Now a new film using virtual reality technology and the latest in 3-D, 360-degree, high defnition video, drones and a unique soundscape will immerse people in the landscape from the comfort of the WA Maritime Museum.
Western Australian filmmaker Briege Whitehead of White Spark Pictures partnered with BAFTA award-winning director Phil Harper who is known for his work on David Attenborough’s Great Barrier Reef VR Dive to produce the virtual reality adventure.
A slightly more rewarding VR event was the eerie and disturbing 1943: Berlin Blitz. Film-maker David Whelan has taken an in-flight recording made by BBC correspondent Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, who went with his sound recordist on what we might today call a “ride-along” on a Lancaster bombing raid on Berlin, commenting on everything as he did so and creating a remarkable documentary record. Whelan recreates around this audio track the experience of being inside the bomber, listening to the pilots and navigators talking tersely to each other and then, on the return journey, laughing and joking in the very midst of carnage. It really is very strange and quite nightmarish, especially when you see the sound man recording Vaughan-Thomas’s words and the ambient noise of the plane on what looks like a little Dansette record player. It is surreal, menacing and induced in me a sense of disorientation and almost panic at being plunged into this uncanny world.
What does Akonia do? It makes thin, lightweight, low-cost, and transparent lenses onto which images can be projected. According to the company’s website, it has “over 200 patents pertaining to holographic systems and materials.” http://akoniaholographics.com/index.html
Jaunt made its name as a creator of 360-degree videos and cinematic VR experiences. But under new management, the company has shifted its focus to supplying mixed reality technology to other companies. Today, it‘s showing off some of the cool research it has been doing in volumetric capture, such as creating 360-degree digital avatars for augmented reality applications.
Jaunt demonstrated how it can capture a 360-degree image of a person with six Intel RealSense depth cameras. Jaunt stitches the images from the cameras into a single 3D avatar, and then inserts the avatars into augmented reality streams that can be sent to mobile devices in real time.
“Our objective is to make streaming of experiences like this very easy and portable,” said Arthur van Hoff, chief technology officer and founder of Jaunt, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We have been strong in 360-degree video and immersive content for VR, and now we are figuring out what we can contribute for AR experiences.”
Jaunt still has a big VR film studio in Santa Monica, California, where it puts to use its expertise in telling stories in XR. In the past, it has launched more than 350 productions, including numerous virtual reality films. But today, the company only starts work on a VR film if a partner pays it to do so.
...in 2016, Jaunt hired Kliavkoff, a former Hearst executive, as its CEO. And he has steered the company beyond the consumer VR space, transforming it into a B2B-focused company that helps partners deliver new forms of XR content spanning augmented, virtual, and mixed realities.
Jaunt’s investors include the Walt Disney Company, Evolution Media Partners, CMC, Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, SMG, Axel Springer, ProSiebenSat.1 SE, The Madison Square Garden Company, Google Ventures, Peter Gotcher, and Sky. Jaunt currently has 100 employees.
With the advent of augmented reality (AR), it’s now possible to intervene on street art itself, sharing digital easter eggs with those who seek them. U.K. artist INSA creates trippy GIF murals for his fans to hunt down around the world; Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobrahas experimented with the technology, too.
This summer, Escif took AR graffiti indoors for an installation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The show, “Encore un jour banane pour le poisson-rêve”—or “Another Banana Day for the Dream-Fish”—explores the wonder, inventiveness, and anxiety of childhood, featuring works by over 30 international artists, including Keita Miyazaki, Kiki Smith, Ugo Rondinone, and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
American, 1928–1987
Follow
Obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture, and mechanical (re)production, Pop artist Andy Warhol created some of the most iconic images of the 20th …
Escif’s installation for the show, entre l’amour et la peur (2018), at first resembles a series of black scribbles dashed on a large white wall, as if an unattended child had just discovered the potential of the Sharpie marker. In fact, children are responsible: The spontaneous marks are the result of a group of 6- to 8-year-olds engaging in “exercises in microvandalism,” as described by Escif, in which they drew on printed pictures of sculptures exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo. Those pictures were then uploaded to a custom-built app, Graffiti Yoga. Download the app and hold up your phone to a scribble, and the underlying sculpture is revealed.
...we need to ask: ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen in this algorithm once it starts interacting with others?’ The problem is we don’t even have a word for this concept, much less a science to study it.”
Research scientists at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab have built a prototype touchscreen device that’s neither smartphone nor tablet but kind of both — and more besides. The device, which they’ve christened the MagicScroll, is inspired by ancient (papyrus/paper/parchment) scrolls so it takes a rolled-up, cylindrical form factor — enabled by a flexible 7.5inch touchscreen housed in the casing.
