Monthly Archives: July 2017

LOS ANGELES A new virtual reality exhibit that opened here last weekend gives viewers a first-hand look at what its like to try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and a peek into what could be the future of political ads.

In Carne y Arena (Meat and Sand) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, visitors strap on VR goggles for an immersive six-and-a-half minute movie where they find themselves among a group of migrants attempting to cross the U.S. border.

They are confronted with U.S. Border Patrol agents pointing guns in their faces, and they feel the cold of an immigrant detention cell. They hear personal stories from immigrants whove made the trek.

The experienceis directed by the filmmaker Alejandro Irritu, the Mexican director of the Oscar-winning films The Revenant and Birdman. Itallows the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants feet, under their skin, and into their hearts, Irritu saidin a statement.

Carne y Arena, which first screened at the Cannes Film Festival, is hardly a mainstream work of advocacy. It has surreal touches: Viewers can literally peek into the chests of the virtual immigrants and see their beating hearts.

But as debates about immigration roil American politics, its impossible not to see the exhibit through a political lens.

I would pay for a bunch of Trump supporters to go and have this experience, said Anne Demo, who traveled from Pennsylvania to see the exhibit on Monday. Theres a level of humanity that really reaches you.

Such VR experiences have already become a staple of the high-end charity circuit. Black-tie clad donors at galas for the organization Charity: Water can strap on VR goggles and follow in the footsteps of a girl in an Ethiopian village getting clean water for the first time.

Cathe Neukum, an executive producer at the International Rescue Committee, which advocates for refugees, said half of the donors who watched her organizations VR production of a refugee camp in Jordan took off their headsets in tears. If youre watching a regular video on your TV or your laptop, you can walk away, but when youre engaged in a headset, youre in it in a completely different way, she said.

When a VR exhibit about a day in the life of a young Syrian refugee was included at mall kiosks soliciting donations for UNICEF, the number of people giving money doubled, said Christopher Fabian, an executive for the charity.

The possibilities for similar commentary abound. A campaign working to end solitary confinement could use VR to show people what its like inside a 6-by-9-foot prison cell, while groups advocating against President Trumps travel ban might put voters in the shoes of refugees escaping persecution in the banned countries.

For the last year, a Stanford experiment has been testing whether people who view a VR simulation of a homeless persons life from losing their job to struggling to pay rent to surviving on the streets are more likely to sign a petition calling for housing support. (The experience is on view at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.) The results are still forthcoming, said Jeremy Bailenson, the studys lead researcher. But overall, he said, theres a growing body of evidence that VR can be a powerful way to get people to empathize with others.

Not everyone thinks VR experiences about refugees, migrants or homeless people will be so influential. In a few years, everybodys going to do it its going to be boring, Fabian said. Theres a certain point where you say, I get it, the world is sad. The most exciting applications of VR, he said, will come in education and coordination connecting classrooms around the world and helping them study together, for example.

And not everyone who saw Irritus exhibit thought it would change minds. People are hardwired, especially these days, in their political belief systems, said Christine Davila, 32, of Los Angeles. Moreover, most Los Angeles museumgoers are probably already pretty immigrant-friendly in their political beliefs, she pointed out. (The exhibit is currently sold out through September.)

So far, the overtly political uses of VR have been much more rudimentary. Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential campaign released several VR videos of his campaign events, giving viewers a front-row seat at one of his rallies. Turn one way and you see the shining faces of the Berniecrats; look down and you can see the notes for Sanders speech.

Another project called AltSpaceVR brought people from around the country together in a virtual space to watch presidential debates and have political discussions. Arguments between people who see each other in virtual reality tend to be more civil than on social media, said Eric Romo, the companys CEO: Its more difficult to be negative if you actually see another person in front of you, than when youre hiding behind a keyboard.

The advent of television transformed American politics and campaigning, ushering in live debates and the 30-second campaign ad. While its too early to say if VR could get anywhere near that level of influence, its likely to at least play a role, especially as the technology gets cheaper and more widely available.

In 2020, Romo predicted, all the major presidential candidates will have some kind of VR element in their campaigns.

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Virtual reality exhibit goes inside Mexican border crossing, with Oscar-winning director's help - The Mercury News

Wednesday, July 5, 2017 at 6:25 a.m.

Denver Comic Con is over for 2017,but the opportunity to geek out with other nerds over virtual reality, gaming and cosplay is just beginning. Player 2, a Denver startup, has been putting on events at bars around the city since January, giving people places where they can gather over beers to play board and video games.

"We want to bring interpersonal experience back to this stuff," says Player 2 owner Shadoe Konicek, recalling the community gaming fostered when he was young. These days, he notes, much of the gaming culture has "lost connections."

