philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Google is Developing a VR Display With 10x More Pixels Than Today’s Headsets

[Philip Lelyveld note: Clay Bavor also mentioned that 20 ms latency or less must be achieved.]

At 20 megapixels per eye, this is beyond Michael Abrash’s prediction of 4Kx4K per eye displays by the year 2021.

“I’ve seen these in the lab, and it’s spectacular. It’s not even what we’re going to need in the ‘final display’” he said, referring to the sort of pixel density needed to match the limits of human vision, “but it’s a very large step in the right direction.”

Bavor went on to explain the performance challenges of 20 MP per eye at 90-120 fps, which works out at unreasonably high data rates of 50-100 Gb/sec. He briefly described how foveated rendering combined with eye tracking and other optical advancements will allow for more efficient use of such super high resolution VR displays.

See the full story with a 30 minute video here: https://www.roadtovr.com/google-developing-vr-display-10x-pixels-todays-headsets/

Gaiman-Inspired ‘Wolves in the Wall VR’ to Premiere at Sundance

Wolves in the Walls VR pulls users into a digital storybook, where they must help a girl named Lucy discover what’s hiding in the walls of her house. The story touches on themes like how children are often the most observant and least believed in our families, modern social issues and diversity. At Sundance, “Chapter 1” will introduce festival attendees to an ambitious new level of interactivity which casts the experience’s viewer as one of the characters.

“Early VR narratives were about adapting what we knew from other formats. But VR is coming into it’s own now. We always ask ourselves, why VR? What can we do to that is only uniquely possible in this medium?” said Billington. “Good story is really about great characters, so that’s where we invested all of our energy … Subjective POV [with VR cinematography] allows the audience to see the world the way that Lucy feels the world.We can put you inside Lucy’s imagination, her drawings, her emotions”

After graduating from Oculus VR short Henry, the team wanted to plumb new depths of character interactivity. They met with game developers and other immersive storytellers to learn the fine points of creating compelling interactive moments that don’t distract from the overall narrative. Wolves’ Lucy is engaging and emotive, changing her performance based on user action. She keeps track of your movements, exchanges objects, confide in you and mold her responses while tracking your actions through the story.

Executive producer Saschka Unseld added: “No one has yet cracked what the promise of storytelling in VR is: How to organically combine a compelling and emotional story with interactive worlds and characters. Wolves in the Walls will be exactly that.”

See the full story here: http://www.animationmagazine.net/top-stories/gaiman-inspired-wolves-in-the-wall-vr-to-premiere-at-sundance/

Vuzix To Supply Augmented Reality Smart Glasses To Toshiba

Vuzix Corporation has inked a deal with Toshiba in which the American technology firm will supply its custom M300 smart glasses to the Japanese conglomerate company over a three-year term. Under the agreement, Vuzix will deliver its augmented reality (AR) smart glasses exclusively to Toshiba for up to 12 months after the Tokyo, Japan-based company submits purchase orders for the said consumer electronics products worth at least $5 million, with the Vuzix-powered smart glasses slated to carry the Toshiba brand and set to be sold on a global scale. Vuzix also said that the smart glasses will ship with a mobile computing system to accompany the head-mounted device.

Other than Toshiba, Vuzix also previously entered into agreements with other tech companies that wanted to grow their stake in the smart glass segment. Last August, the company formed a AR smart glass partnership with BlackBerry, which also marked the Canadian multinational company’s first foray into the wearable category.

See the full story here: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2017/12/vuzix-supply-augmented-reality-smart-glasses-toshiba.html

Now you can track the bitcoin mania bubble in augmented reality

Created by Los Angeles-based developer Bryan Edelman, Bitcoin AR (only available for iOS) is about as simple as it gets when it comes to AR apps.

The app's main function allows you to track the value of various cryptocurrencies as they hover in real space, represented by the logos of the various cryptocurrency brands.

See the full story here: https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/now-you-can-track-bitcoin-mania-bubble-augmented-reality-0181572/

Measuring the Latency of an Augmented Reality System for Robot-assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

Minimal latency is important for augmented reality systems and teleoperation interfaces as even small increases in latency can affect user performance. Previously, we have developed an augmented reality system that can overlay stereoscopic video streams with computer graphics in order to improve visual communication in training for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery with da Vinci surgical systems. To make sure that our augmented reality system provides the best possible user experience, we investigated the video latency of the da Vinci surgical system and how the components of our system affect the overall latency.

