Monthly Archives: June 2017

USA TODAY Sports gets an inside look at the remarkable technology that will soon change the way people across the world consume sports. USA TODAY Sports

Camera pods will be set up throughout MLB ballparks.(Photo: Intel)

NEW YORKMajor League Baseball is about to play ballin virtual reality.

The league is teaming up with Intel to deliver a live-streaming game of the week in VR, starting Tuesday when the Colorado Rockies host the Cleveland Indians. Weekly games will be blacked out in the participating teams local markets, the same way the league handles out-of-market streams on MLB TV and on Twitter.

The non-exclusive Intel-MLB virtual reality partnership is set for three years. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Youll need a Samsung Gear VR (and compatible smartphone) to take in the game virtually, and must also download the Intel True VR app, available free in the Oculus store.

To bring you closer to the field, Intel plans to use an array of 4K-resolution cameras in the home team stadium, giving fans up to four camera angles per game in real time. So you might get to watch from the perspective of the first or third base coaches, or from the dugout. Or inthe case of Chase Fieldwhere the Arizona Diamondbacks play, from the outfield swimming pool view. Camera pods are automated, so you get to choose the views you want.

"Think of it as a highly personalized experience," says David Aufhauser, head of product at Intel Sports Group.

Youll also have the option of watching a fully produced VR broadcast, with audio most likely piped in from the regular radio feed. Intel and the league are not assigning a dedicated announcing crew to the VR broadcast. Stats and highlightswill also be available.

While Major League Baseball has dabbled in VR beforewith post-production efforts around last years All-Star Game and postseason, and through some At Bat VR offerings on Google's Daydream virtual reality platformthe Intel partnership is the first in which full live games will be streamed in virtual reality. It's something rival leagues such as the NBA already deliver on select games.

Whether fans choose to watch an entire three hour baseball game wearing a headsetremains to be seen.

Intel's VR production truck.(Photo: Intel)

Kenny Gersh, an executive vice president for business at MLB Advanced Media, says when it comes to virtual reality we are not even in the first inning yet, and he expects the experiences offered by the end of the three-year agreement to look very different from what will be available next week. But he thinks the pace of a baseball game, in which there are pauses between pitches and innings, will give fans the opportunity to somewhat leisurely toggle among the different views.

For now, Gersh says there are no plans to bring VR to this years All-Star game,playoffs or World Series, in part because of rights issues.

And since Intel will only placeits VR cameras in one ballpark per week, there is no immediate backup in case the VR game on the schedule is rained out.

You might also like:

For the ideal experience, view in 360 degrees on your mobile phone or in VR headsets such as Google cardboard or Daydream.Subscribe to VRtually Thereon YouTube and browse the Virtual Reality section of the USA TODAY app (iOS|Android) to catch three new episodes every week.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2rttU52

Original post:

Major League Baseball to live-stream games in virtual reality - USA TODAY

Team USA athlete Laura Zeng attends Samsungs Virtual Reality Experience Powered by Gear VR during the 2016 Road to Rio Tour in Times Square on April 27, 2016 in New York City. Neilson Barnard Getty Images for Samsung

Virtual reality's hype hasn't become reality yet.

But the nascent market for VR headsets is showing some signs of life, at least for the relatively inexpensive versions.

Samsungs Gear VR headset, one of the cheaper VR headsets, is the most popular, according to an International Data Corporation report published on Thursday. Samsung shipped 490,000 of those headsets in the first quarter, giving the company a 21.5% market share.

This is the first time that IDC is releasing data about VR headset shipments, so it did not provide detailed information about first quarter shipments compared to previous quarters. But it did give a vague idea about whether Samsung's VR business is growing.

Get Data Sheet , Fortunes technology newsletter.

In fact, Samsung saw an annual decline in shipments, according to IDC. But IDC believes the decline is merely a temporary consequence of Samsungs recent debacle involving the recall of its much-anticipated Note 7 smartphone due to exploding batteries.

