Category Archives: Virtual Reality

The upcoming firefighter movieOnly the Bravefinds the great Jeff Bridges reteaming with his Tron: Legacy director, Joseph Kosinski. So, when your writer chatted with the actor Tuesday morning for the EW radio show Entertainment Weirdly at Sirius XMs New York studios, I had to ask about the ongoing rumors that we might one day see a third Tron film.

Yeah, yeah, Ive heard those rumors too, Bridges replied. I hope that happens. I think Joes got the script and everything, you know. Yeah, I dont know that Im supposed to talk about it or not. I dont know. It should be the first virtual reality movie, you know? Wouldnt that be coolto see Tron in that world?

It would indeed, Dude. It would indeed.

Bridges was in town to attend the premiere of his new film, comedy-drama The Only Living Boy in New York, which costars Callum Turner, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, and Kiersey Clemons. You can hear the full interview with Bridges next Monday, Aug. 15, at 1 p.m. ET on Entertainment Weirdly onEW Radio. And you can watch the trailers for both The Only Living Boy in New York and Only the Brave, below.

The Only Living Boy in New Yorkwill be released Aug. 11, whileOnly the Bravearrives Oct. 20.

Read more from the original source:

Jeff Bridges wants Tron 3 to be a virtual reality movie - EW.com

In the past few years, Ive been on the lookout for virtual reality experiences that cross the line into believable experiences. Ive demod Microsoft HoloLens and explored Vive, Oculus, and Samsung Gear.

They all have their place, but none of them took me out of this world, and into another -- except one.

Two years ago, I was one of the first people to demo a new technology platform called The Void at the TED conference in Vancouver.

The Void describes Itself as hyper-reality": a whole-body, fully immersive VR experience.

I wore a haptic vest that uses sound and vibration to ramp up the sense of realism for explorers. I was transported to an ancient temple. From there, I walked down the stone-lined pathways, solving puzzles to open a door into the next chamber. On the wall, a torch was burning, and a voice in my headset suggested I take it along with me.

Steven Rosenbaum / @MagnifyMedia

The plot was carefully choreographed to play out from room to room, with actual walls and stone chairs that drove the sense of reality. The floors shook and the walls felt cold to the touch.

Then a floor dropped away and a lake emerged with a rumble, and a massive serpent rose up and moved in for the kill. Thankfully, I had my torch to keep the serpent at bay.

The Utah-based startup has developed a proprietary head-mounted display, the haptic vest, a tracking system and software called Rapture.

TED's Katherine McCartney said The Void "is pioneering a new form of cinematic virtual reality.

Because The Void is both digital and physical, it takes your mind places that just images and sound cannot. The images of the waves crashing on the shore are combined with a mist of water -- and that little physical clue takes you there. Its not fake, its real. And it felt to me then as if id seen a glimpse into the future.

Last week, the team at The Void announced an amazing next step: their newest hyper-reality experience, "Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire." Produced by Lucasfilm, ILMxLAB and The VOID, the "Star Wars" experience will arrive at Downtown Disney at Disneyland Resort and Disney Springs at Walt Disney World Resort this holiday season.

At The VOID, we combine the magic of illusion, advanced technology and virtual reality to create fully immersive social experiences that take guests to new worlds, said Curtis Hickman, co-founder and chief creative officer at The VOID. A truly transformative experience is so much more than what you see with your eyes; its what you hear, feel, touch, and even smell.

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Youre my only hope. Princess Leia Organa

Smell? Yes, the idea is to engage all your senses and turn audience members into active participants. How many of us have imagined having a light saber in our hands, hearing the sound as it cuts through the air, and our hands tingling when our saber connects with a combatant's weapon? Im SO THERE!

The Force will be with you. Always. Obi-Wan Kenobi

The executive in charge of ILMxLab, Vicki Dobbs Beck said, By combining Lucasfilms storytelling expertise with cutting-edge imagery, and immersive sound from the team at Skywalker Sound, while invoking all the senses, we hope to truly transport all those who experience 'Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire 'to a galaxy far, far away.

