Monthly Archives: February 2022

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 is an absurdist adventure through a metaverse out of control.

The dream, or nightmare, of the possibilities of metaverses seem to be everywhere at the start of 2022. A new VR game on the Oculus Quest 2 (and also Steam VR and Rift) explores these questions, and the unsolved problems of metaverses spun out of control. It's called Virtual Virtual Reality 2, but it's not even an online game: The metaverse is simulated and scripted as a dialogue-heavy absurdist experience.

Tender Claws, the game's developer, got a head start exploring the deeper questions surrounding VR, AR, and immersive AI. The developer's original game, Virtual Virtual Reality, toyed with the broken promises of simulation, and was one of the best experiences on the Oculus Go, Google's Daydream View and other early mobile VR headsets. Tender Claws also explored social spaces and live performance in its follow-up game, The Under Presents.

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 is a single-player experience, not a true online space. But it simulates the feeling of entering a social metaverse -- called "Scottsdale" -- which unravels after losing VC funding, shredding and rebooting a whole universe. Many questions on the nature of metaverses appear to be raised along the way. Some of them, like consciousness-uploading, are reminiscent of ideas wrestled with for years in science fiction.

The game's use of the metaverse was dreamed up well before Facebook's name change to Meta last year; the game's been in the works for years, and the timing has just become lucky. But as social worlds start emerging more rapidly, throwing the term metaverse around with increasing frequency, Virtual Virtual Reality 2 looks to be a commentary arriving at the right time.

Entertain your brain with the coolest news from streaming to superheroes, memes to video games.

Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro, Tender Claws' co-founders and creators of Virtual Virtual Reality 2, were inspired as much by previous abandoned virtual world metaverses like Disney's Club Penguin, and people's sense of abandonment after those worlds closed down. The game examines the existence of social spaces owned by big companies, and asks where our data goes when those spaces fade away.

Tender Claws' previous VR and AR games wrestled with what Cannizzarro identifies as a messy divide between utopian tech dreams and disappointing reality. Tender Claws' previous AR game, called Tendar, toyed with the way companies try to simulate sympathetic AI companions. The Under Presents explored ideas of what it means to have real living virtual social spaces, and it played with time, performance and identity.

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 also looks like a genre-hopping, reality-bending type of game, a toybox of weird ideas. In a world of VR that seems like a place full of copycat genres and ideas, maybe it's also the type of inspirational strangeness the still-not-quite-mainstream world of VR needs right now -- before big tech tries to lock it all down all over again.

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 arrives on Feb. 10. I'll be reviewing it before its release.

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A new VR game wants us to escape the metaverse - CNET

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Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market Overview | 2022 2028

The Global Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market covers explicit information regarding the development rate, market estimates, drivers, limitations, future based demand, and revenue during the forecast period. The Global Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market consists of data accumulated from numerous primary and secondary sources. This information has been verified and validated by the industry analysts, thus providing significant insights to the researchers, analysts, managers, and other industry professionals. This document further helps in understanding market trends, applications, specifications, and market challenges.

The report on the global Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market offers high-quality, proven, and wide-ranging research study to equip players with valuable data for making well-informed business decisions. The researchers and analysts have provided an in-depth analysis of the market segmentation based on the type, application, and geography. The report also sheds light on the vendor landscape, to inform the readers about the changing dynamics of the market.

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Major Companies:Samsung, Google, Merge, Insignia, Lenovo, Homido, iLive, ReTrak, Indigi, Sumaclife

The global, regional, and other market statistics including CAGR, financial statements, volume, and market share mentioned in this report can be easily relied upon in light of their high precision and authenticity. The report also provides a study on the current and future demand of the Global Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market.

Major Types of the Market are:Regular VRCardboard

Major Applications of the Market are:Commercial UsePersonal Use

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Regional Analysis For Virtual Reality for SmartphoneMarket

North America(the United States, Canada, and Mexico)Europe(Germany, France, UK, Russia, and Italy)Asia-Pacific(China, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia)South America(Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, etc.)The Middle East and Africa(Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa)

Research Methodology

The report has been consolidated using three research methodologies. The first step centers around exhaustive primary and secondary researches, which includes an extensive collection of information on the Global Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market and the parent and peer market. The next step involves validating the market size, estimations, findings, and assumptions with further accurate information from industry experts. The report obtains a complete estimation of the market size with the help of bottom-up and top-down approaches. Finally, the report obtains the market estimation of all the segments and sub-segments using data triangulation and market breakup procedures.

