March 10, 2017 12:58 PM

(credit: Visit Philadelphia)

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Fans of Philadelphia and potential visitors can now see the city in a new way.

Visit Philadelphia is introducing an immersive tour of the City of Brotherly Love on a virtual reality headset.

Visitors will be able to explore 25 panoramic, 360-degree photos; watch a three-minute, 360-degree video; and view the video in virtual reality.

Every day we give online visitors compelling reasons to plan a trip to Philadelphia, and we believe this new view of the city will give the 20 million people who use visitphilly.com and uwishunu.com each year even more reasons to visit and do more while theyre here, said Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of Visit Philadelphia.

Viewable on desktop, smartphone or tablet, the VR experience shines a light on over two dozen sites and attractions across the city.

Visit Philadelphia says highlights include the Rocky Steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Franklin Institutes rotunda, featuring the 20-foot Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.

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Potential Visitors Can Experience Philadelphia In Virtual Reality ... - CBS Philly

Adam Tischler and Adam Wartel took turns taking in a virtual reality experience at Westerville South High School Thursday afternoon.

"It's a headset and it has a screen inside of it and you put it on and you look around and you can see things," Tischler said.

The students are playing with the school's Virtual Reality system.

"Right before thanksgiving [a teacher] did a demo for our academic boosters," said Debbie King, library specialist for Westerville South. "They were so impressed that they wrote a check right then, sent him to my center and he bought this for us."

The students are able to visit any place throughout the world thanks to Google Earth. The device also offered various programs in biology and art.

"Because it's 3D you are actually able to see it like you do in person," said King. "So, perhaps we are not able to go to the cadaver lab at OSU to actually see a real autopsy. But now, the kids can kind of get their hands on a body."

Virtual reality allows students to work on projects they may be exposed to on the college level.

"I'm actually going to be majoring in computer science," said Tischler. "I get the opportunity to see it first hand. I get to work with it. I get to use it."

Wartel said the program has broadened his perspective about education.

"There's definitely more! And there's always going to be more," he said.

Westerville City School officials said they hope more schools in the district are exposed to similar technology.

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Virtual reality sends Westerville students across the world - 10TV

Hollywood visual effects firm Magnopus made sure the virtual ISS is as close to reality as possible by basing its design on NASA models and astronaut descriptions. It also got some help recreating the spacecraft's details from NASA Johnson Space Center's VR Laboratory. Mission:ISS is completely free and is now available from the Oculus Store. But since very few people have a Rift, Oculus has also launched a pilot program in the US that gives high school students the chance to try the experience for themselves.

In addition to announcing Mission:ISS, the company has also revealed that it's sending a Rift headset to the actual space station through the French Space Agency. European astronaut Thomas Pesquet will use it to test the effects of zero G on our spatial awareness and balance. Its results will help us understand how our body could respond to future long-term missions that will take humans farther than LEO and the moon.

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Visit the ISS in virtual reality with an Oculus Rift - Engadget

How do you think virtual reality will improve over the next few years? Youre probably hoping for better ways to see, hear and touch virtual worlds. Michael Abrash, chief scientist at Oculus, seems to agree: when he outlined his predictions for the next five years of VR last October, he focused on these three senses.

But one sense Abrash didnt mention was smell. Using your nose in VR might sound slightly unnecessary, superfluous even an optional extra once visuals, audio and haptics have been perfected.

Yet smell is central to how we perceive and remember the world, and without it VR will arguably always be a bloodless imitation of reality. Anosmics, as those without a sense of smell are called, have been found to suffer from a reduced quality of life and even severe depression. Describing the misery of losing her sense of smell, the documentary maker Elizabeth Zierah explained how she felt dissociated from the world around her. It was as though I were watching a movie of my own life, she wrote, and found anosmia far more traumatic than the effects of a stroke that had left her with a limp.

Smell is also the only sense directly linked to the amygdala, part of the brain closely involved in our feelings, meaning that scents can be particularly evocative of powerful emotional memories. Many of us have had the sensation of catching a whiff of something that takes us back to a particular time, place, and emotional state something impossible in current VR.

Benson Munyan III, who researches smell and VR at the University of Central Florida, recalls driving out to his grandmas house as a child. And as soon as we arrived we would see rose hedges that were on her driveway. So getting out the car the first thing we would smell was rose. That has stuck with me until today.

Munyan is one of a handful of scientists finding out how we can smell our way around VR. Having served with the US military in Iraq, Kenya and Djibouti, one of his key research interests is getting former soldiers to don VR headsets so they can face up to, and overcome, their traumatic memories. Smell has been used in VR PTSD treatment previously, he explains, but until now the difference it makes to immersion has not been quantified.

Along with colleagues, he created a VR experience where you have to search a creepy abandoned carnival at night for your keys. In the same room, they set up a Scent Palette, a $4,000, shoebox-sized silver box that fires out certain smells at the right moment during the experience so smoke when a ride crashes and bursts into flame; garbage from an overturned bin; and the more pleasant odors of cotton candy and popcorn.

They found that piping in smells gave participants a greater sense of presence as they made their way around the spooky carnival, while removing odors caused their sense of being there to plummet.

But there is a problem: pump too many different smells into a room for too long, and you end up with a very weird mixture of pongs. After lengthy sessions, that room can smell of smoke, or garbage, or diesel fuel or whatever the combination is, Munyan says.

Not only might this confuse your nose, but a consumer version would mightily annoy anyone who wants to use the living room after you without it smelling of candyfloss and garbage. Odors also need to be synchronized with your VR experience, but it takes time for a smell to reach you from a box in the corner of the room. By the time you smell smoke, you may have already moved away from a fire in the virtual world.

Some companies are already working on these problems. Olorama, a Valencia-based company, produces kits(cost: $1,500) that they say quickly deliver up to ten smells toward headset-wearing users. Their scents include pastry shop, mojito, anchovies and wet ground (gunpowder, blood and burning rubber are coming soon). They say that their aromas are based on natural extracts, suggesting they dissipate more rapidly that standard chemical-based scents.

Another solution might be to have a smell machine incorporated into a VR a headset, meaning odors reach your nose almost immediately and dont stink out the entire room. Such an idea has already been prototyped: the FeelReal mask, launched on Kickstarter in 2015, promised not only to release smells but also vibrate and blast your face with hot or cold air and mist.

The mask was not a success, however, and joined an already long list of failed products like Smell-o-Vision and the iSmell. The Verge described wearing a FeelReal mask as like putting an air freshener in a new car on a hot day. Then imagine burying your face in one of the cars plastic seats. Then imagine the cars driver is navigating some tight curves very quickly. It failed to raise even half of its $50,000 Kickstarter target.

But other contraptions are in the works. A Japanese lab last year came up with a prototype smell machine small enough to hook over an Oculus Rift and sit just below the nose (see video), leaving the lower half of your face uncovered. Rather than using a fan, it atomises smelly liquids by blasting them with acoustic waves so that they waft upward into your nostrils. The lab says that because this does away with tubes, the machine doesnt continue to smell when its not supposed to one of the problems that has plagued previous devices.

One crucial feature of this device is that it can vaporize several liquids at the same time, in different concentrations, and so could potentially combine different smells to make others. The holy grail of VR smell research is a basic palette of smell components that could be mixed to make thousands of other odors, rather like a headset screen can create any color from a few basic ones. But this will be a considerable scientific challenge.

Takamichi Nakamoto, head of the lab at the Tokyo Institute of Technology which created the device, says a huge amount of data are required to establish odor components [of different smells]. We can collect them to some degree but it is not so easy.

Consciousness-altering smells, for example the smell of fear present in the sweat of someone very afraid or scared, are complex mixtures and no-one knows the composition and they will not be synthetically recreated in a hurry, says Tim Jacob, a smell expert at Cardiff University. Smell is not like vision where from a primary color palette you can mix all colors.

So there are a list of daunting technological challenges to solve before we can incorporate smell fully into VR. But the psychological hurdles may be even higher, because of the idiosyncratic way we all experience smell.