For a generation raised on "Star Wars," this is a journey weve been waiting for.

Do. Or do not. There is no try. Yoda

If you want to see what it feels like to be inside The Void, this was my experience at TED:

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Can 'Star Wars' Ignite Cinematic Virtual Reality? - HuffPost

Each year, AFI FEST presented by Audi highlights cutting-edge virtual reality (VR) storytelling with the State of the Art Technology Showcase. AFI spoke with James Kaelan, current Director of Development + Acquisitions at VRcreative studio and production company Wevr, about his work in VR and the future of the medium. Formerly Creative Director at Seed&Spark, Kaelan brought his immersive short-film horror experience THE VISITOR to AFI FEST last year for the Showcase.

AFI: What got you interested in creating VR work in the first place?

JK: Im as surprised as anyone to find myself working in VR. Ive always considered myself something of a Luddite skeptical, generally, of the advance of technology. But back at the end of 2014, Anthony Batt, whos a co-founder of Wevr, was advising at Seed&Spark (which I helped co-found), and invited our team to visit their offices and watch some of the preliminary 360 video and CGI work they were producing. I remember sitting in the conference room and putting on the prototype of the Samsung Gear VR, and being immediately shocked by the potential of the technology. This wasnt some shiny new feature grafted onto cinema like 3D or a rumble pack in your theater chair. This was a new medium, requiring a brand new language.

AFI: What misconceptions do you think are out there among audiences when they first encounter VR work?

JK: I think audiences, rightfully, expect a lot from the medium. Most people whove had any direct contact with the very broad array of experiences that we broadly group together as VR have still only seen monoscopic 360 video, either on a Google Cardboard or a Gear. And with such work, after youve gotten over the initial thrill of discovering that you can look around, essentially, the inside of a sphere, your expectations accelerate. Two years ago we were still at the Lumirebrothers stage of VR. Workers leaving a factory? Awesome. Train pulling into a station? Super awesome. But unlike with cinema in its early years, the audience for VR has extremely high expectations about narrative complexity and image fidelity gleaned from the last 130 years of film. They wont tolerate inferior quality for very long. So those of us on the creative and technical side of the medium have to find a way to meet those assumptions. Some creators, in a rush to find a viable language in VR, have resorted to jamming it into the paradigm of framed storytelling, force-mediating the viewers perspective through edits, and teaching the audience to remain passive. And I dont want to dismiss those techniques out of hand. But I think its our job to actually forget the rules we apply to other media, and continue striving to invent a brand new way of telling stories. When we begin to master that new language, audiences will come in droves.

AFI: Whats the biggest challenge documentary filmmakers encounter when creating something for the VR space?

JK: I would actually say that documentary filmmakers are better equipped, naturally, to transition into VR or at least the 360 video element of it. And I say this because, without painting nonfiction storytellers with too broad a brush (and without sinking into the mire of the objectivity versus subjectivity debate), documentary filmmakers engage with existing subjects, rather than inventing new ones from scratch. Certainly when you look to the vrit side of documentary film, where the goal is observation rather than participation or investigation, 360 should feel quite natural to those artists because its actually closer (I say with great trepidation) to a purer strain of objectivity: because youve gotten rid of the frame. Youve chosen where to place the camera and when, but youre capturing the entirety of the environment simultaneously. Fiction filmmakers are probably less likely to encounter or invent story-worlds that unfold in both halves of the sphere simultaneously. All of that is to say, I literally wish Id spent more time making long-take docs before moving into VR!

AFI: What types of artists are you looking to work with at Wevr?

