This Magic Leap One Demo Offers a Peek into the Future of Multiplayer AR
Tweeted by JJ Castillo of Viewer Ready, a video reveals several remotely linked avatars shooting at targets—a simple demo, but an interesting look into the beginnings of an augmented shared space right in your living room, where real people can pop in for a chat and a quick game.
Created by Steve Lukas, a co-Founder of Across Realities, and joined by Castillo, and Twitter software engineer Andrés Ornelas and Anima Games founder Tony Ramirez, the four move around their respective rooms, tossing out targets with a hand gesture and having a group chat in the process of shooting down the targets, aided by the Magic Leap Control, the system’s single 6DOF motion controller.
While the interactions and low poly models are fairly simple from a gaming perspective, the effect it has on Lukas was anything but. In a tweet, he says he felt like he and the others were the “[first people] to land on the moon.”
Warner Bros. Conjures ‘The Nun’ Snapchat AR Lens to Scare Up Ticket Sales
Snapchat's technical innovations on the platform enable it to offer uniquely-interactive experiences, such as the use of background segmentation and facial cues for The Nun Lens.
Moreover, the company makes a strong case with data that it is an effective platform for spreading brand messages. According to a Snap spokesperson, Sponsored Lenses average 10 to 15 seconds of playtime before they are shared with others. The company also asserts that brands benefit from an average 19 percentage point lift in ad awareness, a six point lift in brand awareness, and a 3.4 point lift in action intent from Sponsored Lenses.
Accelerating MR
The University of Hull’s Mixed Reality accelerator was recently launched with the remit of promoting collaboration between industry and academia to develop commercial applications for Microsoft HoloLens. It is led by VISR a company founded in 2015 by veteran Xbox games developer Louis Deane and his business partner Lindsay West. They were one of the earliest Microsoft Mixed Reality partners in Europe.
The program was specifically formulated to help industry to fast-track the adoption of Mixed Reality technology and build the participating students towards being experts in this new field of computing. It will see 24 of the University’s computer science and digital media students working alongside global companies such as car maker Audi, global drinks brand AB InBev and energy company Centrica. These companies are exploring how best to leverage immersive technologies to improve communication, efficiency, safety and product quality.
Centrica, for example, plans to use the technology to develop 3D modeling of the Easington gas terminal to improve safety and efficiency. VISR Managing Director Louis Deane believes that these kinds of solutions have the potential to streamline processes, improve safety and potentially change the way in which billions of workers do their jobs over the next 10 years.
Jan Pflueger, Coordination AR & VR, Center of Competence AR & VR at Audi AG, explains that his company is looking to use visual and spatial computing to improve context awareness and workflow to support its technicians.
HP Partnership Expands Advanced VR Training
In a recently published case study, immersive media agency Yondr partnered with webinar platform Clickmeeting to show companies some specific examples of how they could leverage immersive content in a variety of practical scenarios. In the end, they found that many still perceived it primarily as a gaming and entertainment experience. What is needed, according to PIXO VR’s CEO, Sean Hurwitz, is a viable path for integrating those solutions within organizations and their training programs. This is where he hopes their recently announced partnership with HP will lead.
HP is one of the companies that have been steadily increasing its focus on VR hardware products over the course of the past few years. In addition to producing a Windows Mixed Reality Headset, it markets a tetherless VR Backpack and has now developed a new HP Z series of PCs designed specifically for VR. These machines features impressive computing power that allows for high frame rates, comfort, and the freedom of motion required for the complex and graphics-rich scenarios offered by PIXO VR.
How virtual reality is being used for science as well as gaming
“My research team is interested in is something called multi-sensory integration – which is trying to understand how our brain takes different signals from different senses and combines those senses to lead to a subjective experience.
“If we start to manipulate the connection between these different sensory signals, people might have quite different subjective experiences.”
And while that could make for an exciting adventure VR game, it can be used to treat psychiatric disorders.
“It’s being used to treat paranoia to make people feel more comfortable about going out in public,” Polito explained.
“It’s also being used to treat body image issues like anorexia.
It doesn’t take long for your brain to start convincing you that what you’re seeing is the reality, even though you know that’s not the case.
See the full story here: https://pickle.nine.com.au/2018/09/09/12/57/virtual-reality-science-research
ANDY SERKIS WILL INVADE YOUR WORLD AS A NEW AUGMENTED REALITY MOTION CAPTURE CHARACTER
LAS VEGAS, NV - APRIL 24: Andy Serkis attends the 2018 CinemaCon - Warner Bros. Pictures "The Big Picture" an exclusive presentation held at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on April 24, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Michael Tran/FilmMagic)
Serkis and his performance capture studio The Imaginarium have partnered with "mixed reality" company Magic Leap to create a new augmented reality experience that will feature Serkis creating a brand-new fantasy character, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In addition to Serkis' new performance for the platform, the partnership will also include Serkis' Imaginarium creating even more content for Magic Leap, and allowing third-party developers to use the Imaginarium motion capture stage in London and other resources for their own creations.
See the full story here: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/andy-serkis-will-invade-your-world-as-a-new-augmented-reality-motion-capture-character
Can Virtual Reality Save the Movie Theater?
Here’s how Oculus Venues works: You strap on your Oculus VR headset, which you can do at home or school or anywhere with a solid internet connection. You create a little avatar—mine is a cowboy with a giant handlebar mustache—and log onto the Oculus Venues live-stream. You’ll appear in a pretty impressive facsimile of a movie theater, with a big screen in front of everybody (though, much like real life, you can look around anywhere you like).
When you arrive, you’ll be slotted into the best available seat in the "theater," but you can teleport around as much as you like. What you can’t do is take a seat someone else is already occupying. (The 7 p.m. Van Wilder live-stream hovered between 30 and 40 people—an unusually high number, according to several of my fellow moviegoers.) And most importantly: Unless you choose to disable it, your microphone will be on the entire time, which allows you—and anybody else!—to broadcast anything you want to say to the rest of the theater.
As far as I can tell, the community is self-policing.
See the full story here: https://www.gq.com/story/can-virtual-reality-save-the-movie-theater
Click Here to Kill Everybody, Bruce Schneier
It may sound like publishing clickbait, but I’m trying to make the point that the internet now affects the world in a direct physical manner, and that changes everything. It’s no longer about risks to data, but about risks to life and property. And the title really points out that there’s physical danger here, and that things are different than they were just five years ago.
It’s really the internet of things plus the computers plus the services plus the large databases being built plus the internet companies plus us. I just shortened all this to “Internet+.”
Your book largely focuses on the US. Do you think it will take the lead here?
I focus on the US because it’s where the major tech companies are located and it’s the regime I know best, but I do talk about Europe a fair bit as well. The European Union is the regulatory superpower on this planet right now. I think it’s going to advance further and faster than the US. In the US, I look more to the states, and specifically Massachusetts, New York, and California.