Biography
I am a Senior Software/Hardware Developer with more than a decade of experience developing games, applications and installations for various platforms and clients. I specialise in UI/UX work, AR and hardware prototyping and get to dabble with all these things at Draw & Code.
In my free time I enjoy doing short and long distance walking, gardening, spotting wildlife and inventing things!
My job is a senior developer, but really it's senior problem solver. Developer is just like a subcategory of problem solving.
Tom's Q&A
What Is Draw & Code good at?
I think we’re really good at taking clients ideas and doing something really amazing with them and something unexpected.
So, for example, Phillips came to us with one or two ideas a while ago, and then we came back with a brief to them, and it kind of like, blew their minds what we wanted to do.
I think that’s kind of what Draw & Code is all about. It’s taking a client’s expectations and kind of like beating it and going above and beyond.
What type of projects do you really enjoy working on?
Cutting edge technology, like groundbreaking stuff, things that haven’t been done before, because it’s really challenging. If it’s been done before, I can just go and see what someone else has done and kind of copy it, which is half the job of a developer.
We go and see someone else’s code and go, we can use that, we can do that because there’s not really such thing as an original piece of code because everyone’s written it already and that’s why you’re using it.
Describe the differences between the immersive technologies you deploy?
VR is virtual reality. It’s where you put a headset on and it takes you into another world. It kind of blocks out your view of the real physical world and just immerses you in a different space. Sometimes you can have immersive audio with it as well, sometimes not.
Then we use augmented reality, which is where you still get to see the real physical world, but you augment digital content on top of it. So Pokemon Go would be a really good example. Pokemon Go is a good example because you can use your camera to look anywhere in your surrounding area, and then the Pokemon stays on it.
Or for Phillips, we made a TV wall placer kind of thing so you could scan a wall in and then see all the different TVs that Phillips were selling and place it on the wall to see if it would fit in the space. And you can measure walls and things. That’s augmented reality.
Mixed reality is kind of a combination of both augmented and virtual. So that kind of gives you a good idea of that.
Then there’s kind of like subtopics of it as well because we do a lot of projection mapping, which is also involved in augmented reality. So we could projection map a dome, for example.
So we currently have AR, VR, XR & MR, can we expect any more or will a more organised structure develop?
It’s kind of like the question, we have three states, we’ve got solid gas and water. Can you imagine another one?And it’s hard because you can’t, because that’s what we know.
It’s probably going to be one of those four, but with an additional element, I would say. So with VR, it’s mostly about vision right now, and sound. But some companies are creating headsets where you’ve got smell built in as well, like little capsules you can get that really smells.
Or it’s probably more going to be haptic feedback. So if you’ve got control, you’ve got gloves, then understanding how your brain receives feedback. So if you touch something in a virtual environment, then you can actually feel like you’re picking up a box or a sphere or something like that to begin with and then taking it further.
So I think all of those technologies that have been mentioned will try and get more immersive and grow more, but I don’t think I can’t think of anything else that will come out. For example, augmented reality, contact lenses that will allow augmented reality so you don’t have to wear glasses or something like that.
Tom's Fun Fact
Currently in training to walk ever longer distances within 24 hours. Current record is set to 32 miles in 11 hours, next goal is 40 miles in 15 hours. Wish me luck!
Tom's Skills Keywords
Unity3D, Autodesk Maya, UI/UX, Augmented Reality, Arduino, C#, Electronics, Hardware Prototyping, Software Development, CAD