This is well illustrated by another experiment, published last October, where participants were told to hunt for a murderers knife in a VR house. Those who were exposed to the unpleasant smell of urine as they entered the virtual kitchen rated the experience as more presence-inducing providing further evidence that smell helps us feel VR is more believable.

But participants often misidentified the urine smell as something else entirely. Some thought it was fish, others garbage, the bad breath of the killer, or the body of the victim, explains Oliver Baus, a researcher at the University of Quebec. Some even thought it was a pleasant smell because it evoked happy memories.

We had one participant who said when they were young, they drove to school past a farm, and thats what it smelled like, he says.

In other words, our reaction to a particular smell is highly dependent on the context, or our previous experiences. Although some cultural consistency in response to certain odors can be assumed to some degree, because the associations we each have acquired to odors is idiosyncratic, it cannot be assumed on the individual level and therefore cannot be used in a predictive fashion, says Rachel Herz, adjunct professor at Brown University and author of The Scent of Desire, which explores smell.

If VR developers want to ever include smell in a game, says Baus, they are therefore going to have to give a lot of visual cues to tell players exactly what they are smelling. The visual is dominant, he says.

For now, smell in VR is seen as something of a bizarre joke, like the moldy timber and blood scented candle you can light while playing Resident Evil 7. But without using this overlooked sense, VR may never be able to pack the emotional, visceral punch of our real lives. For that reason, incorporating smell may become one of the biggest tasks facing the industry over the coming decades.

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Why Smells Are So Difficult To Simulate For Virtual Reality - UploadVR

Virtual reality and the arts arent typically two subjects that are known for going hand in hand. However, on March 2, the Dancz Center for New Music at the University of Georgias Hugh Hodgson School of Music served as an open forum for discussion about all things extended reality.

Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) hosted the event, which included a panel discussion between three professors at the university as well as a showcase of the some of the latest virtual reality technologies.

The panel featured Dr. Grace Ahn, an assistant advertising professor who conducts research in the universitys Virtual Environments Lab.

Ahn brought a unique perspective on the implications of virtual reality as much of her research focus is on how corporations might use virtual reality for advertising as well as how the medium may have an effect on human empathy, possibly allowing users to experience how it might feel to be in the shoes of someone like a Syrian refugee.

Also present was professor of geodesign Brian Orland. Orland, a landscape architect, discussed how he uses virtual reality in his research to create and study virtual forest environments.

Dr. Kyle Johnsen, an associate professor of engineering, rounded out the panel, representing the technological side of virtual reality research.

Together, the three panelists discussed their personal experiences with the emerging medium of virtual reality.

When asked how she first got into studying virtual reality, Dr. Ahn recalled with laughter being asked during a discussion early in her career, as a woman, why are you studying virtual reality?

My ovaries didnt make that decision, Ahn said.

She said that she saw a lot of potential in virtual reality at a time when many were skeptical about its usefulness due to its high cost and low quality.

Ahn discussed the potential issues posed by virtual reality, such as users having memories of an experience that never actually happened in real life.

Interactive experiences can change the way you experience things in the real world, Ahn said.

Orland discussed how he uses virtual reality to connect overarching views of landscape planning with the ground view in order to gain a more complete understanding of various projects.

The discussion also touched on whether virtual reality would be beneficial for education, an idea the panelists doubted due to the effects of sensory overload.

Johnsen shared his view that virtual reality will be more valuable to instructors, rather than students, to discover more effective teaching methods.

The panelists promoted increased discussions and unity among the various departments at UGA.

They discussed the benefits of teamwork between different departments and taking an interdisciplinary approach to researching virtual reality, a sentiment that was emboldened by the fact that the technological discussion took place in the school of music.

After the discussion, the audience was invited to try out different virtual reality set ups.

Participants tried out the HTC Vive by putting on a headset and using two controllers to play catch with a virtual dog.

Onlookers watched what the users experienced on a nearby computer screen. The users, totally entranced by the virtual world, had no clue what they looked like or where they were standing relative to the onlookers, causing many near collisions and quite a few laughs.

Users were also able to put on the Oculus Rift headset and take an immersive, virtual look at various sites around Washington, D.C. The participants took in 360-degree views of sharp images of the district as if they were actually there.

The panelists reflected on many issues and moral questions presented by virtual reality that havent been answered yet. However, if the delight of participants at Thursdays panel is any indication, the excitement and interest in virtual reality only continues to grow.

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Ideas for Creative Exploration hosts virtual reality panel - Red and Black

Knotts Berry Farm is getting in on the latest theme park craze: putting visitors in a virtual world created primarily by software engineers instead of carpenters and welders.

The new VR Showdown in Ghost Town, which opens next month at the Buena Park theme park, will put virtual reality headsets on up to 16 visitors at a time, letting them shoot futuristic blasters at robot creatures in a battle to save the historic ghost town.

Many new theme park attractions in Southern California rely on 3-D technology and motion simulating seats, including the new Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and Despicable Me: Minions Mayhem rides at Universal Studios Hollywood. (The park ditched the Harry Potter 3-D but said it wasnt because riders complained about nausea.)

But smaller regional parks are turning to virtual reality headsets to immerse visitors in a new world without the expense of building sets, erecting towers and installing hydraulic powered seats.

Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia began last year to strap virtual reality headsets to riders of its Revolution roller coaster to give them the sensation of flying through space as they shoot at alien aircraft. Similar virtual reality elements were added to roller coasters at nine Six Flags parks across the country.

SeaWorld Orlando also announced plans to add virtual reality goggles to its Kraken roller coaster, taking riders on an underwater adventure.

Industry experts say virtual reality headsets represent a new way for smaller theme parks to attract new guests without making a huge investment.

Its a very cheap way to add a new attraction or extend an older attraction, said Martin Lewison, a theme park expert and business management professor at Farmingdale State College in New York.

A major benefit of using virtual reality headsets is that the experience can be changed or overhauled simply by writing new software for the headsets.

At Six Flags over Georgia, the park added virtual reality headsets last year for riders of a roller coaster called Dare Devil Dive. But the park announced last week that it is instead adding the virtual reality headsets for riders of a 100-story drop tower ride, dubbed Drop of Doom VR. The new ride lets parkgoers on the tower ride shoot at giant, mutant spiders.

Another advantage to the virtual reality headsets is that the world seen by parkgoers is interactive, so the experience is never the same twice.

At Knotts Berry Farm, the new attraction lets visitors score points by destroying the bad robots and completing objectives, said Ivan Blaustein, director of product integration at VR Studios, the company that created the headsets and software for the theme park.

One of the drawbacks of using virtual reality headsets, said Lewison, is that each headset needs to be cleaned after every use, which can reduce the number of people who can ride the attraction per day.

Knotts Berry will be charging an introductory price of $6 to try the new attraction, on top of the regular park admission price.

Dont expect to see virtual reality headsets used at major theme parks like Disneyland or Universal Studios Hollywood, Lewison said.

When visitors pay ticket prices of at least $99 to enter Disneyland or Universal Studios, he said they expect to see expensive animatronics and movie-quality sets that create an immersive world.

Theme park purists dont like it, Lewison said. Theyd much rather go on a $250-million ride at Disneyland than throw a mask strapped to a Samsung smartphone over my eyes.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.

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Knott's Berry Farm plugs into virtual reality, the new park thrill on the cheap - Los Angeles Times

Facebook has devoted major resources and billions of dollars to virtual reality, but there has been a pretty clear line between what happens in the main Facebook app and what happens on the Oculus Rift and Gear VR.

Today, Facebook is intertwining the real and virtual worlds of Facebook a bit by launching its first dedicated app, Facebook 360. The app will serve as a hub for the 360 video and photo content posted to the site. Facebook boasts that there have ben more than one million 360 videos posted to the site alongside more than 25 million 360 photos to date. At launch, the Facebook 360 appwill be available only for the Gear VR mobile headset. Users can download the app in the Oculus Store.

