Daily Archives: February 20, 2017

New York Times

With New Invention, Virtual Reality's Potential for Magic Gets Real New York Times I have seen a lot of great V.R. experiences, and nothing comes close to what the Void is doing, said Cliff Plumer, a former Lucasfilm technologist and manager who joined the virtual reality start-up the Void as its chief executive on Feb. 9. If ...

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With New Invention, Virtual Reality's Potential for Magic Gets Real - New York Times

We dont know yet if VR arcades in the United States are going to find success, but it is looking like IMAX VR is going to give it a great try.

We went inside the big-screen companys flagship VR center in Los Angeles this week, and got a good look at their plans for arcade roll-outs this year including centers spread across the globe. In short, I saw a series of well-designed spaces equipped with some of the best virtual reality hardware and software available.

Above: The IMAX VR arcade.

Image Credit: UploadVR

Visiting virtual worlds in the center costs about $1 per minute right now (Each experience is approximately 5 to 15 minutes long and featured experiences range between approximately $7-$10). That could change as more content is introduced to the location over time.

The first arcade in Los Angeles is not connected with a multiplex, but future IMAX VR centers in Los Angeles, New York and overseas will be connected to movie theater locations. The idea is youll head out to the movies and before or after the big show youll visit the VR arcade for a few minutes.

Above: The reception area of the VR arcade.

Image Credit: IMAX

HTC is betting big on VR arcades in China. An arcade version of its Viveport VR content store is designed to make it easier for groups to set up a location equipped with a variety of worlds to visit. Theres an assumption that out-of-home VR experiences are going to be very popular in Asia where many people have less space and money to install their own equipment. It remains to be seen whether similar arcades in the United States and elsewhere will find success, but IMAX is looking to make a strong go of it.

This will be a breakthrough for the U.S. I think, said HTCs Viveport president, Rikard Steiber.

A lot of thought clearly went into the design of this first flagship IMAX location, and it is equipped with hardware which should exceed or at least rival the setups early adopters have at home.

For VR enthusiasts in the Los Angeles area looking to introduce friends, family or coworkers to VR this center should be strong competition for anything youve set up personally.

Above: IMAX VR arcade visitors may don these backpacks.

Image Credit: IMAX

IMAX is making clear it is providing a premium experience partnering with the HTC Vive for a series of room-scale pods complemented by Subpac haptic vests and a D-Box motion chair. Powerful PCs are stored out of sight overhead with wires running down on balancers meant to manage the wires and keep them out of the way while moving freely around the room.

Heres the roll-out plan for the next pilot centers:

IMAX has signed agreements to open an additional five IMAX VR centres in the coming months, including a pilot Centre in the UK with ODEON & UCI Cinema. The Company is also currently in conversations to open additional pilot centres in Japan, the Middle East and Western Europe. These pilot locations will test several factors including the overall customer experience, pricing models and the types of content featured. If successful, the intent is to roll out the concept globally to select multiplexes as well as to commercial locations such as shopping centers and tourist destinations.

While most of the pods were equipped with HTC Vives, a pair of StarVR headsets were also at the IMAX location, powered by some of the beefiest graphics cards available hidden away in computers overhead.

StarVR is a headset from Starbreeze that features an ultra-panoramic view compared to the first headsets you can buy for your own home. It is still very much a developer kit, though, and only runs at 60 frames per second (FPS) compared to the Vives 90 FPS.

Above: Playing John Wick in VR.

Image Credit: IMAX

StarVRshould probably come with an experimental sign so visitors to the center know it is not at the same level of polish as the Vive. I tried a rooftop assault version of the John Wick Chronicles VR game in the headset with a realistic gun accessory tracked usingPhaseSpace.

I delighted in a moment when I spotted an attacker coming from my left, in my periphery, who would have been completely unnoticed if I had been wearing a Vive.

But the combo of software and hardware which uses different optics and screens compared with the Rift and Vive lacked a level of smoothness Ive come to expect from room-scale VR.

The same cord management system is used for both the Vive and StarVR systems, relying on a pair of balancers to keep the cord out of the way but let it extend when taking a step.

The waiting area includes poster-size displays previewing experiences and breaking them down by available times and intensity.

According to IMAX, the company established a $50 million VR fund together with strategic investors such as Acer, CAA, China Media Capital, Enlight Media, The Raine Group, Studio City and WPP to help finance the creation of at least 25 interactive VR content experiences over the next three years for use across all VR platforms, including in IMAX VR centres. The center currently features content from ILMxLAB, Sony, Lionsgate, Starbreeze, Survios, and Ubisoft.

