philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

SVRF may have the answer to VR’s search problem

I sat down with Sophia Dominguez, co-founder and chief executive of SVRF, a search engine for VR content, which just launched in open beta.

Sophia discussed why consumers are scared of VR and how she’s planning to knock down the barriers, why the nausea factor is critical in search rankings, how Snapchat will help bridge to the gap to AR, and why Facebook’s VR privacy policy is pretty alarming. Sophia also revealed the challenges of being a woman in the industry, why building a company in New York is a better reality check than building in the Silicon Valley bubble, why VR zombies are a great alternative to coffee, and why trippy VR art is so amazing.

One thing we didn’t realize when we first started was how much bad content there was. There’s all these weird things you have to think about. If you look at content that’s on the web and are like oh this is interesting, but you put it in a headset, it could make someone sick. The way that our ranking works is, would somebody feel comfortable in a headset —

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/18/svrf-may-have-the-answer-to-vrs-search-problem/

Law, virtual reality, and augmented reality

Stanford law professor Mark A. Lemley and I have just finished a draft of a new article, “Law, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality.” It’s still early days in the development of commercial VR and AR, and even more so in the law of each. But we think that the shape of the technology is clear enough to speculate about the legal issues that are likely to arise.

You can read the current 64 page draft of their 6-part article here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933867

A word about my coauthor: Mark is probably the most-cited scholar of his generation, and certainly one of the two or three top intellectual property scholars and law-and-technology scholars in the country.

Our article primarily aims to identify the interesting coming questions, and outline some possible answers. We will sometimes suggest which answers are best, but that’s not the main value that we seek to add. Rather, we simply hope that, by thinking ahead about such matters, all of us can better decide how to better develop both VR and AR law and VR and AR technology, and perhaps also learn something about the role of law in the physical world as well.

See the full news story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/17/law-virtual-reality-and-augmented-reality/?utm_term=.66ef1c34a414

Walk Inside a Gothic Prayer Bead in a VR Experience at the Cloisters

Photography by Ian Lefebvre

The VR helps recover the fascination that might have been felt by a person in the 16th century, when their seemingly impossible precision was part of that awe. It was a deeply contemplative mental condition, — not unlike, as Serrano put it, “the flow state you have when you are playing a game.”

The Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures exhibition that opened this week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters is a rare gathering of around 50 tiny wood carvings created for religious meditation. The details on the prayer beads, some two inches in diameter, are incredible, so layered with their saints and devils, that, according to Anna Serrano, “The moment people see these objects, they wish that they could go inside.” Serrano is the chief digital officer at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab (CFC), and producer for “Small Wonders: The VR Experience,” which allows museum visitors to do just that.

Unlike a lot of art-related VR I’ve experienced, the Small Wonders interactive is much more about appreciating an object in a different way than just a novelty. It’s also impressively transporting, as one moment you’re standing in the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Cloisters, and the next you’re on some Ender’s Game-esque gridded plane, the bead looming above you. A soundtrack of 16th-century Northern European spiritual songs sets the mood, drowning out the museum sounds. An attendant guides you through the process so you don’t trip over the rope and stumble into any priceless art, and with a controller you can explode and contract the diorama of the bead. Even though you are aware it is a digital view, there’s still something startling about walking through the carved surface. For Givord, who has an industrial design background, preserving that tactile nature with the scans, instead of simulating a digital wood grain, was essential to the project. He wanted something “that’s visceral and that you can touch,” even if your hand goes right through.

See the full story here: http://hyperallergic.com/361000/walk-inside-a-gothic-prayer-bead-at-the-cloisters/

Sony shows VR/AR concept pieces at SXSW

Mixed Reality Cave

Motion Sonic Project

projection mapping technology

Cyber Gym and Music Visualizer

Synesthesia Suit

See the full story with video here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3181888/consumer-electronics/sonys-virtual-reality-suit-is-why-people-go-to-sxsw.html

How Will Facebook’s Oculus Rift Price Cut Affect the Virtual Reality Market?

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) has implemented price reductions for its Oculus Rift virtual reality hardware, reducing the cost of the headset by $100 (now $499) and the bundle featuring the platform's Touch controllers by $200 (now $598). The price for separate Touch controllers has also been reduced from $199 to $99, and the cost for an additional Rift sensor has dropped from $79 to $59.

The markdowns come on the heels of disappointing sales for the platform, and are the first major price reductions for the high-end VR device. HTC's (NASDAQOTH:HTCXF) Vive platform, not itself a great success, has shipped somewhere in the neighborhood of 420,000 units, and reports suggest that the Vive (which is priced at $800 for the headset and controllers) has sold roughly twice as many units as the Rift. HTC has said that it does not see a need to cut the price of the Vive in response to the markdowns for Rift hardware.

