featured – Page 32 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

January 3, 2017January 4, 2017

ASUS Officially Unveils The ZenFone AR, The First Daydream and Tango Ready Smartphone (Update)

Report: ASUS ZenFone Is Both Daydream and Tango Ready

Update: During its press conference today, ASUS officially unveiled the ZenFone AR, which is poised to officially be the first Tango-enabled smartphone that also supports Google’s Daydream VR platform. The phone is reportedly “built to see like your eyes do” with its trademarked ASUS TriCam System that enables detailed area learning, motion tracking, and depth sensing technologies. The phone features a large 5.7 inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2560×1440.

The ZenFone AR will be the first smartphone to launch with 8GB of RAM and features ASUS’s specially designed Vapor Cooling system. The phone will also be powered by a Tango-optimized version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 processor.

The ZenFone AR is expected to be available in Q2 of 2017.

Original: Following today’s news about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile processor, we learned about more mobile VR and AR developments. In a leaked Qualcomm blog post (which has since been taken down), it looks like the upcoming ASUS ZenFone is expected to be both Google Daydream and Tango ready. Daydream is the VR ecosystem released by Google in October of 2016, whereas Tango is the AR platform that uses an array of cameras and sensors to portray items in the real world on the phone’s screen.

However, worth noting, is that the ZenFone is actually not powered by the newly detailed Snapdragon 835 processor, but will instead be powered by the Snapdragon 821 processor.

According to the blog post spotted by Engadget: “The ZenFone AR with Snapdragon 821 is built for VR with high-resolution display, ultra-smooth graphics and high-fidelity sensors for precise head tracking. Snapdragon 821 provides the cutting-edge visual, audio and interactive technologies required to deliver truly immersive mobile VR experience for leading Android smartphones.”

In a screenshot posted on GSMArena, the blog post also states that the ASUS ZenFone is “the world’s first mobile device to be both Tango-enabled and Daydream-ready,” which appears to contradict the fact that the Moto Z was poised to be the first smartphone to support both platforms. Perhaps the ZenFone will beat it to market.

So far, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro is still the only actually available Google Tango-supported smartphone, but it looks like that could be changing very soon. Google’s own Pixel phone only supports Google Daydream and not the AR infrastructure of Tango. Expect to see more details about Daydream, Tango, and the ZenFone this week, including our hands-on report with the device from CES 2017.

We’ve reached out to both Google and ASUS regarding this information and will update this story if we receive comment or confirmation prior to an official announcement.

Featured image credit: Evan Blass

Tagged with: asus, CES, Daydream, mobile, snapdragon, tango, zenphone

December 29, 2016

A Brief History of Virtual Reality at CES

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has served as a good way-point for VR’s progress over the years. With CES 2017 kicking off next week, here we take a look back at the highlights (and lowlights) from 4 years of VR at CES to gauge how far the industry has come and look for clues as to where it goes from here.

Wedged somewhat inconsiderately at the very start of every year (it’s OK CES organisers, no one in the tech industry have families they want to spend time with), the annual Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas is still the biggest event for hardware in the world. A swirling mass of corporate marketing excess and the single platform showcasing the best (and worst) new gear from around the world expected to vie for our attention in 2017 and beyond. Virtual reality has figured prominently at the event in recent years of course, quickly rising to become one of the shows hottest technologies. With that in mind, and with CES 2017 imminent, we thought we’d take a look back at the notable VR events from past shows, charting VR’s progress to the present day.

CES 2013 / 2014: The Early Years

From the advent of the Oculus Rift in 2012, we saw Oculus attend the show for the first time in 2013 to show off their pre-production Rift headset prototype ahead of the DK1 launch, following their wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. Press response to the closed-doors meetings was almost universally positive. Road to VR was still in its infancy at the time, but Tested.com went hands-on with an interim Rift prototype at the show along with giving us a glimpse at the near-complete Rift DK-1 design that would ship to Kickstarter backers later that year. The demonstration included the now familar Unreal Engine 3 powered citadel area, one which would become the setting for one of the most famous early VR applications of all time, Rift Coaster. The Rift had of course been covered by media before, most notably when Id co-founder John Carmack at E3 2012 showed an early, modified Oculus Rift prototype sent to him by the device’s inventor (and future Oculus VR founder) Palmer Luckey. CES 2013 however gave us the first glimpse of Oculus VR operating as a company.

Oculus' Pre-DK1 Prototype, shown at CES 2013 — Oculus’ Pre-DK1 Prototype, shown at CES 2013

The following year at CES 2014, Oculus had to share the immersive technology limelight with a slew of new startups who had appeared in the wake of Oculus’ success. The unique (and formerly Valve developed) retro-reflective-powered CastAR system gave us a glimpse at one of augmented reality’s possible futures; Avegant turned up with their bizarre yet technically impressive personal media player the Glyph; PrioVR had their new entry-level motion tracking / VR input system to try. But the star of the show remained Oculus, who, having grappled with the DK1’s biggest technical flaws, showed their latest prototype which resolved two of them in one fell swoop. The Crystal Cove headset featured a cluster of IR LEDs and a tracking camera to provide positional tracking and also introduced low persistence of vision displays. Both advancements provided a vast improvement in user experience, and provided the baseline technical platform for the consumer Rift when it appeared in 2016.

oculus-rift-crystal-cove — The Oculus Rift Crystal Cove prototype VR headset and tracking camera a shown at CES 2014

CES 2015: Consumer VR Takes Shape

CES 2015 brought yet more impressive advancements from VR and AR fields, and some notable setbacks. With the huge uptick in interest surrounding VR technology it inevitably drew opportunistic businesses to join the bandwagon with minimal work.

The most infamous example is of course, the legendary 3DHead system. This was a product which purported to offer a full-fledged VR experience with no lenses and mostly, off-the-shelf technology. Backed by the eccentric billionaire Alki David, the product’s aggressive (and as it turns out misleading) marketing had already drawn ire from the VR community, adopting as it did taglines like “Oculus killer” in its promotional material and then booking a booth directly next door to Oculus themselves sporting those same slogans. The headset itself was enormous – somewhat akin to the head of H R Geiger’s Alien, although somehow less attractive – and the advertising was painfully bad, but we nevertheless did our best to keep an open mind. Inevitably however, after Ben Lang tried 3DHead for himself, and subsequently interviewed the seemingly sincere James Jacobs (at that time COO of the operation), it was clear 3DHead was at best a terrible product and at worst, a complete sham. Watch the interview for yourselves below (along with Ben’s write-up of his experience) but needless to say Ben’s original and succinct summary of his experiences were right on the money; it was indeed, “beyond bad”.

