360 – Page 7 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

February 17, 2017

YouTube Duo SoKrispyMedia Takes Immersive Style To The Next Level With VR

With major 360-degree media companies like Blend Media garnering interest from executives involved with media platforms like TheLADBible and Maker Studios, it’ll be no surprise when the format takes a stranglehold on a large chunk of video sharing networks. Slowly but surely, YouTube tastemakers are utilizing 360-degree video and VR on their creative platforms and taking their creativity to the next level. The latest example is an intriguing 360-degree video that takes advantage of a particular YouTube channel’s unique style with the perfect marriage of creativity and technology.

Sam Wickert and Eric Leigh make up SoKrispyMedia, a channel known for videos that break down walls by bringing digital and physical art elements into the real world, and they’ve released a cool new video.

Considering they’ve emulated VR interactions in some of their work, them utilizing the 360-degree format and VR was essentially an inevitability. In “Internet Surfer”, Sam and Eric meld their creative ideas with assistance from Reality One and Wevr to take Eric on a physical tour of the internet. Due to some wonky happening, Eric gets physically pulled into YouTube and hilarity ensues as he stumbles into the lives of hilarious impressionist Jamie Costa, the action intense Corridor Digital crew, video magician Zach King, and fashionista Lindsey Rem. There’s even a portion of the video with animation from Cyanide and Happiness.

Hopefully, creations like this aren’t just one-offs, as many of the creators involved in this video would be a boon to the 360-degree media ecosystems. Even beyond that, it’s clear that humorous content translates to the medium even for more popular entities like the Always Sunny In Philadelphia crew’s recent video that lets you become a total badass (nothing goes right, of course). Fingers crossed that we get much more comedic content across various networks in the very near future.

Tagged with: 360-degree video, Corridor Digital, Cyanide and Happiness, Jamie Costa, Lindsey Rem, SoKrispyMedia, VR, Zach King

February 15, 2017

NextVR and NBA Putting Together VR Highlights of All Star Weekend

NextVR has made significant progress across different leagues when it comes to VR, from broadcasting NCAA football games and tailgating activities to providing highlight packages for the NFL despite their slower adoption of VR and 360-degree live-streaming. The NBA has been a bit more active in their partnership with NextVR, including VR as part of broadcast subscription packages, and putting together a schedule for the current season. This partnership continues as the two are bringing the NBA All-Star Weekend to VR on February 18th and 19th.

The 66th All-Star game and sponsored events that precede it will be given the premium highlight treatment in the NextVR app immediately following the TNT broadcast of the festivities each night. Viewers will get an intimate look into Saturday’s skills challenge, the three-point contest, and the slam dunk event in addition to the All-Star game itself on Sunday. The highlights will be hosted by three-time NBA champion Bruce Bowen and will feature multiple camera angles.

“We’ve gone from learning the best practices, camera positions, and audio to working to build and enhance the product around the technology,” says NextVR’s VP of content Danny Keens via email. “We’ve combined the best of a live experience with the best of a broadcast experience.”

In addition to this new development, NextVR will be offering a-la-carte live NBA VR broadcasts for single games starting on February 23rd. This is a solid option for those not committed enough to subscribe to one of the NBA League Pass packages, but would like to experience a game in VR anyway. Individual games on the broadcast schedule start at an introductory price of around $7.

The NextVR app is available on Google Daydream via Google Play and Samsung Gear VR from the Oculus Store.

Tagged with: All Star Weekend, nba, New Orleans, nextVR

February 15, 2017

(NSFW) Always Sunny in Philadelphia 360 Video Lets You Be Totally and Completely Badass

What’s up jabronis. Welcome to a brand new episode of Project Badass. The pyrotechnics (bug bomb) are set, the speedway (cardboard ramp) is secure and, most importantly, your helmet (forgot) and safety gear (nope) are on. Totally, and completely, badass, courtesy of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. (NSFW content including foul language and a dancing stripper found below.)

Oh hey! You survived…didn’t look like that would be the case for a while there. Well good! Let me explain what just happened to you.

What you just experienced is a 360 video produced by Jaunt and FX featuring the cast of the highly-successful comedy show: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Always Sunny follows the exploits of four Philly friends who own a bar called Paddy’s Pub. A combination of narcissism, anti-social tendencies, borderline sociopathy ,and an unlimited amount of cash from the bar’s benefactor Frank (Danny DeVito) consistently lead the gang into hilariously convoluted schemes.

