Fans who are watching the various streams of the Parade have like noticed that some of the balloons are not physical balloons, but instead augmented reality balloons, and while there are some positive reactions, many aren't thrilled with how they look onscreen, leaving with a rather negative impression, and you can find some of the bigger reactions below.
They aren't close enough to the real balloons to be seamless, especially in the bigger examples, and some fans just aren't digging it. They much prefer the traditional physical balloons, which thankfully still make up most of the balloons at the parade.
"It is this weird uncanny valley version of the parade. Filmed in advance over three days with augmented reality nonsense instead of actually balloons? Hosts trying to pretend they are still presenting to a large crowd. Just very jarring and altogether unpleasant."
Goo Goo Dolls have announced details of It's Christmas All Over, an "augmented-reality movie musical" inspired by their holiday album of the same name.
The movie, created with the livestreaming platform FanTracks, debuts globally at 7 p.m. ET on December 12, though FanTracks subscribers can get a sneak peek at the day before.
In the film, Goo Goo Dolls travel through the past, present and future in search of the lost "Spirit of Christmas." During their travels, which take them to city streets, subways, taxis, a 1940s-era speakeasy and the set of The Ed Sullivan Show, the band will perform songs from their holiday album and classic holiday standards. The message: Even though we're all being kept apart by our current situation, we're all unified by the true meaning of Christmas.
The first project, led by Prof. Dr. Mathias Blau of the University of Applied Sciences in Oldenburg together with van de Par, aims to find out experimentally whether room acoustics can be realistically simulated in a virtual environment.
The second project, led by Ewert, aims to find out how volunteers assess distances and movements using their sense of hearing.
The third project, led by Debener and Hohmann, ... The aim is to understand how healthy people manage to filter out the voice of their current conversation partner from a variety of sound sources.
“Ready Player Two” shows the fallout of their inheritance, Cline says.
“I kind of show them struggling with the ethics and the ramifications of their technology and how it affects people's lives,” he says, likening it to the modern-day dilemmas faced by inventors of popular social media platforms.
The second novel hints at the advancement of technology and the dangers that come along with it. As artificial intelligence gets deeper and deeper in the current millennium, Cline says humans “have to be careful” with all technology because it’s almost never simply “black or white.”
A company called Pactum, which began engagement with Walmart in the U.S., has software that can read a contract, understand the priorities of both parties to the agreement, integrate instructions from those parties and negotiate on behalf of one of the parties via chatbot. It works best when there are numerous contracts for relatively small amounts that don’t justify the involvement of expensive professionals to conduct renegotiations.
It’s built to maximize the Pareto outcome; that’s where one party can’t get a better deal without hurting the other party. A Pareto-efficient result maximizes the outcome for both parties so everyone is better off when Pactum finishes its work on an agreement. The software allows both sides to recover the value otherwise left behind in a human-to-human negotiation.
Earlier today, Google and Lucasfilm launched a brand new AR experience that “puts you in the shoes of a bounty hunter following the trail of Mando himself, Din Djarin and the Child.” Users can interact with life-sized heroes featured throughout the show, explore the world of The Mandalorian, unlock additional effects through various interactions, and record 3D scenes to share with your fellow nerf herders.
Powered by ARCore, Google’s own developer platform for mobile AR experiences, the app features support for DepthAI, allowing for more realistic AR visuals that blend seamlessly with real-world environments.
The Mandalorian AR Experience is available free on 5G Google Pixel and select 5G Android smartphones via the Google Play Store. A full list of supported devices can be found here.
Twenty of the most special trees in Rotterdam and their stories were brought together for a different tourist path on Tuesday 17 November. The Dutch municipality has created a 4-kilometre-long walking route along the trees in the city centre and reinforced the experience with augmented reality. They are now accessible to anyone owning a smartphone.
Start a conversation with Rotterdam’s most extraordinary trees
Just like buildings and monuments, trees can be the silent witnesses of important historical events, of our everyday moments filled with joy or sadness. The Dutch city of Rotterdam decided to pay the needed attention to some of its most special trees with an innovative service available to both locals and tourists alike.
A new trail named Bomenroute (Tree Route), 4 kilometres long, encompassing 21 trees will allow passers-by to communicate with trees in vivid colours.
Unlike virtual and augmented reality experiences that require you to download apps or have special hardware, this technology lives right in your mobile internet browser.
