Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Reports claim that Google could be planning to enter the game console space with its own streaming-based platform. The service will reportedly function similarly to GeForce Now. Here's everything we know.
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A new report suggests that Google is working on a game console, code-named Yeti. The reports about Google's game console are likely true, but that doesn't mean we will ever see it.
The post Google might be planning a console. That doesn’t mean it will happen appeared first on Digital Trends.
For those wishing to get creative in virtual reality (VR), the original and still one of the best is Google’s Tilt Brush for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Launched way back in 2016 the app has seen numerous improvements in that time with the latest arriving this week. The update adds a bunch of new tools including a beginner mode for first timers.
With its array of features Tilt Brush can be a bit bewildering to start with so when first starting the software users will be treated to a beginner mode. This mode includes only the core feature set to get you acclimatised. When Tilt Brush is opened for a second time you will then be prompted to try all of the tools in the Advanced Mode. Additionally, you can also switch between modes at any time with a press of the Mode Button.
For those who aren’t new to Tilt Brush, the update has added 12 new brushes that allow users to create different textures and volumes. One of them is the Hull Brush for volumetric modeling. This new brush allows designers to create anything from a natural landscape to more lifelike characters.
Or how about adding some sound to your design. An updated set of sound effects has been included that integrate with your workflow. The Tilt Brush team said: “We have listened to your feedback and our revamped audio library retains Tilt Brush’s audio identity while creating a more pleasant creative environment.”
And for the most advanced users of Tilt Brush some additional tools to increase productivity are now available:
Tilt Brush is available through Steam for £14.99 GBP. For any further updates keep reading VRFocus.
While 360-degree video has offered a route in to creating for virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) largely remains the province of professional developers. In an attempt to democratise the AR space and open it up to more creators, a free class is being offered on Coursera for those interested in getting started with AR development.
Coursera is an online learning platform that was founded in 2012 by professors at Stanford University. Since then, it has become widely respected by educators and offers users the chance to learn online and accumulate credits from well-known universities and get accreditation from leading companies like Google and IBM.
The new Coursera class in AR is titled ‘Introduction to Augmented Reality and ARCore’ and has been tailored towards those who are just getting started with AR technology. The course was designed for those with little to no prior knowledge and experience of AR app creation.
The course takes about 15 hours to complete, and at the end students can expert to have learned the basics of AR technology, including what it is and how its works along with the skills needed to design an AR experience.
Students who complete the course will be able to get started with building their own AR project using Google’s ARCore development kit and tools like Poly.
ARCore is the successor the Google’s Project Tango and is designed to enhance AR applications for use on smartphones and tablets. ARCore got an update earlier this year, which was announced at Google I/O conference.
The new ARCore tools allow not only the detection of flat planar surfaces, but also introduces enhanced mapping of textured surfaces. Another new feature is Cloud anchors, which allows two different users to interact with the same virtual object. This feature meant that shared and cooperative AR experiences are now possible.
Further information on the Introduction to Augmented Reality and ARCore course, along with the enrolment application, can be found on the Coursera website. Fur further news on AR and education, keep checking back with VRFocus.
Confidence is a prerequisite to enjoy VR’s magic. There are so many things that can go wrong wearing a VR headset and most of us know this before the goggles come down over our eyes. “Discomfort” doesn’t quite encapsulate the risk of wearing something that blocks your view of the real world. Just trying to lean on something that isn’t really there is potentially deadly. Headset manufacturers must overcome this problem to give people confidence to move freely.
And there are so many reasons to stay in the real world too — your family, friends, and TV. Some of the world’s largest technology companies have learned over the last three years that VR headsets will never be mainstream as long as they a.) limit your movement too much and b.) block you off from your friends and family.
The company which solves these problems in an affordable way — with zero setup required — will have a strong position in immersive computing. This article is focused on showing why Google might be best positioned to be that company.