Table of Contents

Report Overview:The report overview includes studying the market scope, leading players, market segments and sub-segments, market analysis by type, application, geography, and the remaining chapters that shed light on the overview of the market.

Executive :The report summarizes about Virtual Reality for Smartphone market trends and shares, market size analysis by region, and countries. Under market size analysis by region, analysis of market share, and growth rate by region is provided.

Profiles of International Players:This section also profiles some of the major players functioning in the Global Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market, based on various factors such as the company overview, revenue, product offering (s), key development (s), business strategies, Porters five forces analysis, and SWOT analysis.

Regional Study: The regions and countries mentioned in this research study have been studied based on the market size by application, product, key players, and market forecast.

Key Players:This section of the Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market report explains about the expansion plans of the leading players, investment analysis, funding, company establishment dates, revenues of manufacturers, and the regions served.

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Virtual Reality for Smartphone Market 2022: Remarking Enormous Growth with Recent Trends & Demand Cleveland Sports Zone - Cleveland Sports Zone

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Several tech stocks have taken a beating this week, and no Silicon Valley giant has been hit harder than Meta. On the latest Pivot podcast, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss why Mark Zuckerbergs pivot to virtual reality doesnt seem to be resonating with investors.

Kara Swisher: There are Big Tech winners and losers in this weeks earnings, and Alphabet is making it look as easy as ABC. Oh, wow. Producers, thanks for that one. Googles parent company reported blowout earnings in the fourth quarter and beat analysts predictions. On Tuesday, Alphabet announced a 20-for-one stock split. But they werent popping corks all over the Valley. Shares of Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, fell more than 20 percent, in part due to the impact of Apples privacy changes. Also, issues around growth; also, the money theyve been spending on the Metaverse. That brought down the shares of other tech giants, including Twitter. Facebooks number of daily global users dropped for the first time ever, by one million. And again, the spending on Meta is insane they lost $10 billion on that division, the Reality Labs division. And 2022 could bring challenges for both Alphabet and Meta. The Senate is considering a bill that would force them to pay news publishers, similar to the Australian law that took effect. Zuckerberg blamed Apples anti-tracking feature for the losses, but the big thing was this $10 billion cost for the Metaverse investment. So what do you think about the situation?

Twice weekly, Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher host Pivot, a New York Magazine podcast about business, technology, and politics.

Scott Galloway: This is the quarter that Google disarticulates from Facebook, much less Pinterest and Snap. Search is its own form of communications and advertising that continues to just grow. But even at scale, the ad-supported model seems to be under pressure. Facebook, for the first time in 18 years, had a decline in daily active users. Its never registered that. So just some positives because Im always critical of Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg is a brilliant business person. Hes doing exactly what he should be doing, and that is, hes making a staggering investment in trying to pivot the Titanic and finding something big enough to replace what he sees as the sun passing midday on their core business model.

Swisher: Hes also bored with it, right? You can feel it.

Galloway: Hes doing exactly the right thing strategically. The problem is the tactics make no sense. The people in this universe are not impressed with the universe he envisions, and specifically the portal. One of my predictions in November of 2021, when I made 2022 predictions, was that the biggest failure in tech-product history might be the Oculus. The Reality Labs group grew from $1 billion to $2 billion, but to spend $10 billion to get to $2 billion If he pulls it off, itll be one of the most impressive feats in not even corporate renewal but vision around maintaining growth. I dont think theyre going to. I think this thing is already a giant flaming bag of shit.

Swisher: Well, hes got some pattern-matching when they move to mobile, so it feels like thats what hes thinking about. But he really is spending.

Galloway: You cant argue that the guy isnt bold and isnt a visionary. But the two words that are missing from the narrative, or your narrative around the problem and why they have hit a wall here the first word is Tik and the second is Tok.

Swisher: Thats another thing I left that out. They talked about TikTok, the audience issue.

Galloway: TikTok has learned from Facebook. The majority of the complaints I see about TikTok are creators upset that their content got taken down, so theyve pivoted the other way. I want to be clear, they have problems, but directionally, I think theyre more about joy and creativity, as opposed to arguing and calling other people out and teen depression and all this shit. So Im a big fan of TikTok. If it can disarticulate itself in a credible way from this fear that it could be weaponized on a moments notice by the CCP, it will probably be one of the ten most valuable companies in the world in the next 24 to 36 months.

