philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Stanford Alumni Mag – VR Overview

Virtual reality—VR, to the initiated—is so realistic, so immersive, that it feels something like an actual experience.

“We like to say the brain isn’t evolved yet to know that a virtual experience is not real,” says Bailenson, a professor in the communication department whose doctorate is in cognitive psychology and who has been studying VR’s effects for two decades.

And that, to hear Bailenson say it, means a whole lot more than you probably think. “We are going from essentially no VR to potentially pervasive use of the most powerful medium ever,” he says. “What are the consequences of a world where anything can happen at the touch of a button and feel like it’s actually happening?”

Jay Borenstein, ’94, MS ’94, a Silicon Valley veteran who teaches VR coding at Stanford.

As creators master VR’s potential, Borenstein expects the results to be just as far-reaching. “I am a real believer that the medium will be as transformative as television was, as the Internet was,” he says. “It is a profound leap ahead from the two-dimensional ways we experience things today.”

He also echoes a common refrain of VR creators—one borne out in Bailenson’s research—that VR allows the viewer to step into another’s shoes with unprecedented power. Indeed, VR has been embraced by documentary filmmakers who have used the medium to bring viewers inside uncomfortable environments, helping them relate to urban hunger, domestic violence and forced migration.

Belch, a former Cardinal kicker who developed STRIVR while working as a graduate assistant coach for the football team and earning his master’s in Bailenson’s lab, tells me to look for a receiver running an out pattern.

I take the mask off, clearer about the reasons for STRIVR’s growing reputation. Why, for example, Stanford head coach David Shaw, ’94, put his own money into starting the company. Why seven NFL and 13 college teams in addition to Stanford have signed on since STRIVR started. It’s like a flight simulator for athletes.

AltSpaceVR, for example, is a Redwood City company led by former rocket scientist Eric Romo, MS ’03, MBA ’06, who grew interested in the social potential of virtual reality after reading Infinite Reality, the 2011 book Bailenson co-wrote with Jim Blascovich, a professor at UC-Santa Barbara.

AltSpace enables a networked VR world where you can hang out, chat at a Super Bowl party, play Dungeons & Dragons, or stream Netflix onto a shared screen, all with people from around the world in the same room.

“Spatialized” sound conveys the changing distance between avatars, our virtual bodies. Voices are louder as you get closer, softer as you move away, in one ear or the other based on positions.

The AltSpace world is so complete you can check a web browser to read your real-life emails while in VR—something Romo does if he’s spending hours in a headset giving demonstrations. Once, early on, he spent six hours in a headset as others came and went. “I watched an awful lot of YouTube that day.”

In real life, for example, people often feel more favorable toward those who subtly—and often unconsciously—mimic their body language in conversation, the so-called “chameleon effect.” The same holds true in VR, according to research by Bailenson and Nick Yee, MA ’07, PhD ’07.

Likewise, Yee and Bailenson found that making your avatar taller can lead to assuming a strikingly more aggressive posture in negotiations, an effect that can continue even if the parties reconvene outside of VR. In one study, in which student volunteers negotiated on splitting $100, participants with short avatars were nearly twice as likely to accept a poor offer than were ones with tall avatars.

Bailenson’s lab is also early in studies on the effects of VR on young children, an area with scant research. In a previous study, they subjected elementary school children to a virtual experience where the children saw their own likenesses swimming with whales. A week later, a follow-up found half of them had false memories of themselves actually swimming with whales.

But if Bailenson is alert to concerns about VR, he’s also keyed into its potential for good. The lab has found that putting people in virtual reality can get them to change their behavior in positive ways. They save more for retirement if they see older versions of themselves, exercise more if they see their avatars lose weight as they work out, and show more empathy if they see the world through another’s eyes, quite literally in the case of a color-blindness simulation.

See the full story here: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=84558

Hands-in with the gloves that virtual reality needs

The gloves are still in development and they've only been in the works since 2014, but already they're satisfyingly responsive.

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I played an adorable platforming demo called Pillow's Willow with an engineering prototype of the Manus VR gloves, running on the HTC Vive headset. I slipped on a pair of black-and-red gloves, complete with a plastic charging bump and some wires dangling across the top. A developer strapped the Vive's motion controllers around my wrists for positional tracking and I settled the Vive headset over my glasses.

It sounds like a lot. But, once the game got going, the hardware attached to my arms and face melted away. I hardly noticed it -- the goal of any virtual experience.