In September 2015 I asked John Carmack, chief technology officer at Oculus, about the prospect of inside-out tracking technology (the idea that a gadget tracks its own location) for a Facebook VR headset. He said:
“We have like 30 computer vision experts at Oculus from the different companies we’ve acquired and none of them want to just go solve this problem. They’re all working on their esoteric, kind of researchy things while this is a problem that I want solved right now. I wish somebody had spent all of this last year on it.”
For some context, Google had acquired the creator of Word Lens more than a year before that comment was made. The developer had created an AR app which recognized text in another language on signage in the real world and replaced it with a translation in your own language.
While the two technologies aren’t the same — and Facebook has made great progress on inside-out tracking — the acquisition of Word Lens by Google is a key example of how the company makes early investments in people and projects that will pay off in half a decade or more. Google Lens now does what Word Lens did for translation and it is available as a core part of Google’s services and apps across millions of devices. You can search a vast Google Photos library using terms like “paper” to find a document you photographed, or “swimming” for a photo of a pool party. Combine that work with other long-term multi-year efforts at Google like Johnny Lee’s Tango tracking project, and you can begin to see how the company will apply its core goal to VR — “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
For the game Job Simulator, Devin Reimer at Owlchemy Labs spent hundreds of hours figuring out how to build a believable cup of coffee for VR. Layer by layer he discovered aspects of reality he needed to recreate so that when people interacted with coffee in his world, it behaved as expected. Put it in the refrigerator? Steam should dissipate faster. Mix it with milk? The coffee’s color should lighten.
Owlchemy is a leader in creating highly engaging VR software that can also resize itself depending on the available area, or the height of the player. Last year, Google acquired Owlchemy Labs. Job Simulator’s sequel, which we tried recently, appears to be larger in scope with more “zones” for players to visit and play around inside.
It seems like a question of when, not if, Google will combine its visual processing technologies with the kind of work being done at Owlchemy Labs to essentially overlay a fun digital world on top of the real one in just the right way.
While Google’s Cardboard project helped turn millions of phones into relatively low quality VR headsets, Daydream is a more polished and higher quality platform featuring interesting pieces competitors are unable or unwilling to ship just yet.
Daydream’s Chromecast integration is a joy to use as part of a demo party. Wirelessly streaming what the spectator in VR sees to a nearby screen helps keep everyone spending time together. Google’s WorldSense inside-out tracking technology does a pretty good job of understanding your head movement most of the time. But there is nothing in the way of collision detection and object avoidance, and the system is in no way ready to understand situations like going outside and looking up at a clear blue sky.
So the first Daydream standalone — the Lenovo Mirage Solo — restricts movement to less than a meter. That restriction appears to be set in place because Google’s leaders lack confidence in their technology’s ability to keep people safe if used beyond that small space. Nonetheless, Google is pursuing a suite of technologies that could actually solve these incredibly complex problems. Others are working on this too, of course, but Google’s focus on enabling technologies that make information “universally accessible and useful” lets us see the steady improvement and roll-out of these fundamental features across different services.
There is a reason indie VR app Beat Saber was able to sell 100,000 copies in a month at $20 each while being available only on Rift, Vive and Windows-based PC headsets. It’s an extraordinarily fun game enabled by the best tracking technology available in 2018. These headsets give people the greatest comfort and freedom to move around and interact. If you lean around in Gear VR things don’t feel right, and if you turn around is PSVR your hands might disappear. So despite PSVR and Gear VR selling millions of units, it seems that when people have more freedom to move around naturally they are more willing to pay more money to experience a virtual world.
Consider too that Rift and Vive are a pain to set up and even Windows-based VR headsets have a giant cord tethering them to a computer. This limits those headsets in terms of convenience, causing friction and keeping people from putting on their headset. It is all the more reason to be impressed with some developers finding decent sales and enthusiastic player communities despite those drawbacks.
