Social virtual reality company Sansar and EDM label Monstercat have partnered to launch Monstercat: Call of the Wild, a collaboration that is expected to create VR concerts, meet-and-greets and giveaways.
7Jul/19Off
2019’S TOP TRENDS FOR VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) AND AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)
AI integrates with AR and VR
Teaching and Training Influenced by VR and AR
The New VR Entertainment
AR Technology Expands to Vehicles
Collaboration and Remote Assistance via Shared Augmented Reality
See the full story here: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/2019s-top-trends-for-virtual-reality-vr-and-augmented-reality-ar/
6Jul/19Off
‘Eight’ Is a Breakthrough for Virtual Reality in Classical Music
“Eight” is an opera taken in through a virtual-reality headset. In about 15 minutes, with a genre-bending score that verges on pop (the singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke is featured), it tells a poetic story of an old woman looking back on her life.
She beckons you to follow her down a corridor with white walls; once you start walking, you almost never stop, even as the hallway seems to open up into a mountainside and the full cosmos. (In reality, this all takes place in a space no larger than a bedroom.) As viewer, you are very much part of the piece, your hands visible as they reach for a railing and, at one point, lift a red tablecloth to crawl underneath.
There’s nothing gimmicky about “Eight,” in part because the medium is fully integrated with the concept of the piece — a rarity in classical music, where VR is often applied to existing repertoire, modern technology superimposed on Mahler. (“Eight” was built from the ground up in collaboration with the firm The Virtual Dutch Men.)
How do you feel about the way technology ages in relation to your art?
The way we’re doing this, the software is completely hardware-independent. So we have a more fluid system. It will look better; we’ll do more upgrades. But we stop at some point. In 2030, everybody will be laughing about this. Then again, for me it’s not about technology. It’s about the story that people experience. If you look at old video artworks, on VHS, they still move me intensely. It’s not about the vehicle, but about the content.
See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/arts/music/michel-van-der-aa-eight.html
4Jul/19Off
Incredible new iOS 13 FaceTime feature fixes your eye contact with augmented reality
The new feature is called “FaceTime Attention Correction,” and it promises to bring a new level of intimacy (digitally altered though it may be) to your FaceTime sessions. Basically, your eyeballs are going to be automatically corrected, such that it looks like you’re staring straight ahead — you know, actually at the person — instead of looking down.
Based on some early reaction to the new feature, many users appear to be taken aback and thoroughly impressed at how good a job the attention-correction does:
Regardless, it’s a safe bet this will be a well-received feature by the average FaceTime user out there.
See the full story here: https://bgr.com/2019/07/03/ios-13-beta-3-facetime-update-eye-contact-attention-correction/
4Jul/19Off
Virtual field trips bring students face-to-face with Earth’s most fragile ecosystems
Even kindergarten students get a taste – during a “Sustainable Solutions” unit, they assume the perspective of a sea creature and use CoSpaces Edu software to animate both a healthy ocean ecosystem and one cluttered by human garbage.
“Being able to see it can hit home a little bit easier for them, and they can really have a deep understanding of ‘Wow, I’m only one person, but by putting my rubbish in the recycling bin, I can actually make a change,’” said Eloise Feltham, a Knox teacher.
See the full story here: https://hechingerreport.org/virtual-field-trips-bring-students-face-to-face-with-earths-most-fragile-ecosystems/
3Jul/19Off
Apple Won 46 Patents Today covering Future Smart Apparel, Augmented Reality and more
The first covers fabric sensing devices in the form of apparel while the second patent covers ARKit and system-wide behavior of 3D AR models. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.
Apple's 3D fabric extends smart fabrics to office furniture, sofas through to car seats, head mounted glasses and event TVs. Our cover graphic is from this patent.
At Apple's WWDC 2017, Craig Federighi, SVP of Software, introduced Augmented Reality for the iPhone using its TrueDepth camera as noted in the photo collage below.
It was a buzz to see Federighi move items like a "virtual lamp" on an on-stage table and see him move it around on his iPhone with the shadows of the lamp moving in sync.
See the full story here: https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2019/07/apple-won-46-patents-today-covering-future-smart-apparel-augmented-reality-and-more.html
3Jul/19Off
Chinese border guards are putting a surveillance app on tourists’ phones
The spyware: Anyone crossing the land border from central Asia into Xinjiang is being asked to hand over their phones. Border guards then load an app known as Fengcai onto them. This sucks up calendar entries, text messages, phone contacts, other apps on the device, and call logs, all of which are then sent to a remote server. The phone’s content is then checked against a register of over 73,000 items, including terrorist materials, Arabic language books, recordings of the Quran, and even a song by a Japanese band called Unholy Grace.
Big Chinese Brother: This isn’t the first time that China has force-fed apps to people. But it shows the extent to which the country is willing to go to create a massive surveillance state.
3Jul/19Off
Augmented Reality Versus 3-D Printing for Radiology
Three-dimensional (3-D) printing and augmented reality (AR) are two of the more exciting technologies being explored in radiology today. In their own way, each technology gives form and depth to medical imaging data, offering a new perspective for physicians and patients. Early explorations have promised new ways to plan surgical and interventional procedures, and new methods to help patients understand what care is being delivered and how. For now, however, both technologies are still largely viewed as novel, with at best anecdotal evidence of how they can be translated into clinical use. A pair of recent large-scale studies may offer a sense of how to collect quantitative evidence that these technologies can benefit all members of the healthcare team.
When the HoloLens was first released, Wake was already working in 3-D printing but recognized the limitations of the technology — primarily the amount of time required to create a 3-D printed model.
Data indicated that the 3-D models resulted in a change to the type of procedure planned as much as 50 percent of the time.
Models for the second group were either 3-D printed, visualized in AR, or viewed in 3-D on a 2-D monitor. To measure patient response, Wake and colleagues used a five-point Likert scale survey — on a scale of 1 to 5, patients rated their understanding of:
• Their cancer/disease itself;
• The size of the tumor/cancer;
• The location of the tumor/cancer;
• Why the surgeon chose their given treatment plan; and
• Their comfort with the surgical plan.
“Just seeing the anatomy in 3-D, whether a virtual model or a physical tactile model, is much more powerful than simply viewing grayscale medical images on a 2-D screen, especially for patients who might not have seen a medical image before so they don’t really know what they’re looking at,” Wake said.
Despite the utility of both technologies, cost remains a prohibitive factor blocking widespread adoption. Wake said a planned future prospective study will provide a deeper cost analysis in hopes of expanding the utility of 3-D printing and AR.
See the full story here: https://www.itnonline.com/article/augmented-reality-versus-3-d-printing-radiology