With the updated Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphones approaching release, IDC believes that Gear VR headset shipments will likely pick up steam. A Samsung marketing gimmick that gave customers who pre-ordered Galaxy S8 phones a free Gear VR headset almost guarantees some increase in shipments. That deal has since expired.

Sony is the second on IDC's list with 429,000 PlayStation VR headsets shipped in the first quarter. The PlayStation VR requires a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 4 Pro video game console to operate. Although the PlayStation VR is not as powerful as competing headsets like the HTC Vive or Facebooks Oculus Rift, the fact that millions of people already own a compatible Sony gaming console is one reason IDC believes Sony will likely remain a leader in the near term.

Additionally, several big video game publishers like Capcom said they would make some of their big-name titles compatible with the PlayStation VR. For example, Capcom's latest Resident Evil horror game, which debuted in January, works with the PlayStation VR. IDC believes that Sony will benefit from the availability of blockbuster games.

HTC is the third biggest VR headset supplier with 191,000 of its Vive headsets shipped in the first quarter. Although the Vive is the most expensive VR headset on the market at $800, IDC said that the Taiwanese smartphone maker enjoyed success in the commercial space as VR cafes have been popping up around the world, particularly in Asia. Imax ( imax ) , for example, is using the HTC Vive in its handful of VR arcades that it is opening this year.

Facebooks ( fb ) Oculus Rift headset and the Alcatel VR headset are in bottom 5 of IDCs headset tracker report. IDC said that Oculus shipped 100,000 Rifts while Alcatel shipped 91,000 in the first quarter.

The Oculus Rift had a rocky debut last spring as it dealt with shipping delays , legal battles , and management problems involving the Rifts controversial co-founder Palmer Luckey , who has since left Facebook.

For more about technology and finance, watch:

However, Facebook ( fb ) recently dropped the price of the Oculus Rift to presumably get more customers and has released new accessories like motion controllers, which IDC said would help the company provide a compelling alternative for VR enthusiasts.

IDC did not include shipments of Google's ( goog ) Daydream View headset, which must be tethered to a compatible smartphone to operate, in its research.

Read more from the original source:

Sony and Samsung Lead the Nascent Virtual Reality Market - Fortune

In the early days of virtual reality shooters, adding another human to the experience turns out to be an easy win. Games like Raw Data, Farpoint, and the upcoming Killing Floor: Incursion are all best with two people. But Gunheart, the first game from studio Drifter Entertainment, is the only one that also lets you blow balloons with your friends between rounds.

Gunheart is launching on all major high-end VR platforms: Oculus Rift and HTC Vive this summer, then PlayStation VR later in the year. Its designed as a full-length game for three players, with a focus on cool weapons, fast-moving combat, and cooperation. Imagine an even more frenetic version of Borderlands in VR, with greater immersion but so far a lot less character.

Although Gunheart comes from a new studio, the games core team is made up of experienced developers. Ray Davis was general manager at Epic Games, where he worked on the Gears of War series and on Robo Recall, one of the most polished VR shooters ever made. Kenneth Scott is a longtime art director who previously worked at id Software and Oculus. And Brian Murphy is a former designer and creative director at Microsoft.

The gameplay looks fun, but it needs more character

Unfortunately, like a lot of VR games, Gunheart looks generic on the surface. Its name sounds like something from a Rob Liefeld superhero generator, and its central conflict killing bug-like monsters in a rocky alien landscape is the premise of Farpoint as well. Cooperative play is a great element to add, but its also a shortcut that lets developers avoid having to create characters or compelling narratives. VR games have to be developed on an aggressive timeline to keep up with the fast-changing industry, and Gunheart looks like one of the more substantive efforts. But it doesnt feel distinctive in the way we expect from good non-VR games, even ones enjoyed mostly for their gameplay.

