Meta featured XR Beeb: thousands tried a BBC Micro for the first time
Meta featured my app. Yesterday, thousands of people tried a BBC Micro for the very first time, over 40 years after its release.
The fact that an Arm CPU is reanimating its 8-bit ancestor in a mixed-reality simulation is quite apt, too.
Why do it? For fun, and to bring computing history to a whole new audience. But given this is LinkedIn, I'll also note that the future of AI is likely dependent on novel data captured from a human perspective, which is exactly where AR/VR devices come in.
This epic pandemic side-project simmered for years on the back burner, and I'm so glad it's finally out there. You can try it yourself, or find it featured in the Meta Quest browser.
#Built on open source
None of it would be possible without the JSBeeb emulator by Matt Godbolt, shaders by Paul Malin, textures by Stew B and Adrian G, and advice and support from Ash Nehru, Dave Hill, Kieran Connell, Mark Moxon, Richard Talbot-Watkins, Ricardo Cabello, and Tom Seddon.