Wall Street Journal (subscription) | What Virtual Reality Needs to Get Real Wall Street Journal (subscription) The hit mobile game Pokmon Go will reach its first birthday next month having defied the odds. It has stayed popular enough past its fad-like initial launch to build a strong business that generated revenue about $1.3 billion to date, according to ... |
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What Virtual Reality Needs to Get Real - Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Virtual reality is much more than just a new form of entertainment, it is increasingly being used in a wide range of medical applications, from treatments to training. Here are a few of them.
There is good scientific evidence that virtual reality (VR) can help relieve pain. The parts of the brain that are linked to pain the somatosensory cortex and the insula are less active when a patient is immersed in virtual reality. In some instances, it can even help people tolerate medical procedures that are usually very painful.
Other studies have shown that amputees can benefit from VR therapy. Amputees often feel severe pain in their missing limb, which can be hard to treat with conventional methods, and often doesnt respond well to strong painkillers like codeine and morphine. However, a technique called virtual mirror therapy, which involves putting on a VR headset and controlling a virtual version of the absent limb seems to help some patients cope better with this phantom pain.
VR can be used to track body movements, allowing patients to use the movements of their therapy exercises as interactions in a VR game. For example, they may need to lift an arm above their head in order to catch a virtual ball.
Its more fun doing exercises in virtual reality than it is in a gym, so people are more motivated to exercise. It can help in other ways too. For example, we found that for patients who are anxious about walking, we can control their virtual environment so that it looks as though they are moving much slower than they actually are. When we do this, they naturally speed up their walking, but they dont realise they are doing it and so it isnt associated with pain or anxiety.
Studying how people perceive and interact with VR systems helps us design better rehabilitation applications.
If you have an irrational fear of something, you might think the last thing you need is to see it in virtual reality, however, this is one of most established forms of medical VR treatment. Phobias are often treated with something called graded-exposure therapy, where patients are slowly introduced to their fear by a therapist. Virtual reality is perfect for this as it can be adjusted precisely for the needs of each patient, and can be done in the doctors office or even at home. This is being used to treat phobias such as fear of heights and fear of spiders, but also to help people recover from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Patients with brain injury from trauma or illness, such as stroke, often struggle with the everyday tasks that we take for granted, such as shopping or making plans for the weekend. Recreating these tasks within virtual environments and allowing patients to practise them at increasing levels of complexity can speed up recovery and help patients regain a higher level of cognitive function.
Doctors can also use these same virtual environments as an assessment tool, observing patients carrying out a variety of real-world complex tasks and identifying areas of memory loss, reduced attention or difficulty with decision-making.
Virtual reality is, of course, not just for patients. It also offers benefits to healthcare professionals. Training doctors and nurses to carry out routine procedures is time consuming, and training generally needs to be delivered by a busy and expensive professional. But virtual reality is increasingly being used to learn anatomy, practise operations and teach infection control.
Being immersed in a realistic simulation of a procedure and practising the steps and techniques is far better training than watching a video, or even standing in a crowded room watching an expert. With low-cost VR equipment, controllable, repeatable scenarios and instant feedback, we have a powerful new teaching tool that reaches well beyond the classroom.
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Five ways virtual reality is improving healthcare - The Conversation UK
A first-of-its-kind cartoon is being made in Winnipeg using exclusively virtual reality technology.
Super Secret Science Island has two characters failed experiments abandoned on an island by their creator that are brought to life by BUCKO Comedy's Aaron Merke and Lauren Cochrane.
The entire show is acted, shot and edited in real-time.
"Someone could be in Winnipeg, somebody else could be on the other side of the world. They can meet up in VR, create a show together and output that right away," said Rachael Hosein, the chief creative at Campfire Union, the virtual reality development house that created the software for the show.
Merke and Cochrane go to different rooms, put on headsets, grab a set of hand controls and improvise an episode.
"It's like putting a headset on and you're Homer Simpson," said Campfire Union's John Luxford.
While they act, Luxford and Hosein switch camera angles and make sure everything in the virtual world runs smoothly.
"What we're doing is making a virtual TV studio. It's using off-the-shelf virtual reality hardware that we hook into an app that we created, and it's kind of two parts. It allows people to watch content in VR using a VR headset, and it also allows content creators to use a VR setup to live-animate an animated show," said Hosein.
Merke has a simpler way of describing it: "It's just making an animation using your body, instantly."
Merke plays 2B, a cranky guy who lives in a test tube and Cochrane plays Genefur, a kind of "dumb" Mary Poppins-type character that looks like a bear.
"I've done traditional cell animation and that takes forever. This is instant. It's absolutely the quickest. The turnaround on it is insane," said Merke.
Episodes are about three minutes long and can be watched in 2D on YouTube or in 3D on VR headsets.
The episodes can even be livestreamed, and actors can be across the world from each other.
Merke and Cochrane are just in different rooms a few feet away,or in Cochrane's case, a hallway in a shared tech space.
"When we're improvising together that's our life that's what we do. When we're doing it here, we've found a way now to connect. We give high fives in space even though you can't feel it, but you can see it," said Merke. "It's almost like teaching yourself to puppeteer."
The software that makes it possible is called Flipside. It was developed by Campfire Union after they were experimenting with virtual reality drawing apps.
"We were playing around with ways to stream those drawings out to other people, and it kind of got us thinking about content creators in VR," said Hosein. "There's a lot of ways that people can create content and share content and be social within a virtual reality app, so the idea just kind of grew from there."
In the show, characters can draw their own props (like a hat or a pair of glasses) and then use them.
"We knew there were going to be a lot of bugs. Something we didn't expect was how intimate a VR space can be. You're acting with somebody who is on the other side of the world but it really feels like they're honestly there," said Hosein.
"That kind of creates a really organic experience out of a lot of tech and a lot of hardware and a lot of distance between two people."
Merke and Cochrane want to use it to develop interstitials (short segments between TV shows) for kids' networks.
"We're going down to VidCon, which is a YouTube convention in Anaheim. So we're going to be pitching to some people. We have some meetings lined up," said Merke.
Meanwhile, Campfire Union is also working with a San Francisco-based comedian who delivers a takedown of current news as an alien floating behind a desk.
The team says they aren't aware of any other virtual reality development studios using the tech to create cartoons or shows, but they're actively looking for more content creators to make more shows.
New episodes of Super Secret Science Island launch every Thursday.
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Virtual reality TV show created in Winnipeg on way to international convention - CBC.ca
Forbes | 360-Virtual Reality: The Ultimate Storytelling Platform Forbes The art of marketing is essentially the art of storytelling. The basic goal of marketing, its raison d'tre, is to tell a story that will create an emotion in order to influence an action. I strongly believe as many around the world do that virtual ... |
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360-Virtual Reality: The Ultimate Storytelling Platform - Forbes
Maine educators got to demo some groundbreaking virtual reality technology at the State Library in Augusta Monday.
As this technology advances, and becomes less expensive and more commonplace, schools across the country are expected to be implementing these exciting education tools.
The Department of Educations Virtual Reality expo brought educators from across the state to discuss how theyre using virtual technology in their curriculum.
The idea is to be able to create an environment where learners at all levels can use gestures and natural movements of their hands to make and explore mathematical figures, said Justin Dimmel, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education & Instructional Technology at the University of Maine.
The University of Maines Immersive Mathematics in Rendered Environments lab showed off their new Hand Waver program.
Developed by students and recent graduates, it utilizes virtual reality to create learning experiences for those studying math and science.
We are 1 of 4 medical schools in the world who are using this technology, said Marilyn Gugliucci, Professor & Director of Geriatrics Education & Research for the University of New England.
