Condé Nast China and HTC launch an augmented-VR reading experience.
HTC has unveiled Vivepaper, the latest app for the Vive that lets you check out interactive VR from publishers. What the company is calling the “world’s first Augmented-VR enhanced reading experience,” Vivepaper uses a specially designed AR-enabled physical booklet and the Vive VR system to let you immerse yourself in print content.
While donning the Vive headset you scan a booklet and watch a virtual magazine come to life, loading 360° photos and videos, 3D models, 2D content, and audio just by touching a piece of paper. The passthrough “Chaperone” camera on the front of the headset enables this augmented VR (A-VR) experience, letting you see and physically touch objects (the booklet) while in VR at the same time.
You can watch a demo of how the print medium is brought to life in a video HTC shared, showing an example of the December issue of Condé Nast Traveler (China Edition).
Vivepaper represents the beginning of the convergence of VR, MR, and AR on a single device — making way for new forms of advertising and potentially creating additional revenue streams for the struggling print industry. More publishers will soon be releasing Vivepaper versions of their content, including China Daily 21st Century English Newspaper, Caixin VR and the Publishing House of Electronics Industry. Vive is also in discussions with several other major western publishers to release Vivepaper versions of their content outside China shortly.
“With Vivepaper, we will enable the millions of books, magazines, newspapers and periodicals that have existed throughout history to come alive in the virtual world” says Alvin W. Graylin, China Regional President of Vive, HTC. “We are so excited to have Condé Nast as our launch partner and look forward to having all their amazing content available to VR users around the world soon.”
The Vivepaper app will be available October 31, 2016 for download on Viveport for Vive PC users and Viveport M for Android mobile users. For those of you without a Vive system, Vivepaper also works with a compatible cardboard VR viewer. An iOS version of the Vivepaper app will be available later this year. You will just need to simply start the Vivepaper app to view and interact with the Vivepaper booklet to begin a new immersive reading experience.
