Dai ricercatori della University of Texas di Austin arriva un nuovo sistema di tracciamento, basato sulla geolocalizzazione fornita dal network satellitare GPS ma in grado di garantire risultati molto più precisi e affidabili rispetto a quest’ultimo.
Per aumentare la sensibilità e l’accuratezza del segnale GPS, i ricercatori americani hanno fatto uso delle antenne a basso costo disponibili nei moderni smartphone: il risultato è appunto la capacità di tenere traccia dei movimenti dell’utente al centimetro e di determinare l’orientamento con "meno di un grado" di accuratezza.
Il prototipo del nuovo sistema è al momento costituito da un accessorio-smartphone da montare sul caschetto di realtà virtuale indossato dall’utente, e proprio di applicazioni VR parlano i ricercatori indicando i possibili vantaggi che la tecnologia è in grado di portare con sé.Si parla in particolare di "realtà virtuale outdoor", contesto tra l’altro forzato perché indoor il segnale GPS è muto, e di esperienze VR in cui, invece di stare davanti a uno schermo, gli utenti corrono felici assieme ad altri compagni di gioco.
Sicurezza e utilità dei caschetti VR utilizzati all’aperto a parte, i ricercatori che hanno creato il nuovo sistema di tracciamento sono intenzionati a realizzare un prodotto commerciale e per questo hanno fondato la start-up Radiosense. Per quanto riguarda l’interesse specifico di Samsung, infine, è facile prevedere la possibile integrazione del tracciamento ultra-preciso su nuove versioni di Gear VR.
The adoption of smart glasses is expected to increase significantly among enterprises and individual consumers for various applications in healthcare, industrial use, and logistics, among others.
This report covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the Global Smart Glasses market for Augmented Reality for the period 20152019. The report covers the overall ecosystem of the Global Smart Glasses market for Augmented Reality which includes engine providers, software application developers, and smart glasses OEMs.
Virtual reality is getting closer to a commercial reality as Facebook-owned Oculus VR has announced a consumer version of their headset will become available in early 2016. “We’re incredibly excited to announce that the Rift will be shipping to consumers in Q1 2016!” tweeted Nate Mitchell, Oculus’s vice-president of product.
Oculus VR launched the current wave of virtual reality, unveiling the prototype of the Rift in 2012 to rapturous reviews. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised just over $2.4 million. Facebook purchased the company for $2 billion in March 2014. Virtual reality technology has had many highs and lows over the last 40 years, but has failed to capture people’s imagination for a number of reasons. Early attempts featured cumbersome technology that lacked the ability to create truly immersive graphics experiences and carried high costs.
Improvements in screen technology, graphics and the current focus on the potentially lucrative hardcore gamer market have drawn big-name companies to the technology in recent months. Despite the current hype, there are still some issues, including potentially causing motion sickness in some users.
Oculus revealed a little more information in a blog post. The model will be based on the Crescent Bay model available as part of the developer’s kit for the device. "The Oculus Rift builds on the presence, immersion, and comfort of the Crescent Bay prototype with an improved tracking system that supports both seated and standing experiences, as well as a highly refined industrial design, and updated ergonomics for a more natural fit," the company said in the post.
With many companies aiming to release commercial versions of their virtual reality products by the end of this year, Oculus faced being left behind. Oculus has been working on creating a full experience and even warned its competitors not to release bad headsets for fear of turning people off the nascent technology.
"We’re a little worried about some of the bigger companies putting out product that isn’t quite ready," said Brendan Iribe,
Oculus VR’s CEO said at Dublin’s Web Summit conference in November. "That elephant in the room is disorientation and motion sickness. . . . We’re encouraging other companies, particularly the big consumer companies, to not put out a product until they’ve solved that problem." "The Rift delivers on the dream of consumer VR with compelling content, a full ecosystem, and a fully integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality," the post read.
All the focus in the virtual reality space might be on VR headsets like Oculus Rift, Valve, Samsung Gear VR and more, but the brand which is right now dominating the VR space is Unity 5. If you keep yourself updated with virtual reality news, you might already be aware of this. However, for those who are yet unknown about Unity Technologies’ software; the Unity 5 is a multiplatform game engine which was unveiled a few days back. While companies like Oculus, Samsung, HTC, Sony, etc are all busy developing VR headsets, Unity has developed this game engine which can create games on all of these devices.
As new virtual reality devices are developed by the big companies, Unity Technologies, based in San Francisco has created Unity 5, which will pave the path for virtual reality experiences and gaming. John Riccitiello, CEO of the company said “At least 90, if not 95 percent, of all content built so far for VR has been built on Unity, which gives you a sense of our market position.
The promise of VR is in these super powerful headsets that change your experience. If you try a demo from Valve or Oculus or even the Microsoft HoloLens, they’re not just good, they’re staggering. We’re going to see a giant industry grow up and at the center of that industry is going to be the Unity development tool set.”
According to Riccitiello, entertainment will be changed with augmented and virtual reality in the next 4 or 5 years. However, the technology that supports them is still in its infancy and a commercial product is yet to be shipped by any company.
Magic Leap, the augmented reality company, is making news ever since Google invested in it. Last month, Rachel Metz, a senior editor for mobile at MIT Technology Review, tested out one of the AR systems of the company and shared about the AR product in a blog post. After this reveal, Magic Leap CEO, Rony Abovitz, was supposed to talk about their mysterious product at the TED. However, that was cancelled for unknown reasons. Now, the company has released a video that was planned to be shown at the talk. The video shows what the Magic Leap team is playing in the office right now.
The game shown in the video has the branding of Dr. Grordbort, a line of comics, guns and other products. An artist at the Weta Workshop created Dr. Grordbort.
The workshop is a partner of the AR company. The video also has Weta’s branding. The game is actually a robot-shooting AR game, where real decorative guns transform into virtual weapons and the physical world is filled with virtual enemies.
The video also shows the interface of Magic Leap, which is full of floating Gmail icons and YouTube video. There is even a virtual carousel which contains software.
