philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

PTC Hosts Upcoming Augmented Reality ‘ThingEvent’

Later this week, on January 28, PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) will host its exclusive ThingEvent, focused on augmented reality (AR) in the enterprise. This livestream event will highlight real-world customer solutions from leading manufacturing companies as well as new technologies that will transform how humans interact with and experience the physical ‘things’ around them in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT).

By seamlessly overlaying digital data onto the physical world – and providing a rich, visual, interactive experience – augmented reality can fundamentally improve and transform the way we design, manufacture, operate, and service smart, connected products and systems.

Date: January 28, 2016
Time: 9:00 AM EST and 3:00 PM EST
Registration:  www.thingevent.com

See the full story here: http://www.ptc.com/news/2016/ptc-hosts-upcoming-augmented-reality-thingevent

Quantum Chess – Stephen Hawkings and Paul Rudd

Sony creates a new company to run everything PlayStation

[Philip Lelyveld comment; Andrew House speaks Japanese fluently!]

Sony Interactive Entertainment combines hardware and software with PlayStation-branded services.

Sony just announced that it's spinning off PlayStation into its own separate company, dubbed Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. It combines Sony Computer Entertainment (basically any and all PlayStation-related hardware and software) with Sony Network Entertainment (services like PlayStation Vue and the PlayStation Store) and will be led by Andrew House as president and global CEO. Head of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, retains his title, but will now report to Shawn Layden.

See the full story here: http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/26/sony-interactive-entertainment-llc/

Starbreeze Studios Announces A Full-Scale VR Arcade For Los Angeles

Starbreeze AB… at VRLA Winter Expo announced its intention to establish a VR arcade venue in Los Angeles, named Project StarCade. Aiming to make premium VR experiences accessible for the masses, Starbreeze will create a StarVR powered arcade hall, where VR enthusiasts and novices alike are welcome to experience the exciting technology in an immersive setting.

See the full story here: http://l.goodbits.io/l/dnpmy24a

Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market – Expected to Reach Approximately $1.45 Billion by 2020 – Research and Markets

The Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market is poised to grow at a CAGR of around 17.8% in the next 5 years to reach approximately $1.45 billion by 2020.

This industry report analyzes the global markets for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in Healthcare across all the given segments in the research scope. It presents historical market data for 2012, 2013 and 2014, as well as revenue estimations for 2015 and forecasts till 2020.

Companies mentioned

• CAE Healthcare
• GE Healthcare
• Hologic Corporation
• Intuitive Surgical, Inc.
• Laerdal Medical
• Medtronic, Inc.
• Philips Healthcare
• Siemens Healthcare
• Simulaids, Inc.
• TheraSim, Inc.
• Virtual realities
• Vital Images, Inc.
• WorldViz, LLC

See the full story here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125005733/en/Global-Augmented-Reality-Virtual-Reality-Healthcare-Market

Nonny de la Pena, Sundance VR: hate is the purest emotion

De la Peña has two pieces at Sundance 2016: Across the Line, based on footage from women crossing the omnipresent and often abusive anti-abortion pickets outside Planned Parenthood; and Kiya, which dramatizes a 911 call that captured two sisters unsuccessfully trying to stop a third's ex-boyfriend from killing her. The first ends with a remembrance of the three killed and nine injured by a gunman who targeted Planned Parenthood last year, and the second closes by reminding participants of the number of women murdered by romantic partners and ex-partners every day.

...my initial reaction to Across the Line — which I tried first — was analysis. De la Peña's work is aesthetically unique: it uses real location blueprints, photographs, and motion capture data to create simple digital scenes that participants can walk through in VR. It feels distinctly influenced by the blocky style of Second Life, suggesting reality rather than recreating it. Across the Line, though, opens with a short 360-degree video introduction that follows a young woman through the picket line and into the clinic. I'm told this was done to create a greater sense of space, since the HTC Vive it's being demoed on provides less space than the custom headsets of her earlier work. But it also fills out the work in an interesting way, like a photorealistic cutscene in an otherwise low-detail video game.

