New Virtual Reality Experience Transports Viewer Inside Spanish Paleolithic Caves Seen By Only 50 People In 16,000 Years
Two short documentaries and a virtual reality experience have been produced to allow people to enjoy and learn about this extraordinary site.
Only 50 people have physically been able to enter them in the past 16,000 years and the caves are off limits to the public but by mapping them for VR, they can now be viewed virtually by anyone.
Memoria: Stories of La Garma VR experience is exclusively available from Viveport, the world's first unlimited VR subscription service.
See the full story and VIDEOS here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanneshurvell/2020/04/15/new-virtual-reality-experience-transports-viewer-inside-spanish-paleolithic-caves-seen-by-only-50-people-in-16000-years/#43a8c08a20fe
Bay Area virtual reality ‘Tale of the Tibetan Nomad’ to premiere online at Tribeca Film Festival
Enter Bay Area filmmaker Carol Liu, whose virtual reality 13-minute short film “Tale of the Tibetan Nomad” premieres in the festival’s Cinema360 section. The film will be available for free in a partnership between Tribeca and Oculus, a VR company, from Friday, April 17, through April 25.
Based on Chinese playwright Stan Lai’s “A Dream Like a Dream,” the film, developed in collaboration with UC Berkeley Arts + Design, is about a Tibetan shepherd who goes on a surrealistic journey to find his missing newlywed wife. Lai was involved in the production.
"Tale of the Tibetan Nomad": Available online through the Oculus TV app for Oculus Go and Oculus Quest from April 17-25. www.tribecafilm.com
See the full post here: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/datebook-pick/berkeley-produced-virtual-reality-film-tale-of-the-tibetan-nomad-to-premiere-online-at-tribeca-festival
Facebook is using bots to simulate what its users might do
The context: Like any software company, the tech giant needs to test its product any time it pushes updates. But the sorts of debugging methods that normal-size companies use aren’t really enough when you’ve got 2.5 billion users. Such methods usually focus on checking how a single user might experience the platform and whether the software responds to those individual users’ actions as expected. In contrast, as many as 25% of Facebook’s major issues emerge only when users begin interacting with one another. It can be difficult to see how the introduction of a feature or updates to a privacy setting might play out across billions of user interactions.
SimCity: In response, Facebook built a scaled-down version of its platform to simulate user behavior. Called WW, it helps engineers identify and fix the undesired consequences of new updates before they’re deployed. It also automatically recommends changes that can be made to the platform to improve the community experience.
Hidden from view: In order to create as realistic a simulation as possible, WW is actually built directly on the live platform rather than a separate testing version—another key difference from most testing schemes. The bots, however, stay behind the scenes.
Future perfect: Right now the company is using it to test and improve features that would make it much harder for bad actors to violate the platform’s community guidelines. But it also sees other potential applications for the system, such as testing how platform updates might affect engagement and other metrics.
Soul Machines Unveils Bella, the Kiwi Digital Helper for Times of Crisis and Need, Bringing Innovation and AI to the Forefront of Crisis Communications
Bella, the Digital Helper, aims to show how she can assist in New Zealand’s robust response to the ongoing public health crisis by providing a new, interactive channel to help the public receive easily digestible, up-to-the-moment information in a manner that frees up important resources for other relief efforts. As a company founded in New Zealand, Soul Machines designed Bella to be distinctively Kiwi, with an understanding and sensibility of the questions specific to the population.
Powered by the world’s first autonomous animation platform, Bella is a friendly and engaging digital helper available to answer questions based on data from a wide variety of sources. As New Zealand progresses to a phase of gradually reopening society, Bella could provide even more assistance, helping citizens to navigate the changing measures designed to contain and prevent the spread of the virus and restart industries and the economy.
Say hello to Bella here: https://bellahelps.com
See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/soul-machines-unveils-bella-kiwi-150010412.html
Supporting small airports using virtual reality
Looking through virtual 'binoculars'
The idea for such airports is to have a combination of a single Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera and a simple panoramic view of the airfield, video images from which are displayed using a VR headset. If traffic announces itself via the air traffic radio system, the controller puts the VR headset on and uses it to control the PTZ camera. They capture the aircraft with the PTZ camera and see the corresponding video image.
Their head movements allow them to intuitively alter the direction of the PTZ camera, so that they can monitor the airfield site and the traffic in a similar way to using binoculars. To give the air traffic controller a better overall view, the PTZ camera image is supplemented with a simple panoramic image of the airfield.
The VR headset also enables the operator to interact with the workplace systems and other participants. The operator could, for instance, use virtual control elements to communicate with other air traffic control services, operate airfield systems or process electronic flight strips.
See the full story here: https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Supporting_small_airports_using_virtual_reality_999.html