In Gunhearts favor, the gameplay is shaping up to be a lot of fun, based on my run through an early build of one level. It pulls together an armory based on items people already love using with motion controls, including conventional weapons, a crossbow, and a disc-throwing gun reminiscent of the science fiction frisbees in sports games RipCoil and Sparc. Players can wield one in each hand, or combine them into a unique super-weapon by holding their hands together. You could probably go it alone, but you wouldnt be able to surround enemies with other people, or have one person lay down fire with a long-range weapon while another gets up close with a shotgun.

Gunhearts teleportation system makes it possible to reach places youd never get with standard video game running or jumping. You can pop instantly around areas to find cover spots and vantage points, or rush an enemy and then blink back to revive a fallen partner. A lot of VR developers early on looked at teleport as sort of a handicap that caused less motion sickness than running, says Davis. We really embraced it as a first-class citizen, and realized it feels like a superpower. Its also apparently easier to get players to notice things above their heads in VR. It unlocks vertical spaces in a way that we always wanted to do in shooters, Murphy says.

The multiplayer lobby is a literal lobby

And although the game badly needs a fresher aesthetic, it does have one clever feature I havent found anywhere else: the standard multiplayer lobby is a literal lobby, or at least a spacious lounge. Instead of holding guns, players use a device in their hands to blow balloons, draw voxels in midair, or produce a giant foam hand to give high-fives. Will most people spend much time here? Its hard to say. And when players start games with random strangers instead of acquaintances, Drifter will also need a robust anti-harassment system, if it wants to avoid the problems other VR games have faced. But the lobby still offers a non-violent playfulness thats rare in shooters.

Gunheart still feels very much like a first-wave VR game, but its riding the tail end of that wave, learning from the early successes and failures of VR shooters. I just hope I can find enough friends with headsets to play it.

Read more:

Gunheart looks like Borderlands for virtual reality - The Verge

Virtual reality has emerged as a hot topic in banking with the rise of artificial intelligence, innovation labs, and the eath of the physical bank branch. Theres a way to tap into the mind of the customer through VR, but how it should fit into the business is still a mystery for most.

Venture capital funding in VR totaled $2 billion from 2015-2016, according to Digi-Capital and revenue from VR is expected to hit $162 billion or more by 2020 from $5.2 billion in 2016, according to IDC Research.

Its still early for banks interested in bringing VR into their business. And like any new technology, VR is going to face some opposition before its more widely adopted across financial services. Just because banks can use it, doesnt mean they should use it everywhere, or at all. Banks are experimenting with how to use it, when its appropriate, and who their partners will be. One thing is for certain, though: if customer like it, banks will want it.

Banking customers have rarely seen a channel or a way to interact with a bank that they didnt like, said Raja Bose, global retail banking consulting leader at Genpact. Branches, contact centers, online, mobile; banks are now letting customers interact with them via social media. The more ways you get consumers to touch their banks the better and there are always going to be some consumers that like it and wanna do it.

However, some banks have dabbled in the technology already. Below are examples of three banks brushes with VR.

Read it on tearsheet.co

Follow this link:

How banks are using virtual reality - Digiday

A virtual operating theatre is helping train up surgeons on new procedures.

Virtual reality is often touted as a way of creating fantasy universes, but it could also turn out to be an effective way of teaching skills that are hard to practice in the real world.

Take training up the doctors of tomorrow, for example. US university Case Western has already announced it plans to do away with its anatomy labs, and the cadavers that go with them, and teach medical students with Microsoft's HoloLens 'mixed reality' system instead. Aspiring doctors will be able to wear HoloLens headsets, and view the different layers of a body -- skin, muscle, blood vessels, and so on -- in 3D.

But going one step further, one UK company is trying to recreate the hands-on aspects of surgery in a VR setting, allowing students to get a sense of how the human body feels in using haptic feedback.

Fundamental VR, based in London and Guildford, has added a haptics element to virtual reality to allow medics to train without having to test out their nascent skills on an actual patient.

The system combines the HoloLens headset and the company's software with a stylus connected to a standard-issue mechanical arm.

