philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The State of Augmented Reality

[PhilNote: this is a primer, not an update.]

See the full story here: https://arpost.co/2019/05/03/the-state-of-augmented-reality/

Creative Commons Intros Search Engine With 300M Images

“There is no ‘front door’ to the commons, and the tools people need to curate, share, and remix works aren’t yet available,” said Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley. “We want to make the commons more usable, and this is our next step in that direction.”

The new search engine boasts images from 19 collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Behance, DeviantArt and others. With plans to keep growing the overall collection, Creative Commons has stated the desire to prioritize collections like Europeana and Wikimedia Commons.

Future plans include indexing content beyond just photos, tapping into other Creative Commons content like textbooks and audio, and eventually indexing all 1.4 billion works in the commons.

See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/creative-commons-intros-search-engine-with-300m-images/

How augmented reality put five Madonnas on stage at once

The avatars (not holograms, so they weren't visible to the naked eye) wove in and out of the inventive performance, bursting into butterflies and puffs of smoke. There were several environmental effects that livened up the show, including digital rain, clouds, greenery and splashes of color, which married with the physical side in an attempt to tell a cohesive story. Madonna has reinvented herself countless times over her storied career, so it's perhaps little surprise that she tried something like this.

The team brought the concept to a new creative AR company called Sequin, which took on the challenge of piecing the performance together. While it was the first time Madonna and Maluma performed the song live, it also marked the first project for Sequin.

While you might not recognize the name, you'll probably be familiar with the work of co-founders Lawrence Jones and Robert DeFranco. At The Future Group, their projects included those dramatic flooding visualizations for The Weather Channel, an AR-enhanced performance by K/DA at last year's League of Legends World Championship Finals and effects for this year's Super Bowl, for which they were nominated for an Emmy.

A critical aspect of making performances such as this work is real-time camera tracking. Jones and his team use a tool called Brainstorm, layering broadcast objects, including motion graphics, character generation and real-time data, on top of Unreal Engine. Jones explained that Brainstorm feeds data from the physical cameras into Unreal Engine so everything from the real set lines up with a digital replication, ensuring the AR renders are in the right place at the right time.

See the full story here: https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/02/madonna-billboard-music-awards-augmented-reality/

Facebook will open its data up to academics to see how it impacts elections

More than 60 researchers from 30 institutions will get access to Facebook user data to study its impact on elections and democracy, and how it’s used by advertisers and publishers.

A vast trove: Facebook will let academics see which websites its users linked to from January 2017 to February 2019. Notably, that means they won’t be able to look at the platform’s impact on the US presidential election in 2016, or on the Brexit referendum in the UK in the same year.

Despite this slightly glaring omission, it’s still hard to wrap your head around the scale of the data that will be shared, given that Facebook is used by 1.6 billionpeople every day. That’s more people than live in all of China, the most populous country on Earth. It will be one of the largest data sets on human behavior online to ever be released.

The process: Facebook didn’t pick the researchers. They were chosen by the Social Science Research Council, a US nonprofit. Facebook has been working on this project for over a year, as it tries to balance research interests against user privacy and confidentiality.

Privacy: In a blog post, Facebook said it will use a number of statistical techniques to make sure the data set can’t be used to identify individuals. Researchers will be able to access it only via a secure portal that uses a VPN and two-factor authentication, and there will be limits on the number of queries they can each run.

The context: Facebook is keen to improve its reputation after months of scandals over data privacy, security, and its role in elections and democracy. If it opens up its data as promised, it could introduce some much-needed light into what’s often a very heated debate.

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/f/613451/facebook-will-open-its-data-up-to-academics-to-see-how-it-impacts-elections/?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=72251193&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8_ulPXLXdMuvg2GhkpgFJDb15NrzcylAooYpgXt4Pmpp96-MACO9Inb5wi7PCOah5o20OdbmCy9YFoHRryv0WpOD1EOA&_hsmi=72251193

NexTech Announces Ori Inbar, AR Pioneer and Founder of AugmentedReality.org, to Join Advisory Board

NexTech AR Solutions (the "Company" or "NexTech") (NEXCF) (NTAR.CN) (N29.F) is pleased to announce that it has appointed Ori Inbar to its Advisory Board as it ramps up its AR product offerings and sales efforts. Inbar is a recognized AR expert, having been involved in the industry for over a decade as both a startup entrepreneur and a venture capital investor through SuperVentures. With his long term perspective and extensive industry relationships, he is uniquely positioned to help guide NexTech on its growth trajectory and identify acquisition opportunities.