JK:Wevr is in this unique place where weve made a name for ourselves making some of the most phenomenal, intricate, interactive, CG, room-scale VR like theBlu and Gnomes & Goblins while simultaneously making, and being recognized on the international film festival circuit, for 360 monoscopic video work that has cost less than $10,000 to produce. So I dont want to pigeonhole Wevr. We make simulations with Jon Favreau on one end, and on the other, we work with college students who are interning with us during the summer. What unites those two groups is that both maximize, or exceed, whats capable within the constraints of their given budgets. Within reason, you give any artist enough time and money and shell make something incredible. More impressive and more attractive to us is the artist who can innovate in times of scarcity and abundance. Atthis moment in the history of VR, if you can tell stories dynamically without having to hire a team of engineers to execute your vision, youll get more work done. Youll actually get to practice your craft. Later you can have a team of 100, and a budget of a million times that.

AFI: Whats a common mistake you see new artists making when they first start creating work for the VR space?

JK: Artists working in VR try to replicate whats already familiar to them. And ironically, its the filmmakers who have the toughest time transitioning myself included. We miss the frame. We miss the authorial hand that mediates perspective and attention. We miss the freedom to juxtapose through editing. And because we miss those things, our first inclination is to figure out how to port them into VR. The best and least possible approach is to forget everything you know, like Pierre Menard trying to write the Quixote. Whereas artists from theater, from the gallery and museum installation world, come to VR almost naturally. They think about physical navigation and multi-sensory experience. They think about how things feel to the touch. They think about how things smell. They think about how the viewer moves, most importantly. Thats an invaluable perspective to have at this still-early stage in VR.

AFI: What was your experience like showcasing VR work at AFI FEST?

JK:For me and for my collaborators on the project, Blessing Yen and Eve Cohen showing THE VISITOR at AFI FEST last year was an honor. In order to earn a living while being a filmmaker, Ive done a lot of different jobs. In the beginning I bussed tables. Later I got to write about film for living. Now I get to create, and help others create, VR. But during that entire time, from clearing dishes at Mohawk Bend in Echo Park six years ago to working at Wevr now, AFI FEST has been the same: a free festival, stocked with the most discerning slate of films (and now VR) from around the world. And Ive gone every year since Ive lived in LA. So, it meant a lot to me to be included last year. On top of that, the presentation of the VR experiences themselves, spread around multiple dedicated spaces that never felt oppressively crowded or loud, made AFI one of my favorite stops on the circuit last year.

Interactive and virtual reality entries for AFI FEST 2017 presented by Audi are now being accepted for the State of the Art Technology Showcase, which highlights one-of-a-kind projects and events at the intersection of technology, cinema and innovation. The deadline to submit your projects is August 31, 2017. Submit today at AFI.com/AFIFEST or Withoutabox.com.

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The AFI FEST Interview: Wevr's James Kaelan on Virtual Reality Storytelling - American Film Magazine (blog)

Watching a 2017 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 doing what it was made to do is already a treat to the eyes and ears, but Future Motoring just released a video that makes it a whole new kind of experience. The guys over there mounted a 360-degree camera to the back of a slightly modified Shelby to take us for a virtual reality ride.

The video is set in a rural area on country roads where the GT350 shines. This is a great demonstration of the straight-line performance this Shelby is capable of (not that thats the only thing its good at) Granted, the setting doesnt show us much more than road, trees, and sky, but its still a cool thing to watch. Its especially cool if you have a VR headset. If you dont, you can still drag the view around on YouTube.

As for the car itself, its no ordinary GT350. This mean blue Mustang has been equipped with Ford Performance intake and exhaust making the 5.2-liter flat plane crank Voodoo V-8 under the hood breathe better and sound even more amazing than it does in stock form.

This isnt the first time weve gotten a Mustang VR experience. Back in February, Ford Performance released a video called ReRendezvous which was a 360-degree virtual reality ride through Paris from the point of view of a 2016 Mustang. This GT350 video is a bit lower budget, but it gives us a much more satisfying sound.

