Youve heard of virtual reality art, violent virtual reality art, virtual reality flat viewings and virtual reality zombie apocalypses. But how about a virtual reality slide going around Londons tallest skyscraper?

Rather than turn The Shard into the worlds wackiest helter-skelter, Londons pointiest piece of architecture has gone VR. This summer, visitors to The View from the Shard will be able to feel the wind (machine) in their hair as they travel up to 100 miles per hour on virtual reality experience The Slide.

The Slide is joined by Vertigo, a VR experience in which The Shard falls away and leaves you suspended in the air, balancing on the scaffolding ofthe buildings early infrastructure. Its the sort of concept that makes your knees feel wobbly just thinking about it.

Together, they make up the UKs highest VR experience. Virtually youll feel like youre swooping through the air above the London skyline and also literally, because youll really be 800ft above London. You just wont be able to see that you are, because of the VR goggles. Confusing, right? But one thing's for sure: if youve got a fear of heights, its probably not for you.

The Slide and Vertigo are free with The View from the Shard ticketsuntil Aug 4. There will be an additional charge from Aug 5.

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VIDEO: first look at The Shard's completely terrifying virtual reality slide - Time Out London (blog)

I regularly peruse Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) job boards to try to get a glimpse into what the future of Apple and its products holds.

Apple's job listings will generally go to some lengths to obscure the specifics of what product categories that the candidates who apply for those positions will be working on, but with a little bit of industry knowledge and some educated guesses, it isn't impossible to get a reasonable sense of what Apple is working on.

Image source: HTC.

In perusing the company's job listings, I came across a listing that seems to suggest that Apple is working on a virtual reality (VR) headset.

On July 27, Apple posted a listing for a "Visual Experience Engineer."

Apple says in the listing that its "display 'Visual Experience' team is looking for an enthusiastic engineer to lead the development of novel display technologies."

This line alone doesn't suggest that Apple is working on a VR headset -- Apple's core products all have displays and it's only natural that the company would want to work on future technologies to make the displays on future iterations of those core products better.

Read further, though, and the hints start to come.

The next line in the listing says that the job "involves hardware experience prototyping and software-hardware integration with the eventual goal of bringing new technologies to the mass consumer market."

While this, too, could refer to new display technologies being tested out for existing product categories, it's starting to sound more like Apple is describing a new product category rather than an enhancement of an existing one.

Then, under the "Key Qualifications" section, the floodgates appear to open with respect to clues.

Apple wants an engineer that has "experience with depth sensing or eye tracking," has "prior hands-on experience of prototyping novel hardware setups," has experience "designing and conducting human perceptual related experiments," and even experience "in human psychophysics and experimental design."

In case you don't know what "psychophysics" is -- and don't feel bad if you don't, I had to look it up, as well -- Dictionary.com defines itas "the branch of psychology that deals with the relationships between physical stimuli and resulting sensations and mental states."

I really don't think whoever gets this gig will be working on a next-generation iPhone, iPad, or Mac display; she or he will almost certainly be working on a virtual reality headset or something similarly immersive (perhaps a dedicated augmented reality headset).

Many technology companies that build and maintain highly successful franchises as Apple has with the iPhone struggle to move on to the "next big thing."

Although Apple's long-term future is far from certain (no company's is), Apple management seems to be investing seriously in making sure that it will be among those that will build the future of technology (which Apple has been doing for many years) rather than among those that will be left behind.

Ashraf Eassa has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Evidence of Apple Inc. Virtual Reality Headset Emerges -- The ... - Motley Fool

GREENSBORO In one room, Deejay Jones fought zombies in the Arizona desert. Next door, Courtney Davis fixed smoothies and teas for impatient customers. Across the hall, Davis Kelton surveyed the view from a seaside boardwalk arcade.

Of course, there were no zombies, customers or boardwalks. But strapped into virtual-reality headsets at Shift VR Arcade, Jones, Davis and Kelton were happy to believe their eyes.

It definitely looks real. It looks like Im on a pier, Kelton said, his eyes hidden behind the black headset as he turned slowly in the middle of a carpeted room the size of a walk-in closet. Over heres a carnival game with some unicorns. The waters cool.

The arcade, which opened July 1 at 1633 Spring Garden St., has four rooms outfitted with HTC Vive virtual-reality headsets, with room to expand to six. Players can reserve booths for $50 per hour to play a selection of around 70 games, ranging from scary (Emily Wants To Play) to silly (Fruit Ninja VR), and everything in between.

A lot of customers are seasoned gamers, according to Cruz Cockman, who co-owns the arcade with Chet Lakhani. But others are video-game newbies who are just curious about the technology, he said.

A lot of people are open to the idea of virtual reality, and they just have to come in and try it out, he said. Weve had a lot of parents come in, either on date night or looking for something to do with their kids. And we have the games to accommodate all of them.

Cockman and Lakhani met while operating businesses across the street from each other (Little Akihabara Anime Shop and Glass City Smoke Shop, respectively). The idea for Shift VR Arcade came after Cockman installed an HTC Vive in his store and saw the technologys wide appeal.

Everyone who came in and tried it had such an amazing response to it, he said. Young people, old people, male, female, everyone had something there for them. We wanted to do that on a larger scale.

The duo decided to take the plunge in May, and got the business up and running within 45 days, doing much of the work by themselves or with the help of friends. For now, the arcade is just for recreational play, though Cockman and Lakhani hope to form leagues and host tournaments for more competitive gamers. Eventually, they also hope to expand to other cities.

This is really the future of gaming, Lakhani said. There arent many businesses like this, but we know the competition will come, so we really want to set the industry standard. We want to be peoples no. 1 option.

Business has increased steadily since opening, thanks largely to word of mouth and social media promotions. Jones, a Kernersville resident, said he spotted a coupon for the arcade on Groupon and thought it would be a fun activity for a date night with Davis.

I was a gamer when I was younger, Jones said. But Ive got kids now so I cant really get my hands on a controller. Because they hog it.

Davis doesnt care for video games, but was intrigued by the concept of virtual reality. She asked Cockman to select games that would be good for a beginner, and spent most of her hour playing Job Simulator, set in a future run by robots who reenact human jobs as a hobby.

I was in the kitchen, burning bacon and breaking wine bottles, she said. It was really fun.

Jones began his session in the jungle, swinging on vines from tree to tree. That didnt go so well.

I felt sick and had to stop. I dont know how monkeys do it, he said. I had to switch games.

The couple said theyd be happy to spend another date night at the arcade on one condition.

I wont be swinging from trees next time, Jones said. But well be back.

Contact Kate Elizabeth Queram at 336-373-7003 and follow @KateElizabethNR on Twitter.

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Virtual reality arcade opens in Greensboro - Greensboro News & Record

The service is also designed to provide treatment in other ways, like taking patients to the top of a virtual skyscraper so they can face a fear of heights or to a virtual bar so they can address an alcohol addiction.

Backed by the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, Limbix is less than a year old. The creators of its new service, including its chief executive and co-founder, Benjamin Lewis, worked in the seminal virtual reality efforts at Google and Facebook.

The hardware and software they are working with is still very young, but Limbix builds on more than two decades of research and clinical trials involving virtual reality and exposure therapy. At a time when much-hyped headsets like the Daydream and Facebooks Oculus are still struggling to find a wide audience in the world of gaming let alone other markets psychology is an area where technology and medical experts believe this technology can be a benefit.

As far back as the mid-1990s, clinical trials showed that this kind of technology could help treat phobias and other conditions, like post-traumatic stress disorder.

Traditionally, psychologists have treated such conditions by helping patients imagine they are facing a fear, mentally creating a situation where they can address their anxieties. Virtual reality takes this a step further.

We feel pretty confident that exposure therapy using V.R. can supplement what a patients imagination alone can do, said Skip Rizzo, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California who has explored such technology over the past 20 years.

Barbara Rothbaum helped pioneer the practice at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and her work spawned a company called Virtually Better, which has long offered virtual reality exposure therapy tools to some doctors and hospitals through an older breed of headset. According to one clinical trial she helped build, virtual reality was just as effective as trips to airports in treating the fear of flying, with 90 percent of patients eventually conquering their anxieties.

Such technology has also been effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans. Unlike treatments built solely on imagination, Dr. Rothbaum said, virtual reality can force patients to face their past traumas.

PTSD is a disorder of avoidance. People dont want to think about it, she said. We need them to be engaged emotionally, and with virtual reality, its harder for them to avoid that.

Now, headsets like Googles Daydream, which works in tandem with common smartphones, and Facebooks Oculus, the self-contained $400 headset that sparked the recent resurgence in virtual reality technologies, could potentially bring this kind of therapy to a much wider audience.

Virtually Better built its technology for virtual reality hardware that sold for several thousands of dollars. Today, Limbix and other companies, including a Spanish start-up called Psious, can offer services that are far less expensive. This week, Limbix is beginning to offer its tools to psychologists and other therapists outside its initial test. The service is free for now, with the company planning to sell more advanced tools at some point.

After testing the Limbix offering, Dr. Jewell said it allowed patients to face their anxieties in more controlled ways than they otherwise could. At the same time, such a tool can truly give patients the feeling that they are being transported to a different locations at least in some cases.

Standing atop a virtual skyscraper, for instance, can cause anxiety even in those who are relatively comfortable with heights. Experts warn that a service like the one offered by Limbix requires the guiding hand of trained psychologists while still in development.

Limbix combines technical and medical expertise. One key employee, Scott Satkin, is a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher who worked on the Daydream project at Google. Limbix also works with its own psychologist, Sean Sullivan, who continues to run a therapy practice in San Francisco.

