philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

An Augmented Reality Tour Guides Visitors to the Museum’s Margins

The de Young Museum in San Francisco accurately describes Ana Prvački’s Detour, a new commission developed in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, as an “alternative” tour. I’d add a few other adjectives: decentralized, wide-ranging, irreverent, semi-private, and technologically advanced. Available through September 29, Detour is a series of videos meant to be viewed on one’s smartphone at nine specific points in the museum, offering Prvački’s take on the museum’s architecture, gardens, and the views its tower affords. Her videos are activated by the magic of Google Lens, an app most commonly advertised as a way to identify species of flowers and dogs through a smartphone camera. Though Prvački’s tour, as an artwork, is a refreshing and adventurous addition to the museum’s contemporary exhibitions, the requirement to view it through one’s phone via an app often felt like rigmarole invented for the sake of collaborating with a major tech company rather than the future of expanded art viewing.

The app is free. The spaces you traverse in the course of visiting Detour’s stops are unticketed. There’s even Wi-Fi to let you download Google Lens without incurring data charges. But the de Young does not provide loaner devices for those without the correct technology who might wish to view Prvački’s work on-site. While Google Arts & Culture has a presentation of the project on its website, the charm of the tour is having a personal guide in your pocket. It wouldn’t make sense as a series of video stations scattered around the museum, either. Not all art is viewable by all people—barriers to entry include geography, admission fees, personal comfort, and social pressures. The de Young is very clear in its positioning of the collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, which includes both Detour and “lensable” items in the permanent collection, as an experiment. But when a museum embraces new technologies and offloads the burden of hosting those technologies onto the user, it limits access to an artwork not by ticket price, but by personal possession. And that’s a shame, because we could probably all use a bit more copper in our systems.

See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/know-investing-virtual-reality-technology-111700513.html

Entanglement sent over 50 km of optical fiber

For the first time, a distance of 50 kilometers was covered using fiber optic cables. "This is two orders of magnitude further than was previously possible and is a practical distance to start building inter-city quantum networks," says Ben Lanyon.

Converted photon for transmission

Lanyon's team started the experiment with a calcium atom trapped in an ion trap. Using laser beams, the researchers write a quantum state onto the ion and simultaneously excite it to emit a photon in which quantum information is stored. As a result, the quantum states of the atom and the light particle are entangled. But the challenge is to transmit the photon over fiber optic cables. "The photon emitted by the calcium ion has a wavelength of 854 nanometers and is quickly absorbed by the optical fiber," says Ben Lanyon. His team therefore initially sends the light particle through a nonlinear crystal illuminated by a strong laser. Thereby the photon wavelength is converted to the optimal value for long-distance travel: the current telecommunications standard wavelength of 1550 nanometers. The researchers from Innsbruck then send this photon through a 50-kilometer-long optical fiber line. Their measurements show that atom and light particle are still entangled even after the wavelength conversion and this long journey.

See the full story here: https://phys.org/news/2019-08-entanglement-km-optical-fiber.html

Why are products for older people so ugly?

As the market for products aimed at older users explodes, some entrepreneurs are turning to a radical idea: actually get the customers involved, reports Andy Wright.

Listening time: Longevity Explorers is part of an experiment to improve the way technology is developed for older adults. It’s mostly about just sitting and listening to what they have to say.

A common mistake: Designers commonly assume around the age of 60 people lose interest in aesthetics and design, and this can have dire consequences for products meant to help people with their health: they simply won’t adopt them. The list of lousy products for older people is long.

Fighting back: The Stanford Center on Longevity is helping to bring a number of more slick, easy-to-use products for older consumers to market. A handful of major companies are trying to set an example by doing something similar. And designing for older users doesn’t only benefit them. It turns out that it can lead to good design decisions for everyone.

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614167/why-are-products-for-older-people-so-ugly/?

Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan Among Directors Launching “Filmmaker Mode” TV Setting

Leading directors including Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Ryan Coogler, Patty Jenkins and Rian Johnson have teamed up with the UHD Alliance — a coalition whose members include Hollywood studios and consumer electronics manufacturers — to introduce a new UHD TV setting aimed at preserving the filmmakers' creative intent on consumer displays.

There’s been growing concern in the production community that with the many settings available on consumer TVs, the filmmaker’s creative decisions that are made during production and post are not always what is displayed. This new "Filmmaker Mode" for supported TV models is aimed at giving viewers a consistent, cinematic representation of images as the filmmakers intended, in terms of color, contrast, aspect ratio and frame rates.

