Writing
Notes on VR, graphics, physics, and whatever I was building at the time. 2015 to now.
2023
- 27 October 2023 Bring Psychedelic Sculptures and Fractals Into Your Living Room with Squingle Mixed Reality Update I’ve been working hard on this update, which really brings the WOW factor back to VR technology. For the Mixed Reality Update, I made use of generative AI to create mesmerising patterns that…
- 16 March 2023 I chatted to GPT 4 about consciousness. The conversation will blow your mind. If life is a simulation, what is the likely nature of the world in which the simulation is being made? And what is the purpose, if any, of the simulation? Do the simulators know about the presence…
2022
- 11 November 2022 INTRASCEND VR NOW ON QUEST & PICO INTRASCEND is a psychedelic VR game with similarities to Super Hexagon.
- 27 September 2022 Squingle's new Trailer and Passthrough Mixed Reality Update! Squingle was at EGX London last week, where we released a brand new trailer by the amazing ANABURN, who make brilliant mixed reality trailers for VR games. Squingle also has a new Passthrough Update…
2021
2020
- 27 December 2020 How to track metrics on your game's levels using Unity Analytics It has never been easier to get insightful data from your players and beta testers for your game. It’s so easy, you’d be foolish not to implement it - it will take you less than a day!
- 30 September 2020 Introducing Squingle Studios Exciting times! See glimpses of my latest VR project and follow us on Twitter and Instagram (@SquingleStudios).
- 20 July 2020 Introducing Trippy Hall of Faces FREE on Oculus Rift and Quest via SideQuest Inspired by Alex Grey's visionary art work, Hall of Faces is a trippy virtual space with gently changing iridescent colours in a repeating world of faces. You can change the colours until you find…
- 3 May 2020 Ben Outram on the Shifty Perspective podcast Hosted by Ash: I talk about the future of AI, VR, and technology.
- 16 March 2020 Juggling motion tracking data free download! Data was used to create this virtual reality game.
- 27 February 2020 Trippy Fingers available on Oculus Quest and Hololens 2! You can now try TrippyFingers on Oculus Quest and Hololens 2: two devices that support hand tracking. I developed these to try out the new finger tracking features and SDKs on Quest and Hololens 2. …
- 6 February 2020 Remembrain - Game Jam 2020 I joined Game Jam to make this VR game inside a brain! You have to repair forgotten memories by rearranging sentences, to make the brain healthy once again. You can find out more information and…
- 28 January 2020 Crystal Vibes feat. Ott. released on Steam! Crystal Vibes, my psychedelic VR experience featuring music by the amazing Ott is now available to download free for Oculus and Vive over on the Steam page!
- 28 January 2020 Hololens 2 development with Unity: Hand tracking and accessing finger/joint positions. So you are developing an application for Hololens 2, and you can’t figure out how to get access to the finger joint positions? This is how (also available at my GitHub here)
- 11 January 2020 Oculus Quest hand tracking music visualiser demo ← Hololens 2 development with Unity: Hand tracking and accessing finger/joint positions.Contour and false-colour height map shader for Unity →
2019
- 15 November 2019 Contour and false-colour height map shader for Unity A shader for Unity allowing you to map real-world y-position to HSV colour with black contour lines. Also on GitHub here.
- 23 August 2019 Planet Juggle now available to download for Oculus Rift and Quest! Planet Juggle is a virtual reality juggling simulator, allowing you to juggle on the Moon, Mars, Earth and Neptune, to find a gravity that is right for your skill level. Juggle in ‘free mode’ or…
- 20 August 2019 Simple single colour shader in unity with transparency It’s kind of annoying that Unity doesn’t come with an unlit color shader that you can change the alpha value. So here one is. Instructions:
- 23 January 2019 Flow Zone wins 3rd Place at Siggraph Asia Flow Zone, a VR work by Tanner Person and myself, won 3rd place in the ‘best AR/VR’ category at Siggraph Asia 2018. You can read our paper on the work here. Someone wrote an article here.
2018
- 17 December 2018 Neutrino Juggling VR - Download free now! A game based on juggling for virtual reality! Head over the the Neutrino page and try it for yourself now, free! (Available for Oculus Rift only)
- 19 November 2018 Liquid Crystal prints Christmas Sale Save 40% and don’t pay postage from 20th November at my Etsy Shop! They make great gifts! Have a browse at my shop here.
- 19 November 2018 "Liquid Crystals" by Benjamin Outram published on IoP My book, “Liquid Crystals” has been published through Institute of Physics, and is available to buy on Amazon here! Chapter 1 is reproduced below.
- 16 July 2018 Crystal Vibes finally Released on Steam! Download now. Download 3D version now on SteamVR! https://store.steampowered.com/app/623040/Crystal\Vibes\feat\Ott/
- 13 July 2018 Procedural Audio in Unity - Noise and Tone Procedural audio is audio that is created using code at run time, rather than using a wav or mp3 sound file. It can be very useful for creating audio that reacts to the situation and does not sound…
- 9 July 2018 Neural network learns to evade and capture Watch these objects as they try and eat and avoid being eaten on a circular food-chain.