Companies including Lenovo, HP, and Dell will be launching mid-range headsets for Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Holographic platform -- with prices starting in the $300 range. These products will be compatible with a wider range of PCs and are likely to put pressure on Facebook's and HTC's VR hardware offerings.

See the full story here: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/17/instant-analysis-how-will-facebooks-oculus-rift-pr.aspx

Aerial robots take augmented reality to the skies

The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is currently developing global standards for the use of this new technology; and the European Parliament is setting the agenda for potential future European-wide regulation.

In this increasingly regulated sector, augmented reality becomes vital. Rules around flying drones are becoming less focused on when and where drones are operated, and far more about the pilot’s visibility of the drone and how drones can be piloted in the safest way possible.

This is where visual line of sight comes in; the theory that a drone pilot should keep their drone within their visual sight at all times. Of course, with drones being used more and more in high-risk areas, achieving this is proving more difficult.

Drone pilots are increasingly relying on augmented reality smart glasses to effectively keep sight of and control their drones. With a view to developing cutting-edge technology, Epson and drone manufacturer DJI have collaborated on a pair of smart glasses with advanced head tracking sensors that enable the drone pilot to visualise a 360-degree canvas, while keeping track of the device and maintaining line of sight.

See the full story here: http://www.information-age.com/aerial-robots-take-augmented-reality-skies-123465100/

Apple Granted Patent to Make Augmented Reality Maps—Hinting at a Cool, Futuristic Version of Our Well-Worn Maps App

Apple recently scored a patent (number 9,488,488) to create augmented reality maps, hinting at possible AR integration into the iOS Maps application for iPhone.

Apple's augmented reality patent—which is currently being updated with application 15/341,915—describes an iPhone user as pointing her device at a location to capture and then display a live video stream. The iPhone finds your geographic position and recognizes the direction and tilt of your camera. Then, you can search for points of interest in relation to your area.

See the full story here: https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/apple-granted-patent-make-augmented-reality-maps-hinting-cool-futuristic-version-our-well-worn-maps-app-0176600/

You Can Ban a Person, But What About Their Hologram?

Due to outstanding warrants for his arrest, Cozart can’t even return to Chicago, and so unable to perform in the area, he took the innovative approach of performing from California, but as a hologram beamed into the Indiana music festival. But even that was too much for police, and the performance was immediately stopped.

Insubordinate holograms have been used in a far more political fashion as well. Two years ago, the Spanish government passed what has become known as the “gag law”—rules aimed at restricting protesters from convening outside government buildings. Demonstrators hoping to voice their dissent for the legislation staged the world’s first hologram protest as a way to circumnavigate the rules. To pull off the stunt, the protesters hired a production company to film marchers walking along a street at another location and then projected that footage as a hologram on top of a translucent fabric which was constructed outside the buildings.

Location-based augmented reality experiences create issues since they cause real people to move around real places in new and unpredictable ways. More than a few Pokemon Go flash mobs disrupted cities around the world during last summer’s frenzy.

Niantic, the company behind the game, had to remove in-game locations from the Holocaust Museum and Hiroshima memorial, showcasing just how important it is to create divisions between parts of reality and these new digital worlds.

The United States Congress is already beginning to ask interesting questions in the name of finding ways to protect consumers from the perils of augmented reality, including whether hackers might one day be able to edit our reality in weird and nefarious ways. Legislators will also need to explore the ways in which telepresence holograms and location-based experiences can be permitted to navigate the world.

See the full story here: https://singularityhub.com/2017/03/17/you-can-ban-a-person-but-what-about-their-hologram/

MicroGrids, AR, and Drones: How a high-tech experiment in a cotton mill town might change your life

Twice last year, sensors at a Duke Energy substation detected potential power losses from storms. In a fraction of a second, an experimental system disconnected the station from power lines and switched to solar-powered backup batteries, then reconnected it to the grid after the threats passed.

The episodes offered a glimpse into the future of electricity, which in the next decade or so could come to you without power lines.

HTC to Sell Shanghai Phone Factory for $91 Million, Invest Proceeds in VR Business

Despite its major role in the growing VR space, HTC’s overall business continues to struggle financially, posting significant losses over the last two years. Working to turn things around with a restructuring of assets and priorities, the company is facing the sale of a smartphone factory in Shanghai. The proceeds from the $91 million sale will largely funnel toward the company’s Vive VR business, according to China Daily.

See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-to-sell-shanghai-smartphone-factory-for-91-million-invest-proceeds-in-vr-vive-business/