VR Society: ‘Art of VR’ to Open at Sotheby’s New York
The Advanced Imaging Society’s Virtual Reality Society aims to raise public awareness of virtual reality through "The Art of VR," a two-day festival taking place June 22-23 at Sotheby’s New York. The event will feature speakers, including filmmakers Doug Liman and Maria Bello, as well as virtual reality experiences for applications such as museums, dance, theater, film and travel.
See the full story here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/art-vr-open-at-sothebys-new-york-1004494
The Washington Post is diving into augmented reality
Readers can access the story on the Post’s app on iOS devices, then point their smartphone’s camera at the ceiling of any room they’re in and tap play. The real ceiling is transformed into the concert hall ceiling while an audio narration by Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott plays. Users can also tap a prompt to read an accompanying article by Kennicott.
The Post deliberately started small, with the first video in the series only running about 10 seconds, said Joey Marburger, the Post’s head of product. “With that quick experience, you get more out of the story,” he said. “But we didn’t want it to be the only way you can experience the story. We didn’t want to overdo it.”
See the full story here: https://digiday.com/media/washington-post-diving-augmented-reality/
Google’s new Street View Ready cameras will open up a new world of VR
Google Earth might make for one of the most exciting PC VR apps, but the company’s Street View app for Daydream is no slouch either, allowing you to step into 360 degree images of the world around you.
The Ready certification is split into different standards. Mobile Ready lets you publish content direct from the app, while Auto Ready devices capture frames from cameras mounted to vehicles. Workflow Ready, meanwhile, features a set of publishing tools to allow you to upload to Street View accounts.
Matterport, InsideMaps, and NCTech will all be releasing cameras under the VR Ready certification.
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/14/googles-new-street-view-ready-cameras-will-open-up-a-new-world-of-vr/
Facebook’s New AI Could Lead to Translations That Actually Make Sense
This morning, the company’s central artificial-intelligence lab released a paper describing a new technology that could accelerate the evolution of machine translation not only inside Facebook but across the internet. According to Facebook’s tests, its technique—borrowed from image recognition—produces better translations than the current state of the art, and it does so far more efficiently than other methods, which could eventually lead to even sharper translations.
Christopher Manning, a Stanford University professor who specialized in machine translation and has reviewed the paper, calls it an “impressive achievement,” particularly because it can train translation models more quickly than existing systems. And Facebook indicates that its engineers are now rolling this technique onto the company’s social network, which serves more than 1.8 billion people across the globe.
Facebook’s approach relies on neural networks, complex mathematical systems that can learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data.
But Facebook is taking a slightly different tack from most of the other big players. It’s using what are called convolutional neural networks, a technique invented by the venerable deep-learning researcher Yann LeCun, who now oversees Facebook’s AI lab. Rather than analyze a sentence sequentially, one piece at a time, a convolutional neural network can analyze many different pieces at once, before organizing those pieces into a logical hierarchy.
Like Google before it, Facebook is not only publishing a paper describing its new system but open-sourcing the software engine that drives the system, freely sharing the code with the world at large. It’s even sharing models it has already trained on its own data. This is part of a larger effort across the internet’s biggest companies to freely share their AI research. It means that translation will evolve far more quickly across the internet—not just on Facebook.
See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/2017/05/facebook-open-sources-neural-networks-speed-translations/
Samsung’s LED Cinema Screen Passes DCI Compliance Test
Samsung Electronic’s LED direct view digital cinema display has passed DCI compliance tests and can thus now be used to screen new Hollywood releases in cinemas. Having first been shown at invitation-only demonstrations at CinemaCon in late March this year, the speed with which Samsung’s potentially disruptive technology has been brought to market has taken many inside the cinema technology industry by surprise. Previously only projectors from Barco, Christie and NEC based on Texas Instrument’s DLP Cinema technology and Sony’s LCoS SXRD have been passed as DCI compliant cinema display devices.
It is widely believed that Samsung will have a commercial product before the end of this year and will promote it aggressively. Samsung’s DCI certification is also likely to spur LED cinema effort by Sony Electronics – who demonstrated their prototype at CinemaCon – and HSI Immersive, as well as other potential players.
See the full story here: https://celluloidjunkie.com/2017/05/12/samsungs-led-cinema-screen-passes-dci-compliance-test/
Visitors to Shakespeare’s New Place will have the chance to meet the man himself
A new, free, augmented reality (AR) app brings the story of the house, in which he lived for nearly two decades and died in 1616, to virtual life.
The Bard himself guides the user on his journey from savvy investor and keen entrepreneur, to expert social networker and the most recognised, and wealthiest, playwright of his age.
The AR experience, designed by England’s Heritage Cities, is free to download and covers historic sites across 12 towns and cities in the UK.
See the full story here: https://stratfordobserver.co.uk/news/visitors-to-shakespeares-new-place-will-have-the-chance-to-meet-the-man-himself/