Interactive Live-Action VR Film Afterlife Coming In 2019
A live-action film, Afterlife centres around a one family’s grief after a tragedy as they struggle to deal with their new reality. Challenged to find meaning a mother in denial, a daughter in search of herself and an absent father try to deal with their grief.
Viewers experience each storyline through a child’s eyes, with the studio using a new VR technique dubbed Seamless Interactive Cinematic VR which removes loading screens. The process allows live-action footage to be treated as dynamic content by enabling the experience to adapt organically to the behaviour of the audience, employing gaze-control to identify areas of user’s interest.
Featuring the acting talents of Hubert Proulx as Ray and Alarey Alsip as Emma, Afterlife will have 29 unique prompts that will alter the story of the viewer, ensuring thousands of combinations so that each playthrough can be different with multiple endings.
Signal Space Lab plan on releasing Afterlife in Q1 2019 for Oculus Rift, Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR, with other platforms added closer to launch. The experience will be split into three episodes with the first instalment being free.
See the full story here: https://www.vrfocus.com/2018/11/interactive-live-action-vr-film-afterlife-coming-in-2019/
McLaren F1 team launches VR headset with games
McLaren and HTC kicked off their partnership in May this year and on Friday revealed a limited-edition HTC VIVE Pro device ahead of this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
A custom rFactor 2-based version of McLaren sim racing has been produced that will enable users to race classic cars from the British team’s history.
There is also a simulation game where players can be part of the McLaren pit crew, and this includes a ‘pitstop challenge’ that is multiplayer.
Alvin Wang Graylin, HTC’s China president, said the intention was to give fans a “unique experience that can’t be had watching on television”.
See the full story here: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclaren-vr-headset-games-htc/4302327/
Theatre projects among recipients of £1m virtual reality funding programme
Site-specific theatre company Dante or Die is among the recipients of £1 million in government funding to create new immersive experiences in areas including theatre, gaming, film and TV.
Funding was awarded to 32 projects as part of the government’s Audience of the Future initiative, which aims to make the UK a world leader in new technologies such as virtual reality.
Dante or Die and another organisation, Marmelo Limited, have been awarded £43,541 to experiment with new ways of bringing site-specific theatre to a wider audience, including through using a virtual reality headset or a smartphone.
Other theatre-related projects include the University of Portsmouth and Limbik Theatre’s Fatherland, which will combine live theatre performance and digital technology to “blur the barrier between reality and virtual reality”, say its makers. The project aims to enable theatre audiences to experience a virtual reality performance without every audience member having to wear a headset.
See the full story here: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2018/theatre-projects-among-recipients-1m-virtual-reality-funding-programme/
How VR Startup Nomadic Adapted ‘Arizona Sunshine’ for Location-Based Virtual Reality
When Bay Area-based virtual reality (VR) startup Nomadic began to work on adapting the VR zombie shooter “Arizona Sunshine” for location-based entertainment, it first built a doll house-scale model of the stage that players would eventually be able to enter.
On a wooden peg board, the Nomadic team arranged small wooden doors, walls and physical props — all the things that make location-based VR so realistic, tricking the brain into believing that you really walk across a plank from one roof to another. “We used cans of Red Bull to represent players,” said Nomadic CEO Doug Griffin.
The results of Shafer’s work can now be seen at the Pointe Orlando mall in Florida, where Nomadic recently opened its first VR center. Groups of up to four paying customers get to strap on a computer backpack and put on an Oculus Rift VR headset, and then enter the world of “Arizona Sunshine,” where they are tasked with finding a cure for the zombie outbreak — a task that naturally involves shooting a lot of zombies.
Throughout the experience, there are real walls, doors and other physical cues that correspond with items in the virtual world shown in the headsets. Players get to turn door knobs and open doors, press buttons, turn levers, and yes, even touch a dead body.
When they stick their head out of the moving train, wind blows into their face. The plank wobbles, platforms move under their feet. Especially curious minds will even find real drawers to open, hiding gimmicks like a real rubber ducky. “I spend a lot of time crafting those Easter eggs,” Shafer said.
One example: The aforementioned plank was initially positioned towards the end of the experience, leading a few players to literally freeze up. Now, it’s at the beginning, easing players into the experience. “We are challenging people to do things that they normally wouldn’t do,” Shafer said, adding: “They can be the hero of their own adventure.”
Nomadic can guide up to four groups at the same time through the experience, with doors locking and unlocking in time to make sure that groups don’t accidentally stumble across each other.
Griffin isn’t worried about the competition, arguing that there is still a lot of unmet demand for location-based VR. “The industry has been responding with excitement — and way more demand than we are able to accommodate,” he said.
See the full story here: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/nomadic-arizona-sunshine-1203035531/
Hole19’s Brand-New Augmented Reality (AR) Feature Brings the Golf Course to Life
Hole19 AR in action
[PhilNote; what about wind speed and direction?]
With this Premium launch, golfers from around the world can use their smartphone camera to enjoy a truly immersive 360° golfing experience and the ability to determine the correct line for their next shot, irrespective of course position. As well as providing an accurate point of reference towards the green ahead, the feature also provides accurate GPS distances to the front, middle and back of the green on more than 42,000 mapped courses throughout the world.
The Hole19 golf app gives golfers the ability to book and manage their rounds, while statistical post-round evaluation assists in the ongoing quest for golfing improvement.
See the full story here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hole19s-brand-new-augmented-reality-ar-feature-brings-the-golf-course-to-life-300754810.html
Google files patent for motorised virtual reality shoes that moonwalk users to safety
Google has applied for a patent in the US to attach wheels to VR shoes… stick with me here. The concept is a motorised shoe that would keep a user within safe boundaries during virtual reality play while, in theory, allowing you to walk freely within virtual worlds without ever worrying about walking into a wall or smashing your TV to pieces. In theory.
Balancing out the retrograde motion of the shoes with the forward motion of the player is surely going to be a monumental task on its own. And then getting developers to implement it properly in their VR games/experiences without making people sick and/or making them fall flat on their face is going to be mighty tricky too.Niantic Tapped For GPS-Based Augmented Reality Tourism Games
Known for augmented reality games Ingress and Pokemon Go, the software developer is partnering with the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) to foster global travel.
As part of the UNWTO Travel.Enjoy.Respect program, Niantic will curate “unique” campaigns to build awareness of international destinations.
“Our goal at Niantic is to create interactive games that encourage exercise, social interaction, and exploration, giving players the opportunity to play together in the real world and discover the incredible history hidden right in their own neighborhoods,” Anne Beuttenmüller, head of marketing EMEA, wrote in a blog post.
See the full post here: https://www.geek.com/games/niantic-tapped-for-gps-based-augmented-reality-tourism-games-1762163/
HyperSurfaces turns any surface into a user interface using vibration sensors and AI
Imagine any surface, such as a wooden table, car door or glass wall, could be turned into a user interface without the need for physical buttons or a touch screen. That’s the ambition of HyperSurfaces,...
Dubbed “HyperSurfaces,” the new technology, for which the company has four related patents pending, combines vibration sensors and the latest developments in machine learning/AI to transform any object of any material, shape and size into an intelligent object able to recognise physical interactions.
Equally important is that once trained for a particular object, the HyperSurfaces neural network-trained algorithms are able to run on dedicated microchips that don’t require connection to the cloud for processing. This means that gestures can be instantly recognised and in turn trigger specific commands entirely locally and at much lower cost.
Watch the video at the link: https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/20/hypersurfaces/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=e523c984a5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_11_22_12_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-e523c984a5-153894145