My Hololens Experience!

On Saturday when most people are out shopping, I was experiencing a piece of amazing, cool technology. The kind that feels right out of science fiction. This is my Hololens Experience!

A friend has been working with it and invited me to have a play and I can tell you it is an experience that no amount of video recording of it can do it justice. It really has to be experienced to be appreciated. In the video I have attached below, I have made an attempt to try to best show that experience.

As you can see from the above video, what you have, firstly, is your physical space. The stuff you can touch, the real world. On top of that real world you have virtual world objects. I believe these objects are called "Holograms". For instant you could have a tree growing in the middle of an office, or an astronaut floating in office space or a dinosaur crawling on the office floor.

Lets expand on the wording above, "On top of the real world you have virtual world objects". Through the glass of Hololens, the virtual objects no longer feel like that they don't belong there. They do not feel like they are "on top" of the real world. The virtual objects actually look like they are a part of the real world! The only thing missing is the ability to touch and feel it -Hologlove perhaps? There is even a game on it and I can say that Hololens really brought that game to life. That game aside, thinking of what Hololens can do for games is mind blowing. Imagine a detective game where your living room could be your virtual office one scene, and a crime scene in another. Your sofa could be host to a clue, your coffee table holding virtual evidence. What about those "arm chair explorers"? The kind who would sit and browse through a traditional atlas, wondering what's out there. Turn your living room into a living travel guide!

The imagination is unlimited and this is where Hololens shines above just VR(Virtual reality). For one you can see where you are going so you don't bump into things. Using real space as the backdrop to overlay content. Where VR differs from augmented reality hologram based Hololens is that with VR you are completely in a virtual world. With Hololens, you bring the virtual world into the real world but only through the glasses. Both have its advantages, however I feel that Hololens has a much wider range of applications simply because of its ability to bring virtual objects into the real world space. Holo meetings, real estate applications with clients walking with you through an actual property but by sitting comfortably in their living rooms.

The future is amazing! It is a great time to be alive because you can be part of one of two groups. You can sit back and enjoy the magic that is presented to you, or, you can be part of helping develop more magic.

Hololens shows how amazing we can make our futures!

Major change to my deveopment platform

I posted this on my facebook recently but now I am going to talk about it on here.

I have been developing a 3D engine for a while now for the Windows Phone marketplace.
Recently I have decided to abandon that entirely and switch over to doing exactly the same thing but on the Android platform. There are long term compelling reasons for the change.

I had been lacking enthusiasm for the 3D engine development and did not really realise it until I had a chat with friends who are also developers and some entrepreneurs. Windows phone market has been closing for a long time now and that is more true now than it was previously. In the back of my mind, somewhere in the subconscious, I knew this but continued to develop in it. This, as it turns out, was a very bad idea. It caused lack of motivation because subconsciously my mind would think what result would I get in one of the smallest phone marketplace?

Conversations with above mentioned friends also showed that I had to create focus. What was really important to me? Is it the journey of developing a 3D engine to a point where I can make a video game, or is it just a need to make a video game? Had the focus been the latter then coding in API such as direct3D is a really bad idea. Development would be very slow, a lot of work will need to be done before I could even think about generating content. Instead I would have opted for something like Unity3D, have a great scene going in about 14 minutes, concentrate on game ideas to implement, get to creating content sooner, and have a game out of the door, quite possibly before a year has elapsed.

What I found in thinking about focus is that building a game is not as important for me as the journey to get there. I want to build upon my knowledge of 3D, build up on the mathematics, understand how a game engine is built. So that is going to be my focus and a game will come out of it at the end which brings me back to platform of choice. There is no guarantee how long the Android market will stand, but it will certainly be a lot longer than it takes me to build up my 3D engine. Sticking with the windows phone market, I feel, would be akin to developmental suicide.

