UCLA Engineering/Cinema – Augmented Reality: Making it secure, fast, efficient and resilient
A team of researchers from UCLA and New Mexico State University have received $2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation and Intel to integrate augmented reality into new wireless networks. The project aims to develop augmented reality applications on top of the new NDN network architecture to address the limitations in performance, scalability and availability with today’s TCP/IP architecture.
“A fully realized AR environment would not be too far from what science fiction movies have depicted, as many of the necessary components are emerging, including both very high speed wireless technologies and advanced applications such as AR, ” said Lixia Zhang, UCLA’s Jon Postel Chair in Computer Science and the lead principal investigator on the project. “However currently, a major bottleneck in the way is the existing network architecture. We want to use this project to showcase how our newly developed NDN architecture can fully utilize the latest wireless technologies to support AR and promote innovative new applications.”
The new project that will explore these challenges is called “ICN-Enabled Secure Edge Networking with Augmented Reality” or ICE-AR. It builds on seven years of research from the NSF-funded Named Data Networking (NDN) project , which is a multi-campus research effort and directed by Zhang. Half of the $2 million in funding will come from grants from National Science Foundation , the other half of funding comes from Intel.
The new project has four research goals:
- Build an operational AR demonstration system, an AR campus browser, on an NDN network that runs over high speed heterogeneous wireless technologies.
- Design robust and resilient networking support for AR that can withstand major network failures.
- Transition the delivery of content to one that utilizes in-network storage and processing, is highly individualized, fast, and efficient.
- Incorporate comprehensive security and privacy throughout the system from the start by utilizing the security building blocks provided by the NDN architecture.
See the full story here: http://engineering.ucla.edu/augmented-reality-making-it-secure-fast-efficient-and-resilient/
VR Industry Forum Draft Guidelines Push for Open Ecosystem
September 18, 2017
Over the weekend, the Virtual Reality Industry Forum (VRIF) released its draft VR and 360 video production and distribution guidelines at IBC 2017 in Amsterdam. The draft document begins with an intro section suggesting best practices for VR/360 production, including experiences with three degrees of freedom (3DOF). It then makes specific recommendations for the technical aspects of visual and audio VR/360 content production, media and presentation profiles, and content security. VRIF aims to release the full guidelines, with an emphasis on an open ecosystem, at CES 2018 in January.
“They will be supported by interoperability test streams that enable rapid and independent development and deployments of VR services based on VRIF’s guidelines,” notes the press release.
“What is so unique about these guidelines is they take the interests of all ecosystem participants into account and focus on important, but often overlooked factors,” said Paul Higgs of Huawei, chair of the Guidelines Working Group and board member of VRIF. “The VR industry is starting to move away from proprietary systems and toward large scale solutions, and the Guidelines facilitate that transition.”
“The purpose of presenting a draft of the guidelines at IBC is to give the public a chance to review them and identify any issues, so that we can incorporate as much relevant information as possible,” he added.
VRIF has grown to 40 members, including Dolby, DTS, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sony Pictures, Technicolor and Verizon, among others.
Other standardization efforts related to VR and immersive experiences are underway through Khronos Group’s VR Standard Initiative, the IEEE Digital Senses Initiative, SMPTE, and the Industry of VR Alliance.
VRIF is seeking feedback on the draft standards via its website and GitHub by October 31, 2017.
News: Comedy Club Stages First Virtual Reality Gig
*Update - Phil Ellis has said on Facebook that he is also doing this a day before Quinne, so maybe he is the first...
See the full story here: https://www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/content/4537/news-comedy-club-stages-first-virtual-reality-gig
Magnetic brain stimulation helps “unlearn” crippling fear of heights
Advances in technology over the last decade have led to a swift rise in the volume of research surrounding transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and its therapeutic effects. A team from the Würzburg University Hospital in Germany has just published a new study demonstrating how TMS, in conjunction with a virtual reality experience, can help alleviate anxiety disorders and essentially help people "unlearn" fears.
TMS devices have already been approved to treat migraines and some major depressive disorders, but other research is looking into its uses as a learning aid and a way to help visually-impaired people navigate the world.
Virtual Reality: Coming Soon to a Cubicle Near You? Cisco invites customers to experiment with Cisco Spark in VR
As of today, Cisco Spark customers can download the experimental Cisco Spark in VR app from the Oculus Rift store here. As long as they have the Cisco Spark VR app, Oculus Rift with Touch controllers, and a Rift-compatible computer, they can meet, discuss, and interact in a virtual, three-dimensional environment. More importantly, Cisco Spark in VR bridges the gap between the virtual and the physical space by natively integrating with the Cisco Spark platform and endpoints. Users can view shared files and even whiteboard with someone outside of VR in real-time.
Cisco Spark Makes it Possible
Cisco Spark provides everything teams need for meetings, messages and calls. Backed by Cisco security and reliability, the Cisco Spark platform is API-based, making it simple to integrate with VR.
Cisco will be a featured participant in the Oculus Connect panel discussion on VR use in business next month in San Jose.
See the full story here: http://news.sys-con.com/node/4160980
Alan Kay, The Father Of Mobile Computing Is Not Impressed
The finest distillation of that imagination was the Dynabook, one of the most enduring conceptual artifacts of Silicon Valley—a handheld computer that was powerful, dynamic, and easy enough to operate that children could use it, not only to learn, but to create media and write their own applications. In 1977, Kay and his colleague Adele Goldberg published “Personal Dynamic Media,” the most robust description of its intended operation.
