philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Avegant Introduces The World’s Smallest LED Light Engines For Augmented Reality

Avegant today announced its latest products -- the AG-30L 30º and AG-50L 50º LED light engines. Avegant's 30º AR light engine uses proprietary illumination technology to dramatically reduce engine volume and weight while preserving efficiency and MTF. The next generation Avegant light engine, the AG-50L, enables a larger field of view and a more immersive AR experience for users while maintaining the compact, light glasses form factor made possible by the AG-30L product.

A limited supply of engineering samples of Avegant's AG-30L light engine will be available in late 2021. Engineering samples of Avegant's AG-50L light engine will be available in early 2022. Mass production is anticipated to begin in 2023.

See the full story here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/avegant-introduces-the-worlds-smallest-led-light-engines-for-augmented-reality-301370226.html

VIRTUAL REALITY PUTS DRUG RESEARCHERS INSIDE THE MOLECULES THEY STUDY

Drug discovery is less like finding a key to fit a lock—a familiar but misleading analogy—and more like finding a dance partner who can match your moves, as scientists at U.K.-based biotech company C4X Discovery Holdings PLC put it.

C4X is designing small molecules to find drugs for treating cancer and autoimmune diseases. The company is developing its own VR platform, 4Sight, to help make drug-molecule visualization faster and easier.

Nanome, which was founded by experts in nanoengineering, electrical engineering, human-computer interaction and VR, is working to develop an AI assistant that can guide users through their VR experience. Its virtual assistant could ask scientists, for example, if they want to see more or less atomic detail or additional chemical interactions. 

For now, Dr. von Salm says she is pleased to stand in a virtual room and visualize her compounds without having to rely so much on imagination or computer renderings.

“Even for the best people who have a really amazing imagination, you’d put them in this room, and they’d be in awe,” she says.

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/virtual-reality-puts-drug-researchers-inside-the-molecules-they-study-11631023212

4 Things GPT-4 Will Improve From GPT-3

... GPT-3 was brute-force trained in most of the Internet’s available text data. But it wasn’t explicitly taught to do these tasks. The system is so powerful that it became a meta-learner. It learned how to learn. And users could communicate with it in plain natural language; GPT-3 would receive the description and recognize the task it had to do. ...

Disclaimer: GPT-4 doesn’t exist (yet). ...

GPT-3 is big. GPT-4 will be bigger. Here’s the reason... GPT-3 isn’t just more powerful than GPT-2, it is differently more powerful. There’s a qualitative leap between both models. ...

GPT-4 will perform better few-shot multitasking... GPT-4 could be the proof that language models can learn multitasking from a few examples almost as good as we can. ...

GPT-4 won’t depend as much on good prompting ... Tech blogger Gwern Branwen ... calls this way of interacting with GPT-3 prompt programming. We can give GPT-3 a written input and it’ll know which task it has to perform. ... However, Gwern warns that the results of these tests can vary in quality. The reason is that prompt programming involves sampling. And sampling can “prove the presence of knowledge but not the absence”....

GPT-4 will have a larger context window...The beta API allows the user to input a text 500–1000 words long — the context window — for GPT-3 to do something with it. This means the system can’t continue a half-written novel or complete the code for a large program. ...

See the full story here: https://towardsdatascience.com/4-things-gpt-4-will-improve-from-gpt-3-2b1e7a6da49f

Job Simulator Creator OwlchemyLabs Reveals its Next VR Project, Cosmonious High

Cosmonious High is a high school for aliens that features a quirky cast of characters as well as various interactive features guaranteed to keep you busy throughout the game. You will play an alien that has crash-landed into the high school during the first days of class. You will be mastering how you can unlock and deploy special powers to help repair the school and return it to its previous state.

Cosmonious High will be the biggest VR world unveiled by Owlchemy Labs so far. The game features a dynamic set of characters capable of responding to natural gestures such as fist bumps and high-fives. The game has been designed as one big interactive playground with the school being filled with a number of mysterious malfunctions that need to be sorted out although you must also ensure that you attend class as you are a student in the game.

There is a lot happening in Cosmonious High including the crashing of meteorites via the walls, the random breaking out of fires, and even your hands magically adapting to a number of situations such as turning into water so as to put out the flames. The game is not all about work as players also have the freedom to explore the school and also chat with their students in the Grand Hall. They can also head to Chemosophy and do some experiments.

Cosmonious High is set to launch in Spring 2022 to Oculus Quest and SteamVR headsets.