Theres also a sampler that allows visitors to try out a great cross-section of introductory VR experiences.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew is among the experiences coming to the center soon, and IMAX is working with Google to develop a cinema-grade VR camera planned for launch in mid-2018 to capture 360-degree content in 3D. IMAX is planning to leverage the resulting content for its VR centers.

IMAX is pretty clear this is a test for the company, but it is definitely a serious one.Wed love to see how busy the center is in the coming weeks and months, as well as what foot traffic looks like at centers rolling out inside theaters. Thats the data IMAX needs to decide whether its experiment is a success. Well both certainly be watching.

The flagship IMAX VR center is located at 157 South Fairfax in Los Angeles, CA 90036 across from the Grove. The phone number is 323-452-4081 and the link to buy tickets is available here.

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Inside an IMAX virtual reality arcade - VentureBeat

Ubisoft has learned a thing or two about virtual reality.

The giant French video game publisher loves to experiment with new game platforms. Whenever a new one arrives, so do new Ubisoft games. With VR, Ubisoft has tried a number of things, and in October it launched its first VR game, Eagle Flight, a simulation game where you can fly above a future version of Paris as an eagle. After the game debuted, Ubisoft found that 73 percent of the game sessions were longer than 10 minutes, which went against the conventional wisdom about how VR was too uncomfortable for people to stay in it for very long.

Ubisoft also launched Werewolves Within, a VR version of the Werewolves tabletop game, where players try to figure out who among the villagers among them is a werewolf. And the company is working on Star Trek: Bridge Crew, where VR players take on the roles of a starships bridge crew.

David Votypka, creative director at Ubisoft Red Storm, and Chris Early, vice president of digital publishing at Ubisoft, gave a talk about the lessons the company has learned in VR at the Casual Connect Europe event in Berlin. I interviewed them after the talk about those lessons.

Heres an edited transcript of our talk.

Above: David Votypka (left) and Chris Early of Ubisoft at Casual Connect Europe.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Chris Early: The theme of the talk is things weve expected about VR in the early days, in three categories. One was locomotion. VR makes people sick, so you cant do fast motion. Second was time in the headset. Weve heard a lot of things from headset makers, like seven minutes is what we should be designing for. The third is that VR is antisocial.

What weve discovered is the opposite is true in all three of these cases, in a lot of ways. For locomotion, Eagle Flight is the example. You fly at high speeds, turning, fast motion. The vast majority of people are very comfortable with it. A lot of it comes down to the techniques they use, like closing off peripheral vision. Since our peripheral vision is designed to detect things here, if you sense something whizzing by it triggers motion sickness. When the game detects that, it closes that off, and its a very effective technique.

GB: The research must have taken you a lot of time. When did you discover that?

David Votypka: The work was done at Ubisoft Montreal. They had the idea for a flying game because they were experimenting with Paris from the Assassins Creed universe. They started noticing that some things worked and some things didnt. One element that was bothersome was how fast things were going by.

Some of the research Olivia Palmieri did shes the producer on it was in the concept of horse blinders, or what happens when race drivers go really fast. They get that tunnel vision effect, which allows them to focus. Instead of creating a small hole you look through, they do it dynamically. When its displaying fast motion on the screen, it trims down the field of view, and then opens it back up again when theres nothing close by. You still have this wide vista, a panoramic field of view, until you get close to something. People dont even notice it.

Early: Thats the surprising part for me. When I first saw it, I was watching a monitor of someone playing. I assumed people would see it right away. But then I tried it in the headset and I wasnt even thinking about the effect. I didnt notice it at all.

GB: It sounds a bit like this foveated rendering technology theyre saying could reduce a lot of the graphics computing requirements.

Early: We could do that with foveated, probably, by just blurring it instead of blacking it out. It might be enough.

Votypka: To be fair, theyre still calculating the full screen. Its not a savings for us yet, because theyre trying to figure out where theres too much motion. Theyve already had to figure out that theres motion in that section, and then they black it out.

Early: Right. But rendering performancethis part doesnt have to be as high-res as that part. Back to time in the headset, seven minutes is what they were saying you should design for in the early days.

