O'Grady's PowerPage

Tag: Lego

  • Unity launches PolySpatial toolset to help develop XR apps for Vision Pro headset

    Unity launches PolySpatial toolset to help develop XR apps for Vision Pro headset

    If you’re looking to start coding for the Apple Vision Pro headset, Unity might be able to help you out.

    Unity on Wednesday announced the launch of its toolset for its Unity engine, known as “PolySpatial” to display 3D elements that interact with the real world.

    The tool, which was launched as a beta for selected developers, Unity’s PolySpatial technology is now available to all Unity Pro, Enterprise, and Industry subscribers. Developers can now take advantage of “Unity’s familiar authoring workflows, robust XR tools, and cross-platform compatibility to create immersive spatial experiences” for Vision Pro.

    Popular apps that have been ported to visionOS using the Unity tools include LEGO Builder Journey as well as TRIPP, an XR wellness platform.

    In order to develop immersive experiences with Unity for Apple Vision Pro, users will need to download the latest version of Unity 2022 LTS and ensure that the visionOS build target is installed. It’s worth noting that developing visionOS apps requires an Apple Silicon Mac to install and run.

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

    Via 9to5Mac and blog.unity.com

  • WWDC: Apple announces iOS 12, focuses on Siri improvements, augmented reality, performance boosts, etc

    Apple dropped just about every announcement and update possible at its WWDC keynote today, among the most important being iOS 12, which will feature improvements to Siri, performance, communication, enhanced augmented reality tools, and addiction controls.

    The Siri fixes will hone in on responsiveness to users, including the ability to trigger Siri with key phrases called Shortcuts.

    Siri Shortcuts allow users to set up their own Siri triggers tied to Siri actions. This is better than straight training-the-user in that it’s users doing the doing, rather than developers doing the doing and customers having to train themselves.

    (more…)

  • Apple releases details about Swift Playgrounds 1.5, points to hardware that will be controllable via the update

    This could lead to something pretty neat.

    Apple released an update on Thursday in which it provided a detailed update as to Swift Playgrounds 1.5 will let students control robots, drone, and musical instruments.

    The announcement reads as follows:

    Apple® today announced that Swift Playgrounds™, its educational coding app for iPad®, will offer an exciting new way to learn to code using robots, drones and musical instruments. Swift Playgrounds is perfect for students and beginners learning to code with Swift™, Apple’s powerful and intuitive programming language for building world-class apps.

    Apple says Swift Playgrounds 1.5 will let students control Bluetooth-connected bots including “LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3, Sphero SPRK+, Parrot drones and more.”

    In the announcement, Craig Federighi says Swift Playgrounds already has over 1 million users around the world. Apple specifically details compatibility between Swift Playgrounds 1.5 and these products:

    — LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 are incredibly popular in schools around the world and give students the power to explore coding through real-life problem solving as they create and command their own robotic LEGO creatures, vehicles, machines and inventions. With Swift Playgrounds kids can code and interact with their creations’ motors and sensors.

    — Sphero SPRK+, a popular robotic ball, rolls, turns, accelerates and changes colors. Sensors provide feedback when Sphero hits an obstacle, and all of it can be controlled with Swift code.

    — Parrot’s Mambo, Airborne and Rolling Spider drones can take off, land, turn and perform aerial figures like flips, all under the control of code users create.

    — UBTECH’s Jimu Robot MeeBot Kit lets kids program their buildable robot to walk, wave and dance.

    — Dash by Wonder Workshop is an exciting, hands-on learning robot for students, designed to teach the fundamentals of coding, creative problem solving and computational thinking.

    — Skoog is a tactile cube that enables children of all abilities to have fun exploring, creating and playing music with Swift code.

    Cool stuff, albeit this begs the question: Where was anything this nifty when I was a kid?

    Apple says the new version of Swift Playgrounds will be available starting Monday, June 5. Swift Playgrounds is available for free for the iPad and requires iOS 10.0 or later to install and run.

    Via 9to5Mac and the App Store