- 11 June 2018 Smectic liquid crystal photographs Smectic liquid crystals, like all liquid crystals, are fluids that have order at the molecular level, a bit like a crystal. While remaining fluid, molecules prefer pointing along a single local…
- 11 June 2018 Virtual Reality Reading UIs Virtual Reality (VR) devices have increasingly sparked both commercial and academic interest. While applications range from immersive games to real-world simulations, little attention has been given…
- 31 May 2018 Liquid Crystal Photography Exhibition at Linacre College, Oxford Thanks to Linacre College, Oxford University, for exhibiting my liquid crystal photography. The exhibition will remain for some time, so please go and check it out! You can also see the images on…
- 24 May 2018 Liquid Crystal Music Video With Max Cooper Max Cooper is one of my favourite artists in the world. He takes electronic music to fine-art status and brings in many ideas from physics and science.
- 3 May 2018 Simulating Liquid Crystals Liquid crystals are phases of matter that are both fluid but have structure. This is possible due to the shape of liquid crystal molecules, which tend to be long and thin. In this simulation,…
- 17 April 2018 Evolutionary Algorithm with Neural Networks for Modelling Behaviour Below are the result of some of my tinkering with machine learning and evolutionary algorithms with neural networks. The first shows the network learning to get better at better at moving around in…
- 11 April 2018 Music visuals provided for SEBASTIAN REYNOLDS – MAHAJANAKA I provided some visuals to go with the video for Sebastian Reynolds' piece entitled "Mahajanaka", which draws inspiration for Thai Buddhist tradition and culture. Check it out!
2017
- 14 December 2017 Neutrino at Dubai International Film Festival Neutrino went down well at DIFF 2017 with over 100 people trying the demo. In addition, I was with Tanner Person demoing Flow Zone (Tanner Person, Benjamin Outram, Youssef Bouzarte), a poi-based…
- 18 July 2017 Time control in virtual reality This demo shows moving the controller through space to control time in the virtual environment. This kind of instant replay could be very useful for a variety of applications, and gives the user a…
- 7 June 2017 Flow in Virtual Reality with Cosmic Poi Tanner Person and I have been working on using virtual reality to encourage flow states, in which we loose a sense of time and self. Such states have been gaining greater attention for their…
- 5 June 2017 New Juggling VR Project Watch this space for updates and in the mean time, see this video demo!
- 9 March 2017 Crystal Vibes officially selected for Kaleidoscope Showcase Vol.2! Crystal Vibes feat Ott. has been officially selected by Kaleidoscope for exhibition at Kaleidoscope Showcase Vol.2! Check out the Crystal Vibes project page at Kaleidoscope here. Crystal Vibes will…
- 28 February 2017 Crystal Vibes available as 360-degree video You can alternatively download the full file (17GB) from by clicking here!
- 10 January 2017 Crystal Vibes Prints Now Available to Purchase! Crystal Vibes is a psychedelic synesthesic full-body-haptic virtual reality experience that I am presenting at Sundance Film Festival 2017. Please see here for more information and video of Crystal…
- 3 January 2017 Unity GPU Instancing: Unlit Instanced Shader Unity GPU instancing allows you to duplicate meshes without using much CPU overhead, which means you can render more cubes or more copies of trees, fishes, fractal geometries, or whatever else you…
2016
- 5 November 2016 Occlusion culling illustration I made this! It shows the spheres that would be visible from the point of view of someone standing in the center of a huge cubic lattice field of spheres, with the space filling factor changing from…
- 21 October 2016 Something is brewing - watch this space! ← Occlusion culling illustrationRecent Releases! →
- 5 October 2016 Recent Releases! If you have an iPhone, please download my latest sound and music visualization related apps!
- 9 June 2016 Artwork for James Le Roux's single `Routines` Based on images from a new virtual reality sound visualization and synesthesia project, I provided artwork for James Le Roux's new single 'Routines' available for free download now so check it out!
- 30 May 2016 VJing at Algorave @ Forestlimit, Shibuya, Tokyo I had the opportunity to show off some sound visualisation work at the brilliant Algorave last Friday 27th May. Thanks to organiser Renick Bell, photographer Rob Fischer, and musician Akimasa Yamada.
- 1 March 2016 Spectrum VR - Try It NOW! SpectrumVR music visualiser is finally here, so head over to the main page here to download versions for iPhone/iPad, Mac and Windows, and try it for your self!
- 12 February 2016 Gravitational Waves: Visualisation and Audiolisation of Gravitational Spectra If the gravitational wave spectrum were actually a spectrum of light, what colour would it be?
- 4 February 2016 The Knife in a Fusion Device The Knife is one of my favourite artists but their latest music is a little bit out there, and certainly a challenge to visualise.
- 28 January 2016 Dream Land This weird dream land has a big surprise. Please download and play, and see if you realise something funny about the nature of your reality. Download:
2015
- 15 December 2015 Free liquid crystal textures for 3D worlds I have made available my entire collection of liquid crystal photos for anyone to use in their own projects. The collection can be found here! A friend Oliver Coles has already used them to create…
- 15 December 2015 Resin cast into mahogany using liquid crystal pattern My good friend Oliver Coles has used my liquid crystal photography to create this coffee table surface. Using the image as a template with a CNC milling machine, he etched the pattern into mahogany…