Michael Abrash Blog Post: Wearable Computing

[Chris D]

Michael Abrash might be a familiar name to you. For many reasons. Michael has worked at Microsoft, id Software, Microsoft again, then to Intel before eventually getting the job at Valve.

In a move not seen before at Valve, Michael has launched his own blog. In this blog he goes through his career and explains how he came to be working at Valve. It is a fascinating story. He talks in detail about Valve's (lack of) management structure, his early days at Valve and what he's working on now.

After a couple of discussions like that, I realized that he was saying was that I should think about whether that was really the most valuable thing I could be doing – there were plenty of people who were skilled at optimizing the Source engine already working on Portal 2, so it would be more useful to think about what high-impact things I could do that no one else was doing. That, and conversations with various people around the company, kicked me into a different mode of thought, which eventually led me to a surprising place: wearable computing.

Yes, that's correct. Wearable computing. Think Terminator vision. This is also the reason for recent job vacancies.

Of course, this isn't the first time we've heard from Valve about wearable computing.

But the important thing to remember about all of this is it will be an incredibly long time before we see Half-Life 3 glasses or similar, but to get this kind of insight about what is going on at Valve is only a good thing.

You can see Michael's full blog post here.[prbreak][/prbreak]

 

[HAX]

I'd love to buy the Orion's arm computer in Chuck

 

[bobtheskull]

Oooo.... intergrate Half-Life 3 glasses into thick, Black, Hornrim style glasses like a certain Dr Freeman...

 

[bad@chaos]

Power Glove 2.0 or maybe a real life Pitboy

 

[Lobster]

But those are like babie's toys!

 

[0ut_Stander]

Probably they will make a watch what would create a holographic crowbar to your hand, which you can beat people withl

 

[Edeslash]

Thinking medicine!

 

[MFL]

Go read the blog. It's insights into Valve are pretty amazing.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I'd love to buy the Orion's arm computer in Chuck

Order Placed: One Tomahawk Missile and a Pizza-to-go

I'm hoping its discreet 360degree virtual reality glasses

 

[MFL]

IRL MMO. I wanna play caster and just start lobbin fireballs only people with the glasses can see. Maybe I should just start doing that anyways.

 

[Frits]

Wow, Mike Abrash. Yes, you definitely should be familiar with this guy. I remember his articles in Dr. Dobbs well - on the finesses of programming a 3D engine. He makes for an interesting author.

I'll be looking forward to his blog posts!