To help reinvigorate the social aspect of gaming, Konicek started Player 2, which brings a library of board games, a VR station with a full HTC Vive setup, and plenty of video games to participating bars. There, in the classic arcade spirit, you can buy tokens to use toward games or VR.

By September, Konicek hopes that Player 2 will be able to open its own private space, which will be run as a sort of clubhouse; customers will bring their own refreshments to enjoy while they game and experience a full VR station. He's confident the concept will fill a niche, and thinks it could expand to other locations, too; to help get the first one off the ground, Player 2 will run a small crowdsourcing campaign in August, offering early memberships.

In the meantime,Player 2 will be holding a "Nerd's Night Out" on Monday, July 10, at Platt Park Brewing Company, where it has held previous events. Anyone who shows up in cosplay gets their first beer for free, and players can compete in various challenges to win more beer or gift cards: Defeat the fabled samurai in the VR game Death Dojo, for example, and you couldget a$25 gift certificate to Platt Park.

"We do this so people can feel comfortable," concludes Konicek. "The point is it's okay to be adult and still like these things."

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Player 2 Celebrates Video Games, Virtual Reality...and Beer - Westword

July 5, 2017 Credit: University of Oxford

Researchers from the University of Oxford are using a unique blend of virtual reality and innovative genetic techniques to understand the causes of diseases such as diabetes and anaemia.

The team, working in collaboration with physicists from Universita' di Napoli and software developers and artists at Goldsmiths, University of London, are using the state-of-the-art technology to investigate the 3-D structure of DNA. The way in which DNA is arranged in 3-D space has huge consequences for human health and disease. Subtle changes in DNA folding impact on whether genes can be switched on or off at particular times dictating what a cell can do. It is this process that the team are trying to get to the bottom of in the hunt for the causes of disease, and potential new treatments.

The scientists are presenting their research at the Royal Society's annual Summer Science Exhibition.

Prof Jim Hughes, Associate Professor of Genome Biology, University of Oxford, said: "It's becoming increasingly apparent that the way that a cell fits two metres of DNA into a structure more than ten times smaller than a human hair, is more than just a random process. We are dissecting this intricate folding to understand which parts of our immense genome are interacting at any one time, helping us understand whether changes in this process can cause disease."

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CSynth the software on show at the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition is designed to provide an engaging way to explore and understand the complex structure of the genome in 3-D, by integrating data from genome sequencing, computer modelling and high powered microscopy. Scientists are now hoping to use virtual reality to visualise the huge amounts of data they can generate in the laboratory.

Speaking about the software, Stephen Taylor, Head of the Computational Biology Research Group at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, said: "With advances in genetic techniques, we can now harness more information than ever before from biological data provided by patients and volunteers. With the CSynth software we can integrate data from different experiments into something more tangible to help researchers understand how DNA folds. In addition, using the Virtual Reality mode in CSynth is helping us visualise these complex 3-D structures in a more intuitive way."

Prof William Latham from the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, said: "I'm fascinated by the way we can use art to better understand and envision scientific concepts. In CSynth we've created something that not only accelerates research progress, but also allows the public to share in unravelling some of the mesmerising and intricate structures inside our body."

Prof Frederic Fol Leymarie from Goldsmiths, said: "By combining maths and physics together with computer games technologies, we can program realistic molecular interactions, and immerse people in the dynamic world of DNA. CSynth takes you on a close encounter with the very fabric of life."

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Researchers use virtual reality to unpack causes of common diseases - Medical Xpress

Diving into the deceptively real world of virtual reality (VR), for example exchanging ideas with Group colleagues at a logistics hall in the Czech Republic from Wolfsburg the latest VR technology makes that possible for the first time. Experts from the Volkswagen Group have developed virtual reality applications for production & logistics that enable several participants to meet in a VR room. Following a test phase, the Volkswagen Group is now the first car manufacturer to roll out VR technology with the HTC VIVE-VR system. The Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub developed for this purpose together with the Innoactive startup bundles all existing VR applications, users and tools in the Group on a single platform. This platform is making its public debut at the Digility conference and exhibition in Cologne.

Virtual reality creates the ideal conditions for cross-brand and cross-site collaboration, Jasmin Mller from Audi Brand Logistics explains. Together with colleagues from the Group, she develops VR solutions for production & logistics as part of the cross-brand Digital Realities Team. They have already designed virtual reality logistics trainings, created virtual environments for workshops, or exchanged best practice examples in VR.