But keep in mind what happened with Facebook when youre talking about numbers. In five minutes, after the release of the earnings and the missed numbers, Facebook shed the value of Pinterest, Twitter, BMW, and Mercedes. It lost $180 billion in market capitalization. And I think money is power in a capitalist society and a signal of their channel power, which is what Lina Khan says you should focus on.

Meta, when it reports bad earnings, loses the value of BMW, Mercedes, and all of social media, except for Facebook and Google. My point is, people dont recognize just how incredibly unhealthily, awfully powerful these companies are.

Swisher: I dont know which theyre worried about more. Is it TikTok, is it the Apple thing? Or the Metaverse? The one thing that it shows, and this is something Ive mentioned before, but Mark has always said they have competitors, and theyre not a monopoly. With TikTok doing so well, I think they actually have a very good argument in that regard. One thing that was interesting was his quote: Although our direction is clear, it seems our path ahead is not quite perfectly defined. So the direction is not clear, right? I wrote a column that said, Youd imagine $10 billion would buy a better map. So well see what happens with this company. Its very theres a lot going on here.

Galloway: The other problem they face is, when you go to work for Exxon or Altria, you make certain moral compromises. But heres the thing: Theyre great employers. They pay their people really well. They invest in their human capital. And thats what makes the trade-off a trade-off.

Swisher: But people are embarrassed to be working for Facebook. I know they are.

Galloway: But theyre willing to wash over that embarrassment with Benjamins. As long as the stock keeps going up and you have a four- or five-year vest and within six months of joining, youre like, Oh my gosh, I got a million dollars in stock. That means a quarter of a million a year in additional comp that Im vesting. But then you wake up two and a half years into yourfour-year vesting cycle and youre like, Oh, that 2 or 3 million dollars and options I had is now worth $700,000. You suddenly find that your moral compass begins to burn a little brighter. When its raining money, it blurs your vision. A lot of employees at Facebook are going to find new clarity and all of a sudden find their moral compass when the stock is down. I think theyre in for a rough year because I think youre going to start to get data back on the Oculus, or Quest, or whatever the fuck its called.

Swisher: You know, a lot of people like it. Im going to push back. I think a lot of people are excited by the Oculus.

Galloway: Name someone under the age of 25 who has been found with an Oculus.

Swisher: Thats a fair point. But Im saying its not a bad product. Like, I usually whack their products. Its not a bad product. Its a good product. I have one I was using, its great.

Galloway: For $10 billion?

Swisher: I agree, its an expensive good product, so well see. Its not AirPods. Ill tell you that. Theyd be lucky if it was AirPods, right? Thats an unqualified hit.

Galloway: The basis of biology is survival and propagation. And the reality is, we spend 90 percent of our attention and our evaluation of another person nonverbally through aesthetics. And 90 percent of that energy and evaluation goes to one region that is 7 percent of our person and that is our face. And so people are very particular: glasses that bring up the height of my cheekbones, which intimates that Im less prone to infection; a strong jawline, which means Im more violent and can protect your children; facial hair, which says that Im virile, whatever it might be. And this thing, when you put it on your head, it says youre into magic and drive a Mazda and dont have sex with me. And 40 percent of the people who put this on their head feel nauseous. So Meta has denied and ignored a basic instinct among people.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

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Metas Virtual-Reality Arm Is a Flaming Bag of Sh*t - New York Magazine

With the very descriptive name Personal Boundary, Metas Horizon Vice President, Vivek Sharma announced in a blog post a new feature that would protect users avatars from unwanted nearness and protect their personal space.

Personal Boundary feature prevents avatars from coming within a set distance of 1,2 meters of each other, it is activated by default and rolling out begins on February 5th everywhere inside of Horizon WorldsandHorizon Venues.

This means that avatars will not be able to invade each others personal space and if someone tries to do so, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary. Meta says that the halt will not be visible to the user as there is no haptic feedback.

In the announcement, Sharma adds that in the future, Meta will explore the possibility of adding in new controls and UI changes, like letting people customize the size of their Personal Boundary.

Note that because Personal Boundary is the default experience, youll need to extend your arms to be able to high-five or fist bump other peoples avatars in Horizon Worlds or in Horizon Venues.

