Fragments, 2016 Asobo Studio

Make your experience adapt to the box, not fit inside it.

Over two years ago, Microsoft, through collaboration with Asobo Studio, released an application by the name of Fragments. This application set the bar for what a fantastic and adaptive mixed reality application looks like.

I’m sitting there and I look over to my right and I see the Director, Kirkland, and she’s sitting there on the couch telling me to solve the mystery. I can’t even begin to imagine what we can do with story telling and games with that new power of having people in your space, in your home. — Matt Turnbull, Executive Producer, Fragments

With possible already defined, we at Practical wanted to open this sort of spatial intelligence up outside of AAA studios and make it easy for any developer to integrate into their application.

This technology is applicable way beyond games and can be used to improve the user experience of any application. The rooms of our world come in many different shapes and sizes, so it is essential to build experiences that are adaptive to any environment. Find the perfect spot for your UI in a room with our dynamic measurements, make sure that objects are positioned away from other objects, or find an empty table nearby to perfectly showcase your holographic object.

Introducing the Spatial Placement Tool.

Easily find locations to place or move your virtual objects in any room with our Unity SDK.

This update supports:

Spawn Types: Wall Floor Ceiling Room Objects (Surface, chair, couch, other sittable) Spawn Options: Near Away Distance (Min, Max) Units (feet, meters) Targets: User Camera Walls Center of Room Game Object Placement Sizing: Small Medium Large Copy from GameObject Custom

Github: https://github.com/PracticalVR/KEYSDK-WH

Other changes to note in this release:

Better map completion process — ongoing.

Removal of golden token.

Removal of several voice prompts.

Map submission and processing in background.

Improved handling of random spatial placements.

Fixed a bug that could result in an application crash.

Fixed a non-breaking error only shown in the Unity Editor.

Get Involved!

We are on a mission to map the world in 3D and we cannot do this alone.

Register and create your first Practical application at https://developer.practicalvr.com

Join our community for 1-to-1 support or just to hangout and talk about the future with us — http://discord.practicalvr.com

Give us feedback. What do you like/dislike? Let us know how we can better serve your use case.

Spread the word and invite some friends. Anyone, anywhere will be able to jump in to help. It all starts with ideas, and together we’ll bring them closer to reality.

What’s Next?

September came with a few interesting device delays and other announcements. Oculus Connect 5 blew us away with the announcement of a completely untethered mixed reality HMD at a $399 price point. We expect more devices to be revealed in the coming months that will take environment driven mixed reality to a whole new level. We cannot wait to enable those devices with tools to make more real-world dynamic experiences.

PS: I hear persistence is on its way to KEYSDK…

— Micheal