Category Archives: Virtual Reality

The Amazon rainforest is just a few clicks away with this new canopy-diving, sloth-dodging, immersive 360-degree virtual reality (VR) video.

Under the Canopy is a new project from nonprofit group Conservation International, bringing the latest filming and VR technology to one of nature's greatest endeavors. Along with providing a beautiful and entertaining experience, they also hope to raise aware of whats at stake from the perils of deforestation in the Amazon.

Why is this important? Well, for starters, the area holds 40 percent of the carbon stocks of tropical forests globally. It provides 20 percent of the worlds breathable oxygen, 20 percent of the worlds fresh water, and holds more species of plants and animals than anywhere else on the planet. Additionally, its home to a number of indigenous peoples, each with a rich history and culture.

The 11-minute long video is best seen through a VR headset, however, it still makes for great viewing on any screen. Simply by clicking around the screen, you can look around the scenes while the story plays out. Theres also a handful of bonusbehind-the-scenes videos explaining some of the impressive techniques they used to capture this footage.

It begins as you descend down a 60-meters-high (200 feet) Ceiba tree to a panoramic view of the great forest around Suriname, and in Ecuadors Yasun National Park. Once you hit the ground, youre introduced to Kamanja Panashekung, a native of the forest who acts as your personal guide through the gorgeous ecosystem and its potentially dark future.

Under the Canopy gives those who may never visit the Amazon rainforest an opportunity to rappel down a 200-foot tree, see its wildlife up close, and understand what is at risk. Sustaining the Amazon is not an option, it is a necessity, said Dr. M. Sanjayan, Conservation International executive vice president and senior scientist.

Turn down the lights, hit the fullscreen button, and enjoy.

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Explore The Amazon With This Stunning 360 Virtual Reality Video - IFLScience

New York Times

Virtual Reality Has Arrived in the Art World. Now What? New York Times The accelerating development of virtual reality technology which lets you escape into another world through a blackout headset is finally rumbling the art world, always more skeptical than cinema and television about new technologies. A new ...

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Virtual Reality Has Arrived in the Art World. Now What? - New York Times

Customer engagement is defined as the customers emotional or psychological attachment to a brand, product, or company. Customer engagement is vital for businesses as it drives sales and growth, and we will examine virtual reality as a new component of customer engagement.

Customer purchasing decisions are influenced by emotional factors. Behavioral economics has shown that rational decision-making accounts for approximately one-third of peoples decisions and behavior. Feelings influence engagement and engagement boosts sales, as engaged customers buy 90% more frequently and spend 60% more per transaction.

Being emotionally-driven, truly effective customer engagement implies an ongoing interaction between the company and its customers. Interaction is what allows people to develop feelings towards others and towards a brand. Customers are engaged when they get personalized purchasing experiences. This means individually tailored brand experiences, efficient interaction with company representatives, and fast customer services.

Social media and the direct interactions via social networks between companies and customers, as well as live chat widgets that have lately proliferated on company websites, have clearly shown the importance of the social component and of the company-to-customer interaction in engaging customers.

The New Frontier of Customer Engagement: Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is becoming the next frontier in customer engagement. Enterprise VR is emerging as the branch of VR that allows customers to better interact with products and brands and get the efficient and personalized experience that they are desperately looking for. But if we take a closer look at the VR landscape, there is more: Social VR for the Enterprise.

Social VR for the Enterprise as the New Engagement Platform

Social VR for the Enterprise is a unique and novel concept that combines the benefits of Enterprise VR with the power of the real-life interaction, typical of gaming and Social VR. Social VR is the ability for people to interact with each other in a virtual reality space, while Enterprise VR empowers customers to interact with products and content in virtual reality and preview in 3D, touch, flip, and customize the products they are interested in.

It is easy to see how these two powerful elements combined to form the notion of Social VR for the Enterprise will be the key to incredible engagement in the near future.

Interacting and talking with other like-minded people and company representatives in a branded VR environment is a completely new experience. All the other previous and current methods of communication, from telephone to conference calls, emails, and live chat widgets are heavily technology-mediated. Being technology-mediated means that the presence of technology is always perceived: you know that technology is there all the time. This creates an involuntary barrier between you and the other speaker that cannot be overcome with any traditional communication method.