It is a huge set back, throwing away so much work and rebooting on a new platform. I have to learn the new platform, the new market place, potentially new tools and new ways of doing things. Instead of a setback, I see it as a beautiful thing, a challenge, a chance to learn more things, keep me interested and the brain working hard. It also gives me a chance to do things differently by learning from my previous mistakes. It also gives me another opportunity to tap into my ability to learn anything really fast, add experience to that, and develop that skill even further.

To overcome the challenges I have started extensive research into the new market I will be entering. I have spoken to a few people who have been involved with the android market, taking their advice, reading materials they have recommended. These people have been there, done that and for me, the fastest way to make sure I get there too in the most efficient way possible. Time is precious and it has to be managed with the greatest of priorities. There are books to be bought, and hardware to be purchased. At this point I want to go for the newly released Samsung Galaxy S7 so that the hardware is less old than if I went for something like a galaxy S4, towards the end of this development.

There is one other thing I will be doing which I have not been with my windows platform. I will blog more about what I have been learning in my journey into the Android (and potentially later into iOS) platform. I will be posting about code examples, about the openGL ES api, about the progress of my engine. Where possible I will post videos and pictures. Why? So that others can start their own journeys by using mine as a tutorial.

So it is a new beginning and a step in the right direction. A journey into something exciting, that will have the potential for bigger rewards and most of all, I get to continue to do what I really enjoy doing.

Let's get started.....

How to get old games working under windows 10 using VMWare Player

Hi gamer guys and gamer girls!

Last time I showed you how to get Need for Speed Carbon working under windows 10 and mentioned that this could be used to run other games relying on safedisc.

I have been continuing to experiment with better ways to enjoy Need for Speed Carbon and found yet another way that works surprisingly well without the compromise to system security.

The answer is simply to use VMWare Player
It is free for personal use, and of course running a video game is pretty much personal use.

I wont go into detail on how to set up the player because VMWare Player is quite intuitive when you use it.  Just click "Create a Virtual Machine" and follow the on-screen instructions. When you get to the screen below, click the button called "Customize Hardware" :


Note: Unlike the hard drive mentioned in the screen shot (5 GB), you should use at least 40 GB. The above screenshot is a mistake as I was trying to create a VM just to take a screen shot for this blog. I was going to type 50GB. So please be sure to use at least 40, or 50 GB as your virtual HDD size! Also the Memory should be what ever your game needs + 1 GB. For Need for Speed Carbon, I used a VM with 2 GB Ram allocation.

In the Customize Hardware screen, select "Display" then at the top right, CHECK the box called "Acclerate 3D Graphics"

You are done! You now just have to install the OS

The gotchas:
1) You need a legitimate OS that is windows XP or higher original install disk and key so you can install it inside the virtual machine.
2) You need OS installation experience.

However, it is a Virtual machine and anything you do inside it wont harm your computer, so experiment away!

Once you have setup your virtual machine and set up an OS that is Windows XP(service pack three) or higher, then you need to install need for speed carbon.
First tho, you MAY need to connect your CD/DVD to your VM if it isn't already set up for it. To do this, simply click on Player drop down then click on "Removable devices" and then select CD/DVD option. Now you should be able to pop in the NFS Carbon (or any other game) DVD in and install the game. Once done, it should run fine.

Performance:

• Slight jitter but quite playable.
• A few settings can be pushed to high.

How does VMWare compare to Hyper-V Manager? No comparison because VMWare is, hands down, far superior.
VMWare ran the Guest OS at 32 bits, 1080p (without going through RDP), and virtualised 3D hardware. Hyper-V manager did none of that and only ran 1080p via RDP but still no 32 bit colour mode.
After checking out the features of VMWare player pro, versus the free version, I am convinced I need to purchase this amazing piece of virtualisation software especially when half the available features of pro is something I will use.

Ehm, back to the games at hand...

The performance I got in Need for speed carbon outlined above is on a system running VMWare Player 12 with hardware:
INTeL I7- 2600, 12 GB Ram, and an nVidia (EVGA brand) GTX560Ti card. The VM is stored on a RAID drive using Software RAID in "Stripping" mode. HOST OS is on an SSD (Samsung Evo 850). VMWare player is installed on a 2 TB Seagate Hybrid hard drive (8GB SSD Cache coupled Mechanical drive).