Read more from the original source:

Take a Virtual Reality Ride Along in a Shelby GT350 - The Drive

You may need extra controllers to complete your experience and play some of the more advanced titles that are available. The Samsung Gear VR and GoogleDaydreamnow come with small point-and-click controllers for navigating through apps and playing games.

With the PSVR, you can play using your Dualshock PS4 controller, or you can splash out and pick up the VR Aim Controller, which can be used with games like Farpoint, although right now not much else. The controller can be bought for 145.99.

For the Oculus Rift, you can buy Oculus Touch Controllers. Rather than using a handset, these operate in a more similar to real life hand movements,giving the feeling that the virtual hands are actually your own. Oculus Rift Touch Controllers are 130.

You can get a budget Google Cardboard virtual reality headset - or a very similar device on Amazon - for just 15. Google and Samsung's mobile headsets aremore advanced, rounded and comfortable and also cost less than 100.

For a more powerful virtual reality set up, the PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift both cost several hundred pounds, while you will probably want to look into picking up a few extras such as handsets.

The HTC Vive is the most expensive on this list, coming in at more than 750 - and you will need a powerful PC set up to play the headset as well.

Go here to see the original:

The best virtual reality headsets you can buy in 2017 - Telegraph.co.uk

Tyson Helton, USCs quarterbacks coach, stood in a film room Monday holding a strange, round gadget that looked like a smaller version of Luke Skywalkers pilot helmet.

Helton said he was going to use it to read minds.

"Before you put this on, Helton said, I can turn this thing anywhere and see where you're looking.

To demonstrate, he rotated the helmet from left to right. On a television monitor next to him, a view of USCs practice field panned in sync, left to right.

The helmet is USCs latest edge: a virtual-reality set that allows quarterbacks to enter each others eyes and take repetitions virtually, and for coaches to follow along, seeing exactly what the quarterback sees.

At each practice this season, a student trails the quarterbacks holding a long boom topped with cameras pointing forward and back. The student holds the boom a few feet above the quarterbacks head. Within an hour after practice, the quarterbacks can don the headset (or watch on an iPad), cue up each play and look around in 360 degrees as if they were back out on the field.

The Trojans have joined a growing number of teams chasing a technological advantage. Stanford, with the company STRIVR, pioneered virtual-reality film study three seasons ago. XOS Digital, USCs vendor for all video, said it counted 25 virtual-reality clients in college and professional football and basketball.

Zach Helfand

The beach city boys used to throw on USC jerseys and run plays in the driveway, all thinking theyd one day make like Matt Leinart or Reggie Bush.

The beach city boys used to throw on USC jerseys and run plays in the driveway, all thinking theyd one day make like Matt Leinart or Reggie Bush. (Zach Helfand)

On Monday, USC provided a glimpse at how its quarterbacks use the system to steal precious practice hours on the virtual field.

Inside the helmet, a glance down revealed the top of a helmet shining in the sun.

"All right now this is on Sam, OK? Helton said.

Quarterback Sam Darnolds hands were outstretched for the snap. Straight ahead were USCs linemen. Through headphones, coaches barked instructions. It was like stepping into Darnolds head or that of some organism floating right above him.

Look to your left, Helton said. A turn of the head showed Deontay Burnett in the slot. Cornerback Ajene Harris lined up opposite Burnett, mirroring him a bad sign for that route.

So right now Sam should say, 'No, I don't have it,' Helton said.

The clip rolled forward. The ball was snapped. Darnold tried Burnett anyway. Harris jumped the pass and nearly intercepted it.

What was he thinking, Helton wanted to know. After practice, Helton ran the play back. He could follow Darnolds head, look at what Darnold looked at: namely, Burnett and Burnett only.

Sam being Sam, he thinks he can fit everything in there, Helton said.

In the film room, Darnold knew his error immediately.

Unlike basketball or baseball players, football players earn only marginal gains training on the field alone. The best learning comes in full team drills. But that takes time and people and carries an injury risk.

