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Show HN: Making AR experiences is still painful – had to make my own editor (ordinary.space)

161 points by boriskourt ↗ HN
Hey HN!

My co-founder and I have spent over a decade building mixed reality projects and have been growing more and more frustrated with the process. From the number of tools needed, to client sign-off, to the complex esoteric tech stacks. And especially how slow the iteration loop is when dealing with interactivity and UX.

Two years ago we decided to stop whining and fix the fundamental issues. Ordinary Objects [0] was built with our core needs for AR prototyping: a very tight iteration loop between editor and real device, real-time interactivity while editing and clear and concise flow management + mapping. There are many things that layered on to make all of that possible: making it multi-user from the ground up, handling assets without a fuss, and building up a new interaction language.

From a technical standpoint we wanted to be native on the all of the platforms that we support, and do that as quickly as possible. Two years ago the best tool to achieve that was Unity, and I believe that is still the case today. Everything else is inside our custom C# Redux implementation. Our multi-user needs are very different from games, and it helped a lot to learn from Figma's technical notes to implement our pseudo eventual consistency setup. Its been super nice to be multi-user from the get go, we've been able to explore much more functionality this way.

Once the core churn eases up a bit more we will be open sourcing this particular C# Redux setup. As it has nothing to do with any engine code.

The website has some quick examples of how the design tool works [0]. But if you want to view a more complete prototype here is something Gregor, my co-founder, put together recently [1]. We now also have an easy getting started playlist [2].

Over the past year we've been testing with closed groups, and have been excited by what everyone is making. Now we are ready to open it up for all of you to try! Give it a spin and let me know what you think! And happy to answer any questions here :)

[0]: https://ordinary.space

[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/onlinegregor_mixedreality-spo...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_A9gShKENE&list=PLidKy8OpOy...

28 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 74.3 ms ] thread
garyfirestorm
Your landing page doesn’t really explain the stuff you wrote here. Why should I use this instead of Unity and meta simulator?
boriskourt
This tool is aimed at Interaction, Spatial and UX designers and provides a no-code way to very quickly go from idea to device. No technical setup needed.

The core goal is to have a much faster and more affordable iteration loop than the current ways of doing AR and MR prototyping. Which we hope produces far better products going forward!

robbbbbbbbbbbb
I think one insight (that's maybe not obvious enough on their landing page?) is that their product appears to be multiplayer out of the box (in the same sense that Figma is) which I think you'd agree is a pretty significant value add over your proposal of Unity + Meta simulator.
chungus
Do you think it's just frustrating in the Meta landscape? I've been playing around with stuff I find on the "Linux VR Adventures wiki" [1]

I've got a different, (not meta) VR HMD, and am running things using Envision and Stardust XR.

Excuse me if none of this applies to mixed reality.

[] https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/fossvr/

jimmySixDOF
Interesting to see this happening more and more with regard to diy hackit together because I couldn't find it elsewhere type solutions.

There is also Ian Curtis from Niantic who built a ThreeJS editor in bolt.new over a few sessions.

On-the-Fly-AI-UI here we come !!

https://thebrowserlab.com/ https://x.com/XRarchitect

Edit: on closer inspection this is actually pretty polished set of prefabed UI/interactions fit for spatial AR needs more than something hacked out overnight (see html23.com which is nice but just a slice of this project) so will need to drop in some glb files and play with it a bit to compare it with say a ShapesXR or Spline or Bezi etc but like what I see so far !!!

GlacierFox
This looks really impressive well done on creating the editor. You've explained it three times to me - in the initial post, on the website and here in the comments but I've still had trouble fully grasping the solution fully.

Correct me if I'm wrong but is this essentially a really simple to use abstraction over the common tools used to create mixed-reality environments? Just import your assets and pick from some common interaction methods to test stuff your more quickly? If so, this looks really great.

boriskourt
You are absolutely correct. We are building something that lets you have a much smoother and largely single tool workflow. We've been frustrated with how many different things we had to throw together just to make something simple. And of course how long it took to just make small adjustments and re-test them on device.
tmilard
I agree 100% : Too many tools is awfull. Really. - Bugs in the transfert of data betwwen each, - slowness of the full creativ process. - new gui to learn for each tool.

