even the whole look and feel for showing the device controls can be managed from a hosted web page.

May, 2020 - Post

Uncovering the human potential

Covid19 has challenged the way work, I have penned down my earlier article to cover my workday and our shift toward new ways of working. Covid19 has impacted not just the way we work, but also our lives. All-day, we keep hearing how it is hitting hard on humanity and it has brought so much negativity around us. Enough of negativity, let’s uncover human potential to cop with it. In this article, I will cover how the ways of our regular life are shifting, and uncovering new human potentials to try out new things and performing our chores own our own.

May, 2020 - Post

Run a 2D App in XR Container

There are a number of Enterprise XR use cases where we have a need to open the existing 2D apps in the XR devices in a wrapper app, and this article covers a concept, have a look! After trying the OS level customization on an XR device, you may like to run your XR apps as a system app. Here is a simple article by Raju K Android System Apps development - Android Emulator Setup and guidelines to develop system applications

May, 2020 - Post

OS Customization for XR Device

The Operating System of XR (AR VR) devices is mostly customized to the hardware of the device, and not just that the OS level customizations are needed to meet the enterprise needs such as integration with Enterprise MDM (Mobile Device Management) solutions (such as Intune, MobileIron and Airwatch), 3D lock screen, idle-timeout, custom home screen, custom settings, security, as so on. Most organizations currently using traditional hardware and software assets such as mobile devices, laptops, and desktops, and the processes and policies for managing these devices are quite stable and straightforward by now.

May, 2020 - Post

Change to become more successful!

Change is the only constant, it requires continuous effort from humankind to understand the change that leads to success, and make us even more successful. In my earlier article, I talked about the success mantra, and also wrote about accepting the change when required. Sometimes the way we perceive our success becomes a blocker for becoming more successful. We accumulate some habits knowingly or unknowingly along the path of being successful, and mostly we never realize that those habits start blocking our way forward.

Apr, 2020 - Post

User Account Management In XR

In the previous article, we described the importance of interoperability in while building Enterprise XR solutions, In the article, we will discuss how to manage user accounts in the XR device, and implement single sign-on across the XR apps. We will use Android’s AccountManger approach to login into active directory and integrated it into Unity. Please read my earlier article on setting up the app in active directory, log in using android webview, considering a web-based company login form should appear for login, and no custom login form is allowed to capture the credentials.

Apr, 2020 - Post

WebXR - the new Web

The web has grown from a read-only web (Web 1.0) to interactive web (Web 2.0) and then moved into the semantic web which is more connected and more immersive. 3D content on the web is there for quite some time, the most web-browsers support rendering 3D content natively. The rise for XR technologies and advancements in devices and the internet is leading the demand for Web-based XR. It will be a norm for web-based development.

Apr, 2020 - Post

eXtending reality with AR and VR - Part 2

In Part I of the article, we summarized our observations of eXtended reality’s foundational blocks - AR, VR and MR. We also discussed the popular and most relevant tools and implementations of the new technology. In Part II of the article, we will be looking at a few accessible and novel implementations of the tech. At ThoughtWorks, we have delivered both XR solutions and components of XR SDK (Software Development Kit) on the back of which XR solutions are built.

Apr, 2020 - Post

eXtending reality with AR and VR - Part 1

The way we interact with technology today is not too far from what was predicted by futuristic, sci-fi pop culture. We are living in a world where sophisticated touch and gesture based interactions are collaborating with state of the art wearables, sensors, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR). And, this is eXtending user experiences to be extremely immersive. Add to this, Gartner’s expectation that 5G and AR/VR implementation will transform not only customer engagement but brands’ entire product management cycles as well.

Apr, 2020 - Post

XR development from home

Covid19 has challenged the way we eat, the way we commute, the way we socialize, and the way we work. In short, it impacted the way we live. More than a million people got infected and the number is growing exponentially, it has impacted the whole world. We need to find new ways of life and change our focus and priorities to save nature and humanity. Technology can play a great role in coping with it.

Mar, 2020 - Post

Enterprise XR - Interoperability

In the previous article, we discussed implementing multi-factor authentication for an andorid application, and in the article we will cover another enterprise aspect, Interoperability. Interoperability is key aspect when we build enterprise solutions using XR technologies. The enterprises have digital assets in form of mobile apps, libraries, system APIs, and they can’t just throw away these existing investments, in fact, the XR apps must be implemented in such a way that it is interoperable with them seamlessly.

Mar, 2020 - Post

Enterprise XR - Multi-Factor Authentication

XR use cases are growing with advancements in the devices, internet and development technologies. There is an ever-growing demand to build enterprise use cases using ARVR technology. Most enterprise use cases eventually require integration with an enterprise ecosystem such as IAM (Identity and Access Management), ERP, CRM, and single sign-on with other systems. Most organizations protect digital assets with a single sign-on using Multiple Factor Authentication (MFA). The MFA is generally a web-browser based authentication where the browser redirects to tenant’s authentication page where the user provides their credentials and then the user confirms another factor (PIN, OTP, SMS or mobile notifications), once it succeeds, it gets redirected back to the protected resource.

Jan, 2020 - Post

Success Mantra

Everyone in India is talking about Jeff Bezos, the richest of the world, who was on India’s visit recently. People are talking about the investments he is making in India, talking about his prediction about India’s “21st Century is going to be the Indian century”, and discussing the impact on small businesses. We have seen disruptions lead by Amazon in multiple sectors, now people have a fear that whatever Amazon touch, it becomes Amazon’s.

Nov, 2019 - Post

Augmenting the Travel Reality

Travel and transportation have faced and continue facing disruptions. Many of the traditional ways are no more in the choice. Earlier our parents used to warn us for taking rides with strangers, but now Uber/Ola/Lyft/Didi, etc are the preferred ways. Owning a car may be an absurd idea now. We are now dreaming of Autonomous vehicles, Flying Cars, Hyperloop, and Space travel in the near future. Do read, how the user interactions have been evolved with time in my earlier post.