To measure the photon-to-photon latency, we used a microcontroller to determine the time between the activation of a light-emitting diode in front of the endoscopic camera and the corresponding increase in intensity of the surgeon’s display as measured by a phototransistor. The latency of the da Vinci S surgical system was on average 62 ms. None of the components of our overlay system (separately or combined) significantly affected the latency. However, the latency of the assistant’s monitor increased by 14 ms. Passing the video streams through CPU or GPU memory increased the latency to 147 ms and 256 ms, respectively.

See the full story here: http://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2017/62742/index.html

New Report from ILMxLab & Disability Visibility Project Shares Insights on VR Accessibility Design

79 VR users with disabilities from around the world participated in the survey, offering insights into their experiences with VR technology. Of the 98 different types of disabilities described, the most common were deafness, arthritis, scoliosis, cerebral palsy, autism, asthma and PTSD. ILMxLAB helped to promote the survey, and users’ experiences with their VR game Trials on Tatooine (2016) was an optional section.

The report offers six key takeaways from the survey: accessibility should be integrated into VR software from the start, VR software/hardware needs maximum flexibility and customisation, developers should interrogate cultural norms and diversify representation, be sensitive to the diverse and varied communities and disability types, and VR development teams should hire disabled people. A large portion of the report sheds light on the specific challenges that disabled users face when using VR hardware and software.

See the full story and download the report here: http://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-apple-razer-2017-12-06?open-article-id=7609870&article-title=new-report-from-ilmxlab---disability-visibility-project-shares-insights-on-vr-accessibility-design&blog-domain=roadtovr.com&blog-title=road-to-vr

Sundance 2018 New Frontier Further Pushes Into Future Entertainment With Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence

Mandatory Credit: Photo by George Frey/EPA/REX/Shutterstock (8115388g)
Snow piles up as people walk past the Egyptian Theater at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, USA, 26 January 2017. The festival runs from 19 to 29 January.
2017 Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Usa - 26 Jan 2017

PhilNote: This article has one-paragraph descriptions supplied by Sundance of all of the New Frontier pieces.

Eon Studio 9

Philip Lelyveld comment: the link takes you to a useful table of EON's suite of products.]

EON Studio is our flagship 3D authoring software for developing interactive 3D applications. With EON Studio, users of all experience levels can build complex, high-quality interactive 3D content with little to no programming experience.

Whether you create 3D applications for architecture, marketing or training, EON Studio provides a unique range of benefits and functions making it a developer’s preferred choice.

See the full story here: https://www.eonreality.com/platform/eon-studio/

A look at the new BMW i3s in augmented reality with Apple’s ARKit

BMW was one of the first to jump on the opportunity earlier this year with their app BMW i Visualiser. They have now updated it with the latest versions of their BMW i3 and i8.

I do like the app – though that’s maybe more a compliment to Apple’s new augmented reality tools than to BMW.

By the way, Tesla hasn’t jumped on board the augmented reality train yet, but fans have produced third-party apps for the Model 3 similar to what BMW launched this week.

It does look like a glimpse of the future of car retail.

See the full story here: https://electrek.co/2017/12/06/bmw-i3-augmented-reality-apple-arkit/

Snapchat Debuts Six New Augmented Reality Artworks at Art Basel Miami

In celebration of this year's Miami Art week, Snapchat collaborated with artists Deborah Kass, D*Face, Hebru Brantley, Lionel Smit, Nathan Sawaya, and Daniel Arsham to translate their works into augmented reality. Using Lenses, the virtual overlays within the app that gave the world memes like the dancing hot dog, fairgoers at Art Basel and Design Miami—as well as anyone in the world—are invited to explore the six works of art in their surroundings as if they were public art installations. The works are anchored in place and rendered in 3-D, which invites viewers to walk around the sculptures and examine them from all angles.

See the full story here: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/snapchat-debuts-six-new-augmented-reality-artworks-at-art-basel-miami