The University of New England is beta testing an exciting geriatrics program called We Are Alfred.
They become 74-year-old Alfred, an African American male. He has macular degeneration and hearing loss, said Gugliucci.
It gives students the opportunity to experience what life is like for someone suffering from those conditions.
A few years back, my dad was diagnosed with macular degeneration, so sitting there for seven minutes allowed me a seven minute walk in his shoes, said Jaimie Pelletier, a Fort Kent Instructor.
They just get this sense of WOW. I had no idea, and now I know what some of my patients may experience, said Gugliucci.
Its just now sinking in that my dad is going through some of these same conditions and I had no idea. It really hits home, said Pelletier.
Educators say these state-of-the-art education tools are not only providing students and teachers with challenges and experiences that were not possible before the advent of the technology, but also present endless possibilities for the future.
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Maine Teachers Demo Groundbreaking Virtual Reality Education Technology UPDATED - WABI
A YouTube heat map of where viewers devote their attention during a virtual reality video
YouTube's revealed the secret to making an engaging virtual reality video: put the best parts right in front of the audience so they don't have to move their heads.
Google's video vault offers that advice on the basis of heat maps it's created based on analysis of where VR viewers point their heads while wearing VR goggles. There's just such a heat map at the top of this story (or here for m.reg readers) and a bigger one here.
The many heat maps YouTube has made lead it to suggest that VR video creators Focus on whats in front of you: The defining feature of a 360-degree video is that it allows you to freely look around in any direction, but surprisingly, people spent 75% of their time within the front 90 degrees of a video. So dont forget to spend significant time on whats in front of the viewer.
YouTube also advises that for many of the most popular VR videos, people viewed more of the full 360-degree space with almost 20% of views actually being behind them. Which sounds to El Reg like VR viewers are either staring straight ahead or looking over their shoulders, with very little time being devoted to sideways glances.
Google therefore offers the following sage advice for those who want to set heads swiveling: Get their attention The more engaging the full scene is, the more likely viewers will want to explore the full 360-degree view.
Which gets The Register celebrating, yet again, that it's possible to harness countless thousands of servers so they analyse countless thousands of videos and then tell us that getting people interested in movies can best be accomplished by making good movies.
What a time to be alive.
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Virtual reality audiences stare straight ahead 75% of the time - The Register
AN OLD roller coaster at SeaWorld Orlando has been given the ultimate makeover, turning it from a 17-year-old ride into a cutting edge virtual reality experience.
By attaching headsets and earphones to the old Kraken ride, the theme park has turned an already terrifying coaster into a heart-stopping journey to the bottom of the sea.
Facebook / Orlando Informer
Kraken Unleashed is Americas first virtual reality roller coaster, where guests are chased by hungry sea monsters while riding at 65mph for real on a leg-dangling coaster.
As riders fly along the powerful track, complete with dives, corkscrews and seven loops, an immersive VR story unfolds in perfect sync with the rides movements.
Guests can now scream their way through a fantastical voyage past gigantic underwater beasts, including the legendary Kraken sea monster.
Facebook / Orlando Informer
The virtual voyage begins in a futuristic underwater laboratory, then plunging guests into the deep sea.
At first things seem peaceful, with a pod of dolphins following you up a steep underwater canyon before it all takes a terrifying turn for the worst.
As the ride speeds up, guests encounter angry giant crabs and other massive monsters, then finally coming face to with the mystical ancient Kraken.
The ride is over in a matter of minutes but with so much happening on screen and multiple viewing angles depending on which way youre looking, most guests will want to dive right back in.
Facebook / Orlando Informer
SeaWorld expect the ride to be wildly popular, so in keeping with the high-tech theme, holidaymakers will also be able to skip the queue by waiting in line virtually with a new app.
Called Spot Saver, the mobile site will allow thrill-seekers to join a queue with a smartphones and turn up when its their turn to ride.
Brian Morrow, Vice President of Theme Park Experience and Design said:By creating a custom digital overlay and using technology to tell the story, we developed an entirely new virtual reality coaster.
The result is a seamless and completely unique expedition on a well-loved roller coaster.
If riders arent ready to brave the deep, theres also the option to enjoy the ride the old school way.
Link:
SeaWorld's new ride combines virtual reality and a REAL roller ... - The Sun
An attendee wears a virtual reality headset while playing the Bethesda Softworks "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" video game during the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. ( Troy Harvey / Bloomberg )
By Hayley TsukayamaThe Washington Post
Mon., June 19, 2017
LOS ANGELESAt the Electronic Entertainment Expo, all seemed right for virtual reality. Players were waiting in snaking lines some for up to seven hours for a chance to step into fantasy worlds. Crowds watched as players wearing VR headsets over their eyes reached out to pick up objects or shoot enemies that only they could see.
More than 125 VR exhibitors were at E3 this year, up 130 per cent from last year. Yet adoption of VR among consumers hasnt really taken off in the three years since it created a buzz in the wider world. An estimated 6.3 million headsets have sold worldwide indicating that, even among the worlds 2.6 billion gamers, few have picked one up.
Experts point to several reasons behind the slow adoption the technology can cause motion sickness and it is costly. Its also been hard getting people to try it, developers said. And showing virtual reality experiences on flat screens doesnt give people a good enough taste of how different the experience really is.
How do you advertise a colour TV on black-and-white televisions? It requires people walking down to main street and seeing it for themselves, said Steve Bowler, president and co-founder at VR game developer CloudGate Studio.
What virtual reality needs, experts say, is a killer app. And firms are pushing to find it, building up their own platforms and funding developers to bring games to their own headsets exclusively. But this kind of fragmentation has resulted in a confusing market and fewer games for players, thus giving them fewer reasons to spend their dollars on this young trend.
Mike Fischer, chair and co-founder of VR game developer CloudGate Studio, told a panel last year that platform fragmentation keeps me up at night after so many new companies jumped into the VR market although he says that things have improved a little since then.
Devoting extra resources to creating games for different devices can be particularly difficult for smaller studios, whose creativity drive much of the virtual reality market. In fact, some developers, such as Jeff Pobst from Hidden Path Entertainment, say they rely on funding from platforms such as Oculus to get their games made at all.
These exclusive deals between developers and VR companies make it hard for consumers to know which expensive headset will get the game that they want to play leading them to put off their decision, analysts said.
A monopoly, while simple for consumers, wouldnt be perfect either, experts said. Competition is important and different headsets characteristics inspire different types of games. HTCs technology is designed for larger, room-sized experiences that often require gamers to stand. Sonys experiences are largely seated. Oculus provides a mix of the two.
Even big players in the virtual reality market acknowledge that locking any game to a single device could be problematic.
We actually think that content in the VR space makes a lot of space for developers and publishers to look at the market from a platform agnostic standpoint, said Joel Breton, vice-president of Global VR Content for HTC. While HTC helps developers create games for its own platform, Breton said it doesnt hold them to any sort of exclusivity deal.
More companies are also beginning to work on cross-platform solutions.
Developer tools such as Unity and Unreal are streamlining the process for developers who want to port their games between headsets. Ubisoft, one of the worlds largest game publishers, has committed to releasing virtual reality games that work the major three high-end headsets, allowing people who own different headsets to play with each other. Sony spokesperson Jennifer Hallett said the PlayStation VR has several titles that also work on other platforms, including Ubisofts Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Eve:Valkyrie which started as an Oculus-exclusive title.
