Nreal AR Glasses to Get Hand and Finger Tracking
Nreal is busy improving the capabilities of its Nreal Light AR glasses as it moves closer to the launch of the consumer version of the glasses. The mixed reality company is bolstering the glasses with sets of features that are likely to appeal to end users. The company has now announced that it is adding high-fidelity optical hand tracking solution to the glasses. Nreal is also expanding the platform’s apps and carrier support.
The hand tracking solution is from Clay AIR and will enable a camera-based system that will allow for the tracking of gestures such as grabbing, pinching, pointing and swiping. At the same time, it will display dynamic real-time hand skeleton overlays on top of the user’s real hands. This is similar to the optical hand tracking that was recently introduced in Oculus Quest. If the connected smartphone will be using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 or 865 processor, then users can look forward to smooth hand-rendering that will even include the option of displaying full hands, the individual hands or various kinds of custom skins instead of skeletons.
See the full story here: http://virtualrealitytimes.com/2020/03/08/nreal-ar-glasses-to-get-hand-and-finger-tracking/
Lucid Motors plans to offer virtual-reality test drives to sell its electric vehicles
The electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors has a strategy for drumming up interest in its upcoming Lucid Air luxury vehicle that begins production late this year: ultra-designed retail spaces that offer virtual reality test drives.
Why it matters: The luxury EV market is getting more crowded. Startups like Silicon Valley-based Lucid — a largely unknown brand in what's still a very small market — need a way to differentiate themselves and gain cachet.
The company announced Thursday a "direct-to-consumer" model with planned retail spaces that will "enable customers to experience the brand and its products in locations that underscore its unique design aesthetic."
- Lucid is also one of several EV players eschewing the traditional dealership model of sales.
- The company — which is staked with $1 billion from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund — plans to unveil the production version of the car and pricing next month in New York.
See the full story here: https://www.axios.com/lucid-motors-virtual-reality-test-drives-electric-vehicles-daa901b9-5134-4db7-9ff3-13305bfc8fa6.html
The Politics of Code & Virtual Reality: Academic Best Sellers in Computer Science
A thoughtful look at the morality and politics of code; an introduction to computational thinking; and a comprehensive overview of developments in virtual reality top the list of best-selling computer science books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.
1. Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
Thompson, Clive
Penguin Books. 2019. ISBN 9780735220560. $28.
2. Computational Thinking
Denning, Peter J.
MIT Press. 2019. ISBN 9780262536561. $15.95.
3. Virtual Reality
Greengard, Samuel
MIT Press. 2019. ISBN 9780262537520. $15.95.
4. The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality Harris, Blake J.
William Morrow. 2019. ISBN 9780062455963. $28.99.
5. Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think Vlahos, James
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2019. ISBN 9781328799302. $28.
See the full story here: https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=top-20-computer-science-titles-academic-best-sellers
ImmersiveTouch Partners with HP on Virtual Reality and 3D Printing for Personalized Health Care Solutions
ImmersiveTouch is revolutionizing personalized care by designing technology that more accurately simulates each patient's specific anatomy in 360º VR. Surgeons can feed traditional CT and MRI scans into ImmersiveTouch software, strap on virtual reality headsets, and then virtually fly through simulations of muscles, bones and blood vessels, exploring the specific dimensions of the disease they must attack from every angle.
See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/immersivetouch-partners-hp-virtual-reality-133100760.html
This bathroom cleaning robot is trained in VR to clean up after you
“When I grew up, I did a bunch of jobs. He said, if you want to get to the register, you have start in the bathroom,” he explains. “The reason bathrooms are such a good application, because everything is bolted down to the floor. Things move in a predictable way. All commercial bathrooms built after 1994 are ADA compliant. What’s good for robotics is that lays a specific design.”
The robot will clean a restroom, then go to recharge and refill chemicals as needed. It should get around eight hours of cleaning done in a day and can even open doors and ride the elevator to get around buildings, according to Levy.
Prime targets include airports, casinos, office spaces and other spots with large commercial restrooms. The robot will be leased out for around $1,000 a month, after a trial phase. Somatic already has a handful of customers, including a FAANG company, whose offices are already being cleaned by the robot.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/04/this-bathroom-cleaning-robot-is-trained-in-vr-to-clean-up-after-you/
At the Sackler Gallery, take a virtual-reality tour of cities ravaged by ISIS and war
“Age Old Cities” at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery examines three ancient Middle Eastern cities that have recently been ravaged by war: Mosul, Iraq, and Palmyra in Syria were nearly destroyed by the Islamic State between 2014 and 2017, while large portions of Aleppo suffered heavily during the Syrian civil war.
The Sackler’s first primarily virtual exhibition, “Age Old Cities” was organized by the Arab World Institute in Paris, where it opened in 2018, in partnership with UNESCO. It features four large-scale 3-D digital projections, each lasting several minutes, revealing the extent of these cities’ devastation. Almost entirely devoid of people, the animations digitally stitch together tens of thousands of photographs taken from 2017 to 2018 — both by drone and from the ground — along with archival images of some of the sites before their destruction.
The projections were created by the French start-up Iconem, which specializes in digitizing endangered sites, both to record them for posterity and to promote their conservation...
In the Mosul projection, the camera swirls almost vertiginously, gliding over the flattened buildings, burned-out cars and piles of debris that made up much of the cityscape after it was reclaimed from the Islamic State. The 12th-century Great Mosque of al-Nuri — once famous for its leaning minaret — is shown in almost complete ruin after the Islamic State dynamited it in 2017. The projection then morphs into a ghostly 3-D re-creation of the mosque before its destruction, the architectural rendering rising from the rubble around it.
Virtual Reality And Blockchain: Match Made In Heaven
One of the cooler pairings of virtual reality and blockchain is with respect to the entertainment industry. “CEEK” is a VR headset manufacturer which has advertised their content as the “Future of Digital Content”. CEEK allows you to purchase tickets to live events, and enjoy the experience of a live concert, or a gaming event, from the comfort of your home. CEEK’s offering relates to worldly problems, and solves a purpose.
“VibeHub” is another similar project which allows you to buy or sell virtual reality experiences with the help of their VIBE token. The experience you are buying or selling could range from attending an event, to learning an instrument – the options are endless.
The pairing of virtual reality and blockchain could probably take it a step further, if a provision is made to allow students who have missed a class, or those who would look like to attend a class from home, experience the exact setting of a class, with the help of a virtual reality experience.
See the full story here: https://cryptodaily.co.uk/2020/03/virtual-blockchain-match-heaven
In the music industry’s latest hologram play, Jadu is making interactive digital video with artists to promote songs
Those who dream of dancing alongside popular musicians may finally get the chance — sort of — thanks to the latest byproduct of the music industry’s ongoing love affair with holograms.
Jadu, a Los Angeles startup that launched on Wednesday morning, is just the most recent in a music industry craze that began with the Tupac hologram at Coachella in 2012 and still isn’t stopping.