Enterprise virtual reality startup Envelop VR cuts staff as ‘an adjustment to market conditions’
Founded in 2014, Envelop is specializing in virtual reality applications for the business world, allowing employees to work in a virtual environment in order to more quickly solve problems. Its “immersive computing platform” creates a virtual Windows desktop for using applications with a virtual reality headset.
I had a chance to test Envelop’s software this summer and came away impressed. It is a fascinating way to interact with desktop apps. The software lets you switch between different tabs and programs in a truly immersive world with infinite monitors inside a 3D space. You can open multiple windows, adjust their sizes, and place them anywhere you’d like.
It is also an increasingly competitive market. Early competitors in the space include Virtual Desktop for Rift and Vive, Valve’s Steam Desktop Theater, and the virtual desktop mode in Microsoft’s own HoloLens, which is a Windows 10 device in the form of an augmented reality headset.
Envelop is one of several virtual reality/augmented reality startups in Seattle. Others include Pluto VR, VREAL, Pixvana, VRstudios, Convrge, Polyarc, and Endeavor One.
See the full story here: http://www.geekwire.com/2016/enterprise-virtual-reality-startup-envelop-vr-cuts-staff-adjustment-market-conditions/
Storytelling in the Virtual Age at FoST Fest
A cavernous, six-story space on Fifth Avenue and 109th Street will soon be temporarily transformed into a phantasmagoria of virtual reality, augmented reality, olfactory experiments, immersive theater and numerous mind-bending tricks.
At the Future of StoryTelling Festival, or FoST Fest, participants who pay $75 for various interactive experiences will have three hours to join a flock of birds following a mother bird; tap into their five senses to experience gender fluidity; or watch “Riot,” a film that uses facial recognition to take users on a journey through a violent protest.
“We are creating a unique story world,” said Charles Melcher, the festival’s founder. “Our tag line is ‘All the world’s a stage, come be a player,’ and this is the ultimate expression of that sentiment.”
FoST Fest is much larger, with more than 70 hands-on exhibits, as well as panel discussions and satellite events like performances from Punchdrunk’s immersive theater piece, Sleep No More, and “{THE AND},” an interactive documentary about human relationships by the Skin Deep, a creative studio.
See the full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/nyregion/storytelling-in-the-virtual-age-at-fost-fest.html?_r=0
Watch HypeVR’s Impressive Volumetric 360 3D Video In Action
HypeVR may be poised to alter the 360 video landscape with their depth-mapped, volumetric video system that lets VR users move in, out and around the captured scene. Watch Fox’s Futurist Ted Schilowitz as he gives one of the first real time demonstrations of the technology.
HypeVR’s proprietary system uses 14 Red Dragon, 6k Video Cameras rig-mounted to capture a 360 degree field of view. Recording at 60Hz currently (with 90Hz planned) the definition of the resulting footage, once stitched would probably be impressive enough in and of itself, but there’s more. HypeVR’s rig is extended to use a Velodyne LiDAR scanner, capable of capturing up to 700,000 points of 3D depth information every second at a range of up to 100M.
The practical upshot of all this is that, the resulting data captured allows any recorded scene to be reassembled and ‘played’ with the scene able to respond in real time to a viewer’s movements – this means parallax within a video and even the ability to move in and out of the scene.
As he begins moving around, the video (a looping coastal scene) can be seen to respond to his shifts in position, with both parallax and advancement / retreat in and out of the scene displayed.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/watch-hypevrs-impressive-volumetric-360-3d-video-in-action/
New Interactive Features Enhance Bucs Gameday
When the Buccaneers took the field for their home opener in Week 3, the team simultaneously launched two new interactive features on their official app – 15 Seconds of Fame and a collection of interactive games. The Bucs are the first professional sports teams to utilize augmented reality for in-stadium interactive games.
The Bucs' Pirate Ship Race is an interactive ship race featuring three pirate ships. Through the use of augmented reality, the field becomes water. The Buccaneers are the first professional sports team to utilize such technology for their in-stadium experience. Users will tap or swipe the ship they want to win. The ships will race across the water powered by the user's input.
Bucs Showdown has been in existence for over a year. It is played throughout the Bucs’ games, both home and away, and allows fans to make predictions as the game goes on. For example, one Bucs Showdown question could be how many passing yards Jameis Winston will rack up before the final whistle.
See the full story here: http://www.buccaneers.com/news/article-1/New-Interactive-Features-Enhance-Bucs-Gameday/b220dc5a-1cf1-4b3e-b942-fa7b47dd75eb
VR job on Las Vegas Strip (at The Linq)
We are located on the Promenade at the Linq on Las Vegas Blvd.
