philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Pope urges Silicon Valley to avoid slide towards new ‘barbarism’

Francis said technology needed “both theoretical and practical moral principles.”

Francis made his comments in an address to participants at a Vatican conference attended by executives from companies such as Facebook, Mozilla, and Western Digital as well as Nobel laureates, Catholic ethicists, government regulators, internet entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists.

The three-day gathering, which ends on Saturday, is discussing topics with tech jargon not commonly heard inside the Vatican such as algorithms and blockchain.

“The remarkable developments in the field of technology, in particular those dealing with artificial intelligence, raise increasingly significant implications in all areas of human activity. For this reason, open and concrete discussions on this theme are needed now more than ever,” Francis told the participants.

See the full story here: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/entertainment-pmn/pope-urges-silicon-valley-to-avoid-slide-towards-new-barbarism

PGA Creates Innovation Award for Virtual and Augmented Reality

In DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, directed by Dean DeBlois, the Viking village of Berk has become a chaotic dragon utopia.

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) has created a new Innovation Award in recognition of recent tech strides made by Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and other emerging media. The inaugural award honoring “exceptional distinctiveness, inventiveness, and impact…in expanding the conventions of program format, content, and audience interaction, production technique, and delivery” will be presented, along with other key awards, at a nominee celebration prior to the 31st Annual Producers Guild Awards on January 18, 2020.

The innovations encompass immersive theme park attractions (Walt Disney Imagineering’s “Pandora” and “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge”) along with movie and TV-inspired VR adventures (DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” VR Experience). The entries that will be reviewed and voted on by a jury of blue-ribbon experts in the field of new media include:

Kim Adams (Co-founder, Adventure Lab)
Nancy Bennett (Chief Creative Officer and founding member, Two Bit Circus)
Thomas Geraghty (Director, Technology & Innovation, Universal Parks)
Doug Herzog (Consultant, Quibi)
Lisa Hsia (Executive Vice President, Bravo, Oxygen, Universal Kids Digital Media)
Lori McCreary (CEO, Clickstar, Inc.; Founder and CEO, Revelations Entertainment)
Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie (Founder and Chief Scientist, All These Worlds LLC.)
Joanna Popper (Global Head of VR for Location Based Experience, Hewlett Packard)
Yelena Rachitsky (Executive Producer of Experiences at Oculus)
Albert Rizzo (Director, Medial Virtual Reality, USC Institute for Creative Technologies)
Ira Rubenstein (Chief Digital & Marketing Officer, Public Broadcasting Service)
Sam Russo (Vice President, Attraction Development, Herschend Family Entertainment)
Ted Schilowitz (Futurist in Residence, Paramount Pictures & 20th Century Fox)
Christina Lee Storm (VP Business Operations, Strategy & Emerging Technology, DreamWorks Animation)
Shelby Jiggets-Tivony (VP, Creative & Advanced Development, Disney Parks Live Entertainment – Walt Disney Imagineering)

See the full story here: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/09/pga-innovation-award-virtual-reality-augmented-reality-vr-ar-1202176342/

Prime Focus Technologies wins TVBEurope’s ‘Best of Show’ Award at IBC 2019

Part of Prime Focus Technologies' media recognition AI engine, CLEAR™ Vision Cloud, the solution identifies cricket action with extremely high accuracy, helps produce highlight packages in near real-time and delivers immersive viewing experiences to engage with fans. It is trained to catalogue an exhaustive range of elements including ball segments, runs scored per ball, replays, celebrations, wickets, bowling type, batting type, striker, brand logos, etc. with high accuracy. With CLEAR as the backbone, Vision Cloud delivers in-app notifications, powers the most dynamic Video Scorecards, creates rich & interactive storyboards and extends the power of creating highlights to the consumer. Sports highlights produced by the engine compare and go beyond the best human-produced highlights.

See the full press release here: https://www.televisionpost.com/prime-focus-technologies-wins-tvbeuropes-best-of-show-award-at-ibc-2019/

OC6: Facebook In Development Of AR Glasses, Announces Plan To Map The Entire World

LiveMaps, a new program that uses machine learning, localization, and mapping technology to create a virtual map of the real world.

LiveMaps relies on crowd-sourced data, such as geotagged images, obtained from various smart devices to create a point cloud system. This information can then be used to generate photorealistic replications of real-world locations, allowing users to travel to any destination around the globe in a matter of seconds. This technology can also capture data regarding specific objects and locations, providing users with additional references and reminders.

According to Facebook, LiveMaps will serve as the core foundation for their upcoming AR glasses. 

See the full story here: https://vrscout.com/news/facebook-developing-ar-glasses-livemaps/

OC6: Oculus Unveils Native Hand Tracking On Oculus Quest, Coming Early 2020

During this morning’s highly-anticipated keynote presentation, Zuckerburg revealed that upcoming software updates to the Quest’s onboard cameras will soon allow for native hand tracking without the need for any additional hardware.