Dennis Abmeier from Group IT is also a member of the Digital Realities Team. As he explains, exchanging knowledge is just as important as bundling knowledge. Thats why we came up with the Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub central platform in collaboration with Innoactive. All employees have access to all existing VR elements as well as existing knowledge via the platform. That way, we enable individual units to implement new use cases quickly and jointly move in VR applications so they can plan new workflows interactively.

Mathias Synowski, a VR user from Group Logistics, describes the added value of virtual reality solutions: Going forward, we can be virtual participants in workshops taking place at other sites or we can access virtual support from experts at another brand if we are working on an optimization. That will make our daily teamwork much easier and save a great deal of time. Rolling out VR technologies is therefore an important step towards the digital, networked and efficient production of the future.

The testing and rollout of virtual reality applications is an example of cross-brand cooperation in the Group: under the umbrella of Group Logistics and the Digital Factory, the Digital Realities Team is currently developing further virtual reality applications for production & logistics at the Audi, SEAT, KODA and Volkswagen brands. The applications will be accessible throughout the Group via the Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub common platform. As far as the technology is concerned, the VR end user device is the HTC VIVE Business Edition, a special VR headset developed specifically for businesses. The Volkswagen Group is therefore the first car manufacturer to roll out virtual reality (VR) technology throughout the Group with the HTC VIVE headset.

The Volkswagen Group, Innoactive and HTC VIVE are presenting the new VR applications for production & logistics as well as the Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub to the public for the first time at the Digility conference and exhibition in Cologne on July 5 and 6, 2017. There will be a live demonstration of the latest VR applications at the trade fair for AR and VR technologies.

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Volkswagen Group is backing virtual reality solutions for interactive collaboration in production & logistics - Automotive World (press release)

A year ago, while Bryony Cole was researching technological developments in entertainment, she stumbled across virtual reality sex, which essentially lets people interact through a screen as if they were in the same bedroom. The fact that people could have rich, varied sex lives without ever leaving their couches both fascinated and frightened her. How would that affect their real-life relationships? Was it considered cheating?

Those questions made her curious enough to start the Future of Sex podcast. In each episode, Cole investigates a new issue at the intersection of sexuality and technology, from the etiquette of dick pics to the ethics of sex robots. But to hear her tell it, the most significant changes she's seen in sex tech aren't about the mechanics of how we have sex, but how our attitudes are shfitingparticularly where gender is concerned.

Cole talked to Glamour about how technology is altering our relationships and ultimately our society, for better and for worse (but mostly, she believes, for the better).

Glamour: What are the most exciting sex tech inventions you've seen lately?

Bryony Cole: OMG Yes, a sex ed platform for women, which includes touchable videos that allow you to learn and practice 12 different techniques that lead women to orgasm. The touch screens are enabled with feedback technology that essentially tell you if you're doing it correctly or not. This sort of interactivity is far more engaging than any book or screen has been previously.

That interactivity extends to virtual reality. Theres a couple of interesting VR sex ed examples going on at the moment. One is from Emory University in partnership with Georgia Tech. The execution is still pretty basic at the moment, but what theyve attempted to do is walk women through a nightclub and practice saying "no," practice consent in that environment, where you meet someone and it may feel awkward but you're not sure how to say "no." If you keep going through this environment, hopefully, when it gets to the stage of real life, you have the skills and knowledge to be able to say "I don't feel comfortable in this situation."

The other interesting application in VR for sex education is a program called Virtual Sexology II, designed by BaDoinkVR. There's a program for men and one for women, designed by sex therapists to enable you to become better lovers: for men to work through premature ejaculation by getting in contact with your body, and for women, getting in touch with your body and exploring different types of touch. You're touching yourself, but you're in this virtual, immersed environment having this safe place where you can still learn.

Glamour: That sounds like an opportunity we don't really get now, since a lot of people wouldn't feel comfortable masturbating in front of a sex therapist.

BC: Not in the therapy world, but in the coaching world, theres people who do that. Kenneth Play, for example, travels the world and watches couples have sex and teaches them how to be better. [VR sex ed] is probably going be a lot cheaper than having someone stand in your room and a lot more comfortable than having someone watch you have sex. In real life, if theres someone in your room, you can't deny that. With this, you can just take off the headset.

Glamour: What technologies would you like to see more of?

BC: The problem thats going to make the most impact on our lives is helping people communicate. For a lot of tech, thats not the case. Were spending more time communicating via streams versus in person. I [would like to see] technology that can solve the problem of how we can communicate better to our children, our lovers, our friends, and other people. How do we increase our emotional and social intelligence? Theres definitely arguments against that, if we look at the proliferation of dating apps and the way we can swipe through 200 people on the toilet, and the idea that thats made us view people as more disposable. If we look at young people and how they learn to communicate via Instagram and Snapchat, that's a different kind of interaction. True emotional intelligence and being able to read people and body language? That's a super power. Any technology that can enhance education around communication is going to improve our lives.

