HDTVs Left Behind in Samsung’s 4K Push
Samsung really wants you to buy a UHD TV — which has four times as many pixels as HD — because that's where the money is. UHD sets account for 60 percent of Samsung's TV revenue, Lee said, even though they are a small fraction of the total number of TVs sold.
Samsung is also happy to sell you an HDTV, though. "As long as there is a need for that technology
…we're going to address that market demand," Lee said. Don't expect Samsung's HDTVs to be cutting edge, though. "Are we going to continue to pile resources and R&D [into HDTV]?" Lee asked. "It's going to go into this," he said, pointing to Samsung's flagship JS9500 curved Ultra HD TV, which starts at $6,499 for a 65-inch screen.
However, with just a trickle of 4K content available, TV makers need another enticement. New technologies also include a wider color palette using so-called nanocrystals, which produce more saturated primary colors for making up an image. (Hence Samsung introducing its new TVs at the Rainbow Room.) Samsung brands its UHD televisions with all the tech accouterments as SUHD.
An organization called the UHD Alliance -- which includes Samsung, most other major TV makers such as Sharp and Sony, and content providers such as Technicolor, Netflix and 20th Century Fox -- is developing new standards for video that uses the wider, more lifelike colors and higher contrast that new TVs from Samsung and others can produce.
Read the full story here: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/samsung-pushes-4k-uhd-tvs,news-20739.html
Carnegie Mellon and CalTech Researchers Develop New 3D Measurement Tool
Simon Lucey, associate research professor at the Robotics Institute, tells Carnegie Mellon News, “these ‘noisy’ IMUs are good enough that, when the user waves the camera around a bit, they can calibrate 3D models as they are created and enable the phone to get accurate measurements from the models.”
With future improvements, the technology has the potential to be of common use for online shoppers buying products and goods that typically require measurements, such as furniture and eyewear.
“‘The amazing thing is that we can turn any smartphone into a ruler — no special hardware, no depth sensors, just your regular smart device,’” Lucey says of the new measurement technology.
In related research, a team at Caltech has developed a tiny high-resolution 3D imager that could potentially be used by smartphones to enable users to take a photograph, send it to a 3D printer, and quickly and easily create a replica that is accurate to within microns of the object.
“The new chip utilizes an established detection and ranging technology called LIDAR, in which a target object is illuminated with scanning laser beams,” reports Caltech. “The light that reflects off of the object is then analyzed based on the wavelength of the laser light used, and the LIDAR can gather information about the object’s size and its distance from the laser to create an image of its surroundings.”
See the full story here http://www.etcentric.org/carnegie-mellon-researchers-develop-new-3d-measurement-tool/
AUGMENTED REALITY GLASSES FROM SONY, SMARTEYEGLASS, HIT THE SHELVES
At the moment, what is available is the Sony SmartEyeglass Developer Edition (SED-E1). Those augmented reality glasses also include an additional controller and come with a price tag of $840.
They use hologram optics tech in order to be able to superimpose images, symbols, and text overtop of the natural field of view of the wearer.
At the moment, these AR glasses are available only in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. Consumers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany are able to buy these wearables, no matter who they are. However, in the other countries in which the devices are being sold, there are certain limitations, such as the fact that only business customers will be allowed to buy them, at least for the first wave of the rollout.
Kickstarter raises £16,500 for South Kilworth film-maker Dan Smith’s new VR project
A film-maker has managed to raise more than £16,000 to make an ambitious virtual reality film.
Dan hopes that his story about technology, blackmail and revenge, will one day become a full-length feature film but the first step has been raising a minimum of £15,000 through Kickstarter to make the short.
Dan, who went to Lutterworth Grammar School, made his name in the world of documentary film-making, winning a Bafta for his work on Sir David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive.
Dan explained: "The idea is that you can watch the film on a headset and some of the time you'll see a square screen with the film on it.
"But when it goes to the fly's point of view you will be able to see everything in all directions - you'll be able to look around.
See the full story here: http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Kickstarter-raises-16-500-South-Kilworth-film/story-26277868-detail/story.html
Police are learning when not to shoot using virtual reality
The Virtra technology originally employed headsets and goggles, much like the Oculus Rift, but found this to be ineffective in real-life scenarios. Today, the technology is projected in 300 degrees of immersive scenario, where the trainer can manipulate any scenario to train and test officers as if they were really in the field.
