Daily Archives: July 12, 2017

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Enlisting Virtual Reality to Ease Real Pain Wall Street Journal (subscription) In a Los Angeles hospital a short drive from Hollywood, some patients are tapping into virtual reality. But at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 3D technology is there not for entertainment but pain relief. Patients in chronic or acute pain have put on ... and more »

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Enlisting Virtual Reality to Ease Real Pain - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

MIAMI BEACH, Fla.

Nicholas Montes put on goggles and a catcher's mitt and crouched.

The 13-year-old will never catch a 104 mph pitch from Aroldis Chapman. But at the All-Star FanFest, he felt what it's like to be Buster Posey snagging virtual strikes.

"It was like I was actually in the game. When I was catching, I felt the ball move and everything," the Miami teen said enthusiastically Sunday. "And then when I saw it go in my glove, I tried touching the ball, but I felt the remote control thing. So it was pretty cool."

Developed by GMR Marketing, the Esurance Behind The Plate With Buster Posey VR Experience allows fans to "catch" fastballs, curveballs and sliders from a generic pitcher at velocities ranging from 86-93 mph.

"I've always said that I thought it would be cool for the average fan to either step in the box or like this get behind the plate and get the same sense of what it's like to see a 90-plus, 95-mile an hour fastball coming your way," Posey explained last week.

Esurance Insurance Services Inc., a subsidiary of Allstate Corp., became a sponsor of Major League Baseball in 2015 and signed Posey as a brand ambassador. The company had a 180-degree photo experience at the 2015 FanFest in Cincinnati, then provided 360-degree videos of fans taking swings last year in San Diego.

In a dual setup at FanFest, which opened Friday, people get to signal for three pitches over about 90 seconds as Posey's recorded voice offers tips. They can choose the pitch type by pointing their glove toward an icon on the screen, triggering a sensor. When a pitch is successfully caught, the person hears and feels the mitt snap.

"It is as real as it can be," Danny Devarona, a 48-year-old who coaches youth baseball in Miami Lakes, said after taking his turn.

Commercial and social media content was shot over two days during spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Posey's San Francisco Giants train. Posey's voice-over was recorded after the season started.

"Are you ready? All right, let's see what you've got," Posey's voice tells fans. "This guy throws a nasty curve. The trick is to keep your glove below the ball and your eye on it. ... Keep your chin down and be ready to slide to your right, because this one might hit the dirt."

"Nice job! Right in the pocket," he tells fans when they succeed.

"Yeah, that was a tricky one," he says when they fail.

Based on PITCH f/x data, breaks of 38-to-52 inches are simulated.

"Fans will receive a social-sharable video for them that they can then distribute to their friends," said Kristen Gambetta, Esurance's brand partnerships manager. "With VR, there's something really entertaining about seeing people's facial reactions and kind of seeing their movements and how they react to having a ball flying at their face."

Several thousand fans were expected to put on the electronic "tools of ignorance" over the five days. And unlike real catchers, they won't have to stuff sponges in the glove to absorb the impact.

"Let's just say I'm pretty impressed. I don't think I can ever catch, or hit for that matter, a Major League Baseball curveball," said Pablo Souki, a 38-year-old from Venezuela who lives in Miami. "That was pretty eye-opening."

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Take me out to the screen: Virtual reality baseball a hit - MyAJC

Rather than blindly buying off the plan, Australians can now take a virtual walk through their new homes while they're still on the drawing board.

Rather than blindly buying off the plan, Australians can now take a virtual walk through their new homes while they're still on the drawing board.

Virtual reality is bringing yet-to-be-built housing developments to life in several display suites around Melbourne, including the Pace Development Group's luxury apartment block in the suburb of Carnegie. Potential buyers can don an HTC Vive VR headset and walk through a virtual apartment, as well as explore the proposed communal outdoor area on the roof, complete with an infinity pool.

