Gen 24, 2016 | News on Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality
Valkyrie, a new action-packed space adventure developed by game company CCP, was designed to harness the latest in virtual reality technology. A VR headset is the best way to appreciate the truly immersive nature of the game. Two dimensional renderings do little justice to the 3D version – or the hardware used to play it.
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"Today we use devices like smartphones and tablets. Tomorrow we want to change the dynamic around immersive, advanced, virtual reality," said JP Nauseef, the founder of Krush technologies, a company starting to develop virtual reality hardware.
Major advances in virtual reality are starting to take shape. Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Samsung are just some of the players heavily investing in VR. Cheaper, more sophisticated, headsets are coming to market every year.
At the same time, futuristic hardware like Moveo, a concept simulator developed by Krush, are expanding the scope of possibilities for virtual reality.
But according to Halsey Minor, founder of CNET networks and several other tech enterprises, accelerating growth in VR must be content driven.
"I think the biggest opportunities in VR are around the biggest opportunities in television and that requires the ability to do live streaming VR, which today has been a very difficult thing because of the technology involved," said Minor, who is heading up Reality Lab, a start-up focused on bringing VR into the mainstream.
Minor recently unveiled the Quantum Leap VR system, a device that starts paving the way towards a future where people will be able to experience live sporting events and concerts in virtual reality.
"It’s 16 HD cameras all running at the same time and out of those 50 gigabytes of information, a huge amount of information, we have to craft to perfect 360 degree spheres for each eye and then transport that over the Internet," Minor added.
He predicts that just like the Internet is supplanting newspapers, VR will have the same effect on television.
"The most interesting thing that we are going to find out in 2016 is how fertile is the market right now. Are we going to sell 10 million of these? Are we going to send a million of these? But I think that is going to tell us what our trajectory is because where you start is going to determine how fast you grow," he said.
No matter the pace, Minor says immersive technology will increasingly turn the virtual world into our everyday reality.
See on Scoop.it – Augmented World
Gen 24, 2016 | News on Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality
Apple has hired one of the top US researchers in virtual reality, as it looks to catch up to Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft and Samsung in what many see as the next big shift in computing platforms.
Doug Bowman recently joined Apple after going on sabbatical from his post as computer science professor at Virginia Tech, where he had been director of its centre for human-computer interaction for around five years.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.ft.com
According to his academic profile, Mr Bowman focused his research on “three-dimensional user interface design and the benefits of immersion in virtual environments”.
His experience spans both fully immersive VR, as used in Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive headsets, as well as augmented reality, where transparent visors such as Microsoft’s Hololens, Google Glass and secretive start-up Magic Leap mingle digital images with the real world still visible.
Apple has filed patents for smartphone-based VR headsets and made several acquisitions that seem to point to a growing interest in the technology, including emotion-recognition software Emotient, which emerged earlier this month, as well as Metaio and Faceshift last year.
While no product has yet emerged from those deals, people in the industry say that Apple has shown growing interest in VR research over the past six months. Its latest hire is the strongest sign yet of the iPhone maker’s intent, which analysts speculate could range from building a headset of its own to new kinds of automotive controls and displays.
Apple declined to comment.
Mr Bowman is highly regarded by his peers in academia and has won several industry prizes for his work in VR and 3D interfaces in the last few years.
In November, he and a Virginia Tech colleague were also among the first recipients of a $100,000 research grant from Microsoft for using its Hololens headset, for a study on “collaborative analysis of large-scale mixed reality data”. He has also consulted for Walt Disney’s Imagineering unit, which develops its theme parks and resorts.
While relatively few headsets are in widespread use today, ahead of the launch of Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive in the next few months, tech companies are already jostling for position in a market that Goldman Sachs predicts could be worth $80bn by 2025.
Unlike Google, Samsung and Oculus, who have been very public about their VR works-in-progress, Apple’s secrecy means it is unclear how far along any product development in this area might be.
Google recently appointed Clay Bavor, former head of its apps unit, as vice-president of virtual reality, as it steps up its investment in smartphone-based VR products such as Cardboard.
“We believe VR/AR has the potential to spawn a multibillion-dollar industry, and possibly be as game changing as the advent of the PC,” Goldman analysts wrote in a note to clients last week. If VR headsets saw “accelerated uptake”, sales of $110bn by 2025 would outstrip television sets, tablets and desktop PCs, Goldman added.
The analysts said that they did expect Apple to participate in the market, despite the lack of public initiatives from the company.
“As the use cases of VR/AR are still in very early stages of development, we suspect that Apple is trying to gain a greater understanding of how consumers want to interact with the technology and the associated challenges before making its first move,” Goldman said.
Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, said it was “unthinkable” that Apple has not been “quietly exploring this area” given the “red hot” technology and its broad application, from entertainment to education and travel.
See on Scoop.it – Augmented World
Gen 24, 2016 | News on Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality
Augmented-reality devices are developing faster and more intelligently than ever, with big brands and start-ups keen to get involved
Imagine having a volume button for the world – a selective one, built to “turn down” life’s annoyances – howling babies silenced with a button press; the rumble of traffic reduced to a distant hum. It is all done via a pair of hi-tech earbuds controlled by a smartphone app that “edits out” unwanted sounds, without leaving people deaf to things that they DO need to hear, such as a blaring horn of a car bearing down on them, or a friend talking nearby.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.telegraph.co.uk
Doppler Labs CEO Noah Kraft describes his Here earbuds as the first “augmented audio” – or, in Kraft’s own phrase – “bionic hearing” . The computerised headset listens for certain frequencies so that you can, for instance, “turn up” someone’s voice if you’re talking in a loud environment. You can also add an echo or enhance the sound of the bass if you are listening to music.
“Reality isn’t half bad,” says Kraft. “If we can enhance it and optimise it a little bit, that could be a really cool thing.” The current version, which was funded via crowdfunding – with backers paying $180 (£120) each – is aimed at musicians and high-end audio fans. Using external microphones, and an app to “tune” the audio, the Here works like a hi-tech version of the earbuds many music fans wear to concerts. It’s designed to add subtle “tweaks” to what people hear, altering reality in real-time, using an app.
Other start-ups, such as Nuheara, aim to do the same, but for phone calls and conversations with computers, using computer processing to tweak sound in real time. Their creators are keen to emphasise that these are no mere speakers. Nuheara founder David Cannington says: “The new crop of ear-oriented devices boast advancements such as sensors, intelligent use of microphones, audio-digital signal processing and smart battery miniaturisation – technologies more commonly associated with computers, not headsets.”
Information-projecting specs could catch on in the workplace, with Gartner predicting a tenfold growth over the next five years
But such audio augmented-reality devices are just the tip of the iceberg, with companies hoping to expand to glasses and headsets. Such visual augmented-reality systems are a staple of science fiction – think Geordi La Forge’s headset in Star Trek: The Next Generation, or the text scrolling before the Terminator’s eyes. But the technology has been slower to take off than, say, virtual reality headsets. Why?
Augmented reality is simply harder and more expensive to pull off, requiring cameras and microphones working in sync with computers to alter your reality second by second. But that does not mean the technology is going away. Microsoft’s HoloLens is built for what the Windows giant calls “mixed reality” and is shipping to developers early this year.
Early demos showed off a man building a Minecraft world with his hands, as if it was Lego. In Microsoft’s HoloStudio demo, people can “redecorate” their front rooms by inserting objects virtually without doing any heavy lifting.
And in education, it could be a genuine revolution. Microsoft showed off a demo where students could look inside the human body without dissecting corpses. Mark Griswold of Case Western Reserve University said: “The mixed reality of the HoloLens has the potential to revolutionise [medical] education by bringing 3D content into the real world. Using holograms, we can easily separate and focus in on individual systems.”
Even Google’s Glass is making a comeback, despite having fizzled out on its launch in the UK in 2013. This time, Google appears to be aiming at the workplace, with a new model titled “Enterprise Edition”. It’s understood that Google will target workplaces with the gadget – something that several other wearable technology companies are aiming at, with head-mounted displays showing warehouse workers, for instance, where to go next. Such information-projecting specs could catch on in the workplace, with market researchers Gartner predicting a tenfold growth over the next five years.
Professor Bob Stone, of the University of Birmingham, says: “Being able to physically manipulate virtual objects in the real world has been challenging scientists for 40 years. Since my first virtual reality experience at Nasa nearly 30 years ago, the technology has evolved from the primitive head-mounted displays and computers to today’s world, where we can interact with complex virtual objects, integrated in real-time, with real-world scenarios.”
See on Scoop.it – Augmented World
Gen 24, 2016 | News on Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality
Un giorno potremo chattare con le persone avendole dinanzi a noi, seppure come proiezioni olografiche, in stile Star Wars o almeno questo è il progetto, chiamato Room2Room, a cui sta lavorando Microsoft Research.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.tomshw.it
Poter vedere una persona lontana anziché sentirne soltanto al voce è indubbiamente una grande conquista perché offre una maggior immersività e un coinvolgimento emotivo differente, tuttavia negli ultimi dieci anni non c’è stata molta evoluzione per quanto riguarda le videochiamate e il VoIP, ma tutto questo presto potrebbe cambiare, anche se magari non tanto presto quanto potremmo desiderare.
