Dave Ranyard used to head up one of Sony’s longest-running PlayStation developers, working on its most experimental tech, located in the heart of London. Over the course of the past decade, he’s worked on games that spearheaded PlayStation peripherals from the popular SingStar karaoke series to early augmented reality efforts with Wonderbook. Most recently he was working on PlayStation VR, serving as one of the kit’s key ambassadors in its early days, presenting the demos that would add up to the popular PlayStation VR Worlds launch compilation. Showing sharks to his mother, watching people fall through virtual desks or simply watching cynics be converted right before his eyes — you might consider him one of the headset’s biggest advocates.
But these days? He’s traded all of that in for a meditation yurt and he couldn’t be happier about it.
“Madness?” Ranyard interjects with a laugh before I’ve even finished my first question. Well, isn’t it? “I was 48 [when I left Sony],” he explains, “and I thought, if I don’t do it now, I’m not going to do it. It was a bit of personal pressure. I’d always thought “Wouldn’t it be great to have your own studio?””
He’s had his own businesses before, too. In another life, Ranyard was a musician signed to Warner Bros. and he’d even run a vintage clothes store before that.
For starters, DRI has found its feet by taking on some contract work. For example, it helped out with the brilliant Hold The World, a VR experience which puts you face-to-face with a photoscanned Sir David Attenborough as he takes you on a supernatural tour of London’s Natural History Museum.
The Boston-based private company is experimenting with blockchain, artificial intelligence and virtual reality — and is benchmarking itself against digital natives like Nvidia instead of brokerage firms like Charles Schwab.
Failure is acceptable but they had to create a separate place to do it, far away from the retirement and other fund businesses.
Johnson pointed out that financial services don't have a high "fun factor," which makes it hard for the average person to care about it. That's not obvious during a visit to the lab, where virtual reality headsets are strewn on tables and a corn-hole game sits in the corner.
The "7th Floor Village" at the company's headquarters was designed to counter the staid reputation financial firms tend to have, transporting visitors from Boston's Seaport to Silicon Valley. The floor was redesigned a year ago to jibe with the working environment software engineers expect: open plan with no offices or assigned desks. People work at broad communal tables or standing desks, and bright colored couches are scattered about. Nearby, there is cold brew coffee on tap.
Fidelity is moving to zero fees in some areas. Just a month after announcing it would become the first financial company to offer no-fee index mutual funds, Fidelity attracted roughly $1 billion into the two portfolios. It offers access to more than 260 other commission-free ETFs. On stock trading, the firm is betting that the quality of its brokerage services will resonate with customers more than the appeal of zero fees.
In the meantime, Katie Chase, the head of strategy for Fidelity Center for Applied Technology and head of the Blockchain Incubator (which is a part of FCAT), is exploring uses for both public blockchain and enterprise blockchain. Chase could not comment specifically on the projects but said she's seen massive interest from clients and partners, as well as their own employees.
Private company
This would all be much harder to do if Fidelity had to answer to shareholders.
Augmented reality is coming to movie screens in the form of the Noovie ARcade Halloween Experience launching today and running through Halloween night on Oct. 31.
The AR horror experience is launching in National CineMedia's Noovie pre-show on 21,000 movie screens in 1,700 theaters across the country, including AMC, Cinemark and Regal Entertainment Group.
About 20 minutes before the movie “Venom” or “Halloween,” moviegoers with the Noovie Arcade app can activate the AR experience by pointing their phone camera at the screen.
The AR experiences include having a galactic worm hole opening with aliens pouring out or emojis wreaking virtual havoc in the theater lobby.
Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger may set the company's direction for preferring augmented reality over VR, but Robert Sumner, associate director at Disney Research, is driving the company's innovation of AR technology.
At Disney, Sumner heads up research in animation and games, including augmented reality. According to the Disney Research website, Sumner and his team endeavor to "bypass technical barriers in animation and game production pipelines with new algorithms that expand the designer's creative toolbox in terms of depiction, movement, deformation, stylization, control, and efficiency."
In this capacity, Sumner has co-authored several publications for research into augmented reality innovations, including AR face projection, a mobile app that lets users re-color paintings in AR, and intelligent AR characters that can react to real-world obstacles.
Sumner's work in advancing technology also extends outside of Disney's doors. After studying computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Sumner earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute Technology (MIT). Before joining Disney, Sumner worked as a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, where he now serves as an adjunct professor for the Game Programming Laboratory. He founded the ETH Game Technology Center in 2015; a group focused on fostering research, education, and outreach in game technology.
Robert leads the lab's research in animation and games. His research group strives to bypass technical barriers in animation and game production pipelines with new algorithms that expand the designer's creative toolbox with respect to depiction, movement, deformation, stylization, control, and efficiency.
