IEEE – Nausea Ratings for Virtual Reality
As virtual reality headsets and VR content become more mainstream, the need for a different type of rating system has emerged—one that ranks motion or nausea risk.
Oculus Rift, a company that has particularly strong name recognition in the VR industry, is operating ahead of the curve by releasing a comfort rating system. Their color and shape-based system helps to classify the content in their store as Comfortable, Moderate or Intense. They want to avoid discomfort when users consume content on Oculus headsets. While the Oculus Rift rating system focuses on comfort, it paves the way for the potential of setting an industry standard in comfort as it extends to motion sensitivity.
From: https://transmitter.ieee.org/nausea-ratings-virtual-reality/
Researchers aren't entirely sure yet why some VR games trigger such physical reactions in their players, but the inherent sensory conflict involved in entering a virtual world — when your eyes and ears are incorrectly informing your brain that you're moving — is key. So, too, is refresh rate, the measure of how many frames per second a headset is capable of displaying. If this drops below 60 per second, it can start to affect the human brain, making us feel dizzy and disoriented. Studies have also pointed to a person's posture, ethnicity, and field dependence or independence— how much of the background they absorb while looking at an object — as changing susceptibility to sickness, but much of this research was conducted before this current wave of headsets arrived on the scene.
From: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/31/11336430/first-click-does-vr-need-a-nausea-rating-system
Oculus comfort ratings
Comfortable
"Comfortable" experiences are appropriate for most people, although this rating does not confer that an experience is going to be comfortable for everyone. These experiences generally avoid camera movement, player motion, or disorienting content and effects.
Moderate
"Moderate” experiences are appropriate for many but certainly not everyone. These experiences might incorporate some camera movement, player motion, or occasionally disorienting content and effects.
Intense
“Intense” experiences are not appropriate for most people, especially those who are new to VR. These experiences incorporate significant camera movement, player motion, or disorienting content and effects.
From: https://support.oculus.com/help/oculus/918058048293446/
Ctrl is Astonishing Proof that VR Storytelling is Growing Up
Ctrl is unlike anything else I’ve seen in VR, both in terms of subject matter and delivery.
It’s cleverly set inside a videogame, and we get to watch a young boy named Liam take part in the finals of a tournament that could win him some money that he could sorely use. Over the course of around 20 minutes Liam’s desperate situation is made ever clearer as he struggles to balance play and pain.
It’s a story about power, escalation, silent suffering and, as the name suggests, control. It explores these themes with uncompromising conviction, making full use of VR to lose you in an experience you won’t soon forget. Its setting is a gateway into looking at issues that will be close to home for many and although VR empowers the storytelling, it remarkably makes you feel utterly helpless.
That said, VR is crucial to just how well the story pulls you in.
“It’s more about that with the use of the sound and the use of the 360 space that people get so absorbed and so immersed into it that accentuate all the emotional feelings behind it. And it’s very much not just the actual themes itself; it’s a combination,” Frankland tells me.
See the full story with video here: http://uploadvr.com/ctrl-preview/
The Perceptoscope Lets You Sight-See in Augmented Reality
[Philip Lelyveld comment: this is such a great idea for theme parks and historic sights.]
The perceptoscope is an augmented reality device for fixed locations. Before getting too much into the specifics, imagine that you could walk up to a perceptoscope placed near the Empire State building. You look through the eye pieces and you see the city as it was before the building was constructed. At the flip of a switch you can watch the building take shape right in front of you. All this, with true 3D vision and motion tracking.
The stationary aspect of the perceptoscope gives it several advantages making implementation much easier than something like the Microsoft hololens or CastAR. Since it is stationary, you can program it with an exact position in mind. The angles of rotation in both axes are measured precisely in a mechanical fashion, so no complicated tracking systems are necessary at all. The standard form factor of a landscape viewer allows for plenty of room to add electronics and fancy optics.
