American Heroes Channel Releases Civil War 360-Degree Video Tie-In For Upcoming TV Series

American Heroes Channel Releases Civil War 360-Degree Video Tie-In For Upcoming TV Series

The American Heroes Channel recently released a new 360-degree video titled Civil War: Letter From the Trenches. The video is planned to serve as a companion piece for Blood and Fury: America’s Civil War, a TV series scheduled to debut on Dec. 14th on AHC. The series will show the war from the perspective of soldiers during iconic battles throughout the campaign.

Letter From the Trenches on the other hand will focus specifically on a Confederate soldier that’s under heavy enemy fire in the thick of combat. Instead of taking a more measured, slow-paced, and passive approach to immersive video like most content creators, this video appears to be designed to shock and rattle viewers directly. The sounds and sights of bullets whizzing by amidst cannon ball eruptions isn’t exactly a cheery way of spending an afternoon — especially when you factor in how powerful 360-degree audio and visuals can be at tricking you into thinking you’re actually somewhere dangerous.

The experience will use a combination of Go Pro cameras and fish-eye lenses to bring viewers closer to the battlefield than ever before with this reenactment and furthers the discussion of not only mature and serious content in virtual reality — but also how VR could be used to revolutionize historical documentary-style films as well. Reliving moments from history, such as the Civil War or the Wright Brothers flight, is an excellent use-case for educational VR.

Cream Productions’ co-founder and CEO, David Brady, told The Hollywood Reporter that, “above you there’s cannonball contrails, and those are spatially directed so you can follow with your eyes as your ears tell you where they are going. The effect is to hopefully make the viewer turn their heads to see all of this.”

The video itself, Letter From the Trenches, is available now for free at DiscoveryVR. There are various ways to watch the video, as it can be viewed within your browser, on Google Cardboard viewing devices, as well as on the Rift, Gear VR, and HTC Vive.

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Time Inc and HTC Vive Announce Remembering Pearl Harbor Experience

For history buffs virtual reality (VR) provides an immersive opportunity to delve into the past, being able to better understand or relive key moments. Today HTC and Time Inc.’s LIFE VR have announced the launch of Remembering Pearl Harbor, a virtual reality (VR) experience commemorating the 75th anniversary of the attack that brought the US into World War II.

Developed in partnership with Deluxe VR, Remembering Pearl Harbor takes viewers inside key moments of the event’s aftermath through historically authentic and fully interactive environments. The experience also uses interactive archival news material from iconic TIME and LIFE publications, the National WWII Museum and the Library of Congress, including famous radio broadcasts from Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

Remembering Pearl Harbor screenshot

‘Remembering Pearl Harbor’ is a historical and educational room-scale VR experience told through the eyes of Lt. Jim Downing, one of the oldest living survivors of the attack,” said Mia Tramz, Managing Editor of LIFE VR. “As postmaster of the USS West Virginia, Lt. Downing had a unique experience in this pivotal moment in history that we’ve brought to this piece. We’ve created this app with the hope it will bring a new understanding of this event to even the most enthusiastic history buffs.”

“We’re honoured to partner with LifeVR in telling Lt. Downing’s story through such a visceral experience on the Vive,” said Chris Chin, Senior Director of Content at HTC Vive and Executive Producer on Remembering Pearl Harbor. “For the first time ever, viewers can immerse themselves in a virtual recreation of World War II America through this incredibly moving and educational narrative.”

Remembering Pearl Harbor is available to download now for HTC Vive through Viveport for £6.96 GBP . The experience will also launch through Time Inc.’s dedicated LIFE VR app for iOS and Android in the coming weeks.

For all the latest VR news, keep reading VRFocus.

Exclusive: ‘ROM: Extraction’ Teaser Trailer Reveals Terrifying Alien Robots

Exclusive: ‘ROM: Extraction’ Teaser Trailer Reveals Terrifying Alien Robots

When we first broke the news about ROM: Extraction by First Contact with our hands-on reveal last month, we didn’t have any footage to show you — only art work and a few teaser images. Now, that is unfortunately not a whole lot different, as we just have a brief and tantalizing teaser trailer along with a handful of new screenshots.

The below trailer does a wonderful job of setting an ominous tone and building up suspense about the game, but it doesn’t actually show much else. Luckily, you won’t have to wait long to see more, as the game’s Steam page is now live announcing a December 7th release date with both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift support listed. It’s expected to release on the Oculus Home store shortly afterwards as well — motion controllers are required.

According to a prepared statement provided to UploadVR, “ROM: Extraction is a pick-up- and-play, addictive classic arcade shooter, built natively for VR. The heart of the gameplay mechanic is ‘Throw, Slow, and Shoot.’ Players will defend themselves against extraterrestrial robots by using the power to slow down time – called ‘Reflex’ power – for an unprecedented style of strategic combat. The game features the first-person immersion of VR, intuitive, motion-based controls, multiple difficulty settings and global and local leaderboards.”

During our demo, we got to see this in action and came away impressed. The visual fidelity, exciting physics, and potential for expansion upon the base concept were all exciting prospects. The studio’s talent and history of game development shows through in the production quality alone.