I have no idea how it will perform on other systems but it is a safe bet it will perform as mine did on at least a system with the mentioned hardware or better.

Happy Gaming Everyone!

How to get Need For Speed Carbon Working Under Windows 10.

Hi Gamer guys and Gamer girls!

Today I will show you  how to get Need for Speed Carbon working under Windows 10. This same process can be used for other games as well.

UPDATE: The instruction that is present at the bottom half of this post need only be performed once. See the very bottom for the rest of this update.

I have plenty of video games I have bought and never sold. I still have their original packaging, receipts, and you will be lucky to see any scratches on my CD's or DVD's. As the years went by and new versions of Microsoft OS's came out, I am always nervous whether my old games will work or not. That is because I sometimes still play them(at least the ones I can still get working).

This then brings me to Need for Speed Carbon. It would not work so rather than re-invent the wheel, the first thing I did was scan the Internet to see if somebody has found a way to make it work. I could not find any where that showed how to make it work other than NoCd cracks(which you must never get).

The symptoms are:
-The game installs fine but:
-You try to run NFSC.exe and it asks for Admin privileges.
-You launch it with admin privileges but nothing happens, the CD does not get accessed, no process is created.
-You try compatibility modes but  nothing works.

Read on!

The most interesting thing abut NFSC is that it uses the same game engine as Need For Speed Most Wanted, and need for Speed Most Wanted works perfectly fine under Windows 10. So the first trick was to see if I can get the need for speed most wanted exe to launch Carbon, or at least do something enough to give me some clues. It fired ok and asked for the CD even though the NFSC CD was still in the drive. I popped in the NFSMW disk and the game started to launch, the NFS Carbon splash screen came up and then the game crashed. This would give me a clue later on, just not immediately.

I attached a dis-assembler(ollydbg) and walked through it to see what was breaking. It failed after making a call to ntdll. There were a whole bunch of other external files it had jumps to. I was getting a little suspicious, it did not want to read the CD.

Long story short, as it turns out, the NFSC executable is infact a Safe Disc decrypter by Macrovision. Worse still, Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 will not support Macrovisions DRM driver secdrv due to security issues. I personally fully support this decision, however it is clear that nfsc is not the only game that is going to be affected. After much research, I found that if you can get hold of secdrv.sys, you can get older games to run, so the question I asked myself was 'can I get NFSC to run'? It is not that straight forward as simply copying secdrv.sys into the right folder and the popular "deso" tool does not work for Windows 10.
I will explain how to get it to work.

How to get Need for Speed Carbon Working Under Windows 10 - THE INSTRUCTIONS

The trick is to sign the driver your self. See this link for signing the driver your self:
Test Signing a Driver

Step 1:
Get secdrv.sys either from an older windows version or download it from the internet. Microsoft no longer supplies this driver in Windows 10. But you must get this driver for the correct architecture. Hence you cannot load a 32 bit driver in a 64 bit system and vice versa. Place the file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\
Step 2:
Open command console using elevated privileges (Admin command prompt: right click Windows start icon, choose "Command Prompt (Admin)")
Step 3:
You will need a tool called SignTool. If you do not have it, download it as a part of the windows 10  SDK. If your environment settings are not automatically added after installing the SDK, you can find it(assuming default install) in : C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64 (for 64 bits) and C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86  (for 32 bits). Alternatively you can temporarily add it to your path by typing  at the command prompt:

path=%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64 

(or change x64 to x86 if for 32 bits).
Step 4:
You need to create your own certificate store. For simplicity I will call my store "MyCertStore" and I will call the certificate file "MyCertStore.cer" And call the Certificate name OLDGAMESCERT
Firstly you create the certificate with the following command:

MakeCert -r -pe -ss MyCertStore -n "CN=OLDGAMESCERT" MyCertStore.cer

Step 5:
Sign the secdrv driver by issuing the following command:

SignTool sign /v /s "MyCertStore" /n OLDGAMESCERT /t http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll C:\Windows\system32\drivers\secdrv.sys

Step 6:
You will need to install the certificate to Trusted Root Certificates with the following command:

CertMgr /add MyCertStore.cer /s /r localMachine root

After that command it should say that CertMgr completed successfully. If it does not and instead launches the certificate manager (Image below) then you need to do something different.


