Varjo (Finland) Augmented Reality Headset for Over $11,000 Is Winning Investors
Helsinki-based Varjo Technologies Oy announced has raised $31 million in a funding round led by Atomico. Other investors in the company include EQT Ventures and Lifeline Ventures, a Helsinki venture fund whose advisers include Ilkka Paananen, the co-founder and CEO of Finnish gaming sensation Supercell Oy.
But Varjo isn’t pitching its product, currently in the prototype stage, to the mass market. It’s aimed at the auto industry, architecture, and the military, rather than the consumer. Both BMW and the U.S. Air Force are among those signed up to test the gear.
Unlike many augmented reality goggles, which have transparent lenses, Varjo’s goggles are completely opaque and look more like virtual reality headsets from companies such as HTC and Oculus. The headset is fitted with ultra high-resolution cameras to capture the outside world, and the goggles also track a user’s eye movements. This lets the headset produce images -- both of the real world and of virtual objects -- in the center of a user’s field of vision, closely mimicking the way the human eye naturally processes light.
See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-08/augmented-reality-headset-for-over-11-000-is-winning-investors
D-Wave Offers Free Real-Time Quantum Computing For All
Baratz said that, “anybody with an email address, basic Python programming know-how, familiarity with Ocean (open source software suite) and a desire to play around with the future of computing can sign up for the program.”
“Everything we do in the tools arena is open source because we want developers helping us to enhance and evolve and improve the tools in addition to the work that we continue to do,” he added.
D-Wave senior vice president of marketing Jennifer Houston emphasized the importance of “the learning and teaching tools and … the community and help.” “When you add all those things together, you start actually getting this robust environment for quantum applications,” she said.
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/d-wave-offers-free-real-time-quantum-computing-for-all/#more-132787
and here: https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/04/d-wave-takes-quantum-computers-mainstream-with-leap/
Penn State – NSF funds three-year study of virtual-reality engineering simulations
The VR environment, which will include concepts that are taught in a variety of courses, will move Penn State’s industrial engineering program toward a truly integrated curriculum, with a continuing theme, or story, that will reinforce key concepts as students progress through the program.
The National Science Foundation is supporting the project with a three-year grant of nearly $300,000.
“Mechanical engineering students often have physical projects that they can take from one class to another. That allows them to see many engineering concepts in the same object as they advance through the curriculum,” said Omar Ashour, assistant professor of industrial engineering at Penn State Behrend. “We can’t do that in industrial engineering. We can’t bring an entire manufacturing system into a classroom.”
See the full story here: https://news.psu.edu/story/540335/2018/10/05/research/nsf-funds-three-year-study-virtual-reality-engineering-simulations
“Jurassic World” Hits On Formula For VR Arcade Success
[by my buddy David Bloom]
Recipe No. 1 may be the bronto-sized hit Jurassic World VR Expedition, which landed in June at more than 100 Dave & Buster's restaurants in the United States and Canada.
Augmented Reality Growth Fueled by Chinese Investments
One of the new realities of augmented reality is this: the technology is attracting more investment from China than from sources in North America. This trend happens as activity around AR heats up, with major players in the digital economy apparently positioning themselves to profit as the retail-friendly tech move every closer to mainstream popularity.According Digi-Capital, which tracks AR investments, China-based funding for augmented reality and computer vision technologies hit $3.9 billion over the last 12 months, surging ahead of North American investment.
There was no immediate apples-to-apples comparison for North America, but the company’s managing director, Tim Merel, wrote that “North American augmented and virtual reality investment fell from nearly $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017 to less than $120 million in the third quarter of 2018. At the same time, VC sentiment on virtual reality softened significantly.”
Investment Shift
The numbers describing those investments came about 10 months after Digi-Capital identified what Merel called “a fundamental shift from early stage North American (virtual reality) investment to later-stage Chinese computer vision/AR investment.
See the full story here: https://www.pymnts.com/innovation/2018/augmented-reality-chinese-investment-computer-vision-technology/
Facebook’s Oculus Looking to Invest in Location-Based Virtual Reality
Oculus has long supported the development of VR games and experiences with significant investments, with industry insiders telling Variety that the company in the past struck seven-figure deals with some game developers to premiere their titles exclusively on its headsets. However, up until now, these investments have all been for titles that premiered on the company’s consumer VR hardware, not in VR centers.
A new focus on location-based experiences could be explained by the lagging sales of VR headsets. Many consumers have thus far avoided high-end VR systems because of costs and complexity associated with the technology. VR arcades and location-based VR centers on the other hand have a much lower barrier of entry, and have been a way for many consumers to get a first glimpse of the technology.
See the full story here: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/facebook-oculus-location-based-virtual-reality-1202969418/