philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Lightweight gloves help you touch virtual objects

A group of scientists from EPFL and ETH Zurich ... "DextrES," isn't like the other VR gloves also currently in development. First, it's lightweight and doesn't have a bulky exoskeleton or heavy components. It's made of nylon, is only 2 mm thick and weighs 8 grams per finger. Plus, it needs very little power that it could eventually run on a battery.

Shea explained that the system needs very little power to work, because it blocks movement instead of creating it.

See the full story with video here: https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/20/lightweight-vr-gloves/

Conference on virtual reality opens in east China

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, said at the opening ceremony that VR should not be just a novel application, but should integrate with other technologies and the real economy.

"Only when it fuses with the Internet, big data and cloud computing, will VR develop from a toy to a key technology that can solve real problems. We look forward to especially how it will change education and medicine," he said.

China's VR market expanded 164 percent year-on-year to reach 16 billion yuan in 2017. The market is likely to exceed 90 billion yuan by 2020, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which has promised support for the research and development of core VR technologies.

In the rush to embrace VR, the province of Jiangxi in 2016 launched China's first industrial base for VR, and the city of Nanchang now boasts over 60 VR firms, according to Liu Qi, Party chief of Jiangxi.

See the full story here: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-10/19/c_137544740.htm

and here: http://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2018-10-20/detail-ifyyzeyv7660506.shtml

Gartner’s top 10 strategic technology trends for 2019

The Intelligent Digital Mesh

Autonomous Things

Augmented Analytics

AI-Driven Development

Digital Twins

Empowered Edge

Immersive Experience

Blockchain

Smart Spaces

Digital Ethics and Privacy

Quantum Computing

See the full story here: https://www.information-management.com/list/gartners-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2019

Virtual reality experience forces people to lose their jobs and homes, boosts empathy

A new study by Stanford scientists focused on using VR to boost empathy by putting people in the shoes of someone who they might otherwise only read or hear about. Specifically, the used virtual reality to give everyday people a crash course in losing absolutely everything.

The team used a VR experience that they call Becoming Homeless to show people what it’s like to find your life in ruins. In the virtual world, the “player” experiences a range of hardships including losing their job and ultimately giving up their homes.

What they discovered is that people who can experience something first-hand, even in virtual reality, tend to have a lot more empathy for individuals who are actually experiencing those hardships here in the real world.

See the full story here: https://bgr.com/2018/10/18/becoming-homeless-virtual-reality-experience-stanford/

The Digital Transformation To Keep IKEA Relevant: Virtual Reality, Apps And Self-Driving Cars

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Space10 Innovation Lab

Space10 is IKEA’s research hub and exhibition space launched in 2015 that brings together designers, artists, and technologists to innovate tomorrow’s new products and solutions. From developing autonomous urban farming to upcycling products and materials into other uses, and autonomous vehicle design to 3D printed meatballs and more, Space10 is churning and testing out ideas that might make it to an IKEA catalog in the not-too-distant future. The goal of Space10 and its partners is to create better and more sustainable ways of living.

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/10/19/the-amazing-digital-transformation-of-ikea-virtual-reality-apps-self-driving-cars/#4852702776be

The Face Of Entertainment Is Changing Because Of Augmented Reality

Revitalising Print Publications?

There are already examples of publishers relying on AR to create a more innovative, fully immersive experience.

The Future of Film and TV

Have you ever watched The Ring? Now imagine the most memorable scene in which the girl crawls out of the well. How about crawling out of the TV and into your reality? This is precisely what could be accomplished through the use of AR technology.

Music, Audio Files and Augmented

While AR may seem like a highly visual technology, there have already been attempts to change the way in which people listen to music or access audio information. AR earbuds are already a thing. Doppler Labs is the company making such equipment and marketing its earbuds as “the first earbuds with Real-World Sound Control.” Now, what exactly does this mean?

Certain real-world sounds (like background traffic noise) could be filtered out while other sounds will come through.

