BEHIND THE SCENES
Design, UI/UX, Art, Sound, Music.
Design, UI/UX, Art, Sound, Music.
This is an example of an idea that continues to evolve with the available media. It began in the early 90's as a folded paper puzzle, then by the mid-90's became an innovative MS-DOS game, and now decades later has finally made its way to VR. The next logical medium will be AR.
The first prototype was made by hand using color Xerox copies, scissors, glue and foam core board, as "Too Many Geckos!". I patented the concept and then licensed it to a company who rebranded the first physical version as "Triazzle 3-D".
"Too Many Geckos!" subsequently resurfaced as the first 3D computer version of the concept (from 1995), with early texture mapping based on the pioneering work of Michael Abrash (who's path later led to Oculus / Meta).
Fast-forward 20+ years, to where my new ocean-life themed cut-and-fold version collides with a variety of VR headsets.
Paper is low-tech, but still needs to be optimized so the cost of materials can allow for a good retail price point, and still have a decent profit margin.
Likewise, the computer version needs to be optimized in a different way - in this case for efficient use of memory, and performance.
The next version of the concept will be AR. Here is a side-by-side comparison of a physical folded-paper version on the left, and a simulated AR version on the right. Together with hand-tracking, AR is a natural fit for a future iteration of the concept. At the time of this writing, however - no such consumer AR devices yet exist ;)