Social VR Can Replicate Physical Presence

Even when you are talking to someone via webcam, which is the closest surrogate of presence available thus far, you are always aware of the technology layer that is present between the two of you, that constantly reminds you that you are in separate and distant locations talking through a flat screen. This creates a distancing effect as technology never goes away, it never becomes invisible. Youll never really feel you are there with someone, sharing the same space and experience.

Social VR, instead, replicates physical presence. And presence means that the technology finally disappears. As you engage with someone in a shared VR environment, with avatars that replicate the body presence and move around in the same space as you, allowing you to see and share what the others are doing in the same space, with positional audio that replicates the same patterns of physical communication, your brain starts forgetting about the technology behind all that. Being immersed, your brain feels like you really are sharing the experience with others. And technology is no longer there because your brain does not perceive it any longer. In Social VR environments, there is no more distance between people.

The best technology is invisible is a fundamental concept for all user experience designers, usability, and UX/UI experts. Finally, Social VR is here to allow people to interact in a new way that is perceived as non-technology mediated. This makes VR a better-suited technology for interaction. Because interaction is so important for businesses, the notion of Social VR for the Enterprise takes interaction a step further as it allows combining interaction with a personalized brand and interactive product experiences. Customers can thus relate to the brand, enjoy it, talk to company representatives, and to the entire community in a shared and trusted environment. This drives higher engagement which is the ultimate goal of businesses across the globe and is a major factor for competitive advantage, growth and success.

Has your business tried Virtual Reality marketing yet? Tell us how it went!

Martina Ori, PhD is VP Marketing at HyperfairVR - a Virtual Reality platform that provides Social VR for the Enterprise.

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How Virtual Reality Can Enhance Customer Engagement - Rocks Digital (blog)

Forbes

Adobe's Path To Entering The Virtual Reality Story Forbes Until recently, the pioneers of Virtual Reality storytelling, especially live action, were using the digital equivalent of baling wire and duct tape to tell their stories. For the Video Team, it was hearing multiple times that video creators were using ...

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Adobe's Path To Entering The Virtual Reality Story - Forbes

Forbes

How Will Virtual Reality Change The Healthcare Industry? Forbes Professor Albert Rizzo, who is the director of VR in the medical field and who works at the Institute of modern creative technology, uses virtual reality exposure therapy, particularly with the soldiers, who survived post-traumatic stress syndrome ... Not Everyone Will Be able to Use Virtual Reality at WorkSHRM (blog) Virtual Reality Headset Sales On A TearMediaPost Communications Augmented & Virtual Reality Handheld Device Market: By Technology (AR Technology, VR Technology), Device (AR ...Yahoo Finance The Merkle -ValueWalk -Patently Apple all 19 news articles »

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How Will Virtual Reality Change The Healthcare Industry? - Forbes

Fifty Shades Darker fans are having their desires met inside a virtual reality reproduction of one of the upcoming movies key scenes; a masquerade ball inside the Grey family mansion.

Donning a mask participants can crane their neck around the costume party in full 360 degrees, interacting with stars Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele as they do so.

The hi-tech re-imagining of the books come films puts you in the shoes of a guest with the freedom to wander amongst the guests as they arrive for the evenings proceedings. At the end of a night of dancing the player can follow Christian and Ana upstairs as Christian remarks This time, no rules, no punishments'.

The experience is available to view now via 360 degree video at LifeVR or using VR Goggles for those who download the iOS and Android

Marketing for the previous installment of the franchise, Fifty Shades of Grey, included branded Durex and Trojan condoms.

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Fifty Shades fans have a ball with virtual reality experience - The Drum

The abstract paintings have been used to create a 360-degree virtual reality experience using an HTC Vive headset

Four of late Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadids abstract paintings have been repurposed into virtual reality installations at Londons Serpentine Sackler Gallery,in partnership with Google Arts & Culture.

The idea for the posthumous exhibition came from a conversation between Serpentine Galleries director Hans Ulrich Obrist and the late Zaha Hadid. Working with French digital production agency Novelab, the exhibition takes the early paintings of Hadid and translates them into futuristic, 360-degree virtual reality films experienced using an HTC Vive headset. The exhibition covers new ground in the world of virtual reality and abstract fine art.

Hadid made history as one of the worlds most prolific contemporary architects before succumbing to a heart attack in March 2016. She was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, comparable to the Nobel Prize of architecture, in 2004, and received the UKs most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in both 2010 and 2011.

Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings is on display until February 12, 2017 at the Serpentine Sackler Gallerya space created by the late architect in 2013, by renovatinga 200-year-old former gunpowder store.

Serpentine Galleries

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Architect Zaha Hadid's Paintings Transformed Into Virtual Reality Art - PSFK (subscription)

After years of testing, partnerships and product releases, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Super Bowl was finally going to be broadcast in virtual reality this year.

Imagine strapping on a headset that brings a screen so close to your eyes that your brain is tricked into believing you're actually in whatever world the computer is creating. Now imagine putting a camera that can see in all directions on the field at the 50-yard line and broadcasting everything that's happening around it. Together, those technologies could make me feel like I'm at the Super Bowl matchup between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons this Sunday in Houston, Texas.

Naturally, I thought the NFL's biggest game would be shown in VR, especially since the league let two companies, NextVR and Voke, show highlight packages of games during the latter part of the regular season.

Unfortunately, all we're going to get is highlights from the game, broadcast in a computer-generated man cave (or "virtual stadium suite" according to the press release). It won't even be fully immersive; all the action will be happening on a simulated screen.

The "virtual suite" where you can watch highlights of this year's Super Bowl for the first time in virtual reality.

So, instead of watching the game live on my TV at home, I can choose to put on a VR headset to watch highlights on a fake TV in almost real time? Sigh...

Miheer Walavalkar, co-founder of San Francisco-based startup LiveLike VR, the company behind the Super Bowl's virtual reality highlights, told me the goal is for them to enhance -- not replace -- watching Fox Sports' televised broadcast.

What a letdown.

Over the past year, several major sporting events, including the US Open and Masters golf tournaments, the MLB Home Run Derby, pro boxing, NASCAR's Daytona 500, the Big East college basketball tournament and even weekly NBA games have been broadcast in VR. All those experiences have been of the immersive, supercool, feel-like-you're-there kind, not the Super Bowl's pseudo variety.

Last March, I watched parts of two Big East tourney games for nearly three hours using a VR headset from Samsung. Catching the action from midcourt, I clearly recall various replays showing eventual national champion Villanova big man Darryl Reynolds slamming it home during the Wildcats' tight 76-68 semifinal win over rival Providence. It almost felt like I was in Madison Square Garden, and not sitting at my desk in downtown San Francisco.

So, this Super Bowl Sunday isn't just a setback for me and other football fans, it's also a blemish on the tech industry's efforts to convince me and others that VR is the future. Companies like Facebook's Oculus division, HTC, Samsung, Google and even the video game maker Sony have been releasing new devices throughout the last year, enticing game developers, movie makers and news organizations to make content for the nascent industry.

Even former President Barack Obama made a VR video.

So why hasn't the Super Bowl made its broadcast debut in VR yet?

Experts say part of the reason is that football, and particularly the big game, tends to be a social sport. About 167 million people watched last year's Super Bowl, and about half of them probably watched it at a party or a bar, according to data compiled by Statista.

Now, imagine going to the bar and slapping a bulky headset on your face. It's not very social.

"Can you imagine 50 people together watching this game in headgear for almost five hours?" said Crowley Sullivan, a former ESPN producer who's now at Los Angeles-based Mandt VR. "I don't know anybody who would want to do that."

Broadcast video from VR also just isn't good enough yet. When colleagues at CNET have watched VR broadcasts in the past, they've complained about blurry images and the lack of any commentators or scoreboards to help them understand what's going on.

"There's still some technical issues that need to be solved," said Todd Richmond, a project director at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies.

And though it appears broadcast VR is getting better, Richmond said there's another problem: "It comes down to why would I want to immerse myself into a sporting event, aside from it being a novelty factor?"

Don't get me wrong. It's cool that Fox Sports and LiveLike VR are placing a half-dozen 4K cameras around the NRG Stadium in Houston, and that they'll be using them to create some 16 in-game highlights (about four plays per quarter) in near-real time.

But despite all that effort, we're clearly in VR's early stages. This means I'll mostly be watching the game on TV, like everybody else.

Here's hoping it will be much different next year.

CNET Magazine: Check out a sampling of the stories you'll find in CNET's newsstand edition.

Batteries Not Included: The CNET team shares experiences that remind us why tech stuff is cool.