The stylus appears as a syringe in the VR world the wearer sees, with one button to empty the syringe, and another to refill it.

Moving the stylus in the real world moves the syringe in the simulation, and when the virtual needle meets the virtual skin, flesh, or bone, the varying resistance of the material is transmitted through the stylus to the user, giving them a powerful facsimile of a real-live body.

The idea is that encountering different elements of the body -- like fat or bone -- should feel very different.

The first system, set up to resemble a total knee arthroscopy, was custom-built for the drug company Pacera to teach clinicians how to do a procedure using one of its products, an anaesthetic called Exparel.

Unlike traditional most anaesthetics, where a larger dose is injected in one go and spreads out widely from the injection site, Exparel is injected in several doses and stays largely where it's put. For some surgeons, the change in procedure was difficult to grasp, and so the VR teaching tool was born.

The imagery for the system was created by taking a series of photos of a knee to build up its 3D counterpart. Off-the-shelf haptic hardware is used to stand in for the syringe in the Pacera system, but could equally act as any medical tool that's needed.

Surgeons weigh in

Building a system that could faithfully recreate the experience of surgery required a mixture of human and technological smarts. In order to build the VR setup for knee replacement surgery, the company canvassed the opinions of orthopaedic surgeons on the steps that make up each procedure.

"Surgery is about science, but also about art, and where there's art, there's opinion. Getting to a common standard where people agree what's the right way to do that and on best practice, that took some time. Once we had got that, we were ready to start embracing some of the challenges of texture and tissue types and how those change throughout the procedure," Richard Vincent, cofounder of Fundamental VR, told ZDNet.

Next the surgeons were enlisted to help convert the real-life experience of surgery into a virtual version, with the company's haptics development engine the bridging the real and VR world.

"We built a calibration tool: it's the core of our software that allows us to quickly translate what are quite difficult things to communicate into numbers... we started with people saying 'it's like sticking a needle into an orange' or 'it's like chicken', then you can basically adjust it in real time until they agree it's how they feel and average that out," Vincent said.

Dr Stan Dysart, an orthopaedic surgeon that specialises in joint replacements at Georgia-based Pinnacle Orthopaedics, was among the surgeons that contributed their first-person perspective of knee operations to help the system recreate the authentic feel of surgery, assigning each element of the human body a number that corresponds to a certain texture.

"The haptic device has a scoring system, and I helped them decide what a needle feels like in capsule, what it feels like in muscle, in fat, in periosteum, and what it feels like on bone," he said. Fat, for example, is extremely forgiving, while the capsule has a fibrous, plastic-like texture.

"The capsule has a certain resistance, and when you go through the capsule, resistance releases, so you can score that -- you can score that [level of haptic] feedback, and score a different feedback for every part of the knee. You give it a number, and computers understand numbers -- the higher the number, the greater the resistance the surgeon will feel," Dysart said.

Once the surgeons have agreed on the haptic-feedback rating for each layer of the body, from muscle to bone, the haptics system can translate that back into the level of feedback the VR wearer will feel when they apply the virtual syringe -- a matter of balancing the amount of processing that the scenario needs with the abilities of the GPU underpinning the system to produce a smooth experience for the user.

The total knee arthroscopy-related system is already being used by surgeons in centres across the US, and it's helping surgeons refine their techniques, according to Dysart.

"Surgeons love it. They enjoy the experience, they enjoy practicing without potentially damaging a live patient. That's where it's important. Everything we do in live surgery has a consequence -- how deep do you cut? where do you cut? where do you inject? -- because there are nerves and arteries all about the knee.

"In virtual reality, if you plunge the needle too deeply, nothing is injured. You realise you've done it incorrectly, and you can do it over and over until you have the right technique. That's the beauty of this," he said.

Alongside the total knee arthroscopy, Fundamental VR has three more custom setups in the pipeline including a soft tissue and a spine procedure that it expects will go live at some point this summer.

