Category Archives: Virtual Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See more here:

Comcast-Backed Virtual Reality Startup AltspaceVR Shuts Down - Variety

Posted July 29, 2017 17:53:08

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Thieberger is pragmatic when considering language revival.

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

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

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

See the original post here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more:

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

In the announcement post, the company revealed that the app only has around 35,000 monthly users. It says that's "pretty good for the size of the VR market," though, and if there's anything that made its old investors pull back, it's the general slowness of the market's growth. While the app itself will definitely be shuttered, AltspaceVR's head honchos are still thinking of what to do with the company itself.

The social application served as a hangout for VR headset users, who held concerts and various events with their avatars -- Engadget editor Sean Buckley even once played Dungeons & Dragons within its virtual confines. Needless to say, people formed friendships in AltspaceVR's virtual world, and the company wants to remind everyone to take the next few days to find new ways to connect. The team will hold a VR party on August 3rd to give everyone a chance to say goodbye and will take the virtual universe offline for good when the clock strikes 10.

Excerpt from:

Virtual reality hangout AltspaceVR will close in August - Engadget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch a preview of the game below:

Originally posted here:

A billion tweets turned into virtual reality - University of California

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more here:

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

Virtual reality apps canimmerse you in incredible 360-degree visuals. You don't need to splash hundreds of pounds on headsets such as theOculus Rift or HTC Vive, you can enjoy a great VR experience using your smartphone and some brilliant apps.

While early VRexperiences were limited to advanced headsets, now there are a range of options for turning your smartphone into an immersive device.

To use VR on your smartphone you can pick up a budget headset such as Google's Daydream View, the Samsung Gear VR, or even the simple Google Cardboard.There are also plenty of budget virtual reality headsets that work well with iPhones, such as the Homido V2.

There are plenty of VRapps available on Google's Play store and iTunes, some which are dedicated to the medium and some, like YouTube, that have additional VR capabilities and work with headsets.

Google also has a dedicated app store for its Daydream VR headset, which works with Android phones including Google Pixel andHuawei Mate 9 Pro. It will soon be available for the Samsung Galaxy S8. Apps for Samsung Gear VR are available on the Oculus Store.

Read more:

The 10 best virtual reality apps - The Telegraph - Telegraph.co.uk

With the First World War, we have got the chance of doing something different. We can keep it fresh.

It will be interesting to see whether my kids find the First World War as distant as I find the Battle of Agincourt, or will the immediacy of it be maintained because we have got this technology.

Its about taking the images and giving it the full treatment of 2017, which is immersive which is a whole step above sitting on your bottom watching television.

These sets have primarily been used by gamers so far, but I think history has the most to gain from these.

Bill Hunt, a Chelsea Pensioner who spent 25 years in the Royal Horse Guards, on Tuesday became one of the first members of the public to try out the new films.

Go here to read the rest:

Passchendaele virtual reality view could keep the horrors of the First ... - Telegraph.co.uk

Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

Laurene Powell Jobss Emerson Collective LLC andSingapores sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings Pte led a $40 million fundraising round in the virtual-reality company Within,joining investors that include Andreessen Horowitz, 21st Century Fox Inc. and Raine Ventures.

The funding brings the total for the Los Angeles-based software startup to $56.6 million, according to a statement Wednesday. WPP Plc, the worlds largest advertising agency, and Macro Ventures also participated in the latest round. Within is already working with companies including Fox, NBCUniversal and Vice Media.

Source: One of Within

Founded by Aaron Koblin and Chris Milk, Within will use the money for development of augmented reality, or AR, experiences -- an emerging form of digital entertainment. The funding reflects growing investor confidence in potential commercial applications for AR and virtual reality, a market that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says may reach $182 billion by 2025.

In terms of VR/AR content creation, they are our bet and we are extremely excited about teaming with them,Lars Dalgaard, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said in an interview. These two guys are the pied pipers that people are following. They have built a real brand.

Technology and entertainment companies are beginning to develop commercial uses for AR and VR. Apple Inc. is preparing to put augmented reality software in as many as a billion mobile devices this autumn. At the same time, Hollywood studios have been looking for ways to deploy the technology for moviegoers.The funding gives Within the ability to expand and develop new technology and content.

The widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Powell Jobs founded Emerson Collective to focus on education, immigration, the environment and other social justice initiatives. Shes worth about $18 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

With Temasek as a partner, international expansion is on the horizon, and the company will be working more closely with brands to reach consumers, Milk said.

Our goal is to connect the world through immersive stories, Milk, Withins chief executive officer, said in an interview. That includes both developing the new storytelling language in both of those mediums, as well as the technology to support them on a lot of different current hardware, headsets and devices.

Children using Withins AR Goldilocks storybook can read a story aloud and see the characters they describe appear on an iPad or mobile-phone screen, superimposed in reality. The technology was featured last month at Apples Worldwide Developers Conference.

Walt Disney Co. has revealed plans for an AR headset that will feature Star Wars games, like Holo Chess, the board game with battling holographic pieces seen in A New Hope.

Formerly called Vrse, Within adopted its current name in June 2016 when the company completed a $12.6 million funding round.

One of Withins recent projects,Life of Us, isa multi-user experience based on evolution, with viewers developing from amoeba to apes to humans. It can be seen at Imax VR centers, a virtual-reality pilot project by Imax Corp., the operator of large-format movie theaters.

With assistance by Lizette Chapman, and Alex Webb

Read the original post:

Laurene Powell Jobs Leads Funding Round in Virtual-Reality Firm - Bloomberg