At launch, Facebook 360 will feature four main feeds, delivering content into users eyeballs from closer than ever. The Explore tab will give users a birds-eye look at the 360 content that is popular across Facebook from a variety of media companies and creators; meanwhile, the Following tab will let you dial into the content being produced by your friends. Saved gives you an opportunity to experience 360 content you may have seen on the web in a more immersive in-headset experience, while Timeline lets you check out your own 360 photos and videos all in one place.

The app will allow users to post reactions to content, while also being able to save and share360 photos and videos. Facebook said in a blog post that more social features are on the way for the companys first official app.

The wall of separation between Facebook and Oculus is a pretty murky one. With this latest addition, Facebook is asserting its video strength over the Oculus Video app, which has previously been the go-to spot for Gear VR users to engage with videos from Facebook.

In January, Facebook named Xiaomis Hugo Barra as its VP of VR. The appointment was a surprising end to a leadership shakeup at Oculus that began when CEO Brendan Iribe announced suddenly that he would be stepping down as the companys chief executiveand would be leading Oculuss PC VR division instead.

While Facebook continues to work on its own suite of social VR features, its clear that the company has a grand vision in mind for bringing its nearly 2 billion users into the world of VR, and this app may be one of their earliest steps in doing so.

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Facebook debuts its first dedicated virtual reality app, Facebook 360 - TechCrunch

BENGALURU: Emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and real-time language translation are going to play a significant role in shaping the way people collaborate in future, says Jeffrey Rodman, cofounder of Polycom, one of Silicon Valley's earliest video and content collaboration companies.

Considered as one of the pivotal figures in shaping the now known Silicon Valley, Rodman has spent close to three decades founding and building Polycom. The 26-year-old company makes speakers and video conferencing systems to collaborate with colleagues at workstations and other larger informal settings.

Enter your office conference room and the probability that you wouldn't come across the sound station speaker is very slim.

The triangular device - which now comes in several sophisticated models - was pioneered by Polycom's design team during their early days in the 90s.

"[The triangular sketch] was only another small thing, but it was so powerful, it became the symbol of the company for a while," recounts Rod man in a Medium post.

Rodman believes technologies like VR, which are `massive and clunky' right now, will go through incre mental changes and easy to wear.

BENEFITS GALORE "At some point, they may represent a real benefit for Polycom or its users," he said, adding, "Also, we will come to a place where we are going to have biological implants. The things will happen."

He also said in most of these technologies, Polycom would be more o a user than a developer helping the company provide innovative ways for collaboration in the future. Rodman and Brian L Hinman co founded Poly com in 1990 and since have grown the startup into a billion-dollar company over the past two-and-a-half decades.

In July 2016, the company was acquired by Siris Capital Group for a grand sum of $2 billion.

When asked to compare Silicon Valley with the Indian startup ecosystem, Rodman said: "India has a deep skill set born out of working with American companies and participating in a pretty substantial slice of innovation and product development. With this kind of skill sets and resources, it's only natural that India is moving off to form more startups of their own."

He said startups should not be distracted by million-dollar investments and should take small steps to achieve big goals.

"There is something very tempting about saying let's start a business and get rich. One of the mistakes people and companies make is to go into something without a complete vision or a plan... Without having a view of where you are headed to, you are likely to be deluded," Rodman said.

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'Virtual reality, augmented reality will shape the way people collaborate in future' - Economic Times

Science Daily

Studying altruism through virtual reality Science Daily In order to overcome these difficulties, researchers created a contextually-rich virtual reality environment in which participants were completely immersed. Indrajeet Patil, a former PhD student at SISSA and lead author of the paper, and currently a ...

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Studying altruism through virtual reality - Science Daily

It's not often you find an artist whose oeuvre of work is so intuitive and atmospheric that it has the ability to ease you into a fantasy world of their own careful creation however, this is something Hot Sugar (aka Nick Koenig) is particularly adept at doing.

That said, his production work is (counterintuitively) never just about sound. Instead, it's an all-encompassing visceral experience that has a strange way of eliciting a nostalgic longing for situations you've actually never encountered. So it only feels right that Koenig's latest dive into the deepest corners of his listeners' psyches is The Melody of Dust, a 13-track album that serves as the gateway to a much larger, more complex world brought to life via virtual reality.

As such, the word "album" in this case feels limiting, especially since The Melody of Dust breaks new ground as the first musical release whose true contents are exclusive to VR. In reality (or at least the supercomputer-generated one Koenig has created), the full album is 87 tracks, all of which are meant to seamlessly blend together based on your actions within the virtual reality world.

But how exactly does one decide to make an album of this scope? Let alone execute it? In Koenig's case, what started as an idea for a movie was put aside after the Viacom rep he was pitching to introduced him to the company's brand new VR division, Viacom NEXT. "I realized there were so many other dynamic points to VR," Koenig said. "The sensory control being the most important one. So I came up with an idea for VR based on that sort of thing."

What resulted a year-and-a-half later was The Melody of Dust, an immersive, interactive experience that invites the viewer to create their own Hot Sugar track by throwing objects think roses, switchblades, etc. scattered around a room straight out of one of his videos into a tornado. Within this scenario, you are given the ability to trigger one of the aforementioned 87 songs via different combinations of objects thrown into the vortex (in our premiere's case, it's a dove, medusa bust and nail polish).

It's a process that's reflective of his theory of associative music, "a modernized branch of musique concrete" that champions the idea that any object in the universe is an instrument whether you know how to play it or not ("it makes a sound and therefore you can turn it into music"). But it is also a unique way of connecting with listeners who are able to participate by providing the elements in the creation of these compositions.

"In a way, they can hear the origins of the song in the objects that they picked up, so it kind of communicates that message even more," Koenig explained. "When you shake the dove, you hear the sound of a dove. Then you throw it into the tornado, that melody has the voice of that dove hitting different notes. That was the original idea, to romanticize what I'm trying to do with music by turning it into a fantasy game."

That said, accessibility is still an issue seeing as how there are only about 100,000 of these VR units currently in existence but it's one that's Koenig feels is worth it in favor of creating "something new that hopefully will stand the test of time". Or at least something that will eventually reveal itself as the ultimate participatory experience once commercial VR technology makes it to the masses.

And while Koenig says there are tentative plans for some sort of set-up at future shows, the only public showing currently on the books is at SXSW. That said, if you're not one of the lucky few able to catch the whole set-up IRL, you can still listen to the haunting, hazy-hued dream that is "The Life of a Goldfish" below, exclusive to PAPER.

The Melody of Dust is out on March 31st via Steam, Spotify and vinyl.

The Melody of DustVR experience is on Tuesday, March 14 from 11am-6pm at the JM Marriott Salon 5 in Austin, Texas.

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Hot Sugar's Romantic Dream World Is Now Available Via Virtual Reality - Papermag

Forbes

The Future Of Virtual Reality Isn't Your Living Room - It's The Mall Forbes A wave of public space virtual reality (otherwise known as location-based entertainment or LBE) is breaking, allowing everyone to experience new high-end home VR systems whose requirements puts them out of the reach of most consumers. Unique ... and more »

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The Future Of Virtual Reality Isn't Your Living Room - It's The Mall - Forbes

Neurospeculative Afrofeminism, a VR project incubated by NEW INC (all images courtesy NEW INC)

Near the beginning of the second annual Versions conference on creative practice and virtual reality, writer and lawyer Tim Wu posed one of the most sneakily salient points of the day. Discussing virtual realitys place among mass media like film and broadcast radio, Wu suggested that its possible VR is just not destined to be mass technology.

As unassuming as Wus words may seem, they actually issue a resounding challenge to a technology that is presumed to become not only a radical new medium for creative expression, but also a revolutionary computing platform with major repercussions for fields like healthcare, product design, video games, journalism, sports and live event spectatorship, social media, marketing, and more.

While new media are actually still new exciting, uncertain, rapidly changing, and overflowing with speculation and cash it can be easy to forecast their success as imminent or inevitable. Boosterism and hype, however, often tend to skirt the very instabilities, shortcomings, and dead ends that need to be looked straight in the eye if this media is to become anything more than an ephemeral novelty.