“Our computer vision team developed a new method of using deep learning to understand the position of your fingers using just the monochrome cameras on Quest today—no active depth-sensing cameras, additional sensors, or extra processors required. This technology approximates the shape of your hand and creates a set of 3D points to accurately represent your hand and finger movement in VR.”

See the full story here: https://vrscout.com/news/oculus-quest-native-hand-tracking/

Design A Custom VR Avatar In Minutes With High Fidelity’s Virtual You App

Create a custom avatar for social events and work meetings.

The process is simple, you take a quick selfie on your phone and the app then analyzes your photo and creates a 3D representation of your likeness. You then take a few minutes to polish up your VR avatar to look even more like you by tweaking the shape of your face, the shape of your nose, choosing an outfit that reflects your personality, and adding accessories.

Virtual You gives you the ability to create a detailed VR avatar of yourself, whether it be an accurate representation of your real-world appearance or a completely original character.

See the full story here: https://vrscout.com/news/high-fidelity-virtual-you-3d-avatar-creator/#

Amazon wants you to be surrounded with Alexa—wherever you are

The news: Amazon unveiled a dizzying number of new gadgets yesterday, including wireless ear phones (Echo Buds), a smart ring (Echo Loop), and smart glasses (Echo Frames). They all provide hands-free access, so you can ask Alexa to play a song, give you directions, or whatever else you may need, on the go.

What’s behind all this: Taking these three products together, there’s a clear push to move Alexa beyond the home, and onto your body. While Google Assistant is embedded into Android smartphones, people currently only use Alexa at home, and there’s no Amazon smartphone.

That’s a limitation Amazon wants to overcome, pushing deeper into people’s lives. As the first to launch a home voice assistant, Amazon has a huge advantage over its competitors: more than 100 million Echo devices have been sold, and they are the default product many people think of when discussing smart speakers.

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614436/amazons-new-products-show-it-wants-alexa-to-always-be-with-you/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement

VIFF Immersed and Role of the Film Festival in the Emerging XR Ecosystem

Our focus was on work that could be delivered to audiences both at home and in location-based entertainment environments. We decided that VIFF Immersed would focus on content that was already in — or would be available for — commercial distribution to mass audiences. It was also decided to develop VIFF Immersed as an international market initiative to support development, production, and distribution.

VIFF Immersed 2019

Now in its second year, VIFF Immersed continues to extend the Vancouver International Film Festival’s mission of “celebrating excellence in screen-based storytelling” with a robust program initiative, which includes:

• New Realities in Storytelling:
• International VIFF Immersed Competition:
• VIFF Immersed Public Exhibition:
• BC Immersed:
• The BC Tech Crawl:
• VIFF Immersed Co-Production Market:
• A major marketplace initiative

See the full story here: https://immerse.news/viff-immersed-and-role-of-the-film-festival-in-the-emerging-xr-ecosystem-17281827a684

Verizon is tapping into AR ads to help diversify its revenue streams

Verizon's media and online business Verizon Media announced it will add augmented reality (AR) features to its native Moments advertising format for businesses. Advertisers will be able to make AR ads on Moments that allow consumers to interact with products in a 3D environment overlaid on the real world via a phone's camera and screen.

The Moments AR integration follows Verizon's initial debut of AR on Yahoo Mail, which the company says led to unprecedented user engagement. Advertising makes up a small and shrinking part of the telecom's revenue: Verizon Media's revenue fell almost 3% year-over-year (YoY) to $1.8 billion in Q2 2019. To reverse this trend, the company is looking to reinforce the growing segments of the business with AR — Verizon said gains in its native and mobile ads during Q2 2019 were offset by declines in desktop advertising.

Almost 69 million US consumers (over 20% of the US population) are expected to engage with AR at least once per month in 2019, up from just under 60 million in 2018, according to eMarketer.

See the full story here: https://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-testing-augmented-reality-ads-to-boost-revenue-2019-9

$300,000 NIH award to boost STEM proficiency through augmented reality gameplay

West Lafayette, Indiana, Sept. 25, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Explore Interactive, a Purdue University-affiliated startup, has received a $300,000 Phase I SBIR award from the National Institutes of Health for its augmented reality platform to help students learn about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

This latest award comes after Explore Interactive received a $225,000 SBIR grant from the National Science Foundation to make its augmented reality platform collaborative between devices. A video about the startup is available at https://youtu.be/gHsGher7HGU.

Explore Interactive has worked with educators and elementary students from across the United States in the development of its technology, which lets children work together to solve hands-on STEM challenges and conduct open-ended design and play.

See the full story here; https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/09/25/1920364/0/en/300-000-NIH-award-to-boost-STEM-proficiency-through-augmented-reality-gameplay.html