The Army’s futuristic goggles near completion
Imagine getting a 3-D layout of a target building piped into your goggles on a heads-up display before you and your teammates kick the door in and clear the rooms.
That future could become reality with the Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System, basically a “do-it-all” goggle for troops.
The IVAS’ early versions were developed using Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality headset.
But a newly ruggedized system has been used by soldiers all the way up to company-level live fires as recently as last year.
The IVAS is how the Army will move situational awareness and targeting — like what jet pilots have had for years — into the eyes of dismounted soldiers roaming the battlefield.
Plans call for IVAS to include rapid targeting acquisitions, thermal and night vision capabilities, navigation headings, mapping, markers, data sharing and more.
The current IVAS prototype weighs 2.5 pounds, the same weight as the newly fielded Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular.
It also has recording capabilities for instant after-action videos and it uses the existing tactical assault kit — a smartphone-based app — as its off-board computer.
See the full story here: https://www.defensenews.com/news/your-army/2021/10/11/the-armys-futuristic-goggles-near-completion/
China Box Office dominated by China Content
See the full story here: https://www.evolutionmediacapital.com/research/chart-week-100621?mkt_tok=ODUwLVRBQS01MTEAAAGADkbxJSSbKzhvhH2WQclLjau7ARzSOBsdmx_VesxtoQjXfOE0_dygn0gcGfApNyft8WPM9ioV7JAjvNYF9TQELAT1uYqOIL5_dzVpjwckPsGO
Nolan Bushnell, the Man Behind Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, Is Releasing an NFT
The Cost
The videos and AR are straightforward, at least from a consumer standpoint. Like many NFT “drops,” the pricing structure is less so— there are multiple versions of these videos and AR renditions that carry different price structures.
Two unique editions of the red Pong tabletop arcade game and yellow Computer Space arcade game videos, which also come with the AR component, will be auctioned to the highest bidder. But these digital one-offs come with IRL components, too. The red Pong NFT comes with a visit with Bushnell to the arcade/carnival Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles, and the yellow Computer Space NFT comes with an unopened, signed Atari 2600 console.
What it’s like to dance at a VR strip club
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"It's basically run almost exactly like a real-life strip club," Lena continued. "You do an audition on stage during normal club hours, and see how people react, and the head dancer was like, 'You got some good reviews!'"
To prepare for a night at TrippyWRLD ENT, Lena puts on her Oculus headset and body tracking kit, which animates her avatar's hands, arms, and torso. Then in VRChat, Lena selects the "world" that hosts the club. Once she's transported to the club's lobby, she and other dancers, club managers, and DJs attend a pre-show "briefing" to discuss music and make note of VIP guests — VRChat admins and the creators of the world occasionally attend shows and tip dancers with gift cards. When the club's doors "open" at 7 p.m., the team members mute themselves in-game and join a private Discord call, where they can make song requests or ask for breaks. ...
See the full story here: https://mashable.com/article/virtual-reality-strip-clubs-vrchat
THE FUTURE OF MOVIE THEATERS IS MORE THAN JUST MOVIES
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The comedian Howie Mandel has joined with MetaMedia, an entertainment company that specializes in streaming to cinemas, and Super 78 Studios, an animation-design studio, to create something called the “Magic Screen.”
The system enables performers like Mr. Mandel to see and interact with fans in theaters throughout the country simultaneously. His live performance is streamed onto magic screens in multiple locations, and from his position in a performance studio, Mr. Mandel can see, and speak with, audience members—and vice versa.
“‘Any theater that is dependent on the studios and does not try to find other sources, or create other products, is not going to be prepared for the future.’”— Alamo Drafthouse CEO Shelli Taylor
The magic screen also has an animation engine that enables an animated character like SpongeBob to appear live and interact with the audience. “It’s like Zoom on steroids,” says Jason Brenek, MetaMedia’s CEO. The product is still in pilot mode, and only a few magic screens have been installed so far, some of them at theaters managed by Cinemark HoldingsInc. ...
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-future-of-movie-theaters-is-more-than-just-movies-11633708800
Holograms get real: Startup creates objects out of light and thin air
After countless disappointing versions of the technology, a startup called Light Field Lab has started production on a technology it calls SolidLight, which is designed to produce real-life holograms. ...
Essentially, they're causing waves of light to interact at a specific point, and that interaction is visible to your eye. By doing this a lot, they can create the illusion of an entire object "made" of light.
And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. Their 28-inch diagonal panel has 2.5 billionpixels. For comparison, a 4K TV has 8.2 million. They're envisioning holographic video walls made up of these smaller panels, with upward of 245 billion pixels. ...
SolidLight's pixels need to create specific colors in a specific place in front of the display so the image appears to pop out of the screen. ...
Some of you might be familiar with Yamaha's Intellibeam audio technology, which uses an array of tweeters to make it seem like sound is coming from anywhere in the room but the soundbar. This is essentially the same thing, just on a microscopic scale since waves of light are orders of magnitude smaller than the air molecules that make up soundwaves. ...
And because the tech is scalable, you could have a much larger display and much larger holograms. Imagine wall-sized holographic displays and how they could be game-changers for entertainment. ...
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/holograms-get-real-startup-creates-objects-out-of-light-and-thin-air/
British firm claims quantum-computing breakthrough
Most of the major players in this field, including Google and IBM, use an approach involving freezing qubits, the building blocks of a quantum computer, down to near absolute zero.
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Opening what looks like a standard server cabinet in Orca's compact offices on a west London science park, Richard Murray points to the computer and says: "We're completely changing the way people view quantum computers.
"Firstly, it's not cryogenically cooled, it's all at room temperature.
"And you'll also see it looks a lot like a normal computer would - it's a rack-mounted system, it looks very unspecialist.
"Our approach uses single photons, so single units of light.
"And the great thing about single photons is that they don't interfere with the outside environment."
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"There's certainly a few important companies working on it," he says.
"Photonics is definitely not a fringe approach."
But Orca's four-qubit machine has about the same power as a thermostat or an Apple Watch.
"It's in an earlier stage in terms of qubit number than what Google and Rigetti and IBM are doing with superconducting qubits," Prof Morton says.
And scaling up is likely to be a major challenge.
See the full story here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58738571?fbclid=IwAR0p4wFaqFYVFF-JUmaHF2_0NqjoRP-RNAh6vHIsX9x907I5kOF1fDC6uBw
