philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

SNAP TEAM BRINGING AUGMENTED REALITY FESTIVAL TO ORLANDO THIS FALL

Artists include Miami-based multidisciplinary artist Felice Grodin, Turkish digital artist Can Büyükberber, Los Angeles artist Nancy Baker Cahill, German street artist Mark Gmehling, and Central Florida installation artists Mark Gerstein and Synthestruct, among others.

A CITY UNSEEN app will let users enjoy the full range of art installations and immersive AR experiences at each installation site.

See the full story here: http://bungalower.com/2018/07/24/snap-team-bringing-augmented-reality-festival-to-orlando-this-fall/

Epson Expands Moverio Smart Glasses Portfolio and Brings Leading Augmented Reality Platform to Industrial Users

Skylight, Upskill's industrial intuitive software platform interface allows hands-on workers to get the job done faster and more accurately by connecting them to the people, information and equipment they need while remaining hands-free to focus on their tasks and their tools.

Designed to be worn in environments that require safety glasses, the new Moverio BT-350 ANSI model includes indoor and outdoor safety shields that meet ANSI Z87.1 safety certification requirements. Featuring a flexible and durable hinge-based headset, the Moverio BT-350 ANSI smart glasses can be worn comfortably on a wide range of head sizes.

See the full story here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/epson-expands-moverio-smart-glasses-portfolio-and-brings-leading-augmented-reality-platform-to-industrial-users-300685364.html

Disney Research Creates Avatars That Can Strike a Pose to Match a Person’s Movements in Augmented Reality

A new augmented reality framework from Disney Research could make it possible for fans to take selfies with an augmented reality Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, or Iron Man that mimic the user's poses.

Called AR Poser, the prototype experience relies on image recognition to anchor the virtual content and computer vision to identify a person in the scene and estimate the pose. After identifying the person, the application, built with Vuforia's AR platform, then displays a digital avatar with the closest pose match among a set of predefined poses.

The 28-page research publication, co-authored by Robert Sumner, associate director of Disney Research, and fellow researchers Gokçen Çimen, Christoph Maurhofer, and Martin Guay, is available for download from Disney Research's website.

"At the heart of our solution is a set of predefined poses (selfie poses) utilized to reduce ambiguities," wrote the team. "In a nutshell, our method consists of two reliable steps: we first perform 2D pose estimation, and then perform a projection onto the 3D subspace to find the closest matching 3D pose. With our method, we are able to automatically create augmented reality selfies for a variety of different poses."

The solution is not unlike recent research from Facebook's full-body AR camera effects, published earlier this year and slated to arrive soon for the Facebook app.

Applied to film promotion, AR Poser could be integrated into movie posters and make it possible for moviegoers to create personalized selfies with digital characters (as opposed to posing with the cardboard cutouts found in movie theater lobbies, as I've done in the past).

See the full story here: https://next.reality.news/news/disney-research-creates-avatars-can-strike-pose-match-persons-movements-augmented-reality-0186149/

Supermedium scores $1.1M in seed funding for its web-first vision for virtual reality

Supermedium, a recent Y Combinator graduate, wants a more open future for virtual reality, one that’s built on the web. The company launched earlier this year and now it’s raising some seed funding as it looks to keep things moving along.

Supermedium was founded by a couple of Mozilla alums that were behind some of the company’s foundational work on the WebVR standard. WebVR has been admittedly slow to catch on as major stakeholders have largely been looking to direct nascent attention toward their sandboxed platforms and stores rather than to something so democratic as a browser that can work with all major headsets.

The process of getting up-and-running in desktop WebVR might just mean navigating to a particular URL and tossing on your headset. It’s really not much more difficult than that, and Mozilla has already introduced some early projects that show just how simple it is. As more and more momentum aligns behind standalone systems, the Supermedium browser exists as a bespoke solution for VR devices that is structured around VR controls in VR environments.

The startup sees the shift to WebVR as an inevitability; now the company says their challenge is staying lean and keeping their noses to the ground in a bid to gather an early passionate base of users that can grow exponentially as more substantial hardware comes to market.

Right now, Supermedium is focusing on higher-end systems like the Rift and HTC Vive that support positional tracking and hand controllers.

Supermedium certainly has some tough challenges ahead as the startup looks to work its way into a tight niche and find ways to promote WebVR development, but the company has some key cross-platform strengths of the web moving with it, which shouldn’t be underestimated.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/24/supermedium-scores-1-1m-in-seed-funding-for-its-web-first-vision-for-virtual-reality/

What it’s like to ride the world’s first augmented reality zipwire

Ras Al Khamiah is home to world’s longest zipwire, the Jebel Jais Flight zipline, named after the highest mountain in the UAE, from which thrill seekers are flung 1.7 miles at speeds of 100mph through a dramatic, if featureless desert-scape.

To capture the experience, the ride has been filmed in 3D, and loaded into a virtual reality headset, so that once riders have pushed off from the London tower, they are visually transported thousands of miles away.