See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nextech-announces-ori-inbar-ar-120000229.html

‘It’s a Glimpse of Things to Come’: A Show of Virtual Reality Art Offers Collectors a Look Into the Future at Frieze New York

Daniel Birnbaum, the former leading museum director and current virtual reality art impresario, is making his New York debut as a curator of the high-tech medium at Frieze New York. The non-selling show within the fair, titled “Electric,” could give collectors of the future their first taste of the artistic possibilities of virtual and augmented reality.

Along with works by Anish Kapoor, Rachel Rossin, and Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, there will also be new ones inspired by Marcel Duchamp and Hilma af Klint.

“Electric” also includes Man Mask (2017) by Rachel Rossin, who—unlike many of the blue-chip artists Acute Art has worked with so far, including Jeff Koons—is a digital native. “She is a special person because she can really write code,” Birnbaum says. “She is a techy person who used to do computer games as a teenager. Some of the artist we work with could never, ever do this on their own, but she could.”

Although art-fair visitors are novelty junkies, organizing Frieze New York’s first VR/AR art exhibition is an ambitious undertaking.

See the full story here: https://news.artnet.com/market/virtual-reality-art-frieze-new-york-1530907

How to play the mobile games that will turn Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge into a role-playing universe

The interactive Galaxy’'s Edge Data Pad mobile games are closely connected to the Star Wars land coming to Disneyland.

A series of interactive smartphone games will transform Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge into an immersive real-world role-playing universe that will let players collect galactic credits and unlock additional layers of backstory about the new themed land coming to Disneyland.

“From the beginning, we’ve always really thought of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge as for world’s largest Star Wars playset,” said Walt Disney Imagineering executive creative director Asa Kalama. “Building on that idea of being able to imagine and role play Star Wars in your backyard. Being able to do that in a world that is fully supportive of all of the things that you’ve imagined in your mind for all of these years.”

Galaxy’s Edge Data Pad mobile games will have four key tools: Hack, Scan, Translate and Tune.

The hack tool lets players access the memory banks of droids and interact with devices throughout the land. Need to find the ship schematics of a First Order Star Destroyer? The hack tool can help.

The scan tool reads shipping labels that reveal what artifacts and weapons are stowed inside the cargo containers found in ride queues. Is the bounty inside the container encrypted? Use the app’s decryption key to unscramble the message.

The translate tool deciphers languages spoken by alien creatures and carved into building facades.

“As you walk through the land there’s alien languages written on walls and hand carved into stone and things like that,” Ging said. “You’ll hear characters speaking in their native alien tongue. And the translate tool is a way for you to actually understand what they’re talking about and what’s written on that wall.”

The tune tool helps you find and decode secret radio transmissions heard throughout the land.

See the full story here: https://www.ocregister.com/2019/04/29/how-to-play-the-mobile-games-that-will-turn-star-wars-galaxys-edge-into-a-role-playing-universe/?fbclid=IwAR1QXAhx8oIXFe52qhbcluUlqcoeVYub9fT7VLSIn6sk-PdAmPfo5gUaYlA

Inside The Making Of Baobab’s Latest VR Short, Bonfire

Bonfire features the main character, Debbie, voiced by comedian, writer and actress Ali Wong. Debbie is a robot who serves as your assistant as you fulfill your mission while searching for a new home for humans as Earth runs out of resources.

See the full story here: https://uploadvr.com/inside-the-making-of-baobabs-latest-vr-short-bonfire/

VR By the Numbers (market research)

VR By the Numbers

• In 2016, only 28% of the general public was aware of virtual reality devices. That awareness grew to 51% in 2017.
• Around 11 million VR headsets were shipped in 2016.
• The global VR gaming market size is expected to be worth $22.9 billion by the end of 2020.
• Facebook now hosts more than 70 million 360-degree photos and 1 million 360-degree videos.
• After creating a VR experience of the Great Bear Rainforest, Destination British Columbia experienced a 5% increase in visitors.

See the full story here: https://learn.g2crowd.com/virtual-reality-statistics

Lion King director talks Chinese animation

Jon Favreau says that incorporating Virtual Reality in The Lion King production process made it feel more like a real film. The director says that he wanted to experience the environments in the upcoming Disney animated feature as he would in a traditional film, so he built them in VR. To access the 'sets,' the film's crew and voice cast - including Beyoncé, who voices Nala - donned headsets so they could effectively go on location, look around, and even have meetings within the 360 degree VR spaces, where they were all represented by humanoid avatars. “The changes in technology are going to continue to improve and make it possible to make really interesting, different kinds of films, and put the tools of film-making and animation into more people’s hands, which I think would be very good,” Favreau says.

See the full story here; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/china-watch/culture/lion-king-director-secret-china-animation/