philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Get ready for virtual reality coasters to become a real-world reality

The 360-degree 3-D VR experience synchronizes to the motion of the coaster to fully immerse riders in a virtual world of nonstop action. The trick is syncing the steep drops, airtime hills and G-forces of the ride with the visuals on the screen. So far, the tests have found that coaster riders don’t experience motion sickness while wearing the VR headsets.

See the full story here: http://www.latimes.com/travel/themeparks/la-trb-vr-coaster-canadas-wonderland-20150917-story.html?utm_source=KZero+Website+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d4a33d1631-Template_for_VR_News_Weekly71&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6f364169c5-d4a33d1631-117770001

How The Creators of Monument Valley Are Writing The Rules of Virtual Reality

Land’s End is a puzzle game—much like Myst—in which you hop spot to spot to interact with new, staged brainteasers. It’s built to be gorgeous and meditative, to allow the player to almost window shop their way through the game, never thinking about controlling it. What the Land’s End team is trying to accomplish—instead of outright commercial success—is a creative long con: Can they use this game to create some of the fundamental ways that people can interact with a VR world?

...there’s one interaction that all VR headsets will share: Your gaze. And so Land’s End is a game you can control purely by turning your head to look at things.

"[Gaze control] is the one thing that took us the longest to figure out," Pashley says. "We’ve been working on this game from this time last year. And the majority of that time has been iterating on level design, and the best way of letting the player interact with this world...you don't want people to feel like they’re using their head as a joystick."

The team’s first breakthrough was to eliminate the crosshair. 

ustwo also built levels with classic attention grabbing techniques, like leading lines and placing things in silhouette, to pull your attention to the right spot. This means that while Land’s End lets you turn in your chair to appreciate the 360-degree view, as you absorb the horizon, you’ll naturally be drawn to the next stage of your journey. A glowing beacon—which you look at to walk to—just serves as confirmation and reinforcement of this core design.

Solving the actual puzzles—which require you to connect constellations across rocks—requires two main gaze techniques, pioneered by ustwo. The first is what the company calls Starlines. You point your head at a notch in the rock, look to another, and the two are connected by a laser-like trail. Meanwhile, all sorts of little bits of visual flourishes reinforce the behavior, from slowly building sparks when you’re in the right spot, to a crescendoing electronic sound track as your gaze ignites the pixels. It’s satisfying and reassuring; It all just feels so good.

The second breakthrough was telekinesis. By holding your gaze on a giant rock (marked with a certain symbol), it lifts into the air. Moving your head drags it through the air, as if your neck is not a joystick, but a crane.

See the full story here: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3051273/how-the-creators-of-monument-valley-are-writing-the-rules-of-virtual-reality?curator=MediaREDEF

Smartwatch Spies What You Type on a Keyboard

Using the watch's built-in motion sensors, more specifically data from the accelerometer and gyroscope, researchers were able to create a 3D map of the user's hand movements while typing on a keyboard.

The researchers then created two algorithms, one for detecting what keys were being pressed, and one for guessing what word was typed.

See the full story here: http://news.softpedia.com/news/creepy-smartwatch-spies-what-you-type-on-a-keyboard-491604.shtml

DISNEY LEADS $66 MILLION INVESTMENT IN VIRTUAL-REALITY STARTUP JAUNTVR

The Walt Disney Company is among the lead investors in virtual-reality startup JauntVR’s $66 million Series C round of funding. It's the latest evidence that Hollywood wants in on VR before the technology is widely available.

Silicon Valley-based Jaunt has developed an end-to-end cinematic virtual-reality content-creation platform that includes a custom camera capable of shooting high-end, professional-quality 360-degree footage, software for stitching the footage together, a distribution system, and a Los Angeles VR production studio. It announced the funding today.

CAA-backed Evolution Media Capital and China Media Capital joined Disney as lead investors in the round, which brings Jaunt’s total funding to more than $100 million.

Last week, Disney-owned ABC News unveiled a VR storytelling "experience,"produced in conjunction with Jaunt, that takes viewers to Damascus, Syria, where they can see a 360-degree view of life on the streets of that war-torn country. According to Christensen, that project was unrelated to the new funding.

With its new funding, Christensen says Jaunt will continue to focus on its hardware; the "hardcore computational photography software pipeline" its partners use to process their footage; apps for any VR device, from the Oculus Rift to mobile headsets like Samsung’s GearVR; and its Studio program.

He added that the company plans on scaling up all four areas as VR hardware edges closer to mainstream adoption. 

Jaunt is also planning on using its new funding, particularly with the help of its Chinese investor, as well as European media companies ProSieben and Axel Springer SE, to broaden its reach into those parts of the world.

"Jaunt has distinguished itself as a true leader in the field of cinematic virtual reality, an emerging medium with incredible potential across all sectors of entertainment," Kevin Mayer, senior executive vice president and chief strategy officer for the Walt Disney Company, said in a statement. "Jaunt’s unique end-to-end solution for producing and publishing high-quality VR experiences is cutting edge, and we are excited about its future potential."

See the full story here: http://www.fastcompany.com/3051252/tech-forecast/disney-leads-66m-investment-in-virtual-reality-tech-and-content-company-jauntv

Virtual Reality Startup Jaunt Raises Massive New Round of Funding

Virtual reality startup Jaunt is about to announce a massive Series C round of financing, Variety has learned. Exact numbers weren’t available ahead of the company’s official announcement, but multiple sources peg the amount north of $50 million.

The raise comes just a year after Jaunt secured a $27.8 million Series B, and less than 18 months after the company’s $6.8 million Series A. Previous Jaunt investors include Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Google Ventures, BSkyB and others.

