philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Matterport secures new investors for its virtual reality 3D mapping tech

Matterport, a company creating tools to allow 3D spaces to be scanned into virtual reality,

Matterport has raised $56 million to date, including a $30 million Series C in June of last year led by Qualcomm Ventures.

One of the main external-facing metrics for success that the company is sharing are “visits” or views of the scanned 3D models. In August of 2015, Matterport had seen 10 million visits to its properties. Fast forward a year and that number has increased dramatically, the company just announced that it has surpassed 60 million visits to the nearly 270 thousand structures that have been scanned using Matterport’s tech.

The company’s revenues are comprised of both the sales of its $4,500 Matterport Pro 3D Camera and the monthly subscription fees, ranging from $49 to $149 per month which allow users to host their scanned models on the site. The camera is an interesting beast, using a technology called Lidar to blast lasers across a space and capture a full visual scan of the area from that perspective.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/09/matterport-secures-new-investors-cash-for-its-virtual-reality-3d-mapping-tech/

Nokia and Disney Just Created a Big, Green, Virtual Reality Dragon

Nokia said last week that, with the help of digital effects company Weta Digital, it had built a short virtual reality video that lets people fly on the back of Elliot, the lovable dragon from Disney’s  DIS 0.05%  upcoming Pete’s Dragon remake.

The virtual reality short, called “Pete’s Dragon: Elliot’s Flyover,” was shot with Nokia’s newly released OZO 360-degree camera to capture the mountains, skies, and canyons of New Zealand. A CGI version of Elliot the dragon was spliced into the video to give users a sense that they are riding Elliot like a wild stallion through the skies.

Guido Voltolina, Nokia’s head of presence capture, said in a statement. “Each activation we’ve created with Disney has been unique to each film and we will continue to push innovation in the VR category to create even more immersive experiences to complement Disney films.”

The new VR short-film comes after Nokia and Walt Disney Studios signed a multi-year deal in April for Disney to use Nokia’s OZO cameras and related software for the studio’s films and marketing materials.

See the full story here: http://fortune.com/2016/08/08/nokia-disney-virtual-reality-petes-dragon/

AMD – Virtual reality is coming to your movie theater lobby

Taylor took the show as an opportunity to introduce another option in the form of a pod called the VenueVR Gateway. Made by Awesome Rocketship, the concept is simple: a station with a motorized platform, haptic feedback, and integrated computer that can be used to power high-end VR gaming, with various configurations allowing sit-down, stand-up, or full room-scale experiences. The hope is that by offering an easy way to deploy pay-per-play VR stations, the industry can piggyback on top of movie theaters and other venues to create a profitable market for virtual reality developers nearly overnight.

...it was easy to see how the idea could catch on, even at the tentative $1-per-minute price point. Imagine a group of friends that go to a theater to see Star Trek Beyond, walk out afterward, and then all sit down at a four-pod cluster to tackle their own mission with Star Trek: Bridge Crew.

See the full story here: http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/9/12405776/virtual-reality-movie-theater-lobby-awesome-rocketship

Osmo – AR for kids

A shaggy-haired monster as lovable as a teddy bear offers a wave and an encouraging smile that is in no way diminished by the pair of incisors jutting up from his jaw. "Nice to meet you," says the creature, named Mo, who lives in an iPad app called Osmo Monster. "Can you draw me a magic wand?"

So begins a surprisingly intuitive interaction between digital and physical worlds, the complex software operating in the background masked by the childhood delight of free-form play. Draw a magic wand for Mo on a real-life whiteboard placed in front of the iPad and suddenly the exact sketch appears on the screen. One after another, Mo requests drawings of coins, a magic banana, and a favorite toy, incorporating each into his digital home. As music plays, he conducts the "grand finale": an act that features all the drawings as they spin and dance.

Pramod Sharma, cofounder and CEO of Osmo, the startup that designed the app, describes the Osmo Monster experience as a way to give "Walt Disney moments" to kids that have grown up around screens.

Reflective AI - "It’s very hard, iterating on the storytelling side, the computer vision side, and the animation side,"

See the full story here: http://www.fastcompany.com/3062536/the-recommender/pokemon-go-may-be-a-fad-but-augmented-reality-for-kids-is-here-to-stay

Splash’s virtual reality app aims to make 360-degree videos as easy as Snapchat

The app allows you to quickly share 360-degree videos of your surroundings that can be viewed on both smartphones and VR headsets like Google Cardboard.

What sets it apart ... — you can opt to record a video clip in parts of the 360 frame.  You record the 360 in segments that are then stitched.

The results can vary from impressively immersive to wildly abstract depending on how you shoot (you can overlay multiple clips shot at different times on top of one another, for instance.) But Splash cofounder Michael Ronen says that flexibility — allowing people to create an "emotional landscape" — is the whole point.

Splash won the top prize in the VR category at SXSW's startup accelerator Sunday.

See the full post here: http://mashable.com/2016/03/14/splash-vr-app/#mmq9kNCNJ5q7

Is Pokemon Go Finally Making Augmented Reality Mainstream? Brands like Porsche and State Farm are trying it out

This week, Porsche is unveiling a new augmented reality experience with a five-page, gatefold ad in Outside magazine featuring a photo of the Swiss Alps. The experience, created by the AR player Blippar, allows Blippar's mobile app users to scan the page to unlock a digital display of the mountain, along with a 360-degree photo of a Porsche 718 Boxster interior. They can even play a game driving the car through the mountainous Gotthard Pass.

