philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

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

NO VR HEADSETS NEEDED BY 2030 SUGGESTS IEEE SURVEY FROM CES 2016

In a recent survey of 1,537 participants taken at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2016 in Las Vegas, the IEEE found many expected HMDs won’t be required by 2030.

In the survey more than half (52%) of respondents believed immersive headsets like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive will no longer be needed in well under two decades, by 2030. On top of the 52 percent, another 21 percent of respondents predicted this to be a reality by 2035, 15 percent by 2040 and 5 percent by 2045.

 When the participants were asked which industry would most likely benefit from widespread adoption of VR and augmented reality (AR) technology, 36 percent of them indicated that the education sector would probably see the biggest impact and technology would fit well into areas including virtual classrooms and AR/VR-enabled textbooks. Other notable industries included engineering (24 percent), healthcare (16 percent) and communication (nine percent).

IEEE member Todd Richmond, director of advanced prototype development at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California said in a statement: “Immersive capabilities such as AR, VR and mixed reality provide a whole new medium for communication and experience.

See the full story here: http://vrfocus.com/archives/28193/no-vr-headsets-needed-by-2030-suggests-ieee-survey-from-ces-2016/

Virtual reality is about to completely transform psychological therapy

Even though virtual reality itself is still a hard-to-grasp idea for most people who have not experienced it, the clinical use for VR as therapy has been generating a "rich scientific literature" for the past 20 years, according to Dr. Albert "Skip" Rizzo of the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (where Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey previously worked on VR).

The development of commercial VR means that headsets will be widely available, which should open up access to these already-developed therapies for new patients all over.

Still, Rizzo says that doesn't mean that people should start thinking they can just treat themselves for any sort of psychiatric condition.

"I think there are a lot of areas where with some clinician support we can amplify the effects of therapy by having self-administered VR," he tells TI, but "some forms of treatment really do require the guidance and diagnostic skill of a clinician."

See the full story here: http://www.techinsider.io/how-virtual-reality-is-used-for-ptsd-and-anxiety-therapy-2016-1?curator=MediaREDEF

When Virtual Reality Meets Education

While statistics on VR use in K-­12 schools and colleges have yet to be gathered, the steady growth of the market is reflected in the surge of companies (including zSpace, Alchemy VR and Immersive VR Education) solely dedicated to providing schools with packaged educational curriculum and content, teacher training and technological tools to support VR­-based instruction in the classroom. Myriad articles, studies and conference presentations attest to the great success of 3D immersion and VR technology in hundreds of classrooms in educationally progressive schools and learning labs in the U.S. and Europe.

Much of this early foray into VR­-based learning has centered on the hard sciences — biology, anatomy, geology and astronomy — as the curricular focus and learning opportunities are notably enriched through interaction with dimensional objects, animals and environments. The World of Comenius project, a biology lesson at a school in the Czech Republic that employed a Leap Motion controller and specially ­adapted Oculus Rift DK2 headsets, stands as an exemplary model of innovative scientific learning.

In other areas of education, many classes have used VR tools to collaboratively construct architectural models, recreations of historic or natural sites and other spatial renderings. Instructors also have used VR technology to engage students in topics related to literature, history and economics by offering a deeply immersive sense of place and time, whether historic or evolving.

In what may turn out to be an immersive education game changer, Google launched its Pioneer Expeditions in September 2015. Under this program, thousands of schools around the world are getting — for one day — a kit containing everything a teacher needs to take their class on a virtual trip: Asus smartphones, a tablet for the teacher to direct the tour, a router that allows Expeditions to run without an Internet connection, a library of 100+ virtual trips (from the Great Wall of China to Mars) and Google Cardboard viewers or Mattel View­Masters that turn smartphones into VR headsets.

Samsung is opening a VR studio in New York City

Apple hires VR expert

Apple is flexing its hiring muscle in the field of virtual reality. According to a new report from The Financial Times, the Cupertino giant has hired VR expert Doug Bowman.

Before joining Apple, Bowman was a computer science professor at Virginia Tech, where he also served as the director for the University's Center for Human-Computer Interaction.

Of course, it isn't surprising to see Apple hiring VR experts. If this is going to be one of the next major frontiers in computing, it would be ridiculous to expect the tech giant to let Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Sony take center stage.

See the full story here: http://mashable.com/2016/01/22/apple-hires-vr-expert/#kkOpmMfM35q5

A Microsoft Research study uses augmented reality to project a life-size person into a room with you, perching them in an empty seat.

In order to get a sense for how well people could communicate this way, seven pairs of study participants built three-dimensional shapes with blocks via augmented reality. One person sat in front of a table in one room with the actual blocks, while their partner sat in another, giving instructions for what kind of shape to construct. Each person was projected into the other’s room so they could work together.

Researchers found that while putting this kind of puzzle together took only about four minutes when people were face to face, it took about seven minutes using the augmented-reality system and nine via Skype video chat.

See the full story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545466/can-augmented-reality-make-remote-communication-feel-more-intimate/