Consistent with Wus healthy skepticism, this years Versions titled Facing Reality mostly encouraged a more sober, productive, and critical probing of the cultural landscape of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality (although VR predominated in volume in both the discussion and sidebar exhibition). Held at the New Museum, co-presented by NEW INC and Kill Screen, and hosted by Julia Kaganskiy and Jamin Warren, this years conference gathered a slew of rich panels and events, assembling artists, organizers, academics, designers, and writers such as Jon Rafman, Opeyemi Olukemi, Cory Doctorow, Nick Montfort, Claire Evans, and more.

As VR becomes more familiar, both culturally and technically, the level of discourse turns more sensible and specific. At the same time, as earlier practical challenges are overcome, aspirational goal-posts can be moved further into the distance: so, there was less talk about the travails of nausea-inducing VR, but more about widening the scope of possible experiences in VR, and the range of people who can access them.

Topics of access and accessibility were front and center at this years Versions. More than addressing the obstacles inhibiting mainstream adoption of VR, Versions plunged into issues of exclusivity and the barriers to entry for creative professionals and marginalized communities. And indeed, whenever yet another article giddily announces the arrival of VR, one would do well to ask: for whom?

The days first panel, Who Owns the Future? (perhaps named after Jaron Laniers book of the same name), opened with a flurry of questions in this vein: Where are we in VRs development as a viable commercial medium? How do we make it truly democratic? How do we make it truly global? The moderator additionally let slip, How far behind are we in a no child left behind sense? Though certainly well-intentioned, these latter, bigger questions demonstrated that, when talking about VR, there can be a fine line between ethical inquiry and techno-utopian solutionism or the paper-thin addressing of real, material inequality with often vague or trivial fixes (making VR more democratic and global sounds more like corporate PR copy than actually achievable outcomes).

Where more ambitious, faintly TED-talk style questions felt a little hollow, more modest and precise ones rang far truer, if still difficult to answer, like, How do we incentivize equity of access without capital reassurance? Speaking in a later panel on agency and storytelling, Nancy Bennett, head of VR at Two Bit Circus, suggested that design and specifically user experience (UX) design could be a powerful tool for fostering inclusion in VR. And certainly, theres plenty in this area for a more socially engaged design practice to draw from. For example, Paul Dourishs writings on social computing and ethnography in design, which, instead of relying on more decontextualized cognitive data derived in laboratory-like settings, aim to account for the living social context of diverse, and often excluded, subjects. Or, more recently, Kat Holmess inclusive design, which designates disability and diversity as the very starting points for design practice, rather than an asterisked afterthought. Per Holmes: Designing for inclusion starts by recognizing exclusion.

From a more cultural standpoint, scholar and writer Judith Donath intimated that new conceptions of authorship can motivate more enthusiastic and plural participation in VR. Authoring, she said, is too often seen as the domain of experts. Donath emphasizes different standards for creation things you can author while walking down the street, using even rudimentary assets like sound and text (rather than advanced 3D modeling, etc.). Following this line of thinking, meaning-making in VR can begin to take on more folkloristic and amateur proportions, yielding a sensorium of everyday sensation collections of sounds and stories all mapped out in three-dimensional, navigable space.

Donaths points runs parallel with Versions overall interest in how we can explore and embrace new and different paradigms for cultural forms in VR. In pursuit of this, Versions later panels were a refreshing push toward the more experimental and eclectic. As the introduction for the panel Sensing Stories reads, Sound designers, cooks, dancers, and masseuses know as much about taking us on a journey as anyone and yet we rarely consult their expertise when designing for VR and AR, much to our detriment.

In Sensing Stories, Robin McNicholas, creative director of Marshmallow Laser Feast, suggested that VRs specificity hasnt been properly reckoned with. For crafting engaging experiences, you dont need much at all you just need a little nudge for the imagination to fill in the gaps One of the problems of VR is the use of restraint and respecting the audiences intelligence.

Renowned VR maven Brenda Laurel broached the concept of emergent gameplay as a way of respecting audience intelligence and creating riper conditions for freedom, experimentation, and surprise. Emergent VR experiences would resemble expansive sandboxes in which the storytelling is more ambient than actively (or intrusively) exposited.

Speaking of ambient solutions, Chandler Burr, the former New York Times scent critic, convincingly argued for the importance of scent to our perception of space, asserting that VR (or MR, mixed reality) should consider incorporating smell design just like it does sound design, plopping scent-tracks on top of soundtracks.

Whereas Burr talked about deploying scent to manipulate our perception of space, magician Marco Tempest talked about how illusionism can be used to manipulate and deceive perception more generally. Tempests experiments in fusing virtual reality technologies with magic are not only an ironic, ingenious twist on Arthur C. Clarkes dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. They also hearken back to the very origins of cinema, which was significantly propelled by illusionists like Georges Mlisand scientists like tienne-Jules Marey. In many ways, its precisely this union of science and magic that needs to be bottled and tirelessly cultivated if VR is to win the favor of mass audiences. And it returns to the kind of future of VR that the Versions conference is trying to help steward: one in which new directions are explored to the fullest and most experimental degree while a dedicated ethical commitment is maintained in full view.

The second annual Versions conference, Facing Reality, took place at the New Museum Theater (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan) on Saturday, February 25.

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A More Accessible and Eclectic Future for Virtual Reality - Hyperallergic

Anastasiya Sharkova talks about her VR experience at a SpiritualVR event.

What if we had a "Dream Marketing Machine" a way to easily and reliably churn out emotionally passionate customers for any brand? Like Apple's fanboys but much quicker and for a lot less money.

At a recent event hosted by SpiritualVR, panelist Anastasiya Sharkova said she was deeply moved by her first experience with virtual reality (VR) -- a title called theBlu:Encounter in which you go eye to eye with a blue whale.

VR and AR: The Business Reality

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are going to be useful for far more than just gaming. We explore the ways the technology will be used for training, marketing, product design, and much more.

She said the experience is so powerful and overwhelming that it bypassed all reason and logic. She knew it was all computer generated yet when she looked into eye of the blue whale she immediately felt a deep emphatic connection that lasted for days.

And she noticed a curious effect: she used a lot less water for the next two weeks.

This scares me. What if the Blue Whale represents a brand such as Big Blue -- IBM and I'm suddenly emotionally bonding with a commercial organization and I can't control it?

We know that VR can affect behavior because it is already used in therapeutic applications treating post traumatic stress disorders.

Its widespread use in marketing is inevitable and when combined with AI, biometric sensors and personalization -- it will become extraordinary in its effectiveness. A Dream Marketing Machine.

Dream or nightmare?

It's a dream for marketers because all they talk about is creating compelling and emotionally authentic media content. I recently spoke with Yuval Boger, CEO of open-source VR tech design company Sensics.

"We are still in early stages and the headsets and equipment needs to improve and cost less but we are seeing a lot of interest in marketing applications. There are some excellent opportunities to create powerful branded VR experiences."

- But would you willingly agree to a VR experience that you knew was designed to persuade you and manipulate your emotions for commercial gain? And then continue to influence your behavior long after the event?

- Would you allow the Disney whale to try to emotionally bond with your child?

- What if your new job required a swim with the company culture whale as part of HR's on-boarding?

- What if your government insists you swim with its patriotic whale?

Don't get hung up on these balaenopteran examples. The creature will be chosen and shaped just for you -- for maximum effect.

Total sphere of control...

Marketing is mostly confined to the periphery of our daily experience such as with online ads, billboards, etc.

VR gives creators control over the entire 360 degree sphere of the user experience -- every pixel every sound and every aspect of the narrative. Marketers have never ever had so much control.

Mass media critic Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s was alarmed by tiny TV screens.

- I wouldn't let my children into any marketing VR experience;

- I wouldn't use it;

- and I'd be mistrustful of hiring someone who had VR training at a competitor. Joseph Stalin got his US atomic bomb secrets because of spies motivated by an emotional connection to the Soviet Union and not because of money.

VR for social uses?

