week 23: The Asobi Porting Initiative

Time for lucky number 13 of the Sunday Report!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I hope some of you had the chance to play your PlayStation games in 3D, I was surprised how positive the response has been.

Besides launching 3D for iPhones, iPads and Apple TV, I've also shared a preview of things to come (Spatial Fill mode).

The plan is still to bring all these features to all platforms, making Asobi the true Next Level Remote play app.

The Asobi Porting Initiative

Porting of Asobi is going quite well, and you'll see it launching sooner rather than later, so I'll go into it per platform:

- Android

Submitting the app took a bit longer due to the summer heatwave we had over here, which resulted in version 1.0 being submitted last Friday. When it's approved I plan to release it either this Thursday or Friday.

At launch Asobi for Android version 1.0 will have 120fps frame generation, up to 4k upscaling, ambient light spill mode, virtual controller, PS Cloud support, multiple other view modes, support for the Ayn Thor second screen among other things.

As promised it's launching at near-parity to iOS.

The plan is also to bring the 3D SBS mode to it as well, but not at launch -> Probably with the update after it. You'll see it drop soon enough.

This also means that the PlayTest will end soon, I'll keep it running until a week after the Play Store launch. Thanks again to all the testers for all the suggestions and feedback! Humbled!

- Steam (Windows/Linux)

Work on the Steam version is progressing quite quickly, the only thing left to do is to work on the user interface, everything seems to work. I still plan to do the PlayTest before mid-June, but it might drop earlier. The full release will most likely drop in the week after the Play Test. I'm trying to push as much as I can into version 1.0, it will most likely have all the features that the version 1.0 of Android has.

- Meta Quest

From tomorrow I'll start work on finishing the Meta Quest version, this port should also launch before the end of the month depending on how well the Meta review team plays along. The first version will have the same immersive mode as the Vision Pro and I'll try to bring 2D->3D conversion to it at launch, don't expect it to run as great as on the Vision Pro though, there's quite a gap in performance between the two. I'll just try to squeeze as much as I can out of it.

- Android TV

After those three are done, I'll start focusing on an Android TV version; I honestly don't expect this to be too much of an issue.

- PS Vita

One platform that I would really like to port Asobi to is the PS Vita. The hardware is limited (only an H.264 decoder), but I have some ideas.. So who knows.

Asobi Sync

One thing I'm considering is to build some kind of syncing method between different platforms such as Apple <-> Android and such.

The only safe way I've found means you'll still have to sign-in via your PSN account on each device, which would result in any console registrations and your cloud favourites to sync between the devices you've set this up for.

Of course, this will be optional and I'm looking into other options.

Split Screen

As some of you know I've also been working on a split-screen mode where you can play multiple remote play streams at the same time. It just needs some finishing touches, but the base is working great. So soon you'll be able to initiate multiple Remote Play or Cloud play sessions on one device with multiple accounts.

For the time being you can play around with it by activating it in the App settings on iPad and iPhone.

For those that want local multiplayer, I've found out how to do it for PS4 consoles, it's just that I haven't been able to get it to play nice on PS5.

Either way, more soon!

Spatial 3D

Next to some more optimisations coming soon for Vision Pro, I have the plan to add some more 3D modes so you won't need a 3DTV/3D Projector/3D Glasses. I'm looking into adding support for Anaglyph (red/cyan) glasses, Mobile VR / Cardboard-style, and maybe that Wiggle Stereoscopy effect? Either way, Anaglyph is certainly one I'll add to the modes.

In Closing

That's it for this week! Summer's started and June's going to be hot and exciting, you'll see the first drops coming very soon!

Thanks for reading! Time for me to get back to work. See you next week! 🥳🥳🥳

P.S. for the latest status on Midori, check the subreddit r/MidoriApp

P.P.S. What the hell happened? We've already reached 1.1k members? How? It's only been a week??