The first self-contained standalone headsets like Oculus Go, Vive Focus and Mirage Solo certainly cut the cord and drop the all-in price to as low as $200. That’s a big deal, but these headsets still lack the appeal drawing people to experiences like Beat Saber, Lone Echo or Tilt Brush.
Tracking is the key here. Lots of developers and close watchers of this industry believe mainstream acceptance of this technology is as simple as delivering a standalone headset with inside-out tracking capable of playing a game like Beat Saber. It will certainly help but, having felt the wide gaps in the user experience between standalone headsets with varying degrees of movement freedom and interactivity, standalone VR will still be missing a critical piece of what’s needed to make the technology mainstream.
You still need to bring your family and friends into the virtual world with you. Google recently started rolling out a feature it calls “Cloud Anchors” which could one day make it easier for your friends and family to see into your virtual world and play a game with you.
Google’s multi-year efforts in computer vision and its global scale in making the world’s information useful could be the edge the company needs to supply cornerstone services for immersive computing. Google’s Blocks app and Poly service — which is initially focused on free content — is one early example of this strategy. “Cloud Anchors” could be another.
Right now, you could download the Just A Line experimental app on Google Play or Apple’s App Store and create an AR drawing with someone else. The app works by accessing “nearby” information and then pairing up with another device. The idea is that both phones point at the same object and, after a short wait, the two devices should sync up their understanding of the world around them. This lets two people create a shared 3D drawing together.
The feature from Google is shipping as an experiment, but with improvement it could be the key to unlocking incredibly important features for AR and VR. Imagine a VR headset that could share its location (and world) to nearby phones? Your friends and family could use their phones as mixed reality cameras to see your virtual world. While player 1 uses a VR headset, players 2, 3 and 4 could join in via AR.
“We think VR and AR are going to be a big space,” Google’s head of VR and AR, Clay Bavor, recently told me. “There’s room and there are roles for both Google devices and also for working with partners.”
That’s a predictable answer to the question I asked Bavor, given Google’s history building both its own devices and partnering with others. However, another comment he made is more enlightening about the company’s plans:
“I am an emphatic believer in the long term promise of VR, AR and all things as I call them ‘Immersive Computing.’ It is very clearly to me and to us more broadly at Google part of the next phase of computing — computing that makes use of our environment, that vastly increases the richness of input and output — that’s going to be important. That’s going to be a big deal. And we’re making investments for the long term.”
Tagged with: google
The post Editorial: Google’s Long-Term Strategy Could Dominate VR/AR appeared first on UploadVR.
So ends another busy week for VRFocus covering everything at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. As with every year there was much that was revealed and much that left us with questions. Even beyond videogames though there will still plenty of news, so much we frankly didn’t have enough time to cover it all. There’s news across the medical industry, education industry, design industry and a lot more besides that we will get into over the course of the week to come. Because as we always say on VRFocus, immersive technology is in use everywhere.
So, unsurprisingly there are jobs everywhere too. Here’s a selection of roles and titles currently available in the immersive technology sector that you may well be interested in.
|
Location |
Company |
Role |
Link |
| Jacksonville, FL, USA | Brooksource | AR/VR Developer | |
|
San Francisco, CA |
Cybercoders | Software Engineer – React Dev for Augmented Reality | |
|
Plantation, FL, USA |
OSI Engineering, Inc. |
Technical Sound Designer for a Virtual/Augmented Reality |
|
|
Haifa, IL, USA |
IBM |
Computer Vision & Augmented Reality Researcher |
|
|
Brussels, Belgium |
Epson | Account Manager – Professional Display | |
|
Mountain View, CA, US |
Software Engineer, Virtual Reality | ||
| San Francisco, CA, US | HTC | VR Intern – Content & Acquisition | |
| San Bruno, CA, US | YouTube | Software Engineer, Virtual Reality | |
| Vancouver, Canada | VRChat Inc | Online Community Manager | |
| San Francisco, CA, US | Unity Technologies | Senior Graphics Engineer (XR) | |
| London, UK | Technical Program Manager, Social VR |
As always, if there was nothing in this week’s feature that was a good fit for you, you can always look at the previous edition of The VR Job Hub.
