Why the quantum dot is the hottest TV tech going
[Philip Lelyveld comment: the full article contains an excellent explanation of how quantum dots work.]
Known alternately as QDots or nanocrystals, quantum dots are the foundation behind what is expected to be one of the biggest sea changes in the television market over the next few years.
At the moment, there are several different approaches to integrating quantum dots into displays. One, used by companies like LG, Samsung, and 3M, is to spread the dots on thin film, which is then added to the stack of films beneath a display. The other is a thin tube coated with quantum dots that’s used in edge-lit LCD backlit configurations, Gagnan explained.
Gagnan said the tube approach — which is from QD Vision — is less expensive, because it uses fewer dots. But not every manufacturer is set up to use tubes. In both cases, however, an advantage over OLED is that existing manufacturing facilities can easily incorporate quantum dots.
In a standard LCD TV, a white light shines through a color filter, generating a picture by blending red, green, and blue lights and projecting them onto pixels. That approach, however, has its limitations. “Today’s TVs use LEDs to provide the ‘white backlight,” according to Digital Trends, “but here’s the problem with this setup: LEDs suck at producing white light.”
The technology is meant to amp up the power of the white light generated by LEDs. “When you illuminate them with a blue LED, they emit full-spectrum light,” Gagnan said.
“Since the size of a quantum dot can now be precisely controlled,” wrote Digital Trends, “the resulting light they put out can be dialed in just as precisely.”
See the full story, with videos, here: http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/08/why-the-quantum-dot-is-the-hottest-tv-tech-going/
Hollywood Tries Its Hand at Virtual Reality Content
What they lack in content is being provided by apps from third-parties like Jaunt, a VR cameramanufacturer looking to stimulate the market with programming such as a Paul McCartney concert video that will bring you closer to the Beatle than a front-row seat.
These are the tentative first steps to reach a user base that has yet to materialize. But if it can match even a fraction of the passion of the nascent VR industry ready to reach it, there’s reason for high hopes. Research firm KZero Worldwide estimates there were only about 200,000 VR users in 2014, but projects that market will mushroom to 170 million worldwide by 2018.
As Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey put it at the Oculus Connect conference in September: “Without content, nobody would be interested in this whole virtual reality thing.”
“There are no real marching orders, because there’s no defined place where things will end up,” said Ted Schilowitz, who leads the Fox Innovation Lab at 20th Century Fox. “You have to be very nimble at this point.”
Every major studio is already dipping a toe in these waters, with VR extensions to popular franchises including Fox’s “The X-Men,” Warner Bros.’ “Batman” and Paramount’s “Interstellar” and “How to Train Your Dragon” just a few examples of what’s in circulation as installations at events. Gear VR also boasts derivative content from Legendary, Marvel, Imax, Vevo and Cirque du Soleil. There are also plenty of independent projects like “Zero Point,” billed as the first original VR movie by startup Condition One. Even this month’s Sundance Film Festival is catching VR fever, with nine entries employing the technology featured in a program devoted to innovative filmmaking.
We’ve learned you have to create the content for the experience; just converting what you’ve got doesn’t work. You don’t get the immersion you’re looking for,” said Warren Mayoss, head of technology product development at DreamWorks Animation.
DiCarlo said Samsung believes vidgamers represent the most likely consumers of VR, but the company is aiming wider. “If VR is only ever for gaming, it is a good business,” he noted. “Expand it past gaming, it will be a great business.”
“If Magic Leap makes projection-based VR the thing we need to focus on at certain point, then we want to be flexible enough to transition to whatever the right thing is at the right time,” said James Milward, president of Secret Location, which produced a VR experience for the Fox series “Sleepy Hollow.” “VR is an optimal platform that we’ll go hard in, but we won’t be boxed in.”
See the full story here: http://variety.com/2015/digital/features/hollywood-tries-its-hand-at-virtual-reality-content-1201392775/
S.F virtual reality accelerator will promote the technology
Next month, 10 startups will move into Rothenberg Ventures’ South of Market office as the first class in its River accelerator. The companies will each receive $100,000 in investment and mentoring during their three-month stay.
