Scott Hayden – Page 300 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

July 17, 2017

WaveOptics Raises $16M to Create Optics For Small Form-Factor AR Headsets

WaveOptics, a UK-based firm involved in designing and engineering optics for augmented reality, has today announced a successful series B funding round amounting to £12.0m ($15.7m). Investors include Touchstone Innovations, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GMBH, Octopus Investments, and Gobi Ventures.

The company is currently developing AR glasses using holographic waveguide technology, a nano-scale technique that the company says can superimpose digital imagery across endless optical shapes, sizes, and surfaces with full color imagery and peripheral vision. WaveOptics says its technology provides an “unsurpassed field of view.”

As of November last year, WaveOptics reported a maximum field of view of 40°, saying the road map for 2017 would promise a larger field of view to come.

Unlike conventional AR tech that necessarily relies on prisms or mirrors to reflect light from a display, WaveOptics’ holographic waveguide technology is able to actually channel light from a micro-display positioned at the periphery of a glass, or what the company says in the future could also be a plastic lens. This is accomplished by embedding holographic, mirror-like optical channels throughout the AR lens. Much like a fiber-optic, the light is transmitted from the source display directly in front of the user’s eye, which from a design perspective allows the headset’s size to diminish drastically, fitting into a package as compact as something approaching a regular pair of glasses.

“WaveOptics is reinventing the AR market, by developing a series of new AR display technologies that enables a wider field of view and brighter full colour images – a unique combination in today’s market,” said Martin Harriman, Chairman of WaveOptics. “This funding round further accelerates development of our industry-leading technologies and enables us to launch programmes in new markets and territories.

Waveguide technology in general is already in use in some form across several projects, including Microsoft HoloLens, Vuzix M3000, and even the secretive Magic Leap has filed patents using waveguide to display digital imagery.

Waveguide optics manufacturer DigiLens recently closed a $22m funding round lead by Foxconn, Sony, Continental and Panasonic.

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July 17, 2017

Lenovo Reveals New AR Headset in Teaser, Star Wars-themed App Coming Soon

Lenovo and Disney have partnered to bring a new Star Wars-themed app to life using a never before seen AR headset developed by Lenovo.

Revealed at the 2017 D23 Expo, the AR experience called Star Wars: Jedi Challenges was “designed to give Star Wars fans an opportunity to recapture some of their favorite moments from Star Wars films in ways never before possible,” including Holochess—and evidenced by the lightsaber prominently featured in the teaser—also a lightsaber sequence that the creators calls “essential for any Jedi experience.”

Information regarding Lenovo’s AR headset is still thin on the ground. From the trailer, it appears the headset is a smartphone-based device with a reflective display, a design concept explored by early AR startups like META and SEER. If the new Lenovo AR headset does indeed follow that concept, it would store a display panel (in this case a smartphone) in the top portion of the headset and reflect the image on the two panes of glass in front of your eyes. At least two equally-spaced integrated cameras can been seen in a close-up, most likely used for positional tracking.

The teaser video says a “compatible mobile device is required” to run the app.

Lenovo/Disney suggest signing up for the Star Wars AR experience at www.jedichallenges.com. Upon signing up for updates, the website flashes this message:

We will let you know when Star Wars™: Jedi Challenges is available for pre-order.

The experience is said to arrive soon via Best Buy and Lenovo.com.

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July 17, 2017

The 10 Coolest Things Being Built with Apple’s ARKit Right Now

Apple’s ARKit has been out for developers since it was announced last month. Because of the mind-boggling number of iPhones and iPads capable of running ARKit, the new tool is already spreading its augmented reality wings across the Internet thanks to a diverse set of developers. Here we take a look at some of the coolest publicly-shared AR projects being built right now using ARKit.

Keep in mind: because ARKit essentially gives the device the ability to accurately map your surroundings, something made possible by simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), there’s no need for external equipment to run these sorts of AR experiences. Apple, with a single flip of the wrist, has however started down the path of farming AR applications for whatever device it has planned next.

10 – Robot Dancing

Ok, so a dancing robot isn’t the most innovative application we’ve seen, but being able to see a 3D figure do the boogie in your living room has its appeal, and the dynamic lighting only makes it that much cooler. Dancing to Vengaboys (the song from the Six Flags commercial), this happy little robot was created by Tomas Garcia, also known for many other cool ARKit experiments.

