Daily Archives: April 25, 2017

SpaceVR, a small spacecraft with eight cameras, will help deliver a virtual reality experience to Earth after it launches on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in September 2017. Wochit

SpaceVR's Overview 1 virtual reality satellite.(Photo: SpaceVR)

A spacecraft outfitted with high-resolution cameras willdeliver an astronaut-like virtual reality experience to the ground after it launches to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket later this year.

The small spacecraft,named Overview 1,will capture its surroundings in low Earth orbitwith eight cameras after it launches from the Space Coastaboard a Falcon 9 rocket in September. Thefootage will be transmitted to the ground before Overview 1 meets a fiery demise upon reentry into the atmosphere.

SpaceVR, the San Francisco-based startup in charge of designing the spacecraft, willinitially distribute the footage for the HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset. Founder and CEO Ryan Holmes said the footage will eventually come to "all major platforms" that support VR video, such as YouTube and Facebook.

[SpaceX next up on Eastern Range with Falcon 9 NRO launch]

As is the case with other VR experiences, users are not always required to use aheadset they can also pan, tilt and zoom using a mouseor by moving a smartphone around the scene.

Holmes, a native of Port. St. Lucie, credits the "Overview Effect" for inspiration behind founding the company.

"The Overview Effect is when astronauts go into space and they experience feeling what it's like to live amongst an infinite universe," Holmes told FLORIDA TODAY. "We saw that as one of the best experiences one could possibly have. So we sought to allow people to experience it through virtual reality by launching the world's first virtual reality satellite."

Initiallydescribed by "Overview Effect" author Frank White, NASA's Lunar Science Institute describes thephenomenon as "an experience that transforms astronauts perspective of the planet and mankinds place upon it."

As the company's first spacecraft, Overview 1's flight and the resulting footage is intended to be a technical demonstration of its capabilities. The company benefitted from a investment push in April 2016 and secured $1.25 million for the project.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A on Thursday, March 30, 2017.(Photo: SpaceX)

The tentative September launch will be SpaceX's thirteenth launch under theCommercial Resupply Services contract, known as CRS-13. Like previous launches, the company's Dragon spacecraftwill deliver equipment, supplies and science experiments to the crew of the ISS.

SpaceVR signed the launch agreement with NanoRacks, which will use itsCubeSat Deployer to release Overview 1 to low Earth orbit after Dragon arrives at the ISS. The loaf-of-bread-sized spacecraft was built by Pumpkin, which is also based in San Francisco.

SpaceX, meanwhile, is targeting Sunday for the launch of a classified intelligence satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. It's the first such mission by SpaceX for the NRO, which will take flight on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A during a two-hour window that opens at 7 a.m. A first stage landing is expected at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zone 1 shortly after liftoff.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook at @EmreKelly.

An Atlas V rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday, April 18, 2017 with a Cygnus spacecraft for the International Space Station.

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In a historic first for the company and the industry, SpaceX launched and landed a "flight proven," or refurbished, Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

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A Delta IV rocket carrying the military's WGS-9 satellite blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Saturday, March 18, 2017.

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SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Kennedy Space Center with the EchoStar 23 communications satellite on Thursday, March 16, 2017.

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully blasted off from Kennedy Space Center's historic pad 39A on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017. The first stage returned for a successful landing in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

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An Atlas V rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with the SBIRS missile detection satellite on Friday, Jan. 20, 2017.

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Atlas V rocket blasts off on mission with Cygnus spacecraft

SpaceX launches, lands 'flight proven' Falcon 9

Delta IV rocket launches from Cape Canaveral

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center

Falcon 9 blasts off from KSC, lands at Cape

Atlas V rocket blasts off with missile detection satellite

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SpaceX to launch virtual reality spacecraft on later ISS mission - Florida Today

A year ago, Kristina Jenkins considered herself a total novice when it came to virtual reality.

Thats changed since the summer, when Visit Philadelphia, the tourism marketing agency where shes digital content director, began the process for launching its own virtual reality platform.

Once considered inaccessible to the masses, virtual reality is now everywhere,including youriPhone;360-degree cameras are now fairly affordable, too. (Were setting aside the debate about whether systems like Google Cardboard have all the qualities that make up pure virtual reality, like full-motion tracking.)

