Facebook To Bring South Korea VR/AR Startups Under Its Wing
Via the new agreement, the Facebook Korea office in Seoul will reportedly be teaming up with Korea Innovation Center of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning along with the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion to choose 10 promising AR and VR firms in Korea. Employees of those 10 firms will spend 10 weeks in Silicon Valley learning tech and business from Oculus VR engineers.
“Outstanding technologies and companies may be considered by the Facebook headquarters for future M&A or supply pool,” Park Dae-sung, head of policy at Facebook Korea, is reported as saying. “We hope to see some very innovative products from killer content to hardware through this program.”
Facebook’s CSO Alex Stamos adds “Korean companies have a fantastic advantage due to the technical and intellectual infrastructure in these areas” after he made his first trip to Seoul to celebrate the new partnership.
See the full story here: https://uploadvr.com/facebook-helps-korea-startups/
This College Acceptance Letter Came With A VR Viewer
This VR acceptance letter makeover goes beyond just a typical college tour. Luke Meyer, Director of Marketing and Engagement says, “this was a chance to answer one of the top questions accepted candidates ask, which is what is it like to be a Skidmore student when I’m not in class.” The college communications team felt that using immersive video was the best way to answer that question, “why not use something like 360VR to bring Skidmore student life to the accepted candidate,” said Meyer.
The Skidmore Communications team knew students had already toured the campus, sat in on classes, and talked with faculty. So it was about giving the accepted candidates something more, something a letter or booklet couldn’t provide.
See the video and the full story here: http://vrscout.com/news/college-vr-acceptance-letter/
How Salem’s Augmented Reality Exhibit is Actually a Social Mission
From May 27 to Nov. 30, the Salem Maritime National Historic Site will feature 10 augmented reality sculptures in a free exhibition that's open to the public. The exhibits are going to be positioned throughout the park via GPS, and will be viewable using the augmented reality app Layer. For visitors that don’t have a smart device with them, there will be phones and tablets for checkout.
The work will be curated by five internationally-acclaimed artists: John Craig Freeman, Kristin Lucas, Will Pappenheimer, Mark Skwarek, and Tamiko Thiel.
I caught up with one of the artists, John Craig Freeman, ... Freeman will bring virtual sights from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Wuhan, China, to the Port of Salem. Visitors will have the chance to look at the former house of a Russian Tea Merchant and the cathedrals of Saint Petersburg. He explained that the location for the exhibit works especially well, as the Baltic region and China have had a shared history of trade with Port of Salem.
[Meron Gribetz] “And what I think we need to do as a community, is really try and make an effort to imagine how we can create this new reality in a way that extends the human experience, instead of gamifying our reality or cluttering it with digital information.”
See the full story here: http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2017/04/05/boston-cyberarts-brings-augmented-reality-to-salem-maritime-site/
‘Pokemon GO’ CEO Says VR is So Good It’s a “Problem for Society”
Niantic CEO John Hanke thinks VR is great. So great, in fact, that it might actually ruin our lives. Hanke, whose company debuted the wildly-successful Augmented Reality game Pokémon GO, sees virtual reality escapism as a potential issue for his children’s psychological health.
“My thing about VR is I’m afraid it can be too good, in the sense of being an experience that people want to spend a huge amount of time in,” Hanke said at the Mixed Reality Summit in London on Tuesday, according to a report by GamesIndustry.biz. “I mean, I already have concerns about my kids playing too much Minecraft, and that’s a wonderful game.”
The solution, Hanke says, is augmented reality, the technology that Pokémon GO uses.
“With AR, there’s a huge amount of potential to do things that really do have a positive impact on people,” he told the conference. “I think there’s a ton of good that can be done.”
See the full story here: https://www.inverse.com/article/29981-virtual-reality-vr-augmented-reality-ar-pokemon-go
New HTC Vives Weigh 15% Less Than They Did at Launch
HTC has managed to shave 15% off of the original 550 grams (1.21 pounds), bringing the headset’s weight in line with the Oculus Rift.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-weight-15-percent-lighter-than-original-headset-vs-oculus-rift-comparison/
EON Reality’s AVR Platform makes Virtual reality and Augmented Reality application development easy and strengthens the man and machine connection
See the full story here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eon-realitys-avr-platform-makes-130000246.htmlAdd-On Modules
- AR Knowledge Injection allows users to take the context aware knowledge with them in the field and instantly inject it when need it through AR assisted by AI & IOT empowered computers
- EON IOT permits the use of Augmented Reality as a Visual Interface for IOT
- AR 3D Annotation supports non-technical user's creation of 3D annotations on the spot that are connected through AR with a physical object or environment. The AR 3D Annotation supports text, voice, video and EON Creator AVR generated 3D content
- EON GEO Geo-positional Augmented Reality that turns any location into an opportunity for knowledge transfer
- Assessment & Analytics
- EON AI Link Artificial intelligence & advanced image recognition enables faster generation Contextual AVR Guidelines attached to physical objects and environments
Launch of augmented reality project set to bring new life to historic Bath and other UK sites
‘England’s Historic Cities’ app, a ground-breaking AR experience, was launched on 31st March to celebrate English Tourism Week and will transport the user back in time to unveil the hidden lives of some of history’s most fascinating characters at The Roman Baths.
The premise of the app is to capture significant historic moments in time whilst providing tourists the opportunity to explore England’s most historic cities.
In Bath, the latest technology will help you unravel the history of the Roman Bath’s gradual discovery and evolution. With the app you can unearth the fascinating past of the Roman Baths and rediscover the ancient curiosities that lie just beneath the surface by joining one of the Bath’s most remarkable architects – Major Charles Edward Davis.
The exciting new project is one of a number of projects to benefit from the by the £40 million Discover England Fund – a central government funded programme of activity administered by VisitEngland supported by match-funding from private and public partners.
See the full story here: http://www.bathecho.co.uk/news/community/launch-augmented-reality-project-set-bring-new-life-historic-bath-72073/
Project to walk schoolkids through troubled black orphanage in virtual reality
Gerry Morrison's childhood memories of life in the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children are painful, but he has agreed to relive them so a groundbreaking virtual-reality project can ensure future generations will never forget.
The 64-year-old is one of three narrators who will take students wearing Oculus Rift headsets on simulated walks through the now-vacant orphanage on the eastern outskirts of Halifax, once the pilot project is prepared for four Grade 11 classrooms by the fall of 2018.
Morrison said Nova Scotians need to hear his voice and imagine how children struggled with isolation and a sense of neglect in the underfunded home where hundreds of black children spent their childhood.
See the full story here: https://www.localxpress.ca/local-news/project-to-walk-schoolkids-through-troubled-black-orphanage-in-virtual-reality-580366