Elsewhere however, things were looking much more promising. Oculus had once again brought along its latest prototype, the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay. Unveiled originally at the company’s 1st developer conference Connect in September, Crescent Bay gave us what we know now to be a pretty good sneak peek at the device that would eventually ship in March the following year. It had integrated, high quality headphones (supported by a custom inline DAC and amp), lightweight construction, and rear-mounted ‘Constellation’ infra-red LEDs for 360 degrees of positional tracking with a single camera sensor. We would also later learn the device (as with the consumer version) sported dual OLED panels and Fresnel lenses, quite a departure from all Rift devices that had preceded Crescent Bay. For the first time, Oculus had shown a device that looked like a consumer product.

2015’s CES was the first for Samsung’s ‘Oculus powered’ mobile VR headset ‘Gear VR’ having been unveiled and impressing a few months earlier at IFA Berlin. The then Galaxy Note 4 powered device was featured heavily at Oculus’ booth both in front and behind the scenes. It was clear Oculus, thanks in no small part to its CTO John Carmack, was serious about the future of mobile, untethered mobile virtual reality.

A new VR headset challenger also entered the ring at 2015’s CES, one which promised to eschew the proprietary, walled garden approach which Oculus had adopted and open up both the hardware and software for developers to tinker. The Razer-fronted Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) platform was announced along with its very first flagship hardware, the Hacker Developer Kit (HDK for short). This was a headset designed to be pulled apart redesigned and put back together then shared with the community. Built atop an open source set of APIs, the platform was a refreshing take on how to deliver immersive technology. Although the platform left a little to be desired in the overall experience compared with the Rift, it was encouraging to see such a fresh approach.

Unbeknownst to most (with nary a whisper uttered at 2015’s CES), Valve and HTC were working in secret on a virtual reality system that would shake up the fledgling VR industry and present Oculus with their first serious competitor in the PC VR space. At MWC in Barcelona in March that year, HTC unveiled the Valve/SteamVR driven Vive headset and arguably went on to dominate the Game Developer Conference (GDC) show which followed. The Vive was powered by Valve’s new laser-based room-scale tracking technology ‘Lighthouse’ and gave many people their first taste of presence thanks to the system’s then prototype motion controllers which demonstrated an at that time unprecedented level of input fidelity. Vive’s entrance would help shape the conversation around what we should expect from consumer virtual reality throughout 2015 and beyond.

Sony however, having debuted it’s PlayStation 4 powered ‘Morpheus’ (later

The HTC Vive (DK1), SteamVR Controllers and Laser Basestations

re-christened PlayStation VR) headset at GDC in March of 2014, was largely absent from 2015’s CES, with the company focusing more heavily on its more traditional consumer electronic lines. Sony however would go on to push the Morpheus hard at gaming shows throughout 2015 such that, by the close of that year, the PlayStation VR would become one of VR’s best hopes at reaching out to a mass market audience.

CES 2016: Consumer VR Wars

All of that brings us to 2016, and a CES which marked the beginnings of what would turn out to be VR’s most important 12 months so far. Most industry observers (including us) had expected to usher in the first generation of consumer virtual reality in 2015. The hardware felt ready and there had even been indications to that effect from the company largely responsible for VR’s resurgence, Oculus. As it turned out, we had to wait until CES 2016 to learn when we could pre-order the world’s first consumer desktop VR headset. Oculus announced that pre-order sales would go live during CES itself (which posed some logistical issues for those of us covering the event and wanting to get their hands on a Rift let me tell you). On January 6th 2016 Rift pre-orders went live at with headsets expected to ship a couple of months later in March. Also, as a nod to the company’s roots, and as a (largely unprecedented) “thank you” to the original Rift Kickstarter backers that launched the company, Oculus gave announced that every supporter would receive a free consumer Rift. Sadly, the Rift’s launch would become mired in familiar shipping difficulties, in part blamed on component shortage, exacerbated by some seemingly poor logistics management.

The Final Oculus Rift consumer edition — The final Oculus Rift consumer edition

Throughout 2015, the Rift’s biggest competitor, the HTC Vive had made phenomenal gains in public awareness and word-of-mouth PR. Its room-scale credentials and those precisely tracked SteamVR motion controllers had been demo’d around the world and its particular flavour of immersive interactive entertainment was a big hit. Oculus’ handicap, its resolutely seated/standing experience focus and (most importantly) its lack of dedicated out-of-the-box tracked motion controllers, helped Valve and HTC present the Vive as the first ‘complete’ VR solution and people were buying into the idea that room-scale VR might be the future – albeit one which many may not have the room for. In any case, Vive’s launch in April 2016 kickstarted a formation of Oculus and Vive factions, ushering in the dawn of VR format wars with partisan arguments strongly reminiscent of every console generation past.

The Vive Pre (right) versus the Vive DK1 (left)

To highlight the rapidity at which the Vive was approaching a consumer reality, HTC took the opportunity to demonstrate what would turn out to be the HTC Vive’s final form. We’d already seen various iterations of the Vive developer kits, in fact Valve showcased the hardware’s evolution as part of it’s unveiling at CES, but at the show, HTC showcased the Vive Pre, sporting some significant hardware enhancements over its predecessors. The Pre packed in a new, front-facing camera-sensor which allowed users to glimpse their real world within VR. The Pre also came with Mura correction built in, a system to help minimise artefacts inherent in the unit’s OLED display panels. It was also notably smaller than what had come before too. The Pre was, to all intents and purposes, what the retail Vive would turn out to be when it was launched just a few months later in April. It was an encouraging show of readiness from HTC then, although perhaps a far cry from the previously teased “very, very big breakthrough” teased by the company’s CES just a couple of weeks prior.

On the VR input side of things, Virtuix looked in bullish form at the event with a generously sized stand and a dedicated multiplayer event featuring 4 Omni treadmills and a new, in-house developed FPS for people to compete in. We got our feet on the new improved omni-directional treadmill Infinadeck and, despite its gargantuan size and weight, came away intrigued by its unique take on VR locomotion. Equally quirky, the intriguing Rudder VR made an appearance in its final form at the show and announced it would go on sale in 2016. We also got hyped for an experimental input device which promised to bring electromagnetic field powered positional input tracking to Samsung Gear VR. Alas, the Rink controllers were early prototypes and, once we found them, were disappointed by the performance. We’ve not heard anything of them since.

