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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MAY 1, 2017

Unity CEO John Riccitiello has been following both virtual and augmented realities for a long time and, like the rest of us, he’s waiting for it to go mainstream. Today at Unity’s Vision Summit, he outlined how and when he thinks it will get there. Addressing a crowd at the event’s keynote speech, Riccitiello outlined three main factors VR and AR need to master in order to be widely adopted.

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Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

At VRLA 2017, Unity CEO and games industry vet John Riccitiello dumped a little cold water wisdom on the hype surrounding the red-hot VR industry. Riccitiello believes VR is coming and it will be huge, but advises that developers stay focused on survival and steer clear of the hype if they want to seize the incredible opportunities in front of them.

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VRScout

MAY 1, 2017

You can shoot Lego figures in both the virtual and physical world. Combining his love for 3D-printed props with his passion for VR, UK-based robotics mechanic James Bruton has created what he calls a “giant Lego hyperreality blaster.”. The oversized Lego blaster shoots a “Lego brick from a physical Lego gun, through the virtual world, but then back into the physical world to hit physical targets.

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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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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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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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MAY 1, 2017

If you want to peek under the hood of Tyler Hurd’s imagination, just don a pair of VR goggles and dive into his latest VR experience, Chocolate , which transforms you into a robot with cat launchers for hands, surrounded by waves of luminescent landscapes and giant-sized champagne-popping big poppa cats. Like Tyler’s previous acclaimed virtual reality creation Old Friend for the eponymous Future Islands song, Chocolate is an interactive music experience—this time set to tune of Bay Area artist G

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Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

During the opening presentation at today’s Unity Vision Summit, Nathan Martz, Developer Platforms Product Manager at Google, took to the stage to talk about new tools that the company is releasing to help developers create high-performance apps for Daydream, Google’s high-end Android VR platform. Having launched the first Daydream headset and phone in late 2016, Martz said the next step is to grow and scale the platform.

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MAY 1, 2017

HTC’s Viveport Subscription service has been up and running for about a month now, and the company is ready to talk about its most popular apps so far, though the list isn’t hugely surprising. According to the company , Solfar Studios’ Everest VR is the most popular app on the service to date, though HTC hasn’t provided any specific stats to help confirm that.

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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.

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Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

With over 120 applications, Nvidia has announced the 10 companies that will compete at the VR Content Showcase during GTC 2017 for $30,000 in cash and prizes. Nvidia’s GTC 2017 conference next week has a heavy focus on broader business uses of AR and VR, including healthcare, education, architecture, and more. The event’s VR Content Showcase is designed to highlight those non-entertainment use-cases by bringing together leading startups focusing their efforts to make AR and VR useful

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MAY 1, 2017

Today is Unity’s Vision Summit in Los Angeles. The event is a chance for the 3D visuals company to focus on its support for the VR/AR industry and encourage creators to develop using its tools. The show also includes an awards portion and this year one of the top honors is going to a familiar face. Superhot VR has been awarded Best Game at the Vision Awards.

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Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

Superhot VR , surely one of the best pieces of VR content available today but has remained exclusive to Oculus since launch. Today the developers have teased that the game is coming to the HTC Vive soon, but you can already play it today thanks to a free and easy to install hack. Superhot VR devs today teased Vive support on Twitter showing the Vive logo with the word “soon.” That’s great news because it likely means the game will be launching on Steam, making it dead simple fo

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MAY 1, 2017

Unity’s CEO had one last segment left in his company’s nearly three-hour-long keynote address this morning. To close out the show with a bang, John Riccitello invited stage hands to bring forth a pair of comfortable chairs. “If you’re looking at the foundation of VR/AR as we know it today, I think I can point pretty simply to one person that started it all back in 2012,” Riccitello teased the crowd.

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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.

