Category: VR

Create 3D worlds via speech

Create 3D worlds using half a million different 3D objects.
you can create with and without code and also by recognition speech.

Once your world is created you can view on a number of platforms including VR headsets.

The concept seems great, the telling will be in how the interaction with the worlds works and how easy is it to
manipulate the objects to move and interact with each other.

Product site here {Anything World}

VR Meetings – The Future?

With the majority of the world in lockdown and a most people meeting on zoom / teams / skype / Google to hold meetings its taught us a couple of things.
1. we can actually run business and meetings over video
2. it gets a bit lonely.

I saw this post by Vox where recode and spatial had a meeting in mixed reality and looked pretty awesome.

they said it felt a bit awkward at first but 2 minutes in and that faded away.

Could this be the future or at least part of the future?

Being a massive VR fan I hope it does, watch out for Spatial i think we will be seeing more of this team in the future

VR & AR enhancing the way we learn

I feel this has way more usecases than just learning which is where zspace seem to be focusing.
Imagine in store and brand experiences, the deconstruction of products and even virtual building and play (Lego).

This is all using current hardware with the zspace addition to bring a VR / AR experience via laptops and desktops.

I would love to demo this product to see if the video holds up to the experience.

Remote Robot Shelve Stackers

A Japanese supermarket chain is testing remote working,
but in a new way via remote controlled robots.
Family Mart is working with Telexistence a Japanese robotics firm,
The Model-T is remote controlled by a human equipped
with a VR set using their “Augmented Workforce Platform.”

The Robot’s main function with the aid of an operator would
be to stack shelves, enabling the human staff to interact
and engage with the customers.
According to soranews24
its very hard to get store workers and this solution will
help by making it so they only need cashiers and not shelve stackers.

Are we a step closer to the Will Smith Film iRobot?!

 

Virtual and physical world come together.

Water and electronics don’t normally mix well, but here they have combined the thrill of the water slide with the thrill of VR. I can honestly say this passed me by, its been around nearly two years, but i am posting because I am seeing VR getting stronger and stronger with more consumers engaging with the devices and may experiences.

the next step will be the hacking together of other technology such as haptic sound and touch to take the experience to a completely new level.

Lancôme’s VR Pop-up Store

Lancôme has opened a pop-up VR store to reinvent the Future of Beauty retail Post Covid according to Forbes 

We have seen a few of these VR stores pop-up (no pun intended) recently, if kind of makes me chuckle inside a little as we were presenting these type of ideas way back in 2005 and no one was interested, maybe it was to early for this type of engagement via online. What this does is gives me hope that the online experience can be as entertaining and engaging as it once was when Flash was alive.

Reference Link

The New York Times R&D

Screen recording by Azad Balanian

The New York Times has a R&D site, thats the first piece of big news, the second is this web based experience called photogrammetry where scrolling lets you enter into an immersive the story inside the visual
Imagine being able to do this with all flat images, giving you the ability to explore and immerse into different world through a visual portal. 

OpenXR – Hand and Eye tracking for Oculus

OpenXR Launched last summer enabling VR development across platforms, several large companies, including Oculus, SteamVR, HTC, and Microsoft, have worked to support OpenXR. Last week, Microsoft added OpenXR support to Windows Mixed Reality devices. Which is a huge deal because developers don’t have to code in different languages to have their titles working across many platforms.

Now we have an additional feature with the addition of Eye and Hand tracking modules which enable game developers to integrate these new features into up and coming games. Hand tracking is still super new, so there are not a lot of games or headsets which currently have these two features enabled.  Oculus Quest and Microsoft HoloLens 2. do and I am sure more will in the future.

These two added features might seem quite small but they wil enable significant performance increases and additional types of UI interaction on supported headsets.

The group behind the OpenXR platform is the Khronos Group

Here are some apps that use hand tracking.

Source: Nick Sutrich / Android Central

Important takeaways from Android Central where the article information was sources

  • Oculus is now accepting OpenXR-developed titles on the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest stores.
  • Eye tracking and hand tracking are now an official part of the OpenXR standard, enabling cross-platform development with these features.
  • Minecraft’s RenderDragon engine now uses OpenXR for the development of Minecraft VR.