Eye tracking finally began dovetailing with virtual reality at CES 2016 too thanks to Sensomotoric Industries and their impressive demonstration of both gaze-based input and an implementation of foveated rendering, all on a neatly hacked-up Oculus Rift DK2. Eye tracking, the main USP of the recently released FOVE headset, seems to be one of the most likely additional technologies to make its way into future generations of consumer virtual reality given its obvious experiential and performance benefits.

Finally, Oculus brought their tracked motion controllers Touch to CES for the first time and we caught a glimpse of the latest design iteration which would prove to be near identical to the retail editions once they arrived. We’d have to wait almost a full year however to get our hands on the consumer version.

So that’s it, a massively condensed history of VR at CES over the years. CES is by nature a hardware focused event so details of the huge leaps and bounds made by developers and industry leaders in VR content is beyond the scope of this piece. But in truth, as all major VR platforms are now in the hands on consumers and Oculus, Sony and Valve/HTC concentrate on heavily content production for their new babies, the focus for CES this year will likely be less about hardware revisions and more about a glimpse of technologies we may see forming part of the next generation of yet-to-be announced VR hardware. We’ll see the strides made by companies in the field of wireless VR, hopefully progress in the eye-tracking arena and perhaps a handful of VR-centric input devices. That said, the joy of CES is that you never can tell what might happen. In either case, Road to VR will be there to find out as it has done since the beginning.

This far from an exhaustive trawling of VR’s recent history of course, but it serves as a useful reminder of just how far immersive technology has come in just 4 short years. Additionally, the highlights (and lowlights) mentioned serve to indicate where the VR industry is headed and offers up clues as to what we’ll see at CES 2017 next week.

Road to VR will at CES 2017 as ever, and if you have something Vr related you’d like to show or talk to us about, drop us an email at tips@roadtovr.com.

The post A Brief History of Virtual Reality at CES appeared first on Road to VR.

December 24, 2016

‘Twas The Night Before Riftmas: A VR Holiday Poem

Happy Holidays from all of us here at UploadVR! Whether you own a Rift, Vive, PS VR, Gear, DayDream View, Cardboard or no headset at all, please have a happy, safe and warm holiday season! To celebrate we’ve written a little poem for you. Enjoy:

Twas the night before Riftmas, and all through the night

the young Palmer Luckey was nowhere in sight;

His headset was hung by the PC with care,

In hopes that St. Zuckerberg soon would be there;

–

The board members were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of CEOs danced in their heads;

And Palmer in his flip flops, and bright floral gown

Was considering his contract with a cold winter’s frown,

–

When up from his desk there arose such a clatter,

He sprang from his bed to see what was the matter.

Away to his laptop He jogged with great speed,

Clicked open a message and began to read

–

The glow from the screen fell upon his sad face

And gave hope to his heart, which had started to race

When, what to his wondering eyes should appear,

But a message from someone he’d long come to fear

–

The tone of the e-mail was crisp, like a jewel

He knew in a moment it must be from Gabe Newell

More rapid than eagles his heartbeats they came,

As Gabe listed his failures and called them by name

–

“No, ROOM-SCALE! no, LIGHTHOUSE! Poor, TRACKING no HANDS!

Closed, CONTENT! walled GARDEN! no, FREEDOM for FANS!

To reach the top of the market! to sell-out in malls!

you must have! you must have! you must have them all!”

–

And then, in a twinkling, Palmer heard down the stairs

The sounds of an old man with a younger man’s hair.

As he drew up his courage and descended he found

Down the chimney Mr. Newell had come with a bound.

–

He was dressed all in black, from his foot to his head,

His pockets overflowing with funds he could spend

A bundle of cash he had flung by the tree,

And he never, no never, would use the word “three.”

–

The form of a Vive he held tight in his teeth,

With IR beam lasers circling it like a wreath;

It had a broad face with the look of swiss cheese,

That allowed every user to do as they please

–

He was chubby and plump, a legend for gamers,

And Palmer shook when he saw him, and yelled for the neighbors

But a wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon let Luckey know he had nothing to dread;

–

Gabe spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

He gave Palmer a contract; then turned with a jerk,

And laying a pen beside a small dotted line

He explained to young Palmer that, indeed, he should sign

–

He sprang to the computer, placed upon it: a saddle,

And away Newell flew, straight back to Seattle

But Palmer heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,

COME JOIN US AT VALVE, IT WILL ALL BE ALRIGHT!

–

Tagged with: Christmas, holiday, poem, riftmas, twas

December 23, 2016

UploadVR’s 2016 Game of the Year Nominations

The first (almost) full year of full-scale consumer-grade virtual reality is just about in the books. We saw the release of the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, the PlayStation VR, Google’s Daydream platform, the Oculus Touch controllers, and the continued growth of both the OSVR and Samsung Gear VR platforms. Throw in plenty of other advancements from the likes of AR devices and other peripherals and this has been the first true “Year of VR”. We broke down many of the biggest milestones in celebration of UploadVR’s 2nd birthday right here.

But that’s just the hardware. Since everyone knows that software sells hardware, the more important question to ask is what were the good apps, games, and experiences? Was there anything worth trying out on these fancy hunks of plastic, or is it just cool tech with nothing to do? With over 1,000 pieces of VR content on Steam, there clearly isn’t a lack of quantity, but the lack of quality is a common thread in conversations among VR enthusiasts.

We’ve mashed our heads together as an editorial staff and put together what we think is a relatively thorough list of nominees for this year’s best VR content. We’ve got categories for the obligatory best game of the year, as well as platform specific and genre specific nominations to cover most of the bases. Some of these categories (such as Best Immersive Film) are works in progress because the industry is still trying to figure out terminology, but it should be relatively self-explanatory.

Without further ado, here are our nominations in alphabetical order, for the best games and apps in VR this year in over 20 categories! The images selected are not meant to indicate front runners, but are just meant to be representative of the categories as a whole — often chosen alphabetically, avoiding repeats. That way it’s kept fair!