How about using VR for positive purposes? Using less water, getting fitter, eating better because of crafted VR experiences that work to change our behavior?

What if socially responsible VR experiences are sponsored by brands? Would that be OK? Would we trust them?

Question the future...

Society gains nothing by allowing its people to be ensnared by emotional bonds to abstract entities.

If our technologies of persuasion become too good at what they do -- and they will eventually reach that point -- then they become too good to use.

The question is: Who has the right to access our emotions? The government? Hollywood? Or anyone at anytime and in any way?

As our technologies of persuasion become more advanced the answer has to be: No one.

Until we understand that answer -- and make it work -- the world of marketing will rush into VR faster than Elon Musk in a Hyperloop pod.

Visit link:

Technologies of persuasion: Virtual reality and the Dream Marketing Machine - ZDNet

The home improvement giant is launching a virtual reality experience in one of its stores to give customers hands-on practice with a home improvement project. Lowe's may eventually create more VR tutorials and roll them out to more locations.

Initially, customers at a Massachusetts store will get a lesson in how to tile a bathroom. A customer will put on a VR headset, be placed in a virtual room, and use an HTC Vive hand controller to simulate mixing mortar and placing tile. Eventually, a broader range of tutorials may be offered in all Lowe's stores.

In a trial run, Lowe's found that customers had a 36% better recall of how to complete the project when compared with people who watched a YouTube how-to video.

Kyle Nel, the director of Lowe's Innovation Labs, told CNNTech about the advantages of VR as a teaching medium. He pointed to the tactile, immersive nature of virtual reality as allowing for better learning.

Related: Super Bowl 51 was the first available in virtual reality

Nel noted the limitations of offering in-store clinics taught by an employee. Such classes have to be given at set times, which may be inconvenient for customers. The virtual reality experience is available anytime the store is open.

"Virtual reality just happens to be the best way to give people what they want, when they want it," Nel said. "This is meant to be available to the entire country and Canada, not just those on the bleeding, cutting edge of tech."

The VR experience also lends itself to improvement. Lowe's (LOW) will monitor customers and see where they may be getting stuck. Improvements in the teaching process can be made. If Lowe's scales the experience to all of its stores, updates to the teaching process could be made overnight.

Lowe's trends team has found that millennials are forgoing DIY projects because they lack home improvement confidence and the free time for a project. For Lowe's, virtual reality might be a way to reverse that trend.

CNNMoney (Washington) First published March 7, 2017: 9:07 AM ET

Read more:

Lowe's turns to virtual reality for home improvement - Mar. 7, 2017 - CNNMoney

CNN has been experimenting with virtual reality for years, producing more than 50 news stories in 360-degree video. It also teamed up with VR broadcaster NextVR to live stream the full Democratic presidential debate in 2015. In a Q&A on the Time Warner blog, CNN Vice President of Premium Content Video Jason Farkas said virtual reality provides an opportunity for journalists to transport their audience and leave a lasting impression.

"I believe VR is the most powerful tool we have to accomplish that goal," he said at the time. "The whole experience feels like time-travel: you put on a headset, and suddenly you are somewhere else, feeling remarkably close to the story. You are in the story - or at least your senses tell you that you are. The viewer walks away feeling the emotional impact much more viscerally, and memorably."

Other outlets have integrated virtual reality into their newsrooms as well. Huffington Post started offering VR videos last year on the web and its mobile apps. Months later, The New York Times began creating its own daily VR content in a feature called The Daily 360. In its so-called 2020 report, the Times said it's making progress in using a richer mix of journalistic forms, including VR, but it thinks it can do better.

CNNVR's first story is about the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. During the 5:29 minute video, viewers can rotate the camera 360 degrees to look anywhere they like. They can get a better view of the crowds in a bullfighting arena, for example, or check out a matador's swanky office. CNNVR's videos are available on PC (Chrome or Firefox), the CNN app on iOS and Android, Samsung GearVR, Oculus Rift and Google Daydream.

Read more here:

CNN launches a virtual reality news unit - Engadget - Engadget

CBS Minnesota / WCCO

Cinema Expanding: MSPIFF 2017 To Hold Virtual Reality Showcase CBS Minnesota / WCCO MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) Virtual reality is expanding the creative horizons of filmmaking, and that's being reflected in this year's Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. The dates for the largest film event in the Midwest were announced Tuesday.

View post:

Cinema Expanding: MSPIFF 2017 To Hold Virtual Reality Showcase - CBS Minnesota / WCCO

Variety

SXSW Will Feature 8K Video Virtual-Reality Motion Ride That Requires No Headset Variety SXSW attendees next week will be able to climb into a cockpit for a virtual flyby of major Tokyo landmarks in what's being billed as the world's first virtual-reality motion ride with ultra-high-resolution 8K video. Unlike other virtual-reality ... Explore the sights of Tokyo while in an 8K virtual reality ride in TexasDigital Trends SXSW: Virtual Reality Tokyo Ride to DebutYahoo Movies (blog) all 4 news articles »

See original here:

SXSW Will Feature 8K Video Virtual-Reality Motion Ride That Requires No Headset - Variety

Weve just updated the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator to help customers see the true Total Cost of Ownership differences between VMware and Microsoft. Its easy to use just enter the basic parameters for your virtual infrastructure or private cloud environment, such as the number of VMs, type of servers and storage, and the product edition or features you need. The calculator will generate a complete TCO analysis that includes all the necessary elements of capital and operational expenses.

We created the TCO Comparison Calculator after hearing from existing and prospective VMware customers who were being told that alternative solutions based on Hyper-V would be much less expensive, or even free. The calculator totals cost elements that our competition leaves out of their oversimplified comparisons, such as: the system administrator labor costs to operate the environment (the largest component of TCO and one that independent testing shows to be much lower for VMware); effects of VM density (where VMware has an advantage according to analysts like Gartner); 247 phone support; and the need for third-party software to fill feature gaps.

When all those cost elements are combined, the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator shows that VMware solutions, ranging from a small business virtual infrastructure built with vSphere Essentials to a full-featured large enterprise private cloud based on vCloud Suite Enterprise, have the lowest TCO often by substantial margins.

When we updated the calculator, we saw that the VMware TCO advantage increased for some important reasons.

Another important enhancement weve made to the calculator is local currency support. Users can select USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, or JPY and the calculator will apply VMware and Microsoft list prices from those geographies.

This example from the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator shows that the 3-year TCO for a 500-VM environment built with vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus will be 33% less than a comparable solution based on Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center.

Our customers in the trenches running enterprise virtual infrastructures often tell us they know VMware offers the best and most cost effective solution, but they need help making the case for selecting VMware with purchasing managers or CFOs that have heard from other vendors claiming to be less expensive. If you find yourself in a similar position, use the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator to arm yourself with solid proof that VMware provides the lowest total costs.

While the operating assumption is that the OpenStack framework works best on open source components such as KVM, a just completed study by Principled Technologies and commissioned by VMware showed otherwise. Tests showed remarkably higher performance and substantially reduced costs when using OpenStack with VMware technology including vSphere when compared to OpenStack with Red Hat components.

In the study, OpenStack services were used to provision and manage the test configurations. The study equipment was identical except when published recommendations mandated a change. The test results showed:

The study recognized two trends in enterprise computing:

VMware innovations are helping customers get enterprise-class performance when exploring the OpenStack framework as a platform for large-scale application deployment. Among these innovations, the study showed that VMware Virtual SAN played an important role in providing performance advantages. Among the most significant findings related to VMware Virtual SAN, the study noted:

For the following tables, please refer to the full study for the complete test methodology and equipment setup.

Figure 1: The amount of YCSB (Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark) OPS achieved by the two solutions. Higher numbers are better.

Figure 2: The amount of IOPS achieved by the two solutions. Higher numbers are better. The workload was 70/30 R/W mix, random, and 4K block size.

Cost Comparison

The study showed that running OpenStack on VMware components required less hardware. Using VMware vSphere with Virtual SAN also lowered software costs. In total the study showed the 3 year costs were 26 percent lower. Because each OpenStack deployment and environment is different and support engagements vary widely from installation to installation, the costs of implementing the OpenStack framework were not included for either the VMware or the Red Hat platform.

