Monthly Archives: March 2017

The home improvement giant is launching a virtual reality experience in one of its stores to give customers hands-on practice with a home improvement project. Lowe's may eventually create more VR tutorials and roll them out to more locations.

Initially, customers at a Massachusetts store will get a lesson in how to tile a bathroom. A customer will put on a VR headset, be placed in a virtual room, and use an HTC Vive hand controller to simulate mixing mortar and placing tile. Eventually, a broader range of tutorials may be offered in all Lowe's stores.

In a trial run, Lowe's found that customers had a 36% better recall of how to complete the project when compared with people who watched a YouTube how-to video.

Kyle Nel, the director of Lowe's Innovation Labs, told CNNTech about the advantages of VR as a teaching medium. He pointed to the tactile, immersive nature of virtual reality as allowing for better learning.

Related: Super Bowl 51 was the first available in virtual reality

Nel noted the limitations of offering in-store clinics taught by an employee. Such classes have to be given at set times, which may be inconvenient for customers. The virtual reality experience is available anytime the store is open.

"Virtual reality just happens to be the best way to give people what they want, when they want it," Nel said. "This is meant to be available to the entire country and Canada, not just those on the bleeding, cutting edge of tech."

The VR experience also lends itself to improvement. Lowe's (LOW) will monitor customers and see where they may be getting stuck. Improvements in the teaching process can be made. If Lowe's scales the experience to all of its stores, updates to the teaching process could be made overnight.

Lowe's trends team has found that millennials are forgoing DIY projects because they lack home improvement confidence and the free time for a project. For Lowe's, virtual reality might be a way to reverse that trend.

CNNMoney (Washington) First published March 7, 2017: 9:07 AM ET

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Lowe's turns to virtual reality for home improvement - Mar. 7, 2017 - CNNMoney

Anastasiya Sharkova talks about her VR experience at a SpiritualVR event.

What if we had a "Dream Marketing Machine" a way to easily and reliably churn out emotionally passionate customers for any brand? Like Apple's fanboys but much quicker and for a lot less money.

At a recent event hosted by SpiritualVR panelist on-boarding Sharkova said she was deeply moved by her first experience with virtual reality (VR) a title called theBlu:Encounter in which you go eye to eye with a blue whale.

She said the experience is so powerful and so overwhelming it bypassed all reason and logic. She knew it was all computer generated yet when she looked into eye of the blue whale she immediately felt a deep emphatic connection that lasted for days.

And she noticed a curious effect: she used a lot less water for the next two weeks.

This scares me. What if the Blue Whale represents a brand such as Big Blue -- IBM and I'm suddenly emotionally bonding with a commercial organization and I can't control it?

We know that VR can affect behavior because it is already used in therapeutic applications treating post traumatic stress disorders.

Its widespread use in marketing is inevitable and when combined with AI, biometric sensors and personalization -- it will become extraordinary in its effectiveness. A Dream Marketing Machine.

Dream or nightmare?

It's a dream for marketers because all they talk about is creating compelling and emotionally authentic media content. I recently spoke with Yuval Boger, CEO of open-source VR tech design company Sensics.

"We are still in early stages and the headsets and equipment needs to improve and cost less but we are seeing a lot of interest in marketing applications. There are some excellent opportunities to create powerful branded VR experiences."

- But would you willingly agree to a VR experience that you knew was designed to persuade you and manipulate your emotions for commercial gain? And then continue to influence your behavior long after the event?

- Would you allow the Disney whale to try to emotionally bond with your child?

- What if your new job required a swim with the company culture whale as part of HR's on-boarding?

- What if your government insists you swim with its patriotic whale?

Don't get hung up on these balaenopteran examples. The creature will be chosen and shaped just for you -- for maximum effect.

Total sphere of control...

Marketing is mostly confined to the periphery of our daily experience such as with online ads, billboards, etc.

VR gives creators control over the entire 360 degree sphere of the user experience -- every pixel every sound and every aspect of the narrative. Marketers have never ever had so much control.

Mass media critic Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s was alarmed by tiny TV screens.

- I wouldn't let my children into any marketing VR experience;

- I wouldn't use it;

- and I'd be mistrustful of hiring someone who had VR training at a competitor. Joseph Stalin got his US atomic bomb secrets because of spies motivated by an emotional connection to the Soviet Union and not because of money.

VR for social uses?

How about using VR for positive purposes? Using less water, getting fitter, eating better because of crafted VR experiences that work to change our behavior?

What if socially responsible VR experiences are sponsored by brands? Would that be OK? Would we trust them?