Best VR Game of the Year Nominations

Arizona Sunshine

Damaged Core

The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed

Job Simulator

Onward

Rez Infinite

SUPERHOT VR

The Unspoken

Breakout VR Game Studio Nominations

CCP Games (EVE: Valkyrie, Gunjack, Project Arena)

Cloudhead Games (The Gallery)

High Voltage (Damaged Core, Dragon Front)

Insomniac (Edge of Nowhere, The Unspoken)

Owlchemy Labs (Job Simulator, Rick and Morty)

Playful Corp (Lucky’s Tale, Wonderland)

Squanchtendo (Accounting)

Survios (Raw Data)

Most Innovative VR Game Nominations

Accounting

Damaged Core

Eagle Flight

Fantastic Contraption

The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed

Job Simulator

The Lab

SUPERHOT VR

Best Social Variety Experience Nominations

AltspaceVR

Bigscreen

Destinations

High Fidelity

Rec Room

Toybox

Best PS VR Game Nominations

Battlezone

Bound

How We Soar

Job Simulator

Rez Infinite

RIGS

Thumper

Until Dawn: Rush of Blood

Best Vive Game Nominations

Arizona Sunshine

The Brookhaven Experiment

The Gallery: Call of the Starseed

Job Simulator

The Lab

Onward

Raw Data

Vanishing Realms

Best Rift Game Nominations

Arizona Sunshine

Chronos

The Climb

Damaged Core

Edge of Nowhere

Lucky’s Tale

SUPERHOT VR

The Unspoken

Best Mobile VR Game Nominations

Dark Days

End Space

Minecraft

Neverout

Sisters

Tactera

Wands

Most Surprising New Game Nominations

The Brookhaven Experiment

Eagle Flight

Onward

Space Pirate Trainer

Thumper

The Unspoken

Vanishing Realms

Best Shooter Nominations

Arizona Sunshine

Damaged Core

Onward

Raw Data

RIGS

Space Pirate Trainer

Best Puzzle Game Nominations

Fly to KUMA

Hitman GO: VR Edition

Neverout

Please, Don’t Touch Anything

SUPERHOT VR

Water Bears VR

Best Action/Adventure Game Nominations

Chronos

Edge of Nowhere

SUPERHOT VR

Vanishing Realms

Windlands

Best Horror Game Nominations

A Chair in a Room: Greenwater

The Brookhaven Experiment

Dark Days

Sisters

Until Dawn: Rush of Blood

Best Racing Game Nominations

Blaze Rush

DiRT Rally

Driveclub VR

Project CARS

Redout

Best Creativity App Nominations

Gravity Sketch

Medium

Quill

Tilt Brush

Best Productivity App Nominations

Bigscreen

Envelop

LightVR

Virtual Desktop

Best Immersive Film Nominations

Ctrl

Gnomes and Goblins

Henry

KÀ The Battle Within

Best Narrative Nominations

The Assembly

Edge of Nowhere

The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed

Obduction

Robinson: The Journey

Best Online Game Nominations

Arizona Sunshine

Battlezone

Dead and Buried

EVE: Valkyrie

Onward

RIGS

The Unspoken

Best Art Direction Nominations

ADR1FT

Bound

The Climb

Obduction

Robinson: The Journey

SUPERHOT VR

Thumper

Best Music/Sound Design Nominations

Bound

EVE: Valkyrie

The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed

Thumper

Until Dawn: Rush of Blood

Most Anticipated Upcoming VR Game of 2017 Nominations

Arktika.1

Fallout 4 VR

Farpoint

Lone Echo

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Rock Band VR

Star Trek: Bridge Crew

Wilson’s Heart

We will officially unveil our selections for the winners of each category next week.

Did we cover things well enough? What are your picks for some of the best games and experiences this year? Did we leave out your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!

Tagged with: best games, game of the year, goty, PS VR, rift, steam, Vive

December 23, 2016

‘Dating Lessons’ Review

Dating Lessons is an interactive dating course created by VR developers Cerevrum Inc. and self-styled seduction coach Manish “Magic” Leone. Supposedly tailored for heterosexual men with low self-esteem or shyness with the opposite sex, the dating course offers 11 lessons and 7 practical interactive sessions that promise to “give men tools to enhance their power of attraction and develop behavior patterns to handle stress and anxiety.”

‘Dating Lessons’ Details:

Official Site
Developer: Cerevrum Inc.
Publisher: Cerevrum Inc
Available On: Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Steam (Rift and Vive),
Reviewed On: Oculus Rift, Gear VR
Release Date: December 17th, 2016

Before diving into the review, I should first start off with an advisory message: I don’t need dating lessons because I’ve been in a stable relationship with my partner for the better part of a decade, so I’m simply not in a position to put seduction extraordinaire Magic Leone’s pick-up artist (PUA) theories and practices to the test. What I am able to do however is show you exactly what sort of content you can expect from Dating Lessons, which hopefully will help you determine if its right for you. As in all reviews, the thoughts that follow are my own.

Secondly, before the review begins, how do you introduce someone who calls themselves Magic? Straight out of the gate, Magic. Anyway, here’s what he has to say about himself on The Gotham Dating Club blog, one of the regular outlets for his articles such as ‘My Power Pose to Show Her You’re a Superior Man’ and ‘How To Project Dominant Body Language The “Right” Way’:

Magic Leone is an unusual dating coach. He came to the U.S. from India after his failed attempt at suicide when he discovered that his fiancé of 7 years was cheating on him.

Magic studied the deep emotional and physical needs that fuel women’s sexual desires while counseling them on sexual health. Working with women, Magic developed an understanding of how most women want to be seduced. This knowledge led him to sexual encounters with more than 400 women, and ultimately to marry the woman of his dreams.

Magic is known to be a tough coach who runs military-style workshops that force men to evolve overnight, but you may not know that he is actually a softy who craves chocolate 5 times a day. In fact there was a time Magic’s clients brought him chocolate to workshops as part of his compensation, and sometimes even as a form of bribe to make him go easy on them. Magic is also a movie buff. In his spare time (after he is done indulging in women), he secretly works on the screenplay that is his dream project.

According to Magic’s website, with his help you can become “The #1 Choice Of Every Woman. They’ll Choose You Over All Other Men Resulting In Ultimate Power To Have Sex With Any Woman You Choose!”

You can also take solace in the fact that with Magic’s guidance you’ll finally say goodbye to “Feeling Like A Desperate Loser Who Fears Rejection And Does Not Know What To Say To Women. Good Looking Women Will Chase You And Do All The Work – Even Your Female Friends Will Compete To Get In Bed with You!”

