Google Daydream VR: Google’s Way of Addressing Virtual Reality
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Google Daydream is supposed to standardize VR across android platforms, avoiding the multi-version android problem of a few years ago.]
With the introduction of Google Daydream, Google’s VR division finally showed the world what Google’s vision for VR is and perhaps where we can expect VR to go. Google’s Daydream platform makes several nods to Facebook’s Oculus platform in their UI and use of a controller, both of which look strikingly similar to what Facebook’s Oculus has done with the Rift.
Google’s Daydream VR platform is a way for Google to finally reign in many of the VR devices and decisions under one performance profile, and more importantly experience, before there is too much fragmentation. Google appears to be trying to prevent the mess that they had with Android in the early days when it came to different operating system versions and hardware specs. Daydream will enable device makers and developers to both deliver a certain level of experience based on the Daydream software and hardware specifications. In fact, Google has developed both a reference platform for Daydream as well as announced plans to develop their own Daydream device that will likely serve as a platform for Daydream developers.
Virtual Reality Aimed At The Elderly Finds New Fans
Virginia Anderlini is 103 years old, and she is about to take her sixth trip into virtual reality.
In real life, she is sitting on the sofa in the bay window of her San Francisco assisted-living facility. Next to her, Dr. Sonya Kim gently tugs the straps that anchor the headset over Anderlini's eyes.
But in the virtual world, Anderlini is on a Hawaiian beach, and it's sunset, and she is surrounded by a glistening sea and a molten, purple-red sky. If she looks up, she sees the fronds of an enormous palm tree, and falling rainbow specks that dance in the air like the light from a disco ball.
For a virtual reality entrepreneur, Kim has an unusual target audience: the elderly. Anderlini is the first private client for Kim's Aloha VR program, which Kim envisions as a way to help people relax, an alternative to endlessly watching TV and a change of scenery for those who can't get out much.
"When I was driving back home from that visit, I couldn't stop sobbing," Kim says. "As a single woman without any kids, I thought, when I'm her age, who's going to call me? Who's going to take care of me?"
That interaction led Kim to found One Caring Team in 2014. Staffers regularly phone seniors at home to check on their mood, medications and appointments, and prompt them to chat about positive subjects, like what makes them happy or what they could do to bring joy to someone else.
"There are over 100 clinical research papers that are already published that show proven positive clinical outcomes using VR in managing chronic pain, anxiety and depression," she says. "And in dementia patients, all those three elements are very common."
Kim's company has created a handful of virtual environments for demonstration purposes, but it will take time and money to build more. So, for now, they also buy off-the-shelf programs to give the clients a little variety. (They recently teamed with the Virtual World Society, a group that intends to use VR to promote social good. The group's founder, the University of Washington's virtual interface pioneer Dr. Tom Furness, is now One Caring Team's acting chief technology officer.)
See the full story here: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/29/483790504/virtual-reality-aimed-at-the-elderly-finds-new-fans
China’s 13th Five Year Plan: innovation, Internet Plus, new media and information technology
Targets
Household broadband coverage - 40% in 2015 to 70% by 2020
Mobile broadband subscriptions - 57% in 2015 to 85% by 2020
Gov’t supported strategic initiatives;
-the industrialization of Virtual Reality and Interactive Film technologies
From planning to implementation; legal and regulatory matters
-Relaxed restrictions on foreign investment
-Finalisation of the Network Security Law to protect personal data and facilitate the development of Internet-related industries
-Finalisation of the Film Industry Promotion Law to adapt to changes in the Internet Era
-Enhanced Intellectual Property protections
See the full story here: http://www.kwm.com/en/cn/knowledge/insights/china-13th-5-year-plan-innovation-technology-media-internet-plus-20160414
Atari cofounder’s son takes video games beyond the couch
Brent is focused on creating “narrative reality” experiences that combine immersive interaction of tools such as virtual reality with the real life.