Question the future...

Society gains nothing by allowing its people to be ensnared by emotional bonds to abstract entities.

If our technologies of persuasion become too good at what they do -- and they will eventually reach that point -- then they become too good to use.

The question is: Who has the right to access our emotions? The government? Hollywood? Or anyone at anytime and in any way?

As our technologies of persuasion become more advanced the answer has to be: No one.

Until we understand that answer -- and make it work -- the world of marketing will rush into VR faster than Elon Musk in a Hyperloop pod.

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Technologies of persuasion: Virtual Reality and the Dream Marketing Machine - ZDNet

CNN is making a grand entrance into the immersive medium of VR with a new effort called CNNVR. Trumps favorite news source is launching the VR unitto transport users to the front row of global events.

The company is launching the VR unit with a feature highlighting the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. CNN has already worked on nearly 50 pieces of 360-degree content, so the mainnews is that there is now a more centralized home for viewing the content and a more formalized internal structure for producing it.

The big change for users is that 360-degree videos will now be natively viewable in CNNs iOS and Android app, making the app the third largest VR-capable mobile app according to the company, behind YouTube and Facebook. In addition to being viewable on smartphones, the media companys videos will also be accessible on select VR headsets, including the Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream and Oculus Rift. Desktop users will also be able to check out the content on their 360-compatible browser.

The company plans to highlight live-streamed VR content as well as produced regular VR programming.

Many have heralded VR as a particularly apt medium for capturing perspectives and fostering empathy for emotional situations unfolding across the globe. It certainly doesnt work for everything, but few mediums can capture the hell of war or the chaos of riots as well as 360 footage can.

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CNN launches dedicated virtual reality journalism unit | TechCrunch - TechCrunch

Forbes

The Future Of Virtual Reality Isn't Your Living Room - It's The Mall Forbes A wave of public space virtual reality (otherwise known as location-based entertainment or LBE) is breaking, allowing everyone to experience new high-end home VR systems whose requirements puts them out of the reach of most consumers. Unique ...

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The Future Of Virtual Reality Isn't Your Living Room - It's The Mall - Forbes

SXSW attendees next week will be able to climb into a cockpit for a virtual flyby of major Tokyo landmarks in whats being billed as the worlds first virtual-reality motion ride with ultra-high-resolution 8K video.

Unlike other virtual-reality implementations, the 8K VR motion ride at the Austin Convention Center will notrequire a head-mounted display or headphones instead, it uses a hemispherical screen and surround sound to provide the VR experience.

The two-seat ride is produced by a group of Japanese media and entertainment companies, led by NHK Enterprises and NHK Media Technology, which are affiliates of Japans public broadcaster, NHK. They worked with spherical-screen technology vendor Wonder Vision Techno Laboratory and RecoChoku Labo (the R&D department of digital-music provider RecoChoku) to develop the five-minute ride, which is described as a celebration of Tokyo as the host city for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

Whats the point?Aside from promoting Tokyo tourism, NHK is interested in showing whats possible with 8K technology, which the broadcaster has been a leader in developing. With a resolution of7680 by 4320 pixels or four times as many as Ultra HD 4K 8K promises visual displays that make it impossible for the human eye to detect individual pixels, delivering unprecedented realism.

The technology powering the 8K VR ride could be the predecessor of next-generationtheater experiences. However,there currently are no commercial plans for it,according to Tetsuya Fukuhara, executive producer, business development strategy for NHK Enterprises (NEP).

We wanted to enhance the technology by creating a new immersive VR experience for the SXSW audience that showcases our technological advancements and the beauty of Tokyo,Fukuhara explained.

At SXSW 2016, NEP and NHK Media Technology debuted their first 8K VR theater experience. For the ride at this years confab, the companies used Wonder Visions Sphere 5.2 visual system which is 5.2 meters wide, 3.4 meters high and 2.6 meters deep and added an 8K-compatible projector along with asix-axis motion base.

The ride features on-the-ground and aerial views of such sites such as Tokyo Tower (pictured below), Shibuya Crossing and Sens ji Temple. The rides soundtrack is Tokyo Victory, a hit song by Japans Southern All Stars that lead singer Keisuke Kuwata was inspired to write after Tokyo won the Olympics bid.

At SXSW 2017, the 8K VR ride will be available for showgoers to experience at the Austin Convention Center, Exhibit Hall 3, from March 12-14 (10 a.m.-4 p.m.) and March 15 (10 a.m.-12 noon).

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SXSW: 8K Virtual-Reality Ride From Tokyo Requires No Headset ... - Variety