The real zipline takes around two to three minutes to ride, while the London version is around 30 seconds. The experience is so odd, your brain spends a large part of that time trying to frantically work out what is happening.

It is also frankly terrifying to take the first leap of faith from the tower, when it feels like you are thousands of feet higher. Acrophobics should definitely give this one a miss.

See the full story here; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/07/22/like-ride-worlds-first-augmented-reality-zipwire/

RETINA Are Bringing Augmented Reality To Air Traffic Control Towers

Funded by the European Union, the RETINA project has investigated the potential and applicability of synthetic vision tools along with the use of AR display techniques for air traffic control staff. “Built upon technology developed by the SESAR project, RETINA aimed to enhance sight capabilities and situational awareness of air traffic controllers in control towers, allowing them to better manage traffic especially when bad weather sets in,” Said Professor Sara Bagassi, reports pddnet.

This is handled via head-mounted displays (HMDs) which display over the actual ‘out-of-the-window’ view and leverage the technology to superimpose the required information to the wear all while allowing them to maintain their view of the busy airport environment.

The validation campaign for the project was completed in the VR and Simulation Laboratory at the University of Bologna, Italy.

See the full story here: https://www.vrfocus.com/2018/07/retina-are-bringing-augmented-reality-to-air-traffic-control-towers/

Virtual Reality Exploration Of World Heritage Sites: Shaping The Future Of Travel

The concept is called the Open Heritage project, and it includes a collaboration between Google and a California-based nonprofit company, CyArk. The experiment started 15 years ago with CyArk's goal of wanting to create a permanent record of ancient locations under threat of natural events or desecration.

This project has created online 3D models of 26 heritage places in 18 countries. Some of which are:

• The 1000-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas Temple of Kukulcan in the Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico. According to a digital archaeologist, Chance Coughenour, this monument is one of the few circular structures discovered in the Mayan ruins. The Mayans, previously, had developed skills to study the sun, sunsets, sunrise, the Equinox, and the stars, so this structure has been believed to express spiritual evolution.
• The Roman city of Pompeii, buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
• The Native American cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in southern Colorado.
• The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin built in the 18th century.
• The Chavín de Huántar, a pre-Inca religious site, in north-central Peru. This structure is situated at an elevation of almost 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). This place does not attract many tourists because of its low accessibility, but the site is indeed incredible.
• The 1500-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas. This record was created in 2001 by CyArk’s founder, Ben Kacyra, an expatriate Iraqi engineer who now lives in California.
• Bagan in Myanmar in 2016. The place has ancient Buddhist temples, which were damaged by a massive earthquake. One of these temples has been closed to visitors. However, the VR equipment can easily give access to enthusiasts.

The plan is to add more locations in the next few months. Some of them are the Washington Monument and the World War I battleground at Flanders Fields in Belgium.

Virtual Reality at its Peak

One of the main advantages, in the fields of virtual, augmented and mixed realities is the complete virtual reconstruction of 3D environments, especially buildings in full detail. Even if the buildings of interest are physically damaged, they can be virtually reconstructed through probabilistic approximations.

Since 2003, CyArk has created more than 200 heritage sites, with the help of digital cameras, aerial drones and LIDAR, a 3D laser scanning equipment for light detection and ranging.

See the full story here: http://<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ryaWVQM53gQ" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Curious Directive Presents New Augmented Reality Show GASTRONOMIC

Experimental theatre-makers curious directive's new show, Gastronomic is an Augmented Reality dining experience set on board an Airbus A380. The show places the audience on a long-haul flight where passengers are looked after by three chefs. 40 audience members are treated to a five-course tasting menu, all simultaneously with their own in-flight screen.

As we fly over oceans, deserts and rainforests, food accompanies stories about why and how these chefs came to be here.

The cast includes Janet Etuk (Love, NT), Georgina Strawson (Frogman, curious directive) and Craig Hamilton (Jubilee, Chris Goode & co.) with dramaturgical support from National Theatre Immersive Storytelling Studio and dramaturgie by Stewart Pringle.

See the full story here: https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Curious-Directive-Presents-New-Augmented-Reality-Show-GASTRONOMIC-20180720

How to move AR projects from pilots to enterprise adoption

At the 2018 LiveWorx conference, Raman Sapra, digital business leader at Sasken, discussed why augmented reality adoption continues to lag behind.

So now, these three areas are very, very clear. But the point is, how do you make it pervasive? How do you ensure that a very large percentage of her employees are taking advantage of immersive reality? I think one thing that would really help is to build non-intrusive headgear so that it becomes easier for people to wear it and use it as a part of their daily jobs. Define the pilot, implement the pilot. Don't worry about whether it's a success or a failure. The key is to get going, get the learning, and then move forward to roll-outs.

See the full story here: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-move-ar-projects-from-pilots-to-enterprise-adoption/

7 great AR education apps for parents, teachers and students

See the full story here: https://www.gearbrain.com/7-ar-education-apps-teachers-2587980109.html