"... the system I tested out in Morris County, which is now being used at more than 200 training facilities around the world, consists of five large screens that surround a stage and five overhead projectors that cast lifesize videos onto the screens, giving the users the feeling that they’re standing in the center of a scene. The Glock on my hip was a real gun, but rather than being loaded with bullets, it was loaded with carbon dioxide, causing the gun to recoil each time I pulled the trigger. At the end of the gun is a laser, which interacts with the cameras overhead to detect whether or not a shot is accurate. The system also comes with a wearable device that gives officers a small electrical shock to simulate they’ve been shot."
The Virtra system is being used by police departments all over the United States in an effort to curb the violence and tension that's been in the media lately. After the scenarios are run, trainers sit down with officers to identify strengths and weaknesses to make them more capable of protecting the public in every scenario.
See the full story here: http://www.komando.com/happening-now/302319/police-are-learning-when-not-to-shoot-using-virtual-reality/2
Augmented Reality: Teaching Kids About Their World
Georgia Tech’s Interactive Media Technology Center (IMTC) is developing and testing a prototype of an augmented reality mobile application. Its purpose: get kids excited about STEM education by using fun, interactive and compelling experiences. IMTC recently tested the prototype with kids ranging from six to 14 years old. They tested four demos – cubes (learning how to calculate volume and density), a train (setting up an experiment and testing hypotheses about forces and mass), a catapult (understanding the paths of projectiles), and lasers (teaching optics via a game controlled by virtual light beams, mirrors, and prisms). The app is designed as a collaborative, social experience, which enhances learning.
See the full story here: http://ipat.gatech.edu/augmented-reality-teaching-kids-about-their-world
Start-up Improbable is Adding Greater Realism to Virtual Worlds
Large-scale online games are usually built using several “shards”—identical instances of the world that no more than about 10,000 people inhabit at any one time before the computational complexity of maintaining the world becomes too great. Once a world is “full up,” new players are sent to a different shard. Improbable’s technology is different, says Narula. Theoretically, an unlimited number of players will be able to occupy the same world and, perhaps most important for the designers hoping to offer those players interesting ways to interact with one another, “everyone will see the same things happening on screen at the same precise moment,” he says.
The technology, which already works with popular game- and virtual world-building tools such as Unity and Unreal, will offer smaller studios and even one-man game makers access to features that typically are only available to vast teams with highly specialized engineers. Improbable plans to sell access to its platform to game developers.
DAQRI acquires Melon – Hardened AR helmet with EEG monitoring!
DAQRI created the DAQRI Smart Safety Helmet for blue collar workers. Their site states “every aspect of DAQRI Smart Helmet was designed with the industrial work place in mind, from its advanced sensor package to the intuitive user interface that requires zero calibration, to the battery life that lasts an entire shift”. It’s a wearable augmented reality tool basically.
Mellon is a brainwave monitoring headband or more commonly known as an EEG in the medical and science fields. This device interprets your electrical activity your brain naturally puts out. The device uses Bluetooth to wirelessly transmit data to your phone, thus allowing you to keep track and train your cognitive states. The headband has an adjustability designed in to fit most heads age 10 and up.
...technology will become more advanced and will be able to monitor the stress level, skin temperature, fatigue and heart rate of the users. Companies could in theory now also monitor their employee’s overall wellbeing while on the job, thereby improving work and safety conditions.
Digital Domain Holdings, Immersive Media Form Joint Venture For Virtual Reality Content
Digital Domain Holdings Ltd., the parent company of visual effects studio Digital Domain, has entered into a joint 
venture with virtual reality tech provider Immersive Media to create content, including VR content.
The joint venture, to be known as IM360, combines Digital Domain’s expertise in computer generated imagery and motion capture with Immersive Media’s 360-degree video hardware and software platforms.
Immersive Media‘s 360-degree video systems — which can be used for VR or for more limited forms of immersive video — is based on tech developed for military and intelligence applications. Though not a famous name, products using its tech have been quite popular. Its cameras were used for Google Maps’ street view feature. Corporate clients using its tech include Disney ABC, American Express, Converse, Turner Broadcasting and Mountain Dew.
See the full story here: http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/digital-domain-immersive-media-virtual-reality-joint-venture-im360-1201464911/