Votypka: With Eagle Flight, 73 percent of our session times are more than 10 minutes. Eagle Flight is a short-sequence thing. You go in and do a bit of a flight. The missions are maybe a minute or two at the most. But people stay in for a long time. A lot longer than we expected.

Above: Eagle Flight from Ubisoft Montreal.

Image Credit: Ubisoft

Early: In the social VR stuff weve seen about a third of our players playing for an hour to three hours. Very long sessions, longer than we expected, especially compared to that estimate of just seven minutes. Thats been really cool to see.

The third part is this idea that when you look at somebody in VR in their living room, it looks very antisocial. But when you get people in a shared environment together, when your physical traits and voice are networked, you get this social presence. Wow, Im here with other human beings. It becomes extremely social. Werewolves has been out for a little over two months and weve seen some amazing stories, from strangers playing together to how long people spend in the headset to how many friends they add. All sorts of very interesting things from what was, in a lot of ways, a social experiment. Its a multiplayer-only game. It requires VOIP to play. Its almost totally personality-driven. The gameplay systems are pretty simple. So much of it is just the players personalities.

All of these things were huge questions around shipping a game like that. For the players that are aware of it, weve had super positive feedback on all those aspects, which has been somewhatwe hoped, but we werent sure.

GB: Did you set out trying to ignore conventional wisdom?

Early: Social and VR were two things you just didnt think about together a few years ago. For me, VR goes back to the 90s. All the time Ive thought about it, I never thought about the social side until around 2014, when Michael Abrash from Oculus was at Carnegie Mellon giving a speech. He said, Theres a lot of open questions about VR. But one thing Im sure of is itll be the most social medium ever. Thats a pretty bold statement.

We had some multiplayer prototypes in Unity. When we got our DK2s we put on the headsets and got it running quickly. We sat across this table from each other where previously wed been sitting with a mouse and keyboard and monitor. We looked at each other across this warehouse environment and we could see each others head movements and so on. I thought, Okay, I feel like Im actually there with this person, not just looking at an avatar. That moment, it felt like there was something to this something thats not obvious, but once you try it, its evident how tightly connected people can be in VR. Its you, as opposed to just a pre-animated avatar.

Once that was proven, we started thinking about what kind of social games we could make. Werewolves was obviously our version of the original Mafia game. Theres been a lot of derivatives of that card game. We put in our own unique VR mechanics and gameplay rules. We went that direction because we wanted to focus on the social aspect, improving that with a well-known gameplay model. Social deduction is an interesting gameplay format for getting together around a table together.

GB: It seems like certain genres fit will here. The board game genre in genre matches well with social VR.

Early: Right. But you look at Star Trek Bridge Crew, which we still consider a social VR gameI call Werewolves an around-the-table format, while Star Trek is a crew experience. In that case youre all looking in different directions, seated in different places, more separated around the bridge. The around-the-table social connection isnt there. Weve designed it into the stations so you can work with each other. You still discuss with each other. But theres another action component to the game, going on missions and fighting Klingons as a crew. Its different gameplay from Werewolves, but its still social. A lot of different types of games can work in this social VR genre.

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What Ubisoft learned from its first virtual reality games - VentureBeat

Virtual reality is in a "chicken and egg" situation where consumers are waiting for more content before buying, and content makers are waiting for more customers.

Virtual and augmented reality might be the buzz technologies of 2017, but consumer hesitation and shortage of products could mean they won't go mainstream until next decade, new research shows.

The 102-page Australian VR & AR Market Study 2017, released Tuesday by the Australian research company Telsyte, concludes that the technology has found itself in a chicken-and-egg predicament, with consumers unwilling to buy into it until there is enough content, and content producers unwilling to buy into it until there are enough consumers.

Virtual reality technology uses headsets, often just a mobile phone with lens attached to it, that are strapped to the face so users can play video games or watch movies, completely surrounded by the device's video feed.

Augmented reality can use headsets or handheld devices, that mix computer-generated video with live images of the real world.

Neither technology has gained widespread adoption in Australia, with household penetration estimated at only 2.3 per cent at the end of 2016, according to the study.

That figure has been kept low in part because few Australians have been able to try VR or AR to see if they like it nervousness about trying on headsets has meant that only 11 per cent of Australians aged 16 years or older have actually tried a headset, Telsyte found and in part because the manufacturers been nervous about shipping too many products ahead of demand, making them hard to buy even for consumers who have tested it.

"Manufacturers are taking a measured approach to this new category of products," said Foad Fadaghi, managing director of Telsyte and author of the report.