For a show that’s featured such memorable moments as gallons of vomited blood, man-cheetahs, and an increasingly mutilated homeless priest, it was anyone’s guess how the network would tackle the gang’s first 360 video. It opted to go with Project Badass, a send-up of 90s backyard stunt tapes that Mac (AKA the Sheriff of Paddy’s) puts together when he’s not giving out ocular pat downs and cultivating a Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse atmosphere of danger.

Here’s one of the show’s references to the Project Badass concept previously:

This 360 installment of Project Badass puts you in a starring role. It was co-produced by Jaunt — a 360 company with notable investment from major media players like Disney.

The video can be viewed on any VR compatible device including the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, PlayStation VR and Google Daydream. It can also be experienced without a headset either in a browser or on a smartphone.

360 videos are becoming an increasingly more prominent method for major brands to interact with their audience. This video is free to all customers and represents a good omen for the immersive industry. If serious content creators like FX are excited enough about VR to leverage their most notable IP, then the sky is the limit for what we could see next.

Let’s just hope whatever it is that it’s totally, and completely, badass.

Tagged with: 360 video, always sunny, branded

February 14, 2017

Fifty Shades Darker Masquerade Ball 360-Video Features Over 200 Live Actors

The debate about whether or not 360 videos are considered “real VR” rages on across the internet, but the fact of the matter is that it’s the most accessible and easily digestible form of immersive content out there right now. Any Google Cardboard device, or even just a smartphone without a VR HMD, can view a 360 video. They can be embedded directly on Facebook and other websites and YouTube naively supports them now. Most aren’t 3D these days, but a video that surrounds you is still a lot more engaging than a standard flat display.

Universal Pictures teamed up with 5th Wall Agency to release a Fifty Shades Darker 360-degree video entitled The Masquerade Ball last week, just in time for the film’s release and for Valentine’s Day. You can see the entire video below:

For those unaware, 360 videos are typically created by a series of cameras that simultaneously record footage and then “stitch” the results together to create the surrounding 360 effect seen when completed. All of the crew was removed in post-production, so it really feels like you’re there. This particular production features over 200 live actors and shows what Hollywood-caliber 360 video is capable of. 5th Wall worked with Universal on the actual sets of the film itself and the actual cast, putting this a few levels above smaller 360 video projects.

“There was something about seeing Christian Grey put on a mask in the films teaser trailer that immediately inspired all of us – We thought: “Wait a second! That kind of looks like someone putting on a VR headset,” said Chris Olimpo, Creative Director at 5th Wall, in a prepared statement. “What if we invited all the fans of this film franchise to “put on their mask,” in the form of a VR headset, and step into the film? Our goal was to be incredibly respectful to the mythology of the Fifty Shades trilogy, so that everything that was done, was done to make the audience feel as though the world of Fifty Shades was real. This wasn’t a film set. This was a real place – a place where you attended the Masquerade Ball. That’s where the power of the medium is its most powerful, true immersion.”

When the existence of a Fifty Shades Darker VR experience was first mentioned back before the movie released, our minds started racing as to what it would entail. The series is notoriously well-known for its graphic and gratuitous sex scenes, but you won’t find any of that here. This Masquerade Ball video is extremely elegant and features plenty of tantalizing sights and sounds that can be enjoyed by just about anyone. Fans of the books and films will love the immersive feeling of actually being present in this iconic scene.

While it’s only a minor, toe-dipping excursion into the world of immersive 360 video for Universal, seeing more elaborate and attractive productions such as this should bode well for the industry. So far, this 360 video has been viewed over 860,000 times on YouTube and over 2.8M times on Facebook, but it’s unknown how many of those were from within a VR headset. Likely not many.

What do you think of this 360 video? Let us know down in the comments below!

Tagged with: 50, fifty shades, universal pictures, Valentine's Day

February 10, 2017

360-Degree Video Company Blend Media Announces Seed Funding

Blend Media is the curator one of the largest collections of 360-degree videos on Facebook, and is helping companies bring the ideas of brands and publishers to the 360-degree format. Blend told UploadVR they’ve completed a new round of funding and, by the looks of the companies that invested, they could end up tapping into that group of creators in the future.

We chatted with Blend Media CEO Damian Collier about the funding, the company’s direction, and more. Collier wouldn’t share specifics on projects they’ll be pushing, but he says their focus is to provide support to the large and growing number of 360-video creators that it represents globally, and also make 360-media marketing quick and easy for brands.

The funding round was led by executives including the co-founder and CEO of The LADBible Group and the co-founder and former President of Maker Studios. The LADBible Group and Maker Studios are both networks geared toward young creators, and the confidence of executives from such companies could pay dividends for Blend’s expansion and audience growth.

“‘Influencer marketing’ is a fast-growing and important part of today’s industry,” says Collier. “Since Blend’s goal is to provide 360 video solutions to the widest possible customer base, this is naturally important to us.”

Tagged with: 360 media, 360 video, Blend Media, Youtube

February 9, 2017

The Collect App Brings Simple 360-Video Editing To Your Smart Phone

360-degree media is a new exciting wave, breaking out of the frame of traditional photography and video by capturing everything around a source and giving a dynamic viewing experience. Early on, not many 360-degree cameras were easily accessible and would cost thousands of dollars but now there are more and more 360-degree mobile attachments with a growing amount of smart devices ready to record in the format out of the box.

We previously reported on the Pie app that allows you to make and share 360-degree media, but Collect is a new video editor for mobile devices that’s a timely addition to the ecosystem as the popularity of the format grows.

The growth of 360-degree media is largely invested in the mobile market where it can permeate across social media and get into the hands of the most people. With that, a mobile solution for editing is needed as 360-video has had to be moved to a computer for modifications and Collect is looking to be that solution. Collect utilizes the smart device’s touch interface to provide an easy to use and robust editor so that users can merge, rearrange, trim, add effects and filters, and even add music to multiple clips.

“The premise is simple: we are releasing a powerful yet simple to use tool, that allows 360 intuitive creation and unleashes the creativity that this new medium allows to any enthusiast, not just professionals,” says Oliver Pecha. “Few finger taps and done!” Pecha and Mateus Zitelli are the Silicon Valley BoostVC-backed creators responsible for this new application and they’re hoping they have a winner on their hands.

If the fluidity that’s shown in the video promoting the app is reflected in the actual program, it looks like Collect embodies the best of apps like Instagram and Snapchat with a simple collection of mods for your content and a simple interface. We’ll just have to wait and see how many people embrace the format altogether.

The app is currently available in beta on Android for free and iOS users can sign up for the future release on the website.

Tagged with: 360, 360 media, 360-degree video, Collect, editing, mobile

February 9, 2017

The Possible’s Second Episode on Within Tackles Something Einstein Got Wrong

Virtual reality continues to be an incredible platform for creators to innovate when telling stories and there are plenty of groups taking advantage of this, large and small. Hulu has taken to the medium for news and comedy shows along with the Life brand’s shift into documentary-like VR content, but Within is an entity that was named entirely with VR storytelling in mind.

Continuing its trend of producing high-quality immersive content, Within unveiled a new episode of their science and engineering documentary series called The Possible.

Founded by filmmaker Chris Milk, Within collaborates with companies like Apple, NBC, Vice, and many more to create experiences across a collection of genres. The Possible, made with financial backing from GE, will place viewers face to face with cutting edge technology and discoveries across the life of the serial series. Its second episode is named Listening to the Universe and tackles something that Einstein actually got wrong:

A century ago, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime—but believed they were so small that humans would never observe them.

More recently, an MIT physics professor did the math and concluded that Einstein was wrong. So he built the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which measures almost infinitesimally small disturbances in spacetime—smaller than anything that’s been measured before. And in 2016, LIGO succeeded, detecting gravitational waves from a massive, faraway collision between black holes.

Pakistani-American astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala PhD is the MIT physics professor mentioned in the episode’s summary and she’s also known for her pioneering experiments on laser cooling of macroscopic objects and in the generation of squeezed quantum states of light.

If this new episode is any testament to the future stories, The Possible is going to be a very deep dive into science and tech and include collaborations with some of the greatest minds in the world. Listening to the Universe is available in the Within app for iOS, Android, Steam VR, Oculus Home, and PS VR and it’s available to watch on their website as well.

Tagged with: 360-degree video, Astro physics, documentary, Listening to the Universe, science, VR, Within

February 7, 2017

COLOPL Announces New $50 Million Fund To Invest In VR/AR Companies

As more high-quality projects surface and the install base for virtual and augmented reality continues to grow, more and more money is pouring into the different entities cultivating and creating that content. Japan-based COLOPL has charged forward to become a solidified part of the mobile industry with a collection of solid games that include VR experiences. Now, COLOPL and its subsidiary COLOPL Next have created a new $50 million fund focused on VR and AR that brings their total funds focuses on those markets to $100 million.

Named the Colopl VR Fund 2, the accumulated $50 million will be used to invest in companies creating virtual and augmented projects. According to a press release:

COLOPL’s strategy is to develop games and video images within the group, while investing in business fields that the group doesn’t cover on its own. Based on this strategy, the company is steadily working on VR fields one step at a time. Managed by COLOPL NEXT, the Colopl VR Fund has invested in over 30 companies all over the world. The company believes that the development of the nascent VR market requires players that are committed to further accelerating the growth of the market.

The website for the fund declares that COLOPL is “laser-focused” on virtual reality as they’ve spent the last two years investing in research and development for VR projects. COLOPL Next President Shintaro Yamakami gave a statement, declaring VR platforms could transcend the “conventional way of life and gives people a chance to experience new things”.

COLOPL has disclosed most of the 30 companies they’ve invested in, including SPACES Inc, which recently announced the acquisition of $6.5 million for their VR theme park ambitions. Given that interest in AR is ramping up significantly, it should be expected that COLOPL will be investing a great deal more in augmented reality.

Disclosure: COLOPL is an investor in the parent company of UploadVR.

Tagged with: 360 degree media, ar, colopl, SPACES, VR

February 7, 2017

SubVRsive Secures $4 Million Funding For VR and AR Production

360-degree media production companies are becoming more and more important as companies reach out for creative ways to market their products, share their creative visions, and even educate their employees. SubVRsive, a team that has worked with MTV and has even earned an Emmy nomination for their collaboration with Showtime, announced that they’ve completed a series A funding round, acquired $4 million, and appointed former Hulu SVP Johannes Larcher as their new CEO.

On the company’s blog post about the funding, they wrote of the potential of VR and AR when it comes to providing the best content for their clients:

If our experience in immersive storytelling has taught us anything, it’s that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are fundamentally redefining the ways in which brands connect with their audiences. While the sight, sound, and motion of traditional video allow brands to explain their benefits to consumers, the immersive nature of Virtual Reality allows consumers to experience those benefits for themselves – and that experience is captivating. We are convinced that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality will continue to push the envelope of storytelling and will offer brands more and more effective ways to deepen their engagement with their audiences.

The funding round was the result of investments from a single participant, the WPP, which is one of the world’s leading communications service companies. WPP already has assets in marketing technology consultancy, content management, and others. As stated in their own press release on the new development, investing in SubVRsive continues their strategy to diversify their offerings in technology, data, and content. We chatted with the current SubVRsive CCO, Austin Mace, via email about the funding and the direction of the company from this point forward.

“The additional funding will allow us to accelerate hiring that is needed to keep up with a growing demand from brands and media clients, as well as increase our ability to work on projects that transcend our traditional sweet spot of cinematic VR,” Mace says.

When it comes to WPP, he notes that they bring “terrific experience and relationships with the world’s leading brand marketers” and that the SubVRsive team is looking forward to bringing these newer technologies to WPP’s family of agencies and brand clients. “The outlook for the rest of this year is bright. We plan to grow our team with the best talent in the industry and continue to push the boundaries of storytelling in VR and AR.”

Tagged with: 360 degree media, funding, Seeding, SubVRsive, video

February 5, 2017

See The Legend of Zelda’s Master Sword Recreated in Virtual Reality

Welcome to our weekly virtual reality art roundup! Everything you are about to see was made by hand by in a variety of VR creation programs that include Google’s Tilt Brush, Oculus Medium, Quill and Gravity Sketch.

The pieces below were drafted in a three dimensional 360 degree digital space using only a VR headset, a pair of hand-tracked controllers and a dab of imagination. Enjoy!

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How about you? Are you a VR artist with something amazing to show off? Drop us a line in the comments below our reach out to us on Twitter and you just may see you’re masterpiece here next week!

Tagged with: 360, art, master sword, zelda

Moog Lil Phatty Stage II – Quill

European Shorthair – Oculus Medium

The Legend of Zelda Forest – Tilt Brush

Blue Defeat – Gravity Sketch