"It isn't just a narrative," said Omaid Hiwaizi, Blippar's president of global marketing. "It's an immersive, emotional experience that's memorable in a way that most of the time a written story can't be."

See the full story here: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/pokemon-go-finally-making-augmented-reality-mainstream-172823

Talking augmented reality at the GeoTech meetup

Our next foray and case study was a Mars AR experience with a 3D model of planet Mars featuring the Schiaparelli crater. We built it using height data from NASA and with advice from UK Space Agency involved in ExoMars mission. In February this year Christopher Wesson, an OS cartographer, produced a map of the red planet that proved very popular with people from all over the world. Within OS Labs, we had the idea for an educational cartography piece to allow enthusiasts to study the surface of Mars, the depth of craters and the terrain. Vuforia, Blender and Unity were used to create the app which recognises the Mars map as an augmentable target. When this happens a 3D model is snapped onto the real world paper map and is tracked in real time. The next stage is embedding this experience into Gear VR headset.

Another interesting case study in progress is the concept of using AR in hospital navigation by displaying navigation arrows in an AR experience on a real time camera view. The arrows would help you navigate in a turn by turn fashion. This is underpinned by iBeacon technology for indoor positioning. An extension to this would be the concept of smart signs that look like generic symbols but within an AR app, as you hold your mobile device up to them, relevant content to your appointment within the hospital is revealed, including how to get to the relevant clinic and any delay times. This is all tied into your calendar and custom to you as a user.

See the full story here: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2016/08/talking-augmented-reality-geotech-meetup/

Virtual Reality Is Becoming the Next Great Storytelling Canvas – Brands use it to strengthen consumer relationships

In the current state of modern media, where ad blocking and viewability have emerged as major challenges for the ad-buying community, the immersive nature of VR offers some unique advantages. That said, establishing a scalable (and seamless) ad model will be vital in ensuring ongoing investment and exploration. In my view, the most elegant path forward embraces a native marketing sensibility that emphasizes both context and creative. Plus, focusing on native content experiences allows for more organic social engagement.

For brands, the temptation to explore the creative boundaries of this immersive technology will be more than challenging to resist. And while "empathy" has emerged as the new "authentic" in content marketing circles, the fundamentals remain the same: Respect your audience, deliver tangible value and clearly establish your editorial authority to best preserve the long-term vitality and integrity of the canvas.

See the full story here: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/virtual-reality-becoming-next-great-storytelling-canvas-172797

‘Virtual reality’ Hypercube to tour music festivals

By putting on a headset, fans will feel as though they are in a suspended glass box as fireworks and pyrotechnics explode around them and the band plays their track Flammable.

Fifty festival-goers at a time will be able to stand inside a Hypercube, standing at almost four metres high, and feel that they are in the video with Biffy.

See the full story here: http://www.irishexaminer.com/examviral/technology-and-gaming/virtual-reality-hypercube-to-tour-music-festivals-414749.html

The Olympics May Give Virtual Reality Its Long-Anticipated Close-Up NBC and Samsung will offer 85 hours of footage

The VR initiative went live on Saturday when the athletic competitions started in earnest in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Olympics Broadcasting Services will capture 85 hours of VR programming for Samsung Gear VR users, which appears to be a growing audience as more than 1 million people tried the headset in April.

The VR footage will include action from men's basketball, gymnastics, track and field, beach volleyball, diving, boxing and fencing as NBC will offer highlight packages for those sports. The content will be supplied to NBC, which will help distribute it through the NBC Sports app.

To protect NBC's TV interests, the virtual reality programming will be presented on delay, ...

At any rate, how popular VR proves to be during the Olympics should give marketers a healthy perspective on how far along consumer adoption has come for such experiences.

Meanwhile, here's NBC's planned VR schedule for the next two weeks:

Aug. 8: Boxing prelims (10:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m.)
Aug. 9: Boxing prelims (10:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m.)
Aug. 10: Gymnastics, men's all-around (3:00 p.m.)
Aug. 11: Gymnastics, women's all-around (3:00 p.m.)
Aug. 12: Fencing, men's team foil (8:30 a.m., 4:00 p.m.)
Aug. 13: Track and field (8:30 a.m., 7:00 p.m.)
Aug. 14: Track and field (7:20 p.m.)
Aug. 15: Track and field (8:30 a.m., 7:15 p.m.)
Aug. 16: Track and field (8:30 a.m. 7:15 p.m.)
Aug. 17: Beach volleyball, women's medal matches (9:00 p.m.)
Aug. 18: Beach volleyball, men's medal matches (9:00 p.m.)
Aug. 19: Basketball, men's semifinals (2:30 p.m., 6:00 p.m.)
Aug. 20: Diving, men's 10m semi and final (10:00 a.m., 3:30 p.m.)
Aug. 21: Basketball, men's medal games (10:30 a.m., 2: p.m.), closing ceremony (7:00 p.m.)