The VR companies are also trying to do more to work together. Jason Rubin, vice-president of content at Oculus, said in an email interview that he doesnt think that there is harmful fragmentation in the market for consumers or developers. But his firm tries to work with competitors to push the whole industry forward, he added.
But other major publishers seem to be waiting to see how the market plays out before revealing their plans for virtual reality.
We believe VR will be a major opportunity, but widespread adoption will take time, said Electronic Arts in an emailed statement.
For consumers eager to try virtual reality, however, that may mean waiting at least another development cycle to let the market fill out.
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Why is virtual reality taking so long to take off? - Toronto Star
An eye-opening look at the dangers of technology: Jessica De Gouw in OtherLife.
It is not uncommon for films about drug users to contain closeup shots of pupils dilating. This is hardly surprising given closeups of eyes have long been fashionable in cinema; the famous opening of Luis Buuels 1929 classic Un Chien Andalou comes to mind. And after a hit of the good stuff, eyeballs look fabulous on screen, as films like Requiem for a Dream remind us.
Australian writer/director Ben C Lucass sophomore feature, OtherLife, joins the crazy-eyed canon in its opening moments, peppered with near full-screen vision of a narcotic-infused peeper.
Except the drug in question in this low-budget Perth-shot sci-fi movie is arguably not a drug at all. Its inventor Ren (Jessica de Gouw) insists not entirely successfully, especially after an overdose that it is instead biological software.
Once consumed, OtherLife transports users brains into VR-esque settings where they experience all the senses they use in reality. Also, importantly, their grasp of time is expanded, meaning seconds or minutes in real life are experienced as days, months or years inside the users modified mind.
Based in a not-too-distant future, Ren and her business partner Sam (TJ Power) pitch their product as a recreational experience the kind advertised with footage of sun-kissed beaches or majestic snow-tipped mountains.
We never have enough free time, Sam says, reciting a spiel to a bunch of suits in a meeting room. And when we do it feels wasted. He floats the idea of not just buying more time but putting it to all sorts of festive uses: sailing the Caribbean before work, for example, or snowboarding the Alps over lunch.
The technology has its sceptics, and Ren is cautioned about opening Pandoras box. In the lead-up to launch she concedes OtherLife has a glitch (cause of the aforementioned overdose) but downplays it as just bad code. A stern-but-fair university professor (Tiriel Mora) reminds her that the mind is more than a collection of binary switches.
Another cynic opines: A facsimile of an experience youve never had just feels isolating.
This illuminates a theme core to the film, and presumably the book on which it is based, Kelley Eskridges Solitaire: that technology is constructing increasingly lonely worlds for humans to inhabit.
Lucas also philosophised about technology (particularly the use of social media) in his visually striking 2010 debut Wasted on the Young. In a highly memorable scene, the life-or-death fate of one character, a nasty private-school boy, is crowdsourced to fellow smartphone-wielding teenagers as if they were voting in a reality TV competition.
As OtherLife progresses and the pacing warms up, you can sense the shit about to hit a virtually rendered, glitch-prone fan particularly when the government muscles in and proposes alternative applications for the technology. It suggests it could be used as, of all things, a solution to prison overcrowding or, hard time without the time.
The near-future setting, combined with Helen OLoans resourceful, interior-heavy production design, protect the film from extending its sci-fi inclinations beyond the point that can be reasonably achieved within its modest budget. The atmosphere is big but the settings are contained, like Shane Abbess Infini.
And like last years horror indie Observance (another innovative Australian genre film, constructed on an even smaller budget), OtherLifes score and sound design is so striking it is practically a character in the film. All credit to Jed Palmer, who also worked on 2014s delightful The Infinite Man.
Credit also, of course, to Ben C Lucas. With virtual reality devices finally in our lounge rooms and festivals, the film is well timed but I found the excitement of its premise waned a little as the plot progressed. Particularly in the second half, which is partly hinged on finding new applications for already used settings, and has a whiff of Inception-lite about it.
But the tonal consistency with which Lucas brings his ambitious project together will undoubtedly make him an appealing proposition for Hollywood, as it did with Wasted on the Young.
The director is helped along by a darkly charismatic leading performance from Jessica De Gouw who, with her piercing gaze and slightly gothic look and swagger, is a great solidifying force for the cast. Is it her eyes we see in extreme closeup at the start of the film? A question, perhaps, for the director.
Link:
OtherLife review virtual reality goes bad in ambitious Australian sci-fi thriller - The Guardian
LOS ANGELES At the Electronic Entertainment Expo, all seemed right for virtual reality. Players were waiting in snaking lines some for up to seven hours for a chance to step into fantasy worlds. Crowds watched as players wearing VR headsets over their eyes reached out to pick up objects or shoot enemies only they could see.
More than 125 VR exhibitors were at E3 this year, up 130 percent from last year. Yet adoption of VR among consumers hasnt really taken off in the three years since it captured buzz in the wider world. An estimated 6.3 million headsets have sold worldwide indicating that, even among the worlds 2.6 billion gamers, few have picked one up.
Experts point to several reasons behind the slow adoption the technology can cause motion sickness and it is costly. Its also been hard getting people to try it, developers said. And showing virtual reality experiences on flat screens doesnt give people a good enough taste of how different the experience really is.
How do you advertise a color TV on black-and-white televisions? It requires people walking down to main street and seeing it for themselves, said Steve Bowler, president and co-founder at VR game developer CloudGate Studio.
What virtual reality needs, experts say, is a killer app. And firms are pushing to find it, building up their own platforms and funding developers to bring games to their own headsets exclusively. But this kind of fragmentation has resulted in a confusing market and fewer games for players, thus giving them fewer reasons to spend their dollars on this young trend.
Mike Fischer, chairman and co-founder of VR game developer CloudGate Studio, told a panel last year that platform fragmentation keeps me up at night after so many new companies jumped into the VR market although he said that things have improved a little since then.
Devoting extra resources to creating games for different devices can be particularly difficult for smaller studios, whose creativity drives much of the virtual reality market. In fact some developers, such as Jeff Pobst from Hidden Path Entertainment, say they rely on funding from platforms such as Oculus to get their games made at all.
These exclusive deals between developers and VR companies make it hard for consumers to know which expensive headset will get the game they want to play leading them to put off their decision, analysts said.
A monopoly, while simple for consumers, wouldnt be perfect either, experts said. Competition is important, and different headsets characteristics inspire different types of games. HTCs technology is designed for larger, room-sized experiences that often require gamers to stand. Sonys experiences are largely seated. Oculus provides a mix of the two.
Even big players in the virtual reality market acknowledge locking any game to a single device could be problematic.
We actually think that content in the VR space makes a lot of space for developers and publishers to look at the market from a platform agnostic standpoint, said Joel Breton, vice president of Global VR Content for HTC. While HTC helps developers create games for its own platform, Breton said it doesnt hold them to any sort of exclusivity deal.
More companies are also beginning to work on cross-platform solutions.
Developer tools such as Unity and Unreal are streamlining the process for developers who want to port their games between headsets. Ubisoft, one of the worlds largest game publishers, has committed to releasing virtual reality games that work the major three high-end headsets, allowing people who own different headsets to play with each other. Sony spokeswoman Jennifer Hallett said the PlayStation VR has several titles that also work on other platforms, including Ubisofts Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Eve: Valkyrie which started as an Oculus-exclusive title.
The VR companies also are trying to do more to work together. Jason Rubin, vice president of content at Oculus, said in an email interview that he doesnt think there is harmful fragmentation in the market for consumers or developers. But his firm tries to work with competitors to push the whole industry forward, he added.
But other major publishers seem to be waiting to see how the market plays out before revealing their plans for virtual reality.