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As with static websites, there are a host of different tracking and analytics available when using WebAR. Not only can you track traditional metrics like engagements and time on page, you can also get more granular insights like how long a user interacted with a particular product or even — if a user “tried something on” through your experience — their clothing size for future reference.
A word of caution: Don’t be a data snoop! Data protection is incredibly important, and with advancements in technologies like eye tracking, facial recognition and image targeting, the power to collect personal information is only growing. In fact, these technologies are sometimes required to build virtual and augmented reality experiences. It is more important now than ever that we as digital content creators treat this power with respect.
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The development process of creating WebAR experiences can be broken into six simple steps:
Planning and Creative: Always begin with a well-rounded plan that clearly states your target audience, campaign goals and creative vision. This will help inform your decisions later on.
Platform Selection: There are two industry-leading platforms for building WebAR experiences; 8th Wall and Zappar. These are software packages that make developers’ lives easier by giving them access to the base technologies needed to build amazing WebAR experiences — think tools like surface tracking and image recognition. Each has their own benefits and drawbacks, but leveraging one of these two platforms will save you valuable time and money compared to developing your experiences from scratch.
Asset Creation: Now it’s time to start building your 3D digital assets. A good WebAR experience is all about balancing your creative vision with available bandwidth speeds. Highly detailed models or super complex animations can cause web-based experiences to run slowly. For an optimal experience, focus on creating low-poly art assets and engaging yet simple animations.
Assembly: With your plan in hand, platform selected and assets ready to go, you can begin developing your new WebAR experience. This work will be done through the platform you selected above. Like most digital development, this process is fairly technical and best handled by a developer or team of developers with experience building in the platform.
Testing: Testing is an important step when building any digital experience — but especially with WebAR, as there are so many variables to consider. We recommend testing across all major mobile platforms and web browsers. If possible, we also suggest trying the experience on different network connections (Wi-Fi, 4G, 3G, etc.)
Distribution: Both 8th Wall and Zappar offer hosting services and custom URL integrations if you prefer to keep things simple. You can also export the final experience and host it on your own servers Either way, you can now share your new WebAR experience by simply sharing the host URL via QR or any other means.
WHERE IS THE TECH TODAY?
Companies like Google, Apple and Mozilla have been working for years behind the scenes to help make WebAR a reality. Serious research and development efforts on WebAR began in the 2000s but started to really ramp up in the last three to five years. These efforts have paid off, and this technology is now ready for prime time.
WebAR is supported by all major mobile phone manufacturers — such as Samsung, Apple, HTC, Xiaomi, Huawei and more — and across all major web browsers, including Safari, Chrome and Firefox. As consumers and creators, this means we now have access to more three billion sets of eyeballs when we publish a WebAR experience. It’s simply up to you to reach them.
A QUICK NOTE ON 5G TECHNOLOGY
5G is promising mobile internet speeds five to 10 times faster than the fastest 4G connection. What does this mean for WebAR? Imagine watching an NFL football game play out in 3D right on your dining room table. Or perhaps having a phone call with your interior designer while being able to see new paint colors and furniture options appear in your living room in real time. 5G technology is going to be a game changer for WebAR and other interactive technologies like WebVR and 360-degree live streaming. The experiences we’re seeing today (as powerful as they are!) are just the beginning.
Empathy is the secret weapon of human analysts, and because human goals—like saving for retirement, or investing in a climate-aware manner—are the raison d’etre for investing, we will always need real people in the loop.
While QED’s goal is to develop an AGI, it is doing so in the context of having an empathic human working alongside a machine agent to produce better client outcomes.
Global experts who took part in an international webinar on Artificial Intelligence (AI)and Journalism pointed out that news organisations have started to adopt AI to change the way how news is generated, produced, published and shared.
The event was organised by the Department of Media Studies, Christ Nagar College Trivandrum in association with AI Journalism for Research and Forecasting, UAE.
The expert speakers included Prof Charlie Beckett, London School of Economics, Prof. Nicholas Diakopoulos from Northwestern University, Guilherme Canela, Chief of Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists at UNESCO Paris and Francesco Marconi, expert in Computational journalism, USA, among others.
"News organisations have started to adopt AI to change the way how news is generated, produced, published and shared. By using advanced algorithms and machine learning tools, journalists can handle large data to provide greater insights and solutions. The conventional model of journalism is getting disrupted and the changes with AI and Machine Learning is set have profound impact in media organisations," said Marconi.
