technology – Page 3 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

January 23, 2024

TechScape: Why Apple’s Vision Pro headset won’t have Netflix, Spotify or YouTube

This new ‘spatial computing’ device is supposedly the most immersive way to watch TV – but major streamers aren’t building apps for it. Plus, Facebook’s AI god complex

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It’s good to have friends. They come to your birthday party, offer a shoulder to cry on when things are hard and spend precious corporate resources developing apps for your nascent virtual reality platform despite little direct return. It can be tempting to believe that a pile of cash worth $30bn, and a single product line that brings in more than $200bn a year, is an acceptable substitute. But Apple is learning that money can’t buy you everything.

Last week, pre-orders opened for the company’s Vision Pro headset, the $3,500 “spatial computing” platform CEO Tim Cook has positioned as the successor to the Mac and iPhone and the launch of the third major era in Apple’s history. But in the press, the launch has been overshadowed by the quiet hostility towards the device from those whose support will ultimately be needed to ensure its success.

Rather than designing a Vision Pro app – or even just supporting its existing iPad app on the platform – Netflix is essentially taking a pass. The company, which competes with Apple in streaming, said in a statement that users interested in watching its content on the device can do so from the web.

YouTube … isn’t planning to launch a new app for the Apple Vision Pro, nor will it allow its longstanding iPad application to work on the device – at least, for now […] Spotify also isn’t currently planning a new app for visionOS – the Vision Pro’s operating system – and doesn’t expect to enable its iPad app to run on the device when it launches, according to a person familiar with matter.

All App Store developers – including those who place buttons or links with calls to action in their apps – benefit from Apple’s proprietary technology and tools protected by intellectual property, and access to its user base. […] Apple’s commission will be 27% on proceeds you earn from sales.

The Meta chief executive has said the company will attempt to build an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system and make it open source, meaning it will be accessible to developers outside the company. The system should be made “as widely available as we responsibly can”, he added.

AGI is not a strictly defined term, but it commonly refers to a theoretical AI system that can carry out an array of tasks at a level of intelligence that matches or exceeds humans. The potential emergence of AGI has alarmed experts and politicians around the world who fear such a system, or a combination of multiple AGI systems, could evade human control and threaten humanity.

January 14, 2024

Egg timer, Coke bottle and a skull cast: VR puts Burns memorabilia in reach

Glasgow University has set up virtual trips showing stories behind the poems and exploring the poet’s life

Guests attending Burns Night suppers this month can get unexpected help in appreciating Scotland’s national bard – thanks to virtual reality. The Art of the Burns Supper has been created by Glasgow University researchers and takes participants on virtual trips that reveal the stories behind his poems and songs and his love of whisky – and haggis.

The VR experiences have been created by scanning items from Burns collections across Scotland as well as key sites and places in his life. The result is an eclectic vision of the poet whose birthday is celebrated by Scots across the world on 25 January.

January 2, 2024

TechScape: Cybercrime, AI supremacy and the metaverse – the tech stories that will dominate 2024

From the future of X to Apple’s Vision Pro headset, we make a call on the deals, products and technologies that could define this year

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Partway through 2023, I caught up with a respected, high-ranking tech writer at another publication. We gossiped and nattered, and, a bit exasperated, empathised with each other: we were run ragged.

The last two years have raised the stakes for what tech journalists do from serving a small niche community to covering stories that have an impact on the wider world. In part, that’s due to the increasing importance of technology in our day-to-day lives. It’s also down to the characters involved and what’s at stake.

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December 8, 2023

VR goggles for mice create immersive scenarios for brain research

Study suggests mice react in the same way to stimulation in virtual environment as in real world

Whether exploring distant galaxies or dashing about a fantasy world, virtual reality has immersed humans in extraordinary places. Now, it seems, mice will be able to join us.

Researchers have developed a pair of virtual reality “goggles” that can plunge the rodents into various scenarios, from navigating mazes to experiencing the threat of a predator.

September 8, 2023

Rage against the machine? Why AI may not mean the death of film

Technology is Hollywood’s current arch nemesis, but as exhibitors on Venice film festival’s ‘immersive island’ will tell you, AI, VR and XR could lead to a brighter future

One of the hottest tickets at the 80th Venice film festival isn’t a movie at all but a VR installation on the event’s self-styled “Immersive Island”. Each user sits at a computer and answers a series of personal questions, which the exhibit – in the space of a few seconds – converts into a bespoke portrait of their life. The project, Tulpamancer, is officially the work of Brooklyn-based artists Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser. In practice, though, it amounts to a creative collaboration between the user and AI.

Generative AI plays the role of Sleeping Beauty’s bad fairy at Venice. The ongoing writers and actors’ strike was largely prompted by fears over the new technology’s impact on film and TV production and has resulted in numerous star performers deciding to skip this year’s festival. But in the meantime, AI – unwelcome, uninvited and arguably misunderstood – has already joined the party. It’s hiding in the cracks of the films on the main programme and helping facilitate the creation of the XR (extended reality) pieces on the island.