VR Adventures is a cutting edge and never-before-seen immersive experience that plunges guests into a three-dimensional virtual world. Guests will put on goggles that Facebook spent 2 billion dollars to develop, and be transported to a virtual reality. Unlike other video games, VR Adventures requires gamers to use hand movement, walk, sidestep or jump to explore or fly through the virtual world. Honestly...the experience redefines magical!
VR Adventures offers gamers up to FOUR unique experiences to escape from the everyday games and into the virtual world.
www.VRadventures.net
General Responsibilities include:
-Enthusiastically immerse the guest in their VR experience
-Retail Sales
-Cash handling
-Up Selling
-Taking photos and selling photo packages
-Guiding guests on an interactive VR Adventure
-Ensuring guest safety while using VR Unit
-Promoting the experience and upselling tickets
-Solid understanding and communication of all the elements of the attraction
-Position requires employee to memorize a script for the guests
Helpful skills:
-Promotional sales and upselling
-Excellent communication skills
-Retail and sales experience
-Ability to steady customers if they lose their balance
-Ability to stand for long periods of time indoors and outdoors
AES 2016: An overview of the key talking points
The event was bookended by two fascinating keynote speeches. The first, presented by Philip Lelyveld, virtual reality/augmented reality initiative program manager at the USC Entertainment Technology Center, Los Angeles, on 'The Journey into Virtual and Augmented Reality', defined how virtual, augmented, and mixed reality will impact entertainment, learning and social interaction. “Just as TV programming progressed from live broadcasts of staged performances to today’s very complex language of multithread long-form content,” Lelyveld stressed, “so such media will progress from projecting existing media language into a headset experience, to a new VR/AR/MR-specific language that both the creatives and the audience understand.”48 Crazy Ideas Coming From The $2 Billion Stealth Startup Magic Leap
[Philip Lelyveld comment - this nearly 2 year old story shows that Magic Leap is filing patent on everything that they can think of regarding augmented reality and user experience design.]
See the full story here: https://www.fastcodesign.com/3041174/48-crazy-ui-ideas-coming-from-the-500-million-stealth-startup-magic-leap
Virtual reality looks to its adolescence
...based on how Sony has sought to market and frame this device it’s clear that they’re playing a different game than Oculus and HTC.
PlayStation is in the business of making expensive toys that you play with, and it’s clear that Sony is marketing PS VR as less of a visionary metaverse access point than as a new, cool way to experience gaming.
For the time being, virtual reality needs to move away from being billed as some sort of transcendent awakening wrapped in an ethical enigma, instead of what it is right now, just some really cool shit. In other words, shut the fuck up if your job title has the word futurist, evangelist, visionary or wizard in it.
Google Daydream is one of the most important platform launches for VR thus far. The platform gives smartphone users a chance at their first “real VR” experience beyond Cardboard, while giving manufacturers of Android phones a clearer path to success in entering the VR space without having to completely rethink the virtual wheel. Daydream also gives developers access to a much wider base of potential users through the Play Store.
[Samsung] was listed as one of the initial partners for Daydream and will likely be showing off their own headset designed for the platform soon.
With the VR mode in Android Nougat, Google has pretty much dropped a blanket upgrade to Android devices so that low-latency VR can be a reality across manufacturers for devices with low persistence displays.
Positional tracking, the nifty technology that allows VR users to move around in virtual space, is pretty essential to actually feeling immersed in a VR experience.
Mobile inside-out positional tracking is certainly on its way but in the meantime I think it would behoove developers to see fixed point head-tracking as less of a deficiency than a necessary challenge. ...once the honeymoon period is over and laziness reigns, it’s not unrealistic to imagine that seated experiences become the norm for most.
Sony and Google have the benefit of releasing their platforms on systems that they largely control. This raises a lot of questions for how Oculus and HTC are going to expand their horizons on mobile and console VR without just building a bunch more headsets.
Whether or not Microsoft’s 4K Project Scorpio Xbox One specifically taps the Rift to be its go-to compatible HMD, it’s difficult to imagine a VR future for Xbox in late 2017 that doesn’t at least incorporate Oculus.
Growing social
Virtual reality has a lot of potential to expand (and redefine?) social interactions, but other than simple telepresence with other headset wearers, not too many people know what that all looks like.
Sony is experimenting with an interesting concept for PS VR called social screen, where VR headset wearers can play games with other people in the same room on the same system.
Refocusing
For companies in the virtual reality biz, this is going to be the month where things either become much clearer or much blurrier in terms of how your startup operates.
The VR hype cycle may currently be wading through the trough of disillusionment but with so many high-profile announcements on their way from powerhouses in the space, the end of 2016 may finally have a chance to live up to some of the hype.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/virtual-reality-looks-to-its-adolescence/