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Fred Emmott

@fredemmott.com

41 followers 16 following 47 posts

Freelance VR software engineer

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Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Aug 29

TIL either hexdump or xxd is endian-sensitive

hexdump and xxd side-by-side, showing byte swapping in 16-bit groupings

Reposted by Fred Emmott

Kaitlyn @whatdahopper.bsky.social · Aug 14

Hey there everyone! PlayStation VR2 Toolkit (PSVR2Toolkit) is finally here: github.com/BnuuySolutio...

Release PlayStation VR2 Toolkit (v0.1.0) - Pre-release · BnuuySolutions/PSVR2Toolkit

Thanks for your continued interest in PlayStation VR2 Toolkit, me, @hyblocker and @RealSupremium are finally proud to release PlayStation VR2 Toolkit. We hope it has been worth the wait, sorry for ...

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jul 30

3/3. Meta could bring hand tracking support to > 50% of PCVR headsets overnight by removing an arbitrary restriction - this would substantially change the cost/benefit of hand tracking for game developers.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jul 30

2/3. More than half of the headsets on the Steam Hardware Survey are Quest-series headsets that have support for hand tracking, but it requires developer mode or third-party software.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jul 30

1/3. Lukewarm take: the lack of PCVR game support for hand tracking is Meta’s fault.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jul 12

WIP: Reimplementing the look-and-feel of WinUI3 in standard C++23, without a dependency on WinRT, XAML, or msbuild

Reposted by Fred Emmott

Bastiaan Olij @mux213.bsky.social · Jun 11

Slightly snowed under with the spatial entities announcement, OpenXR 1.1.49 also includes the new render models extension which provides access to 3D models of the controllers currently held by the user.

Reposted by Fred Emmott

Khronos Group @thekhronosgroup.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy · Mar 7

With Meta's upcoming v74 SDK release, the built-in OpenXR path for Unity, UnrealEngine, and Godot will be the recommended path for development. #openxr enables you to build cross-platform and use Meta platform plugins to add unique HorizonOS features […]

Original post on fosstodon.org

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Mar 5

*passing the CTS* on every release would be hugely valuable to everyone though , including runtime devs.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Mar 5

I need to write up my thoughts on this, but while the CTS is hugely valuable, I don’t see official conformance as useful to devs or users. IMO the primary benefit is the IP framework for official adopters

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Mar 5

The CTS is free; official conformance requires adopter status and a passing submission (though there is a waive process). It does not require resubmitting or re-testing on new releases or new headsets

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 22

It's frustrating as a developer when I investigate crashes and see they're caused by a runtime bug that could easily have been detected before release.

It's frustrating for users when I have to tell them to hope for a fix from their manufacturer.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 22

[5/5] This is clearly bad for developers and users - and it hurts the ecosystem as a whole; your readers/viewers deserve to know what they’re buying; don’t mislead them by saying headsets support OpenXR when they don’t.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 22

[4/5]
- some vendors seem to stick with an old version of the test suite
- some vendors only seem to test their initial release, or only major milestone releases
- some seem unlikely to have passed any version, and only been spot-tested on a few games

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 22

[3/5] Some manufacturers routinely test their releases, and they should be celebrated for this: conformant runtimes make the whole ecosystem stronger and reduce locking.

I’ve unfortunately also seen a mix of:

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 22

[2/5] You can ask manufacturers what version of the CTS you should use - this should either be the latest version, or any other version published by Khronos that’s at most 180 days old.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 22

[1/5] PCVR journalists: when covering a headset software/firmware update, run the OpenXR Conformance Test Suite. If it fails, the headset/software/firmware *DOES NOT* support OpenXR and users should expect problems. The CTS is freely available on GitHub.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 5

Or the opposite, “We reward teams with fewer severe incidents” -> “hmm is this really worth opening an incident over?” “Is this really a *severe* incident?”, reducing communication and increasing time to fix and severity of incidents , even if there’s fewer labeled as “incidents”

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Feb 5

Metrics often stop being useful once they become goals; rewarding productivity measured by number of commits can encourage spamming ridiculously small commits - eg one per file when one per concept might make more sense

Reposted by Fred Emmott

alice @lexd0g.eu.org · Jan 22

imagine being so well known for killing projects that you have to make a statement assuring developers that you definitely will Not kill your *fourth* XR platform in the last 12 years

www.roadtovr.com/google-respo...

Google Responds to Developer Concerns About Long-term Commitment to Android XR

Google’s announcement of Android XR last month was largely met with excitement, but there was a notable undercurrent of concern about Google’s long-term commitment to the platform. The company has a s...

www.roadtovr.com

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jan 15

Whatever restriction were hypothetically added, I could bypass them for $360/active development year, by moving to more invasive techniques and www.ssl.com/certificates...

Buy Sole Proprietorship EV Code Signing Certificates - SSL.com

SSL.com's EV Code Signing certificates offer the highest level of validation for signing and protecting your code, even for sole proprietors.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jan 15

or they could set HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{ADAPTER}\000X\VulkanDriverName to point at their wrapper; no kernel driver needed then.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jan 15

Also, a lot of the worst ones come from hardware vendors, but aren't GPU drivers. They are already able to publish properly signed Windows drivers, and they do for other components.

If Windows did lock this down, they'd just publish a fake GPU driver wrapping the NVidia/Intel/AMD/... one.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jan 15

I also disagree with 'how it should be':

If as a user, I install "Bob's Vulkan Tool", it *should* work with all games, not just games that decided they want to support "Bob's Vulkan Tool" - that's not the best for game developers, but it is the correct expectation for users and the overall system.

Fred Emmott @fredemmott.com · Jan 15

As the isolation and hooks don't exist, the options are:

- use anti-cheat to prevent unknown DLLs loading, likely causing more problems with rare driver DLLs
- put up with the status quo
- disable API layers and get a strict superset of problems when they move to detours/minhook