Disney is Developing a “Moving Floor” to Enhance the Feeling of Walking in Virtual Reality
First off, the patent suggests using a vibration technology that will create more or less friction to the user’s feet. This will allow the platform to influence the direction of the user so that they will not contact any walls or other users.
Another method is using a number of rotating disks that can be tilted to influence the direction of the user. Each disk can be rotated independently or as a whole to help guide the user from any obstruction in the physical room.
Finally, there is a solution that involves magnets on the user’s shows and on a “treadmill” beneath the floor. As the user walks, that would move the magnetic treadmill, so the user could walk forever and stay in the same spot in the room.
See the full story here: https://wdwnt.com/2018/08/disney-is-developing-a-moving-floor-to-enhance-the-feeling-of-walking-in-virtual-reality/
UCLA researcher uses virtual reality to understand how animals perceive space
When healthy, we don’t appreciate this gift. However, spatial memory is one of the first functions to deteriorate in several neurological conditions including epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. That is why UCLA neurophysicist Mayank Mehta devotes his career to studying how the brain, and especially the cells in the region called the hippocampus, learns to create our perception of space and time.
As Mehta notes, all animals (including humans) “agree 100 percent on concepts of abstract space and time.” And all animals calculate where they are in space in the same way or else they would bump into each other and the objects around them.
Such universal perception of space-time is possible because a set of hippocampal neurons, called “place cells,” fire in an orderly fashion as any animal navigates a jungle, a living room or a maze, laying down a map of space-time without even trying.
How do they turn light, sounds, smells, for example, into a universal perception of space and time?
To resolve this question, Mehta concluded, one would need to tease apart the different sensory stimuli that constitute space-time. This is impossible to do in the real world, but it can be accomplished readily in the virtual world.
In one experiment, the researchers compared the rats’ ability to locate rewards hidden in a real world maze — where rats can use sights, sounds and odors to navigate — with their ability to locate rewards in a virtual maze, where they’re limited to using only visual cues.
First though, an interdisciplinary team that included UCLA students in neuroscience, psychology, computer science, engineering and physics had to build the virtual apparatus from scratch. They designed the hardware, including a ball-shaped treadmill, and trained the rats to become comfortable in virtual reality and to play virtual games.
The findings were surprising. The rats in the virtual maze found hidden rewards as skillfully as rats in a real maze. Rats, it turned out, can see quite well.
These studies demonstrate that the brain needs inputs from multiple sensory factors to construct a working spatial map, Mehta said. If the vision says you are moving in space, but the sounds and smells tell otherwise, as is the case in virtual reality, the neural activity becomes very strange.
See the full story here: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ucla-researcher-uses-virtual-reality-to-understand-how-animals-perceive-space
Event Planning Platform AllSeated Launches New VR Visualization Tool
AllSeated, an event planning and coordination platform, has launched a new VR tool which allows for one to one visualization of floorplans and venues for high end event planning.
AllSeated’s new VR visualization tool allows for virtual walk through a venue before locking down plans, offering up a better perspective of what the venue will look like once everything comes together. Currently, over 100 venues are enabled for the new VR platform, AllSeated says, and projects having more than 1,000 venues in their VR library by 2019.
AllSeated claims to have the capability to customize every detail of a specific event space such as furniture choices, colors, table linens and placeware, and ornament designs. This is meant to allow a client to fully see the space well in advanced of an event to allow for planned adjustments rather than the day of an event. The application is compatible with a range of VR headsets specifically noted are the Oculus Go, Gear VR, and Vive.
Alongside the VR components, AllSeated also includes seating charts, the ability to track RSVPs and menu choices, timeline creation, task lists for vendors, and offers guest mobile check-in. Venue clients can access event layout and design, invite collaborators, and customize details while using a VR headset as though they were at the venue themselves. This form of event planning is meant to make the process more time and cost effective for planners and provide clients a more enjoyable planning experience.
See the full story here: https://www.roadtovr.com/event-planning-platform-allseated-launches-new-vr-visualization-tools/
Nickelodeon Developing Augmented Reality Series ‘Meet The Voxels’
Nickelodeon is upping their game when it comes to original programming. The kid-centric cable channel is developing Meet the Voxels (wt), an original virtual and augmented reality series from the mind of Chris Young, Senior Vice President of Nickelodeon’s Entertainment Lab.
This marks Nickelodeon’s first project that will use its use of cutting-edge virtual cinema technology, including real-time full body and facial performance capture, which takes innovative and immersive storytelling to another level.
Meet the Voxels takes kids behind the scenes of a video game world and follows a family of video-game characters, the Voxels, on their adventures on-and-off-duty. The family members are: Hunter, the 13-year-old star of a laser-tag video game; Maude, a 16-year-old girl fighting to pop as many bubbles as she can;their younger brother Cody who has not found his video game calling yet; Mom, a popular street fighter in her game; and Dad, a ’90s-era classic console game character who quit the business years ago. All the characters currently have working names. Nothing is set in stone yet as the series is still in development.
See the full story here: https://deadline.com/2018/08/nickelodeon-meet-the-voxels-virtual-augmented-reality-1202438400/
Nokia’s Snake Game Slithers into Augmented Reality via Facebook AR
If you're a part of Generation X or a Millennial, there's a good chance that the first mobile game you played was Snake on an old school Nokia phone. Now, you can relive that nostalgia of monochrome and push buttons in augmented reality with the Facebook Camera.
HMD Global, the company behind the current iteration of Nokia phones, has developed two augmented reality experiences for Facebook's platform. First, there's Snake Mask, which adorns users' faces with a giant pixelated snake mask.
The other AR experience is called Snake Real World, which lets users play the classic game in their physical environment.
See the full story here: https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/nokias-snake-game-slithers-into-augmented-reality-via-facebook-ar-0186318/
Augmented Reality Shopping Service Launched
Rather than using augmented reality to bring individual products to a specific location for visualization, this approach takes the consumer into the entire shopping environment through AR.
The service, called AR Market, gives mobile shoppers an online shopping experience similar to being in a physical store. Products can be viewed via 360-degree AR videos. Lifestyle products, fashion and consumer electronics are featured.
Plans are to add next-generation technologies, featuring AR, artificial intelligence and 3D modeling.
See the full story here: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/323117/augmented-reality-shopping-service-launched.html
VR porn booths let Japan’s randy cyber-pervs watch virtual reality smut for just £10 an hour
But Japan has taken this immersive medium a step further, creating dedicated booths for watching virtual reality smut in peace.
The booths were discovered by sex tech blogger Charlie Forrest, who wrote: "Space is a valuable commodity, but it would seem that in Tokyo at least, so too is the privacy to masturbate."
These sex booths were created by a company called Soft On Demand, a notorious Japanese VR porn firm.
"And yes you might be right, and we didn’t ask, but we think that’s a vacuum cleaner in the picture too."
The booths are located in Tokyo's infamous Akihabara district, an area known for its geek culture and seedy stores.
The rooms are reportedly sound-proofed, but it's not clear how regularly they're cleaned – or whether the VR headsets are even wiped down.
See the full story here: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6926107/vr-porn-booths-tokyo-japan-virtual-reality-videos/