We believe VR will be a major opportunity, but widespread adoption will take time, Electronic Arts said in an emailed statement.
For consumers eager to try virtual reality, however, that may mean waiting at least another development cycle to let the market fill out.
The more content out there across different platforms and price points, the more likely consumers are to try VR, and the more likely they are to become true believers in the medium, Rubin said.
Excerpt from:
Why is virtual reality taking so long to take off? | Northwest Herald - Northwest Herald
Because virtual reality is such a new field, developers are still experimenting with the medium. While many studios go with immersive shooters, Polyarc is working on a platformer with an unusual twist.
Players take control of Quill, a female mouse, who is looking for a family member. They can move her around with the DualShock 4s analog stick. They use the X button to jump and square to slash with her sword.
But Moss gets interesting when players realize they also control a second character The Reader. When they look down at themselves in a pond, players see that theyre spirit of some sort that only Quill can see. Staring down at their in-game reflection, The Reader look like No-Face from Spirited Away. Because the world is built to the scale of Quill, players is the size of a giant and they can interact with the environment.
As the spirit-like Reader, players can move statues and manipulate enemies. During Quills fight, players can use the L2 and R2 buttons to hold an enemy in place so that they can maneuver the mouse and stab them without getting her hurt. If she does take damage, players can heal Quill by holding her. Its supposed to build a symbiotic relationship between the player and mouse.
This is a clever project where the gameplay and story both support each other. You start as strangers and end as best friends, design director Danny Bulla said. We want to develop that relationship.
A core element to that is the puzzle solving. As Quill and The Reader explore the world through static set-piece scenes, they come across obstacles that both have to figure out. It starts off with a simple problem. Quill falls into a pit with crablike enemies attacking her. After beating them, players have to figure out how to get the mouse out. By touching the environment, they discover they can lift out a spiral staircase and players can move Quill around it and jump across.
The second puzzle is more complicated. It involves players grabbing an enemy and using it as a block to activate a pressure plate. That opens doors on a wedding cake-looking structure. It took me a while to figure out that I could shift the wedding cake around. After moving the enemy from one pressure plate to another, I could activate different doors and reach a platform on the far side of the room. Being able to lean over and see parts of the room in VR helped with the solving the puzzle as well.
The whole process reminded me of The Last Guardian. Two characters are inventively helping each other to overcome obstacles. If players are lost and cant figure out the puzzle, Quill acts as a hint system gesturing to different areas of the puzzle to help players along.
Despite the combat, Bulla describes the game more as a puzzle title. The battles and platforming are just ways to break up the exploration and other elements of the campaign.
The character design, animation and the presence players feel in VR all serve to make Quill come alive. The immersion amplifies the feeling that the mouse is real. The younger set will find Quill adorable, and yes, even older folks will fall in love with her as well.
I see a lot of my dog in Quill, said art director Chris Alderson. Theres something about connecting to the character and seeing it in the eyes and feeling like its there. It transport you into the world of Moss.'
The developers at Polyarc say Quill wont have a voice, but there will most likely be a narrator talking players through the adventure. Bulla also said Quill and The Reader will also meet other characters.
Moss has a charm that few VR games have. Players can expect to play it on PlayStation VR this holiday season.
Continued here:
'Moss' uses virtual reality to bring a mouse to life on PS4 - The Mercury News
Microsoft backed away from virtual reality on the Xbox One X at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last week. But it said that VR on the Windows PC is a good fit, and graphics chip maker Nvidia is all in favor of that idea.
VR has moved into its gap of disappointment, but there are plenty of believers who still say it will become a huge market over time. The market could reach$17.8 billion in VR hardware sales alone by 2020, according to SuperData Research.
E3 2017 had plenty of VR backers, from Bethesdas Doom and Fallout VR games to Sonys plentiful PlayStation VR titles, like Moss.More than 126 VR companies displayed products at E3 2017, compared to 54 a year earlier.
I spoke with Jason Paul, general manager for virtual reality product strategy at Nvidia, about VR at E3. He is one of the VR believers.Here is an edited transcript of our interview.
Above: Jason Paul of Nvidia
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
GamesBeat: Whats your task here at the show?
Jason Paul: Honestly, its mostly meetings with partners and developers this year. We have a couple of VR demos were showing at our booth. We have Arctic One from 4A Games, the guys who make Metro. Its a beautiful VR first-person shooter. The other one is Star Trek Bridge Crew, which released a couple of weeks ago, but theyre coming out with a patch here pretty soon that brings IBM Watson voice recognition to the game. Its a neat example of how AI and VR are coming together, using AI to recognize what people say and translating that into voice commands for the game.
GamesBeat: Microsoft explained why they didnt talk about VR at their E3 press conference. They said that theyre going to let the Windows side focus on VR. Theyre not emphasizing on Xbox at the moment. I asked if that carries over into the future, and they said yes. It sounds like theyre going to do that much with VR with Scorpio, at least in this generation, which is an interesting shift.
Paul: Were definitely excited to see the next generation of headsets come to the Windows platform. We have a lot of partners working on holographic. Were excited to see those headsets come out and bring some new features, like inside out tracking and higher resolution displays.
GamesBeat: It seems like with the platform changing, its more suitable for the PC.
Paul: The PC has always been the leading edge platform for new technologies. Thats true with VR as well. Being able to have a very high-performance computing platform that can drive the displays, as well as the openness of the platform for content innovation and different types of headsets and input devices. Its natural that VR would start on the PC.
Above: The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti .
Image Credit: Nvidia
GamesBeat: Does it seem like theres still as much excitement for VR right now, despite all this talk about being in a trough?
Paul: At Nvidia were very excited. Any major computing transition takes time. When we look at GPU computing and AI, weve been investing in that for 10 years. Self-driving cars, weve been investing in that for 10 years. Nvidia makes long-term investments. We dont expect major technology transitions to happen overnight. But were excited for all the momentum behind VR this year. If you look at the top publishers in the world, 10 of the top 10 have announced that theyre working on VR projects. You have great headsets already hitting the market and more headsets coming from LG and Microsofts partners. A lot is happening over the next 12 months in VR.
Our big focus at GTX was expanding our VRWorks SDK. We released a 360 video SDK, and also demod a live 360 4K stereo video stream, running on two Nvidia GPUs. We also released the VRWorks audio SDK.
GamesBeat: I think they said there are twice as many VR companies here at E3 compared to last year. 120 versus 54, something like that.
Paul: Over the last day or two weve seen some big titles for VR. Fallout 4 VR, all the Bethesda announcements. Some great high-end content coming to VR.
GamesBeat: What about the PC itself? It seems to be in a prime period right now.
Paul: You have a combination of factors. You have 4K monitors, HDR, VR, esports, and a ton of great triple-A games. All of those are converging to make the PC a great gaming platform right now.
Above: Nvidia GeForce GTX with Max-Q design.
Image Credit: Nvidia
GamesBeat: On the GeForce side you guys have more efficient laptops.
Paul: Right. At Computex we announced our Max-Q notebooks. The challenge with gaming notebooks has always been, you want the best performance, but you want it in a portable form factor. Our engineers obviously spent a lot of years examining this and finding out how to reach something optimal. With Max-Q we have some new approaches as far as how to design for that optimal point of performance in a thin, lightweight, quiet notebook. Weve introduced a number of those with our partners at Computex, and were showing them here as well MSI, Clevo, and Asus notebooks. If you compare the dimensionswe have a great slide that shows the size and weight of the prior generation compared to these. Its one-third the thickness and half the weight.
