VRScout

APRIL 29, 2017

The free streaming TV network is creating VR content for original programming like Snatch , along with immersive sponsorships for advertisers. Rupert Grint, known for playing Harry Potter’s witty ginger haired sidekick, Ron Weasley, has left the world of magic behind for the world of VR. Announced last week by Crackle, Sony’s free streaming TV network, original drama series Snatch will be getting an exclusive VR bonus experience on PlayStation VR this summer.

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Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

360 video combined with real-time CG and interactive elements was demonstrated on stage at today’s Vision VR/AR Summit 2017 keynote. Using two layers of video with 3D elements in between, it is a simple way of enhancing standard 360 video footage to make it interactive. Natalie Grant, Senior Product Marketing Manager of VR/AR/Film at Unity , showcased an interactive 360 video today produced by VFX studio Mirada, built using Unity 2017 Beta (see the video heading this article).

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 4, 2017

Science fiction and virtual reality go together like medieval fantasy and LARPing. Two intergalactic peas in a space pod, if you will. So naturally, the popularity of the latest and greatest form of interactive entertainment – VR headsets – means it was only natural that one of the largest and beloved sci-fi properties on the planet got in on the action.

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Cats and VR

MAY 2, 2017

Grammy winning dance music duo, The Chainsmokers have a free Playstation VR app out now. A collaboration between Sony and The Chainsmokers, the free Paris.VR Virtual Reality Music experience is currently only available in North America and getting some good reviews on Reddit with user feedback being one Reddit user saying, “Whether you’re a fan of EDM or not, I highly recommend checking this thing out!

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Speaker: Chris Paxton McMillin, President of D3 Training Solutions

To avoid awkward and sometimes disastrous learning content, instructional designers must use authentic translation in the right context to get optimal results. For example, even a simple phrase like “got milk” translates to “are you lactating” in Mexico. Can you imagine what a straight translation might do to your course? With over 317 million people in the US and over 6.7 billion potential customers in the world, personalizing training seems logical.

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VRScout

MAY 4, 2017

Virtual Reality continues to evolve, Constrained Reality is a Renowned Biologist’s take on the mind’s VR “software,” Mixed Reality is bringing it all together—and Vision Summit 2017 is where the industry’s ideas and the innovators came together. When it comes to changing the game for XR, Unity Technologies just can’t stop. At the company’s Unite ’16 LA conference last November, we witnessed a clear emphasis on the growth of the VR/AR ecosystem —with a host of announcements geared toward si

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

APRIL 29, 2017

I always thought I’d be more prepared for “the talk” than my parents were. It would be a priority of mine to have historic references on hand, pull from life experiences, maybe even pick out an educational video from the library – you know, make things easier on myself. I made sure to learn as much as I could about this topic so that, by the time it was my turn to have that serious sit down with my kids, I would be ready for their questions.

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Cats and VR

MAY 1, 2017

Award-winning independent game studio HappyGiant and Tippett Studio today announced their ground-breaking augmented reality game HoloGrid: Monster Battle has made the transition to virtual reality , and is coming out on the next-generation Samsung Gear VR. In celebration of the upcoming “Star Wars Day” (May the Fourth), the game is now available for download on the Gear VR website and App, and will be available at a limited-time discounted price of $2.99 USD (regularly $4.99 USD).

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VRScout

MAY 1, 2017

The web has democratized once unattainable products to people across the globe — and virtual reality is no exception. More accessible VR content hosted on the internet will only spur further adoption of the tech. That’s why Mozilla, the makers of the popular FireFox web browser, are advocating their open source JavaScript API WebVR platform and HTML framework A-Frame to make it easier to design internet-based VR apps that run within cheap smartphone headsets or the more powerful Oculus Rif

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Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

Google has announced that its augmented reality platform Tango will be getting native integrated support for Unity later this year. During Unity’s Vision AR/VR Summit opening keynote, Google’s PM for Developer Platforms Nathan Martz took to the stage to announce that, the company’s AR focused platform Tango will join its VR counterpart Daydream in receiving official, native integration in the Unity game engine.