I reached forward to pluck lighting bugs out of the air and place them in street lamps, illuminating her path. I swiveled in my chair -- the game existed around me in 360 degrees -- and pushed down the sides of a bridge for her to cross. I grabbed pieces of a broken staircase and rotated them until they fit back together again; I squashed a series of monsters popping out of the floor of a bedroom. I played a few notes on a piano in a quick game of Simon Says.

Each motion was intuitive -- I didn't have to memorize any buttons or input commands. I did what came naturally, grabbing, turning and prodding objects with my fingers.

The Manus VR developer kit goes on sale in Q2 for $250 and it's expected to ship in Q3.

See the full story here: http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/16/hands-in-with-the-gloves-that-virtual-reality-needs/

Sky sets up in-house studio for virtual reality content

Sky’s move into VR content is a major step for a traditional broadcaster and could be crucial in pushing the adoption of the nascent technology beyond gamers.

The head of Sky VR Studio, Neil Graham, said: “Why now? The platforms are now ready to make this stuff happen and to test the boundaries of what is possible.”

VR could provide that element of sport, if people are willing to don a headset and headphones, which is still a big if.

Nockles said: “Is 2016 the year of VR? Probably not. But it will gain greater recognition this year, meaning 2018 is likely to be the year of VR. When the gear is lighter and smaller and the experiments are over, allowing the story writers to come in.”

There is also the problem of delivering live sport VR broadcasts, which no one has tackled yet. It’s not simply a case of delivering twice as much data to two screens instead of one (one for each eye). VR requires a 360-degree view on two screens, which requires a significant amount of bandwidth.

See the full story here: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/17/sky-sets-up-in-house-studio-virtual-reality-content

Rob Bredow Upped To Chief Tech Officer Of Lucasfilm

He initially joined the company as VP New Media and as the head of Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group, which develops tools and techniques for real-time, high-fidelity immersive entertainment. In that job, he was credited in helping to launch the new division ILMxLAB, which combines the talents of Lucasfilm, ILM and Skywalker Sound to create interactive storytelling and immersive cinema experiences.

Previously, Bredow was the CTO and visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, where he worked on films such as Men in Black 3, The Amazing Spider-Man, Green Lantern, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, Surf’s Up, Cast Away andGodzilla.

Bredow is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Council and a Visual Effects Society Technology committee chair.

See the original post here: http://deadline.com/2016/03/rob-bredow-chief-tech-officer-lucasfilm-1201722038/

40 virtual reality predictions

[Philip Lelyveld comment: I saw that talk. Some were obvious, some were really clever. #17 and #40 are my favorites; guides in the underworld, and robots who track our hands and meet them in mid-air to make us think we're touching multiple objects.]

At the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Jesse Schell, professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center and CEO of Schell Games, made 40 predictions about the future of virtual reality.

1. VR is finally here, It isn’t a fad any longer. VR headsets will permanently be in the consumer market.

2. 8 million Gamer VR headsets will be sold in 2016. This estimate excludes mobile VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR.

3. 4 mobile headsets will ship for each gamer headset.

4. VR headset shipments will double every year.

5. Fifty different headsets will be featured at CES 2017.

6. Microsoft will announce Xbox One Gamer VR Headset after Sony sells 10 million of its PS4 VR headset. Microsoft, he expects will announce it at the E3 Conference in 2018.

7. The majority of the VR revenue will be spent on more affordable and cordless VR headsets. Schell bets that Nintendo will develop an entry to compete.

8. Sony has created an interaction of mixed user experience called asymmetric games in industry jargon. In this game type some players interact using virtual reality headsets and others share the visual experience on a television. Schell believes Sony’s game concept will produce a top 10 VR game hit in 2017

9. Madden NFL 18 will move to VR platforms giving gamers an on-field VR football experience.

10. An entirely new game genre will emerge, probably produced by a startup without a prior operating history.

11. By the end of 2017 the media will blame VR gaming for a mass shooting. A VR first person shooter game (FPS) will develop optimized skills for shooting a room filled with people. Schell didn’t say it but the comparison he seemed to draw between the realism of an FPS VR game and and FPS console game was like training pilots with VR flight simulation compared to flight simulation on a flat screen