There is of course no reference in the announcement, but the feature came only a few days after a 43-year-old British woman reported that she was groped in Metas Horizon Venues virtual world by a group of male avatars. The woman named Nina Jane Patel has even penned down her ordeal in a Medium post, where she has talked about being verbally and sexually harassed by three or four male avatars.

Research on both violent and non-violent games has found that players can (a) express guilt after committing violent acts, (b) report reflective and introspective emotional reactions during gameplay, and (c) debate the morality of their actions with others.

Regarding VR, studies have demonstrated that (a) witnessing physical violence in immersive spaces led participants to take the perspective of victims and better understand their emotional state and (b) controlled exposure to traumatic or violent events can be used for treatment. Broadly, studies into video games and VR demonstrate that the impact of actions in virtual worlds transfer into the physical worlds to influence (later) attitudes and behaviors. Thus, how these experiences may be potentially harnessed for social change is a compelling and open consideration, as are side-effects of such interventions on vulnerable groups.

The VR experiences differ from video gamesin that they often lack a specific goal as well as common video game mechanisms, such as points, badges, or leaderboards. Unlike video games, VR presents experiences that are meant to be lived rather than played.

VR contributes another layer of complexity in the user-media relationship by providing users with a highly interactive environment in which users become the agent of their own media experiences. Users have high agency in VR, controlling the field of view, manipulating objects, and locomoting through the mediated space at will, blurring the boundaries between content producer and consumer. Thus, virtual experiences are better able to mimic direct, firsthand experiences than traditional media. Individuals place greater weight on direct, rather than indirect, experiences when making decisions, and consequently, direct experiences tend to have stronger and longer lasting impact on attitude changes than indirect experiences.

Perhaps one of the most critical opportunities that VR provides for the primary prevention of violence is the fact that the impact of experiences in VR does not end when the user unplugs and leaves the virtual world; rather, the effects transfer into the physical world to shift the users attitudes and behaviors.

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Meta's Personal Boundary feature and the importance of violence in virtual reality - Moonshot News

PlutoSpheres logo. (Pluto VR Image)

Seattle startup Pluto VR has brought its virtual reality streaming platform PlutoSphere into Early Access, which gives interested players a chance to check out and influence a pre-release version of the software.

Initially announced in February 2021, PlutoSphere allows its users to stream VR applications to a headset without the need for a local computer, in order to dramatically reduce the cost of entry for virtual reality. Instead of building a new rig around VR compatibility, you can theoretically just get a headset, then run everything from every library you own via data streaming.

PlutoSphere is currently compatible with the Oculus Quest and Quest 2, with plans to support other headsets and mobile devices in the future. It also requires a 5 Ghz WiFi 6 Internet connection, 50 Mbps of bandwidth, a Steam account, and less than 100ms ping to an Amazon Web Services region.

In exchange, you get what Pluto VR advertises as a hardware-agnostic, open-ecosystem platform that lets you access VR apps from your Steam, Epic Games Store, and Oculus libraries, all in one place via data streaming.

The idea behind PlutoSphere, according to Pluto VR co-founder Forest Gibson, is to break down the walled garden that currently surrounds the virtual reality and spatial computing scenes. Pluto VR advertises PlutoSphere as a bridge between the open PC ecosystem and standalone VR hardware.

SideQuest is a more open platform that supports developers innovating in the XR ecosystem, Gibson said in a press release. Now VR users around the world can access PlutoSphere and gain the power of PC VR without having to buy a computer. Pluto has been working on PlutoSphere in a private alpha test for the last year, in conjunction with a group of early adopters and testers.

Oculus/Meta users can grab PlutoSphere via SideQuest as of Feb. 2. The platform is free to use in Early Access a funding model used for apps in pre-release stages for a limited period of time each day, although users can extend that period by purchasing Pluto tokens.

Pluto VR was started in 2015 by Gibson, Jared Cheshier, former Disney animation executive Jonathan Geibel, and PopCap co-founder John Vechey. Its other projects include an eponymous communication service for VR environments, and Metachromium, a spatial browser that lets you open web browser apps as an overlay running on top of any other VR game.

According to the NPD Group, sales of VR/AR gear more than doubled during the 2021 holiday season, with slightly lower overall growth in the market for the full year. Its still considered a niche in the wider video game industry, but with multiple companies now focusing on augmented/mixed reality applications, i.e. smart glasses, and the Metaverse, the VR market is growing much faster than anyone wouldve expected in 2020.

