Good morning from South-by-Southwest in Austin, Texas. We're working on our SXSW roundup, but taking time for "This week in XR," which was a busy one. A few words about what to expect from our upcoming SXSW coverage: the biggest AR presence at the Festival was Bose audio AR, otherwise known as a "hearable." Their spatial sound glasses will soon be adding prescriptions. This will surely be the first commercially popular wearable AR device and will accelerate much faster than the many still-in-development AR glasses we covered at CES in January. Amazon Prime did a huge million dollar "activation" (marketing speak for experiential marketing) for their upcoming "Good Omens" mini-series fueled by social media. The SXSW "virtual cinema" had some notable VR experiences, including "Mars Home Planet" from Technicolor and Positron, "Eclipse," from Paris VR Studio Backlight, an AR audio experience by Jessica Brillhart using the aforementioned Bose glasses, and a Reggie Watts spatial music video in VR from Intel Studios. We saw several notable documentaries about science gone right and terribly wrong. Of course, the main attraction at SXSW is the music. More on all this shortly, but let's get to this week's news.
HaptX teams up with Nissan so car designers can feel their creations. Thanks to HaptX Gloves, car designers at Nissan can now reach in and touch their digital creations. The haptic gloves from HaptX let designers grip the shape of a steering wheel, turn a volume knob, or feel the contours of an interior design. Carving a clay model or building a physical concept car can be expensive and time intensive, whereas a digital model can be adjusted on the fly and shared across the world in minutes.
Zero Latency partners with Dark Slope to bring new VR game to Zero Latency locations. Dark Slope recently announced the launch of their free-roam VR title Scarygirl Mission Maybee, available to play at their Toronto studio, which will soon be available at Zero Latency locations worldwide. Scarygirl Mission Maybee is the first third-party content Zero Latency has released on its free-roam VR platform.
FundamentalVR adds HaptX Gloves to its immersive medical training platform. Doctors training with the Fundamental Surgery platform can now use their entire hand, not just the instrument on the end of a haptic arm, to train for surgery. FundamentalVR’s Fundamental Surgery platform was originally built for haptics arms, but the underlying Surgical Haptic Intelligence Engine is now being adapted for HaptX’s haptic gloves for greater fidelity.
trueVRsystems announces new free-roam title Tikal: Night of the Blood Moon. The 10 player experience features motion capture, physical props, and 4D effects. This is the first inhouse title built by the team at trueVRsystems, and it runs on their full body immersion virtual reality platform. Tikal: Night of the Blood Moon will be available April 1st at Dreamland in London, Ontario, Canada and soon after will launch in Switzerland.
Facebook reveals work on photorealistic Codec avatars. In an effort to create true telepresence, the team at Facebook is building avatars that look just like you. The team scanned the faces, heads, and bodies of volunteers using 3D scanning systems built specifically for the project, and with the help of AI began recreating near-perfect digital avatars of each volunteer. The avatars not only look the part, but they mimic the facial expressions of the user in real time.
Unlimited VR gaming for $12.99/mo with Viveport Infinity. Starting April 2nd, Vive’s new game subscription service Viveport Infinity will grant access to Viveport’s entire library of over 600 apps and games for a subscription fee. Vive is offering a 2 week trial for any new Viveport users. Viveport Infinity can also be had for $99/year.
Osso VR creates new surgical training module for Smith & Nephew’s NAVIO Surgical System. The first-of-its-kind VR training module will train surgeons on how to operate a robotic surgical device. The Osso VR team is demonstrating the new training model at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) 2019 Annual Meeting this week.
Spotlight Stories, Google’s internal VR film studio, shuts down. The studio has been crafting stories in VR for 6 years now, even winning an emmy in 2016 for their short Pearl. Their latest story, Age of Sail will likely be their last. A spokesperson told Variety, “Since its inception, Spotlight Stories strove to re-imagine VR storytelling. From ambitious shorts like Son of Jaguar, Sonaria and Back to The Moon to critical acclaim for Pearl (Emmy winner and first-ever VR film nominated for an Oscar) the Spotlight Stories team left a lasting impact on immersive storytelling. We are proud of the work the team has done over the years.”
Convergence, the new AR-enabled book from Charlie Fink *ahem* kicked off Tuesday, March 12th, with an official SXSW book talk by the esteemed author and a launch party and signing sponsored by HP, Aris MD, and Zappar. Notable attendees were a virtual who's who from a wide range of AR/VR companies, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Magic Leap, Intel, HP, Bose, NASA, Accenture, and Booz Allen. Here's how the AR cover of the book looks. There are more than fifty scenes like this hidden in Convergence.
"This Week in XR" is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