"They still have memories of other technologies that have come and gone, like 3D TV."

With such constraints still in force for much of 2017, it could be 2018 before we know whether VR and AR will gain a proper foothold or go the way of 3D TVs, Mr Fadaghi said.

While a number of VR manufacturers have said that education will be the first sector to properly adopt the technology, Telsyte's research found that it will be video gaming and movie watching that will draw more people in.

"We do see some uses in education," said Mr Fadaghi. "A lot of educators look at VR as a big opportunity, given its ability to capture the imagination of young people with immersive experiences.

"But when we ask consumers what they want to use VR for, it's primarily for games and movies," he said. The same is true of smartphones: half of all smartphone app revenues go to the gaming industry.

Of the two complementary technologies, it will be virtual reality that has the fastest adoption, thanks to games, but it will be augmented reality that has the broadest application, because it can be used for gaming and business apps.

"It will all eventually take off," predicts said Mr Fadaghi. "It will just take a little longer before it becomes mainstream. It could be 10 years, just like smartphones."

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Virtual reality to take a decade as users chicken out, study shows - The Australian Financial Review

Valve is building hardware for virtual reality, and its taking cues from one of the console industrys brightest minds.

VR is still in its early stages in terms of revenues relative to the industry as a whole, but Valve is pushing virtual realityforward by following the methodthat legendary Nintendo designerShigeru Miyamoto used in the development of devices like the DS handheld or the Wii motion-controlled console. Miyamoto, creator of the Mario and Zelda franchises, has repeatedly worked on hardware and software in conjunction with one another to ensure that the companys games and systems take full advantage of their capabilities.

Valves prototype grip controllers. Photo by GamesBeat/Jeffrey Grubb

Valve wants to emulate that process with SteamVR.

One of the questions you might ask us is, Why in the world are you making hardware, Valve founder Gabe Newell said during a roundtable interview with several media outlets including GamesBeatlast week. Were building three VR games. What we can do now is we can be designing hardware at the same time that were designing software. This is something that Miyamoto has always had. Hes had the ability to think about what the input devices and design of systems should be like while hes also designing games. And our sense is that this is going to enable us to build much better entertainment experiences for people.

Newell said that Valve isnt suddenly looking to make a significant profit from hardware devices because the margins are typically not great on those kinds of products. Instead, he explained that in order to move VR forward, Valve needs to think about software and hardware developing in unison.

It feels like weve been stuck with mouse-and-keyboard for a really long time, said Newell. The opportunity to build much more interesting kinds of experiences for gamers is there, we just had to expand what we could do. But its not about building hardware, its about making bigger leaps forward by working on these things together.

All the senior members of Valves VR team acknowledged that its efforts could flop because they dont know whats going to work. But the company thinks that any potential failure could provide useful data for anyone else working in the space, and since SteamVR is open, someone else could swoop in with a successful idea that Valve couldnt think of.

The presumption is that when youre trying to build something new, youre going to have a lot of failures, said Newell. So you want to be in a position so you know if something could work. If youre not failing, then youre probably not exploring the potential space.

But Valve is determined to do that exploring, and Newell specifically points to Nintendo as an example of how to do this kind of experimentation.

Because you can always be surprised, said Newell. Personally, I thought the DS was kinda stupid. I thought Sony was going to crush Nintendo in that generation of handheld devices. I was totally wrong. I hadnt worked on it. I hadnt tried to design any games for it. And clearly the DS ended up the winner.

On the flipside, the first time I played Wii Sports, I was like, Oh, my god theres so much potential here. But it turned out that Wii Sports pretty much nailed it, and that was it. And there was less innovation that I expected.

So Newell is wary of his initial instincts.

You can still find out that there was more or less [to an idea] than you thought, said Newell. And you find out by making a bunch of experiments and getting a bunch of other people to try things.And the assumption is that as we continue this ongoing evolution of game design, tools, and hardware, were going to find stuff that really creates game experiences that take advantage of the unique characteristics of VR.

And so Valve will keep iterating on its hardware and software, and everyone will get to see if the company ends up with a success like the Nintendo DS or a flop like the Wii U. Either way, Newell and his team are prepared.

This post by Jeff Grubb originally appeared on VentureBeat.

Tagged with: controllers, Gabe Newell, Valve Software

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How Valve is Taking a Nintendo-like Approach to Virtual Reality - UploadVR

Image source: Getty Images.

