philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Event Planning Platform AllSeated Launches New VR Visualization Tool

AllSeated, an event planning and coordination platform, has launched a new VR tool which allows for one to one visualization of floorplans and venues for high end event planning.

AllSeated’s new VR visualization tool allows for virtual walk through a venue before locking down plans, offering up a better perspective of what the venue will look like once everything comes together. Currently, over 100 venues are enabled for the new VR platform, AllSeated says, and projects having more than 1,000 venues in their VR library by 2019.

AllSeated claims to have the capability to customize every detail of a specific event space such as furniture choices, colors, table linens and placeware, and ornament designs. This is meant to allow a client to fully see the space well in advanced of an event to allow for planned adjustments rather than the day of an event. The application is compatible with a range of VR headsets specifically noted are the Oculus Go, Gear VR, and Vive.

Alongside the VR components, AllSeated also includes seating charts, the ability to track RSVPs and menu choices, timeline creation, task lists for vendors, and offers guest mobile check-in. Venue clients can access event layout and design, invite collaborators, and customize details while using a VR headset as though they were at the venue themselves. This form of event planning is meant to make the process more time and cost effective for planners and provide clients a more enjoyable planning experience.

See the full story here: https://www.roadtovr.com/event-planning-platform-allseated-launches-new-vr-visualization-tools/

Nickelodeon Developing Augmented Reality Series ‘Meet The Voxels’

Nickelodeon is upping their game when it comes to original programming. The kid-centric cable channel is developing Meet the Voxels (wt), an original virtual and augmented reality series from the mind of Chris Young, Senior Vice President of Nickelodeon’s Entertainment Lab.

This marks Nickelodeon’s first project that will use its use of cutting-edge virtual cinema technology, including real-time full body and facial performance capture, which takes innovative and immersive storytelling to another level.

Meet the Voxels takes kids behind the scenes of a video game world and follows a family of video-game characters, the Voxels, on their adventures on-and-off-duty. The family members are:  Hunter, the 13-year-old star of a laser-tag video game; Maude, a 16-year-old girl fighting to pop as many bubbles as she can;their younger brother Cody who has not found his video game calling yet; Mom, a popular street fighter in her game; and Dad, a ’90s-era classic console game character who quit the business years ago. All the characters currently have working names. Nothing is set in stone yet as the series is still in development.

See the full story here: https://deadline.com/2018/08/nickelodeon-meet-the-voxels-virtual-augmented-reality-1202438400/

Nokia’s Snake Game Slithers into Augmented Reality via Facebook AR

If you're a part of Generation X or a Millennial, there's a good chance that the first mobile game you played was Snake on an old school Nokia phone. Now, you can relive that nostalgia of monochrome and push buttons in augmented reality with the Facebook Camera.

HMD Global, the company behind the current iteration of Nokia phones, has developed two augmented reality experiences for Facebook's platform. First, there's Snake Mask, which adorns users' faces with a giant pixelated snake mask.

The other AR experience is called Snake Real World, which lets users play the classic game in their physical environment.

See the full story here: https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/nokias-snake-game-slithers-into-augmented-reality-via-facebook-ar-0186318/

Augmented Reality Shopping Service Launched

Rather than using augmented reality to bring individual products to a specific location for visualization, this approach takes the consumer into the entire shopping environment through AR.

The service, called AR Market, gives mobile shoppers an online shopping experience similar to being in a physical store. Products can be viewed via 360-degree AR videos. Lifestyle products, fashion and consumer electronics are featured.

Plans are to add next-generation technologies, featuring AR, artificial intelligence and 3D modeling.

See the full story here: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/323117/augmented-reality-shopping-service-launched.html

VR porn booths let Japan’s randy cyber-pervs watch virtual reality smut for just £10 an hour

But Japan has taken this immersive medium a step further, creating dedicated booths for watching virtual reality smut in peace.

The booths were discovered by sex tech blogger Charlie Forrest, who wrote: "Space is a valuable commodity, but it would seem that in Tokyo at least, so too is the privacy to masturbate."

These sex booths were created by a company called Soft On Demand, a notorious Japanese VR porn firm.

"And yes you might be right, and we didn’t ask, but we think that’s a vacuum cleaner in the picture too."

The booths are located in Tokyo's infamous Akihabara district, an area known for its geek culture and seedy stores.

The rooms are reportedly sound-proofed, but it's not clear how regularly they're cleaned – or whether the VR headsets are even wiped down.

See the full story here: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6926107/vr-porn-booths-tokyo-japan-virtual-reality-videos/

Godzilla VR Experience Heading To VR Zone Osaka

Debuting simultaneously with the launch of VR Zone’s newest Osaka location later this year, the location-based experience will allow friends to team up against the alpha predator himself using a combination of HTC Vive VR headsets and custom motion chairs equipped with dual joystick controls. Taking on the role of combat chopper pilots, users will have access to a massive arsenal of destructive firepower in which to protect the city from Godzilla’s equally devastating attacks.

