Synchronized virtual reality heartbeat triggers out-of-body experiences
[Philip Lelyveld comment: this has huge potential in storytelling (as well as therapies). If you can get a person to identify with an avatar - even if you can't do a scan of every person who accesses your experience - and you transition a heartbeat to the avatar, this could be an amazing tool.]
New research demonstrates that triggering an out-of-body experience (OBE) could be as simple as getting a person to watch a video of themselves with their heartbeat projected onto it. According to the study, it's easy to trick the mind into thinking it belongs to an external body and manipulate a person's self-consciousness by externalizing the body's internal rhythms. The findings could lead to new treatments for people with perceptual disorders such as anorexia and could also help dieters too.
Aspell and Heydrich decided to find out whether a person's bodily self-consciousness could be influenced by visually representing one of its vital inner rhythms – the pulsing heartbeat. They attached 17 participants to electrocardiogram sensors and had them view videos of their bodies through virtual reality goggles so that their body appeared to be two meters (6.5 ft) in front of them.
Participants saw their own heartbeats visually imposed on their virtual doubles in the form of a flashing outline around the body that pulsed in sync. After a couple of minutes, many of the participants reported sensations of being in an entirely different part of the room rather than their physical body and feeling that their "selves" were closer to their virtual doubles.
According to the team, this is the first study that clearly shows how visual signals containing information about the body's internal organs (in this case, the heartbeat) can change their perception of themselves.
The research could help people with distorted views of themselves to connect with their actual physical appearance. "Patients with anorexia seem to identify with a body which is larger than their physical body," Aspell tells us. "We could use this manipulation to help patients with anorexia to identify with their actual physical self."
See the full story here: http://newatlas.com/visualized-heartbeat-out-of-body-experience/28728/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=flipboard
Digital Domain’s New 360 Camera to Capture 250 Hours of Major Sports Footage
The company have just announced that their recently unveiled Zeus 360 camera is to play a major part in capturing footage at a sporting event in Rio, with Digital Domain claiming they’re filming (and live-streaming) 250 hours of video content, designed to be viewed via virtual reality headsets. DD will be handling the capture and post processing pipeline entirely, even handling the packaging of content to distribution platforms, developing “custom apps for this content to be viewed globally by fans on smartphones, tablets, Gear VR and desktop computers.”
The new device, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Nokia’s own Ozo camera, is apparently capable of footage at a greater than 8k resolution at 10-bit RAW output, capturing a high frame rate of 75 fps. The camera is also capable of seamless 360-degree live-streaming at up to 4k resolution.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/digital-domains-new-360-camera-will-capture-250-hours-of-footage/
Mr. Robot Disrupts Digital Engagement
In order to view the experience within the one-hour time limit, viewers had to download the app ahead of time. This created a highly measurable and attributable demonstration of digital engagement that linear hasn’t always been able to achieve. (It’s worth noting that Nielsen’s new Social Content Ratings may help with this moving forward).
Two days before the premier, on July 10th, the show’s actors participated in a Facebook Live Q&A, answering questions about the show and drumming up excitement for the new season.
In the midst of this Q&A, Mr. Robot “took control” of the stream, releasing the first part of the season two premiere. For a short period of time, the one-hour episode was live on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube, allowing the most engaged followers to watch it before its official release.
These strategies are successful, in part, because the show’s target audience is young. They’re less likely to watch shows on linear television, and more likely to stream them; the ratings proved it. Within the first three days of the premiere, the show received a total of 2.25 million viewers, which is a 116% increase on the live viewership, capturing the most important age group: 18-to-49 year olds.
See the full story here; http://tvrev.com/mr-robot-disrupts-digital-engagement/#.V7TNmGW6lgp
Augmented Reality System Lets User “Be the OS”
At 3:35 in the video, Dr. Adam Gazzaley at his lab at UCSF accesses, manipulates and shares 3D digital holographic information in an intuitive way using natural hand gestures. He developed his “glass brain project” using the neuroscience-driven interface of Meta’s Meta 2 Development Kit.
“Our mission is to take AR to the next level by bringing together displays, embedded systems, optics, sensors, computer vision and SLAM (simultaneous location and mapping), and then pack all these advanced techniques into a mobile, head-worn form factor,” said Harner.
“the user is the OS.
“That means we reduce complexity by spatializing content in front of the user, rather than placing content in nested hierarchies, like Folders, as operating systems have traditionally done. This improves working memory and reduces load on the machine.”
It also happens to be the way humans have always worked with physical tools in 3D space. We reach out and move them around. In other words, for the processing to be fast, accurate and efficient, the relationship between input and output — the thought/action and the resulting outcome/reaction — must be maximized. Traditional operating systems (OSes) for 2D space use a chain of abstractions that creates a disconnect between thought and action, placing an unbearable load on working memory.
Thus, Meta’s technology allows the creation of AR tools to organize digital content alongside physical tools in the user’s physical workspace.