Consumer-level virtual reality (VR) received its first big push in 2016 with major headset launches from Facebook(NASDAQ:FB), HTC (NASDAQOTH:HTCCY), and Sony (NYSE:SNE), but uptake for the technology fell short of many analysts' expectations, and there are a range of challenges that threaten to limit future adoption.Sales for Facebook's Oculus Rift and HTC's Vive headsets dried up after their respective launches, and SuperData cut its 2016 sales estimate for Sony's PlayStation VR from 2.6 million units to 745,000 units -- potentially worrying signs for the future of head-mounted displays.

VR still has compelling prospects, but it's also clear that the technology will have to overcome certain roadblocks before it's ready for prime time. In order to better understand the potential growth trajectory for virtual reality in 2017 and beyond, let's take a look at some of the factors that are shaping the progression of the technology.

The fact that Samsung's Gear VR -- which uses compatible cellphones for its display and retails at $99 -- is the top-selling headset suggests that price will continue to be a key hurdle for higher-end virtual reality adoption. The Oculus Rift still sells for $599, while the Vive is priced at $799, and the PlayStation VR retails at $399. In addition to a growing list of compatible phones for Gear VR and Alphabet's Google Daydream platform, more headsets will hit the market in 2017 and fill in the gaps between high- and low-end experiences. Increased competition should put pressure on Facebook, HTC, and Sony to lower the prices for their devices or improve value propositions through bundling and other promotions.

Lenovo is expected to release a headset this year that delivers higher resolution than the Rift or the Vive, a lighter weight, and augmented reality (AR) capabilities -- all at a sub-$400 price. Lenovo's device will be part of Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Holographic virtual reality ecosystem, and make use of a dual-camera internal tracking system (as opposed to the external systems used by the Vive, Oculus Rift, and PS VR) that could be instrumental in the emergence of more affordable headsets. Windows Holographic headsets will reportedly start in the $300 price range and are being designed to be compatible with mid-range computers -- moves that should make virtual reality more accessible and build Microsoft's position in the space. Companies including Asus, Acer, HP, and Dell are also developing entries for the Windows Holographic virtual reality platform, though it's not clear which, if any, will launch this year.

Even with new entrants, the cost of high-end VR will likely continue to be prohibitive to mass-market adoption, but reports that Facebook is closing 200 out of 500 Oculus Rift demo stations at Best Buy locations due to low engagement suggests other obstacles to VR going mainstream this year.

While new competition means the cost of entry for mid-level and high-end virtual devices is likely to fall this year, a growing selection of headsets will contribute to the trend of fragmentation that threatens to limit the progression of VR. Early competition to establish leadership in the space and technological differences between high-end and low-end deviceshave created a situation where many software offerings are not compatible across devices. Fragmenting even exists within individual platforms, with Oculus Rift developers needing to account for segmentation created by the introduction of the device's touch-based controllers.

For now, VR hardware lacks a "killer app" to justify the cost of entry, and the dynamics of the current market present barriers to the arrival of breakthrough software. With small and fractured installed bases for VR headsets, developing big-budget virtual reality experiences still doesn't make sense for most developers, and that issue is likely to persist through 2017. Even Sony, a platform holder with wide range of video game development studios, seems to have few projects on the horizon to support its headset. Without standout software experiences to hook users and encourage engagement with the new display mediums, the high cost of entry will remain prohibitive to the mass market audience.

While early uptake for VR has been disappointing compared to initial projections, it's important to remember just how young this technology is. The overly optimistic forecasts for VR adoption in 2016 give cause for some skepticism when looking at future targets, but expectations for huge growth in the category persist, with a study from Citigroup estimating that the combined market for VR and AR will reach $2.16 trillion by 2035.

Despite initial roadblocks, the immersive potential offered by VR and AR and improvements to hardware and software make it likely that the technology will eventually achieve mass adoption. Last year marked the beginning of the consumer VR push, and, while it doesn't look like 2017 will deliver the confluence of factors needed to propel the medium into the mainstream, the long-term outlook remains very bright.

The early adopter market is mostly buying VR for video games, but the technology will eventually be bridged to online shopping and other uses, and the immersive qualities of AR and VR should open up huge advertising opportunities that help build support for the new mediums.

Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's Board of Directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Keith Noonan has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Virtual Reality Was a Flop in 2016. Will 2017 Be the Year It Takes Off? - Motley Fool