“There’s hundreds if not thousands of people who have been building the various parts of the ecosystem already, (but) funding hasn’t really been there for really passionate people to quit their day jobs to build companies up until now,” Rothenberg said.
Rothenberg, 30, says River is the first accelerator for virtual reality companies. Having invested in virtual reality startups, he was surprised to find there were no accelerators devoted to the sector.
“The investor in us was kind of disappointed in that, and the entrepreneur in us said 'OK then, we’ll build that,’” he said.
See the full story here: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/S-F-virtual-reality-accelerator-will-promote-the-6005337.php
Next Gen Art Event: Putting games in galleries
At the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, such prejudices seem to have been dispelled. Their New Horizons exhibition celebrates the power of the virtual landscape, displaying videos, concept drawings and promotional pieces from a variety of video games alongside the work of prominent artists such as Jennifer Steinbeck, Harun Farocki and Cory Arcangel.
The exhibition finds wonder in even the most seemingly mainstream and consumer-focused of games, encouraging visitors to view them in a new light. Screenshot prints of the multiplayer maps of Battlefield 4, with all soldiers and action absent, are strangely haunting and affecting when taken out of their usual context. The reality-bending gameplay of Portal seems that much more thoughtful when shown alongside the influential impossible spaces of M.C. Escher.
See the full story here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-01-12-next-gen-art-event-taking-video-game-art-seriously
CES: Samsung Looks to Boost Virtual Reality Ecosystem With Milk VR
Milk VR, which is initially working with partners such as the NBA, Red Bull and Refinery29, is meant to provide a curated slate of virtual reality content that updates daily across several categories, including music, sports, experiential videos and scripted content. The app, which is free to download from the Gear VR's Oculus Store, doesn't charge for its content and is currently advertising free.
Samsung is not alone in its pursuit for more VR content. Startup Jaunt believes that Hollywood and the music business will be important into the growth of the virtual reality market and has worked with entertainment clients to create experiences. The Gear VR Oculus Store, too, features a range of content available for download. Apfel says that it's all a positive for the emerging industry.
See the full story here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ces-samsung-looks-boost-virtual-762129
CES 2015: Hands-on With the Razer HDK VR Headset
Anyone that’s seen an Oculus Rift will immediately recognize the Razer HDK VR headset. The unit is based on the same fundamental concepts: a small raster display in front of your eyes, separated by lenses that magnify and focus the image, an IMU inside for headtracking, and straps to hold it all comfortably on your head. But that’s not to say the HDK doesn’t bring unique features to the table.
For one, the unit sports independent per-eye IPD and diopter adjustments. That means that you can readily adjust the distance between the lenses (to match the distance between your eyes) and the focus of each lens, to correctly match each user’s need (or not) for corrective vision. This is something that people with glasses and outlying IPDs have been asking about for some time, but we haven’t yet seen from any of the major players, save for a linked diopter adjustment on Samsung’s Gear VR.
Second, the HDK VR headset has a two-element lens system (compared to a single lens from most others in the space) which the company says eliminates the need for pre-warping or chromatic aberration correction of the rendered scene, whereas the majority of headsets out there are using the aforementioned techniques to correct for distortions introduced by their lenses.
The Razer HDK prototype we tried is about what you’d expect from its on-paper specs. The 1080p display offers the same pixel density of the Oculus Rift DK2, but lacks the OLED display tech that affords a number of benefits to the latter, including infinitely dark blacks, low-persistence display, and richer colors. The 90 degree diagonal field of view felt perfectly comparable to that of the DK2. The build quality felt very good for a prototype, which I suppose shouldn’t surprise us given Razer’s penchant for peripheral design.
The current lack of positional tracking (the ability to move your head through 3D space) seems like a big deal, but Gear VR has demonstrated that it very much depends upon the kind of content available for the device. In the end, positional tracking is always going to be better for the VR experience than no positional tracking. Razer and Sensics are aware of the need for positional tracking and say that the open nature of the product means that anyone could decide to create and sell a positional tracking solution made for the HDK, They’ve also mentioned it’s something they may add at a later stage, suggesting that they want the market to decide what’s important for the headset.