Dr. Sullivan is using the new service to treat patients, including a young man who recently developed a fear of flying, something that causes anxiety simply when he talks about it. Using the service alongside Dr. Sullivan, the young man, who asked that his name be withheld for privacy reasons spent several sessions visiting a virtual airport and, eventually, flying on a virtual plane.

In some ways, the young man said, the service is still less than perfect. Like the Street View scenes Dr. Jewell uses in treating her patients, some of this virtual reality is static, built from still images. But like the rest of the virtual reality market, these tools are still evolving toward more realistic scenes.

And even in its current form, the service can be convincing. The young man recently took a flight across the country here in the real world.

Follow Cade Metz on Twitter @CadeMetz.

A version of this article appears in print on July 31, 2017, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Therapy In a Dose Of Illusion.

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A New Way for Therapists to Get Inside Heads: Virtual Reality - New York Times

After 15 minutes of much-needed rest, I was ready to try the beta version of Marvel Powers United VR, which is not set for release for many months.

By this time, I had figured out the Touch hand controllers a key technology improvement that helps players take better advantage of what's known as a "mixed reality" environment.

Such an environment allows players to not only use their hands in the game but also to see them, as well as having multiple points of view from within the game, said Jason Rubin, vice president of content of Oculus, during the presentation by him and Mitchell prior to the demo.

"Games have had just one camera," Rubin said.

"Now, we've put the camera in the game," he added, which was no small engineering feat. "Mixed reality took a lot of work."

It also produces a lot of fun.

Thanks to some more expert instruction, my virtual Incredible Hulk character learned to bring his huge fists together to generate energy. That energy glowed in front of me the Hulk as I stood in a gigantic room the size of a warehouse.

Enemy characters moved around me at the edge of the room, or ran along a catwalk above it.

By swinging my arms down violently, I was able to unleash that energy, which rippled across the floor of the room like an earthquake tearing up asphalt.

Soon I was able to target these energy blasts, known as "Thunderclaps," at my virtual foes with deadly accuracy.

At other times I hurled their bodies across the debris-filled room with a move known as a "Seismic Toss," according to my game guide.

Although I had largely missed out on the action in the first game, in Marvel Powers United I was able to protect my teammates, including a wise-guy raccoon called Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

He, in turn, saved my virtual, green, hulking self from laser gun fire on multiple occasions.

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What virtual reality is like: Novice plays Hulk in Oculus game - CNBC

Jennifer Jolly/ Special for USA Today Published 8:00 a.m. ET July 28, 2017 | Updated 11:54 a.m. ET July 28, 2017

Jennifer Jolly takes us inside the Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, where a groundbreaking new VR simulation is helping train doctors to better save the lives of children. It's part of Facebook's Oculus for Good program. Jennifer Jolly/Special for USA TODAY

Jennifer Jolly practices hospital life-saving techniques using Oculus Rift.(Photo: Roddy Blelloch/Special USA Today)

Earlier this year, inside a cramped, windowless corner office at the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, I put on a virtual reality headset and tried to savea little girls life.

It wasnt real, of course, but it sure felt like it was. The blotchy, wheezing, seven-year-old struggling to survive while suffering from anaphylactic shock was nothing more than a bunch of digital polygons. Still, the experience triggered every real human reaction youd expect, flooding my brain with fear, stress, and anxiety.

Once I slipped the VR goggles off of my head, one other emotion struck me too: excitement. After a few tough years for the virtual reality industry, a wave of medical VR programs are breathing new life into this cutting-edge technology.

Patient in Oculus Rift simulator.(Photo: Oculus Rift)

Just this past week, VR made headlines for helping surgeons separate conjoined twins in Minnesota. The National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center uses it to find weak spots on viruses. Virtual realityalso made remarkable headway treating PTSD in soldiers, educating pediatric heart patients and their families, and speeding up rehab in stroke victims.

The medical uses are pretty amazing, says Unity Technologies Tony Parisi, one of the early pioneers of virtual reality. Were seeing the perfect confluence. Anything you can do to train people more quickly, effectively, and cheaply is a boon to the healthcare industry. VR is a rapidly evolving technology that solves a lot of problems here.

Virtual reality tested by NFL as tool to confront racism, sexism

VR has yet to find the right problem to solve for mainstream consumers, and has suffered for it. The technology that powers high-priced headsets like the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and even portable VR gadgets like Googles DayDream and Samsungs Gear VR is undeniably impressive, buthasnt lived up to the hype.

In 2016, analysts at Super Data Researchpredicted as much as $5.1 billion dollars in sales of VR hardware, software and accessories for the year. The reality was actually around $1.8 billion. Even those companies that bet big on virtual reality have recently slashed prices, too, throwing in freebies, and doing just about anything to get VR gadgets off the shelf and into the hands of everyday people.

Using an Oculus simulator, a doctor checks the pupil of a virtual girl undergoing anaphylactic shock.(Photo: Oculus Rift)

Does that mean VR is a flop, akin to Google Glass? That augmented reality predecessor to VR was met with jeers and criticism by the general public, and Google shelved the product before announcing its reboot as a business device earlier this month.

Not a consumer flop, saysTirias Research principal analyst Kevin Krewell, but rather "over-inflated and over-hyped."

"When Facebook bought Oculus for two billion dollars everyone said, Mark Zuckerberg just bet two billion on it, Oh, this is going to be huge,'" Krewell notes.

"It will be, just not overnight.

VR gadgets such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Sonys PSVR are well liked, and receive positive reviews from the tech community. Yet they've yet to strike a nerve with the masses, likely due to a combination of cost, content and comfort.

The deep-pocketed backers of virtual reality have faith it will happen. Until then, it's gaining momentum in business and science applications.

The heart is a complicated three-dimensional organ, and its really hard to describe whats going on inside of it especially when something is going wrong, says David M. Axelrod, MD. The clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicineis spearheading the development of a new virtual reality program called Stanford Virtual Heart.

Dr. Joshua Sherman, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, has been using virtual reality simulations to prepare for real-life medical emergencies.(Photo: Roddy Blelloch/ Special for USA Today)

Through a VR headset, the program gives medical trainees the freedom to explore and manipulate a lifelike human heart as it hovers in front of them, spotting defects and becoming more familiar with the issues heart patients experience. Virtual reality eliminates a lot of that complexity by letting people go inside the heart and see whats happening themselves its worth way more than a thousand words.

The freedom that VR affords is priceless, but its also helping to reduce cost. At Childrens Hospital L.A., doctors are trading high-priced training mannequins for VR headsets, ditching the cost of purchasing and maintaining plastic models, which can top $430,000 every year, and adopting a virtual trauma center where lifelike virtual patients are fighting for their lives.

The VR patient changes color of skin, monitor changes, the sound of the monitor changes, those are all cues to us that okay, I have to do this now or else Im going to be in trouble, Dr. Joshua Sherman, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist at CHLA, says. And when you make that action, you watch it change and that gives you positive reinforcement that you did the correct thing, or the incorrect thing, if the situation gets worse. VR is amazing for that.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA TODAY's digital video show TECH NOW. E-mail her at jj@techish.com. Follow her on Twitter @JenniferJolly.

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Doctors are saving lives with VR - USA TODAY

Mike Glennon and Kevin White high-fived as they jogged back to the Bears' huddle early on the first day of training camp, satisfied they had just taken a baby step forward in the offense's evolution.

Glennon had zipped a pass smoothly over the middle. White was open and caught it in stride, just as the coaches drew it up. It was the type of play the Bears need to make more often to pull the parachute cord on their NFL plummet.

And they now have a new tool in that quest.

Ten yards behind the line of scrimmage for that play and most others this summer, there's a 360-degree video camera perched atop a skinny, 8-foot pole.

That addition to Bears practices this year marks their entry into the realm of virtual reality. As the latest NFL team to invest in the burgeoning video technology, it could help thrust them upward as they start a chapter defined by their quarterback overhaul.

The Bears mainly hope it will help them overcome the shortage of practice repetitions for Glennon, second-overall pick Mitch Trubisky and veteran Mark Sanchez. There's also an evaluative component that's different from conventional overhead video.

Trubisky, for example, can strap on a VR headset in the comfort of a classroom and see and hear exactly what Glennon did as he dropped back on that crisp completion Thursday.

"I'm really surprised what that technology has allowed us to do," Trubisky said. "Especially calling plays in the huddle I call the play, go out and practice it, and Coach can see on the screen where my eyes are going. So it has helped me with progression and timing without actually going onto the field and having to do it."

General manager Ryan Pace began exploring the use of VR in 2016 as part of his priority to push the Bears into fledgling areas of sports science and technology. The clarity and processing time in VR technology has continued to improve, and the Bears' quarterback changes this offseason increased its value to the franchise.

After a tryout period in the spring with STRIVR Labs, a Silicon Valley-based company with roots in Stanford's football program, the Bears finalized their deal before training camp. They're the seventh NFL team to partner with STRIVR, joining the Cowboys, Cardinals, 49ers, Vikings, Bills and Jets.

"I'm excited about it," Glennon said. "It gives a unique perspective on how you see things. Sometimes you may see something on the field, and that's not exactly how it looks on the (All-22 overhead) film. But when you watch it on the virtual reality, you're like, 'OK, I was right.'"

Here's how it works:

The 360-degree cameras are placed around the field during practice. For the quarterbacks' sake, they're in the backfield.

After practice, memory cards are plugged into a computer, and the footage is uploaded in about 45 minutes. STRIVR software then divides the video into individual plays and classifies it per team specifications.

Then it's ready for the Bears' quarterback meetings with offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains and position coach Dave Ragone. One quarterback puts on the VR headset over his head and eyes and holds a small controller, actually an Apple TV remote, Glennon said. He runs through plays that either he or one of the other quarterbacks actually ran in practice.