Teaching tool

Fundamental VR is already talking to educational institutions about how haptics-based systems could be used to teach students to improve their skills or help established doctors learn new procedures before they try them out on the wards. For now, Fundamental VR is concentrating on the US market, though it has had conversations with teaching facilities both in London and abroad.

As well as building more specific one-off systems for clients in future, the company also expects to create a library of common procedures that can be accessed on a subscription basis. Long with 'standard' anatomy, the company could potentially create variants to introduce students to some of the rarer anatomical variations or conditions.

"[Removal of] the appendix is still the most performed operation, so having a better way of teaching that would be useful for lots of people, but on the flip side, there's a lot of opportunity [for doctors] to be around that and observe that," Fundamental VR's Vincent said.

"But if you go into neurology, there may be something you only see three times a year, but it's a life-and-death situation. The number of people that need that training is much less and it might be harder to make the business case, but the human case in much stronger," he continued.

While haptics system might not go over well with all surgeons -- some more senior clinicians found the simulations a bit too close to computer gaming -- the company prefers to liken it to the way pilots use flight simulators.

"We go to lots of conferences where we talk to lots of surgeons about how, say, when you face this bleed at this moment, and you've got five minutes to deal with it, it's never going to make that a less traumatic moment when it happens, but if you go through a simulator that gets you close to it a few times, that has got to be good thing," Vincent explained.

Practicing on VR, not patients

Once mixed and virtual reality become cheaper and more common, haptics and VR could be used to create models of individual patients before they undergo surgery.

"If you could create from those scans something where we could share the kidney, move it around, agree how to get in there, what's the plan, how do we make the surgery the quickest and most effective, that would be good for patient safety," Chris Scattergood, Fundamental VR's co-founder, said.

The future of medical VR, then, will be a mix of teaching students and professionals how to do high-volume, routine operations of the kind that are done hour after hour in hospitals across the world, as well as to understand niche procedures that clinicians at the highest level may only see once or twice in their lives.

Either way, while doctors are practising the skills they need to perform the procedures, they'll be learning virtually, making their mistakes away on a computer system and perfecting their techniques long before they get to use them on their patients.

Visit link:

Surgery in virtual reality: How VR could give trainee doctors the feel of real patients - ZDNet

Safely decommissioning any nuclear reactor is a challenge. However, how do you decommission a Cold War-era production nuclear reactor thats more than 60 years old? This is the problem that engineers are facing at the Savannah River Site (SRS), a 310 square mile Department of Energy site in rural South Carolina constructed in 1952 to help the U.S. produce nuclear weapons. The five reactors at SRS known as R, P, K, L, and C were once used to produce plutonium and tritium. When the Cold War ended, their products were no longer needed, and the last of them was operational in 1992. But the story doesnt end there. Closing nuclear reactors is a huge job that must be done properly, and this is the mission of the DOE Environmental Management Office. The work continues with planning for decommissioning of C Reactor.

What lies inside?

The P and R reactors were decommissioned simultaneously. The process included the removal of millions of gallons of water and the pouring of over 200,000 cubic yards of grout. To assist in the planning of this process, engineers and designers at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) reviewed thousands of construction drawings for the buildings and key pieces of equipment. The team quickly realized it was difficult to fully understand what was inside the reactors because the drawings were a guide for construction, organized by phase of construction and craft. This meant that there was no real map for what was inside the building, as there was no single drawing that could provide all of the relevant information for any given room.

To help provide the decommissioning team with a sense of space inside the reactors, the SRNL team created 3D CAD models and 3D printed models of the building structures and key equipment. Once completed, the printed models helped the team understand the building better because it presented the layers of data in a way that humans normally process datain three dimensions. Even engineers with years of experience need to interpret two dimensional drawings into a 3D image. When the information is spread across as many drawings, interpreting the data becomes a serious challenge.

