Category Archives: Virtual Reality

Could virtual reality be dangerous? John Hanke worries that it could. And he should know: Hanke is the CEO of Niantic, the company primarily responsible for the Pokmon Go phenomenon that struck last summer .

"Im afraid [virtual reality] can be too good, in the sense of being an experience that people want to spend a huge amount of time in, said Hanke at an industry conference last month, as reported by GamesIndustry . I mean I already have concerns about my kids playing too much Minecraft , and thats a wonderful game."

Hanke continued: Were human beings and theres a lot of research out there that shows were actually a lot happier when we get exercise, when we go outside and outside in nature in particular. I think its a problem for us as a society if we forgo that and spend all of time in a Ready Player One-style VR universe."

As somebody profiting from virtual reality (and its cousin, augmented reality), Hanke's comments may come off as hypocritical. But I believe he's on to something. If you've played with a high-end VR headset like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or PlayStation VR, you know how immersive the experience can be. Once inside a virtual world, it's all too easy to become captivated. For some players, video games have long offered an escape from reality. Today's VR technology can take that even further.

Let me be clear that I am in no way opposed to VR or its world-changing potential. The technology will find use in gaming, of course, but also in medicine, heavy industry, aviation, the military and more. But users would be wise to make sure their relationship with the technology is a healthy one.

As Niantic's Hanke suggested, getting caught up in a virtual world can keep a person from socializing in the real world, an important part of the human experience. (Yes, friendships have been forged in games like World of Warcraft, but we are still social beings at heart). We've already seen examples of people getting sucked into "regular" games to extreme and even dangerous degrees . Spending massive amounts of time in VR could similarly present real dangers.

I also have concerns about virtual reality's impact on a person's physical health. We already know that spending too much time staring at a screen can harm our vision over the long term. VR headsets are essentially a digital display mounted directly in a user's face, raising real questions about the effects over time. Some people are also prone to nausea, dizziness and vertigo after just a little time spent in VR. For the industry, that motion sickness issue remains a largely unsolved problem.

From Apple to Microsoft , pretty much every major technology company is pursuing or is rumored to be pursuing virtual reality in some fashion. All would do well to give serious thought to these issues as the technology enters the mainstream. While I'm bullish on VR overall, I believe the industry needs to do more to grapple with the potential pitfalls before pushing the technology to the masses.

Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists, covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin is the President of Creative Strategies, Inc and has been with the company since 1981 where he has served as a consultant providing analysis to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry.

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I Love Virtual Reality, But I'm Also Afraid of It - TIME

What if virtual reality could help people be happier in their actual reality?

Heidi Wayment, a professor of social psychology at Northern Arizona University, studies what she calls the quiet egoa set of characteristics that can be cultivated to create a more compassionate sense of self, leading to positive implications for an individuals health and well-being.

Wayment and Ann Futterman Collier, an associate professor of clinical and health psychology at NAU, are combining the concepts of the quiet ego and virtual reality as they begin clinical applications to test virtual realitys effectiveness on mental well-being interventions in their Applied Research with Immersive Experiences (ARIES) lab at NAU.

There are four characteristics of the quiet ego, Wayment said: detached awareness, or mindfulness; sense of interconnectedness with others; perspective-taking; and growth, or the ability to conceptualize challenges as an opportunity for meaningful personal development.

In a recent study, we have found that by encouraging people to think about these key quiet ego principles through a contemplative intervention, people not only increased these quiet ego characteristics, but improved pluralistic thinking and reduced mind-wandering, Collier said. Thus, our findings suggested that a simple intervention with the quiet ego may help people going through stress to cope more effectively.

The two are examining the quiet ego when delivered through virtual reality technology, which uses a combination of audio and visual stimulation, often in the form of nature scenes, to users.

Unlike standard-format audio recordings, which they previously used in the quiet ego trials, virtual reality offers a more comprehensive and immersive environment, allowing users to better engage quiet ego characteristics.

