Sony Future Lab showcased a new device at the recently concluded SXSW festival that transforms any flat surface into an augmented display.
Using an Alice in Wonderland book as an example, a Sony representative demonstrated how touching any character will take them out of the pages and turn them into interactive animations. And if you’re wondering how it works,
The Verge did us all a favour by explaining it in a nutshell. Basically, the technology is built from two components: A camera and projection. The former “map[s] the terrain and tracks changes while hand and finger recognition provides the controls,” and the latter creates the images that appear in the physical space.
Microsoft ha appena condiviso, sul profilo ufficiale di Twitter, un nuovo video che promuove HoloLens e tutto ciò che potranno provare con mano i primi fortunati sviluppatori che riceveranno l’headset.
Gli HoloLens, il primo dispositivo per la realtà aumentata di Microsoft, sono in dirittura d’arrivo per tutti quegli sviluppatori che hanno deciso di acquistare le prime unità al prezzo di 3000 dollari. Mentre questi fortunati utenti attendono con ansia l’arrivo dell’headset, Microsoft ha rilasciato un primo video promozionale.
Postato sulla pagina ufficiale di Twitter, il video in questione svela tutto ciò che gli sviluppatori riceveranno assieme agli HoloLens, come il caricabatterie e la custodia. Inoltre, l’azienda invita gli sviluppatori a dare un’occhiata allo store, che già può contare su una serie di applicazioni che mostrano quello che è possibile fare con il dispositivo.
Il video si conclude poi con la frase ad effetto “trasforma il mondo con gli ologrammi”, una chiara citazione alla realtà aumentata degli HoloLens. Ricordiamo, inoltre, che mentre i primi utenti attendono l’arrivo del dispositivo, la NASA lo sta già adoperando da mesi nello spazio, promuovendone l’utilità anche tra gli astronauti.
The astronauts aboard the International Space Station have a pretty full schedule during their six-month mission away from Earth’s gravity. Despite the workload, there are times when astronauts can have some fun. After the Microsoft Hololens launched to the space station aboard the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft Dec. 6, 2015, NASA’s Scott Kelly and British astronaut Tim Peake were able to test out the device in February and even played a game where they battled against swarms of aliens.
Astronauts participate in hundreds of scientific investigations studying the various effects of microgravity on everything from the human body to fire to plant growth. Astronauts also have to spend several hours exercising to maintain muscle mass and prevent bone loss. With the Hololens, Microsoft and NASA partnered for Project Sidekick to bring the virtual reality/augmented reality headset to the space station. The HoloLens could be used to create a virtual world aboard the space station where astronauts and ground control on Earth could work together on various projects.
There are two components to Project Sidekick that could prove beneficial to future space station crew or astronauts journeying to Mars. The Remote Expert Mode uses the HoloLens and Skype to create a virtual environment for collaboration between a crew member and a ground control operator. The Earth-based operator can highlight different tasks in the space station while talking through each step of the operation with the astronaut. Procedure mode maps a holographic illustration over various items to guide astronauts in their mission, which could reduce training time or provide support during deep space exploration missions where there are delays in communication, according to NASA.
“Sidekick creates a virtual-reality world on the International Space Station so we can ‘drop’ markers, procedures or documents in one location and they will still be there if we leave the module to return later,” Peake explained. “Ground control can come into our virtual world and we can use it for doing tasks together – for example the VR world can point out exactly what switches to flip or which screws to loosen, handles to turn and even guide us to storage locations.”
Peake and Kelly did have some time to demo “Project X-Ray,” an alien invasion game where players shoot creatures using one’s surroundings as the battle zone. For the astronauts, the battlefield was the space station instead of a living room.
L’americana Lowe’s ha costruito un impero su negozi dedicati alla ristrutturazione e l’arredamento di casa. Nonostante un ambito così tradizionale la catena non rinuncia all’innovazione come dimostra la recente collaborazione con Microsoft, incentrata su HoloLens. La catena per il fai-da-te e l’arredamento porterà così in alcuni dei suoi negozi fisici degli HoloLens con cui i clienti potranno dare un’occhiata in realtà aumentata a quella che sarà la loro prossima cucina. Pensili, piani di cottura, piastrelle e lavelli; il cliente potrà scegliere quello che più gli aggrada per poi eventualmente condividere il risultato online. Si tratta di una dimostrazione iniziale, limitata in alcune zone degli Stati Unit. Ma Microsoft spiega che questo esercizio tecnico non è solo un modo per attirare nuova clientela nei punti di vendita Lowe’s. Secondo il colosso di Redmond utilizzare HoloLens per pianificare l’arredamento di casa diventerà una cosa “normale quanto stendere strisce di scotch carta in terra”.
Insomma il futuro dell’arredamento e del design degli interni potrebbe essere in realtà aumentata e non è da escludere che a scegliere i mobili della vostra prossima casa sarà proprio un visore di Microsoft.
We’ve been really excited to see the response to the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition pre-order and all the holographic experiences announced last month. The experiences, in particular, have generated a lot of interest from the community. One of the experiences I talked about briefly in my last blog is called Actiongram.
