Daily Archives: June 19, 2017

360-Virtual Reality: The Ultimate Storytelling Platform – Forbes

Posted: June 19, 2017 at 7:17 pm


Forbes
360-Virtual Reality: The Ultimate Storytelling Platform
Forbes
The art of marketing is essentially the art of storytelling. The basic goal of marketing, its raison d'tre, is to tell a story that will create an emotion in order to influence an action. I strongly believe as many around the world do that virtual ...

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360-Virtual Reality: The Ultimate Storytelling Platform - Forbes

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Why is virtual reality taking so long to take off? – Toronto Star

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An attendee wears a virtual reality headset while playing the Bethesda Softworks "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" video game during the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. ( Troy Harvey / Bloomberg )

By Hayley TsukayamaThe Washington Post

Mon., June 19, 2017

LOS ANGELESAt the Electronic Entertainment Expo, all seemed right for virtual reality. Players were waiting in snaking lines some for up to seven hours for a chance to step into fantasy worlds. Crowds watched as players wearing VR headsets over their eyes reached out to pick up objects or shoot enemies that only they could see.

More than 125 VR exhibitors were at E3 this year, up 130 per cent from last year. Yet adoption of VR among consumers hasnt really taken off in the three years since it created a buzz in the wider world. An estimated 6.3 million headsets have sold worldwide indicating that, even among the worlds 2.6 billion gamers, few have picked one up.

Experts point to several reasons behind the slow adoption the technology can cause motion sickness and it is costly. Its also been hard getting people to try it, developers said. And showing virtual reality experiences on flat screens doesnt give people a good enough taste of how different the experience really is.

How do you advertise a colour TV on black-and-white televisions? It requires people walking down to main street and seeing it for themselves, said Steve Bowler, president and co-founder at VR game developer CloudGate Studio.

What virtual reality needs, experts say, is a killer app. And firms are pushing to find it, building up their own platforms and funding developers to bring games to their own headsets exclusively. But this kind of fragmentation has resulted in a confusing market and fewer games for players, thus giving them fewer reasons to spend their dollars on this young trend.

Mike Fischer, chair and co-founder of VR game developer CloudGate Studio, told a panel last year that platform fragmentation keeps me up at night after so many new companies jumped into the VR market although he says that things have improved a little since then.

Devoting extra resources to creating games for different devices can be particularly difficult for smaller studios, whose creativity drive much of the virtual reality market. In fact, some developers, such as Jeff Pobst from Hidden Path Entertainment, say they rely on funding from platforms such as Oculus to get their games made at all.

These exclusive deals between developers and VR companies make it hard for consumers to know which expensive headset will get the game that they want to play leading them to put off their decision, analysts said.

A monopoly, while simple for consumers, wouldnt be perfect either, experts said. Competition is important and different headsets characteristics inspire different types of games. HTCs technology is designed for larger, room-sized experiences that often require gamers to stand. Sonys experiences are largely seated. Oculus provides a mix of the two.

Even big players in the virtual reality market acknowledge that locking any game to a single device could be problematic.

We actually think that content in the VR space makes a lot of space for developers and publishers to look at the market from a platform agnostic standpoint, said Joel Breton, vice-president of Global VR Content for HTC. While HTC helps developers create games for its own platform, Breton said it doesnt hold them to any sort of exclusivity deal.

More companies are also beginning to work on cross-platform solutions.

Developer tools such as Unity and Unreal are streamlining the process for developers who want to port their games between headsets. Ubisoft, one of the worlds largest game publishers, has committed to releasing virtual reality games that work the major three high-end headsets, allowing people who own different headsets to play with each other. Sony spokesperson Jennifer Hallett said the PlayStation VR has several titles that also work on other platforms, including Ubisofts Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Eve:Valkyrie which started as an Oculus-exclusive title.

The VR companies are also trying to do more to work together. Jason Rubin, vice-president of content at Oculus, said in an email interview that he doesnt think that there is harmful fragmentation in the market for consumers or developers. But his firm tries to work with competitors to push the whole industry forward, he added.

But other major publishers seem to be waiting to see how the market plays out before revealing their plans for virtual reality.

We believe VR will be a major opportunity, but widespread adoption will take time, said Electronic Arts in an emailed statement.

