Category Archives: Virtual Reality

Los Angeles Times

Facebook's Virtual Reality Boy Wonder Departs Wall Street Journal (subscription) Facebook Inc. said Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus VR who had been sidelined for several months after a series of scandals, is leaving the company. Mr. Luckey's last day at Oculus, the virtual reality startup Facebook acquired three years ago, ... Virtual reality visionary Palmer Luckey leaves Facebook 3 years after $2-billion Oculus dealLos Angeles Times The controversial cofounder of Facebook's $2 billion bet on virtual reality is leaving the companyBusiness Insider Oculus virtual reality founder leaves FacebookBBC News New York Times -The Mercury News -UploadVR -Daily Beast all 118 news articles »

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Facebook's Virtual Reality Boy Wonder Departs - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

The adoption of virtual reality in commercial real estate is changing the way buildings/units are designed, marketed, leased and sold.

International Data Corporation reports worldwide revenues for the augmented reality and virtual reality market will grow from $5.2 billion in 2016 to more than $162 billion in 2020.

Rami Kalla, founder of Point in Time Studios, a local video production studio with a focus on virtual reality, predicts the use of virtual reality will become more normalized and expected within the industry.

AZRE: When did virtual reality start to make its presence known in the CRE industry?

Rami Kalla: In 2015, the commercial real estate industry took a leap forward and started using virtual reality to show off different projects. This year, the use of VR has become more widespread in commercial real estate as more companies have started to adopt VR into their practices.

AZRE: How is VR being used in CRE?

RK: Virtual reality is a great tool that lets the stakeholders experience what it would be like to occupy that real estate, especially if the building is still under construction. Another important tool of VR is its ability to transport a viewer anywhere in the world. This is especially useful to parties who are out of state or overseas, expanding the buildings potential market.

AZRE: Why is VR worth keeping an eye on?

RK: The industry may see a shift in their go-to marketing materials, from sketches and miniature 3-D models to complete VR experiences.

AZRE: Who are prominent VR users today?

RK: Two leading figures using VR for commercial real estate are Sage Realty Corporation and developer Macerich. They have primarily been using VR through virtual tours to enhance a buildings impact for stakeholders and to show off the early stages of their projects that are under construction.

AZRE: How much does a standard VR experience cost?

RK: The cost for having VR as a commercial marketing tool can range from $20,000 to over hundreds of thousands of dollars. The scope of the work has the largest impact on the price.

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The future of virtual reality in CRE - AZ Big Media

With each passing year, mobile VRtakes only the tiniest steps forward (Credit: Will Shanklin/New Atlas)

When today's virtual reality devices first hit the scene, we expected mobile VR to progress and grow at a striking pace. Fast forward to the present: Little has changed in mobile VR to the point that its slow evolution could be dragging down the mainstream adoption of virtual reality as a whole.

To illustrate our point, we need to look no further than the Samsung Gear VR and its only real competitor, the Google Daydream View. These two headsets are the major players in the mobile VR space, and while we found several reasons to get excited about them initially, their shortcomings and lack of progress have our enthusiasm waning.

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Trying out the latest Gear VR and controller (Credit: Will Shanklin/New Atlas)

Let's start with the Gear VR a headset that came to fruition through Samsung's partnership with Oculus. Oculus (which was acquired by Facebook in 2014) is the maker of the PC-powered Rift, perhaps the best-known VR headset in the world. At CES 2015, Oculus Product VP Nate Mitchell told us to expect a game of lead-and-follow between the Rift and Gear VR that the Gear VR would catch up to the Oculus Rift prototypes before too long.

Even if we took that claim too literally, that prediction has fallen laughably short. A third consumer edition of the Gear VR was just announced, and while it adds a controller (prompted, no doubt, by the nearly identical one from the Daydream View), our initial impressions point at the same Gear experience we've been seeing since launch. With the exception of incremental changes in field of view, connectors and color, the headset itself is nearly unchanged.

The same goes for the overall quality of its content library. While some good titles have been added over the past couple of years, we mostly see the Oculus Store proliferating with low-quality experiences, versions of mobile and arcade-influenced games that do little to reflect the capabilities and unique qualities of the medium. Many of our favorite experiences have been available since launch, or close to it.

The newest Gear VR (2017) (Credit: Will Shanklin/New Atlas)

It's true that developers making games for mobile VR have to deal with the expectations of consumers: Oculus Rift owners wouldn't flinch at a $30 or $40 game, but most people don't expect to pay very much (if at all) for a mobile game. However, we think that obstacle could be overcome with truly impressive mobile headsets.