See the full story here: https://www.vrfocus.com/2018/10/the-face-of-entertainment-is-changing-because-of-augmented-reality/

How OTT video streaming service Popcornflix engagement skyrocketed with Unreel: case study

Popcornflix is an over-the-top (OTT) advertising-supported video on demand (AVOD) streaming service. With more than 25 million lifetime downloads and hundreds of thousands of active monthly users, Popcornflix is a well-established and successful business. As the consumer-facing arm of Screen Media Ventures, Popcornflix has the rights to more than 3,000 films, and more than 60 complete TV series. Screen Media Ventures is one of the world’s largest privately held premium video collections in the world.

The Problem

Popcornflix’s rapid proliferation onto OTT platforms brought about several issues that needed to be addressed:

1) Inconsistent user interface (UI) and user experience (UX): The UI and UX in the apps on which Popcornflix content ran were severely uneven.

2) A Fragmented User Base: Popcornflix was not yet a true cross-platform streaming service, as it lacked the ability to track a user’s actions across multiple properties. This prevented Popcornflix from capturing data that could have been used to keep its users more engaged and to inform content strategy.

3) Too Expensive to Update: A wide number of platforms, each with its own design, made it complicated and prohibitively expensive to update each platform’s app regularly to keep up with new features and trends.

The Solution

Enter video streaming service provider Unreel, which provided an answer for each of Popcornflix’s woes. This partnership enabled Popcornflix to focus on its core competency: acquiring and curating great video content.

Instant Growth

The first step of the Unreel and Popcornflix partnership was to launch a new mobile and desktop streaming site to see how it would perform. Replacing the old Popcornflix site with the new Unreel-powered version produced significant improvements.

See the full story here: https://sociable.co/mobile/ott-video-streaming-popcornflix-unreel/

(phone-based) Startup Ludenso takes on Magic Leap and HoloLens in augmented reality

Norwegian technology start-up Ludenso (formerly MovieMask) has started a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for its augmented reality glasses for mobile devices, dubbed MagiMask.

MagiMask and its tracking system has been quietly in development for two years, and it is now available to preorder, priced at $99 and shipping in the first quarter of 2019. The company hopes the low price will be competitive against the $2,295 Magic Leap One Creator Edition and the $3,000 Microsoft HoloLens.

Ludenso wants to change the way people engage and interact with the world through MagiMask. The AR head-mounted display (HMD) supports AR-capable smartphones as large as Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Apple’s iPhone XS Max.

See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/16/startup-ludenso-takes-on-magic-leap-and-hololens-in-augmented-reality/

Macy’s Rolls Out Virtual Reality Design Program

Macy’s and Marxent have partnered on what the two companies said is the largest virtual reality rollout in retail history, with approximately 70 Macy’s VR installations in stores nationwide.

“Through the Macy’s VR furniture experience, we are giving our customers a new way to visualize a large selection of furniture products,” said Hal Lawton, president of Macy’s. “Customers design their living space and, using a VR headset, immerse themselves in the virtual rooms they create.”

See the full story here: https://www.homeworldbusiness.com/macys-rolls-out-virtual-reality-design-program/

Do your surroundings affect your taste? Virtual reality answers

What we taste is intertwined not just with what we smell, but also with other sensory inputs. What we can see, in particular, may alter how we perceive the flavor of food — at least this is what a range of experiments using virtual reality settings have shown.

According to a new study conducted by researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, what we taste when we eat is significantly influenced by where we are when we have our meals.

The team's findings have recently appeared in the Journal of Food Science.

Through virtual reality headsets, each participant experienced, by turns, three different environments: a sensory booth, a park bench, and a cow barn.

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One important application, for instance, is to improve the experience of eating for older people. As some people age, they may lose part of their sense of taste and thus find food less appealing, which may lead them to eat less, or less healthfully.

"Visually, virtual reality imparts qualities of the environment itself to the food being consumed — making this kind of testing cost-efficient," he adds.

See the full story here: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323362.php