You may see something like the screenshot above.

In that case look for the store name you created, in this example it is "MyCertStore" and expand that branch on the left pane. You should see another branch called "Certificates". Click on that and on the right hand pane you will see the certificate with the name you called it (OLDGAMESCERT). Right click and select Copy. Then expand the branch on the left hand pane called "Trusted Root Certificate Authorities" and then then click on "Certificates" branch under that. Right click in the right hand pane and select "Paste". It will display a message asking if you want to install the certificate here --of course you do!
Step 7:
Once the certificate is installed, close certmgr (unless your certmgr did not open and yours worked fine from the command prompt -in that case continue on to step 8).
Step 8:
You should still have the admin command prompt open. If not, open it again. Issue the following command:

bcdedit -set testsigning on

WARNING: THIS IS A DANGEROUS COMMAND, READ THE FOLLOWING BEFORE DOING IT:
The above command will switch on test mode for loading unsigned drivers. This is a serious security risk and will open your system to virus and malware attacks. It should only be used for developers to test drivers they are developing by signing unverified certificates.
Why I am showing you this is for those people who want to run NFSC without using any of the options that will come at the end of this article, and also it is a proof of concept that this game CAN run under windows 10.
Step 9:
Reboot your system. Once rebooted and you have logged in, you will see a test mode watermark on the lower right corner of you screen. This should not appear in your game and there are ways to remove it, however, I recommend that you do not disable this watermark. This watermark serves as a reminder that you need to switch off the test signing after you are done playing the game.
Step 10:
Launch your game with your original CD in the drive and Need for Speed Carbon should launch.

The next step is pretty easy.... PLAY HARD!!! --But it isn't over yet, there is just one more thing to do...

Step 11:
DISABLE TEST SIGNING MODE:
Open the admin command prompt again and issue the command:

bcdedit -set testsigning off

Then reboot your computer. Confirm that the test mode water mark is gone.

Why I recommend the following options instead of the above:
As mentioned above under the RED headings', it is very dangerous as you are crippling your systems security. If you are really desperate and do not have any other older copy of Windows, then this will get you playing again.

I Recommend the following options instead:
1) Purchase a version of the game that does not use Safe disc anymore such as from Valve's Steam
2) Install an older version of windows as a multi boot and install your old games on that.
3) Revert back your Windows 10 upgrade (don't do this, Windows 10 is awesome, please keep it!)

NEVER use noCD crack (even though Microsoft appears to be advocating its use under windows 10 for old games!).
NoCD Cracks have a high chance of containing malware that is probably more dangerous than switching your system TEMPORARILY to Test signing mode.

*** UPDATE ***
You only need to perform the instructions provided ONCE. After that you just need to switch the testsigning instruction ONLY. Hence: Switch on testsigning, reboot computer, play game, switch off testsigning, reboot computer.


Happy Gaming everybody!

I have experienced Oculus Rift

Today was an amazing day. It would be an amazing day for any Oculus Rift enthusiast. It was so amazing because today for the very first time I got to use Oculus Rift. First impressions is "WOW".
Before I discuss this I would like to express thanks to the team at CoLab at AUT (Auckland University of Technology) for demoing the work they are doing with Oculus Rift. The place is amazing and a techies dream because there is so much going on in there. If you have a strong interest in working on great new technology, that is the place to be.