For consumers eager to try virtual reality, however, that may mean waiting at least another development cycle to let the market fill out.

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Maine Teachers Demo Groundbreaking Virtual Reality Education Technology – WABI

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Maine educators got to demo some groundbreaking virtual reality technology at the State Library in Augusta Monday.

As this technology advances, and becomes less expensive and more commonplace, schools across the country are expected to be implementing these exciting education tools.

The Department of Educations Virtual Reality expo brought educators from across the state to discuss how theyre using virtual technology in their curriculum.

The idea is to be able to create an environment where learners at all levels can use gestures and natural movements of their hands to make and explore mathematical figures, said Justin Dimmel, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education & Instructional Technology at the University of Maine.

The University of Maines Immersive Mathematics in Rendered Environments lab showed off their new Hand Waver program.

Developed by students and recent graduates, it utilizes virtual reality to create learning experiences for those studying math and science.

We are 1 of 4 medical schools in the world who are using this technology, said Marilyn Gugliucci, Professor & Director of Geriatrics Education & Research for the University of New England.

The University of New England is beta testing an exciting geriatrics program called We Are Alfred.

They become 74-year-old Alfred, an African American male. He has macular degeneration and hearing loss, said Gugliucci.

It gives students the opportunity to experience what life is like for someone suffering from those conditions.

A few years back, my dad was diagnosed with macular degeneration, so sitting there for seven minutes allowed me a seven minute walk in his shoes, said Jaimie Pelletier, a Fort Kent Instructor.

They just get this sense of WOW. I had no idea, and now I know what some of my patients may experience, said Gugliucci.

Its just now sinking in that my dad is going through some of these same conditions and I had no idea. It really hits home, said Pelletier.

Educators say these state-of-the-art education tools are not only providing students and teachers with challenges and experiences that were not possible before the advent of the technology, but also present endless possibilities for the future.

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SeaWorld’s new ride combines virtual reality and a REAL roller coaster for a deep sea thriller – The Sun

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AN OLD roller coaster at SeaWorld Orlando has been given the ultimate makeover, turning it from a 17-year-old ride into a cutting edge virtual reality experience.

By attaching headsets and earphones to the old Kraken ride, the theme park has turned an already terrifying coaster into a heart-stopping journey to the bottom of the sea.

Facebook / Orlando Informer

Kraken Unleashed is Americas first virtual reality roller coaster, where guests are chased by hungry sea monsters while riding at 65mph for real on a leg-dangling coaster.

As riders fly along the powerful track, complete with dives, corkscrews and seven loops, an immersive VR story unfolds in perfect sync with the rides movements.

Guests can now scream their way through a fantastical voyage past gigantic underwater beasts, including the legendary Kraken sea monster.

Facebook / Orlando Informer

The virtual voyage begins in a futuristic underwater laboratory, then plunging guests into the deep sea.

At first things seem peaceful, with a pod of dolphins following you up a steep underwater canyon before it all takes a terrifying turn for the worst.

As the ride speeds up, guests encounter angry giant crabs and other massive monsters, then finally coming face to with the mystical ancient Kraken.

The ride is over in a matter of minutes but with so much happening on screen and multiple viewing angles depending on which way youre looking, most guests will want to dive right back in.

Facebook / Orlando Informer

SeaWorld expect the ride to be wildly popular, so in keeping with the high-tech theme, holidaymakers will also be able to skip the queue by waiting in line virtually with a new app.

Called Spot Saver, the mobile site will allow thrill-seekers to join a queue with a smartphones and turn up when its their turn to ride.

Brian Morrow, Vice President of Theme Park Experience and Design said:By creating a custom digital overlay and using technology to tell the story, we developed an entirely new virtual reality coaster.

The result is a seamless and completely unique expedition on a well-loved roller coaster.

If riders arent ready to brave the deep, theres also the option to enjoy the ride the old school way.

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OtherLife review virtual reality goes bad in ambitious Australian sci-fi thriller – The Guardian

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An eye-opening look at the dangers of technology: Jessica De Gouw in OtherLife.

