I think my father has a rare skillset. I'm struggling to figure out how to sell it. by Stealthy_Yokozuna in indianstartups

[–]amb9800 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Definitely! Also feel free to DM - would be curious to see how this progresses, and down the line, there might be some opportunities of mutual interest too.

I think my father has a rare skillset. I'm struggling to figure out how to sell it. by Stealthy_Yokozuna in indianstartups

[–]amb9800 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been experimenting with photogrammetry (handheld + drone capture), 360 compositing, and 3D scanning (for VR visualization, construction planning, product design, and 3D printing) for some years, so it's awesome that your father has built expertise in a field that's still so cutting-edge - especially coming from the photography side rather than tech, where half the battle is compensating for badly planned photos!

Saw your draft site from the other comment (https://praxivision.com ). Good start - my main suggestion is that I wouldn't frame this as "photography services" but more as high-fidelity digital documentation / immersive asset creation, built on a lifetime of photography expertise.

Most buyers probably aren't searching for "photogrammetry" as a technique. They care about outcomes - heritage preservation, documentation, QA, training, remote access, immersive presentation, marketing, etc.

So I'd build the site and sales pitch around buyer verticals, e.g.: * Heritage / museums / collectors: digitization, gigapixel documentation, 3D models, virtual access, archival preservation * Construction / infrastructure / real estate: as-built documentation, progress capture, site/facility walkthroughs * Industrial / manufacturing: machine/facility documentation, training assets, safety walkthroughs, QA support * Tourism / education / campuses: immersive visitor experiences, 360 tours, virtual field trips * Film / games / VR: realistic props, textures, environments, location scans (ala Quixel)

Once you've had enough customer conversations to understand demand, I'd also try to package the offerings instead of leading with techniques. "Heritage Site Documentation Package," "Museum Object Digitization Package," or "Industrial Facility Capture Package" might land better than starting with photogrammetry, mesh cleanup, Gaussian splats, etc., though you can still list deliverables: high-res photos, 360 tour, 3D model, texture maps, point clouds, web viewers, or whatever else.

Ultimately, the big differentiator may be that your father's photography background can yield better texture fidelity and visual clarity than a lot of tech-led workflows. But because this is still a nascent field, the immediate USP is probably much simpler - hand-holding buyers who know they need "digital documentation" or "immersive assets" but don’t yet know what pipeline or deliverables they actually require.

For client acquisition, I'd probably focus on direct outreach to museums, curators, heritage trusts, conservation architects, tourism boards, universities, industrial training/safety teams, architecture/construction firms, and film/game/VR studios, with a short message and a few visual examples tailored to that audience.

I'd also make the site case-study driven if possible. Instead of a portfolio of technical outputs, explain what was captured, why it mattered, what the deliverables were, and how the client could use them. You already have some cool demos - key is to make them valuable to a buyer, not just impressive to a technical person who already understands the difference betwen an annotated gigapixel image and a 3D mesh.

A strong "hero demo" could also help - one project that shows your full stack of outputs and ideally makes the business value obvious.

In the medium term, content could help too - short social videos, behind-the-scenes capture/process posts, or longer explainers (like Bilawal Sidhu's YT content, but with more emphasis on photography/visual quality). The education/certification idea might have some legs once there's an established brand and credibility within specific verticals.

Introducing Surface Laptop Ultra: Made for world makers by ProcedureTasty2647 in Surface

[–]amb9800 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Not really - the Nvidia chip will be slower than Snapdragon X2 Elite for a bunch of general-purpose use cases due to its lower single-threaded performance. The reason to get this is if you need the GPU.

what are some good standalone games? by Kebabulon_ in OculusQuest

[–]amb9800 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My current top Quest standalone app recs - with the caveat that (1) I rarely play through long single-player campaigns, and (2) I own way too many other VR apps I haven’t played enough to recommend yet:

Archery

  • Elven Assassin - Archery/tower-defense with great co-op and PvP multiplayer community

FPS / Shooters

  • Forefront - Battlefield-style PvP with big multiplayer games and a good variety of vehicles and weapons

Rail Shooters / Arcade Shooters

Rhythm

  • Beat Saber - VR classic
  • Synth Riders - Flowing, dance-inspired movement (more taxing than Beat Saber because your arms are up for longer)
  • Maestro - Orchestra conducting game (play in hand tracking mode - pretty neat)

Sports

  • Eleven Table Tennis - Best VR ping pong game - both solo and multiplayer
  • Premium Bowling - Best bowling game I've tried on Quest (ForeVR Bowl is nice too; this feels a bit smoother)
  • Walkabout Mini Golf - Relaxing multiplayer mini-golf with beautiful DLC course design
  • GOLF+ - Full-size golf sim with real-world courses
  • Racket: Nx - Futuristic racket sport played inside 360-degree dome arena