9 – Room Measurement

Created by Smart Picture 3D, their Measurement Cloud enables what they call “dimensioning intelligence for the interior world.” There’s no denying the utility of pulling out your smartphone to see if that IKEA dresser is going to fit in your office (of course leaving enough space for VR).

8 – Inter-dimensional Portal

Fancy a walk into another dimension? This inter-dimensional portal built by French consulting agency Nedd shows you just how extraordinary a lonely allée can be when you have the ability to see another world at a moment’s notice.

7 – Volumetric Video in AR

Using 3D animations from 4DViews, China-based developer 应高选 created this with his iPhone 6s and Unity. 4DViews is known for creating dynamic, volumetric captures for VR/AR/MR market.

6 – Portals in Play

Showing some gaming applications to the always cool portal-trick, Helsinki-based creative developer lingoded is by his own admission “searching [for] the next big thing” as he works with ARKit and Unity. Look inside the portal to find a key to unlock another door: classic gaming brought to life.

5 – Dance Practice

You don’t know how to dance. I don’t know how to dance. But with AR, we’ll all be dancing in perfect step with a modern take on the old-timey footstep diagrams. This little two-step number was created by Dance Reality App, and projects a moving diagram on the floor so you can learn all the right moves.

4 – Apartment Walk-through

Walking around in my future apartment #ARKit pic.twitter.com/QJAOIBmQaM

— 3D Interactive Sthlm (@ARSweden) July 14, 2017

Virtual apartment walk-throughs have been in VR for a while now, but with the limited room-scale space and relatively expensive kit required to display (not excluding the difficulty of teaching someone how to move in VR for the first time), Stockholm-based firm 3D Interactive Sthlm brought their visualization technique into AR, allowing you the ease of movement you’ve been used to since you started walking.

3 – Positional Tracking for VR

Nexus Interactive Arts, an immersive media division of VFX production studio Nexus Studios, have used Apple’s ARKit working on an iPhone 7 in an experiment that creates basic inside-out positional tracking and pass-through AR for a Google Cardboard headset.

2 – Minecraft in AR

Minecraft is already available in VR, so it was only a matter of time until it came to AR too. Created by Matthew Hallberg with an iPhone and Unity 3D, he says “I love that you are able to place life size objects because the tracking with ARkit is so good.” Stay tuned to Hallberg’s channel for upcoming tutorials and a breakdown of how he created Minecraft for AR.

1 – Real-time Mixed Reality with Vive

Built in Unity by Normal VR, the mashup between the HTC Vive-driven art program and the ARKit’s ‘window’ into the virtual world is truly inspiring—almost as if it were giving us a peek into the future of mixed reality when AR/VR unite in a single hardware platform.

Rift + Touch to Cost $500 at End of Oculus Sale, New Bundle Removes Xbox Controller and Remote

Oculus slashed the original price tag in half to $400 on the Rift +Touch bundle last week, but the company’s ‘Summer of Rift’ sale only lasts for six weeks, leaving the question on the table as to exactly how much the VR headset + motion controller bundle would return to once the sale is up. Oculus says: $500

At the start of 2017, the Oculus Rift + Touch controllers cost the same as the HTC Vive—$800. To attract more potential interest, Oculus then dropped the bundle to $600, while HTC concurrently offered an interest-free finance plan for its still $800 room-scale VR system.

Now Oculus has issued its new ‘permanent’ Rift + Touch bundle price, a clear $300 lower than the HTC Vive is currently.

Former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe, now head of PC VR at Oculus’ parent company Facebook, says the original Rift + Touch bundle is already sold out. Iribe says the company has accelerated a new all-in-one box—likely intended for the post-sale period—that critically excludes both the previously bundled Xbox One controller and Oculus Remote. Iribe tweeted yesterday that the removal of the controllers is primarily a cost-cutting measure, one that he saves $100 per purchase.

Saves $100 by removing the Xbox controller and Remote. We're focusing on Touch and wanted a new bundle that's less expensive for everyone.

— Brendan Iribe (@brendaniribe) July 14, 2017

Like 3D platformer and launch title Lucky’s Tale (2016), all of the games shipped pre-Touch were originally designed for the Xbox One controller, the company’s first bundled controller before Touch launched in December of last year.

While there are many games that have included retroactive Touch support, there are still some games on the Oculus Store that currently list ‘gamepad only’ as an input method. With the entrance of a gamepad-free bundle, there will likely be a push for every game on the store to offer Touch support moving forward.

The send-off of the Oculus Remote is much less dramatic, although not entirely insignificant. The device was designed to make media consumption an easier task, with its tactile volume buttons and touchpad that let you easily navigate non-gaming apps.

