A Chinese Lens on Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality
One of the hosts of the conference, ARinChina, brought me over along with a group of about a half-dozen Westerners. This media company connects a community of 60,000 developers, all of whom are invested in staying ahead of breakthrough technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and the hybrid known as mixed reality (MR). The AR track where I presented was hosted by RAVV, a new technology think tank that is pulling together subject matter experts across robotics, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, VR and AR. RAVV is building an international ecosystem that includes its own approaches for startup incubation, knowledge sharing and other collaborative endeavors.
AR works best when it's invisible. - Snapchat and Pokemon
B2B will be a major driver of AR and MR. You know who most appreciates head-mounted displays? Professionals who work with their hands, need content delivered directly in front of them, and don't care about how they look.
Brands must constantly hone their value proposition. ... if a brand created an app that could use the camera to recognize stains and tell people how to clean them, any parent with young children at home would love it.
Some of the most important technical specifications are about the optics. I got to try the new VR viewer from Wearality, a company run by optics pioneer David A. Smith. The crispness of the screen, along with the breadth of the field of view, delivers a breakthrough in quality, especially for any device at a sub-$100 price point.
It takes a village, and a country, and a world. The goal of the Virtual Reality Summit wasn't just to show off cool gadgetry, though that was part of it. It was to pull together support for business development, content creation, financing, manufacturing, infrastructure, and hardware and software innovation. These are topics of interest for Gui'An in particular, which has quickly become China's big data capital.
See the full story here: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/a-chinese-lens-ar-vr/306265/
Xiaomi beefs up its mobile virtual reality push with Mi VR
The forthcoming Mi VR is going on more general release in China, priced at RMB 199 (~$30).
As with other such mobile VR headsets, it only works with Xiaomi’s smartphones — and is therefore tied to the company’s mobile market footprint. So don’t expect this to arrive in the US; Xiaomi will need to bring its smartphones to the market for that to be possible.
The Mi VR hardware includes a dedicated motion sensor and system-level optimizations for 16ms ultra-low latency, aimed at minimizing motion sickness (aka VR nausea). The headset also ships with the aforementioned 9-axis motion controller to support a wider range of interactions with content. VR content for the device is downloaded from Xiaomi’s app store.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/25/xiaomi-beefs-up-its-mobile-virtual-reality-push-with-mi-vr/
Boiler Room Is Creating the World’s First Virtual Reality Party Venue
Live-streaming leaders Boiler Room have by now achieved ubiquity among the dance community for broadcasting their rocking parties to live audiences around the world. They’re about to take it to the next level of immersion with the announcement they’ll be partnering with virtual reality provider Inception to launch their own special VR venue in 2017.
See the full story here: https://www.insomniac.com/media/boiler-room-creating-worlds-first-virtual-reality-party-venue
Bloomberg: Daqri seeking $200M investment to develop augmented reality helmet
Dive Brief:
- According to sources who Bloomberg characterized as "familiar with the matter," augmented reality company Daqri is discreetly looking for at least $200 million in private investment.
- The company is reportedly in search of cash in order to further advance its $15,000 safety helmet product, which allows industrial workers to see a digital overlay on top of a real-life view of existing site conditions.
- If Daqri manages to raise $200 million, that would mark one of the biggest investments ever into "young" fields like augmented and virtual reality. The Los Angeles-based company — which, according to Bloomberg, has been somewhat secretive about its efforts to raise capital — has previously said it raised $15 million in private equity in 2013.
See the full story here: http://www.constructiondive.com/news/bloomberg-daqri-seeking-200m-investment-to-develop-augmented-reality-helm/429132/
AR as product design tool
In the EU-funded SPARK project, Prof. Cascini leads a consortium that uses light projectors to beam colour onto life-sized plaster casts of new products. Consumers can handle the casts to get a better feel for the final product and designers can alter their appearance in real time.
One challenge is for the light beam to follow the cast around the room without altering the image projected on its surface. To do so, an algorithm works out the position and orientation of each cast from beacons fixed to its extremities and adapts the image sent through the projector accordingly.
The highlight of the SPARK approach is that it manages to augment reality without using any screens. ‘This frees designers up so that they can focus on being creative,’ said Prof. Cascini.
See the full story here: https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/not-just-pok-mon-prepare-augmented-reality-deluge_en.html
IrisVR raises $8M to bring virtual reality to architecture and design
IrisVR launched in beta earlier this year, offering the first full-suite of products that can edit, share and visualize 3D models in virtual reality. The software is first-of-its-kind, and immediately caught the attention of 45 of the top 100 global design and architecture firms. Since then, the company has seen downloads in over 100 countries. Additionally, The company’s ‘Iris Prospect’ tool allows professionals to upload their existing plans and blueprints with only a few clicks, and immediately enter a virtual rendering of their design using a VR headset.
“To date, VR has had the stigma of being some sort of gimmick, bordering on science fiction,” said Shane Scranton, Founder and CEO, IrisVR, in a statement. “Those perceptions are about to be shattered. There are real, industry changing applications for this technology and IrisVR is building one of them. Simply put, we’re reinventing the canvas on which a vast, global industry communicates
See the full story here: http://www.builtinnyc.com/2016/10/25/vr-startup-iris-vr-nabs-8-million-series