Virtual reality films are Sundance’s latest sensation
Jaunt debuted “My Brother’s Keeper,” an offshoot of the PBS series “Mercy Street,” which follows two brothers fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War. More than 150 Civil War re-enactors were used to film “My Brother’s Keeper,” and several of them crawl right up in your face as they die. You can practically feel the intensity of the battle.
Jaunt also premiered “Bashir’s Dream,” a mix of live action documentary filmmaking and animation that tells the story of Qusai Bashir Masaama, a 14-year-old Syrian refugee living in Jordan, who was shot in the back by a sniper while he was on his way to buy candy.
Other virtual reality standouts at Sundance include the Synesthesia Suit, a full-body exoskeleton-style suit with 26 sensors to provide as much sensation as possible while playing the video game “Rez Infinite” or experiencing the psychedelic sounds of “Crystal Vibes.”
In August 2014, Daniel Ashley Pierce recorded the audio of the verbal and physical abuse heaped on him by his conservative parents as they were kicking him out of the house because of his homosexuality. That audio is the soundtrack to “Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story,” which lets participants experience Daniel’s hurt and pain in 360 degrees.
And a three-hour wait accompanied “Tree,” a haptically enhanced virtual experience by artists Milica Zec and Winslow Porter that follows the life cycle of a rainforest tree.
“You start as a seed, you burst through the ground, and then all of a sudden when you start getting branches, you realize that your arms are branches,” Zec says. “You can move them, and your body’s a trunk. You get to witness what unfortunately way too many trees go through today in rainforests.”
See the full story here: http://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/columns/christopher-lawrence/virtual-reality-films-are-sundance-s-latest-sensation
Voxel Virtual Reality Parlour in St. Paul offers an eye-opening night out
In October, he quietly opened the first virtual reality lounge in the Twin Cities. Voxel Virtual Reality Parlour also is among the first crop of such businesses around the country bringing the new technology to the masses.
The 1,500-square-foot space is in the same building as Lake Monster Brewing in St. Paul. It has three bays that patrons can rent out by the hour by themselves or with a group of friends. Each room can fit three to four people.
Passion drives innovation: AR and VR founders survey reveals new trends
Here are the top trends that emerged from our survey:
- Women are starting to play larger leadership roles in technology and innovation.
- Data reveals passion drives entrepreneurship, not technical skills.
- Technical skills guarantee employability.
- Companies need to invest in training their workforce in both soft and hard skills/
- Leadership development is a big concern and priority. Emotional intelligence is a must for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders, management and employees.
- Many U.S. VR and AR companies are starting to look outside of the USA to hire.
See the full story here: http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/29/passion-drives-innovation-ar-and-vr-founders-survey-reveals-new-trends/
Pokemon Go crosses 4.2mn download mark after three days of official launch in South Korea
The number of people in South Korea who used the popular augmented reality game “Pokemon Go” in a single day has surpassed 4.2 million just three days after its official launch in the country, according to a survey.
WiseApp, an app analytics company, said on Friday that 4.28 million people used the AR mobile game on Thursday, up from 2.91 million people on Tuesday when Pokemon Go was officially released in the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store in South Korea, Yonhap reported.
WiseApp also said the number of people who have downloaded the game fell to 850,000 on Thursday, down from 2.83 million people on Tuesday, citing its sample survey of 17,400 smartphone users.
See the full story here: http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/pokemon-go-crosses-4-2mn-download-mark-after-three-days-of-official-launch-in-south-korea-359714.html
Augmented reality helps interpret gunnery commands
The Navy has successfully demonstrated a prototype for a new command communications system that could help sailors work more effectively amid the noise and confusion of combat.
Watch a nightclub shooting in virtual reality? For Rose Troche, painful subjects make for powerful art
“It’s really important to me to test the parameters of how to create sustainable narratives in VR,” Troche says, adding that the sooner a cohesive language to describe it emerges, including critics who understand and employ that language, the sooner that feat will be accomplished.
Actors, too, will need to relearn their craft if VR is to flourish. Actors are never off camera in a 360-degree film, unless they physically leave the room. It’s almost like being in a play, only, unlike with theater, actors in VR need to understate everything. The more they project in VR, the more false they look.
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The new work, “If Not Love,” is a short piece that takes the viewer on a painful, 360-degree journey through a mass shooting at a gay nightclub. “If Not Love” isn’t intended to re-create last year’s Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Fla., but the project was inspired by that incident as well as by the tragedy in Nice, France, when a truck plowed through a crowd at a Bastille Day celebration.
In both cases, Troche wondered if anything could have been done to stop the violence.
“If Not Love” explores that thought by following the story of a closeted gay man who, after an anonymous hookup, decides to carry out a shooting at a nightclub. The piece presents an alternate scenario where, instead of letting him leave after sex, the man’s partner asks him to stay. The two men kiss and hold each other, while back at the nightclub the bodies on the ground suddenly rise up in reverse of the falls they took in the shooting.
See the full story here: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-sundance-updates-watch-a-nightclub-shooting-in-virtual-1485469643-htmlstory.html
Virtualitics launches software that immerses viewers in complex models of data
On Thursday, Virtualitics LLC will launch its business that brings together data visualization and virtual reality. Its technology, which uses machine learning to summarize data patterns, is based on research done at the nearby California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Scientists there teamed up with video-gaming veterans who are helping Virtualitics develop user-friendly tools in virtual reality.
Pasadena-based Virtualitics has developed machine learning algorithms that help an analyst determine which factors will provide the best possible mapping. For example with ETFs, the machine picks volatility and expense ratio as the most important factors to consider.
The program then creates a multidimensional data representation. It uses natural-language processing to write a paragraph that helps interpret what the image means for people who don’t have data-science backgrounds.
Virtualitics declined to identify all its backers by name but said a London-based financial institution, a South American retail group and several individuals invested in a $3 million seed round.
One investor, Andy Walter, a former chief information officer with Procter & Gamble, acts as an adviser.
See the full story here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/virtual-realitys-next-frontier-is-visuals-for-data-science-1485433801
Is virtual reality the antidote to help depressed seniors?
Researchers in different parts of the country are looking into how VR can be prescribed to elderly patients to rehabilitate them from things like strokes, treat depression, dementia and anxiety, and serve as an escape from their hospital or hospice beds.
Lora Appel, a researcher with OpenLab at Toronto General Hospital, has been focusing her VR research efforts on seniors with dementia. Some of these patients don't get to go outside much because they like to wander — and that can be dangerous.
Her hope is to use VR as a tool to take them outdoors virtually and cut down on the wandering.
"I have no doubt this will improve quality of life," she said.
Appel's team has yet to test the technology with seniors, but she and her colleagues are well into the research phase and hope to roll out a pilot project by the end of the summer.
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It's a new concept for Canadians, but some in the U.S. have already been experimenting with VR-like experiences for seniors, like Aerial Anthropology, a Cleveland, Ohio-based film production company that specializes in flying drones for hospice patients.
The drone flights are streamed live for patients on a large screen, showing them a meaningful location of their choice — like the family home or a park they used to go to as a kid. The visuals have brought up many memories for patients and their families.
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Instead, they have some seniors try out different types of virtual reality without the headsets, like a driving simulator and a virtual reality motion-capture machine called CAREN (Computer-Assisted Rehabilitation Environment), which helps seniors with severe physical injuries learn to walk again.
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"It is a forgotten demographic and that's why we really think it is an important demographic," he said.
See the full story here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/virtual-reality-seniors-1.3950196