Virtual reality seemed like a natural way to increase engagement and arousal when delivering psychological interventions, Collier said. Previous research on virtual reality suggests most psychological interventions, when delivered through immersive and interactive technology, are more effective than standard treatments so far. Our preliminary results do indeed support this.

Currently, the ARIES team is in the midst of conducting studies with university students, a population that exhibits higher-than-average levels of stress and anxiety. In the future the team plans to develop quiet ego applications to help individuals coping with severe stress and post-traumatic stress disorder and those undergoing cancer treatments.

The research is done in conjunction with the Immersive + Interactive Virtual Reality Lab.

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NAU researchers study use of virtual reality in creating more mindfulness, awareness - NAU News

Virtual reality companies like Oculus and HTC mainly market their devices for entertainment: Play in a virtual world, or be immersed in 360 video. But researchers at OpenAI, the non-profit AI firm backed by Elon Musk, have found another use for the technology: instructing robots how to move.

By recording an action in virtual reality just once, an system of two AI algorithms were able to decode and replicate the action with a physical machine, according to a post on OpenAIs blog today. The action demonstrated was simplestacking blocksbut this kind of learning through imitation could be more widely applicable to robots that carry boxes or flip burgers.

OpenAIs system works using two AI algorithms: One that interprets where everything is, and one that guesses why and how an action is happening. The researchers call these vision and imitation networks. Usually, these kinds of algorithms need to be trained on thousands of real-world examples of machines looking at blocks to tell where they are, and then examples of real machines picking up blocks, to figure out how to do the action itself.

OpenAIs breakthrough is accomplishing all of that through virtual simulation. The machine was able to accurately copy a humans VR action in the real world, without ever having moved before.

Nothing in our technique is specific to blocks, says Josh Tobin, a researcher at OpenAI, in a video. This system is an early prototype, that will form the backbone of the general-purpose robotics systems were developing here at OpenAI.

The system is expected to work well with other objects that are rigid, OpenAI communications and strategy director Jack Clark tells Quartz, but computers struggle to perfectly simulate fluid or flexible objects, so the data necessary to train robots to carry such objects is harder to generate. The OpenAI researchers plan to work on objects beyond blocks, as well as robots ability to carry objects, instead of just stacking them.

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Finally, a good use for virtual reality: training robots - Quartz

Forbes

When Will Virtual Reality Become Common In Marketing? - Forbes Forbes VR hasn't taken over the world yet, so marketers are still speculative about its potential value. But why is this the case? And when will it become common in the ... and more »

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When Will Virtual Reality Become Common In Marketing? - Forbes - Forbes

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A San Francisco virtual reality startup is being sued by a former employee who claims the company created an "unbearable environment for women."

The suit claims UploadVR degraded female employees, throwing parties with prostitutes and even putting a bed in one of its offices and calling it the "kink room."

The lawsuit also alleges that women employees were discriminated against, given menial tasks and were not reimbursed for business expenses. Also, the company paid male employees more despite female employees holding the same positions and having similar responsibilities, the suit claims.

Meg Virick, the director of San Jose State's School of Management, says the details of the lawsuit are frustrating. It's just the latest in a string of incidents in which Silicon Valley companies treat women badly, she said.

"I am beginning to see more and more that women are tending to leave," Virick said. "They're talented, they're engineers, and they're running into barriers we are imposing on them because top management needs to step up and say this needs to become an inclusive environment for everyone."

UploadVR co-founders Will Mason and Taylor Freeman were also named in the lawsuit, according to a report from TechCrunch. Freeman is CEO and Mason holds the title of president.

The pair released a statement Tuesday, saying, "Our employees are our greatest asset, and the sole reason for the success of this company. We are confident that the true nature of how we treat our employees and how we operate as leaders will shine through this unfortunate situation and confirm that these allegations are entirely without merit."

Mason and Freeman were recently named in the media section of Forbes 30 under 30 list. Their company has received funding from General Catalyst, Greycrofts GC Tracker fund, Colopl and others, according to TechCrunch.