What the player sees inside the helmet is displayed simultaneously on a laptop or big screen for the others in the room. From there, collaborative evaluations begin.

Said Sanchez: "If I'm looking left and I'm supposed to look right, Dowell can pause it and say, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not what we want. Remember, on this concept versus this specific look, see the corner, see the leverage boom we want to look right.'

Sanchez finds VR particularly helpful for throws over the middle or throws affected by something flashing directly in front of him, like a cornerback's angle defending it. Factors that the overhead video doesn't show clearly. And it helps for quarterback coaches to see through the passer's eyes.

"When you're (watching) the big eye in the sky, All-22 film, it's easy to say, 'Throw it to that guy,'" Sanchez said. "Well, in the pocket you can see a little more if a guy is breathing down your neck. That's why I dumped it down to the back or that's why I threw it away."

STRIVR has evolved quickly since CEO Derek Belch was a graduate assistant on Stanford's coaching staff in 2014. The former Stanford kicker developed the technology as part of his master's thesis, then left coaching to build the company full-time on the advice of head coach David Shaw. In addition to expanding in the NFL, they have branched out to help companies such as Wal-Mart train employees.

"The Bears are very, very much on the leading edge, even though we're in Year 3 as a company," Belch said. "This is still something that scares people. It's still something that's going to take time to permeate every part of the NFL. Chicago is one of the teams diving in. It's a perfect storm with the quarterback situation, but it's going to be so much bigger there."

Indeed, the Bears are starting out slowly with the technology. Although VR can serve other decision-making positions like safety and linebacker, the Bears are applying it only to their quarterbacks for now. If all goes well, they eventually will expand it and apply the data analysis component Belch's company continues to advance.

In the meantime, the quarterbacks are using it daily in training camp. It doesn't replace conventional film study, but it augments it in a way that has quelled any skepticism among them and energized the entire group.

"Experience is worth its weight in gold, right?" Sanchez said. "That's the ultimate idea, and this is trying to get you close to that."

rcampbell@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @Rich_Campbell

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VR technology for new Bears QBs? It's a virtual hit - Chicago Tribune

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) - Considering hes an owner over at Screams at the Beach in Georgetown, its not all that shocking to hear Brian Turner swoon over the tech inside the virtual reality horror game, Affected.

After all, there are experiences inside the game - a haunted mansion VR experience with an interactive flashlight and three distinctly different trails to an exit - that he couldnt possibly recreate in Georgetown, like the scene where all the furniture on the ground flies up to the ceiling and then falls on the person playing the game. Hes seen people hit the floor in fear.

Turner this summer has quite literally entered a much different world with his new venture. His Beyond Entertainment Enterprises has partnered with Pete and Michelle Townsend of Sports at the Beach to bring the first dedicated virtual reality arcade, Escape Reality, to Delaware in Rehoboth Beach.

More than that, it appears to be the only dedicated virtual reality arcade on the mid-Atlantic coastline outside of New York. Turner, a Sussex County native, handles the operation of it, while the folks at Sports at the Beach handle the marketing, Turner said.

But the producer of many screams around Halloween isnt out to scare anyone here in the new shop located at 27 Rehoboth Ave.

Hes ushering in a new experience with the future of technology. There are games available for all ages and the experiences range from cinematic viewing to first-person shooter games and more. Theres even a bike setup where users put a headset on and can fly a pegasus, race cars, ride horses, tanks or actually cycle. The faster you pedal, the better the game goes.

Escape is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends and closes at 10 p.m. other days. Turner said business has been booming since the soft opening around Memorial Day Weekend.

Theres nothing like this, Turner said. Its a brand-new concept because virtual reality is so new.

Which makes it not so cheap.

Turner, 36, wouldnt give an exact dollar amount on the startup cost, but did admit each unit costs five figures, and there are six units at Escape Reality. Experiences cost basically $1 per minute.

Escape Reality works with a company called Private Label, which works with game developers to distribute games and experiences to businesses like Turners. There are more than 40 games available at Escape Reality and more on the way, including an escape room experience.

A tough sell

Turner, who says hes always been into video games, was inspired by virtual reality after trying Playstations version of it.

It was a tough sell for me to be convinced because its cutting edge, Turner said. Theres nothing to compare it to. Theres nothing to compare pricing against. Theres nothing to compare anything against, which makes it hard but also makes it exciting.

You cant compare me to stuff on the boardwalk because its all coin-operated and, lets be honest, a lot of that stuff is starting to show its age.

The tech in VR is still relatively new. And many have maybe gotten the wrong idea, having experienced it only on a mobile device, which may have led to a nauseating experience.

At Escape, Turner said not one person has gotten sick, and the only game that makes people feel weird is one called Downward Spiral, a zero gravity experience at a space station that has lost power. There is a floating element.

And while its new and cutting edge, its not hard to picture a not-too-distant future that features mainstream VR arcades.

The 2016 Virtual Reality Industry Report offered a 10-year roadmap for VRs future. The report predicted two million non-Google Cardboard headsets would be in the hands of consumers by the end of 2016 and a staggering 36.9 million by the end of 2020.

Even then, though, the report indicated the hyper growth of the industry was still six-to-eight years away. By the end of 2025, a predicted 135.6 million VR headsets will be in use, with 122 million being mobile. A good portion of others may be in places like Escape Reality.

What does that mean for the traditional arcades? Its a question that doesnt have an exact answer.

Turner says his price point is not much different than that of a traditional arcade. He pointed to a recent trip to an arcade with his son Riley, 11, and some of his friends.

He said it wasnt long before he had spent $100.

You put your money in an arcade game that you dont like, youre stuck until youre dead and youve wasted a dollar, Turner said. If you play a game (at Escape) for 30 seconds and youre like, Ah, its not what I thought it was. You can switch out as many times as you want.

A reasonable price

Josh Mellinger, 32, owner of Makin Whoopie, the whoopie pie shop next door to Escape, said hes been playing at his next door neighbors spot three-four days per week lately.

I think for what it is, basically a dollar a minute, it is a reasonable price, Mellinger said Wednesday afternoon as he watched his daughter Evylyn, 7, play a game called Kitty Cannon, which involved putting cats into a cannon and launching them as far as possible.

Mellinger, of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, said the previous day he and a friend went to a traditional arcade on the boardwalk and were playing a pirate shooting game. He didnt last long there before he walked back up to Rehoboth Avenue.

This is a waste, he said. Why am I doing this? Im going back to VR. I dont want gum tickets.

But hes in the minority for now.

On Thursday afternoon, while Funland on the boardwalk was humming with customers in the middle of the day, Evylyn Mellinger was the only person using one of the six units at Escape Reality.

The nostalgia factor at traditional arcades like Funland makes it a business that looks far from going by the wayside, especially when they, too, have the capabilities of adding VR.

Thats part of what is our bread and butter and we know that, said Funland personnel manager Chris Darr. Our customers tell us all the time, Dont change it. If we were to take out the fire engines and put in a virtual reality simulator than wed probably have a mutiny on our hands.

We still try and incorporate stuff that works with what we are, but were not going to jump on the bandwagon of something that brand new until we know its tested and something that will really work for our customers.

Darr said Funland belongs to a trade organization, the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, and is keeping a watchful eye on new technologies.

Its not that we arent worried about it, Darr said. When its affordable and when its something we can implement, wed probably look at doing it. Right now, I think people are still trying to figure it out.

Mark down Brian Turner as one of those people.

___

Information from: The Daily Times of Salisbury, Md., http://www.delmarvanow.com/

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Delaware virtual reality arcade provides look at the future - Washington Times

Fans of virtual reality felt a punch to the gut this week as Altspace VR announced it would hold its last social VR gathering on August 3 and then shut down.

AltspaceVR was a social space in VR where people could gather in environments that resembled virtual worlds. They could create their own avatars and chat with friends. As such, Altspace VR was like a harbinger of what the world would look like as a virtual society. Facebook followed up with its own version of social VR chat, while others such as Rec Room, Roblox, Linden Lab, and TheWave VR have created their own takes on social VR.

In a blog post, the company said i ran into unforeseen financial difficulty and couldnt afford to keep the virtual lights on anymore. The post said the company tried to raise a new round of funding, but a deal fell through and it ran out of time and money. The company said, Wed love to see this technology, if not the company, live on in some way, and were working on that.

Eric Romo, CEO of AltspaceVR, started the company in his home office in 2013. The company raised $10.3 million in 2015 from Comcast Ventures, Tencent, Dolby Family Ventures, Raine Ventures, Lux Capital, Western Technology Investments, Maven Ventures, Promus Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, and Rothenberg Ventures.

Romo said in an interview with GamesBeat in April that the company was hoping to monetize events that companies paid for, not unlike how Linden Lab monetized corporations in its Second Life virtual world. But Altspace VRs traffic was relatively small, at about 35,000 users a month. Thats a sign of how small the overall base for VR is, and it probably tells you why the company ran out of funds, as that number isnt enough to get investors excited. Mobile and PC-based VR units are expected to grow from 6.4 million globally in 2016 to 20.3 million in 2017, according to SuperData Research.

Its not clear exactly what this means for other VR startups, but everybody knows that growth is slower than expected. Other VR startups such as enterprise-focused Envelop VR have also shut down this year.

Above: Eric Romo, CEO of Altspace VR at SVVR.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Altspace advanced VR as a medium and, while it may have been ahead of its time, it demonstrated the potential of social VR. Everyone working in VR should be grateful for their contributions to the space, said Amitt Mahajan, cofounder of Presence Capital, which invests in AR and VR startups. I think were likely to see a virtual world like Altspace eventually work but itll likely be something that first starts off fairly constrained in what you can do with others and grow from there to a fully fledged social network.

