The Tech We Wish Santa Had Brought us Last Christmas

The Hacker Noon Tech Christmas Wishlist: What Tech do you want Santa to Bring this Holiday Season?

I would really really like an Oculus Quest 2. But if money were less of an object, I'd love to have a Microsoft HoloLens 2. After our podcast with the director of Mixed Reality at Microsoft, I'm even more hooked on the idea of MR.

MR is like AR? Augmented reality? I actually ordered the valve index today, I was on the waiting list for a few weeks. It has outward facing cameras which can be used for AR. I am looking forward to experimenting with all that.

I have a text-based rogue-like side project, but I have done a little bit of WebGL for it too and would like to make it VR capable and get lost in a world of my own creation.

I'd like to see about simulating multiple monitors within VR for dev work too 🤔

I mostly just wanna play games with my kids though. Bust out the old games on emulators and wireless controllers like we did on Thanksgiving 🙂

richard-kubina interested to hear your thoughts on why you chose Valve Index over Oculus Quest 2 or HTC Vive.

Also your project sounds cool and I'd love to hear about how to make it VR-Capable, we can co-write an article on HN.

Also I tried 2 productivity apps in the Oculus Quest and they just aren't great. Like the apps themselves are cool, we can have multiple monitors as large as we want wherever we want in our FOV.

But you have to remember that you can't see your keyboard or mouse, so as long as you are confident in your typing you'll be ok. More importantly, you have a decently heavy headset on your head and a screen 1 centimeter from your eyes.

The amount of time I can spend staring at a computer screen and in VR are massively different. Just personally, I haven't been able to make VR productivity work, but MR (mixed reality) is a whole different ballgame IMO.

Limarc, in my case I had already dumped money into a gaming rig a year prior and I wanted to justify it, squeezing the most out of the GTX 1080 Ti card I bought 😅 So I didn't mind connecting the VR headset to that computer. I also just heard it was top of the line and just wanted to really have a high-quality experience.

I get a feeling I too will be disappointed with productivity apps in VR at the moment, I still think I'll experiment with it for funsies :male-scientist: 😄

Ha I prob want a kindle since I like to read before bed and it’s too bright for David!

I just want the biggest, sharpest, smartest, highest resolution tv in the market today.

Utsav Jaiswal this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aKCzMb6zRc

Limarc as we all spend a lot of time with our computers, I think this is a great investment
https://www.amazon.com/Gravity-Massage-Electric-Heating-Intelligent/dp/B08F9HXL3Q/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=massage+chair&qid=1608406611&refinements=p_36%3A100000-&rnid=386662011&s=beauty&sr=1-3

Linh I have a Kindle on my wishlist as well this year! Utsav Jaiswal I hope that TV is so we can play more Halo over the holidays

Limarc i was exploring this device recently - https://us.moleskine.com/smart-writing-system
as you know, i'm writing a lot, and my workplace is full with different paper notes.

But after exploring it, I realize that I'll benefit more from finding a good working speech-to-text tool, that will be able to digest my pronounciation correctly.

That's so cool Arthur. I can imagine this would've been useful to me in high school and university, but how do you think you'll use it today? Don't you take notes on your computer digitally anyways?

Limarc most of my notes are on paper. when i'm walking, i always have a pen and paper, just in case i have some cool idea.
and at some point - it's hard to organize all that notes together. Plus Utsav Jaiswal think that I should kill less trees

Okay, suuuuuuuper late to the party, and since my list remains mostly unfulfilled (my assumption is that Ms. Santa dropped my parcel somewhere over the Arctic circle when the reindeer had to swerve to avoid a super high tree top, and therefore these gadgets are bringing joy to a family up there somewhere), I'll pop it in here and hope the Ms. Santa has better luck next year in her delivery to me!

So in this year of pandemia and social distancing, the value of a great home theatre system set up has really landed with me, so my wish list is very much all about that. From new projectors with built-in speakers (hello https://www.benq.com/en-us/projector/portable/gs2.html, you sexy beast) or just a really high quality projector (but not too big, I like quality over quantity and projector always needs to be portable) to a smart speaker like Apple HomePod Mini (I do love me some Apple), or JBL Link Portable, or Sonos One. (Although Amazon has a strong foothold in the home speaker playing field, I do not support Amazon for reasons.) And then of course a high quality, easy access and handle, with durability and longevity projector screen to accompany the aforementioned.

Last, but not least... I am salivating for this baby; https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/einova/mundus-pro-by-einova-epa-certified-disinfecting-device - I would LOVE to not have to wipe down my devices any more, but instead just sticking it in one of these. And that's my list!

Arthur, if you end up buying that chair, I might have to move to your city and become your neighbour.

Rianke Krugel to be honest, I'll better to move up to your warm country, with that chair, for sure...

I think we need to have some sort of a deal here. I'm ready to buy massage chair when David will pre-order cybertrack. actually pretty useful thing during pandemic, because of good ventilation system.

Limarc wow also super late to the party! I did get a Kindle for Christmas. Very stoked on that. But if I had unlimited money & no worries then I would buy one of those soundproof office booths for my house so I can always have a quiet peaceful place to work 😂