Published 3 hours ago

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SF Virtual Reality Startup Sued By Former Employee - NBC Bay Area

Ever been tempted to get high with virtual reality? Well, you're in luck: Microsoft is developing "hallucination experiences" at least according to certain sections of the media.

In late 2016, dozens of news outlets claimed Microsoft was either predicting, or developing, hallucinogenic VR. MailOnline declared that "Microsoft says virtual reality could make you HALLUCINATE in the same way as LSD", writing of VR's "free-love, bongo-bashing vibe". The source? A post on Microsoft's blog presenting predictions from female researchers in order to inspire young people into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) which used the word "hallucinations" in a metaphorical sense, and made no mention of LSD.

Look back to the birth of other new forms of media and you'll see how quickly public sentiment shifts into moral panic. Victorians embraced telegrams for the purposes of commerce and government, then panicked at the idea of women sending telegrams to clandestine lovers. The rapid adoption of the telephone in the early 1900s was followed by fears it would lead to the demise of the "old practice of visiting friends". When games consoles became commonplace in the 90s, that lead to hand-wringing that they could incite violence in young men.

The term "moral panic" was defined by Stanley Cohen in the 60s as public alarm expressed in response to an issue that is regarded as threatening the moral fabric of society. More recently, Intel researcher Genevieve Bell built on Cohen's theory by outlining the reasons some technologies (TV, the internet) lead to more panic than others (fountain pens, fax machines). Bell specified three areas to watch. If a new media technology affects our relationship with time, space and each other, then panic conditions are ripe. Which leads us back to VR.

Those of us who work in VR might not want to admit it, but a moral panic is almost certainly coming and as VR succeeds, it will grow. There'll be a rash of VR-induced mental-health stories, ranging from post-VR panic attacks to episodes of psychosis. Then there'll be concerns about addiction: what if the virtual world's lack of limitation creates environments that are more enticing than the real one? Sex will be next expect stories about teledildonic infidelity, lowered birth rates and lawsuits against unofficial sex experiences with CG versions of celebs. Following Bell, we might say that the underlying fear is that our bodies will become irrelevant slabs of flesh, existing purely for the purpose of keeping our brains alive.

It's easy to dismiss these scare stories, but while moral panics are usually wildly exaggerated, they often stem from authentic concerns. Take the Great Cyberporn Scare of 1995, sparked when TIME magazine published a cover story on the hazards of "cyberporn", citing an undergraduate study claiming that 83.5 per cent of images on this new thing called the internet were pornographic. The methodology and reasoning may have been flawed, but there was an underlying concern which has played out into something valid. According to two NSPCC studies in 2015 and 2016, ten per cent of British 12- to 13-year-olds are worried they are addicted to porn, and most young people think that porn doesn't teach consent.

The same goes for VR. I've seen all sorts of responses to immersion, ranging from quiet discombobulation to a frenzied screaming episode. I've actually experienced depersonalisation of my own: the first time I tried Batman: Arkham VR, I came out, looked at my hands and didn't recognise them as my own.

In the best-case scenario, the coming moral panic might encourage the VR industry to reflect constructively on itself. Early adopters can help steer towards this best-case scenario by seeing their role as the "critical friend"; helping reflection happen sooner rather than later. As for VR creators, they must take their role seriously and seek user input as early on in a product's development as possible. They can also think carefully about the content they decide to produce, and how it might affect society in the long term.

It's clear that VR is scary, exciting and powerful. It we treat this power with care then we're far more likely to end up with an industry that not only weathers the storm ahead, but comes out stronger. And in the meantime, when you see a story about VR, don't forget to question what you read.

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It's time to prepare yourself for 'VR panic' - Wired.co.uk

Virtual reality startup Improbable announced Friday that it has raised $502 million in financing from investors including Japanese tech giant SoftBank.