Greg Castle, founder of Anorak Ventures and an early Oculus investor, said he was sad about the Altspace VR news.

There are two distinct strategies I see in social VR, he said in an email. Companies focused on building out the infrastructure (outside in), and those focused on customer experience (inside out). AltSpace and (Linden Labs) Sansar for example have spent a lot of time building out a really robust infrastructure platform and are largely relying on other developers to create fun experiences built atop their platform. Rec Room and Star Trek on the other hand have focused more on providing a compelling, engaging experience off the bat for users which in turn has the potential to build a strong social community. Given the user numbers and slower adoption curve as an investor I prefer the later strategy.

Above: AltspaceVR comedy night.

Image Credit: AltspaceVR

He added, In terms of what it means for venture backed VR companies, I think its probably a reality check in a somewhat frothy market. I think Eric and his team are fantastic and trust theyll find their way.

And Tipatat Chennavasin, cofounder of the Venture Reality Fund, said in an email, When a shutdown happens its hard to understand without knowing all the details. Altspace VR, led by Eric Romo, was a true pioneer and did some ground breaking work in VR and social. Its a shame they werent able to get further funds to continue to innovate, the news also comes right after Within announcing a $40M round, indicating evolving investor dynamics in the sector.

Chennavasin added, For later venture rounds the bar is raised higher and tangible metrics really come into play. A lot of times the main challenge for early innovators is to manage the companys growth in a nascent but potentially explosive market where there are no established investment patterns and the venture investors are still discovering the subtleties of the sector. Altspace has opened many doors of creativity and teased us all with compelling possibilities in social VR. Im afraid their timing wasnt precisely aligned with investor sentiments, especially in later rounds where certain growth parameters are expected, which is hard to do in early stages of the VR market with a small installed base.One last thing I will add is that the team were not just pioneers but also great supporters of the larger VR development community and will be missed. They have definitely learned a lot on their journey and I look forward to seeing what they do next.

Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts, also said on Thursday that it may be a couple of years wait for the mass market VR market.

Jason Rubin, the head of studios at Oculus VR, said in an interview last week that he isnt surprised that the big companies like EA and Activision Blizzard havent jumped into VR yet. Smaller companies are moving into VR, and they will stake out the opportunities first. Once that happens, the big companies like EA will likely acquire those that have the lead.

Regarding Wilsons comments, Mahajan said, I dont disagree with him. The consumer VR market is going to take a while to develop still. I think new Daydream phones and Apples (rumored) addition of an OLED screen to the iPhone 8 will help drive adoption of mass market consumer VR. But were at least one phone refresh cycle away (18 to 24 months) from everyone having VR available to them.

Stephanie Llamas, analyst at SuperData Research, said, I think the closure was an example of how good companies suffer from the prematurely inflated expectations for the industry as a whole that many companies had early on. Primarily, investors are now spooked because there was an overvaluation of the market. Now that growth isnt going as fast as theyd expected, they reevaluated their risk and are now undervaluing certain opportunities. AltspaceVR was truly a pioneer in the social VR space. It should not have been discounted, and I honestly think this is a tragedy for the industry.

Bjorn Laurin, vice president of product at Linden Lab, said he was sorry to see the sad outcome for Altspace VR. But he said, We remain bullish on the future of social VR.

Continued here:

What Altspace VR's shutdown says about virtual reality's prospects - VentureBeat

Towering above you, his sinewy arms will stretch out for crucifixion. His glowing body will convulse sporadically, shooting off showers of golden embers.

But this isn't the second coming -- it's a piece of virtual reality art by the German-Danish artist Christian Lemmerz.

Titled "La Apparizione" (The Apparition), the artwork will be presented in an empty three-by-three-meter room. Viewers step inside, slip on a VR headset and are transported into outer space, where they can circle the levitating, golden Jesus.

It is one of two virtual reality works being exhibited by the Faurschou Foundation in Venice this summer. The gallery joins a growing list of institutions that have exhibited VR art, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

And as the world's top curators embrace this new medium, collectors are starting to circle.

You might not be able to hang "La Apparizione" on your wall like a painting, but it is most definitely for sale. Lemmerz has released five editions, each costing around $100,000.

But valuing virtual art poses a new a challenge for buyers and sellers alike. Galleries normally look to artists' previous work when setting prices, but with only a small number of VR artworks on the market, there are only a few precedents to refer to.

Comparisons with other types of art do not always prove useful. Lemmerz is primarily a sculptor, but can "La Apparizione" be compared to his 2013 bronze sculpture of Jesus?

The latter work is an object, the former an experience. And while artists have been making bronze sculptures for millennia, virtual reality is a brand new technology more familiar to gamers than art collectors.

The market is still adjusting, according to Sandra Nedvetskaia of Khora Contemporary, the production company that helped Lemmerz create his latest VR art.

"At the moment, video art works are the only comparison," she said over the phone. "But (some collectors) have likened (virtual reality artworks) to sculptures because, of course, you find yourself in the middle of that particular artist's moving sculpture."

Hardware is another new consideration for galleries, and those selling VR art often include a headset in the price. Nedvetskaia said that all works produced by Khora Contemporary come with HTC Vive headsets -- and a lifetime service.

"That includes updates," Nedvetskaia added, "so that this artwork doesn't become (like) a video tape that you can no longer experience."

But the speed at which VR technology is changing can be a problem for artists, according to Edward Winkleman, who co-founded of the video-oriented art fair, Moving Image, in 2011.

"Whether they should wait for the hot, new head-mounted display is a constant question in their practice," Winkleman says. "If they wait, they can take advantage of the new upgrades. But they may (also) miss an opportunity to present their work."

Young artists are experimenting with virtual reality -- and not all of their works carry the six-figure price tag of "La Apparizione," according to Murat Orozobekov, the other co-founder of Moving Image.

Notable VR works at this year's fair included a swirling, psychedelic piece by up-and-coming digital artist Brenna Murphy, and "Primal Tourism: Island," which took viewers inside Jakob Kudsk Steensen's dystopian vision of a Polynesian island.

"Prices range from about $2,500 to $6,500 for an emerging artist's work," Orozobekov said over the phone.

At the other end of the market, a disturbing VR piece by American artist Paul McCarthy is currently available at two major European galleries -- Hauser & Wirth and Xavier Hufkens -- for approximately $300,000. Set in a lurid room, the work features a group of female characters who taunt each other, and, occasionally, the viewer.

The difference in asking prices is not simply a matter of reputation, according to Elizabeth Neilson, director of The Zabludowicz Collection in London.

"(There's also) the development costs of the technology they have used. Someone like Rachel Rossin does a lot of the development herself, but someone like Jordan Wolfson does none of the technological work himself, and outsources to Hollywood professionals," Neilson said, referencing two up-and-coming artists who have been working in virtual reality. "As you can imagine, this is expensive."

The price of virtual artworks can be kept high by limiting the number of copies made. McCarthy's VR piece was only released in an edition of three, and Lemmerz's in an edition of five.

By deliberately restricting supply, galleries create a market for virtual reality art that is based on scarcity -- as with paintings and sculptures. But unlike other art, virtual reality pieces are infinitely replicable. In their most basic form, they are simply digital files that can be experienced by anyone with a VR headset.

While an artist can easily limit the editions of a sculpture, it is much harder to curb the spread of a digital file -- something that the music and movie industries discovered the hard way. But this presents opportunities as well as threats, according to Nedvetskaia.

"In five years' time every single one of us might have a set of virtual reality goggles in addition to our iPhone," she said. "So don't rule out the possibility that editions of virtual reality artworks might be made at an affordable price so the public can view them. We're really on the cusp of this market being born right now --the possibilities are limitless."

The art world establishment is yet to fully embrace digital art. Neither Christie's nor Sotheby's have sold a VR work. But both have expressed cautious interest in the medium.

In March this year, Sotheby's became the first major auction house to exhibit virtual reality art. Hosted at its New York headquarters, the technology-focused exhibition "Bunker" featured "La Apparizione" and a VR work by Sarah Rothberg called "Memory/Place: My House."

Christie's chief marketing officer, Marc Sands, believes that it is only a matter of time before VR starts appearing at major auctions.

"Response to (virtual reality art) from both consignors and buyers is largely positive but to date we have not discovered the 'killer' version of VR," Sands said. "However, as with many things digital, it will come sometime soon."

Read more:

Virtually unknown: How to put a price tag on the most progressive form of art - CNN

Social virtual reality (VR) startup AltspaceVR has run out of funding and is going to shut down its service in early August. AltspaceVR announced the closure late Thursday, inviting its users to a final farewell party in its virtual world on August 3.

An AltspaceVR spokesperson told Variety that the companys staff of about 40 employees had been on furlough this week, and that their last day will be July 31.

The company has run into unforeseen financial difficulty and we cant afford to keep the virtual lights on anymore, the company said in a blog post. This is surprising, disappointing, and frustrating for every one of us who have put our passion and our hopes into AltspaceVR.

AltspaceVR had raised more than $15 million in funding from investors including Comcast Ventures,Tencent, Dolby Family Ventures and others. The company was looking to raise additional capital, but a new funding round didnt come together as planned. Weve been out fundraising but have run out of time and money, it said in a statement.

AltspaceVR had been building a social VR application that allowed users to meet up in virtual spaces and chat with each other as well as attend virtual events together. Some notable VR events held by the company included comedy nights with Reggie Watts, as well as a recent VR appearance of Bill Nye.

However, AltspaceVR had been facing increasing competition, including from Facebook, which introduced its own social VR app Spaces earlier this year. Whats more, the real-time nature of social VR represented a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem for AltspaceVR, forcing it to rely on the growth of a medium that is still in its infancy. In the end, AltspaceVR only had 35,000 users per month.