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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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MAY 1, 2017

It was a year and a half ago now that we learned the next iteration in Bandai Namco’s popular fighting series, Tekken 7, would feature some form of exclusive PlayStation VR (PSVR) content. We’d long wondered what that support would look like, and now we know. An event held last week gave select people a first taste of the game in VR. As you can see in the video below from Shirrako, fans won’t be getting a first-person fighting simulation or anything like that.

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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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MAY 1, 2017

Puzzle games are a strange genre in video games. When most people think of a puzzle game they conjure up images of blocks falling like in Tetris or adding up numbers in grid arrangements such as with Sudoku. But now the term “puzzle game” is much more fluid. It’s not just about blocks and numbers, it’s about exploring and unlocking secrets.

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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.

Simulation

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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MAY 1, 2017

Ever since R2-D2 and Chewbacca gathered for a round in 1977 we’ve wanted to play HoloChess for real. Today we’re one step closer. HappyGiant and Tippett Studio today released HoloGrid: Monster Battle on Gear VR. You may have heard of this series before; it started life as an AR boardgame that we reviewed earlier this year. Players used tablet-like devices to visualize monsters on a board game that would correspond with cards you pulled from a deck.

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Hypergrid Business

MAY 1, 2017

Students from around the world can now travel to Pakistan and learn more about the country — virtually. Online educational community PenPal Schools has launched a free six week field trip project to connect about 2,000 students from 17 countries — 300 from Pakistan, and the rest from Australia, Argentina, United States, Pakistan, Canada, Lebanon, Bolivia, Norway, Peru, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Vietnam, Colombia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Germany, and Sweden.

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MAY 1, 2017

Hideo Kojima’s interest in VR is well documented. The Metal Gear Solid creator has spoken about the technology numerous times over the past few years, and recently touched on his excitement for it once more at the Tribeca Games Festival. Kojima had an on-stage interview with Geoff Keighley during the event in New York, where he revealed he had been around the expansive VR installation featured at this year’s festival.

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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

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MAY 1, 2017

As far as VR events go, Unity’s Vision Summit is a pretty big deal. Hosted for the first time in 2016, the videogame development engine maker gathers the industry in LA for a look at the year ahead, with updates coming from virtually every major company. Last year saw free Vives, the future of NASA and VR, and the introduction of Editor VR, and we’re hoping this year is just as big, if not bigger.

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Unity Industry 100

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MAY 1, 2017

Superhot VR is undoubtedly one of the best shooters on the Oculus Rift but it’s remained a timed exclusive to that headset since December of last year. That will be changing in the near future, though. The developers behind the popular VR game rounded out last week by dropping a rather obvious hint: a tweet with the game’s orange logo background holding a flashing HTC Vive logo, complete with the word “soon” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means.

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MAY 1, 2017

I’ve covered the WebVR space from various angles recently, arguing that it’s the most practical and accessible way to consume VR, that it’s now being increasingly prioritized and supported by the top VR players and browsers, and how it enjoys the unique role of enabling the next iteration of the Internet. The next major point I want to turn your attention to is the ‘magic window’ that allows WebVR content to be consumed by any smartphone or desktop user.

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MAY 1, 2017

Last September in the run up to one of the most divisive elections in the history of the United States, an article by The Daily Beast tied Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey to an internet meme machine. Fallout from the piece essentially silenced Luckey in public, apart from a carefully worded apology , and erased him as the face of the VR industry. He departed Facebook at the end of March.

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Speaker: Bruce Armstrong Taylor, Co-Founder & Managing Director of SmartNations Foundation, Jimmy Jia, Venture Partner at Pi Labs, Fabienne Durand, Senior Advisor to the SmartNations Foundation, & Roger Strukhoff, Executive Director of the Tau Institute

The Climate 4.0 Economy. Climate change is here. We see it in many ways already. Weather catastrophes: Texas freezing over, the wildfires of California, the increasingly unpredictable violence and frequency of hurricanes, the rapid melting and disappearance of polar ice caps. Much more evidence all around us. What can we do in our corporate organizations, in our homes and communities, to change the current course?

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