The content library for the Google Daydream is even more anemic in both quantity and quality. And despite being poised to be compatible with many more Android-running handsets, only six phones - the Pixel, Pixel XL, Moto Z, Asus ZenFone, Huawei Mate 9 and ZTE Axon 7 are Daydream-ready. Mobile VR is clearly not a priority for most phone makers.

We do appreciate some of the Daydream's minor details, like its soft covering and easy phone mounting. However, its controller and that of the Gear VR highlight the inadequacies of mobile VR instead of inching it closer to its PC-powered counterparts.

Google Daydream View controller (Credit: Will Shanklin/New Atlas)

For instance, why only the one motion controller? To truly simulate hands in games you need two of them (a la Oculus Touch), so the current setup is limited to Wii remote types of experiences, where you point the remote at something and click. It's a step forward from the trackpad built into the headset on previous models, but still a very far cry from "having hands" inside Rift and HTC Vive experiences.

And will we see positional tracking (where the headset tracks your movement through space, beyond just head rotation) in mobile VR anytime soon? Without it, when you move the world moves with you (instead of you moving through the world) hardly the most immersive way to show off VR to newcomers.

Apart from underwhelming hardware and software developments, there's a very real nausea issue in mobile VR: Even if you do have a mobile VR headset and you find a game that keeps you riveted, the spins that stem from a temple-pinching, fixed-focus display could very well put you out of commission. That may be the biggest problem that positional tracking would help with.

Google Daydream View (Credit: Will Shanklin/New Atlas)

The far-reaching problem with middling experiences like these is that they don't generate consumer excitement for higher-end virtual reality. Mobile VR devices are positioned to be affordable entry-level glimpses into the possibilities of VR, yet we'd be hard-pressed to pinpoint a mobile VR experience compelling enough to encourage a $1,000+ investment on a PC-powered VR setup. There even seems to be a lack of enthusiasm for it within the smartphone industry, based on the lack of flagships rushing to become Daydream-ready.

Mobile VR has trailed so far behind PC-powered experiences that the two hardly seem related. If mobile VR headsets are ever going to intrigue the masses, they need to progress forward in leaps and bounds, or else they could scare off consumers from seeing the very real potential in VR as a whole.

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Mobile VR isn't pushing virtual reality forward it's hindering it - New Atlas

The clients can view the virtual reality using a Google cardboard headset and a smartphone BIMx app from anywhere.

Cullum Homes has been an early adopter of technology for years, and has been dabbling in virtual reality for about 18 months. The virtual reality capabilities were released in November and Cullum Homes has been exporting the BIM model into VR since then, said Rod Cullum, owner and founder of Cullum Homes.

Our entire staff is using the virtual reality component for the clients and the design process, Cullum said. We can solve architectural problems during the process instead of at construction.

By everyone working in one program, it saves the company money and time on projects, Cullum-Colwell said.

This helps save money because we can actually see where the money should be spent, without wasting any money, by physically looking at the model, she said. We can show the air conditioning and the plumbing pipes before construction to show any problems.

To fully give the view of where the house will be built, Cullum Homes employees take 360-degree photos of the environment and then digitally place the house inside those photos, said Eddie Strong, director of architecture for Cullum Homes.

This way we can physically show the mountain view from their living room couch, Strong said. It allows us to look at the space. You cant really feel space through 2D. Architects and builders can see in 3D. Homeowners cannot.

The VR experience also gives homeowners confidence during the custom process so they can actually see what it will look like. Any changes can be easily made digitally instead of spending $10,000 on a physical smaller model.

Were trying to facilitate a comfort zone, Cullum said. Now they can take those ideas and put it into a digital model.

The VR model process also builds a budget along the way as features are designed, instead of putting the budget together later in the process.

We can now easily change out materials and selections in the design phase, know the cost and view it all in a virtual environment, Strong said.

This process also allows Cullum Homes to move to an almost paperless job site, except for the government permitting and inspection process.

We can spend more time designing and less time producing construction documents, Cullum-Colwell said. The homes are better because of that, and the designs are better.

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Scottsdale luxury homebuilder first in state to use virtual reality in design process - Phoenix Business Journal

Forbes

Virtual Reality, Sex And Chocolate Cake: Desire In A Post-Virtual World Forbes This post was cowritten with Moran Cerf, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. In a recent essay (see Post-Virtual World), we explored two technologies that will fundamentally change our experience: invisible interfaces and ...

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Virtual Reality, Sex And Chocolate Cake: Desire In A Post-Virtual World - Forbes

The Democratic Party will exhibit in an April event a virtual reality program that gives participants a glimpse of how it feels to be grilled by DP leader Renho in her trademark harsh questioning style.

According to members of the main opposition party, the game-like VR program will be put on show at the annual Niconico Chokaigi event fro April 29 to 30 in Chiba that will be hosted by video-sharing website operator Dwango Co.