The companys leadership is now looking at all options to see how to continue the work done at AltspaceVR, according to its spokesperson. This presumably includes selling its technology and other assets to anyone interested in getting a head-start in social VR.

Read the original post:

Comcast-Backed Virtual Reality Startup AltspaceVR Shuts Down - Variety

Posted July 29, 2017 17:53:08

The Pacific is the most linguistically rich region in the world, with Papua New Guinea alone being home to a staggering 850 languages.

Yet experts fear that widespread language loss could be the future for the region.

To draw attention to the issue, and to document more Pacific languages, Australian researchers are trialling a new way of making their database of languages more exciting and accessible.

To do this, they are turning to virtual reality technology.

"We've got this fantastic resource a database of a thousand endangered languages," lead researcher Dr Nick Thieberger from the University of Melbourne said.

"But it's not very engaging, it's a bit dull, so we wanted to do something to change that."

Over the past 15 years, researchers from Australian universities have been digitalising recordings of languages and storing them in the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC).

The database has documented more than 6,000 hours of recordings from over 1,000 languages.

Earlier this year, Dr Thieberger, Dr Rachel Hendry a lecturer in digital humanities and media artist Dr Andrew Burrell created a virtual reality experience using files from the database.

Audiences don a pair of virtual reality goggles, allowing them to "fly across" Pacific nations such as Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

As they do so, shards of light emerge that play clips of local languages.

"We really wanted to look at how we could make this database more exciting for people and to get them engaging with it," Dr Thieberger said.

The VR display is currently only exhibited in museums, but the team is working on versions that could be accessed anywhere.

"We're working on an iPad version as well as a Google Cardboard version which will mean people in remote communities can have a comparable experience," Dr Thieberger said.

Dr Hendry said these types of immersive experiences will become more common.

"We're only just seeing the start of this type of immersive representation, and not just with language data," she said.

"Our technology and smart phone capabilities are growing every day and that's exciting for linguists wanting to get this out into the public."

It is hoped that with more public interaction with the database, people will help to expand the collection.

Much of the data in PARADISEC has come from researchers and the team are keen to get audio sent in from regular people.

"There are so many interesting recordings out there clips taken on local people's phones, tapes from tourists," Dr Thieberger said.

"Much of this stuff is just sitting in homes, and it's likely valuable to this collection.

"A good example is last year when we had some tapes arrive and it turned out to be the only known record of some of PNG's languages."

Dr Thieberger said many languages in the Pacific are passed down orally, meaning a recording might be their only documentation.

It also means they are more susceptible to extinction because as older speakers die they take their language with them unless it has been passed down to the next generation.

According to a UNESCO report on endangered languages, many languages are being replaced by 'world languages' such as English and French or being diluted through Creole languages such as Tok Pisin.

Dr Julia Miller is the data manager for the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language at the Australian National University, and oversees the ANU's PARADISEC unit.

Her research has involved fieldwork in the Morehead District of PNG.

Dr Miller said it's a region that is important to document because it has so far bucked the language loss trend.

"Tok Pisin hasn't become the dominant language there, so all the kids are learning languages of their mother as well as their fathers," she said.

"I'll be returning next year to do follow-up work and all of that material will be achieved in PARADISEC."

Dr Hendry said language revival is ultimately up to public will.

But this, she added, was where new technologies such as VR and language databases could help.

"It's important to have these types of databases because linguists can pull audio from there and creating things like VR's, create audio books where you can read along and re-learn languages," Dr Hendry said.

"And with things like the VR, it really shows what is at stake.

"It's not a policy paper, it's you being immersed in languages that are at risk, that's much more powerful for people and policy makers."

Dr Thieberger is pragmatic when considering language revival.

"I'm not sure we can say we are reviving languages but by doing this stuff people will want to go into it and from that they can reintroduce something back to the community," she said.

"It could be a song, a concept, or just a word it might not sound like a lot, but it's something."

Topics: languages, community-and-society, computers-and-technology, papua-new-guinea, pacific

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Can virtual reality help save endangered Pacific languages? - ABC Online

Jul 28, 2017 at 5:34 pm | Print View

MOUNT VERNON Brian Johns likes to compare the research and development in virtual reality he and his engineering student, Nicholas Bieno, conducted this summer to a batting cage.

In the batting cage, one can have just as many misses as hits, yet suffer no consequences. In the end, you get your score and seek to improve. Its a form of practice that results in no harm and no foul.

This is a model Johns, an engineering professor at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, and Bieno, a rising senior at the small liberal arts college, looked to follow in developing a virtual reality surgery simulator.

Typically, how surgeons learn this right now is in the operating room on real patients, Johns said. So they watch the surgeon do it a couple times and then the surgeon will guide them and then toward the end of their training and residency they do it all on their own.

But what Johns and Bieno wanted to do was eliminate some of the risks, specifically those associated with the surgery to repair a type of hip fracture called an intertrochanteric fracture.

The idea with this is to create kind of a batting cage if you want to use a baseball analogy for this procedure a place where a person can get a lot of repetition and it may not be the most realistic but it is a lot of repetition and they can do it without the cost or risk involved with a real patient, Johns said.

Over 10 weeks, Bieno the student Johns selected for the project spent roughly 400 hours learning about virtual reality and the medical procedure before designing a virtual reality operating room and calibrating it with pieces specific to the surgery that he also created.

For eight hours every day, Bieno worked on the specifics of the simulator from the basement of the West Science Center on the Cornell campus, asking for assistance from Johns when needed.

Ive never actually worked on creating models for an operating room or anything like this before, Bieno said. So doing a lot of this stuff has been a first-time experience for me.

The project completed as part of the Cornell Summer Research Institute uses virtual reality to simulate visual elements of an operating room, integrate real world objects to replicate key surgical cues and ultimately minimize the risks and costs associated with current training methods.

Johns previously had worked on a different surgical simulator and said what he likes about virtual reality is that it opens up the capabilities to make the surgeries very realistic.

It could be used for practice before you become a surgeon, Johns said. I think it could be used for surgeons to brush up on their technique and then also as a validation device showing that this person is good enough to operate.

Thats kind of the long-, long-term gain. Were still in development now.

In the future, Johns and Bieno hope to quantify the precision of the motion-tracking hardware, streamline calibration of the surgery while maintaining accuracy and gather feedback to further validate the simulator.

The next step is to try and collaborate and get more input into this device, Johns said. What can we do to make it better?

l Comments: (319) 368-8531; alexandra.connor@thegazette.com

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Cornell College student, professor build virtual reality surgery simulator - The Gazette: Eastern Iowa Breaking News and Headlines

The spiders are everywhere. Hundreds of them are crawling all over barely lit brick walls and ceilings. Soon, you start to feel them on your neck and arms. You try to shake them off, hurry around the corners of the dark catacomb only to find yourself eye to eye with a giant sea serpent lunging out of the water, ready to attack.

SEE MORE: From the July 25, 2017, issue of Variety

Your heart starts racing, and for a second, you forget that none of this is real. The dragon, the spiders and the mysterious catacomb and its ghostly inhabitants are all part of an elaborate virtual reality experience called Curse of the Serpents Eye.

Built by VR start-up The Void, Curse is premiering next month at the companys headquarters in Lindon, Utah, where visitors are being asked to put on helmet-like VR headsets, special haptic feedback vests and computers integrated into backpacks.

Without any cables tying them down, users are free to explore a set that measures close to 700 square feet and combines a virtual world with real walls, doors, tangible props and good old imagineering tricks, like fans blowing hot air whenever the display in your headset shows fire. And you can do all of this with up to three friends, so you wont be the only one screaming when you feel those spiders.

You just do what you normally do, explains The Void co-founder and chief visionary officer James Jensen, whose previous career stints include mobile game design and tech work for the Mormon Church. Walk around, explore the world, use your real hands, grab items, touch stuff, he advises.

The Void was originally supposed to become a massive 21st-century amusement park in Utah. Then VR happened, and the founding team realized that you didnt need a couple square miles of land to build intricate worlds anymore. The company debuted its first commercial VR experience at Madame Tussauds in New Yorks Times Square a year ago and has since launched locations in Toronto and Dubai, where The Serpents Eye will be shown as well.

The company has struck partnerships with shopping malls, theme parks and movie theaters to open dozens of additional locations in Los Angeles, New York, Florida and abroad in the coming months. Eventually, it wants to run experiences on thousands of stages around the world.

In many cases, these will fill a void left by declining movie ticket sales and a crisis in retail, maintains The Void CEO Cliff Plumer: Whether its a theme park or shopping mall or movie theater, they are losing audience. They are looking for the new attraction. And Plumer, like others, is betting that VR can be that fresh lure plus a big cash cow for Hollywood.

The Voids first commercial experience was a VR adaptation of Ghostbusters, which the company produced in partnership with Sony Pictures. Behind the scenes, the company is already working on other titles based on big movie franchises. The studios are looking for new revenue streams, Plumer says. We have one, and its one thats easy for them to relate to.

Studio execs are clearly on board with the format. We believe that location-based VR will be the way that many people experience virtual reality for the first time, says Salil Mehta, president of 20th Century Foxs innovation unit, FoxNext. Its an incredible opportunity for us to create industry-defining immersive experiences that cant be replicated in your living room.

FoxNext is developing a location-based Alien VR experience; Fox has also invested in Dreamscape Immersive, one of The Voids competitors.

Lionsgate Interactive Ventures and Games president Peter Levin endorsed location-based VR wholeheartedly at the recent VRTL industry conference: We are extremely bullish on it, he said, simply.

Paramount unveiled a location-based VR experience for Michael Bays Transformers: The Last Knight at select theaters in June. And Disney decided to come along for the ride with The Void, adding the company to its most recent batch of Disney Accelerator start-ups.