Furthermore, Magic promises that anyone can “Attain High Status Among Men And Every Man Would Want To Be Friends With You Hoping To Get A Little Piece of The Action By Getting In Your Good Books!”

That may be illustrative enough for you to understand what sort of person is behind Cerevrum’s Dating Lessons. Now for the proper review.

Gameplay

Dating Lessons is an app that combines 360 video with interactive elements. Video quality is actually quite good. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that I didn’t have positional tracking for the first lesson or two because of how well interactive elements and 2D video was interlaced. Saint Petersburg-based VR studio Cerevrum has also produced a number of educational VR games including Speech Center VR, House of Meditation, and eponymous brain training game Cerevrum, all of which are available on Gear VR.

Lesson topics run the gamut from subjects such as What Triggers Attraction, Eye Contact, Energy, Self Deprecating Humor and also more sexually-charged themes like Body Language, and Touching. Despite this, everything is pretty much PG-13 in Dating Lessons.

In the first lesson What Triggers Attraction, Magic tells us he’s going to teach us the building blocks of getting the girl:

“How do you approach her? What are those kind of things you can say that makes her want to stop and continue the conversation with you? What is it you need to tell her during the interaction so she continues not only to enjoy your interaction, but also feels more and more interest for you, more and more desire for you? And then I’m going to teach you how to position yourself, how to walk up to her, the right tonality, the right body language, how to make eye contact, how to touch her. Basically, these building blocks will teach you every single thing you need to know that next time you see a woman you know exactly how to charm her, you know exactly how to get her so excited that she gets eager, she gets desperate to be with you.”

Then Magic has me set goals, telling me to choose an arbitrary max of 3. He reassures me that this is “even something I do with my very high-end customers when they come to my program.”

This is all well and good, but these goals that I’ve set have zero bearing on how the rest of the course goes, and offer no tailoring to my individual needs as a paying customer who just wants to simultaneously find out how to date multiple women, attract one special woman and get my ex girlfriend back. (I wonder why she left me in the first place?)

Going through all the lessons and interactive interludes takes about 2 hours. Most lessons start out with some common sense tactics that more or less culminate in a generally understood dating maxim: Thou shalt not be an unpleasant weirdo. That includes staring for too long, not smiling enough, talking too quietly, hitting on her while she’s clearly doing something else, initiating an uncomfortable, albeit entirely innocent touch; basically not having a clear grasp on basic social interaction cues.

But then each lesson takes a brief turn for the frighteningly manipulative, leaving me with some serious questions.

Why do I have to drop fake hints that I’m actually constantly talking to models, and “it’s refreshing to finally meet a girl that is so down to earth”? Why do all of my questions directed toward a woman necessarily have to be self-referential and long-winded? Why do I have to pretend I’m so much more important than I really am? I can’t help but think that these tactics aren’t really about breaking the ice, but actually reveal Magic’s true intent of teaching the user to build a quick report based on artifice and deception. He never tells you the advice “talk about your hobby and maybe you’ll find out she likes it too.” It’s always based on a meticulous extraction of data about her that you’re then supposed to leverage so you can build immediate trust.

Here’s a quick bit on how Magic uses self-deprecating humor to his ultimate advantage.

In the interlaced on-location shots, I found Magic at points somewhat unrehearsed, and even at times a bit incoherent, almost as if he was making up his points on the fly. Outdoor scenes sometimes suffer from bad audio due to the constant wind blowing into his lapel mic.

The virtual visual aides presented during the video were helpful in illustrating some of Magic’s more concise points however, and were well used throughout the entire 11 lesson course to good effect.

The 7 interactive modules were at times painfully ineffective, and left me questioning if there was any point at all to the exercise. In a few trials, you’re asked to talk to a prospective woman with the goal of introducing yourself, chatting her up, etc. The problem is the resultant grades given have no basis in reality. As far as I could tell, the only thing measured was the volume of my voice, which I verified by repeating the phrase “turd-flavored soup” in a constantly descending volume. Jessica, my new female prospect from California with a heavy Russian accent, was pleased to meet me even though I kept whispering “hamburger hamburger hamburger.” Who knows, maybe she just likes hamburgers.

dating-lessons-grade — Hamburger-fan Jessica

I wasn’t expecting to have a realistic conversation with an advanced AI, but I’m not sure how Dating Lessons wants me to practice having a conversation with a cardboard cut-out of a woman either.

Immersion & Comfort

There’s only a single environment in the app, a beach-side bungalow filled with projection screens that Magic pops in and out of for his on-location lessons. There’s not much of reason why this couldn’t be executed on traditional monitors, and I fail to see how virtual reality makes this content any more compelling.

Another annoying bit is the omnipresent gaze reticle. Despite the fact that you only need it for cursory selections and some minor button pushing, it quickly becomes a big distraction personally and I wish it would disappear so I could focus better on the content.

Since the Dating Lessons is entirely based on 360 videos and no positional tracking is afforded to the user regardless of you choice of headset, the same caveats apply as with all non-positionally tracked experiences, i.e. extended use can be mildly uncomfortable and make you feel removed from reality.

Pretty much how I felt through the entirety of Magic’s PUA dating course.

The post ‘Dating Lessons’ Review appeared first on Road to VR.

December 22, 2016

Happy holidays 2016!

Hey everbody!

Happy holidays and (to whom it may concern) a merry Christmas!

What a year, right?! A lot was going on and we were swamped by a lot of new devices and demos and games in 2016! Though, with all virtual reality news and devices that came out and the hype around it, it was still an Augmented Reality year for me! All of us got their hopes up for more AR devices to hit the market (or at least the labs) in 2016, META did quite make it just now, but Magic Leap was quite a bummer.

Well, let me comment on ML: still, this might be good for them to start fresh with their “One” product and expectations that better match reality. It sure was a failure to pretend that WETA-offline-quality (robot demo in the ML office) already works with a very wide field of view and depth focussing on a wearable device… some say, they might be the new scapegoats responsible when it comes to a bursting AR bubble and AR getting a bad reputation not delivering… but then again it´s the tech writers, PR guys and CEOs of other companies who get so excited about a demo video. Obviously noone should believe those 1:1. Same happend to Microsoft Hololens videos. People were bitching about the difference of the FOV in videos and in reality. But for me, still:

2016 sure was the year of the Hololens to shine and to bring AR a big step forward!