Wearing special goggles, players will find themselves in a virtual room mimicking a budget committee room in the Diet where they can play the role of the prime minister.

Renho will show up and barrage the players with questions such as, How on Earth did you find the time to play in such a place like this?

I hope young people who dont have a connection with politics will enjoy (the program), said lawmaker Kensuke Onishi, head of the DPs Youth Department.

But not all party members are positive about the DPs unusual move. Renho is the one who should be cross-questioned about the partys slumping support rate, a mid-ranking DP lawmaker said.

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Democratic Party to use VR program to simulate harsh Diet grillings carried out by Renho - The Japan Times

Want to explore Zaha Hadids unbuilt architecture or visit the worlds first photography exhibition? With virtual reality (VR), you cansort of. Museums are increasingly using the tool to offer visitors new experiences. But curators remain cautious about investing too much in a still-rapidly-evolving medium.

These kinds of skill sets are not that prevalent in the art world yet, says Ben Vickers, the curator of digital at Londons Serpentine Galleries. He worked with Google Arts & Culture and the in-house VR team at Zaha Hadid Architects to plunge visitors into four of the late architects futuristic cityscape paintings earlier this year.

VR also poses practical challenges. Too often, you have awkward experiencesbecause the physical details of how you put the headset on and where you sit are not thought through, Vickers says. Another challenge: cost. Google produces inexpensive cardboard VR viewers, but top-of-the-line versions can cost more than $1,000.

The Stdel Museum in Frankfurt received a five-figure sum from Samsung to produce a VR app that offered 3D reconstructions of the collection as it appeared in the 19th century. The project proves that VR can be a compelling scholarly tool, says the museums deputy director Jochen Sander.

Meanwhile, some institutions are pursuing the medium to follow artists lead. This years Whitney Biennial in New York (until 11 June) includes a disturbing VR work by Jordan Wolfson called Real Violence (2017), which prompts visitors to witness him beating an older man in an alley.

The New Museum in New York and its affiliate Rhizome began commissioning VR works in 2014 because many digital artists were gravitating towards it, says Lauren Cornell, the museums curator and associate director of technology initiatives. Six animated works by artists including Jon Rafman and Rachel Rossin were released as an app in January, billed as the first-of-its-kind exhibition in mobile virtual reality.

VR has extraordinary creative possibilities, says Jonathan Reekie, the director of Somerset House. The London venue is preparing to welcome Thresholds, a virtual recreation of the worlds first photography exhibition conceived by the artist Mat Collishaw, at the Photo London fair in May (17 May-11 June).

Despite its broad appeal, a strong artistic imperative is needed to elevate the technology beyond a gimmick, Reekie says. Its been anticipated that at some point well all have a headset in our homes. So if you use it in a public art space, youve got to think about what its adding.

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Curators cautiously venture into virtual reality - The Art Newspaper - Art Newspaper

Fox News

Intel brings virtual reality and 360-degree replay to Phoenix's Final ... Phoenix Business Journal Final Four fans can stream the games live in virtual reality, and see 360-degree replays, thanks to a team from Intel Corp.'s sports group division. Intel True VR shoots and scores with March Madness coverage | Fox ...Fox News all 3 news articles »

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Intel brings virtual reality and 360-degree replay to Phoenix's Final ... - Phoenix Business Journal

ROME The Venice Film Festival is launching a competitive section dedicated to films made for virtual-reality viewing.

The new section, named Venice Virtual Reality,will comprise a maxiumum of 18 titles. It is beingtouted as the first-ever competition for VR works launched by a major film fest.

A jury composed of up to five prominent personalities from the creative tech world will award the following three prizes: Best VR film, Grand VR Jury Prize, Best VR Creativity Award.

Venice last year became one of the first fests on the global circuit to showcase VR works in a new state-of-the art VR theatre (pictured), which has seats that pivot 360 degrees.

VR titles at Venice in 2016 includeda 40-minute preview of Jesus VR The Story of Christ, which is considered the first VR feature film. It was produced by Autumn VR and VRWERX and shot in Matera, Italy.

In January, the fests parent organization, the Venice Biennale, launched the first edition of Biennale College Cinema Virtual Reality, an extension in the VR sphere of its Biennale College lab, which shepherds micro-budget movies from development through distribution.

In other news, Biennale Collegehas now selected nine producer/director teams who will work on VR projects lasting between 10 and 20 minutes. The selected projects and their directors/producers are:

Of these nine VR projects, two will receive aEuros 30,000 ($32,000) contribution towards production provided bySony Corp. and will subsequently screen during the festival.

The 74th edition of the Venice fest will run from Aug. 31 through Sept. 5.