Figure 3: Projected three-year costs for the two solutions. Lower numbers are better.

The study concludes:

In our testing, the VMware vSphere with Virtual SAN solution performed better than the Red Hat Storage solution in both real world and raw performance testing by providing 53 percent more database OPS and 159 percent more IOPS. In addition, the vSphere with Virtual SAN solution can occupy less datacenter space, which can result in lower costs associated with density. A three-year cost projection for the two solutions showed that VMware vSphere with Virtual SAN could save your business up to 26 percent in hardware and software costs when compared to the Red Hat Storage solution we tested.

As an enterprise customer, you have choices when it comes to implementing an OpenStack framework. Your selections will impact the performance and overall cost of your scale out infrastructure. With this study, VMware has demonstrated significant performance gains and cost savings in an OpenStack environment.

Read the full study here.

Amazon recently launched a new version of their Total Cost of Ownerships (TCO) Calculator that compares VMware on-premises solutions to Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings. Our many customers choose us as their infrastructure platform and stay with us because we provide the best value. The Amazon calculator tries to create a different perception by using biased and inaccurate assumptions.

Stacking the DeckObviously

Amazon claims their calculator provides an apples-to-apples comparison, but in reality, it doesnt come close to doing so. Their calculator contains biased assumptions regarding VMwares TCO, which inflate the costs of an on-premises cloud and underestimate the true costs of using a public cloud solution.

For instance, Amazons calculator:

Another Take on VMware vs. AWS TCO:VMwares Own TCO Calculations

We decided to take a look at how costs might look using our math. The following is a VMware version of the TCO comparison against AWS. It compares costs associated with running conventional workloads on AWS and VMware infrastructure.

Conventional Workloads TCO Comparison

In a separate VMware TCO comparison calculation for a 100 VM environment, VMware TCO is $394K compared to AWSs $487K over a four-year period. This represents a 21% cost savings when choosing VMware.

This comparison uses the following 100 VMs for AWS:

Note that for this sample environment, the calculations assumed licenses for vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM) Standard, which offer more features and functionality than that of AWS and contain the features a customer truly needs for this scale environment. There are also additional AWS fees for things such as: data transfer, IP addresses, service monitoring, CloudWatch, etc. which are not captured in this TCO, but are a necessary part of running an application on AWS.

Conclusion

Clearly the AWS TCO Calculator does not represent a fair, apples-to-apples portrayal of the costs of an on-premises solution. Amazons calculator is underestimating AWS costs and overstating VMware costs. The costs of AWS instances are not the only factor to consider when choosing where to host workloads. Designing for AWS requires developer teams to significantly redesign their applications to account for the limitations and the quality of AWS infrastructure. With VMware, you have access to cost-effective, highly automated, secure infrastructure with a level of control and quality that provides superior value to IT and business units.

With the addition of vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS), VMware now offers customers a public cloud option with faster time to value and the ability to add or reduce capacity dynamically through the use of hybrid, off-premises data centers. The combination of on-premises vSphere or vCloud Suite infrastructure with cloud-based infrastructure hosted on vCloud Hybrid Services or a vCloud Powered partner clearly provides the best hybrid cloud experience. With infrastructure running on a common technology platform (vSphere) and integrations with existing tools like vCenter, vCenter Operations, and vCloud Automation Center, VMware customers get all the benefits of a true hybrid cloud.

Edit: An earlier version of this post claimed that the VMware TCO was over a three-year time period. The correct time horizon of the VMware TCO is four years. The post has been updated to reflect this change.

The release of VMwares vSphere Data Protection 5.5 (VDP) seems to have caused a stir in the virtual backup industry. It appears we have hit a soft spot with some of the other vendors offering backup solutions for vSphere and have seen some confusing messaging coming from our partners/competitors in this market. While were certainly proud of the technology partner ecosystem built around VMware solutions I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on vSphere Data Protection.

Well dive in to each of these a little bit to get to the truth about vSphere Data Protection.

Some vendors claim they require no agents to do vSphere backups, even for application aware backups of Exchange, MS SQL, and SharePoint, whereas VDP Advanced does require agents for these applications.

The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of VMs do not require agents because of the way our vSphere data protection APIs work. This is the case for VDP and every other vSphere certified backup solution. But, a proper application consistent backup of Exchange, MS SQL, SharePoint and other application does require an agent, even for vendors like Veeam. Need proof? Heres a quote from page 235 of the Veeam Backup & Replication Version 7.0 User Guide:

Call me crazy, but a runtime process injected on a VM via admin credentials to do indexing and other activities on behalf of another server is the very definition of an agent. The biggest difference between VDP and Veeams agent approach is that VDPs agents are a one-time install via wizard, whereas Veeams agents are installed and uninstalled each and every time a backup job runs.

And dont forget: our VDP Advanced agents also run on physical servers so you can backup your entire Exchange, SQL, or SharePoint environment with VDP Advanced.

First things first, it really doesnt matter which backup system you choose your backup files are useless without the backup servers. Further, if youve lost your backup infrastructure Id say the odds are good youve lost other critical parts of your infrastructure as well. In cases like this, perhaps backups arent the best option for getting up and running. You might want a disaster recovery solution like our Site Recovery Manager or vCloud Hybrid Service Disaster Recovery for this situation.

But what about smaller, localized issues? What if your backup server gets wiped out? First and foremost Id recommend you use a product that includes backup replication so you always have 2nd and 3rd copies of your backups, hopefully on-site and off-site. With VDP Advanced your backups could be replicated directly to another VDP Advanced virtual appliance so you could immediately restore from the 2nd appliance no additional configuration or setup needed. (Even if vCenter is down!)

So what happens if you have your backup files but your backup server is gone? Nothing! At least not until you re-install the backup server and database and maybe some proxies and repositories so that you can actually use those files, stealing precious minutes or hours from your recovery time objective.

Even if youre using our basic version of VDP, which is included with most versions of vSphere and which does not have built-in replication, keep in mind that everything you need to protect your backups the backup files, database, everything! is contained within a single VM. Simply copy the VM to secondary storage periodically to avoid a single point of failure.

VDP Advanced includes highly efficient, secure backup data replication across any link at no additional cost. How do we do it and why dont you see some special WAN accelerator configuration inside VDP Advanced? VDP Advanced is based on EMC Avamar and uses the same enterprise-class deduplication algorithm and replication engine as Avamar. What this means to you is VDP does all the required deduplication as soon as the backups are created, across all backups stored on the appliance. No additional steps are needed to further optimize the data for WAN transfers. Plus you get the added benefit of using less storage for the primary backups so you save money on your overall backup solution!

Instant Recovery is the hot marketing item in the backup world (its kind of a boring world). Strategies for restoring data quickly is a topic Id like to explore further in a more detailed article so we can look at how wed approach some common scenarios with VDP. For now I want to say this about instant recovery: the feature looks good in the brochure, but instant recovery techniques from nearly every vendor end up with VMs that are pinned to a single host, running from your backup storage, with IO shuttled through some sort of proxy VM. Add it all up and youre left with a significant performance and usability hit to the recovered VMs. If you later decide to move that VM from backup storage to production, it often requires multiple steps to move and rehydrate the VMDKs and then rebuild them from the delta disks that were written while the instant VM ran.

In contrast, VDP Advanced can utilize Changed Block Tracking to restore a VM directly on full production storage. This means only the blocks that have changed since the selected restore point will be restored. As a result, restore times can be dramatically reduced up to 6X versus traditional restore methods according to the VDP Advanced study performed by ESG Labs.

This myth is just plain wrong. VDP Advanced does include automated backup verification. And were not just talking about verifying a file checksum. A VDP backup verification job can be created to automatically restore and verify the full functionality of a VM on a scheduled basis, e.g., once per week. Results of the backup verification jobs are reported in the VDP Advanced user interface and email reports so that administrators have the utmost confidence that important VMs can definitely be restored when needed.