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If you're hoping to watch all of the Super Bowl in VR, sorry - CNET

In 1965, Ivan Sutherland, a computer-graphics pioneer, addressed an international meeting of techies on the subject of virtual reality. The ultimate virtual-reality display, he told the audience, would be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming, such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.

Virtual reality has advanced rapidly in the past couple of yearsthe much-anticipated Oculus Rift headset is expected to arrive in stores in early 2016, followed closely by several other devices. Yet the technology is still very new, and Sutherlands vision seems little closer to, well, actual reality. Right now, its like when you first had cellphones, Richard Marks, one of the lead engineers working on Project Morpheus, Sonys virtual-reality headset, told me. A lot of focus is still on the most-basic things.

I recently spoke with scientists, psychologists, engineers, and developers about the possibilities for this emerging field. Where might it eventually take usand will that be somewhere we want to go?

Being Virtually Anywhere

During a recent demonstration of Google Cardboarda DIY headset thats made of cardboard and uses a smartphone for the displayI found myself by turns atop a rocky peak, in a barn next to a snorting horse, and on a gondola making my way up a mountain. The gondola ride gave me vertigo.

We react like that, experts say, because our brains are easily fooled when what we see on a display tracks our head movements. We have a reptilian instinct that responds as if its real: Dont step off that cliff; this battle is scary, Jeremy Bailenson, the founding director of Stanfords Virtual Human Interaction Lab, told me. The brain hasnt evolved to tell you its not real.

Much of the excitement about virtual reality has come from the gaming community. Who wouldnt want to experience a game so completely? But gaming is just the start. At Sony, Marks has worked with NASA to conjure the experience of standing on Marsa view that could help scientists better understand the planet. David Laidlaw, the head of the Visualization Research Lab at Brown University, told me that his team has re-created a temple site in Petra, Jordan, enabling researchers to see previously unclear relationships between objects found there.

Google is testing Expeditions, a way of sending students to places like the Great Barrier Reef, where they can virtually scuba dive as part of a lesson on marine biology and ocean acidification. Similar approaches may enhance professional training. By donning a pair of goggles, a neurosurgeon could navigate brain structures before surgery; a chemist could step inside a drug to understand it on the cellular level; an architect could walk through a building shes designing.

Another possibility: Imagine that youre unable to attend a family gathering. With a pair of glasses, youre in the middle of the action. And everyone there wears glasses that make it appear as though youre present. The whole thing is recorded, so you can replay the experience whenever youd like. Ten years from now, such a scenario might be common.

And consider the potential for telecommuting. Henry Fuchs, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leader in the field, envisions virtual offices. You could use the physical space of your housea real desk, a real computerbut interact with your colleagues as if they were in the same room as you.

Seeing Through Others Eyes

In his lab at Stanford, Bailenson studies how virtual reality changes behavior. Hes found that if your avatar is taller than you are in real life, you become more confident. If you have a particularly attractive avatar, you become friendlier. If youre young and you have an avatar that is a senior citizen, you save more money. These changes last even after you leave the virtual realm.

And avatars could soon become more convincing. Most commercial virtual-reality systems capture only the movement of your head and hands. In 2013, though, Apple acquired PrimeSense, an Israeli company developing technology to track the movements of your whole body with infrared sensors and special microchips. And a company called Faceshift is working to capture facial expressions, so that if you smile or roll your eyes, your avatar will too.

Virtual reality has already proved useful in treating phobias and PTSD. It can help people overcome a fear of heights, for example, through simulations of standing on a balcony or walking across a bridge. Bailenson and others think it could also be used to build empathy. What if you could step inside a documentary, rather than just watching it on a screenalmost literally walking in someone elses shoes? That was the goal of Clouds Over Sidra, a virtual-reality filmcreated through a partnership between the United Nations and Samsungthat followed a 12-year-old girl in a Syrian-refugee camp in Jordan.

And what if you could do something similar in real time? Combine this sort of immersive storytelling, as it evolves, with technologies like Periscope and Meerkatapps that let users stream live videoand you can in essence see the world through anyones eyes, Clay Bavor, the head of Googles virtual-reality initiatives, told me. A protester in Cairo or Athens or Baltimore, for example, could use a special camera to give people around the world a 360-degree view of what its like to be there.

Engaging All Your Senses

Google recently acquired Thrive Audio, a company that specializes in spatial audiosounds that your ear registers as emanating from a particular place. A virtual waterfall grows louder as you move toward it. Something catches your ear from behind. You turn, and see a deer approaching. The audio becomes three-dimensional, truly surrounding you.