As always, if you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to myself (keva@vrfocus.com) and also Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).
Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the industry.
Der Verkaufsstart der autarken Oculus Go begann zwar erst kürzlich, doch nun veröffentlicht Google ein lukratives Angebot für die hauseigene und überarbeitete Version der Google Daydream View. Die mobile VR-Brille ist aktuell im offiziellen Google Store versandkostenfrei bis zum 18. Juni für nur 59 Euro erhältlich.
Die Google Daydream View bietet dank einem kompakten sowie leichten Design und intuitiver Bedienung einen einfachen Einstieg in die Virtual Reality. Mit einem kompatiblen Smartphone erhält man Zugriff auf verschiedene VR-Spiele, Streaming-Dienste, wie Netflix und NextVR, und weitere interessante VR-Erfahrungen. Die zweite Generation der Daydream besitzt Fresnel-Linsen und dadurch ein größeres Field of View als sein Vorgänger und enthält ein eingebautes Kühlsystem, um einer Überhitzung effektiv entgegenzuwirken. Zudem sorgt ein zweites Band über dem Kopf für mehr Stabilität und Tragekomfort. Die Brille wird gemeinsam mit einem dazugehörigen Controller ausgeliefert.
Folgende Smartphones sind mit der mobilen VR-Brille kompatibel:
Eine Liste mit allen kompatiblen Smartphones befindet sich hier.
Ein Hands-on der überarbeiteten Brille ist hier zu finden.
Wer sich bisher noch keine VR-Brille zugelegt hat und für den Einstieg in die Virtual Reality nicht allzu tief in den eigenen Geldbeutel greifen möchte, der sollte einen Blick auf das Angebot werfen. Die Google Daydream View ist aktuell im offiziellen Google Store versandkostenfrei für 59 Euro erhältlich. Das Angebot gilt vom 4. Juni bis zum 18. Juni 2018. Danach wird die Brille erneut 109 Euro kosten.
(Quellen: Google)
Der Beitrag Google Daydream View für 59 Euro erhältlich zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!
Weeks after releasing ARCore 1.2 for Android and iOS devices, Google is broadening its cross-platform augmented reality support across two applications. The educational VR/AR app Expeditions is making AR object support “available to anyone” with compatible Android ARCore or iOS ARKit devices, and the “experimental” AR drawing app Just a Line is gaining support for iPhone users.
Originally announced in May 2015, Expeditions was designed to extend classroom use of Google Cardboard, a basic virtual reality viewing system for smartphones. The app enabled teachers to share virtual reality scenes with their students and supported over 100 VR tours within months. In May 2017, Google debuted AR Expeditions, a feature to explore AR objects with integrated descriptions, initially rolling the feature out to Android users in schools via a pilot program. Today, Expeditions boasts over 100 AR objects and 800 VR tours for students to choose from.
Today’s version 2.0 update enables any ARKit-capable iOS device or ARCore-compatible Android device to display AR objects in the camera view, as well as featuring redesigned Discover, Guide, and Join screens to facilitate tour browsing and classroom sharing. To get the maximum impact out of VR tours, users will need to have a Cardboard viewer or similar lens-equipped housing, but AR content can be viewed unassisted through the screen.
By comparison, the Just a Line app is entirely new to iOS, having debuted for Android devices in March. As its name suggests, Just a Line really does only one thing — it tracks the motion of your phone in a physical space, using the data to “draw” lines that can be viewed in AR. With today’s iPhone release, however, Just a Line lets iOS and Android users collaborate on drawings, which Google says makes it “the first app that lets two people create together in AR, at the same time, across Android and iOS.”