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With a rapidly changing economy, Avangrid Renewables looked to virtual reality to develop a standardized form of immersive training in order to onboard and upskill technicians faster than ever before.

Virtual Reality

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 4, 2017

Two pieces of information from Facebook sources have given us new insight into the division of labor inside the social media giant. Words spoken by Oculus team’s head of PC VR Brendan Iribe and a passage from Facebook’s quarterly report indicate more than five percent of the company’s total workforce are devoted to virtual reality in some capacity.

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Cats and VR

MAY 1, 2017

At an event last week, Tekken 7 producer Katsuhiro Harada spoke a little about Tekken 7's exclusive PlayStation VR (PSVR) content adding he does not think it will be fun in the traditional sense for Tekken players but will still have some value. "If you could imagine that you have some kind of a martial artist or pro boxer or something come and do shadowboxing right in front of your face, you can then probably begin to see how that’s not a very entertaining or enjoyable experience.

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VRScout

MAY 2, 2017

All in the name of art. The 2017 Tribeca Film Festival has officially come to a close and I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the incredible VR projects I was lucky enough to experience. However, one exhibit in particular stands out in my mind. It was able to hit all my senses at once, in one of the most unique VR experiences I’ve had to date.

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Road to VR

MAY 5, 2017

Oculus just officially announced that they’d be winding down Story Studio, the company’s internal VR film studio which produced first-party VR shorts like Lost , Henry , and Dear Angelica. Along with the closure, the company also says they’re earmarking $50 million to invest in non-gaming experiential VR content, and in doing so reveals a major reason why the company opted to shutter the studio.

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Speaker: Nik Gowing, Brenda Laurel, Sheridan Tatsuno, Archie Kasnet, and Bruce Armstrong Taylor

With 191 country signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement now hard at work in the race to zero carbon by 2050, much of the heavy lifting in ecosystem sustainability falls on the shoulders of the world's densely populated urban centers. This conversation considers how today's AI-enabled simulation media, such as AR/VR, can be effectively applied to accelerate learning, understanding, training, and solutions-modeling to sustainability planning and design.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 4, 2017

The developers behind popular social VR experience Rec Room posted a video showing users how players can easily block someone who is antagonizing them with a simple gesture. Harassment in VR is a tough subject as developers grapple with how to stop it. The sense of presence you gain in a virtual world means that when other people get close to you, or in your face saying something offensive, they really feel like they are invading your personal space.

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Cats and VR

MAY 4, 2017

Wands®, the award winning, action-packed VR game is now releasing a new content package called ”Eastern Realms”. Eastern Realm is packed with new mind-blowing content such as new arenas, wielders, spells, clothes, masks, and more. The new features are fully compatible with the new Oculus controller which steps up game play to a whole new level. Wands® was recently awarded ”Best VR Game” at the International Mobile Gaming Awards Global in San Francisco.

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VRScout

APRIL 30, 2017

This year’s festival features a huge selection of immersive experiences spotlighting some of the world’s most pressing issues. So far, the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival has been a chaotic whirlwind of innovative filmmaking, groundbreaking immersive entertainment and masterful storytelling. However the most impressive part of the event has to be the increasingly high amount of projects highlighting important social, environmental and health-related issues through creative forms of interactive

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Road to VR

MAY 3, 2017

As one of the first game genres to embrace VR, sim racing has been successfully transitioning from the ‘very early adopter’ stage (using Oculus development kits) to the ‘early adopter’ stage (the first-generation consumer headsets). Now that the majority of PC racing sims support VR, there are several compelling options to try. Update (5/3/17): Complete overhaul to listing now that consumer versions of the Rift and Vive have launched and most major sims have added VR support.

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Speaker: Richard Goring, Director at BrightCarbon

Remote meetings are here to stay - and many are BORING. If you are trying to engage your learners (or any audience), compelling content is critical. But trying to create stimulating content with the same tools you’ve always had is hard, right? Thankfully, wrong! Terrific tools in PowerPoint along with visual assets help you create the kind of dynamic content you need to capture your remote audience’s attention, with functions that allow for interactive sequences and navigation.