PHOTO: Bryony Cole

Glamour: Are there any other technologies you're concerned about?

BC: Im more concerned about the way people will take it rather than the technology that's being invented. Dolls and robots are currently being used as companion dolls in the field of therapy, as sexual surrogates for healing people who have been through severe sexual trauma or have some disability so that they cant have sex with another person. Theres totally the potential for these dolls to be used in other ways. Theres concern around the dolls you can makechild sex dolls entered the market in the U.K. That idea of how our brains are changing, and were becoming attached to objects and seeing them as something that can potentially replace us, is definitely concerning. They have a lot of protests about this. Theres nobody regulating the sex tech industry in terms of whats being developed. The reason I started the podcast is to ask the ethical questions around "What are we designing?" and "How are we going to navigate love, sex, and dating in the future?"

Glamour: What are the biggest changes you've seen in sex tech since you started your podcast a year ago?

BC: The biggest marker for me was in the sex tech world. We saw sex tech companies like Unbound raising money, which has previously been a big problem because of reputational risk and morality causes. In 2017, JWTs global intelligence report hailed 2017 as the year of "vagina-nomics." Vaginas and economics are coming together like never before. Body image and female sexual pleasure, which have previously remained on the fringes of discourse, are rapidly being embraced in mainstream media. And in turn, we are in a year where there are more womens sex tech products on the market than ever before: period underwear, pee-proof underwear, tampon subscription services, vulvar skin cream.

The fact we can put an ad on a subway that simply says ["Underwear for women with periods,"](http://www.glamour.com/story/glamour-staffers-try-out-thinx-period-underwear-the-verdict-theyre-awesome) unapologetic about a womans bodily functionssignifies society's attitudes are changing. The sex toy industry in particular has had to make a major shift from being a male-dominated industry that primarily used cheap, dodgy materials to one where many of the best brands are either founded by women or have women on their design teams, and they are using the latest advancements in technology.

Some of my favorite examples include Dame Products, co-founded by Janet Lieberman, an MIT graduateoften the first female engineer in the company she worked forwho created a vibrator company out of frustration with the lack of quality, high-end design. The Eva became the highest-funded adult product in the history of crowdfunding. It raised seven times its goal and is now sold globally. Stephanie Alys, co-founder of MysteryVibe, designed a six-motor vibrator that bends to any shape you like. User-focused design and deep research with their target market is a hallmark of this sex tech aimed at women.

Sex tech is not only changing the experience of sex for women. It's shifting views and opening up public conversation. Its changing the language and giving us words to talk about these things that were previously in the dark.

This article is part of Summer of Sex, our 12-week long exploration of how women are having sex in 2017.

More Summer of Sex:

How Tumblr Porn Got Its Woman-Friendly Footing Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Sex in Space Meet 6 Sex-Positive Instagrammers Changing the Internet

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How Virtual Reality Sex Tech Just Might Change Women's Lives - Glamour

With Oculuss place at the forefront of virtual reality technology becoming shakier with the departure of its CEO Palmer Luckey, the news that the company was shutting its filmmaking division, Story Studio, was a surprise. Some have accused Facebook the company which owns Oculus of being behind the move, as a way of prioritizing the social functionality of VR.

Whatever the motive, what was hailed at its inception as the Pixar of virtual reality is no longer a going concern. But will the former Oculus Story Studio staff who counted former Pixar employees amongst their number simply take their talents elsewhere? Or is this a flare sent up to the industry that VR film isnt worth making to begin with?

Firstly, it is worth noting that when people talk about virtual reality film, what they are really talking about are movies shot with a 360 camera. This has led those in the industry to take pains to note that 360 film isnt really true VR, as it lacks the interactive element virtual reality is, by definition, entirely computer-generated, after all. Last year, UploadVR convincingly argued the case for True VR being reclassified as responsive VR, in the hope that both 360 cinema and VR experiences could coexist peacefully in the eyes of the industry.

Speaking at the Cannes festival in 2016, Stephen Spielberg told journalists of his scepticism towards VR filmmaking. It gives the viewer a lot of latitude not to take direction from the storytellers but make their own choices of where to look. This may seem like futurephobia from the director of some of the most beloved films of all time, but its a view shared by those in the VR industry as well.