He noted that Filmmaker Mode offers “a single button that lines up the settings so it works for the benefit of the movie and not against it.” He got a laugh as he added, “If you love movies, Filmmaker Mode will make your movies not look like poo poo.”

See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/martin-scorsese-christopher-nolan-launching-filmmaker-mode-tv-setting-1234968

Editorial: Why Facebook’s Portal Could Be The Next Great AR/VR Accessory

I toured through the website for Portal for the first time this week. The product debuted last year, and the whole website for the device reads like Facebook put a mirror up to itself and had trouble figuring out how to explain what it saw. The gadget is supposed to help you video chat with your contacts, but there’s a whole section of the product site dedicated to privacy. There is a physical cover you can place over the device’s camera when you don’t want a palantir-like glass eye staring into your room all the time and there’s a red light, too, that comes on when you a press a button to physically disconnect the camera and microphone from the rest of the device’s electronics.

If Portal and Quest could communicate automatically to deduce their locations relative to one another, then you’ve got yourself most of the way toward an auto-calibrated mixed reality studio. For the player in an Oculus Quest — at any given moment they should be able to activate mixed reality on the nearby Portal and show everyone in the room exactly what they are doing.

See the full story here: https://uploadvr.com/facebook-portal-vr-ar-xr/

Virtual reality helps Israeli soldiers enter new world

In December, the Israeli army launched an anti-tunnel operation on the Lebanese border dubbed "Northern Shield".

"Technology is an essential part of the fight," which justifies heavy investment, says H., commanding officer of Yahalom's training centre at a military base in central Israel.

The Hezbollah tunnels exposed by Israel have been digitally scanned and appear on a soldier's headset as they are in reality.

"The soldier sees what a tunnel looks like," says H.

Since it is not always possible to train in the field, the virtual world allows personnel to familiarise themselves with a hostile underground environment without leaving their base, he added.

There are a dozen soldiers on the current course; 100 have been through it since it began three years ago.

See the full story here: https://news.yahoo.com/virtual-reality-helps-israeli-soldiers-enter-world-104837674.html

(ACM research) Virtual Reality and Older Hands: Dexterity and accessibility in hand-held VR Control

Whilst the VR Headset has a sense of commonality with users, VR hand controllers are largely incongruent with each other. This paper examines the common ground between VR developments in the area of hand control devices. This paper looks at VR controllers through the lens of older people, specifically for the purpose of including people from any age in the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of VR experiences. This study uses Fitts' Index of Difficulty to determine areas of concern in terms of dexterity and accessibility. The study recommends a standardized approach to agility and access in VR hand control development.

See the full story here: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3328262&preflayout=tabs

Billie Eilish Concert to Stream on VR Platform Oculus Venues

On Tuesday (August 21), the company announced that the pop titan's upcoming Madrid show on September 3 will be shot and available to watch later that evening beginning at 9:30 PM ET via Oculus Go, Gear VR or Quest headsets. Additionally, Oculus is partnering with the streaming company Supersphere for the upcoming broadcast. "It's really nice to be able to have something that makes the show so accessible, and to have a platform to bring the live experience to people who haven't been able to be at a show yet," Eilish said in a statement. "I just want everyone to have a good time. That's always my only goal, even when you're watching the show at home."

“'Copycat' is really fun,” Eilish added. “I make everybody get really low, and we all jump when the drop comes in. Even though you'll be watching on a VR headset, you should still get low and jump with everyone.”

See the full story here: https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8527878/billie-eilish-concert-stream-virtual-reality-oculus-venues

and here: https://www.iheart.com/content/2019-08-23-billie-eilish-concert-to-stream-on-virtual-reality-platform-oculus-venues/

Virtual Reality Expedition to Ancient Israel

Free and open to the public

“Travel” in fifteen minutes to an archaeological site in Ashkelon, Israel to explore the first-ever excavation of a Philistine burial ground. For years archaeologists have searched for evidence of these Biblical people. Transport yourself to the center of 360° scenes of an archaeological expedition while your gallery facilitator explains what you are seeing. Borrow a device from the museum or download the virtual reality app on your smart phone and bring it to place in a 3D viewer at the museum for an immersive experience.

https://semiticmuseum.fas.harvard.edu/event/virtual-reality-expedition-ancient-israel

Google is working on cheap AI-based hand tracking for Google Glass

MediaPipe can map up to 21 points on the hand and fingers with up to 96% precision and do it all on a mobile device (ie not in the cloud), opening up the possibility of using the tehcnology in other applications such as controlling applications on your smartphone.

See the full story here: https://mspoweruser.com/google-is-working-on-cheap-ai-based-hand-tracking-for-google-glass/