So Stanford coach David Shaw, an early investor in STRIVR, which was founded by a former Stanford player and graduate assistant named Derek Belch, started his quarterbacks on virtual reality in 2014 to trick their minds into thinking they were seeing real action.

In the middle of a game, the plays about to start, and he says, Ive been here before. I know whats going to happen. Ive seen this before, Shaw said of his quarterbacks at last years Pac-12 media days. Boom. Change the protection. Touchdown pass.

Bill McCarthy, the football product manager for XOS, said teams have experimented with deploying cameras at different positions such as linebackers or even the personal protector on punt drills.

USC coach Clay Helton said the running backs have found the training particularly useful. Last week, he was excited about experimenting with the linebackers.

"We tried it, said Eric Espinoza, USCs director of football video operations. It just didn't give the look that he wanted, and where we were going to place [the cameraman], the defensive coaches were worried about safeties coming up from behind and hitting him.

Espinoza and another video staffer, Daniel Dmytrisin, crunch all of USCs practice video. Coaches and players hoard, consume and obsess film as if it were legal tender. Film shows which player can win a starting job. It shows which opponent has a tell. It shows what opposing teams will do to break opponents down.

USC records from towers high above its end zones, zoomed out to fit all 22 players. Tyson Helton said he still uses this tape 80% of the time. But it leaves important gaps.

A lot of times when you coach in the film room and you're looking at the video from the angle up top, Helton said, it doesn't tell the true story of what [the quarterback] saw.

For players, standard game film is like a good textbook. Its the foundation. But sometimes what they need is a lab. This is especially true for backups.

"Sam uses it some, but because he's getting a lot of reps and he's a little more experienced player, he already knows what he's done wrong, Helton said. But the beauty of it is the young players, the young quarterbacks, because it allows them to get the closest thing to a live rep as possible."

Jack Sears, USCs freshman quarterback, uses the system more than anyone.

"Jack's a gym rat, Helton said. Jack lives at the office. I mean, literally you have to kick him out, like, Jack go home, man.' Because he enjoys the process. He enjoys it. Right now he doesn't know anything, and he knows he doesn't know anything. So he's trying like hell to get caught up."

Helton cued up a play from a recent practice. The play gave Sears an easy read to either side.

You'll watch Jack's eyes right here, Helton said. Watch him. He goes left with his eyes. He goes right with his eyes. And then back late. You kind of see his head moving a little bit.

With the camera angled down from a few feet over Sears head, its clear that both options are open, but his helmet swivels as if he were shaking off a 3-2 curveball. Sears hesitation let a blitzing linebacker through, so he took off and ran.

To correct these misreads, Sears spends about 20 hours a week watching film on his own, a majority of it in virtual reality.

It is a powerful advantage. The NCAA allows coaches to spend 20 hours a week with players on football-related activities. But Darnold alone takes about half of the repetitions during practice. During the season, his workload bumps to about 75% of repetitions.

As Helton left the film room Monday, Sears walked in, holding a skateboard.

We were just talking about you, Helton said.

See the rest here:

USC gets inside Sam Darnold's head with virtual reality film study - Los Angeles Times

Richard tried out the Shard VR experiences (Picture: ITV)

Poor Richard Arnold is having an absolute mare this week.

On yesterdays Good Morning Britain, the showbiz correspondent was forced to dress as a shark to celebrate the GMB hosts roles in Sharknado 5.

And today, he was made walk the plank 800 feet in the air and essentially throw himself off the Shard.

Richard volunteered to try out new virtual reality experiences at the top of Londons Shard, but that may have been a terrible idea, considering he is afraid of heights.

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Firstly, he tried out a VR experience which put you in the shoes of the builders working on the tallest building in the United Kingdom.

As Richard put on his glasses, he was transported to a plank of scaffolding 95 storeys up, causing him to scream which was fairly amusing, considering we were just watching him stand still.

