When you’re actually in a place, the world reacts to you as you move your head around: light bounces off surfaces in different ways and you see things from different perspectives. To help create this more realistic sense of presence in VR, we’ve been experimenting with Light fields.
To demonstrate the potential of this technology, we’re releasing “Welcome to Light Fields,” a free app available on Steam VR for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
This is possible because a light field records all the different rays of light coming into a volume of space. To record them, we modified a GoPro Odyssey Jump camera, bending it into a vertical arc of 16 cameras mounted on a rotating platform.
Fandango’s video-on-demand service, FandangoNOW, has signed a deal with Disney’s digital movie service, Movies Anywhere, bringing the total of online retailers that have joined up to five. That list includes Apple’s iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, and Walmart’s Vudu. FandangoNOW customers can now access movies from major studios via the Movies Anywhere app and website. Movies Anywhere provides access to nearly 7,500 digital movies, some purchasable and others redeemable via digital codes.
As VR display resolutions become more packed with pixels and new controller types such as Valve’s Knuckles dangle tantalizingly in front of us, one thing that often goes overlooked is haptic feedback. There are plenty of companies out there working to help define the first real haptic standard outside of tiny vibration motors seen already in VR motion controllers, and now it appears Microsoft can be counted among them with their newly revealed CLAW controller prototype.
The prototype contains a servo motor coupled with a force sensor, which imparts force on the index finger during grasping and touching. Using HTC’s Vive Tracker for positional tracking, the prototype also incorporates a vibrating actuator at the index fingertip to mimic virtual textures. While somewhat less exciting in its implications, CLAW can also reconfigure to a trigger mode that delivers haptic force feedback to simulate pulling a trigger on a gun.
Santa Monica-based film and TV studio, Lionsgate, is opening theme parks in South Korea and China. And of course it wouldn’t be a proper theme park now days unless there’s VR.
Dubbed Lionsgate Entertainment World, the themed parks are set to debut in the next couple years.
Next year, Lionsgate will be opening their first indoor theme park in Hengqin, China. According to the LA Times, the 237,000-square foot entertainment complex will feature a VR motorcycle simulation ride based on the Twilightvampire movies.
...expect Hunger Games and Twilight...also .... Gods of Egypt, while a flop at the domestic box office, will take advantage of a larger international fan base and debut a VR ride of its own at the park.
In 2020, Lionsgate will followup ... with an outdoor park in South Korea in the tourism hub of Jeju Island. ... Hunger Games build outs as well as a horror-themed area with attractions based on Saw and Cabin in the Woods.
Lionsgate has already opened their first Hunger Games-themed land in Dubai’s new Motiongate park back in October.
“The world’s highest resolution (18 megapixel, 1443 ppi) OLED-on-glass display was developed. White OLED with color filter structure was used for high-density pixelization, and an n-type LTPS backplane was chosen for higher electron mobility compared to mobile phone displays. A custom high bandwidth driver IC was fabricated. Foveated driving logic for VR and AR applications was implemented.”
As first reported by OLED-info, an advanced copy of the event’s schedule maintains that a talk featuring Google hardware engineer Carlin Vieri will be taking place May 22nd.
The talk is named simply “18 Mpixel 4.3-in. 1443-ppi 120-Hz OLED Display for Wide-Field-of-View High-Acuity Head-Mounted Displays.” Such a display, OLED-Info postulates, could land somewhere around a resolution of 5500 × 3000. If correct, it has a clear advantage over even the highest resolution panels seen in current headsets such as the Samsung Odyssey or the upcoming HTC Vive Pro, both of which pack dual 1440 × 1600 resolution, 3.5 inch AMOLEDs at 90Hz.
The Virtual Reality (VR) Club hosted UC San Diego’s inaugural HackXR, a unique event for aspiring developers, from Feb. 23 to Feb. 25. The three-day hackathon focused solely on extended reality, with workshops and game development centered around virtual, augmented, and mixed realities.
The hackathon had four workshops for participants of all experience levels, including a mandatory “VR Design” workshop to help teams create an extended reality (XR) game. Limited to 100 participants, the event included 19 teams of three to five students and had 10 mentors, 27 volunteers, and 11 sponsors to guide the hackers.
...winners for the four categories—Best Overall Hack, Best Medical Hack, Best Beginner Hack, and Best Multiplayer Hack.