How To

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

APRIL 29, 2017

As journalists — especially those, who publish multiple articles weekly — we’re often so focused on the now-now-now, that we rarely take a step back and reflect on stories from a few news cycles ago. Especially when those stories were inaccurate, misleading or outright false. It’s easier to just make a small correction or two (or perhaps even none at all) and move on to the next piece.

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Cats and VR

MAY 3, 2017

Perplexigon is a multiplayer collaborative block building game out on Steam Greenlight looking for a chance to come home to your VR hearts. The game is an immersive multiplayer VR physics sandbox game in where you choose from a toolbox of blocks and joints to create anything from castles to complex remote controlled rockets. Use the tracked Vive or Oculus Touch controllers along with seated or room-scale tracking to fully move around your constructions and build them quickly and intuitively.

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VRScout

MAY 5, 2017

The first wish granted by Make-A-Wish using VR is an intergalactic trip on the ‘Zayden 7’ rocket ship. History was made this past monday as Make-A-Wish Georgia granted the first ever virtual reality wish to seven-year-old Zayden Wright in an attempt to fulfill his request of flying to the planet Saturn in a red rocket ship. It was a tear-jerking scene inside the Texas Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia Monday as Make-A-Wish, NASA and and over 30 active servicemen and women came togeth

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Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

Brandon Bray, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, took the stage at Unity’s Vision VR/AR Summit 2017 to show a little more of what Microsoft has planned for the VR side of things when the first Windows Holographic headsets come later this year. And to wit, Microsoft is giving away a free Acer Windows VR headset to everyone present at today’s Unity Vision VR/AR Summit.

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Speaker: Treion Muller, Chief Strategy Officer at ELB Learning

Since when has learning and development (L&D) become such a negative experience with its intended learners? Could it be because learners have been conditioned by very poor learning experiences over the past two decades, combined with the kinks of technological innovation? Or is it because learning has typically been designed as a one-size-fits-all solution, despite the fact that humans are not clones?

Technology

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 4, 2017

There is a lot of discussion surrounding VR as a spectator sport. Some folks are even trying to brand the term ‘vSports” as an update to “eSports” for professional VR competition that can attract spectators. But there are serious roadblocks to this evolution. Games like Call of Duty, Dota 2, or Starcraft 2 have millions upon millions of players and fans that are familiar with their respective games, providing a large base of spectators who can closely follow the action of

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Cats and VR

MAY 3, 2017

Now You See Me: Back to Macau is the first major hidden object game in VR and features 6 challenging, adventurous missions. The game is based on the global blockbuster Now You See Me film franchise from Lionsgate. The player assumes the role of Special Agent Price, assigned to find the whereabouts of the “Four Horsemen” band of magicians depicted in the film, who have disappeared yet again after another narrow escape.

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VRScout

MAY 4, 2017

An HTC developer is taking the Vive VR tracking device into unexplored territories. . Since being made publicly available for developers back in March , the Vive Tracker has seen an incredible amount of use in an extremely short amount of time. The device has been used by amateurs to turn everyday objects into tools for VR resulting in some truly unique, sometimes bizarre, experiences.

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Road to VR

MAY 3, 2017

IMR is one of several companies creating technology to enable a future where high-end VR headsets can break free of the tether that keeps them connected to the host PC. The company’s secret sauce is their proprietary compression algorithm which they say is made-for-VR, allowing for huge compression at much faster speeds than traditional video compression technology.

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Speaker: Micah Eppler, Account Executive for Rehearsal of eLearning Brothers

Did you know that companies such as Paychex, 3M, and Honeywell are getting better results by incorporating video-based practice and coaching within their L&D strategy? From sales pitches to soft skills, learners are becoming top performers by applying and validating knowledge transfer using the unique benefits of video. Whether used as a stand-alone application or integrated with a learning platform, video-based practice and coaching platforms give learners the ultimate opportunity to repeatedly

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