The new all-in-one bundles will be available wherever Rift is sold, online or at brick-and-mortar partner stores like Best Buy and Microsoft Store. New all-in-one bundles include:

Rift Headset + Cables
Touch controllers + two sensors
Six free titles when you activate Touch
- Lucky’s Tale (2016)
- Oculus Medium (2017)
- Toybox (2017)
- Oculus Quill (2017)
- Dead and Buried (2017)
- Robo Recall (2017)

The amount of free content far exceeds the six games that come with the bundle however. We’ve rounded up 17 of the most important free VR games and experiences to download.

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July 14, 2017

Using Apple’s ARKit, This Company Built Inside-Out Tracking for a VR Headset

Announced last month at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), ARKit is an iOS 11 tool allowing developers to create AR applications thanks to the device’s computer vision capabilities. With ARKit, iOS 11 devices are able to map surfaces in real time, and allow users to superimpose digital objects onto the physical world—replete with interactive animations and dynamic lighting.

Using ARKit, the team reports their inside-out positional tracking solution clocks in “at around 60 frames per second,” or right around mobile VR’s current target framerate. This, according to the team, means Apple has created the foundations for a cheap, but still ultimately reliable positional tracking solution for mobile VR headsets.

In the video, they demonstrate inside-out positional tracking for VR and pass-through AR by touring a conceptual ‘art museum’ in a park. When in VR, walking close to a boundary like a tree results in a point cloud materializing into the otherwise closed-off experience—essentially acting as a guardian system to keep you from bumping into things as explore the infinite (or sufficiently large) tracking volume afforded by the device’s machine vision. In the AR demonstration, the digital skybox is lifted to reveal digital scenery affixed to the park’s trees and landscape.

The AR headset capabilities presented in the video, while an impressive use of ARKit, are less useful in this case because of the lack of stereoscopic vision afforded by the iPhone 7’s monoscopic rear-mounted camera. The developers aren’t couching this as a verified AR headset solution however, but rather showing the versatility of ARKit itself.

Allowing developers free reign to create applications for AR—and thanks to this experiment, now free-roaming VR experiences currently puts Apple back into competition despite its lack of discrete AR/VR headsets.

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July 14, 2017July 20, 2017

‘Echo Arena’ Launches Today, Free for a Limited Time

Echo Arena, the zero-g VR sports game coming to Rift July 20th, is going to be free for anyone who downloads it in the first 3 months after launch, says production studio Ready at Dawn in an Oculus forum post.

Update 07/20/17: Once you so much as add ‘Echo Arena’ to your library during the three-month window, you’ll have free, unlimited access to the title indefinitely.

Original Article (7/14/17): Echo Arena is the multiplayer mode launching alongside Lone Echo, a first-person, sci-fi adventure using the same zero-g locomotion system and Oculus Touch controllers. Ready at Dawn says owners who purchase Lone Echo ($40 regularly, $35 with pre-order) will automatically get Echo Arena for free at any time.

For everyone else, Echo Arena will be free (and accessible indefinitely) as long as you download it within 3 months after launch. After the 3 month period, the game will sell for $20.

This 3-month free download window is the result of a sponsorship by Intel. Already experiencing two successful open beta access periods (the second goes to July 17th), Echo Arena looks to garner a large player base.

Check back soon for our review of Lone Echo.

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July 14, 2017

6 VR Experiences Nominated for 2017 Emmy Awards, Oculus Receives Multiple Nominations

The 69th Emmy Awards nominations are out, and while it’s true the Emmys were created to recognize excellence in the television industry, virtual reality as a medium has been lauded with six total nominations this year, three of which are thanks to content created by Oculus.

There isn’t an official ‘VR’ section of the Emmys, rather the nominations have been spread between two categories: ‘Outstanding Original Interactive Program’ and ‘Outstanding Creative Achievment in Interactive Media Within a Scripted Program’.

Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media Within A Scripted Program

The Mr. Robot Virtual Reality Experience USA Universal Cable Productions, Here Be Dragons, Esmail Corp. and
Anonymous Content (360 video on YouTube)
Stranger Things VR Experience – Netflix – Netflix and CBS Digital (360 video on YouTube)
The Simpsons – Planet Of The Couches – play.google.com – Gracie Films in association with 20th Century Fox Television and Google Spotlight Stories (download here for Google Cardboard)

Outstanding Original Interactive Program

Dear Angelica – Oculus Story Studios – Oculus (download here for Oculus Rift)
Mission: ISS – Oculus – Magnopus / Oculus (download here for Oculus Rift)
The People’s House – Inside The White House With Barack And Michelle Obama – Samsung / Oculus – Felix & Paul Studios
and Oculus (download here for Oculus Rift)

Oculus’ Henry, the company’s Pixar-esque VR cartoon that follows the woes of a lonely hedgehog, won the 2016 Emmy for Outstanding Original Interactive Program, becoming the first VR original narrative to do so. While the company’s production studio Oculus Story Studios—which saw the release of Lost, Henry, and Dear Angelica—is now shuttered, Oculus says they’re earmarking $50 million of the $250 million they recently committed to invest in VR content exclusively for external investments in “non-gaming, experiential VR content.”

This effectively means Oculus will be funneling funds away from internal production in order to further grow the nascent industry of VR-based narratives. There’s no word on whether these $50 million will come with platform exclusivity however, although it would make sense from a business perspective for Oculus to do so. More high-quality, exclusive content on the Oculus Store equates to a high perceived value in their growing milieu of VR headsets, possibly including a reported Oculus-branded $200 standalone VR headset to come next year.

We’ll be tuning in to this year’s Emmy Awards on September 17th at 5PM PT (local time here). Check out the full list of this year’s Emmy nominations here.

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July 14, 2017

nDreams Raises £2.7M to Further Develop VR Games, Signs Deal to Bring Exclusive Content to VR Arcade

nDreams, creators of The Assembly and publishers of the upcoming brawler Bloody Zombies, have completed an additional £2 million investment with Mercia Technologies, and £700,000 from private investors to create more VR games. In addition, nDreams has signed a deal to bring exclusive new content to a “leading VR arcade company.” According to a nDreams blog post, the VR arcade content partnership is just one of many recent deals with third-party companies.

nDreams says they’re “targeting rapid growth over the next year as the VR market continues to expand,” citing its five VR titles in production including Bloody Zombies and and number of unannounced titles currently in development.

Paul Fitzsimons, a former partner at venture capital firm Apax Partners, will join nDreams as chairman. Rob Precious, the former director of business development at Geomerics/ARM, has also joined the company’s board as non-executive director. nDreams also plans on strengthening their senior team by hiring a CFO and a COO in the coming months.

“Mercia’s continued support, and the backing of private investors, bolsters our relentless ambition to remain at the forefront of VR. The company has expanded rapidly over the past 12 months leading to outstanding opportunities, including our move into VR Arcades and our continued focus on creating innovative VR content for home headsets. We’re also delighted to welcome Paul and Rob to the board, who bring a wealth of experience and insight to the team,” said Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO and founder of nDreams.

Mercia previously invested seed funds amounting to $2.75M in December 2015. Combined with the recent £2.7M ($3.5M) follow-on investment, this brings nDreams to $9.22M over the course of three funding rounds, according to Crunchbase.

“nDreams continues to thrive within the VR market, a sector expected to be worth in excess of $30 billion by 2020,” says Mike Hayes, investment director at Mercia. “Its growing reputation as one of the UK’s leading developers and publishers of VR content demonstrates the significant progress that the company has made this year with many of the major hardware brands in this rapidly growing market. We are delighted to continue to back this industry-leading team.”

The company’s latest title, Bloody Zombies, is slated to arrive later this year on PS4, PC, Xbox One, PS VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.

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July 14, 2017

nDreams Raises £2.7M to Further Develop VR Games, Signs Deal to Bring Exclusive Content to VR Arcade

The company’s latest title, Bloody Zombies, is slated to arrive later this year on PS4, PC, Xbox One, PS VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.

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July 13, 2017

Report: Facebook to Ship a $200 Standalone Mobile VR Headset in 2018

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg | Photo courtesy Facebook

According to a report by Bloomberg, Facebook is working on a wireless, all-in-one VR headset said to target the $200 price range. Citing “people familiar with its development,” the report reveals the Oculus-branded headset, code named ‘Pacific’, will ship sometime next year.

The headset is said to be more compact than the company’s PC VR headset the Oculus Rift, and lighter than Gear VR, Samsung’s mobile VR headset that accepts a number of flagship Galaxy phone variants including the new S8, S8 Edge and S8 Plus among many others. While the headset is still in its design phase and features aren’t finalized, the report says, there’s no denying the appeal to a high-quality mobile VR experience at such a low price point.