I've been talking about rovers on this blog for several weeks nonstop. I thought it would be fun to have a micro Sawppy rover up and running in time for Perseverance landing on February 18th, but I don't think I'll make that self-imposed deadline. I have discovered I cannot sustain "all rovers all the time" and need a break from rover work. I'm not abandoning the micro rover project, I just need to switch to another project for a while as a change of pace.

I was invited to participate in ART.HAPPENS, a community art show. My first instinct was to say "I'm not an artist!" but I was gently corrected. This is not the fancy schmancy elitist art world, it is the world of people having fun and sharing their works kind of world. Yes, some of the people present are bona fide artists, but I was assured anyone who wants to share something done for the sheer joy of creating can join in the fun.

OK then, I can probably take a stab at it. Most of my projects are done to accomplish a specific purpose or task, so it's a rare break to not worry about meeting objectives and build something for fun. My first line of thought was to build a follow-up to Glow Flow, something visually pleasing and interactive built out of 3D printed parts and illuminated by colorful LEDs controlled with a Pixelblaze. It's been on my to-do list to explore more ideas on how else to use a Pixelblaze.

Since we're in the middle of a pandemic, this art show is a virtual affair. I learned that people will be sharing photos and videos of their projects and shown in a virtual meeting space called Gather. Chosen partially because the platform was built to be friendly to all computer skill levels, Gather tries to eliminate friction of digital gatherings.

I poked my head into Gather and saw an aesthetic that reminded me of old Apple //e video games that used a top-down tiled view. For those old games, it was a necessity due to the limited computing power and memory of an old Apple computer. And those same traits are helpful here to build a system with minimal hardware requirements.

Sharing photos and videos of something like Glow Flow would be fun, but wouldn't be the full experience. Glow Flow looked good but the real fun comes from handling it with our own hands. I was willing to make some compromises in the reality of the world today, until I noticed how individual projects will be shared as web content that will be hosted in an <iframe>. That changes the equation. Because it meant I could build something interactive after all. If I have control of content inside an <iframe>, I can build interactive web content for this show.

I briefly looked at a few things that might have been interesting, like three.js and A-Frame. But as I read documentation for those platforms, my enthusiasm dampened by shortcomings I came across. For example, building experiences incorporating physics simulation seems to be a big can of worms on those platforms. Eventually I decided: screw it, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go big. It's time to revisit Unity 3D.