And for place-based nonprofits in particular, tech like this can be extremely beneficial, saidJenkins, who will be speaking at our augmented and virtual reality bootcamp,Tech in the Commons, this Friday, as part of Philly Tech Week Presented by Comcast. Its hard to break through the noise online and I think content like this can help destinations do that and reach new audiences with a compelling, immersive viewing experience that really isnt like anything else.

Virtual view of the Schuylkill River. (Screenshot via visitphilly.com/virtual-tour)

(If you need a primer on these subjects, try our reading list here.)

According to Jenkins, who managed the virtual reality project for Visit Philly, the 20-year-old organization has always been ahead of the curve in the destination marketing world when it comes to using new technologies, such as implementingsocial media into its marketing strategy beforeit became the essential tool it is today.

But this brandof tech struck Jenkins as especiallyappropriate for Visit Phillys mission: Potential visitorsget an immersive view into a citys best features, thus (hopefully) improving their impression of the city and encouraging them to check it out in person.

It was really important for us to engage online visitors with a small snippet of what they could experience in Philadelphia, she said.

Virtual view of Pats King of Steaks. (Screenshot via visitphilly.com/virtual-tour)

Development of the virtual reality project started last summer. Visit Philly picked virtual reality marketing agency YouVisit as a partner because of its previous destination marketing work with cities such as Houston and Antigua, Guatemala. YouVisit alsohad its own hostingplatform with options for photo and video as well as virtual reality, so Visit Philly didnt need to do much of its own web development, Jenkins said.

After a fewdays of filming local landmarks in October and severalweeks of beta testingon Visit Phillys website, the project officially launched in March. Jenkins couldnt share numbers but said shes seen some pretty solid use of the platform: Website visitors whoengage with the toolhave almost doubled their time on the site.

Here are Jenkins tips for nonprofits looking to take on a similar project:

This Fridays Tech in the Commons event is sold out, but you can still sign up for the final three bootcamps, which will teach place-based nonprofits best practices for employingdata visualization, live video and social communicationsin their digital engagement strategies.

Julie Zeglen is Editor of Generocity. Previous to joining the Technically Media team, she served as managing editor of Star Community Newsweekly, a hyperlocal newspaper focused on Philadelphias River Wards. The Temple alumna lives in West Philly.

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A peek into Visit Philly's new virtual reality platform - Generocity

AMDs 2017 Product Roadmap Threatens Intel, Nvidia PART 1 OF 17

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has generated some talk with its new product launches, strong growth in its stock price, and a comeback in the high-end chip market. This turnaround happened under the leadership of AMDs president and chief executive officer, Lisa Su.

Advanced Micro Devices is the only company that offers both CPUs (central processing units) and GPUs (graphics processing units) and that has both ARM and x86 CPU architecture. This broad portfolio was once its disadvantage.

AMDs rivals Intel (INTC) in the CPU market and Nvidia (NVDA) in the GPU market have strong cash reserves to develop advanced products in their respective markets. However, AMDs limited cash was scattered across a broad portfolio. Advanced Micro Devices is turning this disadvantage to an advantage by tapping high-growth markets and developing integrated solutions.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is focusing on the fast-growing markets of gaming, data center, and virtual reality. These three markets present a $53 billion opportunity for AMD.

Within the gaming market, Advanced Micro Devices is looking to offer its Vega GPUs to gaming enthusiasts and its Polaris GPUs to mainstream gamers. AMD would also power Microsofts (MSFT) new Xbox Scorpio and Sonys new PlayStation 4.5 gaming consoles with its APUs (application processing units). With the advent of VR (virtual reality) in gaming, AMD looks to develop advanced VR headsets.

After seeing the success of Nvidias GPUs in the data center market, Advanced Micro Devices also entered in this space by supplying GPUs to Alibaba (BABA) and Googles (GOOG) hyperscale data centers. AMD is also looking to compete with Intel in the server space with its Naples CPU.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is looking to bring VR closer to reality, which would require high-end graphics, memory, and high processing power. So, the company is developing the Raven Ridge APU that would combine the Ryzen CPU and the Vega GPU. AMDrecently acquired wireless VR chip manufacturer Nitero to get rid of the wires attached to the VR headset.With all these efforts, AMD aims to become a leader in the VR space.