He shouted: Oh my god, its horrible. Thats horrendous. I cant look down.

Back in the studio, Kate Garraway joked: Its torture Richard week on Good Morning Britain, welcome.

But things got worse when Richard had to try out a virtual reality slide that made you think you were plunging 800 feet down and across the London skyline.

When the reporter strapped himself into the slide and saw himself whizzing through the air at speeds up to 100mph, Richard screamed and held onto the sides of his slide, leaving Kate and guest host Jeremy Kyle in stitches.

Better you than us, Rich.

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If youre brave and/or stupid, you can book your own Shard VR experiences here.

Although we doubt you could beat Richards screams.

MORE: Sharnado 5 stars Good Morning Britains Kate Garraway, Charlotte Hawkins and Laura Tobin

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Richard Arnold tried out a terrifying virtual reality slide on GMB and he was hysterical - Metro

In the past few years, Ive been on the lookout for virtual reality experiences that cross the line into believable experiences. Ive demod Microsoft HoloLens and explored Vive, Oculus, and Samsung Gear.

They all have their place, but none of them took me out of this world, and into another -- except one.

Two years ago, I was one of the first people to demo a new technology platform called The Void at the TED conference in Vancouver.

The Void describes Itself as hyper-reality": a whole-body, fully immersive VR experience.

I wore a haptic vest that uses sound and vibration to ramp up the sense of realism for explorers. I was transported to an ancient temple. From there, I walked down the stone-lined pathways, solving puzzles to open a door into the next chamber. On the wall, a torch was burning, and a voice in my headset suggested I take it along with me.

The plot was carefully choreographed to play out from room to room, with actual walls and stone chairs that drove the sense of reality. The floors shook and the walls felt cold to the touch.

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Then a floor dropped away and a lake emerged with a rumble, and a massive serpent rose up and moved in for the kill. Thankfully, I had my torch to keep the serpent at bay.

The Utah-based startup has developed a proprietary head-mounted display, the haptic vest, a tracking system and software called Rapture.

TED's Katherine McCartney said The Void "is pioneering a new form of cinematic virtual reality.

Because The Void is both digital and physical, it takes your mind places that just images and sound cannot. The images of the waves crashing on the shore are combined with a mist of water -- and that little physical clue takes you there. Its not fake, its real. And it felt to me then as if id seen a glimpse into the future.

At The VOID, we combine the magic of illusion, advanced technology and virtual reality to create fully immersive social experiences that take guests to new worlds, said Curtis Hickman, co-founder and chief creative officer at The VOID. A truly transformative experience is so much more than what you see with your eyes; its what you hear, feel, touch, and even smell.

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Youre my only hope. Princess Leia Organa Smell? Yes, the idea is to engage all your senses and turn audience members into active participants. How many of us have imagined having a light saber in our hands, hearing the sound as it cuts through the air, and our hands tingling when our saber connects with a combatant's weapon? Im SO THERE!

The Force will be with you. Always. Obi-Wan Kenobi

The executive in charge of ILMxLab, Vicki Dobbs Beck said, By combining Lucasfilms storytelling expertise with cutting-edge imagery, and immersive sound from the team at Skywalker Sound, while invoking all the senses, we hope to truly transport all those who experience 'Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire 'to a galaxy far, far away.

For a generation raised on "Star Wars," this is a journey weve been waiting for.

Do. Or do not. There is no try. Yoda

If you want to see what it feels like to be inside The Void, this was my experience at TED:

Read more:

Can 'Star Wars' Ignite Cinematic Virtual Reality? - MediaPost Communications

A demonstration shows Mozilla's Firefox catching up to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge with WebVR support.

Mozilla plans to release a version of its Firefox browser Tuesday that embraces a version of virtual reality for the web.

Back in 2014, Mozilla developers including Vladimir Vukicevic put together a concept called WebVR. The idea was to let web browsers navigate virtual realms, and make it easier for people to create a VR world once that would work on all sorts of devices.