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Venice Film Festival to Launch New Competitive Section for VR Works - Variety

You start by picking up the knife, or reaching for the neck of a broken-off bottle. Then comes the lunge and wrestle, the physical strain as your victim fights back, the desire to overpower him. You feel the density of his body against yours, the warmth of his blood. Now the victim is looking up at you, making eye contact in his final moments.

Science-fiction writers have fantasised about virtual reality (VR) for decades. Now it is hereand with it, perhaps, the possibility of the complete physical experience of killing someone, without harming a soul. As well as Facebooks ongoing efforts with Oculus Rift, Google recently bought the eye-tracking start-up Eyefluence to boost its progress towards creating more immersive virtual worlds. The director Alejandro G Irritu and the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, both famous for Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), have announced that their next project will be a short VR film.

But this new form of entertainment is dangerous. The impact of immersive virtual violence must be questioned, studied, and controlled. Before it becomes possible to realistically simulate the experience of killing someone, murder in VR should be made illegal.

This is not the argument of a killjoy. As someone who has worked in film and television for almost 20 years, I am acutely aware that the craft of filmmaking is all about maximising the impact on the audience. Directors ask actors to change the intonation of a single word while editors sweat over a film cut down to fractions of a second, all in pursuit of the right mood and atmosphere.

So I understand the appeal of VR, and its potential to make a story all the more real for the viewer. But we must examine that temptation in light of the fact that both cinema and gaming thrive on stories of conflict and resolution. Murder and violence are a mainstay of our drama, while single-person shooters are one of the most popular segments of the games industry.

Students who played violent games for just 20 minutes a day were more aggressive and less empathetic than those who didnt.The effects of all this gore are not clear-cut. Crime rates in the United States have fallen even as Hollywood films have become bloodier and violent video games have grown in popularity. Some research suggests that shooter games can be soothing, while other studies indicate they might be a causal risk factor in violent behaviour. (Perhaps, as for Frank Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards, its possible for video games to be both those things.) Students who played violent games for just 20 minutes a day, three days in a row, were more aggressive and less empathetic than those who didnt, according to research by the psychologist Brad Bushman at Ohio State University and his team. The repeated actions, interactivity, assuming the position of the aggressor, and the lack of negative consequences for violence are all aspects of the gaming experience that amplify aggressive behaviour, according to research by the psychologists Craig Anderson at Iowa State University and Wayne Warburton at Macquarie University in Sydney. Mass shooters including Aaron Alexis, Adam Lanza, and Anders Breivik were all obsessive gamers.

The problem of what entertainment does to us isnt new. The morality of art has been a matter of debate since Plato. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was skeptical of the divisive and corrupting potential of theatre, for example, with its passive audience in their solitary seats. Instead, he promoted participatory festivals that would cement community solidarity, with lively rituals to unify the jubilant crowd. But now, for the first time, technology promises to explode the boundary between the world we create through artifice and performance, and the real world as we perceive it, flickering on the wall of Platos cave. And the consequences of such immersive participation are complex, uncertain and fraught with risk.

Humans are embodied beings, which means that the way we think, feel, perceive, and behave is bound up with the fact that we exist as part of and within our bodies. By hijacking our capacity for proprioceptionthat is, our ability to discern states of the body and perceive it as our ownVR can increase our identification with the character were playing. The rubber hand illusion showed that, in the right conditions, its possible to feel like an inert prosthetic appendage is a real hand; more recently, a 2012 study found that people perceived a distorted virtual arm, stretched up to three times its ordinary length, to still be a part of their body.

Its a small step from here to truly inhabiting the body of another person in VR. But the consequences of such complete identification are unknown, as the German philosopher Thomas Metzinger has warned. There is the risk that virtual embodiment could bring on psychosis in those who are vulnerable to it, or create a sense of alienation from their real bodies when they return to them after a long absence. People in virtual environments tend to conform to the expectations of their avatar, Metzinger says. A study by Stanford researchers in 2007 dubbed this the Proteus effect: They found that people who had more attractive virtual characters were more willing to be intimate with other people, while those assigned taller avatars were more confident and aggressive in negotiations. Theres a risk that this behaviour, developed in the virtual realm, could bleed over into the real one.

In an immersive virtual environment, what will it be like to kill? Surely a terrifying, electrifying, even thrilling experience. But by embodying killers, we risk making violence more tantalizing, training ourselves in cruelty and normalising aggression. The possibility of building fantasy worlds excites me as a filmmakerbut, as a human being, I think we must be wary. We must study the psychological impacts, consider the moral and legal implications, even establish a code of conduct. Virtual reality promises to expand the range of forms we can inhabit and what we can do with those bodies. But what we physically feel shapes our minds. Until we understand the consequences of how violence in virtual reality might change us, virtual murder should be illegal.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Murder in virtual reality should be illegal - Quartz