Weve designed VDP and VDP Advanced to offer a great value to our customers, who often struggle to setup a good backup system and cannot afford the high price of some of the enterprise backup solutions. We think VDP excels in many areas but especially with features like:

As I said at the start, were very proud of the ecosystem of partners weve built around vSphere, even those we compete with at times. While we at VMware focus on building products that are better together we realize that no single product will fit every customers needs and at the end of the day its you the customer who has to navigate the maze of features and jargon and figure out the solution thats best for you. I hope this article makes that task a little bit easier.

If youve had a chance to use the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator, you know that it factors in all the elements of a proper Total Cost of Ownership analysis to compare the true cost of building a virtual infrastructure on our vSphere and vSphere with Operations Management products to the cost of building a similar infrastructure on Microsofts Cloud OS their name for Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center. [VMware has an even more detailed ROI/TCO Calculator to show the financial savings of virtualization and private cloud vs. physical infrastructure.]

The results are eye-opening for many users who have seen the comparisons from our competitors that consider only the Windows operating system and virtualization software license costs. Including all the TCO elements shown above makes it very clear that the cost of virtualization software is just a small part of the overall TCO for a virtualized infrastructure.

Weve just updated the TCO Comparison Calculator with two important new features:

There are three key cost elements that work strongly in VMwares favor that show up in the calculator results:

A quick example from the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator shows just how much of an impact those VMware cost savings have. This example shows the two-year TCO for an infrastructure of 1,000 VMs on vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus (our highest edition) vs. Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center.

You can see that VMware delivers 30% lower TCO from its lower OpEx costs and features that preclude the need for third-party add-ons.

Heres an example showing that the two-year TCO for upgrading a 1000-VM vSphere Enterprise environment to our full-featured vCloud Suite Enterprise platform comes in 36% less than if that sameinfrastructure were migrated to Microsofts Cloud OS.

Whether youre new to virtualization and considering a greenfield server consolidation project or a long-time vSphere user weighing your options for a private cloud upgrade, give the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator a try youll see that you can get the best for less.

There is much rhetoric these days about cloud wars. Beyond the rhetoric, the hype is there for a reason: the value of hybrid cloud environments is becoming real, and the market opportunity even more real. We are proud to serve our customers as a leading provider of virtualization software and cloud infrastructure. And were equally proud of what our customers are achieving with VMware as a partner.

You can take a break from the hype cycle by checking out the rest of the blog post by Bogomil Balkansky,Sr. Vice President, CloudInfrastructure Platform here.

With the announcement of vSphere with Operation Management this week, it is truly exciting to not only see the advancements of management being tied so closely to the vSphere platform, but also bring our customers closer to the vision of the Software Defined Data Center. As we see both the vSphere platform mature along with our customers use of it, we also see an evolution of VMware operations management accelerating and leveraging the value of the platform in our customers environments.

This new offering signifies a number a key aspects in the evolution of virtualization and cloud management:

First, our customers have experienced and expressed the need for accurate and automated solutions to proactively manage performance and capacity and vCenter Operations Manager, as part of vSphere with Operations Management, has delivered. Leveraging a foundation of patented self-learning analytics, vCenter Operations Manager delivers the most comprehensive, scalable and automated management solution for vSphere. Utilizing the vSphere health model, vSphere with Operations Management further extrapolates and presents data for managing performance and capacity more effectively than any other current or promised solutions.

We invested in vCenter Operations to support our large infrastructure of 500 VMs and 40 hosts. It has enabled us to predict capacity needs and to easily locate any performance issues.

Eric Krejci , Systems Specialist, EPFL

Second, vSphere with Operations Management leverages true automated operations for vSphere environments. This VMware innovation reduces the administrative overhead and inaccuracies from tools using static thresholds (manual thresholds set for individual metrics) while analyzing all (not just a handful) of relevant vSphere performance metrics to ensure there are no performance or capacity blind spots. Furthermore, to automatically correlate and expose the bottlenecks (with associated metrics) along with best practice remediation, vSphere with Operations Management ensures accurate management alignment that supports and further leverages our customers investment in VMware.

Advanced analytics easily identifies and shows root-cause to problem areas

Finally, vSphere with Operations Management raises the bar by redefining what operations management needs to be in todays dynamic infrastructure. Cloud customers simply were not finding effective solutions from their traditional, legacy IT management frameworks, or even 3rd party tools that are built on the same premise. Even when considering other hypervisor / cloud products, the management ecosystem is at the heart of truly enabling the platform. VMware vSphere with Operations Management clearly demonstrates the next step in simplicity of both cost and value through reliable, proven and innovative technology.

Going to VMware Partner Exchange 2013? Be sure to check out these sessions on VMware management and the competition: MGMT1238, MGMT1369 & CI1523.

Twitter: @benscheerer

The idea of introducing multiple hypervisors into your data center and managing them seamlessly from a single tool might sound appealing, but in reality, products claiming that ability today cant deliver on that promise. You introduced virtual infrastructure to simplify operational tasks for your IT staff, so why would you want to handicap them with a management approach that adds costs and complexity? A study recently completed by the Edison Group and commissioned by VMware shows that is exactly what you will be doing if you introduce Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) with the hopes of using it to manage VMware vSphere hosts.

Microsoft touts SCVMM as a heterogeneous management tool with the ability to manage VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer hosts in addition to those running Hyper-V. IT managers might find Microsofts claims that they can, easily and efficiently manage applications and services across multiple hypervisors, enticing. The suggestion by Microsoft is clear: dont worry about complicating the jobs of your system administrators by introducing Hyper-V into a VMware environment because SCVMM provides a do-everything single-pane-of-glass control panel. Are their claims true? Can Microsoft SCVMM really let you operate a multi-hypervisor data center without the cost penalties that come with staffing, training for, and operating across the isolated islands of management that would otherwise exist?

To find the truth behind Microsofts promises, we asked Edison Group to test VMware vSphere in their labs using both vCenter and the vSphere Client and Microsoft SCVMM 2012 to complete a set of 11 typical management tasks. Edisons analysts used their Comparative Management Cost Study methodology to measure the labor costs and administrative complexity of each task. The tasks Edison Group studied were those that any vSphere administrator performs on a regular basis, such as provisioning new vSphere hosts, deploying VMs, monitoring system health and performance, configuring virtual networks, etc.

Higher costs and complexity when managing vSphere with SCVMM 2012

The results were clear and conclusive managing VMware vSphere is much more efficient using vCenter than when attempting to manage it with Microsoft SCVMM 2012. To complete the 11 typical management tasks Edison Group tested took 36% less time and required 41% fewer steps using vCenter and the vSphere client compared to SCVMM 2012.

Figure 1 Managing vSphere using vCenter takes 36% less administrator time than with SCVMM 2012

Figure 2 vCenter management of vSphere requires 41% fewer steps than SCVMM 2012

Jack of some trades, master of none

Its not hard to understand why vCenter and the vSphere Client make life so much easier for vSphere administrators. As my colleague Randy Curry wrote, Microsoft SCVMM 2012 just doesnt do a very good job of enabling vSphere management. SCVMMs incomplete or missing support for even basic tasks forces administrators to constantly jump over to the vSphere Client to get any real work done. Microsoft was apparently more interested in being able to check the box for multi-hypervisor management when they built SCVMM 2012 than they were in providing a truly usable vSphere management tool. As Edison Group said in their report (available here or here):

Managing hypervisors using tools that are not specifically optimized to control all aspects of their operations risks impairing reliability, elegance, and ease of management, with potential adverse impact on the bottom line. Creating a truly successful solution requires deep integration and expertise in development.

Adding different hypervisors? Proceed with caution.