AMD is targetingall its research and development efforts on the above three markets. In this series, well look at the companys end markets and its efforts in each of these markets.

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AMD Investors Eye Virtual Reality, Gaming Capabilities - Market Realist

There's a lot of buzz around virtual reality(VR) right now and its potential to transform how we interact with technology and video content and as a catalyst for an entirely new computing platform, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has suggested.

It's still unclear when, or even if, VR will truly take off -- and even more ambiguous is whether it will truly benefit the companies that are betting on it. But in this space,NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) is emerging as not just a leader but also a company that's poised to bring in significant gains from its VR pursuits. Here's why.

Image source: Getty Images.

Early last year, NVIDIA itself noted that only 1% of PCs sold in 2016 were capable of running high-end VR devices. The vast majority simply didn't have the processing power to keep up.

VR will require powerful GPUs to render new gaming worlds, movies, shows, and other content through headsets, and that's great news for NVIDIA. The company holds 70.5% of the discrete desktop GPU market right now, followed by Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) with just 29.5%.

AMD has made some market share gains over the past couple of years and could put additional pressure on NVIDIA when it releases its new Vega architecture later this year. But NVIDIA's current lead and its ability to continually release new VR-ready graphics cards (even for notebooks) mean that its GPU sales will likely benefit as the VR market grows.

As Jon Peddie Research noted last year,"VR will be a multi-tier experience, like all entertainment platforms. Consoles will appeal to the casual user, whereas the PC with three to four times the processing power will be the platform for the intense gamer. In the PC market, NVIDIA has a substantial market share in enthusiast graphics boards, the type needed for Oculus and HTC VR experiences."

Aside from its leadership in the GPU space, the company has already created its own VR game and has its own VRWorks suit of APIs for developers to create their own VR games and apps, as well as a separate suit of APIs specifically for VR headset developers. It also has its GameWorks apps that help gamers buildVR experiences, and even taps into the company's deep learning systems to make the process much faster. In short, it's creating both the hardware and some of the tools that developers will need to grow the VR market.

NVIDIA already brings in 58% of its total revenue from selling GPUs in the gaming market, and as PC makers begin to bring more VR readiness to their devices, it's likely that NVIDIA's GPU sales will continue to expand. The move from desktop gaming to VR is a logical step in the gaming space, and there's no reason to believe that NVIDIA won't bridge that gap smoothly.

The huge advantage for NVIDIA right now is that it already has a solid position in gaming, and knows how to build on its GPU strengths and apply them to other markets. Its dominance in the GPU world and its own pursuits in building out new VR-ready graphics cards and tools for developers mean that the only way the company won't benefit from VR is if the market itself flops.

Chris Neiger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Will NVIDIA Benefit From Virtual Reality? - Motley Fool

by Elizabeth Tyree & Priscilla Kaiser

Emma Elliott created her own virtual reality complete with sound effects (Photo: Priscilla Kaiser)

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) -- It's one thing to learn how to master a virtual reality game and another to build one, but that's the project one senior at Lynchburg College decided to take on as her final project.

Emma Elliott created her own virtual reality complete with sound effects.

"I told the game to do that. I wrote the code to do that," she said. "Most of it I was learning on my own, it was kind of uncharted territory," Elliott said.

As a senior at Lynchburg College she decided to create the virtual reality video game for her final computer science project.

Elliott said she used software to help her create the space station scene she had hoped for that she calls "Puzzles in Space."

"You have to explore the maze to find three different buttons and that opens the door to get out and go to the next level," she said.

Elliott's professor, Doctor Joe Meehean said she's the one who took the project to the next level.

"Every computer science student does a year-long project, but not every student puts in the time and dedication that Emma does," said Dr. Meehean.

And, it took her every bit of time to master the program and bring her vision to reality.

"I'm a bit surprised, I think we're a both bit surprised at how well it had turned out," Dr. Meehean said. "She got an A, yeah, she got an A."

Also interested in the arts, especially theater, Elliott believes those skills has helped set her game apart.

"I find video games as well as virtual reality just another platform to tell a story on," she said.

Elliott says she plans to look for jobs in Engineering or Gaming when she graduates next month, and she said she wasn't sure she'd enjoy coding and building a game as much as she did.

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Lynchburg College senior creates virtual reality game - WSET