TED 2016: The Void offers new taste of virtual reality
[Philip Lelyveld comment: so much for the idea that VR experiences have to be short!]
Had I remained there longer than the 10 minutes it took to complete - and I could happily have stayed inside for hours - I may have started to believe more deeply in my strange new reality.
Entering the Void was a very different experience and felt like I had finally fulfilled my childhood dream of stepping inside the TV.
There are walls to touch and a stone throne that you are invited to sit on. It all takes place in a small room but the space feels much larger, with corridors that lead to jungles and pools full of sea monsters. You have to pick up virtual torches and when walls crumble you believe that the bricks are falling on you.
See the full story here: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35583355
It’s Going to Be a Virtual Reality World at TED
[Philip Lelyveld comment: I expect full reports from my fellow TEDster!]
“There are speakers at TED who’ll be arguing that VR and augmented reality offer the chance of a dramatic shift in how we interact with computers and with the real world,” TED curator Chris Anderson told Re/code. “From digital to analog, from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, from observation to immersion, the demos they are working on are jaw-dropping. We can’t wait.”
Among those presenting is Meta, which has a new augmented reality technology that has Robert Scoble gushing. Scoble likens his experience with Meta to seeing the first Mac. The last time he got this overwhelmed, it was Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope that had him all weepy.
Speaking of Microsoft, HoloLens and Kinect creator Alex Kipman is speaking on Thursday morning.
Meta CEO Meron Gribetz said he sees 2016 as a big year for both augmented reality and virtual reality and said some people will begin to replace computer monitors with headsets.
“Our objective in our own offices is to replace our external monitors by the end of the year,” Gribetz said.
But Gribetz said the industry still faces the challenge of becoming a tool and a utility versus a toy and a novelty.
See the full story here: http://recode.net/2016/02/15/its-going-to-be-a-virtual-reality-world-at-ted/
An NYU Research Project Is Trying to Make Virtual Reality Less Lonely
“Holojam is a set of practical experiments to prototype a future that does not yet exist,” said Ken Perlin, principal investigator of Holojam.
We’re interested, not about when it’s cutting edge and exciting, but when it’s boring.”
“Seeing somebody in VR gives you a sense of them that you don’t get from video,” explains Lobser, who’s done all of the art for Holojam so far. “The way that they express themselves becomes more cartoony. Certain things are simplified, and certain things are amplified.”
In virtual reality, he demonstrated by switching from leg to leg, balancing on each. There’s not much subtlety possible in here, which lends itself to more extravagant gestures. He offers me a high five, which is his favorite way to blow the minds of the uninitiated; making physical contact with something you can see in virtual reality is, I can confirm, wild.
While the team works on Holojam in some form throughout the week, Thursdays are the most exciting time. From 5:00 to 8:00 on Thursday evenings, graduate students and faculty gather in one of NYU’s computer science buildings to talk, plan, code and occasionally just hang out in virtual reality. Running a project with this many volunteers can be messy—I haven’t been inside the development of Sony’s PlayStation VR, but I expect it’s different than the consensus-run meetings of Holojam.
See the full story here: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-nyu-research-project-is-trying-to-make-virtual-reality-less-lonely
Here’s how Sundance’s first VR residency film got made
Like so many artists eager to get their hands on the medium, Wallworth had never worked in VR film, but she knew exactly what she wanted to do with it. Years prior, while working with indigenous Martu artists in Australia's Pilbara desert, she'd mentioned visiting the Maralinga region near the country’s southern border — site of UK nuclear weapons tests in 1950s and 1960s. The wife of one of the Martu elders, a man named Nyarri Nyarri Morgan, turned to her. "You have to talk to Nyarri," she said. Seeing one of those tests — an explosion of ash and a lingering, otherworldly cloud — had been his first encounter with the non-indigenous world.
For years after, Wallworth had pondered a way to work with Nyarri to tell the story. "Then, when I saw VR, I thought: 'This is really perfect,'" she says. Seeing in all directions would help bring audiences into the vast Australian desert, where they would meet Nyarri and his family (virtually) firsthand. Collisions could follow him through his daily life as he told the story, building toward a single, unreal moment: the bombing itself, now decades in the past.
"I took this camera out on this shoot having not shot one scene," says Wallworth. Armed with a week of training from Jaunt, she soon started figuring out the quirks of VR film. Instead of closely controlling scenes, a 360-degree filmmaker has to plan each one and let it play out from a distance. "It’s closer to directing theater than directing film," she says. "We’re kind of hiding behind a door talking to someone through an earpiece — or for us, hiding behind trees and trying to avoid spiders and fire." Afterwards, she and an editor would work with a low-resolution version of the video and send it off, not seeing exactly what they'd made until a perfectly stitched copy came back.
She wanted Collisions to have the same theatrical premiere as a traditional film, even if it was on dozens of tiny screens instead of one large one. With help from the artistic engineering collective Two-Bit Circus, every audience member would don a Gear VR and Wallworth would trigger them simultaneously, making sure each one started and finished at the same time. People might not be able to see each other in the headsets, but they'd take them off knowing they'd had a shared experience.
See the full story here: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/9/10940236/sundance-virtual-reality-residency-lynette-wallworth-collisions
Expert Predicts Madden NFL and Reality Shows Coming to VR
Videogame designer, Carnegie Mellon University professor and former Disney Imagineer, Jesse N. Schell, soared through a list of 10 virtual reality prognostications at Unity’s recent Vision AR/VR Summit in Hollywood. One of five speakers asked to soothsay about VR’s future, the creative director behind the “Toontown Online” massive multiplayer online game (MMO) predicted that by 2018, “Madden NFL” will be released in VR, and by 2020, there will be at least 10 VR reality television shows and a $10 billion VR adult video industry.
Reality and VR are a natural fit, proclaimed Schell, because both are about “putting you in a situation and making you feel like you are there.” Being there, or presence, the perception of really existing in a non-physical world, is a goal that VR also shares with porn, along with existing in three-dimensions when executed as their best.
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/expert-predicts-madden-nfl-and-reality-shows-coming-to-vr/
Many Of Your Favorite Actors Are About To Own A Gear VR
Each winner and nominee will receive a gift bag from DELOVERY that will include a myriad of the year’s hottest products including a Gear VR complete with a Samsung Smartphone. The phone will come preloaded with content from Wevr that includes the VR films like Waves and Hard World for Small Things.
For those curious, the full gift bag will contain:
A flipbook of career highlights by Hiccup Media
Guided meditation classes and goodies from Unplug
A preloaded Gear VR headset from WEVR
Signature dress shirts from Mizzen + Main
A box of skincare essentials from Fresh
Danish eyewear from Kilsgaard
SoCal-inspired jewelry by ALOR
The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss
A fingerprint jewelry kit by Touchstone
Artisan cider by Clementine Carter
A t-shirt and cap from Sol Angeles
A candle from Voluspa
The Gear VR’s presence alongside these other trending items is further evidence that what was once the niche concern of computer-aficionados is quickly barreling towards a mass market appeal. Hopefully, the headsets in these bags will inspire more celebrities to join the likes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and champion the cause of VR in the movie business.
See the full story here: http://l.goodbits.io/l/40xtda69