We spoke to Sumner about what sparked his path toward working on the cutting edge of immersive computing. Below is his lightly edited response.
Describe your first time experiencing AR or VR?
My first experience was around 1996. I was a student volunteer at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference and had the chance to try a virtual reality experience in Disney's exhibition space where you fly a magic carpet through the animated world of Aladdin. Even in this early day, the experience was incredible, and I've never forgotten it. Fortunately, a research paper describing the concept is still available.
Apparently Bublé has a big gig at London's O2 Arena this Saturday, which makes the timing of this AR experience very convenient. Almost as if some people in marketing did it on purpose or something. O2 claims that this is the first time anyone has done this sort of thing with a musician, and the point of the app is to have Bublé appear on screen in a puff of smoke and interact with fans.
Bublé lovers can pose for selfies with the singer, while the phone user alters his position to get the perfect shot. Fans can also interact with the singer as he beckons them over, kisses them, or gets down on one knee to propose.
See the full post here: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/heres-everything-facebook-announced-oculus-connect-virtual-reality-event/
Here are the biggest unveilings from the event:
Oculus Quest: Combining the power of Oculus Rift and the standalone nature of Oculus Go, this “all-in-one” headset is the total package, according to Zuckerberg. The realization of the long-anticipated “Project Santa Cruz,” Oculus Quest also represents the completion of Facebook’s first generation of VR products.
YouTube VR on Oculus Go: The app brings more than 800,000 immersive videos — from concerts to nature scenes — to Oculus Go. As The Verge notes, this announcement means every Oculus device now has some form of YouTube app.
Manifold 360 degree camera from RED: Following up on a promise from its F8 event earlier this year, Facebook unveiled its new 3D/360 degree camerabuilt in partnership with camera maker RED. Facebook didn’t say how much the device would cost or when it would be available.
Oculus Insight: Featured in the Oculus Quest, this tech tracks a user’s position without sensors. It supports the ability to build the experience beyond room scale and also lets users know when they are about to run into a wall.
Casting: As the highly lucrative world of e-sports has shown, people like to watch others play games as much, or even more, than they like to play themselves. Oculus Go will soon support the ability to cast content one user is viewing onto a phone or TV.
New Star Wars VR series: Launching with the Oculus Quest next spring, Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series is a three-part series that takes place between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One. It is written by David S. Goyer, who worked on movies like The Dark Knight and the Blade series.
Oculus Venues with NBA games and more: Announced earlier this year, Oculus Venues transports users to virtual arenas and other, for lack of a better word, venues, to watch events with other users. Facebook today released the fall lineup for Oculus Venues, which includes several NBA games for the first time.
Oculus Rift updates: Facebook did not unveil the next generation Oculus Rift headset, but it did say that the Rift’s Core 2.0 software is rolling out to customers starting today. The updated software includes more personalization features, expressive avatars and the ability for developers to create their own line of items that users can collect for their personal VR living rooms.
Four headsets will be given to every Walmart Supercenter and two to every Neighborhood Market starting in October. By the end of 2018, every associate will have access to the same training as their managers do at the Academies.
Walmart says its new virtual reality program will help with so-called "soft skills" like customer service and empathy. In addition, the program will help associates with compliance issues, and help them grow familiar with the company's technology, like its Pickup Towers, which will be available in roughly a quarter of the retailer's stores by the end of this year.
“Our job is to really find out where the intersection of this kind of tool and the field sticks,” said Mimi McFaul, Deputy Director of the National Mental Health Innovation Center. “VR basically puts you in a simulated environment that can expose you to a number of different practice environments."
Most of the clinical studies with virtual reality have been done with adults, but there are requests for younger children to get involved. Clinicians hope to use the 3D setting as a way to help patients face their fears and get real time reactions.
While VR cannot completely replace the work of a trained clinician, it’s a tool to help solve problems in mental health or prevent them from developing further.
See the full story here: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/lifestyle/health/virtual-reality-being-tested-on-cu-anschutz-campus-to-treat-mental-illnesses-fears
NewTV, incubated by Katzenberg and held by his WndrCo, will seek to charge subscribers $5 per month for content with ads and $8 per month for an ad-free experience on the new service, Whitman said during a presentation at a conference Tuesday organized by AT&T, whose WarnerMedia is an investor in the company.
The pair said they expected to reveal a formal name for the project in coming weeks. Launch of the new service is expected in late 2019 or “the start of 2020,” Whitman said. The company expects to distribute a premium lineup of original, short-form series comprising episodes of 10 minutes each, sometimes less.