“My cofounder and I were frustrated with out-of-home entertainment, which hasn’t changed since laser tag and mini golf,” he said.
It is also creating virtual reality entertainment and its “story rooms” such as an interactive space adventure. In one version, one person is in VR and another is not. And that person has to describe what the other has to do, and the person in VR has to describe what they see. In other versions, a group of people are placed in a room and they have to use what is in the room to escape it.
“People would rather have a life experience, and that’s good for us in the game industry, where we make experiences,” he said.
See the full story here: http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/29/atari-cofounders-son-takes-video-games-beyond-the-couch/
Tasting Victory: Why Gamers Are Hacking Taste and Smell
In Planet Licker, a single-player game originally created over 48 hours at the Ludum Dare game jam last August, players guide a pixelated monster by physically licking ice pops. The inch-and-a-half-tall pops sit in tiny metal cups that are wired to a Makey Makey circuit board in the game’s controller. When players hold the controller and touch their tongue to any of the three brightly colored pops in it, the action controls the on-screen monster. Licking a specific flavor—grapefruit-honey, pink lemonade, or beet, for instance—guides the monster to the nearest digitized ice planet corresponding with that pop’s color.
Other technologies aimed at making games smellier and tastier include National University of Singapore’s “electronic lollipop,” which sends electrical signals to the tongue to give users the sensation of tasting something bitter, sweet, salty, or sour, and the FeelReal VR, a mask that fits over the nose and mouth and connects to a virtual-reality headset like an Oculus Rift or Sony Morpheus. FeelReal can deliver up to seven different scents, including flowers, meat, and burning rubber, and for $300, users can create their own customized smells.
See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601783/tasting-victory-why-gamers-are-hacking-taste-and-smell/
VR Cinematography Studies for Google
Michael Naimark
Several timely and relevant areas of exploration emerged.
1. Close-up VR imagery from camera-originated material is awesome but tricky.
2. High quality spatial sound is as important as image.
3. Filling (and unfilling) the panoramic sphere has novel challenges.
4. The “hyperimage,” a Holy Grail of interactive media, is well-suited for VR.
5. Metadata-based interactivity, another Holy Grail, may also be well-suited for VR.
6. Community buy-in is essential.
Starting with Studies ...
See the full story here: https://medium.com/@michaelnaimark/vr-cinematography-studies-for-google-8a2681317b3#.mtkt8lrf7
Sony: More to VR than Games
The PS VR headset ships Oct. 13 in the U.S. at $399, and as part of a $499.99 bundle with the headset, two PlayStation Move controllers, the PlayStation Camera and PS4 VR title “PlayStation Worlds.”
“There are several key benefits that I think PlayStation VR has vs. the competition,” House said. First, thanks to the PS4, PS VR has “unified architecture” that will provide a “very stable quality of experience that developers can rely on,” he said. The hardware pricing is also “very affordable,” he said. After all, the rival Oculus Rift costs $599 for a comparable bundle that also includes accessories and software, while the HTC Vive is even costlier, at $799.
VR applications beyond gaming are part of a “longer-term strategy” for Sony, House said. Live sports and education are a couple of the areas that the company is “starting to focus on,” he said. But Sony “will build this market carefully and cautiously, looking at areas where we can maximize the right business-to-business model,” he added.
The company achieved “solid continued expansion” of the PS4 installed base in the past fiscal year, growing it to more than 40 million units globally, he added. Despite “expectations of decline” in the game console market, Sony has “maintained the fastest penetration in PlayStation history,” he said. At the same time, Sony saw “continued substantial growth” in the company’s network business, with sales growing more than 50% over the previous fiscal year, he said.
See the full story here: http://www.mesalliance.org/2016/06/29/sony-more-to-vr-than-games/
Seven Startups From South Korea’s Thriving VR Scene
The 7 include facial expression tracking for avatars, spatial audio, and content developers.
See the full story here: http://technode.com/2016/06/29/korean-content-creators-game-developers-now-makes-vr-contents-vr-technology/