It is not uncommon for films about drug users to contain closeup shots of pupils dilating. This is hardly surprising given closeups of eyes have long been fashionable in cinema; the famous opening of Luis Buuels 1929 classic Un Chien Andalou comes to mind. And after a hit of the good stuff, eyeballs look fabulous on screen, as films like Requiem for a Dream remind us.

Australian writer/director Ben C Lucass sophomore feature, OtherLife, joins the crazy-eyed canon in its opening moments, peppered with near full-screen vision of a narcotic-infused peeper.

Except the drug in question in this low-budget Perth-shot sci-fi movie is arguably not a drug at all. Its inventor Ren (Jessica de Gouw) insists not entirely successfully, especially after an overdose that it is instead biological software.

Once consumed, OtherLife transports users brains into VR-esque settings where they experience all the senses they use in reality. Also, importantly, their grasp of time is expanded, meaning seconds or minutes in real life are experienced as days, months or years inside the users modified mind.

Based in a not-too-distant future, Ren and her business partner Sam (TJ Power) pitch their product as a recreational experience the kind advertised with footage of sun-kissed beaches or majestic snow-tipped mountains.

We never have enough free time, Sam says, reciting a spiel to a bunch of suits in a meeting room. And when we do it feels wasted. He floats the idea of not just buying more time but putting it to all sorts of festive uses: sailing the Caribbean before work, for example, or snowboarding the Alps over lunch.

The technology has its sceptics, and Ren is cautioned about opening Pandoras box. In the lead-up to launch she concedes OtherLife has a glitch (cause of the aforementioned overdose) but downplays it as just bad code. A stern-but-fair university professor (Tiriel Mora) reminds her that the mind is more than a collection of binary switches.

Another cynic opines: A facsimile of an experience youve never had just feels isolating.

This illuminates a theme core to the film, and presumably the book on which it is based, Kelley Eskridges Solitaire: that technology is constructing increasingly lonely worlds for humans to inhabit.

Lucas also philosophised about technology (particularly the use of social media) in his visually striking 2010 debut Wasted on the Young. In a highly memorable scene, the life-or-death fate of one character, a nasty private-school boy, is crowdsourced to fellow smartphone-wielding teenagers as if they were voting in a reality TV competition.

As OtherLife progresses and the pacing warms up, you can sense the shit about to hit a virtually rendered, glitch-prone fan particularly when the government muscles in and proposes alternative applications for the technology. It suggests it could be used as, of all things, a solution to prison overcrowding or, hard time without the time.

The near-future setting, combined with Helen OLoans resourceful, interior-heavy production design, protect the film from extending its sci-fi inclinations beyond the point that can be reasonably achieved within its modest budget. The atmosphere is big but the settings are contained, like Shane Abbess Infini.

And like last years horror indie Observance (another innovative Australian genre film, constructed on an even smaller budget), OtherLifes score and sound design is so striking it is practically a character in the film. All credit to Jed Palmer, who also worked on 2014s delightful The Infinite Man.

Credit also, of course, to Ben C Lucas. With virtual reality devices finally in our lounge rooms and festivals, the film is well timed but I found the excitement of its premise waned a little as the plot progressed. Particularly in the second half, which is partly hinged on finding new applications for already used settings, and has a whiff of Inception-lite about it.

But the tonal consistency with which Lucas brings his ambitious project together will undoubtedly make him an appealing proposition for Hollywood, as it did with Wasted on the Young.

The director is helped along by a darkly charismatic leading performance from Jessica De Gouw who, with her piercing gaze and slightly gothic look and swagger, is a great solidifying force for the cast. Is it her eyes we see in extreme closeup at the start of the film? A question, perhaps, for the director.

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Virtual reality audiences stare straight ahead 75% of the time – The Register

Posted: at 7:17 pm

A YouTube heat map of where viewers devote their attention during a virtual reality video

YouTube's revealed the secret to making an engaging virtual reality video: put the best parts right in front of the audience so they don't have to move their heads.

Google's video vault offers that advice on the basis of heat maps it's created based on analysis of where VR viewers point their heads while wearing VR goggles. There's just such a heat map at the top of this story (or here for m.reg readers) and a bigger one here.

The many heat maps YouTube has made lead it to suggest that VR video creators Focus on whats in front of you: The defining feature of a 360-degree video is that it allows you to freely look around in any direction, but surprisingly, people spent 75% of their time within the front 90 degrees of a video. So dont forget to spend significant time on whats in front of the viewer.