No, I am not paid by Microsoft or a fanboy. The last years more on the contrary. And no! I don´t think 2016 was the year of Pokeon AR! But seriously, I do believe, that Microsoft did a really good job on their marketing, roll-out strategy and their first dev kit! Okay okay, it really is expensive. But the fov doesn´t bother me for a dev kit. They reached out well to the developer´s community and are really pushing support and integration. Especially the new Unity3D 5.5 integration of direct Hololens emulation and remote testing is a great step for faster dev cycles! I have the feeling that their holographic platform with 3rd parties selling new devices next year and their focus on an operating system for mixed reality was a smart move.

I do miss better interaction methods, though. I hope we will see more than air-tapping and Cortana in it. I feel so restricted in AR with it… like using a bad, non-responsive touch screen for coding. Meta shines (in theory) with full Leap-Motion-like finger interaction. Let´s hope that there will be more on Holographic, too! Also, full object recognition and alignment (registration) is still a huge gap for me in today´s AR devices being inside-out without markers. I want to fix things and overlay by the millimeter… still need to wait, I guess…

So, will 2017 already dive deep into glasses-based AR? Or will we upgrade next to Tango-like handhelds? Is Apple finally coming up with AR in their next gen phones? I was a bit disappointed by Tango this year. The Phab 2 is too big to be good, but no other practical device hit the market, though it has been around for quite a while.

So, what will see next in 2017? CES will as usual be the first chance to get some big news. Or do we have to wait for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February? Will Samsung present a new Gear with AR-support? What about more Holographic devices from the other companies? Will they work well? Are the minimum requirements too low to be good? Will we get wireless VR already? When do we get better Tango consumer devices? What about other AR companies and their upcoming products and what about Magic Leap in 2017?

Well, questions that will hopefully be answered very soon. I do cross my fingers for the next big news on Jan, 5th-8th! But for now… time to lay the devices aside and to relax in an analogue way. If you are home alone – use the VR glasses to meet with your friends and family! But otherwise: let´s leave the glasses aside for a while. Enjoy the relaxed days and go out into the snow (or to the beach)!

I will be back with updates first week of January, but we will continue our (German) AR/VR podcast under vrodo.de next week, as well! Make sure to tune in!

So, all the best for 2017!

– Toby.

Free picture taken from Wallup.

December 17, 2016

Visualising UI Solutions for Our Mixed Reality Future

Augmented and Mixed Reality technologies are rapidly evolving, with consumer devices on the horizon. But how will people interact with their new digitally enhanced lives? Designer Ben Frankforter visualises several ideas he’s had to help bring about the arrival of what he calls the “iPhone of mixed reality”.

Guest Article by Ben Frankforter

Ben Frankforter is a designer passionate about connecting consumers and services via positive experiences. In the past 10 years, he’s designed and led small teams creating brands, furniture, interiors, and apps. I recently finished a position as Head of Product Design at BillGuard and now researching on user interfaces for mixed reality.

While virtual and mixed reality experiences are trending right now (we’ve seen a lot of cool examples in movies), I feel that there’s a lack in convergence of practical interaction patterns. We haven’t seen the iPhone of mixed reality yet, so I decided to explore the user experience and interface aesthetics of mixed reality and share my ideas with the community. My goal is to encourage other designers to think and publish ideas on MR interfaces.

As technology becomes invisible at all such levels, from a perceptual and cognitive point of view, interaction becomes completely natural and spontaneous. It is a kind of magic.
– Alessandro Valli

During our lifetime, we acquired skills that empowered us to interact with our environment. As Bret Victor explains, by manipulating tools that answer our needs, we can amplify our capabilities. We perform thousands of these manipulations everyday, to a point that most of them feel natural. And one of the attributes of good interaction design is allowing Natural User Interfaces: those which are invisible to the user, and remain invisible as we learn them. Some examples of these interfaces are speech recognition, direct manipulation, and gestures.

Apps as Objects

I started by looking into an interaction that felt very natural: browsing records.

I found this interaction interesting because of the following:

Direct manipulation of the catalog
Perception of progress while browsing
Full visual of selected item
Minimal footprint of scrolled items

I was thinking of a way to apply these principles to an interaction for browsing and launching apps in a mixed reality environment.

Apps as cards

In this case, the app cards are arranged in a stack and placed below the user’s point of view, at a comfortable reach distance. The perspective allows a full view of the apps in the stack. Just browse through the cards and pick up the app you want to launch.
Being virtual, the app cards could grow into various sizes, starting from a handheld virtual device up to a floating virtual display.

animated-ui-1 — Manipulating virtual devices and displays

animated-ui-2 — Going from app to device to display

mr-ui-concept-collection-1 — Mockup of apps and virtual devices

Switching Between Apps

It’s an interesting way to open and close apps, but what about switching between them?
Inspired by Chris Harrison’s research, I explored a system that uses simple thumb gestures to navigate between apps and views. We can easily perform these operations, even with blinded eyes, thanks to two factors: proprioception (awareness of position and weight of our body parts) and tactile feedback (contact and friction applied to the skin).

mr-ui-app-switching-ui-1 — Thumb gestures occur against fingers

Thanks to the friction applied by the thumb sliding on the index, we perceive a continuous tactile feedback.

Proprioception with tactile and visual feedbacks enables switching easily between views.

Tools and Controls

While the left hand controls the basic navigation, the right hand is free to execute other operations by using virtual tools. The result of these operation are displayed in a virtual display in front of the user.

mr-ui-mockup-large-1 — A bird’s-eye view of a photo browsing environment

mr-ui-mockup-large-2 — Scroll through your photos

But a planar surface is not always available, and to be able to interact with any environment the user should be able to perform other types of gestures as well. Gestures in mid-air can help, such as framing the right photo.

You can follow Ben Frankforter on Twitter and Facebook as he brainstorms solutions for the future of immersive technology user interfaces.

The post Visualising UI Solutions for Our Mixed Reality Future appeared first on Road to VR.

December 10, 2016

‘Grav|Lab’ Early Access Review

Grav|Lab, despite its Early Access status, might well be the surprise star of the Oculus Touch launch lineup. It doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of the bigger releases – and many of its rough edges are in need of smoothing – but its intriguing blend of fun, challenging, physics-puzzler gameplay is compelling.