Virtual reality production company REWIND have noted that, as a film medium, VR can be technically dazzling, but lacking in story: there is no certainty that anyone watching a film in VR will even notice the plot points of the narrative going on around them. However, with most virtual reality films clocking in at under ten minutes apiece, the best virtual reality film content will arguably strive to strike the ideal balance between story and spectacle. This is where the pros come in.

As far back as 2015, commentators were claiming that VR film would favor creative experimenters, which may explain why so many Hollywood luminaries are eager to work in the medium. Aprils Tribeca Film Festival may have premiered The Handmaids Tale and the new documentary from Werner Herzog, but some of the festivals biggest-names were there to promote their VR work. Kathryn Bigelows eight-minute documentary The Protectors about the ivory poaching industry was widely praised, and Emily Mortimers appearance in Broken Night was hailed as a breakthrough in tailoring the medium of VR film to accommodate narrative filmmaking.

Last years festival saw the first screening of Invasion!, the debut VR film by Baobab Studios, a then-new VR production company helmed by the director of the Madagascar films. One year on, and the festival premiered the first episode of Rainbow Crow, Baobabs latest series, which also featured the voice talent of John Legend and Constance Wu. The Tribeca Film Festivals VR programmer told the BBC that he believes the richer the content is, and the more compelling, the more it warrants being paid for. Thats when we have an industry and a legitimate visual medium. Whether that new industry sees a sustained spirit of collaboration between Silicon Valley and Tinseltown that has so far eluded traditional filmmakers remains to be seen.

The first celluloid films were even shorter than their VR counterparts, limited in length to under a minute by the bulky cameras and nonexistent editing technology. By comparison, VR films are generally only 10 minutes long (though Miyubi, a 40-minute feature, has been garnering some of the mediums best reviews yet).

The forms brevity could be down to the health risks some have associated with spending too long in VR worlds, though the bitesize nature of virtual reality film has given some studios alternative ideas about how it could be used. RSA Ridley Scotts production company launched a dedicated virtual reality division a month prior to the Tribeca festival, with its inaugural VR experience being released to accompany Alien: Covenant. Its first projects independent of existing Ridley Scott films are two new VR series (one fiction, one documentary), though it seems telling that the head of its division neglects to mention narrative filmmaking in the companys launch statement.

I think VR is one of the most exciting areas in the industry today, said RSA VRs head of department, with potential to influence how we consume content for generations to come. Whereas Spielberg was worried about storytelling, RSA are simply content with creating content.

But this isnt necessarily the final direction down which VR film could travel; indeed, perhaps Baobab Studios will end up supplanting Oculus Story Studio as the mediums Pixar. Invasion! is set to be adapted into a feature-length 2D movie, with a follow-up VR short also in the works. At the very least, this surely shows that, regardless of how they choose to use it, VR film is fertile ground for some of the most imaginative minds in cinema.

Read next: Photobucket's 'ransom demand' is a masterclass in how not to treat your users

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What does the closure of Oculus Story Studio mean for VR filmmaking? - TNW

Segment the human experience of light apart from the objective behavior of light unseen from our universe, and try to imagine seeing light in both its particle and wave form at the same time. In case you are struggling, here is a snapshot of the behavioral duality exhibited by light, captured as both a waveform and a stream of particles.

Over the past 200 years, cameras have evolved just as rapidly from analog to digital as they did from large to miniaturized. Now the worlds virtual reality and augmented reality enthusiasts are attempting to create more immersive experiences by altering and improving the way a physical environment is captured digitally. Capturing a physical environment digitally requires a 3D scanning system. The specific considerations needed for creating a digital version of an as-built model for virtual reality depend on the current technological limits of photorealistic reality capture.

A San Franciscobased company called Lytro has designed and constructed a light-field camera and developed an array system it calls Immerge to capture, compute and create an immersive virtual reality experience of a musical performance at St. Ignatius Church.

A light-field camera is designed to capture light from different angles to make images with depth and color, calculated from intersections of different angular directions of rays. Using an array of cameras set up in a predesigned capture matrix, each can be programmed to see different perspectivesexposure, shutter timing, focal length and position all carefully measured and quantized sequentially.

The creation of a multi-camera, array-based system requires the expenditure of considerable time and capital. But Lytro has developed an individual camera called Illum apart from Immerge. This array-based system of light-field technologies allows Lytro to capture a light field, calculate ray angles and then manifest a virtual representation for interactive immersion.

This incredible array of 475 cameras called Immerge captured and processed a huge amount of visual data using Googles cloud platform and custom rendering techniques designed by Lytro. (Image courtesy of Lytro.)

To learn more about this technology and the virtual reality capture at St. Ignatius Church, visit the Lytro blog.

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How Does Lytro Capture Light Fields for Virtual Reality? - ENGINEERING.com