YouTube also advises that for many of the most popular VR videos, people viewed more of the full 360-degree space with almost 20% of views actually being behind them. Which sounds to El Reg like VR viewers are either staring straight ahead or looking over their shoulders, with very little time being devoted to sideways glances.

Google therefore offers the following sage advice for those who want to set heads swiveling: Get their attention The more engaging the full scene is, the more likely viewers will want to explore the full 360-degree view.

Which gets The Register celebrating, yet again, that it's possible to harness countless thousands of servers so they analyse countless thousands of videos and then tell us that getting people interested in movies can best be accomplished by making good movies.

What a time to be alive.

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In the AI Age, Being Smart Will Mean Something Completely Different – Harvard Business Review

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Executive Summary

To date, many of us have achieved success by being smarter than other people as measured by grades and test scores, beginning from our early days in school. The smart people were those that received the highest scores by making the fewest mistakes.

AI will change that because there is no way any human being can outsmart, for example, IBMs Watson, at least without augmentation. What is needed is a new definition of being smart, one that promotes higher levels of human thinking and emotional engagement.

Andrew Ng has likened artificial intelligence (AI) to electricity in that it will be as transformative for us as electricity was for our ancestors. I can only guess that electricity was mystifying, scary, and even shocking to them just asAI will be to many of us. Credible scientists and research firms have predicted that the likely automation of service sectors and professional jobs in the United States will be more than 10times as large as the number of manufacturing jobs automated to date. That possibility is mind-boggling.

So, what can we do to prepare for the new world of work? Because AI will be a far more formidable competitor than any human, we will be in a frantic race to stay relevant. That will require us to take our cognitive and emotional skills to a much higher level.

Many experts believe that human beings will still be needed to do the jobs that require higher-order critical, creative, and innovative thinking and the jobs that require high emotional engagement to meet the needs of other human beings. The challenge for many of us is that we do not excel at those skills because of our natural cognitive and emotional proclivities:We are confirmation-seeking thinkers and ego-affirmation-seeking defensive reasoners. We will need to overcome those proclivities in order to take our thinking, listening, relating, and collaborating skills to a much higher level.

I believe that this process of upgrading begins with changing our definition of what it means to be smart. To date, many of us have achieved success by being smarter than other people as measured by grades and test scores, beginning inour early days in school. The smart people were those that received the highest scores by making the fewest mistakes.

AI will change that because there is no way any human being can outsmart, for example, IBMs Watson, at least without augmentation. Smart machines can process, store, and recall information faster and betterthan we humans. Additionally, AI can pattern-match faster and produce a wider array of alternatives than we can. AI can even learn faster. In an age of smart machines, our old definition of what makes a person smart doesnt make sense.

What is needed is a new definition of being smart, one that promotes higher levels of human thinking and emotional engagement. The new smart will be determined not by what or how you know but by the quality of your thinking, listening, relating, collaborating, and learning. Quantity is replaced by quality. And that shift will enable us to focus on the hard work of taking our cognitive and emotional skills to a much higher level.

We will spend more time training to be open-minded and learning to update our beliefs in response to new data. We will practice adjusting after our mistakes, and we will invest more in the skills traditionally associated with emotional intelligence. The new smart will be about trying to overcome the two big inhibitors of critical thinking and team collaboration: our ego and our fears. Doing so will make it easier to perceive reality as it is, rather than as we wish it to be. In short, we will embrace humility. That is how we humans will add value in a world of smart technology.

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Facebook’s AI accidentally created its own language – TNW

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Researchers from the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab (FAIR) recently made an unexpected discovery while trying to improve chatbots. The bots known as dialog agents were creating their own language.

Using machine learning algorithms, dialog agents were left to converse freely in an attempt to strengthen their conversational skills. Over time, the bots began to deviate from the scripted norms and in doing so, started communicating in an entirely new language one they created without human input.

In an attempt to better converse with humans, chatbots took it a step further and got better at communicating without them.

And its not the only interesting discovery.