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Pluto VR debuts tech that lets you stream virtual reality to a headset without a computer - GeekWire

Video game and film companies widely use motion capture technology to create lifelike digital characters and avatars.

Now, a January 2022 study from researchers at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia suggests that virtual reality (VR) therapy using realistic motion capture avatars is not only possible, but it may be more effective than traditional therapy for some.

As VR technology develops, your therapist may soon join you in the metaverse in the form of an avatar. What may seem like a graphic video game or dystopian future has been demonstrated by new research.

The study suggests that realistic motion avatars could be the future of social interactions in virtual reality, which could have clinical implications for therapeutic relationships.

Shane L. Rogers, PhD, researcher and lecturer in the Edith Cowan University psychology department in Australia, and the lead author of the study, said that due to the increasing affordability of motion capture technology, it could start to become widely adopted for a greater variety of purposes such as psychotherapy.

The therapist can drive the movement of a digital avatar in real-time so that the avatar mimics their face and body movements in a smooth and lifelike manner, Rogers told Psych Central.

The study focused on the interactions between two avatars in a three-dimensional virtual setting.

Fifty-two undergraduate psychology students from 18 to 53 years old rated their experiences communicating with an avatar driven by another person wearing motion capture technology.

They engaged in casual getting-to-know-you conversations and were interviewed about positive and negative experiences.

The researchers compared the avatar conversations to face-to-face conversations and found that about 30% of participants felt more comfortable disclosing negative experiences in virtual reality compared to face-to-face.

This indicates that for a substantial proportion of people, this mode of communication might be quite useful for psychological therapy, Rogers said. We are currently doing more research to further investigate that.

Virtual reality is not a new concept, even in therapeutic settings.

Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) that places people in simulated environments related to combat developed by technology companies like Bravemind is being used at over 100 sites across the United States to treat combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Though the process of reliving trauma may sound intense, 2021 research suggests that VRET can have benefits.

Research on the benefits of VR therapy for mental health conditions dates to at least 1995, when a small-scale study showed that virtual reality exposure could help people who have a fear of heights.

But the idea that a therapist-client relationship could occur in a virtual world is relatively new.

Communicating in VR transports you into another world, Rogers said. When you step outside the real world for a moment into the virtual one, for some people, this might feel like a safer space to process the negative feelings around negative experiences.

Rogers added that disclosing negative experiences to another person face-to-face may lead to feelings of shame or embarrassment. Interacting in VR provides an added layer of interpersonal distance, making disclosing feelings easier for some.

He was also surprised by how much participants seemed to enjoy their social interactions in the virtual setting, suggesting increasing acceptance of the technology.

Human beings are social beings, Rogers said. Now that we can really put the social into VR experiences, this opens up a massive amount of possibilities.

A growing body of evidence, according to a 2021 review, suggests that VR therapy may benefit people with specific mental health conditions.

David A. Merrill, MD, PhD, an adult and geriatric psychiatrist, and director of the Pacific Neuroscience Institutes Pacific Brain Health Center in Santa Monica, California, uses VR therapy at his outpatient Memory Clinic to provide brain training for individuals with Alzheimers disease.

He said that many people could benefit from VR therapy, particularly children and adolescents who might feel shy or wary about disclosing their feelings face-to-face with a therapist (even online or over Zoom).

With VR technology, you could engage in clinically meaningful therapy thats actually preferred without ever leaving the house, Merrill told Psych Central. I think its meant to be a proxy for togetherness when you cant actually be together.

Research from 2020 suggests that prolonged exposure therapy and virtual reality exposure could help people experiencing post-traumatic stress manage their symptoms by re-creating the narrative of their trauma.

The core of post-traumatic stress is avoidance and anxiety that becomes so severe that youve stopped doing things because youre avoiding triggers and reminders, Merrill said.

You can create a narrative where you realize that you were there, that you lived through such an awful thing, and that you survived.

Research from 2019 shows that VRET may also be beneficial for anxiety disorders, particularly phobias.

Virtual spaces can be created to expose individuals to specific anxieties or phobias in a virtual setting, such as a fear of heights or spiders.

In addition, another recent study suggests that virtual companions in the form of avatars may help reduce anxiety by providing support, particularly among women.

VR therapy may also hold promise for treating individuals with depression and mood disorders, according to a 2021 study.

