Google Glass to Project Aura: aiming for HoloLens and the Enterprise
As the year is coming to an end, Google Glass resurfaces as Project Aura, the augmented reality headset. In a patent awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Google, we get an early glimpse into what Google engineers have been working on in the past 5 years or so. The new version of Glass, now interestingly named Project Aura, is still an awkward-looking device that won’t go unnoticed, but it will be much more refined than the original Explorer consumer version ever was. In a bid to give Microsoft’s HoloLens a real competitor, Project Aura aims to vastly improve upon the hardware and software capabilities of Google Glass by using higher-end technology and a well-developed software.
With a design based around the usage pattern of a monocle, Project Aura looks just as ridiculous as Google Glass, but smaller. Although the monocle design with the rectangular hardware, positioned to cover the wearer’s eyebrow, seems like a more minimalist and practical approach than the glasses approach of the first generation, it still looks futuristic and alludes to how one would imagine security officers in a post-apocalyptic 1984 monitored wirelessly by a tyrant government. Nonetheless, it’s a step in the right direction.
Project Aura will be made with designing, architecture, management, financial and maybe even journalism purposes in mind, leaving little room for the wearable to fulfill tasks like social media, entertainment or casual media consumption and interaction.
See the full story here: http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/11/29/google-glass-to-project-aura-aiming-for-hololens-and-the-enterprise/
Breaking Down Billion-Dollar AR/VR Investment In The Last 12 Months
Last quarter alone saw more than 6x the investment in the market from Q2 2014.
Magic Leap took more than half the money in the last 12 months, and there are reports that they’re raising another billion. VCs and corporates have also become excited beyond our Floridian friends, with an impressive diversity of investment in a market that hasn’t really launched yet.
Read the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/27/breaking-down-billion-dollar-arvr-investment-in-the-last-12-months/
Meet the Camera That Could Bring Virtual Reality to the Masses
The LucidCam is part FlipCam, part GoPro, with the look and feel of a slim smartphone. It's meant to be a point-and-shoot camera for capturing virtual-reality content on the go. It's portable and mountable, and makes it possible to create high-quality content from a first-person perspective. With its 180-degree field of view and true depth perception, the camera creates the sensation that you really are there. You can then watch this virtual-reality content on your smartphone, with or without a special viewer, or on a virtual-reality headset.
LucidCam has gone through a number of iterations and prototypes, and the next step is to take it to mass production. To make that possible, LucidCam is in the middle of raising $100,000 (roughly Rs. 66,35,000) on the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo.
With 45 days to go, the product has already pulled in more than $90,000 (roughly Rs. 60,00,000).
The best content, Jin said, is still being made by professionals, not amateurs. Companies such as JauntVR are applying Hollywood-style production techniques to creating cinematic, immersive virtual-reality experiences.
See the full story here: http://gadgets.ndtv.com/cameras/features/meet-the-camera-that-could-bring-virtual-reality-to-the-masses-768518
Bankrolling the 10 Breakthrough Technologies: Magic Leap
Abovitz founded Magic Leap in 2010, and it became his full-time gig in December 2013 after he sold his previous business, the medical-device maker MAKO Surgical, for $1.65 billion. Nagraj Kashyap, senior vice president at Qualcomm Ventures, attributes much of his firm’s enthusiasm for Magic Leap to Abovitz’s track record building successful technologies and cultures. But he also sees good reason to believe that Magic Leap’s technology will create something new, a “pervasive and persistent” form of augmented reality.
Although virtual reality is not new, investors have been drawn back to it because of a substantial decrease in costs. Virtual-reality headsets that existed 20 years ago cost $20,000 to make, says Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life and High Fidelity. Because it was so expensive, he says, “virtual reality in general has been a dream always five years in the future.”
In contrast, today “90 percent of the hardware in a virtual-reality headset is already in a cell phone,” says Nabeel Hyatt, a partner at Spark Capital, the original backer of Oculus VR, the virtual-reality headset maker Facebook bought in 2014 for $2 billion.
Spark Capital professes to like investing in markets so new their size can’t yet be determined. Even so, Hyatt says his firm believes the augmented reality of Magic Leap is still too far off to warrant investment. Significant technological puzzles still have to be solved in computer vision, 3-D rendering, strategies for mapping a room in real time, and other areas, Hyatt argues. “I am bullish on that,” he says, “but over the very long term.”
See the full story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/543386/bankrolling-the-10-breakthrough-technologies-magic-leap/
OzoMG! Why Nokia chose a virtual reality camera for its hardware comeback
The mass market hook is there too -- the company believes that VR will become ubiquitous on phones. "We see this as the birth of an entirely new media. We don't see it as a niche market where the audience would only consist of gamers and owners of virtual reality consoles, but everyone who has a mobile phone is a potential consumer of this content," said Melin.
... you'll always want to watch Apocalypse Now just how Francis Ford Coppola put it together, but a tour of the set filmed on an Ozo might give you another perspective on how the movie was made.
See the full story here: http://www.zdnet.com/article/ozomg-why-nokia-chose-a-virtual-reality-camera-for-its-hardware-comeback/
Broadway’s ‘The Lion King’ pushes into virtual reality
"The Lion King" on Broadway is offering fans a view of the musical that even the very best seat in the theater can't rival.
The Disney stage blockbuster on Wednesday released 360-degree footage of its opening song "Circle of Life" that lets users look left, right, up, backstage and at the audience, even when sitting on a couch.
To create the virtual reality world, some half-dozen GoPro cameras were mounted on a stand and placed in the center of the stage as the actors swirled around in their Julie Taymor-created costumes and masks.
The stand also telescoped 20 feet into the air to capture the view as Pride Rock rises up and baby Simba is introduced. Software stitched together the various videos into a seamless, 360-degree view - a circle of life.
The footage can be seen free on laptops and desktops on Wednesday via YouTube and Facebook (using cursors to move around the virtual world) or smartphones and tablets (where the screen tracks movement) or special immersive headsets like Samsung's Gear VR and Google Cardboard.
Online:
https://www.youtube.com/user/DisneyOnBroadway
https://www.facebook.com/TheLionKingUSA
See the full story here: http://www.kmov.com/story/30550359/broadways-the-lion-king-pushes-into-virtual-reality
UCLA computer science class integrates virtual world into reality
Ford, a lecturer in the computer science department, aims to develop gaming as a subfield of graphics at UCLA through her courses on virtual reality and artificial intelligence. This quarter, Ford’s virtual reality class, “Advanced Game Development for Virtual Reality,” is using gesture-tracking to create its own virtual reality games, following in the footsteps of her spring class, “Virtual Reality Game Development.”
Ford said the interactions between players and artificial intelligence, built off the programming and testing done by students like Corbalis and Morgan, gave rise to pre-patterns of coding, which can be used by game developers across the world to create even more virtual reality games.
In August, Ford presented pre-patterns within her class’ games on stage at SIGGRAPH. During Ford’s presentation, the student-created games were met with cheering and applause from developers in the audience, she said.
See the full story here: http://dailybruin.com/2015/11/18/ucla-computer-science-class-integrates-virtual-world-into-reality/
Instant VR for Your Next Party with ‘WeLens’
What if you simply want to show off VR demos as part of your corporate event or birthday party without the hassle?
California company WeLens sets out to solve that problem. WeLens offers a kit complete with Samsung Gear VR headset, a compatible phone, headphones, charger, and cleaning accessories, and can even preload content. Beyond that, they can assist with on-site staffing and furnishing, offering a turnkey VR event.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/instant-vr-next-party-welens/