Good luck for your adventure

boriskourt
Thanks! We are just getting started! Hope to keep improving the workflow in new and better ways. Always looking for feedback if you have time go give it a spin. :)
chaosprint
super cool and hello from Oslo

just a small comment: is it possible to provide a sign up with Google?

I found myself spoiled by this shortcut already

jaustin
Did you look at Mattercraft? https://zap.works/mattercraft/ - the team that are building it have been delivering mixed reality experiences across platforms in Zappar for a long time and it's very complete.
boriskourt
Yes we did! That team is doing some super cool stuff! Early on we laser focused on the more traditional UX / Interaction Design workflow by helping with state management and opening up more complex interactions. So it is not just about the content, but how the user experience flows across many different moments in a product.

We've also focused on a no code solution, to give designers the tools to prototype AR without having the overhead of learning programming.

fanssex
While this looks super cool and impressive but if I were to choose a tool for my next serious project, Mattercraft still gets my vote without hesitation
robbbbbbbbbbbb
Yeah, to be fair to Boris ordinary.space looks like a much more appropriate tool for interaction design than Mattercraft, which looks much more like a drag-and-drop tool for building relatively static, single user 3D scenes. Mattercraft also looks to be pretty bloated with random content features (3D Text?) in comparison.
macguillicuddy
While Mattercraft has some drag and drop elements, it's predominantly a development environment for content, featuring TypeScript and NPM support. So it's a bit like a 'Unity for the web'. Many of the features (e.g. physics, particles) are provided as optional additional NPM modules. The 3D text support is included in the base 3D module because it only adds a few kb and Mattercraft's built-in bundler doesn't bundle it if your project doesn't use it. (My team and I run Mattercraft )
robbbbbbbbbbbb
Thanks for the extra context. I haven't actually looked at what you at Zappar are doing for a while. Would you care to comment on what the key differences are between Zapworks Studio [1], Zapworks Designer [2] and Mattercraft [3]? Their elevator pitches on those pages feel like they have pretty complete overlap with each other tbh.

[1] https://zap.works/studio [2] https://zap.works/designer [3] https://zap.works/mattercraft

macguillicuddy
It would be my pleasure :-)

Zapworks Designer - it's our no-code tool focussing on AR+VR. It's targeted at folks without scripting experience and is very much 'drag and drop'. Our customers typically use this for bringing simpler interactive content to, e.g. menus, posters and also for Learning & Development.

Mattercraft - this is our complete 3D development environment for the web. We took everything we'd learned from Studio and built MC from the ground up embracing the web ecosystem. It has a fully featured animation system, scripting, built-in bundler, live preview, collaborative editing - the works :-) Our customers use this for building high end campaigns and content for consumers.

Zapworks Studio - this is our previous generation of creative tooling. It was originally built to target native platforms but we ported its runtime to the web. Mattercraft is the 'spiritual successor' to this tool.

MutedEstate45
Great work! The visual elements are very impressive. Would you say this tool is suitable for prototyping, especially for someone with development experience but no prior AR experience?
mouse_
this is the first site ever that has made my phone lag
InDubioProRubio
The price for watching into another world with your seeing stone- is to turn your palantir to slag
macguillicuddy
Great work :-) Sending love from the Zappar team - we're firm believers that AR/VR needs more great tooling!
boriskourt
Thanks! Love what you do! Excited to see all the cool stuff that people will make in AR over the next year :)
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harrison_clarke
is there a reason that this is a stand-alone tool, rather than a pile of Unity editor scripts?

i always liked the immediate-mode UI in unity. some people can't stand it, so i can see that being the reason

mncharity
One nice thing about global state management (re "our custom C# Redux implementation"), is you can backtrack and replay altered input logs. So inputs with diverse latencies (eg keys with speech or vision or gestures) can be combined (silly example: click item while saying "trash"). You can react promptly to a click action, and then backtrack when 1000 ms later you find out that was instead a click+"trash" action. Or when incremental tts updates from "launch the missiles" to "lunch is mussels, in butter".