12. By the end of 2017, news stories about “VR Addiction” will be frequent.

13. By the end of 2018, there will be at least three movies playing on fears of VR.

14. Documentaries will be the first VR films to win major awards.Go

15. By 2020, VR porn will be a $1 billion industry worldwide.

16.  By 2020, there will be at least ten Virtual Reality Reality-TV Shows.

17. The Divine Comedy will provide a model for successful VR storytelling. Schell’s point needs explanation. Like Dante is led through the stages of hell by the spirit of the Roman epic poet Virgil in the Devine Comedy, VR 360 degree movie goers will need navigation in because they will need a guide in VR. He used the Russian Ark as an example of a movie shot in one 90 minute take with a narrator leading viewers through the Hermitage palace as an example of a 360 degree movie format that will become prevalent.

18. By the end of 2018, Comcast will have a VR channel.

19. For feature films to work in VR, they will need to be social. By 2025 your friends will be included in your feature film experience.

20. By 2025, the majority of VR revenue will be from social experiences.

21. By 2020, one of the top 10 VR games will be a dance game.

22. By the end of 2020, at least one VR MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) will have more than 1 million subscribers.

23. By 2025, VR/AR boardgames will be a $100 million business.

24. By the end of 2018, there will be a leading VR social platform, and it won’t be one of the old guard.

25. By 2018, VR Emoticons will be very popular, and have a stupid name. Think – VR emoticons.

27. By 2020 there will be at least 20 VR coasters worldwide. Schell said he beat his prediction – when he first made this prediction last year there were four VR roller coaster rides like this. Now there are 24.

28. By 2025 location based VR events analogous to the bowling alley with AR Glasses will be a thing.

29. By 2020, trackable props for VR and AR will be common. At first glance Schell makes an abstract point but props with tactile feel that people can touch, hold and interact with will add additional senses to VR experiences.

30. By 2025 the AR market will be dominated by “video AR” systems similar to the Vryana Toem and Google Tango.

31. By 2025, AR experiences synced with TV will be a thing.

32. At all levels in education augmented reality lectures will be popular by 2025. The teacher and students strap on VR goggles and all go to the same microscopic or telescopic place together.

33. By 2025, chasing VR phantoms in your house will be only a game for children.

34. By 2018, gamers will wear narrow glasses or get contacts that fit into VR headgear.

35. By 2020, really hardcore gamers will have headsets fitted with prescription lenses.

36. By 2018 eye tracking VR headsets will be available and bringing eye to eye contact into games and apps responsive to eye movement.

37. By 2020 foveated rendering will exist. This type of rendering increases resolution at specific focus points – for example where the eye is focuses.

38. By 2025 there will be no more corded VR systems tethered to a powerful PC. As amazing as the Oculus and Vive experiences may be, they are tethered to a powerful computer anchor. Cutting the VR cord will be even more liberating than cutting the TV cord.

39. When the difference between reality and virtual reality can’t be discerned with vision and hearing virtual touch will be the next development.

40. Robots will touch us by 2025 to fulfill the need for touch to complement the senses of vision and hearing.

See the original post here; http://www.networkworld.com/article/3043979/virtualization/40-virtual-reality-predictions.html?google_editors_picks=true

McDonald’s and the gold rush to fill virtual reality with ads

VR promises to change our relationship with what’s real, giving us otherwise impossible experiences and sensory escapades into the unknown. At SXSW 2016, McDonald’s is reminding us that VR will just as easily be a vehicle for corporate consumption. Like the early web being irreversibly branded by the banner ad, VR too will face its own unique struggle with the forces that wish to monetize and market with it.

MCDONALD'S SHOWS US THE CAPITALIST DYSTOPIAN SIDE OF VR

See the full story here: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11214484/mcdonalds-vr-htc-vive-sxsw-2016-capitalist-dystopia

New Virtual Reality App Timelooper Takes You Back in History

The Timelooper app allows users to experience key moments in London history with just a smartphone and a cardboard headset.

For example, when Timelooper cofounder Andrew Feinberg visits the Tower of London, a historic castle on the banks of London's Thames River, he doesn't queue up with hordes of tourists to catch a glimpse of the royal family's crown jewels. Instead, he uses Timelooper's time travel tourism app to experience the tower over 750 years ago, in 1255.