Smell could become part of the virtual experience as well. A company called Feelreal has developed a mask that releases scents, such as the smell of fire or the ocean, to enhance what you see in a headset. (The project is hampered by the need to preload the scents youre likely to encounter, among other problems.) Closely related is the ability to taste what you see. Researchers in Singapore are developing electrodes that, when placed on your tongue, mimic basic tastes, such as sweet, salty, bitter, and sour.

What about touch? Could we one day find that when we dip our fingers in virtual water, it actually feels wet? David Laidlaw considers resolving this challenge, known as the haptics problem, to be the holy grail of virtual reality. But that doesnt mean its insurmountable. Im confident well do it within our lifetimes, Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, told me. There are no fundamental physical laws that prevent us from building something thats almost perfect. Laidlaw is less optimistiche thinks that creating lifelike haptics will take 100 yearsbut he agrees that a virtual world may one day be a nearly perfect simulacrum of the real one.

Of course, there could be unintended consequences. Already people are developing vision problems and vitaminD deficienciesnot to mention obesity and diabetesbecause they spend too much time in front of screens. (See The Nature Cure.) What might a flawlessly rendered virtual world mean for our health?

A Neuromancer Future?

Jeremy Bailenson was inspired to work in virtual reality in part by Neuromancer, a 1984 novel that depicts a future in which people can jack in their brains directly to a virtual world. Perhaps, Bailenson speculates, thats where virtual reality is headed. He imagines that in 50 or 100 years we might develop a brain-machine interface that taps directly into the nervous system.

Perhaps then well find that rather than jacking in for a while and calling it quits, we can, like Alice, move wholly into a Wonderland where the laws of the prosaic world (gravity, aging) no longer apply. Virtual reality could then become akin to the Singularity, a concept described by Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and Google engineer, among others: a way for our minds to separate from our bodies and, uploaded into a digital realm, live on even as our physical selves grow old and die. Just like Wonderland, its a vision equal parts entrancing and frightening.

1930: The first mechanical flight simulator is patented.

194245: The U.S. military uses View-Masters for training during World War II. The device later becomes a popular childrens toy.

1962: Morton Heilig patents the Sensorama, an experience theater featuring 3D video, a vibrating chair, fans, and artificial smells.

1968: MIT develops the first virtual-reality headset, a device so heavy, it must be suspended from the ceiling. Its nickname: the Sword of Damocles.

1996: Virtual Boy, Nintendos 3D video-game console, is discontinued because it causes nausea.

2014: Facebook buys Oculus, a virtual-reality company, for $2 billion.

2115: Virtual reality incorporates haptic sensations, enabling users to touch what they see.

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Virtual Reality Gets Real - theatlantic.com

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Hertfordshire based organisations, Tribemix and Quantum Care, have developed a series of virtual reality experiences that take people living with dementia in care out of the residential homes and away to a range of relaxing places. The immersive 3D scenes include the beach, a forest or even to watch dolphins playing around a coral reef.

The project has already gained industry recognition as Tribemix and Quantum Care have been nominated for an Outstanding Innovation Award in Dementia Care at the National Dementia Care Awards.

The project began when Tribemix Managing Director, Alex Smale, wanted to help his elderly neighbours to get outside after becoming isolated due to disability, Our nearby residents, Stan and Dulcie, are 99 and 94 years old respectively. Over the past two years, we watched them go from active people walking into town to do their shopping, to losing their confidence and never leaving the house. When we began developing in VR for our commercial clients early this year, I thought Wouldnt it be great if we could take Stan and Dulcie to the beach?. So I created a virtual reality experience to do just that. This led to a conversation with a friend at Quantum Care. They were fortunately very forward thinking, and understood what we were trying to do. The results have been amazing and its the most rewarding thing Ive ever been fortunate enough to do..

Tribemix is now working with Quantum Care to roll the project out across their care home group. They are also working on developing the technology into training to allow carers and relatives to understand what it feels like to live with dementia.

For more information, please contact Tribemix at info@tribemix.com or call 01462 623929

Website: http://www.tribemix.co.uk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tribemixsocial Twitter: https://twitter.com/tribemix Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tribemix_so... Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/tribemix

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Tribemix Virtual Reality for Dementia Care - YouTube