Jaunt has been a bit of a jack-of-all trades in the virtual reality (VR) world; the company has built its own VR camera, has produced VR experiences and apps for studios and others, and has developed its own software and tools for VR content production.

Jaunt is said to be focusing more on original content, with the goal of becoming more of a full-featured studio. Jaunt has launched a new corporate division called Jaunt Studios that is headed by former Lucasfilm CTO and Digital Domain CEO Cliff Plumer and that includes a physical production space in Los Angeles.

Investments in VR have been heating up in general. In the first half of 2015, VR companies raised a total of $248 million, according to data from CB Insights.

See the full story here: http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/virtual-reality-startup-jaunt-raises-massive-new-round-of-funding-exclusive-1201595977/

An Unexpected Disruptor? Verizon’s Bold Digital Strategy

No longer content to simply be a wireless provider and with its wireless business reaching a plateau, Verizon is reinventing itself as a content producer and an ad platform as well. Over the last few months, Verizon has made several announcements that suggest the company has a deliberate strategy to address the digital revolution in media and entertainment. And in this industry, companies that undergo radical innovation to disrupt themselves are the ones that will succeed.

(Go90 will be available to any mobile user — not just Verizon customers), with a full launch planned for the end of September. With a combination of television programming, live events and video, Go90 appears to offer a broad menu.

According to Verizon, the company is targeting the younger demographic of 18- to 34-year-olds, 70 percent of whom watch video on mobile devices first. Certainly the content, with offerings from Comedy Central, Food Network, ESPN , NFL Network, Discovery, VH1, MTV , and SPIKE; content from multi-channel networks like AwesomenessTV and Vice; and live events like NFL games and concerts, seems to be geared toward this demographic. (Interestingly, Go90 offers individual programs, not networks — Verizon apparently negotiated for the rights on a show-by-show basis, rather than the entire library of the channels.)

And there is a strong social component to Go90, something that Millennials crave. Through Go90, users can set up profiles to personalize their experience, share video clips to social media sites, and “follow” friends and other profiles pages like those for celebs or favorite shows. Go90 will also features “crews,” which allow users to join special interest groups within the app.

But the key to these services is translating a streaming video platform into profits, and on that count, Verizon is seeking an edge. On Go90, users will be able to stream video to their phones and mobile devices by way of a free app, which will eventually be supported by ads.

There is no subscription fee for Go90, a radical proposition in a field of subscriber-based services. But Verizon is also hoping that by providing its service through mobile devices, customers may upgrade to more robust (and more expensive) data plans. The bet is that this approach will surpass the revenues that could be derived from an upfront subscription fee, and that is a pretty big bet, especially considering millennials’ attraction to short videos and inexpensive subscriptions.

See the full story here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2015/09/17/an-unexpected-disruptor-verizons-bold-digital-strategy/

ETC Publishes White Paper on C4 Cloud Production Framework

Not only is the C4 ID universally unique, it is also universally consistent. This means that given identical files in two different organizations, both organizations would independently agree on the C4 ID, without the need for a central registry or any other shared information. This allows organizations to communicate with others about assets consistently and unambiguously, while managing assets internally in any way they choose.

This can be done without prior agreement or communication of any kind. This ‘agreement without communication’ is an essential feature of C4 IDs and a key differentiator between it and other identification systems.

See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/etc-publishes-white-paper-on-c4-cloud-production-framework/

Augmented reality expert explains how AR will help humanity

Gaia Dempsey, managing director of DAQRI, which makes an AR-enabled smart hard hat, offers up a strong case for why augmented reality is more than just hype. In a new video for the upcoming Future of Storytelling Summit (which also produced the stunning video of animation legend Glen Keane drawing in VR), Dempsey explains how AR could fundamentally change the way we learn and experience the world. For example, it's one thing to be told how the mechanics of a clock works in text or video, it's an entirely different experience to be able to manipulate a moving set of clock gears in three dimensions.

"If you want to control the entire view, VR is best. AR on the other hand puts digital information into the real environment so you can see it in context of the world around you."

See the full story here: http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/15/gaia-dempsey-ar/

ABC News Says It’s Taking Virtual Reality Seriously

In a release timed to coincide with a story on “Nightline” this evening, ABC created a special 360-degree video companion piece, intended to be viewed on a mobile phone with a Google Cardboard-style headset. It’s said to be the first of many VR projects that will live at ABCNews.com/VR.

ABC’s first VR story takes viewers on a tour of Damascus, Syria, led by reporter Alexander Marquardt. It examines how in some parts of the war-torn country’s capital, normal life goes on; in others, Syrians are scrambling to keep ancient art and religious sites safe from destruction.

To produce the VR component of the story, ABC partnered with virtual reality film startup Jaunt. Silver said Jaunt processed and stitched together the raw video files — a necessary step whenever video shot by several cameras is combined into one file — but that ABC still did all the narrative video editing, as it would for any other story.

See the full story here: http://recode.net/2015/09/16/abc-news-says-its-taking-virtual-reality-seriously/

Cortana and HoloLens in your Windows car

According to the exec, Microsoft’s Cortana will be an important part of autonomous and smart vehicles in the future as the company is working hard to try and integrate the virtual assistant seamlessly into the Windows in-car experience. Cortana and tech used in the Microsoft HoloLens will let drivers project the virtual assistant’s interface right onto their windshield and work from there.

With Google Car in development and to be widespread in just 4 years, Microsoft will have to consider the new developments that Google is doing with Android Auto and the AI software that they use for the Google Car. If Cortana and HoloLens work seamlessly throughout a driving experience, Microsoft has a change at securing itself a more sturdy place in the future.

See the full story here: http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/09/17/cortana-and-hololens-in-your-windows-car/