See the full story here: https://makezine.com/2016/06/03/the-perceptoscope-lets-you-sight-see-in-augmented-reality/
Bjork Launches Virtual Reality Exhibition
For her latest foray into virtual reality, the singer is bringing her native Iceland to fans during her Björk Digital exhibition, which launches on Friday in Sydney, Australia.
During the event, Björk will premiere her fourth virtual reality video from her personal, and devastatingly stunning Vulnicura, which chronicles the dissolution of her longtime relationship. "[The exhibition] is a further step into completing the full Vulnicura VR album, which will come out soon," she said in a statement on her website. "I feel the chronological narrative of the album is ideal for the private circus virtual reality is: a theatre able to capture the emotional landscape of it."
Read the full story here: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bjork-launches-virtual-reality-exhibition-20160602
Lucid Launches VR Content Studio
Lucid VR, the developer of 3D virtual reality (VR) pocket-sized cameras, is launching Lucid Studios, a production house specializing in the creation of 180- and 360-degree 3D VR videos. The firm already has a number of marketers signed up including cosmetics company Sephora and UC Berkeley among others.
With Lucid VR’s proprietary software, the 3D video content is then integrated for playback on websites and apps.
“Our 3D, 180-degree, VR approach gives storytelling true depth and peripheral vision in an incredible and very real experience,” said Han Jin, CEO, Lucid VR. “This is called ‘found footage’ in traditional filmmaking where viewers feel like what is filmed through the viewfinder is what they would be seeing with their own two eyes. It is incredibly realistic.”
UC Berkeley Recreational Sports department is using the new facility to develop VR videos for five or six different team sports, as well as the university's VR campus tour. Sephora and several U.S. retailers are other brands are using the studio to develop VR campaigns.
See the full story here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/277099/lucid-launches-vr-content-studio.html
The next big thing in virtual reality could come out of this student club at Stanford
Stanford University's first virtual reality club, Rabbit Hole VR, was born in fall 2015 to bring together enthusiasts who want to try the latest headsets, organize panels, and create new applications for the emerging technology.
Yelizarova recently launched an "immersive travel blog" called Follow the White Rabbit, where she'll post weekly episodes and tutorials. Yelizarova will leave for Iceland in June and return to the states in early September, ending her journey at Burning Man.
Other members of Rabbit Hole VR have also taken on ambitious projects — and wound up with pretty stacked résumés.
Last summer, Korman worked on product design at an internship at Magic Leap, a company developing a mysterious, impressive-looking"mixed-reality headset" that has raised over $1 billion from high-profile investors like Google and Alibaba.
Others have worked in the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford and the University of Southern California's prestigious Institute for Creative Technologies.
See the full story here: http://www.techinsider.io/rabbit-hole-vr-stanford-2016-5
15 Virtual Reality Startups Changing the Game
Check Out These Virtual Reality Startups on Their Websites
See the full post here: https://tech.co/notable-virtual-reality-startups-2016-06
Jaunt Inc. Launches Virtual Reality Venture in China
Palo Alto-based virtual reality firm Jaunt Inc. has established a joint venture in China with Shanghai Media Group and China Media Capital, two of the country's most influential state-backed media and entertainment investors.
The partners say the China venture is already operational and producing Chinese-themed VR content aimed for a global audience.
"Initial programming will include VR content such as The Voice of China, virtual tours of Shanghai and music from the band SNH48," the partners said Tuesday in a statement. Jaunt says it also will tap SMG and CMC's content libraries to create VR experiences across travel, adventure, narrative, music and sports.
China Media Capital, chaired by Ruigang Li, is the local investment partner to many Hollywood brands in China. Its investment portfolio includes stakes in Imax China, Oriental DreamWorks and Warner Bros.' Chinese film studio, Flagship Entertainment.
Shanghai Media Group, formerly headed by Li, has a portfolio spanning print and digital media, live and filmed entertainment, e-commerce, tourism and gaming. It is one of the key investors in Walt Disney Co.'s $5.5 billion Shanghai theme park, set to open later this month, and also has strategic partnerships with Viacom, BBC, Amazon AWS and others.
See the full story here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jaunt-launches-virtual-reality-venture-898586