The AFI FEST Interview: Wevr’s James Kaelan on Virtual Reality Storytelling
...artists from theater, from the gallery and museum installation world, come to VR almost naturally. They think about physical navigation and multi-sensory experience. They think about how things feel to the touch. They think about how things smell. They think about how the viewer moves, most importantly. That’s an invaluable perspective to have at this still-early stage in VR.
See the full story here: http://blog.afi.com/the-afi-fest-interview-wevrs-james-kaelan-on-virtual-reality-storytelling/
This ARKit App Locates Items In A Supermarket For You
This new ARKit app from AR designer Bruce Vang shows you exactly how the tech could do just that. Using an iPhone, shoppers are directed towards the item they’re looking for, right down to its location of a shelf. Not only that but the user is able to load up their own shopping list, so the app could seamlessly transition from one item to the next.
See the full story with video here: https://uploadvr.com/arkit-app-locates-items-supermarket/
Disney to Pull Movies From Netflix, Launch Streaming Service
Disney said it will be pulling its movies from Netflix, will launch an ESPN streaming service early next year and will launch a Disney streaming service the year after that.
To help do all that, Disney will acquire a majority of BAMTech, the streaming technology company owned MLBAM, the internet company owned by Major League Baseball.
Disney CEO Bob Iger called the initiatives "a strategic shift in the way we distribute our content."
See the full story here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disney-pull-movies-netflix-launch-streaming-service-1027793
Watch This Trippy Reggie Watts Music Video in Mixed Reality
This MR music video of musician Reggie Watts is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. The video, published by Microsoft HoloLens, features holograms of the musician set in different locations.
Though the video portrays a pretty whimsical image of the app, it has serious processing capabilities—including hand-tracking and a scene manager that helps users decide how many holograms can be placed into a particular scene.
See the full story here: https://vrscout.com/news/watch-trippy-reggie-watts-music-video-mixed-reality/
Europe’s VR Sector Has Grown To Nearly 487 Companies
Europe VR landscape 1H 2017
See the full story here: https://uploadvr.com/europes-vr-sector-grown-nearly-487-companies/
New Fresnel Lens From Wearality is Thinner Than a Quarter
Nearly two years ago, Wearality created a unique Fresnel lens for VR headsets offering a claimed 150 degree field of view. The company successfully funded a VR viewer featuring the lens called Wearality Sky through Kickstarter. The company recently revealed a new and improved lens, but this time around they intend to act as a supplier rather than directly selling a viewer to consumers.
A thinner lens means less weight, but Wearality also says that the optical properties of the lens can create much smaller headsets.
Flatline VR Brings Near-Death Experience To Life
The journey the Flatline VR experience follows is that of Gloria, a young woman in the 1950s who suffered a miscarriage in a wing of a large hospital and was left alone while she bled out.
“They put her in a room and forgot about her in a wing that wasn’t busy, and she was screaming for help for days and nobody heard her,” Schnitzer recounted. “She lost consciousness and died and went through this Flatline experience. When she woke up there were doctors at the foot of her bed. Her husband was in the military and he told her not to tell this account to anybody, so it wasn’t until decades later that she wrote about it in a letter to somebody.”
The words written in that letter are the exact words that actress Mella Leigh recorded for this VR experience.
Beyond the expansion and the extraction of the color spectrum, the feeling of falling and spinning and turning, and the 360 audio experience that’s been designed to disorient you, there’s a lot more to the experience, including an element that makes it worthy of a horror festival.
The entire experience was created in four months by a team of 12 people, including the audio team. It marked a collaboration between Schnitzer’s The Brain Factory 3D Live, the company behind Electronic Arts, Bioware’s and Cedar Fair’s Mass Effect 4D ride at Great America.
See the full story here; https://uploadvr.com/flatline-vr-brings-near-death-experience-life/
Vive China President Shares 16 Lessons for a VR-First Future From ‘Ready Player One’
4. Everyone will become ‘Gamers’ & watching game streams will be a major pass-time
5. Virtual Schools will democratize high quality education to the world
6. Remote work via VR will become the norm
8. Gathering experiences and access will be more important than gathering wealth
9. Virtual currency will become more relevant to our lives than traditional currency
10. A huge economy is coming for virtual goods and services
14. Privacy and data security will be critical to enable an acceptable VR-First future
16. Even in a virtual world of abundance, humans still have a need for greater purpose
See the full story here: https://www.roadtovr.com/16-lessons-for-vr-first-future-ready-player-one-vive-china-president-alvin-wang-graylin/