Russian mixed reality supplier HoloGroup has developed a holographic system in collaboration with the Russian branch of global energy giant Enel. Holographic images will be used during the process of dismantling a power line at Nevinnomysk Hydropower Station Armavir, which is due for repair. HoloGroup has developed mixed reality systems for a dozen major companies in various sectors.
Another Russian startup, WayRay, is one of the few local companies to come up with technology suitable for the mass market. Its product, a holographic AR navigation system for vehicles, is similar to systems currently being tested by major global automotive companies.
This weekend at the Philadelphia Flower Show, over 500 event-goers participated in a new AARP augmented reality (AR) experience. The enhanced version of reality allowed attendees to use a tablet to view and interact with computer images of an animated game aimed at a wall of the AARP Block Party exhibit.
Few older adults have used virtual reality and many are unfamiliar with augmented reality, according to recent research from AARP.
"Augmented reality experiences largely show up in the gaming industry, so it's exciting to see AARP offer this experience to the 50+ community," stated Bill Johnston-Walsh, AARP PA State Director. "Video games are truly ageless. Those of us 50 and older play them for the same reasons everyone else does. They're fun, enhance our digital skills, and can help us prevent social isolation."
AARP donated $5,000 to the William Way LGBT Community Center. William Way was selected because it shatters stereotypes about aging, challenges outdated beliefs and sparks new solutions that help the LGBT community in the Greater Philadelphia region.
Sony opened the doors yesterday on the Wow Factory, its name for the wide-ranging exhibit that blends art and technology borne from its experimental, Japan-based Future Lab program.
The core premise is that with a mix of smart sensors that perform depth detection and motion tracking with a high-quality light source, you can create the closest thing we have today to interactive holograms. The projectors create objects out of light that typically exist on a flat plane either in front of the projector or below on a tabletop. You can interact with these virtual objects using your hands because the projector’s software is able to recognize and track your movements. Effectively, Sony has figured out a way to make augmented reality without requiring you wear bulky goggles or goofy smart glasses.
Going one step further, Sony has designed custom demos that make use of real-world objects.
...it’s also a great example of how to take an alternative approach to AR. Something like this is both more accessible and can be experienced collectively,...
Fans who want the full nostalgia trip, who want to wring every Easter egg out of the experience, will eventually be able to pause the movie and frame-by-frame through it, looking for the flux capacitor on the dashboard, checking the plates, and scanning for extra bonus material. But in the middle of the action, even to people who’ve never seen the Back to the Future movies and aren’t vibing on the connection, the car doesn’t need explaining. It’s just a sleek piece of visual energy, one breathless element among dozens of others. It’s not a citation or a list. It’s an effortless, integrated piece of the action.
That dynamic stretches throughout Ready Player One, scripted by Cline and X-Men: The Last Stand writer Zak Penn, and directed by Spielberg as a whiplash-fast tear through a world-spanning, all-encompassing video game.
But the film improves significantly on the book by prioritizing the story over the signifiers. The hardcore pop-culture crowd that is this movie’s ultimate intended audience will have plenty to pore over and pick apart in this film. But the story moves briskly enough, and with enough giant-sized, screen-friendly excitement that it doesn’t feel like it’s aimed solely and specifically at them.
Cline’s book assumes everyone will know a DeLorean is cool; Spielberg’s film assumes the same thing about a teenage protagonist who loves playing video games.
He’s more a customized audience avatar than a real character, ...
Spielberg’s signature sentiment is operating in full force, as he builds up one highly symbolic confrontation solely for the feelings of triumph and justice it creates, and then has it come to exactly nothing.
All those feelings of love and obsession came through clearly on the page. But on the screen, they’re bigger and better, because they’re so much more intense, and so much closer to the memorable images that turned Cline into an obsessive in the first place.
Santa Monica-based film and TV studio, Lionsgate, is opening theme parks in South Korea and China. And of course it wouldn’t be a proper theme park now days unless there’s VR.
Fans who want the full nostalgia trip, who want to wring every Easter egg out of the experience, will eventually be able to pause the movie and frame-by-frame through it, looking for the flux capacitor on the dashboard, checking the plates, and scanning for extra bonus material. But in the middle of the action, even to people who’ve never seen the Back to the Future movies and aren’t vibing on the connection, the car doesn’t need explaining. It’s just a sleek piece of visual energy, one breathless element among dozens of others. It’s not a citation or a list. It’s an effortless, integrated piece of the action.