Grav|Lab Details:

Developer: Mark Schramm
Publisher: Mark Schramm
Available On: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive (Oculus Home & Steam)
Reviewed on: Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch
Release Date: Dec 3rd (OH), Oct 21st (Steam) 2016

Gameplay

Grav|Lab plays out like nothing so much as a reverse Lemmings (1991). Here, in your bid to get a set number of balls from their spawn point to the goal, you are building the world for them to traverse. You will lay out gravity defying plates that allow you to gently coerce your charges onto the right path, one that may well be above you as the game makes full use of 3D space. You will use accelerators to fire them on ballistic trajectories, and property modifying fields that can make them especially heavy or as light as bubbles.

As with all the best puzzlers, the devil is in the details. Getting your balls from A to B is only the beginning. Getting them there efficiently, with the minimum number of component pieces, is something else altogether. Each challenge has an easy, medium and hard variation that will impose restrictions on you that force some real out-of-the-box thinking.

One notable example introduces you to the accelerator, a useful tool not unlike a tennis ball machine that accepts balls into an opening and then shoots them out at high velocity. You use this to solve a puzzle in a satisfyingly direct way: by firing something from its origin to its destination. Great! The very next challenge looks like it could be solved the same way, only it suggests that you try it without the accelerator. Because you’re human, and because you can’t resist a challenge, you do exactly that.

There are more wrinkles to come as you move out of the six Basic Challenges into the nine Advanced Challenges. Here a lot of new toys are added, including sensors that will make other machines pump out new balls that you need to get to their destination. Each ball has to get to a specific collector, which needs a certain amount of them before declaring you victorious. Whereas before it was about getting a ball from A to B, it now additionally has to pass through a sensor to allow another ball to spawn that you must get from C to D, and yet another from E to F. By the end the room is chock full of your contraptions, and the air is thick with balls arcing gracefully on their way. It’s hard not to giggle gleefully at this point, and it’s a game where I’d love to share some footage of my wilder solutions – although in 2D I don’t think you’d get quite the same impact from this chaotic and vaguely ridiculous ballet. Add a spectator mode to the wishlist for the dev.

I keep referring to ‘balls’ but the objects you must direct aren’t spherical. They’re multifaceted geometric things, about the size of a baseball, and that brings an element of unpredictability into the mix because the flight paths now can’t be deterministic. Each ‘ball’ isn’t guaranteed to fly along exactly the same path as the last, which injects some welcome chaos and character to the experience, where often physics based puzzlers can be rather dry.

What’s most wonderful about this experience is how active you have to be to get the most from it. When lining up accelerators to blast the ball to the other side of the room, I’d use the now standard press-aim-release teleportation movement system (which also has a ‘nudge’ you can do on the stick to take small steps forward and back and rotate) to get myself in position and then crouch behind it and sight down it to line up my ‘shot’. It makes the whole thing more engaging and personal. It’s like tuning a hot rod. For people new to ‘room scale’ type experiences this is going to be a real eye opener. It does expose some of the tracking flaws of two front mounted Touch sensors, but nothing you can’t work around.

Immersion

Taking place in a single environment, the titular Grav|Lab, the game doesn’t exactly wow with its setting. That is, until you realise that each room is basically a blank canvas that you can use to paint spectacular solutions, then it fades into the background as all your mental energies turn to solving the puzzles. There’s a wonderful sense of being on the inside of a machine, observing inner workings that are usually hidden from view. Setting up a production line of balls being fired from one side of the room to the other, and then teleporting to the far side, turning back, and watching them hove into view is excellent as you set up the next devious part of your master solution.

I have lost hours to Grav|Lab. The VR immersion is almost secondary to the mental immersion in eking out the best solutions to the problems.

Comfort

With step movement and teleporting, the game is perfectly comfortable at all times. You might find yourself performing some contortions to line up components, and to take a different view on the problems at hand, so a muscle warm up before you play wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.

Road to VR does not award scores to early access titles as development is often still underway.

The post ‘Grav|Lab’ Early Access Review appeared first on Road to VR.

December 8, 2016

HTC Announces ‘Vive Studios’ to Publish “Deeper, Richer and Longer” Room-Scale VR Games

Today, HTC is announcing the launch of its newest subsidiary: Vive Studios. This brand new content publisher will work to facilitate and release new, high-quality content for the titular HTC Vive virtual reality headset. The company has appointed its VP of Content, Joel Breton, as head of this new operation. Vive Studios is launching its first game today as well: Arcade Saga.

According to HTC, “Vive Studios will bring to market VR content created by HTC’s internal studios as well as through publishing partnerships with external developers.”

This model is much more similar to a traditional console or video game publisher. The company clarified the exact nature of the Vive Studios process by stating that:

“Vive Studios will use a publishing model similar to console games, where the label will produce first-party content through internal developers, such as 2 Bears, as well as partner with external developers. For external developers, Vive Studios is now a partner they can turn to for development funding as well as publishing and marketing support on VR content. Vive Studios is actively creating content across key categories for VR including games, education, cinematic, design, social, real-estate and sports, as well as tools and applications that can revolutionize areas such as media, retail, healthcare and location-based entertainment centers and arcades.”

UploadVR had the chance to speak with Breton at the Vive X offices in San Francisco, California. Breton confirmed that the goal of Vive Studios is to partner with “both internal and external studios” in order to create “great showcases for room-scale VR.” Breton explained that, like any other publisher, Vive Studios will recieve a portion of the revenue generated by each of its partner games.

The closest faximale to Vive Studios in the VR world is the long-running Oculus Studios, which was founded and led into significance by Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin. The Oculus Studios philosophy for games has been to invest millions of dollars in grants to developers in order to stimulate the early days of VR with titles that would not otherwise have been able to exist. When asked if Vive Studios would be operating on a similar financial scope or overall mindset Breton’s response was direct:

“I don’t want to put any restrictions on numbers when it comes to the amounts we’re going to offer these studios. It will be a very flexible model. This is a response to the opportunity we feel currently exists around VR. The VR ecosystem needs support and we want to come in and throw our muscle around where it can do the most good.”

The 3D platformer “Lucky’s Tale” was one of the first Oculus Studios titles.

Games and experiences produced by Oculus Studios are also notable in that they only work on Oculus Hardware. When asked if Vive Studios games would also work on Oculus hardware Breton responded by saying, “We aren’t announcing support for the other platforms today. Each piece of content will be released where it makes the most sense.”

Breton did explain that there will be no direct “blocks” built into Vive Studios games keeping them tethered to the Vive and that, “we believe content should be open and go wherever consumers want to access it…we don’t feel that they [Oculus] need to lose for us to win.”