The investments value Improbable at more than $1 billion -- the threshold startups must surpass to be considered a unicorn.

Improbable develops technology used in the creation of massive virtual worlds.

The company has created an operating system that allows developers to build virtual worlds and maintain them in the cloud. It allows gaming companies and studios to make big multiplayer games without spending money on hardware.

Improbable's technology could also be used to create virtual simulations of the real world -- for example, a virtual recreation of a city's subway system.

Related: Forget Ireland. Snapchat picks London as its international HQ

The investment is a big deal for a British startup. Europe has created far fewer unicorns than the United States.

For the lead investor, however, the investment is more routine.

"SoftBank is a perfect partner for us, with many complementary investments in their portfolio," CEO Hermann Narula said in a statement.

SoftBank's investment arm has recently poured huge sums of money into several startups, moves designed to position the company for what CEO Masayoshi Son calls the coming information revolution.

Related: Meet 'crazy' tech tycoon Masayoshi Son

The centerpiece of this effort is a $100 billion tech fund dubbed the SoftBank Vision Fund that will provide financing to emerging tech companies.

The bulk of the tech fund's money is expected to come from the government of Saudi Arabia. Other backers include Apple (AAPL, Tech30) and Qualcomm (QCOM, Tech30).

The investment in Improbable will not come from the Vision Fund, but could move to it in the future, Narula told Tech Crunch.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published May 12, 2017: 6:54 AM ET

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This virtual reality startup is now worth $1 billion - CNNMoney

Virtual reality tech has endured some serious growing pains already, and still hasnt fully reached mainstream acceptance among consumers. Plenty of people still see VR headsets as too complicated, clunky, and simply not worth the investment or hassle. A new VR headset concept is making its big debut at the ACM CHI 2017 event and, well, its probably not going to help matters. Its called FaceDisplay, and it might be the most ridiculous VR headset ever conceived.

Created by designers at Germanys Ulm University, FaceDisplay aims to solve the problem of virtual reality being an isolating experience by allowing others to interact with the headset wearer in the virtual world. With a trio of large touchscreens, the FaceDisplay headset acts as an input device for both the wearer and anyone standing nearby. Bystanders can touch the headsets displays to prompt input that the playerwill see in the virtual space like spawning objects that the player can then interact with.

The idea here is to make VR more of an inclusive experience rather than simply a portal for the wearer to look through. The problem, unfortunately, is readily apparent even in the brief demo video offered by its creators. In short, the entire experience is far too awkward to have staying power.

Tapping the headset of someone who doesnt know when or where youre going to touch means guessing when theyre going to turn their head and quickly moving your hand to avoid the headset as they swing and turn. Likewise, using the touchscreen as an input device for the player themselves seems incredibly frustrating, and its clear in the video demo that its not terribly useful or accurate.

Theres definitely a lot of room to explore multi-person VR concepts and perhaps once virtual reality truly grabs the publics imagination well see something that makes it possible, but this probably isnt it.

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Introducing the most absurd virtual reality headset of them all - BGR

The virtual reality (VR) market, which is estimated to reach up to $45 billion for gaming alone by 2025, shows early potential for mainstream use, but there are limitations to using the technology that need to be overcome in order for VR to reach mass adoption. We'll review these limitations, but first let's look at one VR product that is being rapidly adopted, and what the device's success says about the broader market for the technology.

One big success in the VR space has been Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL)Google Cardboard. Yes, it's a virtual reality device actually made out ofcardboard, which means it's relatively cheap costing only $15.More advanced VR devices like Facebook's (NASDAQ: FB) Oculus Rift and Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Playstation VR cost hundreds of dollars.Alphabet's Cardboard is cheap not only because its made out of cardboard but because its also designed to be good at simple things like viewing photos and videos. Recently, Alphabet announced it has shipped over 10 million Cardboard viewers since the product launched in 2014. There were as many Cardboards shipped in 2016 as the first two years, which shows accelerating adoption.

Google Cardboard. IMAGE SOURCE: ALPHABET INC.