The VR mechanics cover three square metres in the Carnegie showroom, with users able to walk around to explore a virtual two-bedroom apartment rather than merely standing still and looking from side to side. The headset's video cable hangs from the ceiling to keep it out of the way, while a floating barrier appears in the virtual world to warn people when they're approaching a real-world wall.

Bystanders in the showroom can watch the view from the headset via a 165cm television hanging on the wall. This tends to draw in the crowds, says co-founder of digital production studio Kasa Digital, Dexter Eugenio. The company partnered with architectural visualisation group 4dstudio to develop the VR walk-throughs for the property developers.

For many people it's the first time they've experienced immersive VR, Eugenio says, but they soon get past the novelty value and forget about the technology as they explore the apartment.

"People adapt to this kind of VR surprisingly quickly because, unlike a flashy computer game, you're not rushing around and our virtual worlds are designed to look real right down to the sunlight coming in the windows," he said.

"The sense of depth is amazing as you move through the apartment, and it really gives people a much better sense of what their home will feel like than simply looking at mock-up photos and studying floor plans."

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Handheld controllers add to the sense of immersion by letting users interact with virtual objects, such as turning on lights and appliances. They can also use a virtual laser point to easily teleport around the apartment, to overcome the fact that the virtual space is much larger the showroom's dedicated VR area.

Other VR experiences developed by Kasa Digital and 4dstudio offer potential home-buyers a bird's eye view of new housing estates. They can rotate the area in their hands, drop down to ground level and then stroll through the streets before walking into a virtual home.

Today virtual reality's hardest challenge is getting past preconceived notions of clunky VR experiences and convincing property developers to agree to a meeting, Eugenio says. Pace Development Group's Natasha Tannourji concedes they were apprehensive at first.

"To be honest we weren't sure whether the technology was ready and we didn't want to bring it into our display suites if it wasn't going to do our apartments justice," she said.. "Once we saw it for ourselves we realised how far VR has come, that it's ready for the public and isn't just a gimmick. In the past developers selling off the plan have been selling the dream, but now we can actually sell the reality."

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Virtual reality: Selling virtual real(ity) estate - The Sydney Morning Herald

Christopher Nolans upcoming film Dunkirk is set to be the biggest 70mm film release in 25 years, and in an exclusive new clip the filmmaker explains why shooting so much of it in IMAX became essential to his creative vision. The director has used IMAX for specific sequences in his films for years, but Dunkirk which tells the true-life story of the evacuation of Allied soldiers in France represents his most ambitious use of large-format film to date. About 70 percent of the film was shot on IMAX, with the remaining footage filmed on 65mm film.

IMAX cameras are notoriously large and heavy, making them difficult for use in tight quarters or handheld shots scenarios that presented particular challenges given the extensive cockpit photography and other sequences in Dunkirk. However, as Nolan explains in the clip, the visual clarity of the larger format made the trade-off worth it. The immersive quality of the image is second to none, Nolan says. We really try and create the sensation of virtual reality without the goggles.

Now, that statement on its own is an incredible stretch, ignoring the fact that mediums like VR offer far more in terms of interaction, audience agency, and field of view than even the largest film format can. Theyre simply not comparable. But in terms of the cinema-going experience itself, IMAX is arguably the most immersive format out there, just in terms of aspect ratio alone. In both IMAX 70mm film screenings and some IMAX Laser screenings, the film will be presented in an aspect ratio of 1.43:1 a towering, square image that can fill the entire field of view depending on where an audience member sits in the theater.

Those screenings will be somewhat hard to come by, however. The movie is also being presented in a number of different formats that dont take advantage of the taller aspect ratio that Nolans IMAX photography allows for. Thankfully, the Dunkirk website has a tool to help audiences determine where they can see the optimal version of the film. Dunkirk opens on July 21st.