My impressions of Oculus Rift can only be compared to the very first VR technology I experienced and I have to say this is leaps and bounds better. I did not feel disorientated at all, at all. I turn my head and the scene moves as expected but it works so well it actually feels truly like I was in the room and I had turned my head inside the room. I could not detect any perceivable delays between when I  moved my head and the scene changes provided by the system in response. It was explained to me that the system can anticipate human movement as it is more predictable than we realise. "Like cache hit and cache miss for humans" I joked although this is probably the best way to describe it.

The only issue was the grainy image quality through the lens and some distortion however unless you are specifically looking to pull every little thing about it apart, it didn't seem to affect immersion. I am so impressed by it I cant wait to have one of my own.

Once again thanks everyone in CoLabs at AUT for this opportunity to experience Oculus Rift, you have made me very happy!

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Wolfenstein: The New Order was released couple of days ago. I did my pre-order for one reason and one reason only, to get my hands on the Doom 4 Beta when it comes out. Just incase you are wondering, yes I do love Wolfenstein.

Have not had a chance to play through it, only fiddled with it for a couple of minutes and I can say the first impressions are pretty good. I am playing on Uber difficulty because why wouldn't you? Made it to a castle whose exact details are eliminated in an attempt to avoid spoilers. In the castle it feels like Wolfenstein 3D, the classic Wolfenstein 3D of course.

Since I cannot review this yet I will suggest that you must see the free classic Wolfenstein 3D game made available online to play inside your web browser. Click the Wolfenstein 3D link to get to it.

A link on the free Wolfenstein 3D game to a YouTube video is also worth a look (Embedded below) as it has John Carmack playing through the original DOS version while telling the story and history of the games. Of particular interest is the technical aspects of the game engine and design he touches on as well as the attempts to improve it when the game was made open source.

I am hoping to discuss Wolfenstein: A New Order at some point but there is a lot of other things going on at the moment so priorities priorities. However the most things I will talk about is the Doom 4 Beta -Beta conditions permitting of course.

Mantle Intel -Marriage or infatuation and a jealous Direct3D -the other woman?

Couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post on AMD's Mantle where I had distilled information from a number of sources. Sometime later from then I wrote another blog post on Mantle talking about nVidia's response to it. From those and other news articles at that time one could conclude that AMD was in for a fight with nemesis Intel, nVidia, and the API competitor Microsoft's DirectX. Now it seems AMD is marrying Intel and Direct3D might be the jealous other woman, or perhaps I am getting a little ahead of myself here.

An interesting set of measured statistics has been published by techradar that compared the performance of Mantle enabled AMD GPU's running on AMD CPU's versus Intel CPU's. Techradar reports an interesting find that Intel and Mantle pairing resulted in better frame rates than AMD and Mantle pairing. We have to be careful when we say this because the pairing advantage seems to be where there is CPU intensive operations by DirectX, Mantle helps the AMD CPU's come closer to Intel CPU's running DirectX.

What does all of this mean then? If you are a gamer, you are better off with an Intel/Mantle combination as is inferred by techradar and I agree. The impression we could get and as touched by techradar is that AMD is not focusing on CPU comparison, instead take out nVidia altogether and then this would cause problems for DirectX. If Mantle and Intel combination succeeds in a hypothetical world with many game developers in support then this is dire straits for DirectX because let's not also forget TrueAudio part of the AMD package. Given that all this is in the early stages and DirectX is coming out in flavor number 12, it actually means a hard time for Mantle rather than the other way around. For me, I am continuing to develop my 3D engine in Direct3D (a component of DirectX) and there is no intention of changing that yet. It does mean that I will most likely try my hand at Mantle and will likely provide that support time permitting because I like Mantle and I like Intel.

So is Direct3D the jealous other woman? If Mantle keeps on growing strong then I guess she is, except we haven't seen her 12th incarnation yet. There is also the case of whether Mantle supports every technology of Direct3D and that I cannot answer. What I can say is that none of the reviewers of games running on Mantle have yet talked about any missing graphical functions compared to DirectX so at least those features are present that are needed to maintain the quality of the original version written for DirectX. In all of this we have forgotten about nVidia so is this a sign of things to come? I have another dilemma now, I really like nVidia too! so now what do I do? There is only one thing to do, watch the market, see how things are turning out, adjust and adapt. The beauty of it is, whatever goes, it is replaced with something even better so there is really no loss to think about.