Google enabled the cross-platform functionality by adding iOS and Android support for Cloud Anchors — shareable real-world relative location data — to ARCore 1.2 at Google I/O last month. While sharing floating AR drawings across devices is a basic concept, the company’s decision to bridge platforms with device-agnostic features like this gives Google an early lead on establishing ARCore as a broad-based augmented reality standard.
Expeditions version 2.0 and the new Just a Line — Draw in AR for iPhone are available now for download from the iOS App Store. Updates to the Android Just a Line and Expeditions apps are available through the Google Play store.
This post by Jeremy Horwitz originally appeared on VentureBeat.
Tagged with: google, Just A Line
The post Google Brings Just A Line AR Drawing To iPhone appeared first on UploadVR.
Stepping into the world of virtual reality (VR) has become easier with time. While the best experiences revolve around headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, mobile VR came first, and can still offer highly immersive and entertaining content. Depending on your smartphone (and discarding all the cheap Google Cardboard imitations), mobile VR falls between to platforms, Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream. Gear VR has proven to be the more popular of the two thanks to an earlier launch and heavy promotion. That doesn’t mean Google isn’t averse to the odd discount, today dropping the cost of Daydream View by half.
This limited time promotion is available through the Google Store from today until 17th June, 2018 at 11:59 pm GMT. Customers can grab the Daydream View for £49 GBP rather than £99, in its three colours: Fog, Charcoal and Coral.
Of course you’ll need a compatible phone. Unlike Gear VR which is restricted to Samsung only devices, Daydream View accepts a much wider selection of phones: Google Pixel, Google Pixel 2, Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+/S8/S8+, Galaxy Note 8, ZenFone AR, Axon 7, Mate 9 Pro and Moto Z/Z2.
Supplied with a 3DoF controller, you don’t need anything else to get started in VR, just download some videogames or apps, and start playing. Currently there are around 350 apps on the Daydream platform, with exclusives like YouTube and Google Street View.
While the recent Google I/O conference was lacking in VR updates (or anything to do with Daydream), the company is still pushing ahead with VR and augmented reality (AR) development. On the VR side, Google Tour Creator was announced, expanding upon the Expeditions idea to allow students and teachers to create their own local 360-degree tours.
As for AR, Google has been updating ARCore adding further features to expand its scope a usability, which also saw Expeditions compatibility this month. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Google Daydream View, reporting back with the latest updates.
Good news for Android users as Chrome 67 has started to roll out bringing with it a host of new features and APIs that allow developers to enable virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experience.
The new version of Chrome on Android comes with a new WebXR Device API that is aimed at enabling web-based AR and VR experiences. The new API is still under testing but within it’s release developers will be able to start using it and seeing the benefits that it brings to the mobile platform. Designed to specifically support mobile devices and desktops the API is aimed at unifying experience across AR-enabled devices, mobile-based VR headsets such as the Google Daydream View and desktop-hosted headsets, including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
In addition to the new WebXR Device API, Chrome 67 brings the Generic Sensor API with it that allows developers a means to easily obtain sensor data to create web applications for us in immersive gaming, fitness tracking, and AR or VR experiences. Both the WebXR Device API and Generic Sensor API were announced back in April of this year, now being made available for use within Chrome 67.
Developers will need to sign up for the origin trial programmer to begin working with the WebXR Device API, but the benefits it will begin are sure to be worth getting hands on with earlier. For everyday users it means that more mobile AR and VR experiences will be made available as developers get hands on with the new API’s, offering more ways to get immersive within content and Google Chrome.
Elsewhere in Chrome 67 is the inclusion of being able to toggle a horizontal tab switcher, rather then using the original vertical tab switcher. This can be enabled by visiting this link within Google Chrome on Android devices.
Google have of course run out updates to Chrome on Android in the past to allow for more VR and AR applications, including adding support for the Oculus Rift back in April of this year. As the Chrome team continue to bring new features to the browser to enable more VR and AR uses, VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest.