Designed from the ground up for virtual reality, Adr1ft is set in Zero G, allowing you to float through the beautiful wreckage of space.
23Jun/15Off
In Cannes, WEVR Releases an early prototype of their Interactive Virtual Reality Video technology with SapientNitro
For this experience, SapientNitro enlisted WEVR to create the technology and shoot all the 360 video. Our technology and creative allows the Apartment to come to life in a way that was true to the design and the feel of the brand while making it perfectly fit for the VR medium. We have gaze based, animated, and customizable “story triggers” as part of the system we built from the ground up that renders content in high definition. Real-time, positional audio is triggered by our interactive gaze technology. We also engineered in functionality that allows for state based interactions that are used to fulfill the project’s objective as being a prototype for the future of shopping in VR.
See the full story here: http://wevr.com/in-cannes-wevr-releases-an-early-prototype-of-their-interactive-virtual-reality-video-technology-with-sapientnitro-474
23Jun/15Off
CBS Interactive Debuts a Virtual Reality Comedy Short at Cannes Lions
[Phil Lelyveld comment; People have stated that comedy wouldn’t work in VR because comedy depends on timing and you can’t count on a VR end-user looking in the right place at the right time. As with so many other things in VR, once people actually try to do it - versus talking about it - the language for VR comedy will emerge.]
Thompson discusses virtual reality and explains how it works, snapping his fingers to make characters appear and disappear at will. Turn around, however, and there's Thompson playing the film's pretentious and increasingly frustrated director, along with his camera crew.
Looking up, down or anywhere around makes viewers feel like they're quite literally in the center of the action. It can be disconcerting but also quite amusing.
All of CBS Interactive's 25 brands, including TV.com and Last.fm, "are ripe for virtual reality experiences," said Christy Tanner, svp and gm of CBS Interactive Media Group, suggesting cooking demos on Chowhound and set visits on TVGuide.com as possibilities.
To that end, Studio 61, CBS Interactive's branded content studio launched earlier this year, partnered with the Uprising Creative production company, which suggested a comedy short.
"This short is trying to be a showcase for how to do comedy in VR. The Uprising Creative really felt that comedy was an underserved area, if it's served at all, and this was an opportunity for us to pioneer what's funny in VR," she said. "We know what's scary in VR, what's cool, what takes you to the scene of a news event, but I don't think it has been widely explored what's funny in it."
The virtual reality presentation will be followed by a panel including Thompson, Uprising Creative's Jeff Nicholas and Jonathan Craven, Kendell Ostrow of UTA (which packaged the short), and Anthony Batt from virtual-reality firm WEVR (which handled the film's technology and editing).
See the full story here: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/cbs-interactive-debuts-virtual-reality-comedy-short-cannes-lions-165504
22Jun/15Off
NextVR Livestreams US Open Golf Tournament in VR, App Coming to “All VR Devices”
NextVR’s live broadcast of the U.S. Open is second only to being there yourself. The cameras are closer to the action than the audience at the course itself.
The company is also pulling HUD elements into the broadcast. Down below the horizon is an indicator showing which hole/camera you’re viewing. Some of the feeds also have picture-in-picture cameras and leaderboards.
The stereoscopic capture is important to VR video and NextVR is doing it as well as anyone else to my eyes, but it isn’t yet perfected. The company recently introduced a light field component to enhance their stereoscopic reconstruction.
NextVR’s portal, which the company says will be available on all virtual reality devices (Oculus, Samsung, Sony and others), will host U.S. Open 2015 highlights and other immersive video events. The company maintains that current home and mobile Internet connections will be sufficient to livestream their selection of premium VR content.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/nextvr-livestreams-us-open-golf-tournament-vr-app-coming-vr-devices/
20Jun/15Off
Adr1ft Showcases The Potential Of Virtual Reality
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“Your goals are simple: to stay alive and get home. You accomplish that by floating though this destroyed space station atmosphere in zero gravity and repair your suit and the mainframe computers on the station in order to turn on the emergency escape vehicles.”
It’s also a game set in Zero G, which means you’re not limited to standing on a floor and being confined by walls.
The game was designed to be played in a single sitting. It’s not a 60 hour or $60 experience.