See the full story here: http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/24/10820778/sundance-2016-virtual-reality-immersive-journalism-experiences

Wicked Jezebel Feminist! Users Witness Anti-Choice Abuse in Virtual Reality Film “Across the Line”

A new project at the Sundance Film Festival puts you in the shoes of a woman passing through the gauntlet of anti-choice protesters to reach an abortion clinic. "Across the Line" is a seven-minute immersive virtual reality experience that uses real audio of anti-choice protesters. We speak with the project’s co-creator, Nonny de la Peña, known as the "godmother of virtual reality," and with executive producer, Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

See the full story here: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/25/across_the_line_virtual_reality_immerses

The Abbot’s Book wants to be the gothic Myst of virtual reality — can it pull it off?

[Philip Lelyveld comment - I saw an early version of this a year ago.  It is very dark - as in night time and castle underground passageways.)

Every once in a while, you get a work of art whose backstory and future potential nearly eclipse the actual experience. Take, for example, The Abbot's Book, one of the first pieces of VR I saw at Sundance Film Festival. The Abbot's Book is a Gothic horror experience played on the HTC Vive, a brief journey through a network of sinister catacombs in the company of a taciturn monk. Did I mention it comes with an actual book?

According to creator Michael Conelly, The Abbot's Book began as a piece of fiction he wrote in 1989 — a novella about a family seduced by ancient evil. Set in 17th-century Italy, it explores the perennially potent theme of intergenerational ruin, centered on a book that tempts its readers with a horrifying kind of eternal life.

Pure environmental wandering isn't an unusual idea, but it tends to be seen in experiences that are a few hours long at most, like seminal "walking game" Dear Esther. Even the non-traditional Telltale games are almost nonstop cinematic events and conversations, and Amnesia developer Frictional relies on puzzles, jump scares, and fragments of books and diaries to draw players through its worlds. Has anyone done something this big that's purely explorational? "I don't think anyone is telling a narrative" in that way, he says, so The Abbot's Tale will be the first.

The greatest strength of The Abbot's Book is the book itself, which was published several years ago, and is an enjoyable and evocative piece of horror in its own right. It has the feel of some old role-playing game manual, combining a novella with hand-drawn illustrations from various artists, character profiles, and alternate story ideas that seem to be making their way into the VR experience. So while I'm unsure on the future of The Abbot's Book, Conelly has at the very least made a compelling case for its place in interactive horror.

Sundance Film Festival Has Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Flying Whales

(2 good videos at the link) Far greater visual wonders await festival-goers who plop a big virtual reality helmet like the Oculus Rift on their noggins instead. Of particular note this year is the Leviathan Project, which pairs both augmented reality and full-on virtual reality to bring Scott Westerfeld's best-selling Leviathan trilogy of novels to life. It's the product of a three-year collaborative effort between Alex McDowell’s 5D Global Studio, USC’s World Building Media Lab, Intel, and Unity, and it certainly makes for an interesting setting. Westerfeld's books focus on an alternate reality in which a sordid affair between Charles Darwin and Mary Shelley ultimately leads to proponents of steam-powered engines duking it out with folks who advocate using fabricated animals as weaponry during World War I.

See the full story here: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/sundance-film-festival-has-virtual-reality-augmented-reality-and-flying-whales

Star Wars at Sundance an augmented reality

Showing off The Holo-Cinema, a new technology being developed by Lucasfilm to expand the Star Wars universe to the living room.

Users, wearing augmented reality glasses, can explore the Jakku desert and walk around a three-dimensional C3PO while he neurotically frets and BB-8 rolls around. The world comes into 3-D focus with the glasses on. Without them, the scene looks like an unfocused projection against the wall.

In a few years, technology will have developed to the point where the projection and immersion could be experienced just by putting on a pair of augmented-reality glasses, he said. It could be accessed at theme parks installations, or by consumers in their own home.

Gaeta expects the augmented-reality technology to be prevalent in three to five years and mainstream for all sizes of movies in five to ten years. The team isn’t beholden to Star Wars; they’re also developing experiences for other filmmakers, he says.

See the full story here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/star-wars-at-sundance-an-augmented-reality/news-story/0960debf0e2c34ead251226cecdbc2ad