But Vukicevic headed off to game engine maker Unity, and Google's Chrome browser beat Mozilla with WebVR support. Microsoft's Edge also edged out Firefox, adding WebVR support in April. Microsoft and Google, which both sell devices to experience virtual reality and its augmented reality cousin, have a big incentive to make virtual reality real.

"WebVR is the major platform feature shipping in Firefox 55," the latest Firefox release calendar update says. "Firefox users with an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift headset will be able to experience VR content on the web and can explore some exciting demos."

There's plenty to do on the web with a PC, and plenty of apps to run on a phone. But for VR to thrive, there has to be plenty of stuff for us to do online virtually, too. WebVR is an important part of keeping keep us supplied with games, tourist attractions, educational lessons and other interesting things to do in virtual realms.

There are caveats to using WebVR today. Chrome's support only is on Android-powered devices right now, and WebVR on Edge requires you to put the browser in a developer mode.

WebVR is also important for Mozilla. The nonprofit organization is fighting to reclaim its relevance and restore its reputation after Firefox slid into Chrome's shadow in recent years. The work to get Firefox back into fighting trim will culminate with Firefox 57, due to arrive Nov. 14.

There's plenty of VR hardware available, from high-end headsets like Facebook's Oculus Rift and HTC's Vive to basic models like Google's inexpensive Cardboard, which relies on your phone to show VR views. With WebVR, it's in principle easier to build those VR destinations, because developers don't have to re-create them for each device.

WebVR isn't the only way to bridge the divide, though: Unity also offers tools to span multiple headsets.

And WebVR is no universal cure. Some VR headsets don't support WebVR, and some browsers don't support all devices.

Mozilla has high hopes for VR. Its senior vice president of emerging technologies, Sean White, has been working with VR for more than two decades.

"In the 1990s, unless you had $5 million or $10 million, you couldn't do it," he said in a recent interview. "Now if there's somebody with Parkinson's disease who can't move or travel, I could take them to Angkor Wat."

In the long term, he and his boss, Mozilla Chief Executive Chris Beard, think VR could be eclipsed by augmented reality. VR immerses you in fully computerized worlds of VR, but AR overlays computer-generated imagery atop the real world.

"VR will beget AR pretty quickly as a mass-market opportunity," Beard said. "Browsers play a very meaningful role."

First published Aug. 8, 5 a.m. PT. Update, 10:55 a.m.: Adds detail about Microsoft and Chrome support for WebVR.

Virtual reality 101: CNET tells you everything you need to know about VR.

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View original post here:

Firefox soon will help you lose yourself in the VR web - CNET

August 7, 2017 Two 138-degree light field panoramas (top and center) and a depth estimate of the second panorama (bottom). Credit: Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and Photonic Systems Integration Laboratory at UC San Diego

Engineers at Stanford University and the University of California San Diego have developed a camera that generates four-dimensional images and can capture 138 degrees of information. The new camerathe first-ever single-lens, wide field of view, light field cameracould generate information-rich images and video frames that will enable robots to better navigate the world and understand certain aspects of their environment, such as object distance and surface texture.

The researchers also see this technology being used in autonomous vehicles and augmented and virtual reality technologies. Researchers presented their new technology at the computer vision conference CVPR 2017 in July.

"We want to consider what would be the right camera for a robot that drives or delivers packages by air. We're great at making cameras for humans but do robots need to see the way humans do? Probably not," said Donald Dansereau, a postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering at Stanford and the first author of the paper.

The project is a collaboration between the labs of electrical engineering professors Gordon Wetzstein at Stanford and Joseph Ford at UC San Diego.

UC San Diego researchers designed a spherical lens that provides the camera with an extremely wide field of view, encompassing nearly a third of the circle around the camera. Ford's group had previously developed the spherical lenses under the DARPA "SCENICC" (Soldier CENtric Imaging with Computational Cameras) program to build a compact video camera that captures 360-degree images in high resolution, with 125 megapixels in each video frame. In that project, the video camera used fiber optic bundles to couple the spherical images to conventional flat focal planes, providing high-performance but at high cost.

