Instead, they were from an unofficial channel called "Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen." And as if that wasn't brazen enough, the owner explicitly asked viewers for donations to fund the uploading of copyrighted content.
17Dec/18Off
A 45-Year-Old German Film Knew Things About Virtual Reality We’re Just Discovering Today
Nearly 50 years ago, German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder created a two-part sci-fi miniseries made for TV that was way ahead of its time. Combined, the parts created a movie that would be an entirely different genre for Fassbinder and a pioneering example of VR on the screen.
Based on the book Simulacron-3, written by Daniel F. Galouye in 1964, the movie is set within the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science (IKZ). Engineers have created the Simulacron, a virtual world that looks just like the real world and contains more than 9,000 ‘identity units’ who all look like real people and think they’re living, breathing human beings - and, importantly, not generated AI living in a simulation.
In World on a Wire, Stiller begins to question the nature of his reality, realising that if the virtual world feels just like the real one, could the one he thinks is real be virtual too? What about his own identity, is that real or is he one of the many, many units inside the simulation?
See the full story here: http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/12/a-45-year-old-german-film-knew-things-about-virtual-reality-were-just-discovering-today/
17Dec/18Off
HTC THINKS CHRISTIANS ARE VR’S NEXT BIG AUDIENCE
7 Miracles, a film from HTC’s own Vive Studios, isn’t just the latest example of this trend; it’s an acknowledgment on the part of one of the leading headset makers that religion might be a new opportunity for VR.
Although billed as the world’s first feature-length VR movie, it’s more accurate to think of 7 Miracles as a collection of seven 10-minute-long vignettes, each of them focused on one of Jesus’ miracles as described in the Gospel of John. It’s nothing if not a straight telling of one of the least controversial portions of the Bible that wouldn’t feel out of place as a special attraction in Sunday School.
Vive Studios isn’t trying to convert VR enthusiasts into Christians. Instead, it wants to convert Christians into virtual reality believers.
The result is a film devoid of blood, politics, and really of much in the way of conflict at all. It’s content to simply retell the popular stories rather than attempt to comment on them.
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/16/18139134/htc-vive-studios-7-miracles-focus-virtual-reality-movie-raindance-film-festival
17Dec/18Off
Virtual reality gaming and the pursuit of ‘flow state’
What we seek is that elusive, perfect focus — or flow state. According to researchers, someone in flow will experience a lack of sense of self, a decline in fear and time distortion. It is peak performance coupled with a euphoric high. All your happy neurotransmitters fire, and your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex performs differently — you do not second-guess yourself, you quite simply just flow into the next stages of the activity at hand. And you happen to be performing at the highest level possible.
Unlike the hacking nature of Beat Saber, where you smash blocks with lightsabers, in RaveRunner you touch blue and orange glowing circles with your controllers, and move your whole body to the rhythm of the music.
Behind the design of this game is a woman, Ashley Cooper, who is the developer responsible for the gameplay mechanics that can help a player attain flow.
At the end of the day, I love that Orpheus is attempting to tap into a part of the market that so desperately needs their attention. If we don’t make self-care a major part of VR today, then we’ll continue to use VR as a distraction from, as opposed as a tool to enhance, our daily lives.
As for me, along with the peppermint tea, grapefruit candle and music that make my focus possible, I’ll now be adding some Orpheus games into my flow repertoire.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/16/in-raverunner-nothing-stops-the-vr-flow/
17Dec/18Off
Virtual reality to help detect early risk of Alzheimer’s
The devices, widely used by computer gamers, display images that can be used to test the navigational skills of people thought to be at risk of dementia. Those who do worse in the tests will be the ones most likely to succumb to Alzheimer’s later in life, scientists now believe.
“It is usually thought memory is the first attribute affected in Alzheimer’s,” said project leader Dennis Chan, a neuroscientist based at Cambridge University. “But difficulty with navigation is increasingly recognised as one of the very earliest symptoms. This may predate the onset of other symptoms.
“By pinpointing those who are beginning to lose their navigational skills, we hope to show that we can target people at a much earlier stage of the condition and one day become far more effective in treating them.”
See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/16/alzheimers-dementia-cure-virtual-reality-navigation-skills
17Dec/18Off
AT A NEW YORK PRIVACY POP-UP, FACEBOOK SELLS ITSELF
A friendly-looking sign pinned to a bulletin board helpfully displayed the perennial question: “Does Facebook sell my data?” “No, Facebook does not sell data to advertisers,” it answered, next to a cartoon of a padlock.
(A New York Times op-ed published the day before was the latest to make the case that the opposite is true. And as Molly McKew wrote in WIRED earlier this year, "It doesn’t matter that Facebook isn’t 'selling data'—an oft-repeated theme. They are using psychographics to profile you and selling advertisers access to the products of those algorithms.")
See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-nyc-privacy-pop-up/
17Dec/18Off
These fake faces show how algorithms can now mess with us
The faces above don’t seem remarkable. They could easily come from Facebook or LinkedIn. In fact, they were dreamt up by a new kind of AI algorithm, Will Knight writes.
Fake faces: Nvidia researchers created these faces using a new sort of generative adversarial network (more on GANs here). The images released show how much of an improvement the researchers’ new work is.
A big quality leap: The team were inspired by a technique known as style transfer to build their GAN in a different way, letting their algorithm identify different elements of a face, which the researchers could then control, remixing elements like age, race, gender and even freckles.
Uses: GANs are likely to change the way video games and special effects are generated and can be used to sharpen up degraded images or video. But the work also shows how advances in machine learning could lead to all sorts of new possibilities for fakery and misinformation. Read the full story here.
See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612612/these-incredibly-real-fake-faces-show-how-algorithms-can-now-mess-with-us/
16Dec/18Off
5 Technology Trends to Watch in 2019
1. Machine Learning will advance Artificial Intelligence (AI)
2. Quantum Computing (Supercomputing)
3. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
4. Global Internet of Things (IoT) security breach
5. Blockchain technology
See the full story here: https://interestingengineering.com/5-technology-trends-to-watch-in-2019
16Dec/18Off
The best multiplayer VR games
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
The Playroom VR
Rec Room
Tabletop Simulator
Star Trek: Bridge Crew
.......................
Other great games to check out:
- Altspace VR (Social)
- Cloudlands: VR Minigolf (Sports)
- Creed: Rise to Glory (Sports)
- Elite: Dangerous (Space simulator)
- Minecraft VR (Survival/ exploration)
- Pavlov VR (Shooter)
- Payday 2 VR (Heist shooter)
- Sports Bar VR (Social/minigames)
- Raw Data (sci-fi shooter)
- Robo Recall (sci-fi shooter)
16Dec/18Off
Soon, a virtual tour of railway heritage sites in trains, classrooms
Soon, passengers onboard trains or students in faraway locations can take a tour of the National Rail Museum or see the Kalka-Shimla rail route without moving from their seats. Taking forward its digital initiative to preserve and promote its heritage, Railways has tied up with Google's education initiative to create and deliver virtual educational expeditions using 3-D imaging and virtual tours of its prominent heritage places.
"The railway minister has asked us to provide such glasses to the onboard staff so that they can be used by passengers," Subrata Nath, Executive Director (Heritage) told .
The cost of these glasses - Google's version is called Google cardboard - vary, with the cheapest coming for less than Rs 200. All one has to do is use the Google Expedition app or open the Google arts and culture website and search for the railway heritage sites one wishes to visit.
See the full story here: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/soon-a-virtual-tour-of-railway-heritage-sites-in-trains-classrooms/articleshow/67113669.cms