Weve heard over and over from film studios that location-based is becoming part of their strategy moving forward, says Doug Griffin, chief executive for Nomadic, a Bay Area-based location-based VR start-up.That enthusiasm partially can be explained by the slower-than-expected growth of home-based VR. Facebook-owned Oculus, which many pegged as a market leader, sold only a few hundred thousand headsets in 2016. The same goes for competitor HTC. Sony took nine months to sell 1 million of its PSVR headsets.

Weve all seen that the audience hasnt shown up yet, says Plumer, who was an early investor in Oculus. The in-home experience, the mobile experience, is probably still three to five years away.

Part of this is the result of VR sticker shock. Prices for headsets have come down recently, but anyone interested in a higher-end VR solution still needs to invest around $1,500 for a headset and the latest-generation computer necessary to run it. Thats why some are betting on VR arcades as a way to experience virtual worlds without spending an arm and a leg.

One of those players is Imax, which opened its first VR experience center in Los Angeles in January. Imaxs model differs from that of The Void in that it doesnt focus on just a single, big virtual world. The companys VR centers instead house a number of pods, or smaller VR setups with wired headsets that are closer to home-based VR installations, without the complicated equipment used at The Void. The Imax VR center often runs experiences available to headset-owning consumers as well.

Imax launched a second location in New York last month. Now, the company is looking at Toronto; Manchester, England; and Shanghai. Imax chief business development officer Rob Lister tells Variety the giant-screen firm plans to run a total of 10 locations by the end of the year. Weve been really, really pleased with the start, Lister says, with audience numbers continuing to exceed expectations.

Later this year, Imax is going to crunch more numbers and evaluate whether location-based VR could be the next big thing for the company, which operates more than 1,000 theaters in better than 66 countries. Many of those theaters could one day include their own VR arcades, giving people another reason to come to the venues, and thus help boost ticket sales. Says Lister: We are off to a very promising start.

Imax is using its soft launch this year to experiment with locations: Its debuting stand-alone properties as well as VR arcades in movie theaters, with technology that includes higher-end headsets than those available to consumers, rumble chairs for virtual roller-coaster rides, gun-shaped VR controllers, and social integrations for multiplayer gaming. And the company is actively looking at bigger, more Void-like setups that would allow users to walk around freely, Lister says.

In the end, though, Imax is targeting franchises, not hardware, to lure consumers. Content is a really big part of our differentiation strategy, says Lister. The company has launched a $50 million fund to invest in VR games and experiences, in turn getting exclusive windows and other special perks from developers. Ultimately, the deals might appear similar to those in the companys theater business, explains Lister, where Imax regularly partners with directors for optimized versions of their movies.

Joining Imax, Nomadic, Dreamscape and The Void are a number of other location-based VR companies including Vrcade, whose technology is being used by restaurant and entertainment franchise Dave & Busters.

But VR-focused market research firm Greenlight Insights cautions that location-based VR could be hampered by a lack of content, as well as by technical challenges. And others argue that VR in movie theaters and malls may lose its luster once home-based VR improves.

However, Jensen doesnt believe that better and cheaper headsets will make location-based experiences like the ones produced by The Void obsolete. That would be a little bit like saying one day, people will build roller coasters in their home. Its just not going to happen.

Still, there are operational challenges that come with taking VR to public venues. Companies like The Void have to strike a balance between providing deeply immersive experiences and theme park ride-like efficiency, which requires them to gently nudge consumers along so they dont spend too much time in an experience. In Nomadics current demo, an invisible guide tells participants to hurry before theyre killed by flying drones. The Voids Ghostbusters experience literally ends with a big bang as participants blow up a giant marshmallow monster, accompanied by the smell of smores.

Another challenge is pricing, especially since the main action rarely lasts longer than 15 minutes. The Void charges around $30 per person for its experiences, which can make frequent visits a pricy proposition. Imax, on the other hand, sells access to its less elaborate experiences for as little as $10. Nomadics Griffin thinks lower prices are key to taking location-based VR mainstream. We want to bring this medium of entertainment to neighborhoods everywhere, he says. We dont charge a price that is out of reach for those smaller neighborhoods and communities.

Griffin also wants cheaper prices because he sees Nomadic VR centers as more like movie theaters than theme parks. People are supposed to come back every few weeks and experience new content frequently. To achieve that, the company has been building highly modular sets with easily movable walls and props that can be quickly repurposed to support new experiences a kind of Lego for VR sets, if you will. We want our venue partners to have very little downtime, Griffin says. When they switch from one experience to the other, they should be able to do that very quickly, without having to hire construction crews, without having to shut down for a month.

The Void, meanwhile, is betting more on its ability to tweak existing experiences over time to make them feel fresh for repeat visitors. We will have long-lasting experiences, Jensen says. You look at Ghostbusters in New York Times Square. That could exist there for 10 to 20 years.

The start-up is building a content pipeline to eventually offer new experiences every three to six months in some of its locations, but its also looking to get people to return by other means.Key to these efforts is developing a mobile app that will allow consumers to design their own avatars at home and forge a persistent profile.

We want to create an engagement with The Void even when youre not there, Jensen says. Consumers will be able to download videos of their past visits and collect points and virtual items for their avatar. At some point, The Void may even enable consumers who visit an experience to interact in real time with their friends at home, he says.

The success of location-based VR hinges on content and the possibilities it offers consumers. This could include virtual worlds based on Hollywood movies, catacombs full of monsters and spiders, strolls over the surface of the moon or things as simple as extreme sports, Jensen says. Deep-sea diving: Id love to do that, but its probably not ever gonna happen for me. I have kids. I have a family. And I dont want to risk my life, he quips. Were just scratching the surface of what we can create.

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Studios, Start-Ups Bet on Shared Location-Based VR Experiences ... - Variety

At the ChinaJoy 2017 digital-entertainment conference in Shanghai starting Thursday, virtual-reality (VR) pioneer HTC announced its standalone VR headset aimed at the China market.

This marks the first major player in the virtual-reality space to officially reveal a standalone product intended for the broad consumer market. The benefits are that its more affordable and portable.

Standalone VR headsets differ from current options in two distinct ways. First, they are disconnected from a PC and dont require an attachment to a desktop for processing or display output. The current HTC Vive and Facebooks FB, +1.18% Oculus Rift require a high-end PC to play VR games and use HDMI and USB connections to power the headsets. This new standalone design also moves away from the slot-in design of the Samsung SSNLF, +0.91% Gear VR and doesnt require the user to monopolize their smartphone for VR purposes.

Though mobile-first VR solutions like Gear VR have existed for several years, selling on the market before the PC-based solutions were released, the move of Taiwan-based HTC from tethered virtual reality to a wireless standalone unit signals a shift in the market. Consumers see the value and quality experiences that VR can provide but the expense and hassle of in-place configurations have stagnated adoption.

HTC is using the Qualcomm QCOM, +0.74% Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform to power the Vive standalone VR headset, the same chipset used in many high-end smartphones on the market today.

Qualcomm and HTC can modify traits of the processor to improve performance without worrying about the sensitive battery life of a consumers phone. Though we dont know the specifics of what HTC might have modified for the configuration of this standalone unit, it likely is a mirror of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 VR hardware development kit that was announced in February.

That design includes the capability for six degrees of freedom tracking (moving around a space accurately without external sensors), high-resolution displays for each eye, and a full suite of graphics and digital signal processors to handle the complex workloads of VR experiences.

Though HTC is the first to announce a complete standalone VR product, HTC and others intend to release standalone units in the U.S. later this year through Googles GOOG, +0.80% Daydream program. Beijing-based Lenovo plans to build a VR headset using the same Qualcomm reference design for the Daydream platform.

Facebook-owned Oculus of Menlo Park, California, has not officially announced its intent, but rumors in July point us to another Qualcomm-powered headset that will sell for around $200. Facebook plans to reveal the hardware in October.

HTCs decision to target the China market first is driven by its ability to promote its custom Viveport software store in a region that does not offer Google services like the Android Play Store or Daydream. HTC will leverage a customer base that is larger than North America and Western Europe combined, and one that is expected to grow rapidly.

IDC statistics show VR headset shipments reaching 10.1 million units this year and target 61 million units by 2020 worldwide. iResearch Consulting estimates Chinese VR market revenues will reach $8.1 billion in that time frame.

Growth in VR and AR (augmented reality) is driven by consumer markets, but it is the enterprise implementations that provide the push for expanded usage models. Medical professionals already use VR technology to analyze data, and mechanical engineers can dissect and evaluate models of products in a virtual space to improve and speed up workflows. Target fields also include factory workers, emergency personnel, the military, delivery drivers and nearly all facets of business.

As VR technology improves usability, comfort and general societal acceptance, the merger of virtual- and augmented-reality hardware will create a new age of connected consumers.

Ryan Shrout is the founder and lead analyst at Shrout Research, and the owner of PC Perspective. Follow him on Twitter @ryanshrout.

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Opinion: Virtual reality is about to go mainstream, as HTC beats Facebook and Lenovo to market - MarketWatch

In Georges Seurats masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the artist used millions of dots of color to paint a scene of Parisians at a park along the banks of the River Seine. When it was exhibited for the first time in 1886, the technique known as pointillism was revolutionary and sparked a new artistic movement: Neo-Impressionism.

Today, 131 years later,Laila Shereen Sakr, an assistant professor in UC Santa BarbarasDepartment of Film and Media Studies, is using billions of social media posts to create a revolutionary work of art. Using a program she developed the R-Shief Media System, which has been collecting and analyzing social media posts since 2008 shes building a virtual reality (VR) world that gives form to those countless tweets.