The success of Google Cardboard is proof that there is interest in VR. Cardboard usershave downloaded 160 million Cardboard apps on Google Play, demonstrating that people enjoy using it for the simple tasks it was designed for.

Unfortunately for all it's doing to get people using VR technology, Cardboard also highlights what is wrong with higher end VR headsets.

More expensive, high-tech VR headsets from Facebook, HTC (NASDAQOTH: HTCKF), and Sony haven't been as successful, having shipped only hundreds of thousands of units in 2016. Samsung's (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF) Gear VR shipped 4.5 million units in 2016, which stands out from the much lower totals of Sony's Playstation VR, Facebook's Oculus Rift, and the HTC Vive. But Samsung Gear VR retails for $130, a fraction of the cost of the other headsets.

Obviously, price is a key factor in people's decision to buy one of these devices. The cheap build and low price of Alphabet's Cardboard highlights another feature working in its favor -- simplicity. Cardboard is just a little rectangular box you hold up to your eyes. There are no wires, it's not a clunky thing you strap around your head. Cardboard is as simple to use as taking pictures with a smartphone.

VR won't take off as a mainstream technology until more advanced VR headsets get cheaper and simpler in design. One of the other key differences between Cardboard and the more advanced VR systems is that Cardboard only requires a smartphone to use. Some advanced VR headsets for gaming and othergraphically intense applications require a high-end gaming PC to operate properly, which adds to the expense of using VR.

VR headsets made for consoles, on the other hand, such as Sony's Playstation VR, may have an advantage over headsets made to work with PCs, since consoles are cheaper and are dedicated to gaming, not to mention that Playstation VR is already priced about 30% less than the $600 Oculus Rift.

Virtual reality has big growth opportunities for areas besides gaming. IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

The technology has been hyped for good reason. The hype reflects people's excitement for the technology to revolutionize areas not just in gaming, but in content and education as well.One example I find interesting of how VR is being used for educational purposes is through an app called Lithodomos VR, which allows the user to see what the ancient city of Jerusalem looked like 2000 years ago.This kind of application of VR technology, along with the medical treatment possibilities for things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is what gives VR the potential to be a widely adopted, common appliance used by millions of people.

Companies developing VR technology would do best not to rush anything, to be patient in getting a product to market, and take advantage of using cheaper versions of VR technology like Alphabet's Cardboard or Samsung's Gear VR as a way to introduce the masses to the new technology to ensure everyone who uses it has a good experience, and doesn't drain your bank account.

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Here's What's Really Holding Virtual Reality Back - Madison.com

If conventional waterslides arent quite enough of a thrill for you, try gliding down ethereal lava flows and skirting simulated volcanic eruptions on the worlds first virtual reality waterslide.

The slide, which is currently in its testing stage, is set to open at Bavarias Galaxy Water Park later this year.

Essentially, its a waterslide, but when you ride, youre wearing virtual reality goggles which totally intensifies many elements of the experience, said media producer Malcolm Burt of Australias Queensland University of Technology, who is working with a German waterslide company to create the concept.

"Using research into VR immersion, and how to trick the brain into believing it is in danger, every twist, turn, and launch is magnified, and it definitely makes for more of an adrenaline kick."

Burt and waterslide company Wiegand-Maelzer paired up to develop the slide following the release of Burts documentary about rollercoasters, called "Signature Attraction. Its completion will be part of Burts PhD.

Certain design elements are still being ironed out, but the VR waterslide concept is in testing and there is nothing else like it in the world, said Frank Heimes of Wiegand-Maelzer.

Burts research has also garneredthe attention of various VR amusement attraction vendors across the U.S. and Europe, as well as Six Flags. If all goes well, perhaps we could all be enjoying theme parks with a dose of virtual reality some day soon.

h/t Travel and Leisure

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Ride 'Lava' Flows, Dodge 'Explosions' On The World's First Virtual Reality Waterslide - Civilized