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/
Firefox soon will help you lose yourself in the VR web
Mozilla plans to release a version of its Firefox browser Tuesday that embraces a version of virtual reality for the web.
Back in 2014, Mozilla developers including Vladimir Vukicevic put together a concept called WebVR. The idea was to let web browsers navigate virtual realms, and make it easier for people to create a VR world once that would work on all sorts of devices.
But Vukicevic headed off to game engine maker Unity, and Google's Chrome browser beat Mozilla with WebVR support. Microsoft's Edge also edged out Firefox, adding WebVR support in April. Microsoft and Google, which both sell devices to experience virtual reality and its augmented reality cousin, have a big incentive to make virtual reality real.
"WebVR is the major platform feature shipping in Firefox 55," the latest Firefox release calendar update says. "Firefox users with an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift headset will be able to experience VR content on the web and can explore some exciting demos."
There are caveats to using WebVR today. Chrome's support only is on Android-powered devices right now, and WebVR on Edge requires you to put the browser in a developer mode.
WebVR is also important for Mozilla. The nonprofit organization is fighting to reclaim its relevance and restore its reputation after Firefox slid into Chrome's shadow in recent years. The work to get Firefox back into fighting trim will culminate with Firefox 57, due to arrive Nov. 14.
"VR will beget AR pretty quickly as a mass-market opportunity," Beard said. "Browsers play a very meaningful role."
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-55-gets-webvr-support-for-more-immersive-web/
Virtual reality video showcases UCLA campus as 2028 Olympic Village
The goal was to convince the committee that Los Angeles was “games-ready” because the facilities at UCLA will serve as the Olympic Village.
The video takes the viewer around UCLA’s sports and living facilities in 360 degrees, seamlessly transitioning from spots like the basketball courts at the John Wooden Center to the dining room at Bruin Plate.
The video came out of a joint effort between LA 2028′s team and two other companies: advertising agency 72andSunny and virtual reality team Jaunt.
Jaunt had less than six weeks to shrink UCLA’s campus down to the size of a VR headset. The approaching summer break accelerated its timeline even more, since it was crucial that the campus be populated with students.
See the full story here: http://dailybruin.com/2017/08/07/virtual-reality-video-showcases-ucla-campus-as-2028-olympic-village/
Augmented reality: What are the legal realities?
Getting the contract correct
The relationship between the retailer, developer and platform providers can often be fairly complicated and therefore requires a number of different contracts.
In particular, any agreement between the retailer and the developer should include a service level and service credit mechanism to ensure that the end-product is produced on time and then appropriately maintained.
AR output: who owns the IP?
Does the AR product allow end-users to develop or publish content, such as an app that lets the user create and then publish a new design for a clothing retailer or amend existing product lines?
Data: the devil will be in the detail
Retailers will need to ensure that end-users have been adequately informed and the data they provide through use of the AR tool is lawfully processed and secure.
The end-user must consent to the specific use of their data and they must be able to withdraw this consent at any time. Burying the detail in a privacy policy or making use of the service conditional on accepting the privacy policy will not be good enough.
Who’s responsible if something goes wrong?
Who should be responsible if an end-user suffers loss, such as an injury, as a result of using the AR product on offer?
Under English law, liability for certain losses – such as death or injury caused by negligence and fraudulent acts – cannot be excluded. However, where the liability sits for all other matters and who takes the risk of liability is generally up for negotiation and should be considered before embarking on an AR project.
See the full story here: https://www.retail-week.com/topics/policy-and-legal/augmented-reality-what-are-the-legal-realities/7025061.article
This virtual try-on system for clothing might actually work
"Our approach is to scan a person wearing the garment, separate the clothing from the person, and then rendering it on top of a new person," says Dr. Gerard Pons-Moll, the project's principal investigator. "This process captures all the detail present in real clothing, including how it moves, which is hard to replicate with simulation."
The product, called ClothCap, uses 4D movies recorded using a scanner with 66 cameras and projectors to take full stock of the person being scanned. This allows the scanner to fully see how clothing drapes on a person's body and where it wrinkles. It also records how a body moves under the clothes and how the garment shifts accordingly. Once this data is analyzed, it's easy to separate the piece of clothing from the original body and use it in virtual try-ons. You can find the full paper on how the tech works in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics.
See the full story here: https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/03/clothcap-virtual-try-on-system-for-clothing/
MOVIE REVIEW: Let this be a warning!
The Virtual Reality (VR) experience is a surreal one. Unlike conventional cinema where you watch what is happening, you have to keep looking around you, never being sure what your fate is. The surroundings are not familiar and it is a new world.
Jason Runo and Marrianne Nungo are two actors that shine in this short film.
See the full story here: http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/buzz/MOVIE-REVIEW-Let-this-be-a-warning/441236-4046048-yfdtwr/index.html