How can we create a cinematic VR production out of these tweets? Sakr said. Can we make a VR production thats cinematic using real-time data? Social media in particular seemed very apt. We started thinking, What would that cinematic world look like?

In the 2018 Arab Future Tripping VR Prototype Sakr developed, that world looks like its from another universe. Her cyborg avatar VJ Um Amel video jockey mother of hope in Arabic moves through a landscape literally animated by tweets. Trees sprout from the ground, each one a virtual manifestation of an individual social media post.

The shape of the tree is not random, Sakr explained. Its shaped according to the data weve structured from our Twitter archive. I am approaching this world-building project using a mix of gaming, sculpture, design and cinematic production methodologies.

The VR prototype, which was funded with a UC Santa Barbara Academic Senate Faculty Research Grant, was fueled by 60,000 users who tweeted roughly half a million posts during the Womens March in January. Developed with the help of her two graduate lab assistants, Intae Hwang and Han-Wei Kung, the VR project is the culmination of Sakrs latest version of R-Shief. The software, she said, has collected some 30 billion tweets since 2008.

Ive got this crazy archive and I want people to be able to know whats in it, she said. So Im thinking of new modes of knowledge production given the digital form of social media data. How do we produce knowledge based on this primary source? And Im working my way through this universe knowing that Im just a tiny explorer on this ship. Its much bigger than I am; it is humbling.

Sakrs VR project comes on the 10thanniversary of creating VJ Um Amel, her digital alter ego. VJ Um Amel is a name I use in a set of art practices where I explore the implications of placing the identity ofmother and a techno-feminist construct of cyborg within local and transnational expressions of Arab, she writes inA VJ Manifesto.

To mark the decade, she will also release R-Shief 5.0 and publish a book on Arabic open-source software movement and its role in the Arab uprisings. When the VR project is complete Sakr wants to have an immersive space with multiple screens and projectors. She would also like to see it installed in galleries and museums as a traveling exhibit. In the meantime she faces the daunting task of scaling up the project to its full potential.

I want to use the entire database, she said. Right now Im just testing. What you see is only a hundred rows of data. It is just the conceptualizing part of the project. After this, we have to build the whole thing.

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A billion tweets turned into virtual reality - University of California

Virtual reality could become easier to navigate, thanks to an assist from Wi-Fi.

alvarez/iStockphoto

By Matthew HutsonJul. 24, 2017 , 3:00 AM

Youre at home playing a virtual reality (VR) game on the Oculus Rift, dodging zombies like a pro. But then you step too far back or look behind you, and suddenly youre frozen in space, as the systems infrared cameras can no longer see the lights on your goggles and it loses track of you. Instant brain food. Now, researchers have come up with a way to spare you such a frustrating end by using standard Wi-Fi technology to enhance VRs tracking abilities. In addition to improving VR, the technology could also help track robots or drones and streamline motion capture for movies.

VR enables a user to move through a virtual 3D world projected through the video screens in the systems headset. To track the users movement, the Rift uses one or more infrared cameras in a room, often on tripods. The headset has accelerometers to measure tilt, and it has infrared lights that the cameras use to track movement forward, back, or sideways. Another VR system, the HTC Vive, tracks movement by projecting infrared light from devices in the corners of the room that are detected by sensors on the headset. A related technology, called augmented reality (AR), maps virtual features onto the wearers view of the real world. So a users living room may be inhabited by virtual monsters. Microsofts HoloLens AR system uses several outward-facing cameras on the headset to track the users movement in relation to the environment

Such systems have their limitations, however. In order for VR games to work without glitches, users often need to stay within a few square meters, and the infrared sightlines cant be blocked by furniture or other people or by turning away. Microsofts AR system doesnt work in all lighting conditions, it can be confused by blank walls or windows, and it cant track your hands if they move out of view.

A team of researchers from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, wanted a simpler, cheaper, more robust system. So they turned to the common radio technology Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has been used to localize people and objects in space before, but only with an accuracy of tens of centimeters, says Manikanta Kotaru, a computer scientist at Stanford, and he and his colleagues thought they could do better.

Their solution, which they call WiCapture, requires two parts: a standard Wi-Fi chip, such as the one you might find in your phone, and at least two Wi-Fi access points, which are transmitters such as the ones found in home routers. Communication between the chip and a transmitter comes in high-frequency radio waves. In order to track a Wi-Fi signal source with millimeter-level accuracy, one needs to measure the time it takes a signal to travel from the chip to the transmitter with picosecond-level accuracy. However, the chip and transmitter have different clocks, and no two clocks in Wi-Fi devices are perfectly synchronized.

To get around this problem the researchers took advantage of the fact that signals reach the transmitter through many paths. Some radio waves travel directly to the receiver to create the main signal, whereas others bounce off walls to create echoes. Kotaru wrote an algorithm that looks at signals from two different paths, identified by triangulating among the transmitters multiple antennas. Those signals will be equally affected by clock asynchrony, so the algorithm can just compare their relative change as the chip moves and ignore the drift of the clocks timing. Still, this method measures distance to only one transmitter; using two or more transmitters in combination allows the algorithm to use triangulation to track motion in two dimensions. (The researchers will eventually expand WiCapture to track motion in three dimensions.)

To test the idea, scientists placed the Wi-Fi chip on a mechanical device that could move it with high accuracy in an office 5 meters by 6 meters with four Wi-Fi transmitters in the corners. As they moved the chip around in various patterns, WiCapture tracked its position to within a centimeter. Next, the researchers tried an office in which all the Wi-Fi transmitters were occluded by furniture or walls. As long as two were in the same room as the chip, WiCaptures median error was still only 1.5 centimeters. Outside, the median error was again less than a centimeter, the team will report this month at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Honolulu.

It was really nice to bridge work in the wireless community with work in the virtual reality community, says Dina Katabi, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved in the experiment. Yuval Boger, a physicist and the CEO of Sensics, a VR hardware and software company in Columbia, Maryland, says, the need is real for a robust hi-resolution position tracker. He notes that 1 centimeter is not a high enough accuracy for head tracking, but would work for hand tracking. In a fighting game, Im not sure Im going to do any small delicate movements with a sword.

The authors acknowledge that WiCapture still has a slower reaction time and lower accuracy than infrared cameras, but they think they can improve both by combining it with an accelerometer to add another source of data and fill in the gaps. In any case, Kotaru says, the technology is basically ready to use.

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Wi-Fi could protect you from getting lost in virtual reality - Science Magazine

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For the past several years weve been told that the age of virtual reality is upon us. Tech companies have introduced new hardware and updated systems to much fanfare, but so far have not been able to turn widespread interest into practice.

Virtual reality, and now augmented reality, are often seen as novelties: cool to play with in a store or at that one tech-obsessed friends house, but most of us are not putting on clunky headsets or Googles cardboard system and walking out the door.

However, its finally looking like the VR and AR industries are on the cusp of going mainstream, as industries start to figure out how to implement transformative technology in the user experience. These 10 industries are pioneering ways to integrate VR and AR tech and offer customers more opportunities to explore products and services.

Looking for a new home or apartment can feel like taking on a second job. Between endlessly checking listing updates to taking time to visit every open house on the market, buying (or renting) a new place can be a daunting and tiresome task.

But what if you could experience all that a house has to offer without leaving your home? Real estate companies are toying with VR solutions that offer prospective buyers the chance to walk through a property and survey every room, hallway, nook and cranny without actually leaving their own homes.

Related:Real Estate, Movies, Retail: VR Is Exploding. The Opportunities for Entrepreneurs Are Huge.

Going to zoos gives people the opportunity to experience wildlife up close, albeit behind a sturdy partition. However, zoo trips often spark more questions than they answer. Most zoo experiences consist of visitors wandering from exhibit to exhibit and reading about the species on small placards and in outdated pamphlets.

Guru is an app that is seeking to redefine the zoo experience by bringing the animals and their habitats to (virtual) life. The app allows users to choose customized audio experiences that share facts about specific animals, as well as behind-the-scenes videos and augmented-reality portals into the actual habitats and lifestyles of animals in the wild.

Related:12 Amazing Uses ofVirtual Reality

Every millennial woman remembers the first time she saw Cher Horowitzs closet in Clueless -- it was a magical moment. The idea of being able to test clothes and match outfits without actually having to try them on resonated with an entire generation.

Now, over 20 years since Clueless sparked an obsession, Chers closet, or at least the idea behind it, has become reality. Gap recently unveiled a VR solution that enables customers to digitally try on pieces within its collection. Other retailers are bringing VR headsets into stores to allow visitors to feel as though theyre sitting in the front row at the designers latest fashion-week presentation.

Related:Virtual RealityIs About to Change Your Business

The internet has made the world a smaller place. Thanks to programs like Google Earth, people can walk pathways in Santorini one minute and find themselves at a busy Sydney intersection the next. More travel organizations are tapping into consumers love for virtual exploration.

Expedia recently announced a new VR-based initiative that will allow travelers to step inside hotel-room listings before making their destination decisions.

Related:Why This Restaurant Chain Has Started Using VR to Train Employees

The world of medicine is exploring several avenues and uses for VR to help doctors and patients. Some doctors are now wearingVR headsets in the operating room to give medical students a more in-depth look at the surgical procedures.

Additionally, hospitals are experimenting with VR as a means of making patients feel more comfortable. For example, VisitU, an emerging Dutch company, has created virtual glasses to give children at hospitals the chance to experience life at home or in the classroom, even though they are bedridden.

Related:VRcade: Be the First to Open One in Your Town

Since Hollywoods inception, film studios and production companies have been searching for new ways to make their projects more engaging and lifelike. Now, with virtual technology, film studios have the opportunity to transform the viewing experience from passive to participatory.

Companies like Within are gaining the attention and support of major studios because their technology creates fully immersive viewer experiences that, until recently, Hollywood could only dream of.

Related:Google: 180-Degree Video Is the Future of VR

Many people have a hard time self-motivating when it comes to fitness. It can also be difficult to carve out the time to travel to a gym or fitness studio to take a class. Thanks to emerging VR programs, those wanting to get in shape no longer have to sacrifice their time.

Startups like Icaros are creating fitness solutions that take the boredom out of getting fit. These systems allow users to feel as though theyre actually climbing a rock wall or boxing an opponent, when in fact they havent left their living rooms.

Historically, the automotive industry has needed a physical shopping experience to stay afloat. Before people are willing to make huge investments in new vehicles, they usually want to test the car out for themselves. For this reason, the automotive industry has struggled to find ways to connect with younger generations. Not only are millennials and Gen Zers supporters of the ride-sharing economy; theyre also digitally driven shoppers.

Now, automobile makers like Ford are introducing VR experiences intended to give shoppers a real sense of a cars interior and create a strong enough virtual experience to encourage them to visit a dealership and test drive the real thing.

Deep Patel is the author of A Paperboy's Fable: The 11 Principles of Success. The book was dubbed the #1 best business book in 2016 by Success Magazine and named the best book for entrepreneurs in 2016 by Entrepreneur Magazine.

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8 Industries Being Disrupted by Virtual Reality - Entrepreneur

July 21, 2017 1:10 PM BySam Coley Parade @samlcoley More by Sam

Virtual reality (VR) pro Filip Baba swears that a great VR experience is just like jumping into your favorite sci-fi novel.

Its what you used to read about in sci-fi books or watched on Star Trek. Its pretty close, Baba says.

A self-taught expert, Baba is the CEO and founder of the virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) agencyAnyworld, which creates VR and AR experiences for clients like real estate companies and artists.

Recently, Baba and Anyworld worked with R&B singer, Tangina Stone, on her latest music video. The virtual reality music video, called the Anxious 360 Experience, debuted at her album launch party in New York City.

Baba talked with Parade on how he created the VR music video, why people are fascinated by VR and what the future holds for the industry.

What was it like creating a virtual reality music video for Tangina Stone?

It was a really fun experience. The whole screenplay and story was all hers. It was about Tangina dealing with anxiety. So, we tried to put the user in the type of anxiety shed be feeling. We sat down with her and got her creative vision, and then we went ahead and technologically did it. We did all the 3-D environments and screenplayed the whole thing. She came up with the concept on that, so she had a lot of fun doing it, as well.

Tell us about the scenes of the music video and how you created those.

In the beginning, you see [a sign post that says] Canton and Brooklyn. Since the whole beginning scene is VR and 360, it forces you to look away. But [when] you look back, that spot isnt the sign post anymoreits actually a burning tree. The burning tree symbolizes the odd one out of the whole forest, and under it is an old TV playing a 2-D version of the music video. Then, theres a glitch effect. We use that to glitch into another scene. In VR, it takes you by surprise. Then in the second scene, youre in a room and it starts to grow big around you. You start to feel smaller, which is a lot more pronounced when youre in VR. All of a sudden, you start flying up. We very slowly start lifting the person up, and it gives you the sensation of flying, and youre getting pulled out of this room. The third and last scene is a mental ward. Around you are whiskey bottles, which is one of her things shes dealt withalcoholism. All of a sudden, the display breaks. When youre in VR, it seems like the glass shards are coming at your face. Then, you look down and the floor falls under you. Youre floating in darkness, and you see the room above you just fading away. It was a bit of a trip to create.

How would you say VR has grown through the years, and where do you see it going in the future?

The hardware has definitely gotten a lot more polished. Now, a lot of the mobile [devices] are becoming more affordable. Most of our smartphones can be used as VR headsets. Its all getting more mainstream. Now, its up to the content creators to create content and distribute it. I believe that in the futurenow, we have 2-D screens, monitors, phonesthings are going to meld and be more augmented. More and more consumers are going to demand these experiences. I think it will become as common as how people go to the movies or watch TV at home.

Why do you think theres a growing appeal for virtual realityexperiences?

When you try some good VR, its what you used to read about in sci-fi books or watched in Star Trek. Its pretty close, I would say. Im a gamer. I used to play classic PC games, but I play some VR games now. Theyre competitive, too. They get you up on your feet. Youre actually movingits got that Wii appeal. If you get someone in a VR experience, you could take full control over what theyre going to experience.

In what ways do you think virtual reality could be used in other forms of entertainment, like movies and TV?

Its already happening. I know some movies have VR experience booths. I dont think thats going to be the main thing. Itll probably start with artists and specific genres. Maybe the horror genreI can totally see them capitalizing on something like that. Events are going to play a large role. People love installations at events, and a VR installation gets a lot of attention. Sometimes at Anyworld, well do a tradeshow and people respond positively. They love coming up and trying something.

Do you have any other projects coming up?

Were starting to teach AR classes with the new Apple AR kit thats coming out. We also do things with real estate, so were going to have some AR and VR solutions for real estate coming soon. I think [AR] is going to be even bigger than VR is right now.

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Virtual Reality Expert Filip Baba Shares His Newest Project and How VR is Changing Entertainment - Parade

Almost 90 years ago, in October 1927, the art of storytelling took a dramatic turn when the first talking picture or sound film was released to audiences around the world. The Jazz Singer was a smash hit, earning more than $2.6 million as it captivated audiences with its Vitaphone technology, the eras leading sound-on-disc system that would forever change the standard for in-theater experiences. Within just a year, filmmakers encouraged by the success of The Jazz Singer were already developing ways to advance in-theater audio beyond the use of discs and turntables and began migrating to sound-on-film. Regardless, the new multi-media era had been launched. The introduction of sound on top of moving pictures took people to a new dimension.

Fast-forward to today and the art of storytelling in our modern, more virtual world is once again about to be disrupted by another seminal advancement in sound. Its the use of 3D audio to immerse people more deeply into virtual environments, taking them to a reality thats, well, much more real.

Binaural 3D audio is inherently more authentic to our ears than two-dimensional stereo. It is sound thats designed to replicate the way we hear spatially, leveraging how humans consume auditory information in our natural environment. 3D audio engages the listener by offering a spatial bearing that enables them to sense where they are relative to the noises around them. In a 3D soundscape, the origins of sounds can perceptibly move about the listener, locating the listener as if they were standing in a real life environment.

By inserting 3D audio, new spatial information is introduced to the virtual experience, enabling audiences to sense things happening behind them, or elsewhere in their virtual environment, completely independent of their eyes. Just imagine yourself at a museum, standing in front of a massive painting that despite being a two dimensional work of art has amazing depth and allure. Visually, it draws you in and creates a sense of rapture. Now fold 3D audio into the experience with carefully crafted sound that wraps itself around you and pulls you closer. Characters in the painting sneak up from behind and encourage you to look deeper. Meanwhile, others call for your attention on the right, and then on the left. Suddenly, youre a part of whats happening on the seemingly flat canvas. Manipulating this type of audible sensory perception has the potential to completely reshape the entire virtual experience.

While the creative industry has been exploring 3D audio for some time, these efforts have been difficult, expensive and time-consuming to engineer since its production requires a mannequin head equipped with microphones shaped like the human ear. Not exactly the type of stuff you have laying around in the garage.

However, a group of five companies called The BINCI Consortium short for binaural tools for the creative industries are working collaboratively to develop an integrated software and hardware solution that can be used by professional audio content creators and artists to ease the production, post-production and distribution of 3D audio content.As an active member of The BINCI consortium, I share the organizations vision that everybody will soon be able to create and listen to binaural audio with off-the- shelf devices and headphones. The Consortium, which includes my company, Antenna International, as well as Eurecat, HEAD acoustics GmbH, 3D Sound Labs and Voodoopop, aims to develop a solution that can support a variety of professional applications in the creative industries, such as music, video games, virtual reality and augmented reality.The new tools will cut production costs tremendously and therefore revolutionize the industry as well as all virtual experiences.

Virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality experiences as we know them today are still flat unless the audio sound doesnt create a similar three-dimensional reality as the visual effects do. Reflecting back to how Vitaphone technology changed the in-theater experience nearly a century ago, todays virtual experiences havent yet met the modern equivalent of The Jazz Singer but its coming soon.

BINCIs experimental production pilots are scheduled to be carried out over the next year in cultural and heritage sites that include Fondaci Joan Mir (Barcelona, Spain), Opra Garnier (Paris, France), and Alte Pinakothek BStGS (Munich, Germany). These pilots, also known as The BINCI Project, will offer visitors the worlds first encounter with 3D audio-guide productions and usher in a new era of immersive storytelling.

In the meantime, others in the VR, music, film and gaming industries are also attempting to drive 3Daudio forward. For example, Microsofts new Xbox One X supports 3D audio content and the headphone manufacturer Plantronics has developed 3D audio gaming headsets. And San Diego-based Comhear Inc., has recently developed a sound projection system that can deliver 3D audio without the use of headphones.

In less than five years, 3D spatial audio is expected to revolutionize our standard for multimedia listening. Similar to how high-definition television has enhanced the everyday viewing experience, binaural 3D sound is expected to reshape our listening experience and redefine the production of music, movies, radio, and television programming and yes, VR, AR and mixed reality content as well.

Theres currently no blueprint for piecing together the storytelling thats best suited for this new type of virtual medium. As far as content goes, there is consensus about only one thing: in a virtual world, its all about storydoing, not storytelling.

Eva Wesemann is the Director of Creative Strategy for Antenna International, a provider of technology, content, and managed services to the worlds artistic, historic, and cultural institutions. She is also an active member of the BINCI Consortium.

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Why 3D audio is the next big step for virtual reality - VentureBeat