The 3D printed models also improved the safety of the decommission teams on the ground. Every entry of workers into the facilities exposed them to various dangers; tripping hazards, heat stress, and radiation exposure. Having models available for review offsite reduced the number of walkdowns required in the actual buildings and allowed the teams to plan movements more effectively before entering the facilities.

Read more:

Virtual Reality for Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors - R & D Magazine

No need to attend festivals or buy expensive viewing gear to live some of the most moving virtual reality documentaries; in fact, many can be experienced from the comfort of ones living room provided you have a smartphone ideally of the latest generation and a good internet connection or data plan.

Though a headset, even a do-it-yourself cardboard one, is useful to block out your surroundings and immerse yourself more fully in the world, there is also something to be said about trying them as 360-degrees experiences. The juxtaposition between your world and the one on your device can create stirring moments. When a view of a destroyed street in Syria lines up with your hallway, it is hard not to project yourself and think of what it would feel like if you were to open your door to a war zone. It brings the story home.

Since the New York Times launched with fanfare their NYT VR app in November 2015 by sending out Google Cardboard viewers to over a million of their subscribers, several media organizations have followed suit. Many developed their own application (DiscoveryVR, LIFE VR, WSJ VR, for instance); some, like The Guardian with 6x9, built an app dedicated to a singular experience; while others, partner with existing VR companies.

But prominent members of the fourth estate are not the only ones creating compelling content. Tech companies, film studios and individuals are also using the latest innovations to share the stories that matter to them.

Here are a few of the most recent productions that have caught our attention.

Under the Cracked Sky by The New York Times On the edge of the world, at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, a group of researchers monitor life under the ice. Their job involves diving through a small hole into in frigid waters, the clearest in the world. Two of them, Rob Robbins and Steven Rupp, invite you to join them thanks to VR.

To give the impression that youre swimming with them rather than being carried by them, the New York Times team provided them with a customized underwater rig strapped to a nine feet pole. This way the diver handling it would recede in the background and, thus make way for majestic and unparalleled views of frozen seawater stalactites, ice caves and rocky black seabed. We told them: essentially youre swimming with a persons head down there, so act accordingly: avoid sudden movements, twisting and turning, or changing speed too quickly, explains Graham Roberts, one of the producers.

They recorded several dives over the course of one week, which were then edited into one mesmerizing and illuminating experience. Much of the time is spent gazing upwards, marveling at the light streaming through the ice while also considering how dangerous such a dive is the way in is also the only way out , and looking for the cheeky seals whose calls you can distinctly hear around you. It checked all the boxes for a VR project," adds Robert. It takes people somewhere they couldnt otherwise go to, it deals with an important topic, climate change, and it provided us with the opportunity to record unique imagery.

Time: 9 minutes App: NYT VR

The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers Shoes by National Geographic The numbers associated with elephant poaching are staggering. The Great Elephant Census recorded a population drop of 30% between 2007 and 2014 to just over 350,000 beasts. The decline is mostly due to poaching, which claims a life every 15 minutes. Simply put, at this rate, the large mammal could be extinct within the next 12 years.

To stop the massacre, park rangers risk their lives. In Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, nineteen of them have been killed in action over the past decade. These men are unassuming heroes and we wanted to tell their stories in a way that is multifaceted. As you journey into the savannah, youre also journeying deeper and deeper into their minds and psyches, says Imraan Ismail, who worked with Oscar-winning film director Kathryn Bigelow on this project.

Embedded with these wildlife watchmen, he filmed their daily lives from their time at home with loved ones, to their swift training and the tense patrols. He asked them about their relationship to the animals, to each other, and to their most often invisible enemies. The immersive experience, which at times was filmed by the rangers themselves as they trail elephants and go after poachers, gives you a sense of how unnerving it is to move through the bush when danger lurks all around.

