philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Disney puts a new spin on its accelerator

Ambidio

An innovative sound company that creates a continuous sound field with a sense of depth and dimension through any device with stereo speakers, bringing an immersive sound experience to everyone.

aXiomatic

A broad-based esports company built by leading sports team owners with ownership interests in esports teams and esports content distribution. The company has a majority stake in Team Liquid, a top esports team in the US and Europe with 60 pro players, coaches, and analysts competing in nine games as well as a minority stake in Super League Gaming.

Brit + Co

A digital media company that inspires, educates and entertains real women with a creative spirit. Through inspirational content, online classes, and products, Brit + Co enables their audience of over 125 million to use creativity to shape their best lives.

Epic Games

Creators of Unreal Engine technology, which is used by millions of developers to ship visually stunning, high-quality games and experiences across PC, console, mobile, VR and AR platforms. Developers also choose Epic’s Unreal Engine for cinematic production, visualization, design and simulation. Epic is known for creating the Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade series of games, as well as newer titles such as Fortnite, Paragon and Robo Recall.

Hoodline

A local news and content discovery platform, that uses machine learning to distribute geotagged and relevant content from hundreds of media partners into websites or mobile apps. Hoodline also analyzes data sets to unlock insights for businesses and media companies.

Kahoot!

A game-based learning platform with more than 50 million monthly active users in 180 countries. Kahoot! makes it easy to create, discover, play, and share fun learning games in minutes—for any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages.

ProductionPro

A tool for storytellers and creators focused on improving creative collaboration in Film, TV, and Theatre production. ProductionPro pulls scripts, research, designs, and continuity together to empower creative decision-making.

ReplyYes

A frictionless e-commerce over mobile messaging experience: customers simply reply “YES” to buy the product and have it delivered.

Samba TV

A data and analytics company providing essential television insights by leveraging a source of real-time, opt-in viewership data across broadcast, cable TV, OTT, and digital media. Through software integrations with smart TV manufacturers, Samba recognizes content and associated viewership patterns making TV audiences more addressable and measurable while helping marketers activate cross-screen campaigns and maximize their impact.

Savioke

A robotics company that develops and deploys autonomous indoor delivery robots that work alongside people in busy environments such as hotels, logistics facilities, and high-rise apartment buildings. The company’s flagship product, Relay, is an autonomous delivery robot that is already installed in dozens of hotels worldwide.

The VOID

A location-based entertainment company that fully immerses guests in virtual experiences with friends and family, engaging all of their senses. The VOID combines interactive sets, virtual reality, real-time effects, and state of the art technology to bring guests into their experience.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/11/disney-puts-a-new-spin-on-the-accelerator/

Apple’s Augmented Reality Is Coming to FaceTime, Using Light Field Camera Tech

Apple has won patent protection for a new way of using light field cameras, included in the iPhone 7 Plus–although it has been used by other brands as well–to project images into a live video chat.

The iPhone version of the tech overlays the images from two cameras to create a sense of depth, resulting in the “bokeh” effect where the subject of a photo is held in sharp focus while the background is blurred.

Using more cameras in the array, and focusing them on objects other than the main subject–like your fellow caller, in a video chat situation–makes it possible to radically expand the visuals of a video call.

Such technology is already available in webcams such as the Razor Stargazer and the 4k video-enabled Logitech Brio, which use infrared sensors to separate a caller from their surroundings. It’s also the key ingredient to the Windows Hello facial recognition software.

See the full story here: https://www.videoconferencingdaily.com/latest-technology/apples-augmented-reality-coming-facetime-using-light-field-camera-tech/

Commercial Augmented Reality Is Where Vuzix Should Reward Shareholders

Before I go any further, I recommend readers take a look at this video.

It is a YouTube video uploaded by user LeeCompany, which is the account of US-based residential and commercial contractor company Lee Company. The video feels a little staged and production isn’t great but it serves to visually illustrate the kind of application that augmented reality smart glasses have in the commercial world. In this instance, an on-location contractor calls into a central location and uses smart glasses he is wearing to get help from a centrally located operator with the job in hand.

The operator makes a couple of recommendations and the contractor highlights the fact that he initially needed somebody to support him in the field, but no longer requires physical assistance because of help the operator was able to give him remotely. Staged or not, the takeaway here is that this sort of technology can save a company money.

As the company in question, Lee Company, points out here, the ROI on its smart glasses outlay (which came in at 500 pairs purchased as of January this year) amounts to $20.11 for every $1 invested in the technology.

This is relevant from an industry perspective and in terms of how Vuzix can expand into this commercial side of the wearables space. But the relevance doesn’t end there – the glasses that the Lee Company is using are Vuzix models.

Specifically, they are the M100 model.

See the full story here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4086739-commercial-augmented-reality-vuzix-reward-shareholders

How The Future Group Is Redefining Live Game Shows With Mixed Reality

Lost in Time, which ran a pilot test season in Norway, featured real-time special effects combined with real-life contestants who competed for prizes. The audience at home could also compete in the same challenges in a virtual way on iOS and Android, blending of primetime TV and mobile entertainment.