When ROM: Extraction launches next week on Steam it will be a single player only experience, but plans are in place to add cooperative multiplayer for free soon, in addition to new levels, weapons, enemies, and abilities to help further diversify the gameplay. It’s a simple game, but the team hopes that the core gameplay loop is addictive enough to keep gamers coming back for more.

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Disfellowshipped Is Investigative Journalism Adapted To Immersive Media

Disfellowshipped Is Investigative Journalism Adapted To Immersive Media

News outlets like USA Today and Huffington Post have turned to 360-degree media to add a new layer to reporting in recent months. Though interesting, both works are just brief looks into various topics. Investigative journalism is a deeper dive into specific topics and The Center for Investigative Journalism, also known as Reveal, is using immersive media to pull viewers right into the story.

Disfellowshipped follows a journalist’s

The process that led to Disfellowshipped started back in May of 2015 when the VR start-up Vragments started work on the Fader tool. With Fader, the dev group wanted to provide journalists an easy way to integrate virtual reality into the reporter’s work loads. Fader works by allowing the journalists to create specific story points and allow viewers to explore them in virtual spaces while also adding additional elements in post-production. In the early stages of development, they turned to Trey Bundy’s investigation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and he broke down the story he wanted to tell into three parts.

The story focuses on Debbie McDaniel, a young woman who was exiled from the Witnesses by the very person that had abused her for five years. The 360-degree visual takes you through her story and her hometown of McAlester. The experience isn’t just one long 360-degree recording of the interview with McDaniel; it has various stills, cuts of her hometown, and music mixed in with Debbie’s interview and narration much like television shows that focus on investigative journalism. The resolution isn’t the best (Bundy used an inexpensive 360-degree camera) but the animated portions of the feature represent big additions.

“The answer is to give the viewer a more intimate understanding of a character and her experience,” Bundy wrote about the project. “The technology allows us to put you in the reporter’s shoes, to feel what it’s like to sit with people as they look you in the eye and tell you their story, to visit their towns and the places that affected their lives. In some instances, it becomes a window into a person’s emotional memory.”

Disfellowshipped is a solid example of how to keep viewers involved with a longer form of reporting with the experience broken into two parts, with an additional “Inside the Investigation” feature. You can watch part 2 of the feature on Youtube here or via your browser where all three clips are in the same virtual space here, clicking and dragging like a YouTube video. It has a VR option in the bottom right corner.

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New Level for The Climb Inspired by Iceland

Its been known for a while that Crytek’s climbing title The Climb would support Oculus Touch once the controllers arrived. Early last month Niels Stoelinga, Gameplay Programmer for The Climb revealed the upcoming Touch update would include a brand new level without going into details. Now Crytek has unveiled the first image and info.

The new level ‘North’ has been inspired by the iconic landscape of Iceland, with snow-capped peaks and volcanoes set in the distance. As the image below shows, players will now be able to climb shear ice covered cliffs, with the terrain and the Oculus Touch controllers offering new challenges for seasoned players.

The Climb - North

Alongside the new level the update introduces new player-customization options and a range of accessories designed specifically for the North setting.

There’s going to be plenty of content for those that have ordered the new £190 GBP controllers with developers revealing launch day titles. For anyone that’s pre-ordered they’ll get The Unspoken and VR Sports Challenge for free, with Dead and Buried, Medium and Quill all available from Oculus Studios. Third-party titles include Funktronic Labs’ Cosmic Trip, COLOPL Inc.’s Dig 4 Destruction, Fierce Kaiju’s Viral EX, I-Illusions Space Pirate Trainer,  PlaySide VR Zombie Riot, and South Korean developer HandMade Game’s CRANGA!: Harbour Frenzy.

For all the latest updates for Oculus Touch, keep reading VRFocus.

AR Glasses Company ODG Raises $58 Million Series A Round

AR Glasses Company ODG Raises $58 Million Series A Round

San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group (ODG) said it closed a large $58 million Series A funding round, and will use the money to “accelerate its existing production capabilities” and “complete its new products” to be introduced at CES in January.

Shenzhen O-film Tech Co., Ltd., Vanfund Urban Investment & Development Co. Ltd., 21st Century Fox and individual investors participated in the round. With the money ODG also plans to grow its patent portfolio and hire worldwide, growing the ranks of its 80 employees.

“For eight years, we’ve taken a very systematic approach to designing and refining our smartglasses for specific applications from the US government, industry and enterprise customers in a wide variety of markets, and that will not change,” said Ralph Osterhout, CEO of ODG, in a prepared statement. “We carefully picked investment partners who not only share ODG’s product vision and growth strategy, but also have the reputation and reach to expand ODG’s global presence and market recognition.”

ODG makes augmented glassess with see-through displays that resemble sunglasses, which could have big potential for uses like manufacturing and construction where you can access checklists or instructions without removing your hands from the work. AR and mixed reality glasses also let you talk to remote exports who can guide you through specific work on site, a use case that has potential to help workers from the space station to the bottom of the ocean.

With the Spectacles camera sunglasses from Snap finding popularity at a low price, existing companies and businesses working in similar areas may be getting a boost now that the technology appears to be maturing.  ODG was originally founded in 1999 as a tech incubator, but is now focused on head-mounted displays for government and enterprise.

With CES 2017 in January clearly shaping up to be a big event for ODG, we can’t wait to see what they have to show as the company aims to cover the consumer market as well.

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