Merrill said VR could help those whove lost their sense of motivation, pleasure, and joy.

Bringing joy or enjoyment into therapy would be an important element that could be an advantage, Merrill said. You can meet [your therapist] on the phone or Zoom but I think there are some people whod be kind of jazzed to meet in the metaverse.

VR may seem like all fun and games, but its not for everyone. Side effects of VR may include:

In addition, psychotherapy can still come with risks even in the virtual world.

Those trying VR therapy can work through feelings of overwhelm and anxiety about the therapeutic process with a professional.

You need to have confidence that the therapeutic framework is going to be maintained and that its professional therapy, Merrill said, That kind of safeguards against the vulnerability of altered states or altered realities.

In a tech-driven world already grappling with Zoom fatigue, is metaverse burnout on the horizon?

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, will soon release its VR communication platform, Horizon Worlds, which means it wont be long before cutting-edge VR technology and headsets become widely available.

I predict were going to witness VR social interaction becoming a lot more commonplace in the not too distant future, Rogers said.

Harnessing motion capture to make the avatars more faithfully mimic the body language of the person behind the avatar is the key ingredient to enhance the experience enough to bring VR communication into the mainstream.

Although the Edith Cowan study is preliminary and the technology still needs development, meeting your therapist in the metaverse, as proposed by the new research, could present a new pathway for those who might not feel comfortable in traditional therapy, be it in real life or online.

Research supports VRET therapy for certain mental health conditions, but avatar-based VR therapy is still in its early infancy.

Emerging research suggests that VR technologies could supplement not replace the in-person therapeutic process. For some people, a combination of traditional and VR therapy may work well.

I think one of the fears of the metaverse is that you just stopped living in reality, whereas VR is intended to help you get back to living more healthfully in the world, Merrill said.

Its hard to imagine the technology evolving to the point where you would replace the therapist because this is really more about connecting with another person in a virtual space rather than connecting to a virtual entity.

Excerpt from:

How Virtual Reality Therapy Could Help with PTSD, Depression, Anxiety - PsychCentral.com

PHILADELPHIA, Pa.Comcast NBCUniversal has launched the NBC Olympics VR by Xfinity app, which will offer for the first time 8K resolution of virtual reality Olympic coverage.

The app will feature more than 150 hours of live and on demand interactive virtual reality (VR) coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games, including VR Coverage of Opening and Closing Ceremonies, Figure Skating, Ice Hockey, Snowboarding and More

We strive to create innovative viewing experiences so immersive it rivals being at the Winter Olympics live, said Sophia Ahmad, executive vice president, Xfinity Consumer Services. Our robust network makes it possible for Xfinity customers to get closer to the action than ever before, experiencing for the first-time ever, the Games in 8K VR.

The app was developed in collaboration with product and technical teams across NBCU and Comcast.

Partnering with global colleagues across Comcast, our 8K virtual reality experience for the Winter Games will offer fans a one-of-a-kind viewing experience where they feel as if theyre fully immersed in their favorite sports, cheering Team USA athletes to victory, said Gary Zenkel, president, NBC Olympics.

The app can be used by all pay TV customers in the U.S. They can use their TV Everywhere credentials to authenticate their access to the app. The 150 plus hours of immersive 8K coverage includes:

Viewers can also host a virtual Olympics watch party and invite up to three friends to join their virtual suite where they can interact together and enjoy immersive live coverage of Olympic events as if they were in the same room.

The NBC Olympics VR by Xfinity app is now available to download from the Meta Quest 2 app store.

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8K Virtual Reality Coverage is Coming to the Olympics - TV Technology

[105 Pages Report] Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense Market Insights 2022 The Aerospace and Defense industry is prone to develop VR/AR technologies. Industrial and military applications are numerous, and constitute opportunities at every stage of the supply chain. Engineers and technicians can benefit from VR rooms to simulate systems and platforms designs before starting to fabricate the first piece of hardware. They will also use AR glasses as a technical support on the assembly line or during maintenance checks. Overall, the quality and the reliability of the industrys output will increase while time and costs are set to decrease. On the end-user side, military personnel are already using VR for trainings and are now exploring the potential of AR glasses for intelligence and information communication on the battlefield.

Market Analysis and Insights: Global Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense Market

In 2021, the global Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense market size will be USD million and it is expected to reach USD million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of % during 2021-2027.