GamesBeat: It seems like that could be very appealing for the esports crowd. The performance meets their needs, and they tend to want something more portable.
Paul: Its compelling for esports. Its compelling for VR. You want to take VR around and show your friends. Its compelling for the development community. They want to be able to show off their content without lugging around big systems. Weve gotten a lot of great feedback so far.
Above: LawBreakers in action.
Image Credit: Boss Key Productions
GamesBeat: We saw some interesting announcements out of the PC gaming show yesterday. They talked about Age of Empires: Definitive Edition. LawBreakers has a launch date.
Paul: Weve been working with the LawBreakers guys on a feature we call ShadowPlay highlights. Basically, it gives the developers ways to tell GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay when to record video. If you get a kill streak or an amazing play in a game, the game will automatically record that for you, and after your sessions finished, itll show you your highlights. Thats one thing were looking forward to from those guys.
GamesBeat: How do you distinguish ShadowPlay in the market among all the different ways people can record and stream?
Paul: It comes down to GPU acceleration and quality. Because we have a built-in hardware encoder, we can capture and encode that video very quickly with very minimal performance impact on a game, and we can do it at very high quality, up to 4K at 60 frames per second. The other thing is that its just easy to use. Its built right into GeForce Experience, which many people already have on their PC. You hit alt-Z, pull up the interface, and capture.
Above: E3 2017
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
GamesBeat: Streaming and influencers is exploding. Its an interesting way for everybody to get the word out and receive information now.
Paul: One of the other things we use ShadowPlay for, were using it to do live streaming as well as video capture. You can use the exact same technology to live stream out to Twitch or YouTube. Earlier this year we announced streaming to Facebook Live as well. Its an interesting phenomenon. All sorts of game content sharing is happening now. Games are obviously an art form, but capturing content in games is becoming an art form too. Thats why were investing a lot in Ansel, which youre probably familiar with.
GamesBeat: Thats the picture capture technology?
Paul: Right, our in-game photography mode. Its been doing really well. We announced another couple of game integrations here at the show. Theres about 13 titles now with Ansel support. Were getting a lot of positive feedback from the gaming community. They can capture their favorite characters and environments in new and interesting ways.
GamesBeat: Any other subjects that are on your mind right now?
Paul: Were showing some of the G-Sync 4K HDR monitors at our booth here. You may have seen those before, but were showing off more with a few partners. And the rest of the booth this year is some of the top upcoming PC games. The core of our presence is 40 Destiny 2 PCs, showing it off in 4K on GeForce GTX. We also announced a bundle this morning with Destiny 2 and our GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti. Thats coming at the end of the month.
Read more here:
Nvidia keeps the faith for virtual reality on the PC - VentureBeat
HAYLEY TSUKAYAMA
Last updated08:53, June 19 2017
Tomohiro Ohsumi
TOKYO, JAPAN - MAY 12: A visitor wearing an HTC Corp. Vive VR headset plays the Salomon's Carpet VR virtual reality video game at the VR Park Tokyo on May 12, 2017 in Tokyo, Japan. The VR Park Tokyo, a theme park with 7 VR arcade games was opened last year in the Shibuya area of Tokyo, in part, as a response to the growing market for global virtual reality gaming. (Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)
At the Electronic Entertainment Expo, all seemed right for virtual reality. Players were waiting in snaking lines - some for up to seven hours - for a chance to step into fantasy worlds.
Crowds watched as players wearing VR headsets over their eyes reached out to pick up objects or shoot enemies that only they could see.
More than 125 VR exhibitors were at E3 this year, up 130 percent from last year. Yet adoption of VR among consumers hasn't really taken off in the three years since it captured buzz in the wider world. An estimated 6.3 million headsets have sold worldwide - indicating that, even among the world's 2.6 billion gamers, few have picked one up.
Experts point to several reasons behind the slow adoption - the technology can cause motion sickness and it is costly. It's also been hard getting people to try it, developers said. And showing virtual reality experiences on flat screens doesn't give people a good enough taste of how different the experience really is.
READ MORE: *Virtual reality sex is coming soon *Samsung Gear virtual reality headset ismindblowing *Review: Oculus Rift virtual reality headset *Hands-on: HTC's virtual reality headset
"How do you advertise a colour TV on black-and-white televisions? It requires people walking down to main street and seeing it for themselves," said Steve Bowler, president and co-founder at VR game developer CloudGate Studio.
What virtual reality needs, experts say, is a killer app.
And firms are pushing to find it, building up their own platforms and funding developers to bring games to their own headsets exclusively.
Reuters
Showing virtual reality experiences on flat screens doesn't give people a good enough taste of how different the experience really is.
But this kind of fragmentation has resulted in a confusing market and fewer games for players, thus giving them fewer reasons to spend their dollars on this young trend.
Mike Fischer, chairman and co-founder of CloudGate Studio, told a panel last year that platform fragmentation "keeps me up at night" after so many new companies jumped into the VR market - although he says that things have improved a little since then.
Devoting extra resources to creating games for different devices can be particularly difficult for smaller studios, whose creativity drives much of the virtual reality market.
In fact some developers, such as Jeff Pobst from Hidden Path Entertainment, say they rely on funding from platforms such as Oculus to get their games made at all.
These exclusive deals between developers and VR companies make it hard for consumers to know which expensive headset will get the game that they want to play - leading them to put off their decision, analysts said.
A monopoly, while simple for consumers, wouldn't be perfect either, experts said.
Competition is important, and different headsets' characteristics inspire different types of games. HTC's technology is designed for larger, room-sized experiences that often require gamers to stand. Sony's experiences are largely seated. Oculus provides a mix of the two.
Even big players in the virtual reality market acknowledge that locking any game to a single device could be problematic.
"We actually think that content in the VR space makes a lot of space for developers and publishers to look at the market from a platform agnostic standpoint," said Joel Breton, vice president of Global VR Content for HTC. While HTC helps developers create games for its own platform, Breton said it doesn't hold them to any sort of exclusivity deal.
More companies are also beginning to work on cross-platform solutions.
Developer tools such as Unity and Unreal are streamlining the process for developers who want to port their games between headsets.
Ubisoft, one of the world's largest game publishers, has committed to releasing virtual reality games that work the major three high-end headsets, allowing people who own different headsets to play with each other.
Sony spokeswoman Jennifer Hallett said the PlayStation VR has several titles that also work on other platforms, including Ubisoft's Star Trek: Bridge Crewand Eve: Valkyrie- which started as an Oculus-exclusive title.
The VR companies are also trying to do more to work together. Jason Rubin, vice president of content at Oculus, said that he doesn't think that there is harmful fragmentation in the market for consumers or developers. But his firm tries to work with competitors to push the whole industry forward, he added.
But other major publishers seem to be waiting to see how the market plays out before revealing their plans for virtual reality.
"We believe VR will be a major opportunity, but widespread adoption will take time," said Electronic Arts in a statement.
For consumers eager to try virtual reality, however, that may mean waiting at least another development cycle to let the market fill out.
"The more content out there across different platforms and price points, the more likely consumers are to try VR, and the more likely they are to become true believers in the medium," Rubin said.
-The Washington Post
More:
Why is virtual reality taking so long to take off? - Stuff.co.nz
The NFL has become a proponent of training in virtual realityeverybody from the Dallas Cowboys, who began using the technology in 2015, to Arizona Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer has embraced the idea of practicing in this 3D space. So have the NBAs Washington Wizards, the NHLs Chicago Blackhawks, and, most recently, Walmartassociates.
Now STRIVRthe self-proclaimed world leader in training athletes by using virtual realityis expanding to European soccer, and the German Football Association (DFB) is the first to take a giant step into this brave new world.
