Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Nintendo's highly-anticipated Switch event is almost here, signaling what could be a turning point for the iconic Japanese company. Here's how to stream the latest announcements online, and what to expect.
The post Here’s what we expect to see at the Nintendo Switch Unveiling Event appeared first on Digital Trends.
Redeeming a code on your Xbox One is a piece of cake thanks to an array of different options for doing so. Here's how, whether you want to use an app, your favorite web browser, or the ill-fated Kinect sensor.
The post How to redeem an Xbox One code appeared first on Digital Trends.
Streaming games on Twitch for the first time can be daunting to say the least, but with a few simple steps, it's remarkably easy to do. Here's how to do so using a PC, Mac, Xbox One, or PlayStation 4 console.
The post Kick off your streaming career with our complete guide to broadcasting on Twitch appeared first on Digital Trends.
Want to play Xbox One games on your Windows 10 PC, or an Oculus Rift, while your roommate is hogging the TV? It's not difficult to do, as long as you can make it through the initial setup process. Here's how.
The post How to leave the Xbox in the living room and play games anywhere in the house appeared first on Digital Trends.
Everyone feels, but it takes practice to translate those emotions into coherent words, and even more practice to do it on the spot. Conversely, while most people can think in 3D, not everyone can convert those thoughts onto a 2D page. But with the rise of virtual reality art, we won’t have to translate as much anymore. Five months ago I decided to make my art completely in VR, and now I can stand inside of these vast environments I’m building faster than I imagined. My audience no longer needs to guess how my sci-fi worlds would feel if they were real. I can just transport them there.
I often hear the phrase, “Sorry, I’m not an artist,” at group meetings which involve a whiteboard and stick figures, and that doesn’t surprise me. Art of any kind is hard to produce without practice, you either have to know how to manipulate matter while physics works against you, or you have to understand the technical details about perspective and shading. Digital applications like Maya, Zbrush, and Photoshop have made the job easier, but their interfaces are too complicated for a regular consumer to pick up quickly. We will always have master-level creatives, but new virtual reality apps are making it more intuitive for anyone to make art with a level of professionalism that just wasn’t possible without hours of training.
This guide is to help you understand which apps work best for certain projects, and how they could work together in order to create experiences that we haven’t imagined yet.
If you’re interested in joining the VR art community, I want to help. Google, Oculus, and Adobe are without a doubt anticipating 2017 to be a big year for VR art, and probably have a few surprises in store for us. But what’s available now, and what can those applications achieve? Better yet, how can these apps work together? I’ve been importing Gravity Sketch sculpts into Tilt Brush to add atmospherics and effects, while other artists like Steve Teeple have been building workflows between between Oculus Medium and Tilt Brush. There’s a lot of room for innovation right now, what could you come up with?
These are the top design apps. Let’s look at what they excel at, what they’re lacking, and what they could learn from each other.
Tilt Brush, created by Skillman & Hackett then acquired by Google, is a virtual reality drawing application where you use your whole body to paint in three dimensions. It’s designed to be accessible by everyone, and yet it’s feature set has enabled me to create self contained worlds for companies like Marvel. It is available on both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift through Steam. This is a breakdown of it.
When you first launch into Tilt Brush, you’ll find yourself standing on a floor in a dark environment. You always have the option to switch to a blank canvas, but the floor helps ground your understanding of scale and world location. While you can scale your scene like other applications, the world’s vertical rotation is locked, so you’ll always have an intuitive understanding of what is up and down. This locked rotation feature is the main thing I find myself needing with the other design apps. That said, I wish Tilt Brush included an option to unlock rotation so drawing on the underside of things would be easier.
The shadows created by the shaded brushes help to initially sketch out a scene without being confused about the way a stroke is facing, or how far away it is from you. I prefer to use flat brushes to create my own shading, although it’s critical for beginners to have access to shaded brushes so they don’t need to worry about creating their own shadows. This extra worry is one of the biggest problems people have when attempting to make 2D art. Here’s a pre-production comparison between Tilt Brush’s shaded brushes and Quill’s shadeless counterpart.
Tilt Brush is currently the only professional design application that grants you the ability to teleport, so if you’re designing a game level or movie set, you can easily preview your world from multiple perspectives without losing your prefered world scale or rotation. This also allows you to make your Tilt Brush creation a self-contained VR experience, like Stu Campbell, Steve Teeple, and I did for Marvel’s Dr. Strange.
Guides are like 3D rulers which allow you to draw on a two-dimensional plane. You have the option of using a square, sphere, or capsule guide that can scale non-uniformly, and then place them anywhere in your scene. This makes it much easier to add details on walls, create textured floors, or to just create any kind of 2D art. Here’s an example of a wooden bridge I made for a mixed reality video by using the square guide.