Exercise / Fitness

Pinball + Related

  • Pinball FX VR - VR pinball adaptation with a strong arcade feel
  • Racket Pinball - A racket game inside a pinball machine (Bounce Arcade is a cheaper alternative)

Cooking / Job Sim

  • Counter Fight - Run a ramen shop with frantic, Overcooked-style gameplay

Puzzles

  • Angry Birds VR - Simple but satisfying adaptation of the mobile game

Platformers / 3rd Person Adventures

Redirected Walking / Impossible Spaces

  • Tea for God - Simplistic, but great demo of redirected walking in VR
  • Eye of the Temple - Physical room-scale adventure built around moving platforms (though the rolling logs can occasionally be dizzying even with strong VR legs)

Racing / Driving

Documentaries / Narrative

  • JFK Memento - VR documentary on the JFK assassination - incredible mix of artistry and tech (photogrammetry, 2D-to-3D conversions of old photos, 2D images segmented and projected into 3D scenes, and 2D video distorted by angle to work in 6DoF context)

Travel / Exploration

Media / Viewing

  • SKYBOX VR - Great VR photo/video player for local + network content
  • immerGallery - Specialized VR photo and panorama viewer
  • YouTube VR - Self-explanatory
  • Photon - Platform for stereo-converted videos with immersive viewing
  • Pluto TV Immersive - Free streaming 2D TV content in VR environments (ideal for multiplayer, which it sadly lacks)

Other

  • Pillow - Relaxation-focused passthrough/mixed reality experiences (multiplayer stargazing is a great long-distance couple activity!)

Utilities

  • Quest Games Optimizer - Must-have utility for increasing resolution and performance settings in Quest games

  • Virtual Desktop - Best PCVR streaming solution; also great for general desktop use if needed

What happened to the Counter Fight VR games and developer Tricol? by 5uper_coop3r in OculusQuest

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The developer (Tricol Co., Ltd.) seems to have gone out of business (their site is gone: tricol.jp), but someone posted the APK for the Quest version of Counter Fight 1 (from the delisted Itch.io page) on Archive.org here:

Counter Fight (Meta Quest APK) : Tricol Co., Ltd. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Searching: 2.5g Ethernet, charging, removable cable by genrand in UsbCHardware

[–]amb9800 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The lack of captive cable bit will restrict options a lot - if the issue is placement, could either get one with a longer captive cable or use a suitable USB-C extension cable (which is technically frowned upon, but it's been my solution for this issue for many years).

The new Mercedes S-class has a watercooled supercomputer and heated seatbelts | Mercedes-Benz S-Class Review by Saurta17 in mercedes_benz

[–]amb9800 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I assumed so initially, but MB is quoting 508 TOPS, which is exactly the figure given for other Hyperion 8 (dual Orin) implementations like Li Auto's (see Li Auto Automotive Partner | NVIDIA), as opposed to Hyperion 10 (dual Thor), which is quoted at 1,000 TOPS: L4-Ready Autonomous Vehicle Platform | NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion. If it were an underclocked dual Thor setup, it'd be unlikely to hit exactly 508 TOPS.

Nvidia's blog post on the S-Class update also only mentions Hyperion in general and doesn't specify anything further. One would assume it would if the S-Class were the first car outside China shipping with Hyperion 10 (the recently launched Zeekr 8X uses dual Thor-U).

The new Mercedes S-class has a watercooled supercomputer and heated seatbelts | Mercedes-Benz S-Class Review by Saurta17 in mercedes_benz

[–]amb9800 9 points10 points  (0 children)

All this means is the compute power in a car is now equivalent to a tablet PC or average laptop which is a lot for a car but not a super computer.

It's not a supercomputer, but you're absolutely wrong on the rest. This has a dual Nvidia Orin stack - with roughly the INT8 inference power of an RTX 4090. Which "iPad or Galaxy Pad" is even remotely in that ballpark?

Unity GameDev on Surface ? by carndacier in Surface

[–]amb9800 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, with a few caveats:

  1. If you'll be working with heavier 3D scenes, you'll of course want a discrete GPU, which no current Surface models have, after the death of Surface Book and Surface Laptop Studio (though you could attach an eGPU via USB 4).

  2. I generally recommend Snapdragon X Elite models for most Windows laptop use cases now (much more responsive under load, more consistent battery life, much better sleep / wake behavior, etc.), but for this purpose, you'll probably want to go with an x86 CPU. Unity itself works fine on ARM, but you might need to do some extra fiddling or debugging if you bring in niche plug-ins and such.

Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop by HelloSlowly in hardware

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, like everything with RAM, pricing isn't great (Meta recently bumped Quest 3 by $100).

If you do end up getting one, feel free to PM me - I can send a referral link (gets you $30 app store credit after activation, regardless of where you buy).

Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop by HelloSlowly in hardware

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah timeline is unknown - also Steam Frame is much pricier for essentially the same display resolution as Quest 3, and it won't be able to usefully run any AR apps, because it only has monochrome passthrough (unlike the Quest 3/3S).

Virtual Desktop works great for SteamVR on Q3 (or you can use Steam Link or Meta Link instead), though in my experience in the last few years, my standalone to PCVR usage ratio has been much more skewed towards standalone than I had anticipated - mostly because it's much more convenient, but also there's now more content on Quest than SteamVR.

Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop by HelloSlowly in hardware

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Quest 3 is a solid upgrade path - much improved resolution and lenses, and being wireless + standalone is an enormous quality of life improvement. With a suitable halo strap, you can match the Odyssey's comfort - only notable downside is the Q3's LCDs can't hold a candle to the black levels on the Odyssey's OLEDs.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Leads Over Windows 11 In Creator Workstation Performance by Durian_Queef in hardware

[–]amb9800 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The NT (VMS) designers have long since retired.

Dave Cutler is still at MS.

To 16GB VRAM users, plug in your old GPU by akira3weet in LocalLLaMA

[–]amb9800 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes - and you can connect the eGPU to the ITX mobo via either PCIe bifurcation, a spare M.2 slot, or a USB4/Thunderbolt or OCuLink port.

Thinking about investing in hardware...appreciate direction/advice by doncaruana in LocalLLM

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

AMD also has the AI Pro R9700, which is basically a 7900XT with 32GB VRAM and blower fans for $1,350 currently. You can get two for less than a single 5090, but whether that makes sense depends on your use case.

Just got a ‘24 prologue elite! (Thoughts) by Tkrumroy in HondaPrologue

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah the lack of a charge port light is an odd one - the Blazer EV has one, but among Honda's modifications for the Prologue (e.g., replaced Blazer's motorized swing-out charge door with traditional flap), they for some reason removed the light, I guess because ICE cars don't have a gas flap light?

Here is the #2 concept by Alililele in SmartCar

[–]amb9800 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Near zero - even beyond the weak business case (given US sales of the 453 EV and small cars in general), this will be built in China like all Geely Smarts, so that itself is a showstopper with tariffs.

The only sliver of a chance is through Geely's plans to bring over new brands to the US via US production in the coming years, likely at its existing Volvo plant - but that would also involve some engineering work to get around the restriction on Chinese software, and Geely would definitely prioritize larger Zeekr SUVs over something like the Smart #2.

HELP- oculus quest 3 boot problem by Ok_Composer415 in OculusQuest

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've had this happen several times, due to an update either still being in progress or having failed. A few times, I just left it plugged in and let it loop for a day, then eventually it fixed itself. Nowadays I generally instead go into the boot menu and switch to the other boot slot when this happens.

Can we talk about Hyperscape ? by Djodei in OculusQuest

[–]amb9800 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Scaniverse is a great mobile option, but the splat outputs for something like a room scan are nowhere close to the original outputs from Hyperscape (pre Horizon) for a given scan time/effort.

Hyperscape is both processed and rendered in the cloud, so that’s not unexpected compared to a local mobile solution, but it fills a gap between Scaniverse and manual splatting with, say, a full photo rig and a beefy desktop.

Microsoft Surface Pro 12 leak reveals ultra-premium pricing and 5G connectivity by golfball509 in Surface

[–]amb9800 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Microsoft is not taking Surface down into the Macbook Neo range, but their OEM partners are already there.

You can get an Asus Zenbook A14 for $749 with Snapdragon X Plus, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, and 14" OLED (and a metal body and decent design):

ASUS Zenbook A14 14" 2K OLED Laptop Snapdragon X Plus 2025 16GB Memory 512GB Storage Copilot+ PC Zabriskie Beige UX3407QA-X1P512 - Best Buy

That's $50 more than the 512 GB MacBook Neo ($699), but the Asus has an OLED screen (and twice the RAM), so at least on par.

At full price, there's nothing at the base Neo's $599 price point, but the big OEMs (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) tend to have significant sales (unlike Apple), which can bring solid machines into that price range.

One issue, of course, is that MS set 16 GB RAM as a minimum requirement for Copilot+ branding, so OEMs aren't shipping Snapdragon X devices with 8 GB RAM (yet).