Timelooper's travel app is also used by those working in London's booming tourism industry. Blue Badge tourist guide Ruth Polling pulls her cardboard headset out as she escorts visitors to Trafalgar Square and lets them see what happened on Sept. 23, 1940, when a bomb dropped by Nazi Germany exploded near Nelson's Column, a famous landmark and iconic part of the victory celebrations held five years later to mark the end of the war in Europe.

Timelooper plans to launch in New York City this April, allowing tourists to witness the famous kiss that was photographed in Times Square in August 1945 on VJ Day, the day World War II officially ended with the surrender of Japan, and to see the iconic picture of workers eating lunch atop a skyscraper during construction of the Rockefeller Center in 1932.

See the full story here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/virtual-reality-app-timelooper-takes-back-history-37629889

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

[philip Lelyveld comment: this is pseudo-360, creating video panels within a panorama rather than 'streaming VR video.']

Splash, a new iOS app launched at South by Southwest Interactive, is aiming to create a Snapchat-like platform for casual sharing in virtual reality.

The easiest way to describe Splash is a sort of mashup of Periscope and Snapchat but all the content is 360-degree images and video. 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 from other apps that allow you to capture 360-degree views, though, is that you can also record video in addition to a static image. While shooting a scene — a process that will be familiar to those who have shot panoramas on their smartphones — you can opt to record a video clip in parts of the frame.

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.

Semantics aside, Splash, which won the top prize in the VR category at SXSW's startup accelerator Sunday, offers an intriguing glimpse into the future of social applications for virtual reality.

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

SULON Q VIRTUAL REALITY AND AUGMENTED REALITY HEADSET WITH BUILT-IN COMPUTER UNVEILED

At the GDC 2016 Sulon Technologies gave a sneak peek of the Sulon Q, the world’s first and only all-in-one, tether-free, headset for virtual reality, augmented reality, and spatial computing. The Sulon Q is a combines the Microsoft HoloLens and the Oculus Rift into one wearable device.

While this would already be great, the Sulon Q does not require a computer. It has an AMD based computer built into the headset. The Sulon Q headset harnesses the power of the recently launched AMD FX-8800P processor at up to 35W with Radeon R7 Graphics leveraging AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture.

The result is a solution that is optimized for modern workloads and media formats, capable of driving the latest graphics APIs including DirectX 12 and Vulkan, and able to render stunning video game console-quality visuals on a beautiful 2560x1440 OLED display. The Sulon Q headset also integrates AMD’s LiquidVR technologies to help ensure smooth and responsive VR and AR experiences.

See the full story here: http://www.i4u.com/2016/03/107111/sulon-q-virtual-reality-and-augmented-reality-headset-built-computer-unveiled

PlayStation VR will arrive in October for $399

This places the barrier of entry for PSVR dramatically lower for gamers looking to take a whack at virtual reality. With the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive priced at $599 and $799, respectively, while also requiring pretty hefty PC builds, PSVR has a real shot at being the headset to beat in terms of popularity.

The $399 price tag notably doesn’t look like it includes the PlayStation Camera, which will be required for gameplay. The camera is going for around $45 on Amazon at the moment so it’s not a major cost...

Also not included are the glowing orb Move controllers, though PSVR users will definitely be able to use the motion-tracked DualShock controller that’s included with the system.

To keep VR gamers and console gamers engaged, PlayStation will be offering local multiplayer thanks to what they call a “Social Screen.” It will allow the PS4 to power both the TV and PSVR displays so someone with a PSVR headset can still sit on the couch and play with their buddies.

Sony has said that the FoV of the PSVR is 100 degrees. The FoV for the consumer versions of Oculus’s Rift and HTC’s Vive have yet to be publicly disclosed but rumor is they both are somewhere in the 100 to 110-degree region. For comparison Gear VR’s field-of-view is 96 degrees.

But right now, the key to building a top-of-the-line VR experience that won’t leave users reaching for barf bags is also keeping frame rates above 60fps. Having both of those (FoV and high fps) right now will probably require users to drop a few thousand bucks on a high-end graphics card, ...

The PSVR will operate at a constant 120hz refresh rate, a system level standard that is quite a bit higher than the 90hz offered by the Rift and Vive. This refresh rate is powering a 5.7″ OLED screen operating at 1920×1080.

Sony claims that their subpixel screen design significantly lessens visible Screen Door Effect by having individual red, blue and green subpixels make up each onscreen pixel.

See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/15/playstation-vr-will-arrive-in-october-for-399/?ncid=tcdaily