The first season of Lost in Time just aired in Norway. We used Norway as a soft launch market to see how the technology would work. Are people participating? Are they enjoying it? It’s been fun to see, because we were estimating that maybe five or 10 percent of viewers would play along. We ended up seeing 45 percent interactivity for the last show. It started at about 20 percent, and with each show more people would participate. They found out that experience gave them something extra.

The games are designed within a traditional free-to-play model, but we don’t have any in-app purchases. It’s free to play, but with meta-features for sharing and retention, so players can play throughout the week and earn virtual currency that they then sink into the live broadcast for a chance to win real prizes.

GamesBeat: That’s happening in real time, then, whereas most people would be used to seeing computer-generated characters inserted in post-production. Why is it more important to be able to do it live?

Einarsen: It allows for more interaction with the characters. It’s the same thing you see in Lost in Time. If I touch a physical prop live, it’ll blow something up in the virtual world. If we were filmed now, using Frontier, you could interact with a character right here and everyone would be able to see it on the screen. It allows for a more immersive AR experience.

See the full story here: https://uploadvr.com/future-group-game-shows-mixed-reality/

Warner Bros. Studio Releases ‘Dunkirk’ VR Experience

What’s most interesting about the just over five minute experience is the choice to focus on heavy imagery rather than fast-paced, chaotic action to represent the dire mood of the full film. Slow-motion shots of soldiers killed in action sinking into dark waters, the first-person perspective of a pilot as he crashes into the ocean, a group of desperate soldiers routinely preparing for incoming fire. These moments are made all the more impactful by their choice to trade in action for tone.

Dunkirk’s VR experience launched this weekend with access on YouTube 360, Facebook 360, LIFE VR, and most major headset platforms like the HTC Vive.

See the full story here: https://vrscout.com/news/warner-bros-studio-dunkirk-vr-movie/#

Digital Privacy to Come Under Supreme Court’s Scrutiny

Devices connected to the internet, from cellphones to watches to personal training trackers that facilitate our personal habits and communications, are a fact of daily life, and the Supreme Court will have to start drawing clear lines around what types of electronic information are — and are not — protected by the Fourth Amendment. Simply asserting that there is a right to privacy does not provide much help in determining how far that protection should extend in a digital world.

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/business/dealbook/digital-privacy-supreme-court.html

W3C Approves the EME Standard for DRM-Protected Video

“Web creator Tim Berners-Lee and W3C project manager Philippe Le Hégaret write that they believe EME is better for accessibility, because it complies with other web accessibility standards, and that having DRM support built into the web, instead of requiring plugins, makes life easier for browser developers,” notes The Verge. They also state that, with regard to protections for security researchers, they “didn’t want to hold up the standard just because all parties couldn’t come to agreement on this issue.”

The Verge notes that the disagreement boils down to a difference in philosophy. Whereas the EFF doesn’t like DRM and “would like to see a much more open solution … W3C seems to have decided that since DRM is going to get used anyway, the web may as well standardize and avoid security horrors like Flash.”

See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/w3c-approves-the-eme-standard-for-drm-protected-video/

DeepMind’s AI is teaching itself parkour, and the results are adorable

Case in point is a new paper from Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind titled “Emergence of Locomotion Behaviours in Rich Environments.” The research explores how reinforcement learning (or RL) can be used to teach a computer to navigate unfamiliar and complex environments. It’s the sort of fundamental AI research that we’re now testing in virtual worlds, but that will one day help program robots that can navigate the stairs in your house.

Everything the stick figure is doing in this video is self-taught. The jumping, the limboing, the leaping — all of these are behaviors that the computer has devised itself as the best way of getting from A to B. All DeepMind’s programmers have done is give the agent a set of virtual sensors (so it can tell whether it’s upright or not, for example) and then incentivize to move forward. The computer works the rest out for itself, using trial and error to come up with different ways of moving.

The novelty here is that the researchers are exploring how difficult environments can teach an agent complex and robust movements (i.e., using its knee to get purchase on top of a high wall). Usually, reinforcement learning produces behavior that is fragile, and that breaks down in unfamiliar circumstances, like a baby who knows how to tackle the stairs at home, but who can’t understand an escalator. This research shows that isn’t always the case, and that RL can be used to teach complex movements.

See the full story with videos here: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/7/10/15946542/deepmind-parkour-agent-reinforcement-learning

Google restructures Computer Graphics with a Virtual Reality program titled Blocks

Overall, I find Google Blocks excellent for beginners in graphic design. The program will help build a better understanding on how three dimensional objects are put together. In comparison to May and Adobe Illustrator, Blocks is currently free to use.

See the full story here: http://crescentvale.com/2017/07/google-restructures-computer-graphics-virtual-reality-program-titled-blocks/

‘Sharknado’ Augmented Reality Mobile Game Debuts

In advance of Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, which debuts Aug. 6 on Syfy, fans can experience a Sharknado of their own with a new augmented reality mobile game.

Sharknado: ShARkmented Reality puts the player in the shoes of Fin (played by Ian Ziering in the TV franchise) and April (played by Tara Reid). Users will be able to impose a virtual Sharknado on their surroundings, armed with various virtual weapons — such as a chain saw — to defeat the sharks. Each level up will unlock new weapons and new sharks to battle.

See the full story here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/sharknado-augmented-reality-mobile-game-debuts-1019024