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Watch Christopher Nolan explain why he thinks Dunkirk in IMAX is like 'virtual reality without the goggles' - The Verge

It's easy to grasp why stories about the price cuts carried out by Facebook Inc.'s (FB) Oculus unit for its Rift virtual reality headset and related Touch motion controllers suggest the cuts are proof that VR has failed to live up to its considerable hype. Industry unit sales are perhaps equal to about 1% of global smartphone sales, and that's after factoring cheap smartphone-paired headsets that are sometimes bundled with high-end phones.

This column originally appeared on Real Money, our premium site for active traders. Click here to get great columns like this.

But while near-term hopes for VR have come down a lot, Oculus' price cut isn't a sign that VR is failing as it is that the Facebook unit's original VR strategy -- trying to deliver a superior user experience by creating a costly headset that has to be paired with a high-end PC featuring a powerful Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) or AMD Inc. (AMD) GPU -- was a mistaken one for a market this young and immature. And that it's now trying to adapt.

About 15 months after launching the Rift to good but measured reviews, and about 7 months after launching the Touch to very good reviews, Oculus has slashed the price of a bundle featuring the two items by $200 to $399. The move comes after Oculus cut the Rift and Touch's standalone prices by $100 apiece in March, to $499 and $99.

Oculus says the new price cut is only good for six weeks. But a discount this large, and which lasts for such an extended amount of time, is typically followed by either a permanent cut or the discontinuation of the hardware in question in favor of a newer model. With Oculus having signaled that a second-generation Rift won't be arriving before 2019, the former seems more likely.

A permanent Rift/Touch price cut also makes sense in light of how the Rift occupies a niche within a niche right now, thanks in part to stiff competition. Research firm IDC estimates that just 99,000 Rift units were shipped in Q1, giving Facebook a 4.4% VR unit share.

IDC thinks Samsung was the market leader on a unit basis, estimating the company's $99 Gear VR headsets -- they're powered by Oculus software, and rely on high-end Samsung phones to supply a display and processing power -- recorded 490,000 shipments. Sony Inc. (SNE) was the presumptive revenue leader, with the company estimated to have shipped 429,000 units of $399 PlayStation VR headset, which works with PlayStation 4 consoles. And HTC was estimated to have shipped 191,000 units of its $799 Vive headset, which like the Rift needs to be paired with a PC.

Clearly, the VR headset market has been evolving differently than Oculus once hoped. Shipments are lighter than VR evangelists hoped, and a large chunk of them involve cheaper smartphone and console-paired headsets. A key culprit behind both of these trends: The user experience delivered by modern-day VR headsets, whether the Rift, the Gear VR of something in between, remains far from ideal.

In particular, the subpar display resolutions provided by today's headsets -- generally in the 1080p or 2K resolution range -- can't help but disappoint those used to seeing sharp, unpixelated images on their phones, tablets and PCs. The closer a display is to a user's eyes, the more pixels it needs to pack per square inch to provide a sharp image. That's why a 5 or 6-inch smartphone display needs a much higher pixel density than a typical 4K-resolution TV, and why VR headset displays need much higher densities still.

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Facebook's $200 Oculus Price Cut Sends a Powerful Message About Virtual Reality - TheStreet.com

July 12, 2017 by Mandy Erickson The virtual reality system is helping train residents, assist surgeons in planning upcoming operations and educate patients. It also helps surgeons in the operating room, guiding them in a three-dimensional space. Credit: Paul Sakuma

Having undergone two aneurysm surgeries, Sandi Rodoni thought she understood everything about the procedure. But when it came time for her third surgery, the Watsonville, California, resident was treated to a virtual reality trip inside her own brain.

Stanford Medicine is using a new software system that combines imaging from MRIs, CT scans and angiograms to create a three-dimensional model that physicians and patients can see and manipulatejust like a virtual reality game.

After donning a headset connected to the VR system, Rodoni could clearly see the ballooning blood vessel, as well as the spot where her neurosurgeon, Gary Steinberg, MD, PhD, would place a clip to repair it. "Because I had been through this before, I thought I knew it all until I saw this," she said. "I felt better knowing it was so clear to the doctor."