Godzilla made its VR debut back in 2016 with Shin Godzilla VR available for Japanese PS VR users. The monster also dipped its toes into AR back in May with Tokyo’s Godzilla Nights event, powered by Microsoft’s Hololens.

See the full story here: https://vrscout.com/news/godzilla-experience-vr-zone-osaka/

New Virtual Reality ETF Hopes For Real Returns

...Wednesday’s launch of the Defiance Future Tech ETF (AUGR), whose ticker symbol plays into the product’s focus on augmented reality and virtual reality technologies.

The fund comes with an expense ratio of 0.65% and lists on the NYSE Arca.

Defiance was founded by Matt Bielski, and alum of ETF issuers like ProShares and BlackRock’s iShares. Most recently, he left Direxion to form Defiance. The firm is primarily focused on the technology space.

The AUGR fund tracks the rules-based, modified equal-weighted BlueStar Augmented and Virtual Reality Index comprised of companies whose products and services are predominantly tied to the development or commercialization of augmented or virtual reality technologies.

The components are selected based on publicly available regulatory filings. To be eligible for inclusion, they must have at least $150 million in market capitalization and meet minimum liquidity requirements.

According to the fund’s prospectus, those technologies include artificial intelligence; gaming systems; graphic processing units; image and touch display manufacturing; sensors used for touch, depth, or image perception; and software or applications dependent on augmented and virtual reality.

The AUGR fund’s top five holdings comprise Nintendo, Silicon Motion Technology, Lenovo Group, Corning and “Cash & Other.” The rest of the portfolio’s 59 holdings is laden with large-cap tech names— including leading players in the AR/VR space such as Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft, Samsung and Sony—and a decent slice of smaller, less-familiar companies.

Roughly 60% of the fund is U.S. companies, with foreign countries represented in the index including Japan, South Korea and France. The constituents include such big names as Nintendo, Disney, Sony and Snapchat, but also lesser-known names such as Dassault Systemes, Kopin and Battle Technologies, according to Bielski.

See the full story here: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/new-virtual-reality-etf-hopes-for-real-returns-40095.html

plus here: http://www.etf.com/sections/daily-etf-watch/virtual-reality-etf-debuts?nopaging=1

Walmart’s Store No. 8 Ventures Into Virtual-Reality Retail

In its relentless quest to improve shopping, Walmart is trying to recreate an in-store experience for online shoppers using virtual reality developed by Spatialand, a software start-up the retail giant acquired earlier this year.

The company is already using VR to train its new sales associates by simulating challenging situations like November's dreaded Black Friday.

Eventually, Walmart plans to use VR to market more experiential products, which Finnegan separates from "consumables" like groceries and toiletries, for customers who may want a preview.

See the full story here: https://cheddar.com/videos/walmarts-store-no-8-ventures-into-virtual-reality-retail

Augmented Reality Recreates A New York City Not Seen for Centuries

Today, Governor’s Island is a scenic destination broken up into a small national park and several historic sites. But originally, it was a seasonal outpost for Native Americans (who inhabited the whole region) to set up camp and collect fish. The British arrived, and the island changed hands several times between the English and Dutch — specifically, the West India Company, which made the island the base of its operations.

The brainchild of mixed reality artist Roi Lev (a former Israeli intelligence officer but more recently a master’s graduate from New York University), Inventing America features a cast of virtual characters and a branching storyline that users can freely follow, explore, or ignore as they see fit. It’s entirely up to each person how much they want to interact with the app’s narrative and cast of virtual colonists. And because the project relies on augmented reality rather than a virtual reality simulation or standard video, the only way to explore the virtual island is to wander the physical island.

“This is a first episode of experiences of the city in different times,” Lev told Futurism. “We recently started developing an experience set in the Lower East Side in the beginning of the 20th century.”

See the full story here: https://futurism.com/augmented-reality-time-travel/

Alphabet Backs Augmented Reality Platform Company

Scandit, a technology company that develops mobile computer vision, barcode scanning and augmented reality, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Alphabet’s GV, formerly Google Ventures.

The company, which previously raised $13 million, plans to use the new funds to accelerate global expansion and further develop its mobile computer vision platform.

Scandit’s technology enables the capturing and decoding of text, object and other visual identifiers using wearables, drones, robots or stationary cameras, allowing the identification and tracking of everyday objects, which then can be identified via augmented reality.

Brands using the technology include Sephora, Louis Vuitton, DHL and Levi Strauss & Co.

See the full story here: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/322984/alphabet-backs-augmented-reality-platform-company.html