e515 — Seeing Through Walls

Games At Work dot Biz

Photo by Mihály Köles on Unsplash

Published 26 May 2025

e515 with Andy, Michael and Michael – the Fortnite Darth Vader NPC, IO, both from Google and Open AI, AI hardware, an intriguing Vision Pro use case, infrared contact lenses, Car Play Ultra, Microsoft’s GamePass set of retro classic games (Pitfall said to be coming!), and a Warhammer typing game.

Andy, Michael and Michael start off with stories about Darth Vader in Fortnite. One article deals with how players have gotten the Darth Vader NPC AI (non-player character) to say questionable things and another on the rights Fortnite secured to do so.

The team then turned to a summary of the top 15 announcements from Google’s I/O 2025. The cohosts were impressed by the fact that Google created a NotebookLM from the content of the conference. Less impressive was how interacting with the NotebookLM did not create the personalized results expected. Moving along to a different IO; the OpenAI acquisition of Jony Ive’s company, the cohosts note that reimagining what it means to use a computer (AI or otherwise) is an enormous undertaking.

Rethinking how spatial computing could be used, Michael R walked Andy and Michael through a use case to see through walls, floors and ceilings in an intuitive and easy way. Another example of superhuman visual powers are contact lenses that provide the wearer with infrared vision. According to the article, these lenses work even better when the wearer closes their eyelids to help block out more of the (previously) visual spectrum to allow for the infrared to be more easily discerned.

Rounding out this episode, the cohosts take a slightly deeper look at Car Play Ultra beyond the Aston Martin experience described last week, enjoy the Microsoft Game Pass offering for retro classic games, as well as the Warhammer typing experience. Perhaps some of these user experience and interaction mechanisms from such games will surface in the IO AI computing device.

What do you think is the next computing paradigm – both in hardware and software? How will the user experience become so transparent, that all that is left is creativity, augmented in the flow of the creative process? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know!

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot. All rights reserved. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

That’s Mr. Vader to you

Wired article: Fortnite Players Are Already Making AI Darth Vader Swear

Kotaku article: Fortnite In Legal Trouble After Adding AI Darth Vader

AI

The Verge article: The 15 biggest announcements at Google I/O 2025

Google I/O: About I/O

Google created a NotebookLM notebook with everything they announced at Google I/O. So instead of slogging through thousands of hours of video and other content, you can just ask NotebookLM questions, listen to a podcast, or get a FAQ, etc. https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/953b658a-579b-4b3c-b280-43b3781babf3

— Mike Elgan (@[email protected])
2025-05-21T03:29:11.088Z

Wall Street Journal article: What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He’s Making With Jony Ive

OpenAI post: Sam and Jony introduce io

Cafe Zoetrope – where the io introduction video was made

HP IQ

Games at Work e371: Legacy Games & New UX (for early discussion on Humane in 2022)

Super Vision UX

Reddit post: How I use my Apple Vision Pro to retrofit Unifi Access Points in finished homes

The Guardian article: Seeing infrared: scientists create contact lenses that grant ‘super-vision’

Classic Games

The Verge article: Microsoft adds over 50 ‘Retro Classics’ to Game Pass

The Verge article: Warhammer’s free new game makes typing grimdark

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine