clay bavor – Page 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

May 28, 2017

Google Look To Up Their Display Game With “Secret Project” Collaboration On OLED

When it comes to virtual reality (VR) there are two important factors to consder when considering immersion. The first is the visual presentation. If the picture is so bad you can’t believe your eyes, chances are you won’t. The second is audio, an important factor we’ve discussed on VRFocus several times. However, it’s the former that Google is focusing on, at least according to a keynote made earlier during SID’s (the Society for Information Display’s) Display Week 2017 conference in Los Angeles, California.

As reported by Consumer Electronics Daily, the Tuesday keynote saw Google’s Vice President on matters relating to VR and augmented reality (AR) Clay Bavor take to the stage where he revealed that the power behind the Cardboard and Daydream were in a parnership with an unnamed manufacturing company and that the pair were working on a prototype display that is, in Bavor’s word’s “spectacular”.

The prototype made by Google and “one of the leading OLED manufacturers” is set to provide a quantum leap in displays if what was said is realised. Bavor mentioning that there would be ten times as many pixels “than any commercially available VR display today”, “the pixels of two and a half 4K TVs”.

Google have of course recently announced a partnership with both the Vive team and Lenovo to create a new “standalone” VR head-mounted display (HMD) at this year’s Google I/O event which will have all components needed built-in to the headset. Whilst there was no suggestion from Bavor that this was related to this project no real details were released regarding the standalone project’s specs.

Bavor described visual quality as one of virtual reality’s “fundamentally unsolved problems” and Google is not alone with their efforts.

Elsewhere Samsung has also been revealing new screen technology both for OLED and LCD, with the Korean manufacturer revealing an LCD display with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 4K, a significant improvement on that of other headsets including that of their mobile VR partner Oculus’ Rift headset. Meanwhile at the same event as the Bavor keynote the eMagin Corporation were also at showcasing their OLED displays which can be used in VR HMDs and other wearables.

This “secret project” (as it was described) is a developing story and VRFocus will bring you more information when it is available.

May 19, 2017

Google Confirms Glass Team is Not Working With AR/VR Team

Amidst a lot of exciting AR/VR news from Google this week during I/O 2017, a bit of sad news comes for any fans of the company’s ‘Project Glass’. The team within Google that worked on Glass is not collaborating with the Daydream/Tango VR/AR teams, a strong indication that there’s no plans to bring Glass forward into the fledgling era of immersive computing

Although, generally speaking, Google Glass was not an augmented reality device (though it did have a few AR apps), it was an impressively engineered HUD headset that’s greatest technical contribution was perhaps a smart user interface for head-worn devices with touch input, while its greatest societal contribution was easing the world’s view of wearable technology. In 2017, with so much talk of head-worn devices as the future of immersive computing, it’s easy to see that Glass was ahead of its time.

Among fans of the device (myself included), there was hope that after the Project Glass had “Graduated” from within Google’s secretive Google[x] in 2015 (also the origin of Tango, Google Watch, and more) the Glass team would be moving ahead with development of new and improved versions of the device.

With the Glass team at the time teasing, “we’ve outgrown the lab and so we’re officially ‘graduating’ from Google[x] to be our own team here at Google. We’re thrilled to be moving even more from concept to reality,”—and especially with Google’s lead investment in Magic Leap’s $500 million Series B—it seemed only natural that the Glass team would be working alongside Google’s tightly knit VR and AR teams, Daydream and Tango, to help define the future direction of the company’s head-worn projects.

Sadly, Google has confirmed that the Glass team is not only not actively working with the Daydream and Tango teams, but those teams had little idea of what the Glass team is currently working on.

Speaking with Clay Bavor, Google’s VP of VR & AR, I asked if Glass was still alive. He paused for a few seconds, looking off into the distance as if searching his mind for a lost fact before answering.

“Um… I don’t know the details of that program. I think they may still be selling in small volumes the second version of it to enterprise largely. But I’m not sure…” and further confirmed, “[Glass is] not part of our team.”

For me it was a sad confirmation that there’s almost certainly no secret Glass revival in the works; no new device to wow us with a forward thinking approach like the 2012 introduction of the headset; no effort to bring the “One Day…” concept vision of Glass to life.

And, rather unfortunately, it seems the hard-won lessons learned by the Glass team have gone underutilized. I recall back in 2014, when reviewing the first Gear VR ‘Innovator Edition’, thinking that the headset’s touchpad-based interface was surprisingly immature and could learn a lot from the smart design of the Glass interface:

I would advise Oculus to pay closer attention to Google Glass […] which has already spent a decent amount of time figuring out how to navigate a similar interface with just a touchpad, and they’ve devised a number of useful gestures. In Glass, you can give the touchpad a quick swipe and it’ll scroll through lots of items with momentum. That would be handy in Gear VR as well (it’s actually present in at least one of the apps). For now it isn’t a huge problem because most lists aren’t that long, however, as the Store grows, the need for a quick way to get around will become clear.

Daydream ended up taking a pretty similar interface approach to Gear VR, and even still today, three years later, I think there’s lessons both could learn from Glass’ user interface design.

The post Google Confirms Glass Team is Not Working With AR/VR Team appeared first on Road to VR.

May 17, 2017

Google is Bringing Daydream Compatibility to Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG’s Next Flagship Phone

Google I/O has begun, the company’s annual developer conference, and amidst expectations of a new all-in-one VR headset, the company announced that Samsung’s Galaxy S8/S8 plus and LG’s next flagship phone will be officially receiving Google Daydream support.

Taking the stage at I/O, Clay Bavor, the head of Google’s VR team, announced that Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus phones will finally be receiving Daydream support via a software update this summer. This is the first mention of a specific Samsung device supporting the Daydream VR platform.

LG’s next flagship phone, a yet unrevealed model, will also be supporting Daydream at launch later this year.

When first announced at last year’s Google I/O, Daydream-compatible phones were supposed to come from several manufacturers including Samsung, HTC, LG, Mi, Huawei, ZTE, Asus, and Alcatel.

Because of the lack of onboard electronics, Daydream-compatible phones require highly-tuned inertial measurement units (IMUs) which determine head-tracking latency, not to mention the graphical guts to make the cut. Google Cardboard, the company’s wide-reaching VR initiative that supports a multitude of mid-to-low end devices, delivers a basic but serviceable mobile VR experience. Daydream however, with it’s hand controller and beefier specs, that necessarily push frame rates to 60 fps, delivers what most consider a high-quality VR experience on par with Samsung’s Gear VR mobile headset.

This story is breaking. Check back for more information soon.

The post Google is Bringing Daydream Compatibility to Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG’s Next Flagship Phone appeared first on Road to VR.

May 17, 2017

Report: Google May Introduce a New All-in-one VR Headset at I/O Developer Conference

According to a Variety exclusive, Google may be gearing up to show off a brand new mobile VR headset at Google I/O developer conference this week, one that not only delivers VR in an all-in-one device, but could likely offer inside-out positional tracking as well.

The Variety report maintains information of the alleged all-in-one mobile VR headset—which won’t require a phone or PC to use—was gathered from “multiple sources with knowledge of the project.” Predictably, a Google spokesperson declined to comment.

The report posits that the headset is likely to debut this week in similar fashion to Google Daydream, which was introduced at last year’s Google I/O. Daydream is the company’s high-quality mobile VR platform designed to work with several flagship devices including the company’s own Pixel phone.

It’s unsure at this time exactly what a Google-made, all-in-one headset will look like, and whether it will incorporate the company’s augmented reality initiative Tango’s computer vision capabilities or not. Google’s interest in room-scale, interactive experiences is clear however, as evidenced by their early acquisition of VR studio Skillman and Hackett, known for creating Tiltbrush (2016), and more recently their acquisition of VR studio Owlchemy Labs, the minds behind Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).

The conference takes place today, May 17th, and goes until the 19th. The opening keynote will be livestreamed on the company’s developer channel on YouTube at 10 am PDT today.

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