Time: 8 minutes App: Within

Capturing Everest by LIFE VR Many have tried to convey what it is like to climb Mount Everest, the highest peak on earth. Adventurer Jon Krakauer described it in words in Into Thin Air, blind mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer had his ascent filmed for Farther than the Eye Can See, Liam Neeson narrated an IMAX documentary, and the list goes on. It was a matter of time before people took VR cameras to the top of the world. So, it comes as no surprise that the LIFE VR team, in association with Sports Illustrated, would try their hands at it too.

While the footage was already shot when it fell into their hands, theyre the ones who turned it into a mini-series that follows the adventure of Jeff Glasbrenner, who lost his leg in a tractor accident as a child, and Lisa Thompson, who was recovering from cancer. There was a lot to communicate: the inspiring journeys of Jeff and Lisa, the dangers associated with the climb, the long periods of waiting for the conditions to be favorable, the life at basecamp, the importance of the Sherpas, etc.," says Mia Tramz, Managing Editor at LIFE VR [LIFE VR is a Time Inc. company] . "Its a story about climbing Everest, but its also one about human nature."

Each of the four chapters focuses on a different challenge: getting ready, making it to basecamp, navigating the treacherous Khumbu Icefall and reaching the top. Everyone wants to see what its like to get to the summit," says Glasbrenner. "But, to me, the most representative scenes are those in the tents. You have to stay motivated while waiting for the conditions to allow you to continue. You miss your family and the comforts of home while also battling self-doubt." Though it helped his family and friends better understand exactly how much of a feat it was to reach the peak, he also acknowledges that some experiences are impossible to capture, especially how the lack of oxygen makes everything so much more difficult, even putting your shoes on is an effort.

Time: 4 episodes of approximately 9 minutes each App: LIFE VR

Step to the Line by Ricardo Laganaro with VR for Good Inside a California maximum-security prison, inmate and volunteers face one another. A facilitator from Defy Ventures, a training program for currently and formerly incarcerated Americans, asks those who relate to the statements she read to move forward. I heard gunshots in my neighborhood growing up: most prisoners take a step. Ive earned a four-year college degree: the tables turn. Ive done criminal things for which I could have been arrested, but did not get arrested: most of the people present step to the line and shake hands. The 360-degrees camera is set in the middle of the two rows putting you in the middle of this social experience.

This sets the stage for us to meet Trebian Tre Ward, one of the convicts. As Ricardo Laganaro, who took part in Oculus VR for Good initiative that paired filmmakers with non-profit organizations to explore immersive technologies promise to foster empathy, was developing the project, he realized that there are a lot of misconceptions regarding what it is like to be in prison. We think we know what its like because of all the movies," says the Brazilian artist. "But you dont, actually. Especially the cell, its really different from what you see in films that portray it as an empty space. In VR you can look around and see the wardrobe, the cabinet, and the belongings of the two inmates that share it. Theres a lot in there. My main goal was to provoke a transformation of the viewers opinion. I want him to move from being scared of the guy, to understanding a little bit of his past and current struggle, to cheering for him and thinking about the future, not what he did anymore. Mission accomplished.

Time: 11 minutes App: Facebook

Peoples House by Flix & Paul For all those who miss seeing Barack Obama in the White House, your prayers have been answered. Thanks to the Peoples House, a project by the Montreal-studio Flix & Paul, you can visit Americas most famous home with the 44th President and First Lady as your guides.

Thanks to a custom-designed robotic platform, it feels as if youre moving seamlessly through the different spaces as your prestigious docent share historical tidbits and personal anecdotes about 23 of the rooms.

Filmed over five days at the end of Obamas tenure, the immersive experience is an opportunity for the former First Family to reflect on their time at 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue. You learn that Obamas first impression of the Oval Office was that it wasnt as big as I imagined it on television, while it took Michelle months to feel like she was at home rather than in a museum.

Time: 22 minutes App: GearVR and YouTube

Laurence Butet-Roch is a freelance writer, photo editor and photographer based in Toronto, Canada. She is a member of the Boreal Collective .

Link:

The 5 Virtual Reality Experiences to Try on Your Phone - TIME