We’re looking forward to seeing how the HDK prototype will improve for its initial launch come June, along with execution of the broader goal of OSVR—creating an open source SDK that’s compatible with a multitude of devices from VR headsets to input devices.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/razer-sensics-hdk-vr-headset-hacker-developer-kit-hands-on-ces-2015/
Avegant Glyph at CES
[Philip Lelyveld comment: in the something is better than nothing dept., Avegant showed a non-functioning prototype of their VR HMD at CES.] See the story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/ces-2015-avegant-glyph-new-design-nearing-consumer-level-fit-finish/
Designers Are Ditching The Mouse For The “Flow” 3D Motion Touch Controller
[Phil Lelyveld comment: This little device has 4 ways to control cursors and the internet of things (turn, touch, swipe, press). It requires learning a new gestural language. They hope to replace the mouse and gesture interfaces. But it reminds me of those infomercials for contracting hoses - oh the knots, the tripping, that heavy hose. What's a person to do? All you have to do is increase the sensitivity of your mouse and you can skip this device.]
That’s why Flow is built to work with Spotify, YouTube and SoundCloud. You could hover your hand above Flow to adjust volume, or wave over it to skip to the next song without disconnecting from your friends or the task at hand to stare into a screen. Phillips Hue smart lightbulbs can also be controlled much quicker with Flow than digging up the remote app on your phone.
I’ve played with Flow and the device is well-constructed. The tension on the spinning cylinder gives just the right resistance so you can feel the slightest movement. It combines motion with less tiring gestures rather than just tiringly keeping your hands in the air, which is why Leap Motion never took off. Integrating Flow into your habits will take time, and not everyone has a professional need for it.
“We want to create a new generation of natural user interfaces,” says Eichenwald. With hardware costs, connectivity, and Wi-Fi chips all getting cheaper, anything could be turned into an input. Eichenwald asks “Why not the table? Why not the wall? Why not the objects around you?”
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/29/pixel-perfect/?ncid=tcdaily
Hollywood’s Streaming Nemesis Popcorn Time Gets A VPN, But You’ll Have To Pay For It
Popcorn Time, for those who aren’t aware, is a service that lets you stream a tonne of top films and TV shows to your computer for free. It uses unlicensed torrents on the internet for content, which naturally raises a gamut of legal issues.
VPNs, which essentially route a device’s internet through a different country, are seen as an important addition to Popcorn Time. Some users in Germany were fined for using Popcorn Time earlier this year, so a VPN could help movie fans avoid repercussions for their borderline-legal viewing activity — which we at TechCrunch do not condone, by the way.
Mega caveat though, users will have to pay for it.
VPN.ht is priced at $4.99 per month, but Popcorntime.io users can get it for $1 for the first month after which they can cancel. Alternatively they can pay $3.99 per month on a yearly deal.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/25/popcorn-time-vpn/?ncid=tcdaily
VRClay Beta Hands-on, the 3D Sculpting Software for VR
Upon seeing the video we decided to reach out to the so far discreet developers who kindly granted us exclusive beta access to the digital sculpting tool that looks to challenge the current paradigm of mouse-only input used by industry standard software like Autodesk Mudboxand ZBrush.
VRClay is a joy to use. As someone who has always been fascinated with CAD, but has zero experience, jumping in and being able to create free-form digital sculptures was a blast. The Razer Hydra motion input controller was instantly recognized by the game and needed no setup, save for a brief calibration sequence at the beginning.
With no prior practice (or art skills), I felt comfortable creating and manipulating objects in VRClay in no more than 10 minutes. To play with the Drag tool, I set about creating an octopus-like creature, and was fairly happy with what I came up with in another 15 minutes.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/vrclay-beta-virtual-reality-sculpting-cad-oculus-rift-razer-hydra-stem/