When it comes to angular precision, you can also snap straight lines to a 90 or 45 degree angle relative to the world, which makes creating buildings and maps easier when coupled with guides. Tilt Brush also comes with a symmetry tool that you can grab and place anywhere around you, which makes creating characters and vehicles a lot easier. The experience of seeing a ghost brush copying your arms movement is pretty mind blowing as well.
Tilt Brush comes pre-loaded with 36 brushes that can really make your scene pop. For example, there’s a particles brush that emulates snow falling, a light brush that can symbolize what aspects of your scene will be glowing, and a fire brush that could represent explosions. While I personally only use about 10 brushes for most of my art, it’s extremely convenient to have the options available.
Overall, the brush selection just makes Tilt Brush fun. It’s a great way to get people into making art. You can start with the silly brushes, and then work your way up to using the program more seriously. Sometimes I just want to play and create a lot of effects to see what happens.
If you're switching from an older PlayStation 4 to the new PlayStation 4 Pro, the process for transferring your data is a very simple ordeal. With about 300GB of content to move, it took us about an hour. Here's how.
The post Want to transfer your save games to your PS4 Pro? Here’s how appeared first on Digital Trends.
Removing and reinstalling games on the Xbox One's hard drive isn't difficult, but it is a process that not everyone is familiar with. Thankfully, our guide will run you through each step so you'll know precisely what to do.
The post How to delete and re-install games on your Xbox One appeared first on Digital Trends.
Microsoft's Xbox app can't do it all, but it does allow you to access your profile information and launch media content directly from your mobile device. Check out our quick guide on how to connect your smartphone to an Xbox One, regardless of your platform.
The post How to connect your smartphone to an Xbox One with the Xbox app appeared first on Digital Trends.
The VR and AR markets are full of companies of various sizes with many roles in the VR industry, when you consider how many verticals there are it can get confusing. Additionally, many of these companies are still privately owned or in their infancy. Thus, if you are interested in investing in some of these companies you would normally have to be a venture capitalist (VC) of some sort usually with millions of dollars to invest. Many VC firms have gotten into VR in one way or another and wall street firms are watching VR like its already a full-blown market. VR is still a very fledgling market and has lots of room to grow, which means that there’s lots of potential for companies involved in VR to make some major money for their investors. Investing in a new market is risky and there will be some winners and there will be some losers, so there’s definitely a certain amount of risk. VR investments have broken into the billions of dollars with reports showing as high as $4-5 billion since 2010 and $2 billion in the last 12 months alone.
This list will mostly be made up of publicly traded companies that are confirmed to have a presence in VR. There are a few at the end that are suspects but don’t have anything launched or to show quite yet. Below we have compiled the company, exchange, stock ticker and involvement in VR. Also keep in mind that there are plenty of private companies worth investing in, and some public companies listed below have invested in them like Magic Leap who has investments to the tune of $1.39 billion from companies listed below like Google and Qualcomm.
Public Companies involved in VR
Unconfirmed
Because right now there are so many startups with VC investment, the only way that you can invest is to buy stocks that have varying levels of VR engagement. This means buying stocks from the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges through a broker like TD Ameritrade, Scott Trade or Robinhood. There are plenty of other ways to invest in VR, but these are some of the cheapest and fastest ways of getting there before the market matures.
You can also go through your own broker, who will advise you on which stocks are worth buying overall when you consider their entire business performance, not just VR. The list provided above is not designed to be a recommendation to buy these stocks and a certified financial professional is your best guide to investing in VR. In addition to buying these stocks, you can either buy a mutual fund that is heavy in these stocks or one that is more diversified but still incorporates some of the individual companies.
Disclaimer: This article is not a recommendation or solicitation for you to buy any of the stocks mentioned above and is purely for informational and research purposes. This article is not and should not be considered as advice or as a recommendation regarding investing in any security or any investment activity. This article is provided without any guarantees and is purely to inform the reader about the companies involved in the VR industry and what their roles are within it. Please consult a professionally accredited investment advisor if you plan to make any investing decisions.
Disclosure: My firm, Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or had provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, including AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung and others cited this article. I do not hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this column.
Sony built the PlayStation 4 with smartphone and mobile integration in mind. Take a look at our guide for connecting your smartphone or tablet to a PS4, so you can browse profiles, trophies, and other content directly on your mobile device.
The post How to connect your smartphone or tablet to a PS4 appeared first on Digital Trends.