What’s more, Oculus is shipping the Go with a full-featured web browser. Many providers of adult VR fare, including BadoinkVR (website not safe for work), already stream their content to VR headset browsers. Naughty America went even further, and launched a VR-optimized site (website not safe for work) the day after the Oculus Go went on sale.
For that site, Naughty America is using WebVR, an emerging standard for web-based VR experiences. WebVR is supported by a number of stakeholders, including headset manufacturers and browser makers like Mozilla, with the hopes of making it easier for developers to distribute immersive content that works on a wide variety of devices. Porn producers could be one of the earliest beneficiaries of the technology, since they are shut out of traditional app stores.
Portland-based Big Room Studios and the Yarn Corp. are holding a showing of their virtual reality production “A Shared Space” Friday in the city’s Congress Square from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The production is billed as an “immersive 360-degree experience” that tells the story of two friends who grew up in the world’s largest refugee camp in Kenya, and have since made their way to Lewiston.
The piece was created by Rockland filmmaker Daniel Quintanella, along with the aforementioned friends Shuab Ahmed Mahad and Hilowle Aden.
At the Friday showing, members of the public will be invited to wear headsets and navigate through 13 short videos displaying parts of the immigrant friends’ lives.
Edited by Woodrow Barfield, Professor Emeritus, USA Editor, Virtual Reality Journal and Marc Blitz, Oklahoma City University School of Law, US
Virtual and augmented reality raise significant questions for law and policy. When should virtual world activities or augmented reality images count as protected First Amendment ‘speech’, and when are they instead a nuisance or trespass? When does copying them infringe intellectual property laws? When should a person (or computer) face legal consequences for allegedly harmful virtual acts? The Research Handbook on the Law of Virtual and Augmented Reality addresses these questions and others, drawing upon free speech doctrine, criminal law, issues of data protection and privacy, legal rights for increasingly intelligent avatars, and issues of jurisdiction within virtual and augmented reality worlds.
Qualcomm Inc. plans to unveil a dedicated chip to power standalone virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets as it seeks to break into new businesses beyond smartphones, according to people familiar with the matter.
The announcement will happen as early as next week at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California, the people said. They asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t yet public. The chip, to be called Snapdragon XR1, will be a system-on-a-chip with a main processing unit, a graphics processor, security functions and components to handle artificial intelligence tasks. The chip will also tackle voice control and head-tracking interaction with headsets.
Google and LG Display have joined forces to design the clearest OLED display to date. The 4.3-inch screen, which Google recently revealed at Display Week, is designed to push the boundaries of VR image quality with an incredible 1,443 ppi resolution. For comparison, Japan Display Inc unveiled its slightly smaller 1,001 ppi LCD screen earlier this month, which outclassed both the Oculus Go (538 ppi) and HTC's Vive Pro (615 ppi).
The display offers an impressive 120Hz refresh rate, which is also a step up from the 90Hz achieved on Oculus Rift and Vive Pro. Measuring in at 4,800 x 3,480 pixels per eye, these numbers indicate a serious jump in visual fidelity, but it's still nowhere near to matching human optics. In a research paper, Google's Staff Hardware Engineer Carlin Vieri said humans are capable of seeing 9,600 x 9,000 pixels per eye, and that our field of view can reach roughly 160 degrees horizontally and 150 degrees vertically. Google's prototype screen can manage 120 degrees.
To bridge that gap, Google researchers have implemented a technique called "foveated rendering." It processes whatever image the user is looking at in high resolution, and allows objects in a viewer's peripheral vision to lose focus. One benefit of this technique is that it shrinks the amount of data processing placed on the GPU.
At this stage, consumers will need to wait for Google and LG Display to eliminate issues such as lag, latency, and motion-blur before making their prototype available to everyone.