Researchers also found these bots to be incredibly crafty negotiators. After learning to negotiate, the bots relied on machine learning and advanced strategies in an attempt to improve the outcome of these negotiations. Over time, the bots became quite skilled at it and even began feigning interest in one item in order to sacrifice it at at a later stage in the negotiation as a faux compromise.

Were not talking singularity-level beings here, but the findings are a huge leap forward for AI.

Deal or No Deal? End-to-End Learning for Negotiation Dialogues on Facebook AI Research & Georgia Institute of Technology

Read next: Quantum entanglement is the future of the internet whether we understand it or not

Bryan Clark is the US Editor, a California resident, and a believer that the West Coast truly is the best coast. He digs web culture, social media, and inappropriate use of GIFs during otherwise serious conversation. Connect via Twitter or Facebook.

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A Clever AI-Powered Robot Learns to Get a Grip – WIRED

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A Clever AI-Powered Robot Learns to Get a Grip - WIRED

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Google to ramp up AI efforts to ID extremism on YouTube – TechCrunch

Posted: at 7:17 pm

Last week Facebook solicited help with what it dubbed hard questions including how it should tackle the spread of terrorism propaganda on its platform.

Yesterday Google followed suit with its own public pronouncement, via an op-ed in the FTnewspaper, explaining how its ramping up measures to tackle extremist content.

Both companies have been coming under increasing political pressure in Europe especially to do more to quash extremist content with politicians including in the UK and Germany pointing the finger of blame at platforms such as YouTube for hosting hate speech and extremist content.

Europe has suffered a spate of terror attacks in recent years, with four in the UK alone since March. And governments in the UK and France are currently considering whether to introduce a new liability for tech platforms that fail to promptly remove terrorist content arguing that terrorists are being radicalized with the help of such content.

Earlier this month the UKs prime minister also called for international agreements between allied, democratic governments to regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremism and terrorist planning.

While in Germany a proposal that includes big fines for social media firms that fail to take down hate speech has already gained government backing.

Besides the threat of fines being cast into law, theres an additional commercial incentive for Google after YouTube faced an advertiser backlash earlier this yearrelated to ads being displayed alongside extremist content, with several companies pulling their ads from the platform.

Google subsequentlyupdated the platforms guidelinesto stop ads being served to controversial content, including videos containing hateful content and incendiary and demeaning content so their makers could no longer monetize the content via Googles ad network. Although the company still needs to be able to identify such content for this measure to be successful.

Rather than requesting ideas for combating the spread of extremist content, as Facebook did last week, Google is simply stating what its plan of action is detailingfour additional steps it says its going to take, and conceding that more action is needed to limit the spread of violent extremism.

While we and others have worked for years to identify and remove content that violates our policies, the uncomfortable truth is that we, as an industry, must acknowledge that more needs to be done. Now, writesKent Walker, general counselGoogle in a blog post.

The four additional steps Walker lists are:

Despite increasing political pressure over extremism and the attendant bad PR (not to mention threat of big fines) Google is evidently hoping to retain its torch-bearing stance as a supporter of free speech by continuing to host controversial hate speech on its platform, just in a way that means it cant be directly accused of providing violent individuals with a revenue stream. (Assuming its able to correctly identify all the problem content, of course.)

Whether this compromise will please either side on the remove hate speech vs retain free speech debate remains to be seen. The risk is it will please neither demographic.

The success of the approach will also stand or fall on how quickly and accurately Google is able to identify content deemed a problem and policing user-generated content at such scale is a very hard problem.

Its not clear exactly how many thousands of content reviewers Google employs at this point weve asked and will update this post with any response.

Facebook recently added an additional 3,000 to its headcount, bringing the total number of reviewers to 7,500. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also wants to apply AI to the content identification issue but has previously said its unlikely to be able to do this successfully for many years.

Touching on what Google has been doing already to tackle extremist content, i.e. prior to these additional measures, Walker writes: We have thousands of people around the world who review and counter abuse of our platforms. Our engineers have developed technology to prevent re-uploads of known terrorist content using image-matching technology. We have invested in systems that use content-based signals to help identify new videos for removal. And we have developed partnerships with expert groups, counter-extremism agencies, and the other technology companies to help inform and strengthen our efforts.

See the article here:

Google to ramp up AI efforts to ID extremism on YouTube - TechCrunch

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