Created by the Colorado startup Surgical Theater, the VR system is helping train residents, assist surgeons in planning upcoming operations and educate patients. It also helps surgeons in the operating room, guiding them in a three-dimensional space.

For the residents, class is held in a room in the hospital basement. Under low lighting, and surrounded by three massive screens, the residents settle into reclining chairs complete with drink holdersall promising a comfortable ride inside the human skull.

Once the residents don headsets, an instructorwho shows up as an avatar in a white coatcan lead them inside the brain of a patient. The system allows instructors to highlight different components of the brain, such as arteries to show an aneurysm, bones to show skull deformities or tissue to show a tumor, while rotating the view to illustrate how a tumor or aneurysm looks from different angles. They can also progress, as avatars, through the steps for removing a tumor or fixing an aneurysm, starting outside the skull.

'A window into the brain'

Surgeons make their way down to the Neurosurgical Simulation Lab to practice an upcoming operation. Because they're practicing on images from the actual patient, rather than a generic brain, they can map out the surgery ahead of time. "It's a window into the brainand a window into the brain of the particular patient we're going to operate on," said Anand Veeravagu, MD, an assistant professor of neurosurgery and the head of the Stanford Neurosurgical Simulation Lab.

The three-dimensional aspect of the imagery eases surgeons' planning and improves the accuracy of the surgery, with the aim of producing safer procedures. "We can plan out how we can approach a tumor and avoid critical areas like the motor cortex or the sensory areas," said Steinberg, professor and chair of neurosurgery. "Before, we didn't have the ability to reconstruct it in three dimensions; we'd have to do it in our minds. This way it's a three-dimensional rendering."

Steinberg noted that in Rodoni's case, an artery was attached to the top of the aneurysm. "You couldn't see it on conventional imaging," he said. "Had I not known about it, it could have been a real disaster."

To show patients what's going on inside their skulls, Malie Collins, MS, senior program lead for the VR program, rolls a mobile unit, complete with headset, into an examination or hospital room. Being able to see the problem in three dimensions reassures them, she said, adding that it's especially useful for young patients or those who don't understand English well. She can also download the imagery onto a thumb drive and give it to the patient as a souvenir.

"Traditionally, doctors can show their patient a standard physical model of the brain or of the spine and say, 'On this model, imagine your tumor is located here,'" she said. "But with VR, we are able to immerse patients in their own anatomy, so they can very clearly get a sense of what's going on."

Stanford Medicine doctors are using the VR technology for the brain and spinal cord because these organs are stable and lend themselves to imageryunlike other body parts, which move with blood flow and breathing. Collins said the technology may soon be available for the rest of the body.

'Much, much more detail'

Surgeons typically use video feeds while they are operating, but the new VR technology adds a three-dimensional view which they can superimpose on the real-time video. "It has much, much more detail," said Steinberg, the Bernard and Ronni Lacroute-William Randolph Hearst Professor in Neurosurgery and Neurosciences. For Rodoni's surgery, "I had the 3-D rendering of her anatomy and could match that up with the surgical microscopic view, something I can't do with any other technology."

Veeravagu said some patients have chosen Stanford over other nearby hospitals solely because of the VR technology. "This software really helps them understand what it is they are about to undergo," he said. "Seeing it on the screen, in 3-D, really helps put a patient's mind at ease."

It certainly did for Rodoni. Knowing where her aneurysm lay, and how Steinberg would repair it, helped calm her as she faced her third brain surgery. "I knew that Dr. Steinberg would be able to see the same thing I saw, and he wasn't going to run into any surprises," she said. Rodoni's surgery went smoothly and she was discharged from the hospital within two days, her aneurysm gone.

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Virtual reality system helps surgeons, reassures patients - Medical Xpress