Although publisher 505 Games will release Adr1ft on Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Orth said the game has been designed from the ground up for virtual reality and will be playable on Oculus Rift, Sony Morpheus and the HTC Vive.
“We know we have something pretty special with this VR game,” Orth said. “It touches people in ways that the traditional game version doesn’t, and that was really unexpected for us. But we don’t know what the best Adr1ft virtual reality experience is yet. We’re still building that.
See the full story here: http://www.craveonline.com/gaming/articles/869095-adr1ft-showcases-potential-virtual-reality
18Jun/15Off
StarVR Detailed Hands-on: Big Field of View, Even Bigger Potential
The bottom line is, StarVR is a hugely exciting prospect for anyone not satisfied by what some see as FOV compromises in the forthcoming wave of consumer headsets. Weight on this latest iteration has come down and ergonomics are much improved from what I saw of the very early protoype in 2013. The team continue to rapidly iterate through hardware revisions and by the time E3 2016 rolls around, I suspect StarVR will be a premium headset to aspire to. Starbreeze’s desire to tightly couple both hardware and software is a great approach and with ingenious, creative experiences like The Walking Dead, may offer content which goes beyond what the current generation of headsets will generally offer.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/starvr-detailed-hands-on-big-field-of-view-even-bigger-potential/
17Jun/15Off
Researchers advance mobile augmented reality technology
The technology, called OverLay, works inside a smartphone and essentially combines the camera and the sensor data to make sense of the surroundings in real time.
The uses for the technology extend beyond defense and surveillance,... Jain said that it could be beneficial for infrastructure management, museums, shopping and privacy.
Jain said that in the future, the technology could be deployed by the likes of Google and Amazon, but there are infrastructural, financial and legal obstacles to overcome before a public release of that scale. For the time being, they are working closely with the Illinois Distributed Museum to iron out issues and make mobile augmented reality accessible for a wider audience.
Read the full story here: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-advance-mobile-augmented-reality-technology.html
15Jun/15Off
Here’s StarVR, a dual-display virtual reality headset that will offer a 210-degree view
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Humans can see ~180. Infinity either offers 210 or 130 degree views. Their description doesn't make sense, and isn't cleared up by the video at the link.]
Star breeze Studios, the game developer, has acquired France-based virtual reality company InfinitEye Each display on the StarVR is 5.5 inches, with one for each eye. The result is a overall display resolution of 5120x1440 with a 210-degree horizontal view, and a 130-degree virtual view, as opposed to other VR headsets that have 100-degree views in both directions.
See the full story here: http://www.windowscentral.com/heres-starvr-dual-display-virtual-reality-headset-will-offer-210-degree-view
15Jun/15Off
Virtual Reality Headsets, Gaining Scrutiny at E3 This Week, Raise Very Real Concerns
“When all of a sudden 10 avatars turn around and look at you, you know you should be quiet,” said Eric Romo, the chief executive of AltspaceVR, a Silicon Valley start-up that organizes the virtual movie gatherings and other virtual reality events.
Etiquette around social forms of virtual reality is already taking shape since this technology has the potential to turn some of the more noxious forms of online behavior into something far more menacing.
“We’re kind of at the Pong level of working with this,” said Chet Faliszek, who works on virtual reality at Valve, a game developer in Bellevue, Wash., referring to one of the earliest arcade video games to help popularize video gaming. “There’s so much more we’re discovering.”
At Valve, developers plan to minimize unwanted collisions with a feature that it calls a “chaperone” system.
The technology maps the terrain of a room: furniture, walls and all. When someone wearing a headset gets close to an object, a wireframe model of the room materializes in the virtual space in front of their eyes, fading as they move away.
But wearing a virtual reality headset in public could make someone a target for derision and, more seriously, theft.
A trickier challenge could be policing virtual reality games that are social in nature. Developers are buzzing over the possibilities of immersive virtual worlds in which people connect with each other. The potential for harassment, though, which is bad enough in conventional online video games, and other forms of abuse — especially in online settings that permit anonymity — are very real for virtual reality.
Mr. Bolas believes social virtual reality games will come up with “bounding boxes” — essentially, force fields that players can place around their avatars to keep others away.
See the full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/business/virtual-reality-headsets-raise-very-real-concerns.html?_r=0