As far as the type of content Vive Studios is producing, Breton revealed that the focus will be on more than just games. Areas like education, architecture and virtual commerce will be explored as well. All of the experiences, however, according to Breton, will be released on either Steam or Viveport.

It’s no secret that the Vive has been accused of housing too many shallow pieces of content, blithely referred to by the VR community as “tech demos” and Breton explained that Vive Studios is meant, at least in part, to address this problem.

“As far as games are concerned we feel like the Vive already has a good amount of smaller, snackable-sized experiences,” Breton said. “Through Vive studios we want to create games that are deeper, richer and longer.”

When it comes to rollout, Breton stated that users can enjoy Vive Studios’ first game, Arcade Saga, today with “more coming in the next several weeks” and “dozens being released next year.”

Arcade Saga itself is a collection of three smaller games that each provide a futuristic spin on classic arcade games like Pong and Breakout. The title was developed by Vive Studios first partner developer known as Two Bears. The game was fun, fast and, of course, highly focused on hand controllers and room-scale capabilities.

Arcade Saga is available now on Steam. We will be bringing a full hands on review in the coming days.

Tagged with: bigger, Games, htc, new, room scale, Vive, vive studios

December 8, 2016

There is no mixed reality!

What? But I thought…

Mixed Reality is kind of starting to replace AR one by one for some, for others it´s a third kind besides AR and VR. I thought I´ll add my point of view to the discussion today and you will understand why there is no mixed reality by itself.

In 2016 everybody is big into VR and claims to have known it for many years. Then someone writes down “we do VR” – adding “yeah, yeah, we also do AR and MR” having a nice triplet of buzz words in a row: VR/AR/MR. Microsoft labels HoloLens Mixed Reality and Magic Leap sometimes knocks it up a notch calling theirs cinematic reality. No definition is carved in stone or can claim the throne. In the end I also don´t care about names, but the result.

But, hey, why not let´s make a detour to history for starters. Paul Milgram published a paper in 1994 with his colleagues Takemura, Utsumi and Kishino called “Augmented Reality: A class of displays on the reality-virtuality continuum”. If you haven´t read it – go now, print it and put it up on your bedroom walls to really digest it, damnit! Here they already nicely describe visionary how the ultimate computer could look like and what kind of forms could exist blending reality levels. Their range goes from left (100% reality) to right (100% virtual) in their RV-continuum, know also known as the Milgram Mixed Reality Continuum. All stuff we market today can fit into this spectrum. It does not matter if you see the reality or virtual world through video-see-throughs, a window or on the screen. That´s left to other terms (they also describe). To sort things they asked:

Is the environment being observed principally real, with added computer generated enhancements? -or- Is the surrounding environment principally virtual, but augmented through the use of real (i.e. unmodelled) imaging data?

Obviously this leads to the categories we all talk about – AR and VR. Augmented Reality will let you remain in the real space with added information. It does not really matter (for this definition) if you just have a HUD system like Google Glass~~holes~~ or look at the augmented content through a window via a tablet or phone. The visual quality may also vary from simple wireframes (like in the Sword of Damocles HMD from the ´60s) to high-end graphics we expect from Magic Leap. If you augment the user´s real world view with additional info, it´s AR. The term got a bit damaged by silly marketing apps with bad quality or boring overlays, but still, I´d say it´s the right term for what we expect from glasses like the Hololens or Magic Leap.

On the other extreme, Virtual Reality is well-known simple to define. You just see virtual, computer-generated (or digitalized) content without seeing anything of your real physical world you move inside as a human. Any game for the Vive, Rift, Gear, PS VR or Daydream is VR. Easy. But what if we see the chaperone system (to protect us from bumping into our furniture by displaying a grid or the outlines of the real world´s object) or if a real person joins into our VR world as a 3D-representation (scanned by a Kinect or similar)?

Well, then it´s time to talk about Augmented Virtuality. It fits into the continuum above inbetween the extremes. The naming get´s kind of tricky. It´s rather an augmented Virtual Reality. Though the “augmented” term would now refer to real world objects, while “augmented” in AR refers to virtual objects. But the concept gets clear: if you are in VR and add physically present objects it becomes something else than VR – you move left on the continuum line.

So, is this all there is?

viraugmixmodmediated_reality

This definition sure covers nicely the transition from real to virtual and it´s mixings. But right now we only talk about adding things to our viewport in AR or VR. While I will leave out commenting on other sensory input (augmented audio, etc.) there is more than the mixed reality continuum. Technology can add things to our view, subtract information from it or manipulate our perception of reality as a whole. Here the MR space gets limited by it´s default definition.

Systems to diminish reality could surely be seen as a sub-part of AR (to remove real world objects in your real world view). I´ve presented demo here and here long ago. But seeing the user´s perception of the world being altered, maybe not only through human sensory input, but also to the brain – how the world is perceived, another more abstract term seems useful: mediated reality. (See graphic, taken from wiki.) Once MR and AI connect us even deeper into the digital world – and all gets a bit more scary – I`m sure the term will have it´s rise (get ready for the discussion).

So, is there a mixed reality?

As said, it´s just names. Some people use the term MR to say that they create youtube videos showing a real person in a virtual reality environment by means of camera tracking and a greenscreen (this would be an Augmented Virtuality presentation of a Virtual Reality experience for me). Others use it to talk about AR “with convincing integration”. I´d stick with the phrase of Augmented Reality for that (not only because it better matches my domain)! It just makes more sense. The continuum describes all possibilities!

Microsoft did well in calling their overall approach Mixed Reality to begin with. The Hololens sure is a pure AR device. But with Windows Holographic and new devices around the corner that can switch between AR and VR – it was smart. They just put a new video online describing their range, too (a second video continues explanations):

So, is there a mixed reality? With the “old school” definition there is only a mixed reality continuum. You cannot be in a so-called MR experience. You can mix different realities – a virtual one, the real one, virtual pieces or real pieces to your current AR, VR or AV scenario. Some say “but MR has higher immersion than AR”. I disagree. Immersion comes through the story, not the visuals or the technology. A book can be way more immersive than Magic Leap. But, hey, let´s talk about immersion and presence another day. :-)

So, however we call it, Enhanced, Augmented, Modulated, Mediated, Mixed… Let´s work together on a great new computing era and enjoy the blend of flavours!