Considering Germany is the defending World Cup champion, and has a reputation for forward thinkingwhen it comes to using technology to better the national team, it seems like the perfect match.
Were new to virtual reality. Its still a white space when it comes to soccer, but we want to be the first mover, Nicolas Jungkind, the head of technology lab with DFB, told the Daily Dot. On the academy side, our biggest focus for 2017 and going into 2018 is cognition. Virtual reality hits the sweet spot of what were trying to achieve.
The DFB is beginning with a specific purpose. As Jungkind said, the DFB wants to start small and think big. He understands there will be plenty of trial and error, because when it comes to using VR technology, American football is vastly different than soccer.
Thats because each play on the football field starts from a stop. One team sets up on one side of the line of scrimmage. The opponent lines up on the other. Then, the ball is snapped, and the play begins. That kind of static starting and stopping makes it easier to train a quarterback on VR, because theres a clear beginning and end point.
But soccer is continuously moving, making it a completely different experience and one thats potentially harder to capture with VR.
Its very fluid, said Derek Belch, the CEO and co-founder of STRIVR. Theres a lot of space between people. There are a lot of challenges associated with that. Its about reaction time. Its about cognition. Right now, they know there are eight different things a center midfielder can see over a year. How do we put that into VR? How do we make that second nature?
For now, the DFB is using VR to think about how goalkeepers can improve their play, particularly when it comes to set pieces. Think of it this way: A goalie can use VR to analyze how an opponent will take a penalty kick. How many steps does the player take from his starting point to when he actually strikes the ball? How fluid is his approach? Does he start and stop, or does he make his attempt in one motion? Does he open his body before he makes contact? Does he show a tell before kicking the ball in one direction or the other?
Its also about visualization and repetition. A player whos taking a free kick can watch himself in VR shoot the ball around the defensive wall and under the crossbar for an amazing goal time after time. He can bend it like Beckham perfectly on every single attempt. To the German national team, theres real value in that.
What are those isolated decision-making moments? Belch said. It comes down to a fraction of a second. What are the things we can put into VR at various points to help a player make the best decision when it shows up in the game so that they just react and so that theres no thinking involved?
But not unlike some of the barriers STRIVR ran into when it was pitching NFL teams on why they should use VR, there is a bit of an old-school mentality that surrounds soccer that might sour on this kind of new technology.
We have those old-school coaches in soccer, no question, Jungkind said. But now that were experiencing a lot of younger coaches making their way to the highest level, were already seeing a shift toward being open to technology and doing things differently. We want to be that first mover in these kinds of strategic areas. That is our ambition.
Not just with the German national team that competes in international tournaments and will look to defend its World Cup title next yearin Russia. The DFB also wants to continuously improve the club teams in the Bundesliga, the German pro league thats one of the best circuits in the world.
For now, though, the DFB isnt focused so much on the senior national team or the top squads in Bundesliga. Instead, its starting with the national youth teams, and the DFB recently introduced the idea of VR training when the under-21 national team and the senior national team met up in Frankfurt.
[The players] loved it; they absolutely did, Jungkind said. There are so many positive things. All they want to do is become better. If they realize we make an effort to make them betterthat were thinking outside the boxtheyll appreciate that. Twenty years ago, youd be sitting in a room for two hours and watching 2D film.
Compare that passive experience to what Jungkind and Belch are striving for in soccera fully immersive, 360-degree VRexperience that allows you to see an opponents tendencies from every angle possible while envisioning yourself succeeding at the highest level.
We are completely disrupting the way organizations go about training, Belch said, Its just really exciting.
See more here:
The German national team will use VR to train, and it could change soccer - The Daily Dot
Muhammad Hussain plays a virtual reality rock-climbing game in the Virtual Reality Lab, part of the iSchool at the University of Washington (Photo courtesy Vriti Wadhwa).
For people afraid of heights, leaning over a wall when rock climbing could cause feelings of terror and nausea. Being attached to ropes when climbing is not always reassuring for an acrophobe.
But perhaps experiencing similar conditions in virtual reality with two feet on the ground could help people overcome those fears.
Thats the theory of six University of Washington students, who have developed a virtual reality (VR) rock climbing game to study how users experience the fear of heights. The game has the potential to help researchers analyze how virtual reality can possibly find solutions for patients with other phobias.
This game was part of our final project for our immersive environments class at UW, said lead storyteller and designer Sanjana Galgalikar. We wanted to create something that was a challenge but also feasible as a project within the three-week span that we had to work on it.
To create the game, the team used a game-making software called Unity. Unity is a game-making application that allows for the creation of different plug-ins and functions such as graphics, sounds, and animations. Unlike other game creators, Unity makes it easy to write codes for characters, object behavior, and environment without complicated and multi-layered processes. The application is considered more progressive as it allows for games to be published on multiple platforms, whether for consoles, desktops, or mobile.
The team went through a step-by-step process to create a user flow outline and storyline for the rock climbing game, plan out the different game levels, and then apply it to the Unity software. They then self-coded the logistics of the game through C#, a multi-purpose programming language, to bring in the different elements altogether.
The element of virtual reality technology allows for a computer-generated environment that consists of 3D images, sound experiences, and sensory stimuli for users.
Most of the participants said it was really immersive, in the sense that they were actually feeling like they were climbing a mountain, said project developer and video producer Jeewon Ha.
The game incorporates three levels of rock climbing, increasing in difficulty. The first level is a simple procedure of climbing from one block to another without being stuck in one place. The second level includes different elevations and mountains to climb through, making it easier for the user to fall down. The third level involves challenging swinging techniques needed to reach to the top of the climbing wall.
The gap between level two and three was so big that barely anyone passed through level three, said Ha.
The general control system of the game was an important element needed to create a realistic setting. The interaction between the controllers and content on the screen needed to be well-coordinated.
I created the general controls in the game, said game designer Muhammad Hussain. The trigger on the handle allows you to pick up an object, or hold yourself onto the rocks of the wall.
The game even includes a teleportation feature, which allows the user to fly to different rock climbing walls in the area, simply by moving the arms in a swinging-like momentum. Once a user is no longer able to grab onto the rocks, they feel the sensation of falling down, which ends the game.
Testing out features with users has allowed the team to analyze reactions to the intense environment they created. Several participants felt frightened when they looked down from a high elevation or reacted audibly when falling down.
In our user testing, we tried to reduce as many negative user experiences as possible, Galgalikar said. We added a layer of vignette (darkening the corners of a visual element) to ease the side effects of falling down.
The team experimented with a virtual element called six degrees of freedom, which refers to stimulated capability given to the body to move in different directions. This makes the experience more realistic for users.
Virtual reality has been used in phobia-related research before. Dr. Hunter Hoffman, Director of the Virtual Reality Research Center at the Human Photonics Lab at the University of Washington has done extensive research on how virtual reality can treat pain and phobia.
Most people avoid the thing theyre afraid of, Hoffman said. The nice thing about virtual reality is that people are more willing to go closer to their fears.
In his research, Hoffman used virtual reality to study people with arachnophobia, fear of spiders. His work allowed him to see how the virtual world could help people confront their fears.
The ability to customize the experience for each individual patient is what makes the process a lot more effective, Hoffman said. In theory, virtual reality makes it a lot easier to change the program accordingly.
Hoffman isnt the only scientist studying VR as a treatment for phobias. Virtually Better is a company that sells virtual reality-related research to psychologists for further analysis or use in studies.