The new camera uses a version of the spherical lenses that eliminates the fiber bundles through a combination of lenslets and digital signal processing. Combining the optics design and system integration hardware expertise of Ford's lab and the signal processing and algorithmic expertise of Wetzstein's lab resulted in a digital solution that not only leads to the creation of these extra-wide images but enhances them.

The new camera also relies on a technology developed at Stanford called light field photography, which is what adds a fourth dimension to this camerait captures the two-axis direction of the light hitting the lens and combines that information with the 2-D image. Another noteworthy feature of light field photography is that it allows users to refocus images after they are taken because the images include information about the light position and direction. Robots could use this technology to see through rain and other things that could obscure their vision.

"One of the things you realize when you work with an omnidirectional camera is that it's impossible to focus in every direction at oncesomething is always close to the camera, while other things are far away," Ford said. "Light field imaging allows the captured video to be refocused during replay, as well as single-aperture depth mapping of the scene. These capabilities open up all kinds of applications in VR and robotics."

"It could enable various types of artificially intelligent technology to understand how far away objects are, whether they're moving and what they're made of," Wetzstein said. "This system could be helpful in any situation where you have limited space and you want the computer to understand the entire world around it."

And while this camera can work like a conventional camera at far distances, it is also designed to improve close-up images. Examples where it would be particularly useful include robots that have to navigate through small areas, landing drones and self-driving cars. As part of an augmented or virtual reality system, its depth information could result in more seamless renderings of real scenes and support better integration between those scenes and virtual components.

The camera is currently at the proof-of-concept stage and the team is planning to create a compact prototype to test on a robot.

Explore further: Lensless camera technology for adjusting video focus after image capture

More information: Technical paper: http://www.computationalimaging.org/w 04/LFMonocentric.pdf

Hitachi today announced the development of a camera technology that can capture video images without using a lens and adjust focus after image capture by using a film imprinted with a concentric-circle pattern instead of ...

By combining 3-D curved fiber bundles with spherical optics, photonics researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a compact, 125 megapixel per frame, 360 video camera that is useful for immersive ...

When taking a picture, a photographer must typically commit to a composition that cannot be changed after the shutter is released. For example, when using a wide-angle lens to capture a subject in front of an appealing background, ...

Traditional cameraseven those on the thinnest of cell phonescannot be truly flat due to their optics: lenses that require a certain shape and size in order to function. At Caltech, engineers have developed a new camera ...

A camera that can record 3D images and video is under development at the University of Michigan, with $1.2 million in funding from the W.M. Keck Foundation.

(Tech Xplore)A team of researchers with the University of Stuttgart has used advanced 3-D printing technology to create an extremely small camera that uses foveated imaging to mimic natural eagle vision. In their paper ...

Most of the nuclear reactions that drive the nucleosynthesis of the elements in our universe occur in very extreme stellar plasma conditions. This intense environment found in the deep interiors of stars has made it nearly ...

Energy loss due to scattering from material defects is known to set limits on the performance of nearly all technologies that we employ for communications, timing, and navigation. In micro-mechanical gyroscopes and accelerometers, ...

New results show a difference in the way neutrinos and antineutrinos behave, which could help explain why there is so much matter in the universe.

A research team at the University of Central Florida has demonstrated the fastest light pulse ever developed, a 53-attosecond X-ray flash.

Engineers at Stanford University and the University of California San Diego have developed a camera that generates four-dimensional images and can capture 138 degrees of information. The new camerathe first-ever single-lens, ...

Imperial researchers have tested a 'blued' gauntlet from a 16th-century suit of armour with a method usually used to study solar panels.

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4-D camera could improve robot vision, virtual reality and self-driving cars - Phys.Org