The first new announcement is a request for proposals from academics eager to study false news on the platform. Researchers who are accepted will get data and money; the public will get, ideally, elusive answers to how much false news actually exists and how much it matters. The second announcement is the launch of a public education campaign that will utilize the top of Facebook’s homepage, perhaps the most valuable real estate on the internet. Users will be taught what false news is and how they can stop its spread. Facebook knows it is at war, and it wants to teach the populace how to join its side of the fight. The third announcement—and the one the company seems most excited about—is the release of a nearly 12-minute video called “Facing Facts,” a title that suggests both the topic and the repentant tone.
The film, which is embedded at the bottom of this post, stars the product and engineering managers who are combating false news, and was directed by Morgan Neville, who won an Academy Award for 20 Feet from Stardom. That documentary was about backup singers, and this one essentially is too. It’s a rare look at the people who run News Feed: the nerds you’ve never heard of who run perhaps the most powerful algorithm in the world.
Intellectual property laws are probably among the most impacted branches of law, not only because AR/MR is a much-hyped, newfangled technology that has been attracting a great deal of funding for research and development, but also because it is a new medium.
Using Virtual Reality (VR), teacher training can be facilitated in a comfortable and individual virtual space where teachers can practice pedagogical approaches and new ways of integrating Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at their convenience and as frequently as possible. It reduces the hassle of high costs associated with training venues, per diems during training periods, travel to training sites or missing school days. While introduction of technology does not completely eliminate the need for in-person and personalized trainings, the VR for teacher training pilot was first envisioned as the project began sketching out a sustainability plan of the existing Connect To Learn Myanmar project, launched in 2015.
Connect To Learn Myanmar is a project headed by Ericsson in partnership with the Earth Institute and with funding support from Qualcomm® Wireless Reach™. It provides ICT solutions to 31 schools with in-person teacher training under the broader vision of increasing quality of instruction and student participation, especially for girls, in secondary schools in marginalized communities. With the project period ending in 2019 and funding support for in-person teacher trainings ending as a result, the project proposed digital content housed through a VR environment, which can continually be used by teachers even after project wrap-up with Ministry of Education oversight.
Facebook Reality Labs, the new name for what was previously Oculus Research, is at Display Week 2018 today talking about its latest work in VR optics. During his talk this morning, the team’s Douglas Lanman showcased the company’s latest prototype to utilize varifocal displays.
A varifocal display alters the focus to match the way your eyes see in the real world, offering a more comfortable experience. Lanman revealed that Oculus had been working with the tech for three and a half years now, producing a number of prototypes in that time.
...video showcases the third prototype to incorporate this design, which Lanman described as having everything “dialed to 11”, with eye-tracking “better than anything you’d ever expect” and displays moving “faster than the human eye.”
The final video shows that same prototype running without its shell. Lanman described it has “nearly vibration-free, nearly silent”, suggesting Oculus is closing in on perfecting the design.
Google and LG Display have joined forces to design the clearest OLED display to date. The 4.3-inch screen, which Google recently revealed at Display Week, is designed to push the boundaries of VR image quality with an incredible 1,443 ppi resolution. For comparison, Japan Display Inc unveiled its slightly smaller 1,001 ppi LCD screen earlier this month, which outclassed both the Oculus Go (538 ppi) and HTC's Vive Pro (615 ppi).
What’s more, Oculus is shipping the Go with a full-featured web browser. Many providers of adult VR fare, including BadoinkVR (website not safe for work), already stream their content to VR headset browsers. Naughty America went even further, and launched a VR-optimized site (website not safe for work) the day after the Oculus Go went on sale.
By Seth Koenig, BDN Staff • 
Using Virtual Reality (VR), teacher training can be facilitated in a comfortable and individual virtual space where teachers can practice pedagogical approaches and new ways of integrating Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at their convenience and as frequently as possible. It reduces the hassle of high costs associated with training venues, per diems during training periods, travel to training sites or missing school days. While introduction of technology does not completely eliminate the need for in-person and personalized trainings, the VR for teacher training pilot was first envisioned as the project began sketching out a sustainability plan of the existing Connect To Learn Myanmar project, launched in 2015.