This novel form factor, which they made using 3D printing, means the device can be used like an erstwhile Rolodex (remember those?!) for flipping through on-screen contacts quickly by turning a physical rotary wheel built into the edge of the device. (They’ve actually added one on each end.)
Then, when more information or a deeper dive is required, the user is able to pop the screen out of the casing to expand the visible display real estate. The flexible screen on the prototype has a resolution of 2K. So more mid-tier mobile phone of yore than crisp iPhone Retina display at this nascent stage.
They also imagine it being used as a dictation device or pointing device, as well as a voice phone. And the prototype includes a camera — which allows the device to be controlled using gestures, similar to Nintendo’s ‘Wiimote’ gesture system.
Less than 20 days after the launch of Magic Leap One, Mapbox has jumped at the chance to provide its map services to Magic Leap developers through its Maps SDK for Unity.
Dubbed the Magic Maps SDK, the toolkit enables developers to pull 3D vector maps, satellite maps, and elevation data of any location in the world into their apps. The Unity plugin takes advantage of the close integration between Magic Leap's Lumin OS and Unity to make bringing map visualization into apps easy and seamless.
"Magic Leap has a 'zero iteration' feature with a live remote to Unity. So when tweaking the size of the map or any other small change, the update appears immediately in the headset."
Despite the recent release of Google Maps API for location-based AR apps, Mapbox has positioned itself as the go-to provider of location services for augmented reality developers, with Snapchat as its most-prominent AR client.
Beat Games, the Czech Republic-based indie developers behind smash hit rhythm game Beat Saber, are aiming to make a big splash in Asia with a newly revealed dedicated arcade machine.
The cabinet was created in partnership with SKonec Entertainment, a Seoul-based company that recently opened a VR multiplex called VR SQUARE.
The arcade cabinet itself features a monitor for spectating, an overhead cable management system, and appears to be powered by a HTC Vive headset, as evidenced by an image reported by Korean publication MK News. An alternative image obtained by VR Focus also features a Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headset in play.
The developers say in a recent tweet that the arcade machine’s public debut will begin this September at KVRF in Seoul, and the GTI Expo in Guangzhou, China.
Luna, the storybook puzzle game from indie developer Funomena, will launch on the platform this fall, the studio confirmed today.
The game features varied puzzles in which you try and help a young bird find its way back home. You’ll be linking up stars to form musical notes, reshaping forests and creating lilypads for frogs to navigate (aww!). The main draw, at least for us, is the game’s amazing visuals, which look like they’ve come straight out of a children’s fairy tale
Luna’s been out on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive for some time already, though we always hope that a PSVR release will help a game find a bigger audience. That should definitely be the case here.
Now a new film using virtual reality technology and the latest in 3-D, 360-degree, high defnition video, drones and a unique soundscape will immerse people in the landscape from the comfort of the WA Maritime Museum.
A slightly more rewarding VR event was the eerie and disturbing 1943: Berlin Blitz. Film-maker David Whelan has taken an in-flight recording made by BBC correspondent Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, who went with his sound recordist on what we might today call a “ride-along” on a Lancaster bombing raid on Berlin, commenting on everything as he did so and creating a remarkable documentary record. Whelan recreates around this audio track the experience of being inside the bomber, listening to the pilots and navigators talking tersely to each other and then, on the return journey, laughing and joking in the very midst of carnage. It really is very strange and quite nightmarish, especially when you see the sound man recording Vaughan-Thomas’s words and the ambient noise of the plane on what looks like a little Dansette record player. It is surreal, menacing and induced in me a sense of disorientation and almost panic at being plunged into this uncanny world.
What does Akonia do? It makes thin, lightweight, low-cost, and transparent lenses onto which images can be projected. According to the company’s website, it has “over 200 patents pertaining to holographic systems and materials.” http://akoniaholographics.com/index.html
With the advent of augmented reality (AR), it’s now possible to intervene on street art itself, sharing digital easter eggs with those who seek them. U.K. artist INSA creates trippy GIF murals for his fans to hunt down around the world; Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra has experimented with the technology, too.
...we need to ask: ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen in this algorithm once it starts interacting with others?’ The problem is we don’t even have a word for this concept, much less a science to study it.”
Less than 20 days after the launch of Magic Leap One, Mapbox has jumped at the chance to provide its map services to Magic Leap developers through its Maps SDK for Unity.
Beat Games, the Czech Republic-based indie developers behind smash hit rhythm game Beat Saber, are aiming to make a big splash in Asia with a newly revealed dedicated arcade machine.