Multi-hypervisor IT shops are a trend that may be growing, but dont expect a simple single-pane-of-glass management experience if you bring in a different hypervisor. The testing by Edison Group clearly shows that management costs and complexity will be substantially higher if you attempt to use a partially implemented heterogeneous management tool like Microsoft SCVMM 2012 to manage a vSphere infrastructure. We at VMware realize that operating a 100% vSphere environment is not always possible and weve recently introduced our own multi-hypervisor management features with vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager and vCloud Automation Center to accommodate those cases. Rather than positioning those solutions as enablers of permanent multi-hypervisor environments, were offering them to help our customers manage heterogeneous pools of infrastructure until they can migrate their workloads to a VMware platform where they can benefit from our exclusive software-defined datacenter capabilities.

If youre weighing possible benefits of introducing a second hypervisor, you may want to take the advice of Gartners Chris Wolf and stick to a single hypervisor unless you want maintain and pay for separate islands of management:

Multi-hypervisor has serious tradeoffs if its the end goal for the production server workloads in your data center. Additional hypervisors for one-off siloed initiatives is often practical, but becoming less standardized in your data centers is anything but efficient.

Chris Wolf repeated that message at a session on heterogeneous virtualization we attended at the recent Gartner Data Center Conference. In fact, he stated there that no Gartner clients have succeeded in adopting a single-pane-of-glass multi-hypervisor approach. Thats refreshingly frank advice that should be heeded by anyone lured by Microsofts promises of multiple hypervisor nirvana.

Microsoft has published a blog article claiming that VMwares Cost-Per-Application Calculator admits VMwares costs are higher.

VMwares Cost-Per-Application calculator is designed to rebut Microsoft claims that Hyper-V is five to ten times cheaper.It shows that the acquisition cost with even VMwares highest edition vSphere Enterprise Plus is at parity with Microsoft and actually beats Microsoft for most configurations. For example, the blog shows a comparison result from the VMware calculator using servers that have 64GB RAM. A comparison using servers with 128GB RAM, the more common configuration, shows that the total cost with VMware is at parity with Microsoft.

Read the original post:

Virtual Reality - Setting the Record Straight One Post ... - VMware Blogs

As SeaWorld parks phase out their real-life animal encounters, the entertainment giant is looking to virtual reality to boost guest satisfaction in a different way.

This summer, the Orlando theme park will debut a new virtual reality experience on its popular Kraken coaster, handing out VR goggles to give riders the experience of racing through a fully submersed underwater scene.

We see great potential for [virtual reality] use across the parks, SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby said in a call with investors on Feb. 28.

We're also looking to have a version of virtual reality for our animals where guests can see them live and other things you typically can't see as a human today except through virtual reality."

But as a new technology, virtual reality is unlikely to offer the full excitement of seeing a live animal in person-- or the thrill of being able to fully enjoy a traditional thrill ride like a roller coaster, say some theme park experts.

SEAWORLD ANNOUNCES DEATH OF TILIKUM, KILLER WHALE FEATURED IN DOCUMENTARY 'BLACKFISH'

"Parks should be careful not to be too liberal with their VR experiences, it should be used to enhance-- not replace-- traditional attractions," Ricky Brigante of Inside the Magic told Fox News.

While Brigante believes SeaWorld Orlando has some of the best rides in the business, he cautioned that experiences like the Turtle Trek-- a 3D theater experience about saving sea turtles-- lean too heavily on virtual reality and the in-your-face pro-conservation message takes away from the entertainment value. Plus, says the theme park insider, it's very hard to replicate the experience of meeting--and getting splashed by-- a real animal.

"Ipersonally get where animal activists are coming from but I've met many amazing trainers and caretakers [at SeaWorld] who put the animals' needs first always," says Brigante.

"When I think about going to SeaWorld, I want that visceral experience of seeing a real animal. VR technology just can't replicate that quite yet."

According to the Orlando Business Journal, SeaWorld's VR investment is part of the theme park giant's plan to revamp its offerings. SeaWorld will use advanced technology termed Deep See and will incorporate virtual reality headsets as a way to transport guests into areas of the world theyd never be able to visit otherwise.

"In general, VR headsets are an inexpensive way to create a new ride experience without having to make a major capital expenditure," explainedMartin Lewison, AssistantProfessor, Business ManagementFarmingdale State College in New York.

SeaWorld, which is looking to bring in new customers and win back detractors, may see VR as a relatively "low-risk" investment to upgrade additional rides.

Like Brigante, however, Lewison warns the virtual reality world has its limitations.

"On the negative side, however, the VR headsets do significantly slow down operations," says Lewison. "Goggles have to be cleaned and straps need to be secured...In addition, some guests ride rollercoasters so that they can feel the wind in their face and see the park around them. Ive heard some enthusiasts say that staring at game screens is something that one can do at home."

In January, SeaWorld San Diego announced plans to enhance its non-animal attractions with a roller coaster dubbed theElectric Eel. That ride, which will send riders back and forth at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour, will reach a height of 150 feet. It will also showcase a live eel exhibit in the waiting area.

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In addition to more rides, if SeaWorld is able to use the VR experience as something guests can only find within parks, however, Brigante sees great educational and entertainment potential.

"After handing out the goggles,SeaWorld could leverage the idea of getting all dressed up into scuba gear to give the audience that feeling of 'hey, were about to go on this deep sea dive, time to suit up.'"

The new attractions come as SeaWorld attempts to move on from its controversial orca-breeding program. Last May, the park partnered with marine biologist and wildlife artist Guy Harvey in an attempt to educate visitors on worldwide shark preservation attempts.

The parks new Mako coaster, named after the oceans fastest shark, served as the main point of that shark conservations education.

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Will virtual reality save SeaWorld? - Fox News

British set designerEs Devlinhas useda basin-shaped map as the canvas for video projections for a play at London's National Theatre, which follows an injured soldier undergoing virtual-reality therapy.

The protagonist of Ugly Lies the Bone, which opened at the National Theatreon London's South Bank last week, is a soldier named Jess withdebilitating burns from anIED in Afghanistan.

Now back home inasmall town on Florida's Space Coast, sheisundergoingvirtual reality therapy, which uses simulated experience to aid with pain relief.

As shown in theseexclusive rehearsal photographs, Devlin has created a map ofthe small town of Titusville, Florida, which curves up around the stage.

Models of2,000 buildings applied by hand by the National Theatre Scenic workshop protrude from the surface of the map.

The screen creates a rounded backdrop for moving images that simulatethe world as if seenthrough a VR headset, including rolling snowy mountains.These images contrast the wireframes and night-time shotsthat are projected to indicate thereality of daily life.

"The set is a bowl-shaped map of Titusville, Florida, a now dwindling small American town originally born out of the national optimism of the now defunct space shuttle programme at Cape Canaveral," Devlin told Dezeen.

"The action oscillates fast between the epic arctic vistas she experiences within her VR headset, and oppressive small domestic settings where she attempts to re-engage with what's left of her life."

For the more mundane daily life scenes in the play, which was written by American playwrightLindsey Ferrentino,Devlin has also placed furniture on wheels. These roll into the basin to create Jess' familyliving room, along with a wall of picture frames.

Apurple rectangular volume attached to four poles also extends from above to create the ceiling in this scene, and is lowered further to represent a rooftop in another.

For thelocal store, now run by Jess'ex-boyfriend, ared shop counter fitted with popular magazines and sweets wheels diagonally across the stage.

After years of designing for the theatre, Devlinnow also regularly creates sets for some of the world's biggest musical acts, including The Weekend's World Tour, as well asKanye West, Lady Gaga and U2.

Lastmonth, the designer caused a stir with her set for singer Katy Perry's politically charged Grammy Awards performance, which featured a picket fence that grew into a wall a reference to the barrier Trump intended to build between the US and Mexico.

She also designs catwalk show sets for the likes of Louis Vuitton and created a scent-infused mirror maze for Chanel in London.

Ugly Lies the Bone is on show at theNational Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre until 6 June 2017.

Project credits:

Writer: Lindsey Ferrentino Director: Indhu Rubasingham Set designer: Es Devlin Music: Ben and Max Wringham Costume designer: Johanna Coe Video design: Luke Halls Lighting design: Oliver Fenwick Stage build: National Theatre and Weldfab

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Es Devlin creates bowl-shaped set as backdrop for virtual reality-themed play - Dezeen