“Imagine having your own self-contained knowledge manipulator,” they implored—note the language, and the emphasis on knowledge. “Suppose it had enough power to outrace your senses of sight and hearing, enough capacity to store for later retrieval thousands of page-equivalents of reference materials, poems, letters, recipes, records, drawings, animations, musical scores, waveforms, dynamic simulations, and anything else you would like to remember and change.”
The Dynabook, which looks like an iPad with a hard keyboard, was one of the first mobile computer concepts ever put forward, and perhaps the most influential. Although some of its concepts were realized in 1973 with the desktop Alto, the Dynabook has since accrued the dubious distinction of being the most famous computer that never got built.
I’d headed to Kay’s home in part to ask the godfather of the mobile computer how the iPhone, and a world where 2 billion people own smartphones, compared to what he envisioned in the ’60s and ’70s. Kay believes nothing has yet been produced that fulfills the original specs for the Dynabook, including the iPhone and the iPad. In fact, mobile computers, he says, have turned out to be mind-numbing consumption devices—sophisticated televisions—rather than the wheels for the mind that Steve Jobs envisioned.
If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar.
So, one of the major things that schools should be charged with, is to teach children to be media guerrillas—that’s what we call them. It’s guerrilla warfare going on, because everything has been infiltrated. ... Things that are constant in our environment both seem natural and also become invisible.
...
Well, it’s not really standardized because they’re up to HTML 5, and if you’ve done a good thing, you don’t keep on revving it and adding more epicycles onto a bad idea. We call this reinventing the flat tire. In the old days, you would chastise people for reinventing the wheel. Now we beg, “Oh, please, please reinvent the wheel.”
...
..., the telephone was an amplification of a human universal, which means you don’t have to learn how to use it, which means it’s just going to completely triumph over anything that requires you to learn something. ...
The idea is, you never let the child do something that isn’t the real thing—but you have to work your ass off to figure out what the real thing is in the context of the way their minds are working at that developmental level.
When I saw what Papert was doing, while I recognized it immediately, it had just never occurred to me. And then that nanosecond I realized this is what McLuhan was talking about. This is what Montessori was talking about. This thing is the equivalent of the Montessori school.
Papert had the great metaphor. He said, “Look if you want to learn French, don’t take it in fifth or sixth grade. Go to France, because everything that makes learning French reasonable, and everything that helps learning French, is in France.
...
I said, “If we’re gonna do a personal computer”—and that’s what I wanted PARC to do and that’s what we wound up doing [with the Alto]—”the children have to be completely full-fledged users of this thing.”
Think about what this means in the context of say, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad. They aren’t full-fledged users. They’re just television watchers of different kinds.
...
A well-written essay is something where the author knows a little bit about you, somehow, and tells you in the beginning of the essay what you need to know and answers questions that the author somehow knows that you have. It’s amazing how well good authors can do this. They prepare you for the whammy, two-thirds of the way through, and for the last third of the thing, where they actually get you to elevate your thinking—it’s incredible, isn’t it?
See the full interview here: https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now
GOOGLE EARTH VR NOW LETS YOU EXPLORE STREET VIEW IMAGERY FROM 85 COUNTRIES
Up to now, you could fly around the planet like Superman, exploring locations from above using an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset. But now you can drop down to ground level to explore Street View imagery from 85 countries using the Google Earth VR app. The content comes from the Street View team as well as regular folks who’ve been contributing 360 photos to the online tool.
See the full story here: https://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/google-earth-vr-street-view/
Editor’s Corner: For VR, 4K, AI and voice control, it’s sink or swim time at IBC
As 4K progresses and VR fizzles, artificial intelligence has emerged as the toast of IBC.
"AI is something that's transforming our business today," Drury said.
"..It will disrupt pretty much all areas of the market," said David Mowry, vice president of strategy and business development at IBM Cloud Video. “We’re just scratching the surface on how transformative AI will be.”
In describing the investments Fox has made to overhaul its TV Everywhere hub Fox Now, Sullivan said that his company had leaned heavily on machine learning to rev up its recommendations.
So for many emerging technologies, outlooks are promising. Meanwhile, voice control and 4K seem to have finally reached the mainstream after years of wheel spinning. But VR, for all its promise and impressive capabilities, has spent another IBC languishing as a technology still struggling to find much of a future.
See the full story here: http://www.fiercecable.com/broadcasting/editor-s-corner-for-vr-4k-ai-and-voice-control-it-s-sink-or-swim-time-at-ibc
People will soon be doing graffiti in augmented reality, and no one knows how to police it
Armed only with their phone and a virtual spray can, artists could soon leave hidden marks for others to find in the urban environment. Virtual graffiti would allow budding artists to be creative and push boundaries in the public domain without creating an eyesore, allowing local governments to clean up the actual streets of traditional graffiti while letting young artists have a creative outlet.
As with many other emerging technologies, the consequences and implications of this blurring of the real and fake world are complicated and unsettled. As AR increases in popularity, it’s coming up against established rules and societal expectations: If something only exists in virtual space, but it appears real to its creator, is it bound to the laws of the actual world.
Legal systems are yet to get a grip on new technology, and there is cultural confusion about the role of virtual items located in public places. As demonstrated by pro-LGBTQ Pokemon GO players trolling the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, the conversations and experiences that play out in the augmented world can have real-life consequences.
We will soon have to answer some complicated questions: Is graffiti still a crime if it only exists in the virtual world? If the message scrawled on the side of a building is only visible to those who wish to see it through their phones, is it still counted as defacing public property? Or does ownership carry over to the digital world?
See the full story here: https://qz.com/1072528/the-next-trend-in-street-art-will-be-graffiti-in-augmented-reality/