Avete presente le comunicazioni nell’universo di Star Wars, in cui si parla con le proiezioni olografiche delle persone chiamate? Microsoft Research, la divisione "sperimentale" dell’azienda di Redmond sta lavorando su qualcosa del genere, un progetto chiamato Room2Room.
Per il momento in realtà quelli visualizzati non sono esattamente ologrammi ma mere proiezioni a grandezza naturale della persona con cui si sta conversando, ma si tratta solo del primo stadio del progetto.
Per questo Microsoft infatti sta impiegando la stessa tecnologia di RoomAlive, che utilizza alcuni sensori digitali e le fotocamere Kinect per sovrapporre alla stanza un ambiente fittizio, con la tecnica della realtà aumentata.
In futuro tuttavia l’obiettivo è di passare all’impiego di HoloLens, di cui alcuni mesi fa è stata mostrata una demo davvero spettacolare.
Come forse ricorderete infatti HoloLens non è un visore per la realtà virtuale ma per quella aumentata: la differenza sostanziale è che col primo tipo di visori l’ambiente virtuale rappresentato è interamente digitale e visualizzato solo dinanzi ai nostri occhi, impedendoci dunque di muoverci liberamente nell’ambiente reale. HoloLens invece consente di visualizzare ambienti e oggetti tridimensionali sovrapposti all’ambiente circostante, con una capacità di interazione impossibile da ottenere con la realtà virtuale.
Prima però bisognerà superare alcune difficoltà tecniche, come la risoluzione delle immagini, troppo bassa per offrire un coinvolgimento soddisfacente, e la necessità di diminuire la quantità di dispositivi attualmente necessari. Room2Room quindi non vedrà la luce a breve, ma la sensazione è che stia nascendo qualcosa di cui negli anni a venire sentiremo molto parlare.
See on Scoop.it – Augmented World
Gen 23, 2016 | News on Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality
Un giorno potremo chattare con le persone avendole dinanzi a noi, seppure come proiezioni olografiche, in stile Star Wars o almeno questo è il progetto, chiamato Room2Room, a cui sta lavorando Microsoft Research.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.tomshw.it
Poter vedere una persona lontana anziché sentirne soltanto al voce è indubbiamente una grande conquista perché offre una maggior immersività e un coinvolgimento emotivo differente, tuttavia negli ultimi dieci anni non c’è stata molta evoluzione per quanto riguarda le videochiamate e il VoIP, ma tutto questo presto potrebbe cambiare, anche se magari non tanto presto quanto potremmo desiderare.
Avete presente le comunicazioni nell’universo di Star Wars, in cui si parla con le proiezioni olografiche delle persone chiamate? Microsoft Research, la divisione "sperimentale" dell’azienda di Redmond sta lavorando su qualcosa del genere, un progetto chiamato Room2Room.
Per il momento in realtà quelli visualizzati non sono esattamente ologrammi ma mere proiezioni a grandezza naturale della persona con cui si sta conversando, ma si tratta solo del primo stadio del progetto.
Per questo Microsoft infatti sta impiegando la stessa tecnologia di RoomAlive, che utilizza alcuni sensori digitali e le fotocamere Kinect per sovrapporre alla stanza un ambiente fittizio, con la tecnica della realtà aumentata.
In futuro tuttavia l’obiettivo è di passare all’impiego di HoloLens, di cui alcuni mesi fa è stata mostrata una demo davvero spettacolare.
Come forse ricorderete infatti HoloLens non è un visore per la realtà virtuale ma per quella aumentata: la differenza sostanziale è che col primo tipo di visori l’ambiente virtuale rappresentato è interamente digitale e visualizzato solo dinanzi ai nostri occhi, impedendoci dunque di muoverci liberamente nell’ambiente reale. HoloLens invece consente di visualizzare ambienti e oggetti tridimensionali sovrapposti all’ambiente circostante, con una capacità di interazione impossibile da ottenere con la realtà virtuale.
Prima però bisognerà superare alcune difficoltà tecniche, come la risoluzione delle immagini, troppo bassa per offrire un coinvolgimento soddisfacente, e la necessità di diminuire la quantità di dispositivi attualmente necessari. Room2Room quindi non vedrà la luce a breve, ma la sensazione è che stia nascendo qualcosa di cui negli anni a venire sentiremo molto parlare.
See on Scoop.it – Augmented World