See the full story here: http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1330308
5 Unique Uses Of Virtual Reality At The 2016 Rio Olympics
1 Broadcasts
2 Hardware and software
3 VR-Vantage - Jointly created by BAE Systems and British government organization UK Sport, the main purpose is to help athletes learn environments thoroughly by method of virtual reality.
4 VR Tours - Using special headsets, users are immersed in VR footage shot from from the air over places like Deodoro, Barra, and even Copacabana beach.
5 360 Virtual Tours - Google Maps has produced a 360-degree virtual tour called Beyond the Map in which users can explore points of interest around Rio for themselves.
See the full story here: http://www.sporttechie.com/2016/08/17/5-unique-uses-of-virtual-reality-at-the-2016-rio-olympics/
Virtual pop star Hatsune Miku is getting a virtual reality game
Hatsune Miku is no stranger to the video game world, but the virtual pop star will soon be entering a new frontier: virtual reality. Sega has announced that a new Miku game is coming to PlayStation VR when the device launches in October. Called Hatsune Miku: VR Future Live, the game attempts to re-create the experience of a Miku concert set in a packed virtual stadium.
RadicalMedia Teams Up With Uncorporeal to Capture Celebrity Holograms for Augmented Reality
...RadicalMedia CTO Evan Schechtman joking that securing rights for celebrity appearances can take just as long as the development of cutting-edge technologies.
In the case of the RadicalMedia cooperation, this is being achieved with an array of 48 off-the-shelf cameras placed in a circle around a green screen stage. This video is then being augmented by footage shot with a few Red cameras. The result can not only be used in augmented reality, but also repurposed as a traditional 2D video.
And thanks to the massive amount of data captured, Uncorporeal can always build higher-resolution versions for headsets that have yet to be built.
See the full story here: https://www.yahoo.com/movies/radicalmedia-teams-uncorporeal-capture-celebrity-holograms-augmented-reality-130031448.html
How VCs are looking at investing in VR experiences
We’re all looking from an investment standpoint at VR and AR. If you look at the acquirers in the space and the investors and the space, you’ll notice that in the early days, the Oculus—Oculus first started this revolution. Around the time they were acquired by Facebook, the investors in the space were looking mainly at technology companies. Fast forward to now, we’re seeing Disney and Fox and the other studios that Technicolor services investing in the space. As well as Technicolor itself and our competitors. It’s an important piece of data, to know who will be potentially buying you or your companies, giving you those awesome exits.
I can make a couple of quick observations. Both Hollywood, which I’ve been close to for a long time, and the bay area, where I’ve spent a lot of my time dealing with video game publishers—the community around financing films and the community around financing tech companies have a very difficult time understanding what interactive entertainment is. Interactive entertainment, for a very long time, has been a key storytelling medium. I think of game design and interactive entertainment as very often being a business model in itself. Some designers are so talented that they can come up with ways of engaging consumers. We’ve seen this in the mobile revolution. You can design around a specific engagement application that brings in consumers in ways that surround them with story, but also engage them and make them part of the storyteller’s vision.
Now I see, for the first time in my career, a true convergence coming in VR. That’s why I’ve committed my career to what I consider the best storytelling talent, doing primarily interactive storytelling, in the VR medium. My hope is I can help create a new type of financing mechanism for these companies.
I just got back from a trip to Asia, where this was especially interesting. People are talking about all these experience centers. It’s exploding in China and Korea and others. Hundreds of experience centers opening up everywhere that are just dying for amazing content. They’re all looking to us to find out how we get this content over to the U.S. from all these content creators in China and other Asian countries.
VR is in a unique position right now where if we strategize correctly, we can capitalize on that and help U.S. content creators get access to money from abroad that will enable them to continue with not only capital, but also alternative forms of funding, so I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on that pipeline to Asia.
The typical models have been, as opposed to pure commercial art, where generally you go to people who do slate financing–versus a publishing play, where you’re building infrastructure around your content that is about cross-promotion and customer acquisition. Increasingly we’re seeing things in mobile game development that are going to apply to VR, which is becoming a social platform. That’s things like live operations.
A few of the filters I go through—of course, like everyone said, team is the most important thing. But I start my filter from genre. There’s lots of historic data around genre, whether it’s film genres or game genres. What are the sales cycles there? Looking at those cycles, you can see the ups and downs.
From genre, does a team have technology that supports a genre in an interesting way? That’s where it becomes more of a venture bet, where you can see there’s some kind of technical competence that undergirds that genre. Finally, is that team capable of doing something interesting with the technology in that genre? Do they have a history that ties them to this particular project? What are their contacts in this space? I’m always a bit nervous when I see entrepreneurs, particularly in a new market like this, who are jumping in without a wide set of contacts related to what they’re doing. As it turns out, in the early stages of a platform, the early adopters are other people in the industry.
See the full story here: http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/15/how-vcs-are-looking-at-investing-in-vr-content/?curator=MediaREDEF