September 4, 2023

Venice’s brave new world: my cosmic trip to Immersion Island and back

On the Lazzaretto Vecchio, the small island home of Venice film festival’s Immersive section, I donned an XR headset and boldly went where most festivalgoers don’t

Traditional cinema hogs the limelight at the Venice film festival but there’s an array of wilder delights just behind the main site. Hang a right past the PalaBiennale theatre and a boat whisks you across to the Lazzaretto Vecchio, the small island home of the event’s Venice Immersive section. It’s a two-minute ride but it feels like light years away.

Venice’s self-styled “Immersion Island” is dedicated to showcasing emergent technologies – and by definition emergent storytelling. There are 28 XR (extended reality) productions in the main competition, together with 24 “world gallery” tours hosted by VRChat, and these run the gamut from interactive movies through 360-degree videos to the sort of imposing standalone installations you’d otherwise find in a modish art gallery. The medium is nascent and even the language around it is still bedding down. The works on the schedule aren’t quite films or games or art displays, although most will contain elements from all three disciplines. “We like to call them experiences,” says the woman on the desk with a shrug.

August 12, 2023

‘The night is literally in my hands’: what it’s like to attend an acid house rave – in virtual reality

Using VR and haptic vests to transport users to a sweaty club in 1980s Britain, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is so realistic that you might need a lie down afterwards

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I’m not the kind of person who you’d normally find at an illegal rave at a regular raving time, let alone 9am on a Wednesday. But that’s where I found myself this week – virtually, anyway: with a haptic vest strapped on to my back, a controller in each hand and a virtual reality headset covering my eyes, I’m transported back to 1989, hooning through the suburbs with my friends to find a secret dancefloor.

Darren Emerson’s award-winning interactive VR film, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, tracks the acid-house movement and rave scene in Coventry, UK. It’s wholly transportive – I forget that I’m actually standing in the middle of an empty studio in metro Melbourne, because for half an hour I’m in the back of a car, in a friend’s poster-strewn bedroom, in a police station, hurtling down a freeway, bumping up against sweaty bodies in a club and walking through a forest hungover as the day breaks and the sun peeks through the trees.

August 9, 2023

‘Even closing my eyes is an intense movement’: the VR experience that simulates a serious neurological condition

Ben Joseph Andrews’ chronic vestibular condition leaves him with migraines and dizziness – which he’s transformed into a VR experience. Luke Buckmaster gives it a go

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You would’ve heard of déjà vu: the surreal sensation of having previously experienced the present, or something like it. You may not have heard of jamais vu: the sensation of being unfamiliar with things that should be recognisable. Like your house, your desk, even your hands.

Guy Pearce’s protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s 2000 thriller Memento, who can’t create new memories, has a version of it. But the kind I got a taste of, in a fascinating “world-first mixed reality” experience featured at this year’s Melbourne international film festival, is jamais vu of a very different variety.

July 18, 2023

Recommended Tech Biopics

With Apple, Microsoft and Meta recently in the news for AR & VR, we thought it might also be a good time to look back at the histories of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. KBZ Films recently sent us one of their latest articles for the Best Tech Biopics. These are historical films, or biopics, that cover a specific event or subject. In this case, the article lists some very good films we had forgotten about (and would recommend) and some others that look very interesting.

Some of the recommended tech biopics from the KBZ article include:

Pirates of Silicon Valley which is about the early days of Microsoft and Apple. This has a great performance in the film from Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates.
Steve Jobs which is one of our personal favorite films.
The Social Network which is also a personal favorite and a great look at the early days of Facebook.

There are also some films that we haven’t seen that look very interesting – especially Micro Men, Blackberry and Tetris.

If you’re looking from some tech inspiration or want to watch a good technology-related historical film, KBZ’s recommended list of tech biopics is a good place to start.

The post Recommended Tech Biopics appeared first on Zugara.

June 6, 2023

Apple’s Vision Pro VR is incredible technology but is it useful?

The new product is far ahead of its competition; however, it is not clear that there is a pressing need for it or that most people can afford it

As people begin to report on their hands-on time with Apple’s Vision Pro VR headset, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the company has produced an incredible piece of hardware.

Even in limited demonstrations, users have praised the company’s extraordinary work producing the two postage-stamp-sized screens that sit in each eyepiece and pack in more pixels than a 4K TV; they’ve been stunned by the quality of the “passthrough” video, which shows wearers what’s happening in the outside world in enough detail that they can even use their phones while wearing the headset; and they’ve been impressed by the casual ease with which the gesture controls on the new hardware work, with an array of infrared cameras letting users make small and subtle hand movements to select and scroll rather than relying on bulky controllers.