Therapists use experiences like this to help with phobia of heights, water, and other exposure therapies, Hussain said. When you think of immersive experiences, you think of virtual reality. It kind of speaks for itself.
The team of students has already presented their work at the AT&T VR Hackathon in Bellevue,Wash. and now hopes to take their game to even more competitions and hackathons down the line.
Read more from the original source:
Students create game to help acrophobes confront their fear of heights in virtual reality - GeekWire
I hold in my hands what looks and feels like a wand from a Harry Potter film. But this isnt one of the cheap replicas you can buy in a souvenir shop. It was 3D-printed right here, in the high-tech workshop where Im standing. And once I put on a HoloLens headset, its incredibly effective against the hordes of advancing dementors.
The gameand the wandwere developed by Pat Starace, director of the digital fabrication course at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida. Over a 20-year career, Starace has produced a huge range of models, special effects, and animations for motion pictures and television, including the iconic 1979 title sequence from 60 Minutes. At Full Sail, he teaches students the rapid prototyping techniques needed to convert 3-D drawings into objects like magic wands, while also working on his own projects (like an animatronic toucan and a 3D-printed prosthetic hand modeled after Iron Mans glove).
The Dementor game was built to explore switching between augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) within the same experience: Players can either blast Dementors rushing at them from all sides of their living room, or be transported to what looks like a room at Hogwarts. In the industry, this type of game is still considered blue-sky thinkingexperiences tend to be segmented into AR or VRbut students vying for Full Sails Simulation and Visualization bachelor degree, launched in 2016, are encouraged to think big. Already, this blended approach is being embraced by industry players like Microsoft.
We talk about VR and AR as their own separate industries, but they are in fact simply screens into a virtual world, says Full Sail program director Rob Catto. The difference is that the screens actually put you into that world. VR is about much more than just putting on a headset; its about all of your senses.
As with Hogwarts wizards, training AR/VR wizards is a complicated business. Full Sails workshop is packed with 3D printers, laser cutters, and milling machines. Students learn everything from basic carpentry and spray-painting to how to make their own circuit boards. They study artificial intelligence, physics, data modeling, and human-computer interaction, and learn a diverse range of technical skills that includes using engines like Unity and Unreal, and coding in C Sharp and C++. The program is not for the faint of heart, and more suited to your average Hermione than your average Ron.
Early on, students are given a project that requires them to use skills like laser-cutting and circuit-board construction. They then go on to assemble and program devices like one Catto shows me in the Full Sail lab. Called a Stewart Platform, its a miniature version of what most theme park rides sit on top of, except this one fits in the palm of my hand. Its engrossing to watch the platform perform a wide range of dynamic movementsheaving, surging, swaying, rolling, hitching, and droppingespecially when those movements are synced to a characters on-screen movements.
When Full Sail student Carolyn Smith was tasked with building a Stewart Platform, she too turned to J. K. Rowling for inspiration. Smith designed her own version of Quidditchsort of like football, if football were played on flying broomstickscomplete with a Harry Potter figurine riding a broom. That got Smith thinking bigger: Why not make a broom you could actually ride while experiencing Quidditch in immersive VR?
Smith started by crafting a life-size Nimbus 2000a high-end broom model featured in the booksusing tools and materials from the Full Sail lab. She also found resources online: Being a keen cosplayer meant Smith was familiar with a community that enjoyed building realistic props, and various tutors offered help and advice. (One of them even lent her his personal power chisel.) After a lot of hard graftshe stayed up until 2am spray-painting and hand-layering broom bristles the model came together, and Smith turned her attention to making it fly.
Two instructors helped me with wiring it and doing thing like fitting in an accelerometer and connecting it to an Arduino computer, Smith says. Two buttons are placed just below the accelerometer [to accelerate and to grab the snitch, if youre close enough], which also connect to the Arduino, making complex adjustments that link the movements of the platform to those of the character generated on the screen.
A huge Harry Potter fan, Smith plans to visit Universal Studios Harry Potter ride to see how it compares to her efforts, and its not unlikely that shell stay in Orlando after graduation: The city has more than 100 companies working in the simulation sector, and the VR boom is continuing to gain momentum. But for now, Smiths only regret is how the project deadline prevented her from researching all the proper Quidditch lore. I wanted to try to make the game as accurate as possible, she says, but I ran out of time. Looking at what shes managed to build, I cant help but feel that Rowling herself might let a few inaccuracies slide.
See the rest here:
A Florida university is making Quidditch a (virtual) reality - Quartz
LOS ANGELES At the Electronic Entertainment Expo, all seemed right for virtual reality. Players were waiting in snaking lines some for up to seven hours for a chance to step into fantasy worlds. Crowds watched as players wearing VR headsets over their eyes reached out to pick up objects or shoot enemies that only they could see.
More than 125 VR exhibitors were at E3 this year, up 130 percent from last year. Yet adoption of VR among consumers hasnt really taken off in the three years since it captured buzz in the wider world. An estimated 6.3 million headsets have sold worldwide indicating that, even among the worlds 2.6 billion gamers, few have picked one up.
Experts point to several reasons behind the slow adoption the technology can cause motion sickness and it is costly. Its also been hard getting people to try it, developers said. And showing virtual reality experiences on flat screens doesnt give people a good enough taste of how different the experience really is.
How do you advertise a color TV on black-and-white televisions? It requires people walking down to main street and seeing it for themselves, said Steve Bowler, president and co-founder at VR game developer CloudGate Studio.
What virtual reality needs, experts say, is a killer app. And firms are pushing to find it, building up their own platforms and funding developers to bring games to their own headsets exclusively. But this kind of fragmentation has resulted in a confusing market and fewer games for players, thus giving them fewer reasons to spend their dollars on this young trend.
Mike Fischer, chairman and co-founder of VR game developer CloudGate Studio, told a panel last year that platform fragmentation keeps me up at night after so many new companies jumped into the VR market although he says that things have improved a little since then.
Devoting extra resources to creating games for different devices can be particularly difficult for smaller studios, whose creativity drive much of the virtual reality market. In fact some developers, such as Jeff Pobst from Hidden Path Entertainment, say they rely on funding from platforms such as Oculus to get their games made at all.
These exclusive deals between developers and VR companies make it hard for consumers to know which expensive headset will get the game that they want to play leading them to put off their decision, analysts said.
A monopoly, while simple for consumers, wouldnt be perfect either, experts said. Competition is important, and different headsets characteristics inspire different types of games. HTCs technology is designed for larger, room-sized experiences that often require gamers to stand. Sonys experiences are largely seated. Oculus provides a mix of the two.
Even big players in the virtual reality market acknowledge that locking any game to a single device could be problematic.
We actually think that content in the VR space makes a lot of space for developers and publishers to look at the market from a platform agnostic standpoint, said Joel Breton, vice president of Global VR Content for HTC. While HTC helps developers create games for its own platform, Breton said it doesnt hold them to any sort of exclusivity deal.
More companies are also beginning to work on cross-platform solutions.
Developer tools such as Unity and Unreal are streamlining the process for developers who want to port their games between headsets. Ubisoft, one of the worlds largest game publishers, has committed to releasing virtual reality games that work the major three high-end headsets, allowing people who own different headsets to play with each other. Sony spokeswoman Jennifer Hallett said the PlayStation VR has several titles that also work on other platforms, including Ubisofts Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Eve: Valkyrie which started as an Oculus-exclusive title.
The VR companies are also trying to do more to work together. Jason Rubin, vice president of content at Oculus, said in an email interview that he doesnt think that there is harmful fragmentation in the market for consumers or developers. But his firm tries to work with competitors to push the whole industry forward, he added.
But other major publishers seem to be waiting to see how the market plays out before revealing their plans for virtual reality.
We believe VR will be a major opportunity, but widespread adoption will take time, said Electronic Arts in an emailed statement.
For consumers eager to try virtual reality, however, that may mean waiting at least another development cycle to let the market fill out.
The more content out there across different platforms and price points, the more likely consumers are to try VR, and the more likely they are to become true believers in the medium, Rubinsaid.
Correction: A previous version of this story misattributed the last quote from Jason Rubin. This version has been corrected.
Go here to read the rest:
Why is virtual reality taking so long to take off? - The Washington Post - Washington Post
3-D Wall of Virtual Reality | Inside Science Inside Science News Service (Inside Science) -- In the world of virtual reality, putting on a pair of goggles transports users to anywhere on earth and beyond, all without leaving home. |
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3-D Wall of Virtual Reality | Inside Science - Inside Science News Service
SeaWorld Orlando didnt build a new roller coaster this year, but it felt like it to Alex Moreno.
Ive been on Kraken tons and tons of times, and that didnt feel like Kraken, he said Friday. Its better much better.
Moreno and his friend Chloe Spencer of Orlando were among the first to ride the rebooted coaster rechristened Kraken Unleashed with its new virtual-reality component in place.
Riders have the option of wearing a headset that presents a movie to make it seem as if theyre going underwater and encountering sea life, both real and mythological. In reality, theyre on the same rail thats been in place since the ride opened 17 years ago.
When you first go into the water its so crazy, Moreno said.
Friday also marked the debut of SeaWorlds Spot Saver system, which allows visitors in the park to reserve ride times on the new coaster. A Spot Saver kiosk was set up near the Kraken Unleashed entrance, and the service could also be accessed by mobile devices at spotsaver.com.
By noon, all reservation slots had been taken. The park closes at 7 p.m.
Spot Saver was established, in part, because the turnaround time between rides has increased. Theres a learning curve for folks donning the virtual-reality headsets for the first time, plus the equipment is cleaned between each run.
Rudi Stern, who lives near Munich, Germany, said he liked the ride but was frustrated by the wait time in the station.
It was a great ride, but it all took too long, he said. When we put on the glasses and then the riding time and the waiting time and the time when you are sitting, it was about 7 minutes, which is very long.
But, once they got rolling, he said the virtual-reality aspect was a winner and superior to stationary simulators.
Its not like the virtual reality where you only sit, Stern said.
The rides film is synchronized with the movement of the coaster, which still goes 65 mph and turns upside-down seven times, said Brian Morrow, vice president of theme-park experience design.
We take advantage of the real inversions, but sometimes we disguise them as other maneuvers, which makes it really unusual, he said. So you cant count the seven inversions anymore.
All the in-your-face movement didnt make Regina Johnston queasy, she said. She usually avoids coasters but wanted to check out the VR on Kraken, she said.
I think it makes it easier, said Johnston, who lives near Dallas. When Im on a regular coaster, I want to shut my eyes or hold my breath. This one, I could keep my eyes open.
dbevil@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5477
Here is the original post:
Virtual reality run: SeaWorld unleashes Kraken roller-coaster revamp today - Orlando Sentinel (blog)
When I think of virtual reality, I think of playing games or being immersed in a 360 degree video experience where the action takes place all around me. But when Kim Bullock and Andrea Stevenson Won talk about VR, they have something else in mind helping patients cope with pain. Bullock, a psychiatrist, is the founder and director of Stanfords Neurobehavioral and Virtual Reality clinics and laboratories. Won directs Stanfords Virtual Embodiment Lab.
I had a chance to speak with both researchers during a recent visit to Stanfords Virtual Reality-Immersive Technology Clinic, where I learned about some proven techniques and promising research when it comes to using VR for pain management. You can listen to the entire interview at larrysworld.com/vrpain.
Bullock and Won are working on ways to use VR to help people with psychosomatic pain remap the way they visualize those parts of their body where they experience the pain so thats its less prevalent and less debilitating.
The technology builds on what is known as mirror therapy where doctors traditionally used a mirror to create what Psysiopedia refers to as a reflective illusion of an affected limb in order to trick the brain into thinking movement has occurred without pain. But VR is much more powerful than a mirror because it allows the patient to visualize more than just the swapping out of, say, a left foot for a right foot.
If I move my right hand in real life and I cant move my left hand in real life, I can transform the movement of my right hand so that I see both my left hand and right hand moving freely and naturally, said Bullock. But with virtual reality you can push it even further so you can move your hand in real life and see your foot move in virtual reality, she added.
The Stanford researchers are focusing on psychosomatic pain, but virtual reality has already been shown to distract patients from physical pain, such as when cleaning burn wounds to prevent infection.
Our interdisciplinary team is putting burn patients (especially children and teenagers) into VR during wound care and physical therapy, wrote University of Washington cognitive psychology research scientist Hunter Hoffman. In preliminary research Hoffman and colleagues found huge drops in how much pain the patients experience during their short visit to virtual reality, that exceeded the pain relief from morphine according to research summarized on the website of the Human Photonics Laboratorys website, vrpain.com.
During our interview at Stanford, Bullock described the VR effect as going well beyond distraction.
Instead of just having your head and eye movements tracked, your whole body is tracked and now you can create the illusion that your inside another body, youre inhabiting an avatar, Bullock said.
Its about tricking what Bullock describes as our reptilian brain, which reacts to injuries through pain as a mechanism to discourage movement of an arm or a limb.
The brain says we better turn up the pain, so well have time to recover and not have any movement, so were programmed that movement and pain are intimately connected and they feed on each other, Bullock said. With VR ,we can stop the vicious cycle of immobility and pain, and give the body the illusion of movement.
Im not a medical doctor and I dont play one on TV or even on the web, but I have experienced the power of persuasion when it comes to managing physical symptoms. A couple of years ago I suffered an intestinal blockage and, after I posted about it on Facebook, a friend of mine, Dr. Danielle Rosenman, advised me to imagine a river flowing freely through my intestines. Although my results are anecdotal, the technique has been effective. On her professional website, Rosenman writes that she uses neuroplasticity, imagery, meditation, psychotherapy, and other techniques in her medical counseling practice.
Ive used distraction as a way of dealing with occasional discomfort, pain and anxiety by watching TV, playing games or even working at my computer, literally taking my mind off what was bothering me, and that turns out to be a well documented remedy. But when you add in the element of virtual reality, youre going way beyond distraction because of the transformative impact it can have on the way youre experiencing the world.
You dont need to feel pain to understand VRs emotional impact. Try donning a VR headset and running an application that has you standing on the ledge of a building. When I experienced this at the Facebook headquarters when they were about to launch their Oculus Rift VR headset, I found myself stepping back to avoid falling over. The intellectual part of my brain knew that I was safe on the ground floor but the emotional part of my brain was convinced that I would fall to my death if I took a step forward. That was actually anxiety inducing, so its pretty easy for me to imagine turning the tables and using VR as a way of reducing anxiety or even pain.
Dr. Bullock is a psychiatrist, not a pain specialist, and only sees patients dealing with psychosomatic disease.
She is bullish on augmented reality, which which allows you to superimpose computer generated images over your real world visual experience. She said they have a program for spider phobia that allows you to experience virtual spiders in your actual environment. She said that she looks forward to enabling patients to experience the real world plus the virtual world, without stumbling into things.
I too am excited about doctors using virtual reality to help us cope and perhaps recover from medical and psychological illnesses. If only we could figure out a way to virtualize the way we pay for medical care.
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