Actiongram allows people without 3D skills and visual effects experience to be amazing holographic storytellers. In order to provide great holographic content to help inspire creators, we built a holographic studio where many different actors, characters, objects and creatures can be captured as holograms. Actiongram is an app that allows people to place this rich holographic content into their real world environment, and record a mixed reality capture (MRC) video. Creators are able to develop their own unique holographic stories, in their world, to express their thoughts, ideas, and delight people. A
ctiongram allows people to create videos with holograms and advanced visual effects that would normally require expensive software and years of experience to do. Actiongram not only shows how easy it is to be a holographic storyteller, it demonstrates that almost anybody can be a holographic developer. Actiongram was built by a team of just 5 people in roughly 6 months
This team was given a mission to help prove the robustness of the HoloLens development platform and the ability for a small team to make a high-quality holographic experience. I am extremely proud of Actiongram both because of the creativity it can unlock with storytellers and because it shows what a small team can do with holograms.
I am excited to share that we already have some of the world’s best social storytellers creating holographic stories using Actiongram and HoloLens. It is amazing to see the creativity and hilarity people are able to deliver with this new medium. We’ve been working on a closed beta program to help test how easily people can create and share these holographic stories from HoloLens.
We are just starting to see the initial results of this program. I am super happy to share the first of these videos with you. Check them out and let us know what you think! Use #Actiongram on social media or feel free to reach out to me on Twitter with your feedback – @kudotsunoda. Apply now for the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition, which begins shipping on March 30th. Device owners can look for the Actiongram app in the Windows Store beginning this summer.
A middle-aged white man sees himself as a young black woman being taunted by a racist. An Israeli grandmother glimpses herself as a Palestinian teen. A star athlete experiences what life would be like in a wheelchair. These are not plots of dystopian movies. They are experiences that take place in virtual reality, which technologists believe will be the next major platform for everything from gaming to social interaction and perhaps even global diplomacy. Marketers predict VR headsets will soon top wish lists for kids and young adults from the Silicon Valley to Hong Kong. Which already seems to be happening with PlayStation VR pre-orders being sold out on Amazon, and the company’s Move and PS Camera seeing a growth of 1000 percent in sales, within hours of the unveiling. Read more: PlayStation VR geared for a global launch in October The computer-generated images beamed to devices strapped around a person’s head allow users to experience “presence” — the sense that they’re entering video games or movies, climbing a treacherous Vietnamese mountain or scuba diving at a coral reef. Potential benefits include hands-on teaching with a classroom of far-flung students, or holding a business meeting whose global participants sense they’re rubbing elbows. The upcoming rollout of the Oculus Rift — a $599 headset offering studio-quality VR to the general public — is expected to jump-start industry sales. Sony meanwhile announced at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco it would launch its PlayStation VR headgear priced at $399 in October. Many others have VR equipment hitting the market. Along with its cousin, augmented reality, VR is forecast as a huge market that could push aside smart phones and computer tablets. – From a California garage – VR has been a dream of futurists and tech geeks for decades. But until recently, devices were relegated to research labs because of their exorbitant cost, clunky construction and quality issues that included motion sickness. At Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, experiments were done until 2014 with a $40,000 device that gave users neck aches; now the lab uses a lightweight Rift at a fraction of the cost. “I believe in virtual reality and I believed it could be amazing, but that was not a view that was shared by everyone,” Rift inventor Palmer Luckey said. The Rift, created in 2011 by Luckey in his parents’ California garage when he was 18, uses images and sounds (smell and touch may come later) to convince users’ brains they are flying over a city or standing on a skyscraper. At the San Francisco conference, users pivoted to shoot would-be attackers and flinched at imaginary flying objects. “Vision is really important. You rely on it for a majority of your senses,” said Jason Rubin, who as head of worldwide studios oversees content development for Oculus. “So if we can take over your eyes, we can get control of your belief system.” Oculus, bought by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion, is competing with companies such as Google, Samsung and Sony in creating VR devices, with analysts expecting sales of 12 million headsets by the end of this year. – ‘Bigger, more disruptive’ – But Tim Merel, founder of technology advisory firm Digi-Capital, says VR will be eclipsed by augmented reality, or AR, within a few years. VR is fully immersive, meaning a user can’t walk down a street wearing a headset. AR is partly immersive: a person can do everyday tasks while augmenting them with virtual images, using holograms (such as flying dinosaurs) superimposed on the user’s field of vision. While Merel thinks VR will cannibalize video games and become a $30 billion market by 2020, he sees AR as taking over the smartphone and tablet market and accounting for $90 billion in annual sales in the same period. “Our broad view is that AR will be bigger, more disruptive and faster in terms of its effects than mobile was compared to the original Internet,” Merel said. While most VR content now focuses on gaming, it has the potential to impact everything from architecture to military training to travel. Developers envision its use in dealing with phobias and addiction, or in helping youngsters combat bullying. The United Nations is using a VR film to give people a sense of living in a Syrian refugee camp. The New York Times and others are using VR films for immersive news reports. Jeremy Bailenson, a Stanford professor of communication who founded the lab, said school children might use VR for empathy training. But he acknowledged limits. “Could this work in the Mideast conflict? I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not a magic bullet or anything.” There also are potential risks, such as overuse or people discovering they’re more comfortable in a virtual world. “When porn feels like sex, how does that affect reproduction rates?” Bailenson asked. The Rift, about the size of a brick but considerably lighter, will be shipped March 28 to customers who pre-ordered it. Oculus is not yet saying when the device will be available in stores. Many users will need a new computer to run the Rift, potentially tripling the $599 price. Luckey, who attended the developers conference in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and flip-flops, acknowledged the Rift is still too expensive and limited in its capabilities, but that with improvements “it is going to go well beyond being a toy.” “I think it’s going to be the next smartphone and the last smartphone. Once you perfect virtual reality, there’s no reason to create anything else,” he said. “I see people continuously moving between the real world and the virtual world.”