See the full story here: https://virtualrealitytimes.com/2021/09/05/job-simulator-creator-owlchemylabs-reveals-its-next-vr-project-cosmonious-high/

The best virtual reality porn games, and how to play adult VR

See the full story here: https://mashable.com/article/best-vr-porn-games

seeing the invisible: ai weiwei, el anatsui + more exhibit AR works at gardens across the globe

See the full story here: https://www.designboom.com/art/seeing-the-invisible-ai-weiwei-el-anatsui-exhibit-ar-works-botanical-gardens-09-04-2021/

LionGaming CEO: “Our blockchain technology can be toggled on/off for each bettor”

Blockchain technology has become a buzzword that is thrown around frequently, not only in the context of cryptocurrency but in conversations about digital transactions in general. Most recently, DraftKings announced its NFT marketplace which breathed new life into the discussion regarding what role blockchain will play in fantasy sports and sports betting in the future. 

One company that has incorporated blockchain technlogy in its sports betting and casino solutions is Lion Gaming, a company based in Canada that caters for U.S. sportsbook and casino operators. We asked CEO Duncan McIntyre a few questions about their technology to learn about how Lion Gaming helps solve the most pressing issues the industry faces, and how they use blockchain to improve the betting experience and security for bettors here in the U.S. and overseas.

See the full story here: https://usbettingreport.com/interviews/liongaming/

Surveillance Towers set up along US-Mexico border

...

creating an invisible border wall.

The high-tech watch poles known as Autonomous Surveillance Towers are powered by solar energy and use artificial intelligence to detect movement along a two-mile radius, sending the information in real-time to agents patrolling the area.

And they’re now being installed at different points along the nearly 2,000 miles of the US-Mexico border.

... The ASTs were developed by Palmer Luckey, the 28-year-old founder and designer of Oculus VR and Oculus Rift.

... “Most of our [recent] apprehensions have come from this tower,” said Freeland, pointing at El Paso Sector’s newest AST, which sits on a high remote patch of scrub where the borders of Texas, New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua meet. The camera has been in operation for only the last two weeks.

... US Customs and Border Patrol, which plans to deploy 140 of the cameras to create a virtual wall along the border.

... Luckey, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, is marketing the towers that use a network of interconnected cameras and sensors through Anduril Industries, the defense technology startup he founded in 2017.

Anduril did not respond to messages seeking comment.

See the full story here: https://sportsgrindentertainment.com/surveillance-towers-set-up-along-us-mexico-border/

ABBA’s Virtual Concert, The Metaverse And The Future Of Entertainment

The quartet spent five weeks with A/V wizards at Industrial Light and Magic, who have used advanced motion capture techniques to create virtual copies of the band that behave accurately in every way, from their dancing to their eye movements. Artificial intelligence (AI) routines were then used to “de-age” the performers, similarly to how it has been done in movies such as Star Wars and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.  

The digital Abba performance – named Abba Voyage – will take place at a physical location in London, with the audience buying tickets to the show and taking their place in the audience just as if they were going to see the group perform in their 1970s heyday. But other performers have experimented with making their shows entirely digital. Boy band BTS attracted a world-record 1.33 million paying viewers to a live-streamed concert earlier this year. Then, Ariana Grande took the logical next step of closing the loop between a digital show in front of a live audience and a live show in front of a digital audience. During a performance in which she used the video game Fortnite as a venue, both the star herself and the audience were present as digital avatars.

While we know AI will be used to recreate a young-looking Abba, we can speculate that the next step could potentially go even further by recreating something of their personalities and behavior. It isn’t a huge leap to imagine they could use language processing and voice recognition to respond to song requests from the audience and, perhaps one day, even hold a conversation.

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/09/06/abbas-virtual-concert-the-metaverse-and-the-future-of-entertainment/?sh=24f980d06844

Bustling Taiwanese Film Industry Ushers in VR-Led New Wave

Taiwanese cinema shows no signs of slowing down, and the country recently embarked on a new chapter in its film history. Since 2020, the Taiwan Creative Content Agency, an intermediary organization supervised by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, has invested in the nation’s future by encouraging artists to explore the use of extended reality (XR) innovations — such as augmented reality and virtual reality used to enhance our understanding of real or artificial environments around us — as well as mixed-reality technologies.

“XR is a new medium, everyone is exploring its creative possibilities,” says TAICCA chairperson Ting Hsiao-ching. “There are ways to produce and present new and innovative art forms in XR. And today it’s accessible to everyone. In Taiwan we have a lot of technological advantages due to our national hardware and software resources, creative studios and artists… We have a freedom of creation that helps us promote immersive projects.”

With the launch of commercial 5G high-speed mobile networks, Taiwan’s heavyweight status in the IT hardware supply chain, plus the emergence of progressive young filmmakers within its borders, Taiwan is undoubtedly well-positioned to lead the latest generation of tech-based creativity. 

See the full story here: https://variety.com/2021/biz/news/taiwanese-film-industry-vr-new-wave-1235055844/