Oculus Rift and Star Trek Voyager

Some people have all the fun, and wow don't I want to be that person who is featured in the youtube video below wearing an Oculus rift and walking through the bridge of Voyager!

Download this Demo

Looking at the demo which was built with the unreal engine, and comparing that to the early attempts in virtual reality which I have actually used, I'd have to use a variation of Scotty's words in the opening scenes of Star Trek:Generations, "Damn fine VR Device if you ask me", and that pretty much sums it up.
This demo spectacularly demonstrates the potential of Oculus Rift as a mechanism to 'enter' another world. Neither the events of Star Trek Voyager nor the ship itself is real, but to be able to walk around it as if it were is absolutely incredible. I think that it is time to start saving for it and the best part of that is Oculus Rift is aimed at providing virtual reality at a more affordable cost.

Just to tease you some more, here is another video I found on youtube

Well done to the team at Oculus VR.

Mantle case

nVidia has released a beta driver version 337.5 claiming it can outperform Mantle in DirectX 11 games.

Maximum PC consequently has published an article testing nVidias claims. What Maximum PC found was that there were no significant performance improvements in games they tested except for those title's AMD has used to showcase Mantle even on tests using Multi-GPU scaling.

What could all this mean? It is difficult to say but questions on peoples minds probably are:

Virtual reality and Oculus Rift

Oculus Rift has been in the media recently and for me, it has been an interesting read. Of particular importance is the acquisition of Oculus VR by Facebook because there is potential there for a good financial backing. Oculus Rift has also found favors with  John Carmack, the man behind a series of  early 3D games (Hovertank and Wolfenstein 3D). Oculus Rift has also found favors with me so what is it?

Thief savegame corruption

I am a HUGE fan of the thief series ever since I played the first thief. I have played all the thief series so I was very excited at the announcement of Thief 4 by Eidos Montreal. Unfortunatly there appears to be a bug in the game that has also affected me. At time of writing I am not aware of any patches, but Eidos has revealed that they are aware of the problem and taking it seriously.

I am one of the persons affected by this so I wanted to see if there is anything I can do to get this working because I did not want to start the game all over again and lose all my hard worked thieving progress. While I am not saying what I found is the solution, I am only saying this worked for me and I can only hope it works for everyone else. I emailed SquareEnix on the 3rd of April with this but all I got was a standard "we are aware.....patience...etc" response even though I clearly outlined it wasn't a service request.

So what did I find:

Mantle

AMD, a company formed by a couple of people and $100k. A company currently in dire straights, a predicament caused by the first CEO Sanders, which AMD never recovered from[2].

So Mantle, from AMD, why am I intrigued by Mantle?
Ever since its introduction into the PC market, I have been a great fan of openGL. Then came Direct 3D which was, to put it mildly, rubbish. D3D has since risen up to be a challenger to openGL. A key advantage of D3D over openGL is the quick implementation of new graphics technology. Comparably, it takes a little longer for openGL as it has to be reviewed by the consortium before a new version of openGL has them(if at all). However I have always liked openGL since it offers speed advantages over D3D thanks to it offering more low level operations in the API -but that isn't saying openGL is a low level API, it is a high level API. openGL is also cross-platform unlike DirectX which is restricted to Microsoft technology-for the moment.

D3D also suffers here because it has to make more cpu calls which increases latency. Although I am building a 3D game engine for windows phone at the moment, I will switch to openGL ES and develop for Android which has a significantly larger market but crucially it uses a technology I have always loved -openGL. If there is any value to be had, I would get that from the Android market by developing on technology I enjoy, and having a significantly larger market to target. So how does Mantle fit and why I like it?