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Global Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense Scope and Market Size

Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense market is segmented by company, region (country), by Type, and by Application. Players, stakeholders, and other participants in the global Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense market will be able to gain the upper hand as they use the report as a powerful resource. The segmental analysis focuses on revenue and forecast by Type and by Application in terms of revenue and forecast for the period 2016-2027.

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Leading key players of Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense Market are

Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense Market Type Segment Analysis (Market size available for years 2022-2027, Consumption Volume, Average Price, Revenue, Market Share and Trend 2015-2027): Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR)

Regions that are expected to dominate the Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense market are North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa and others

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(New Report) Virtual and Augmented Reality in Aerospace and Defense Market In 2022 : The Increasing use in Civil Use, Military is driving the growth...

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When immersive experiences first became accessible to everyday consumers in the form of headsets like the Oculus Rift and Google Glass, the industry appeared ripe for mainstream acceptance. A few years later, the hype around VR and AR has died down.

Then Facebook (the company) changed its name to Meta and signaled its investment in the metaverse. Suddenly everyone cared about VR and AR again.

Yet I still find many people still arent quite clear on what all these terms mean. Whats the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality? What does XR stand for, and what exactly is mixed reality?

Fret no more friends, Im here to help. I should note that some of these terms are constantly evolving and that sometimes academic/technical/corporate usage differs from colloquial usage (were primarily focused on the latter here), but this guide should help you make sense of our imminent immersive future.

Virtual reality is the OG. When people think of immersive computer-generated experiences beyond just gaming on a giant TV, VR is probably what comes to mind the most.

Credit: Oculus

Virtual reality generally refers to a fully immersive experience replacing the real world with a fully computer-generated one. Typically, experiencing VR requires wearing an opaque headset that blocks your eyes from the real world. This generally counts even if the VR headset is creating a simulacrum of your surroundings. Some VR headsets, for instance, are able to project aspects of the real world into your field of view using headset-mounted cameras.

Basically, if you strap on something onto your face and cant see out of it until you turn it on, thats VR.

Examples: Oculus Rift/Go, HTC Vive, Google Cardboard, Nintendo Virtual Boy

Now things are getting a little muddier, but in general, AR is the counterpart to VR. While VR replaces the real world with computer-generated imagery, AR instead seeks to, erm, augment the real world with virtual experiences.

Therefore, when youre experiencing AR, your perception is still guided by real-world objects and events.

Unlike VR, AR doesnt require you to be fully immersed in a headset or use a headset at all, for that matter. If youve used a Snapchat filter, youve used a form of AR.

There are a number of apps now that allow you to superimpose 3D models onto an image of the real world say, if you want to see how that armchair youve been eyeing will fit in your living room.

Augmented reality may not require sight either some might consider location-based audio cues to be a form of augmented reality.

Examples: Pokemon GO, Google Glass, Magic Leap, Vuzix Blade

Im grouping these two together because depending on who you ask, these could be the same thing or have more specific definitions. But in general, these are the two terms most often used as the over-arching terminology to encompass all computer-generated immersive experiences.

Microsoft, for example, is fond of the term mixed reality as a term for all digitally-enhanced events both AR and VR. This implies that reality and virtuality exist on a spectrum the aptly-named reality-virtuality continuum and has its roots in academic research for decades. It was coined by researchers Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino in a 1994 paper.

On one end, you have the real world as the cave folk experienced it, free from any digital nonsense. On the other end, you have a completely virtual experience, where your senses are fully immersed in a virtual environment this is closer to straight-up living in the Matrix.

Mixed reality is everything between these two extremes, so it generally works for both AR and VR. That includes devices that offer both technologies in one; you can imagine a headset that is transparent for augmented experiences, but can go opaque when the user wants to be fully immersed.

There are some even more complex and specific definitions for mixed reality, but the above should suffice for most of the time you encounter the term.

So what about extended reality (XR), then? Well in most situations, it pretty much means the same thing.

That said, XR has gained some traction the last few years and is often defined more broadly; its also supposed to also cover all possible Rs we havent even thought of yet. Mixed reality, while including AR and VR, tends to be a bit more associated with the former (perhaps due to Microsofts HoloLens).

Still, MR appears to be the more popular term overall:

Its also worth noting that weve generally been talking about replacing or adding to reality, but some researchers are also studying removing stuff from reality. This could be used, for example, to focus on a particular subject in an environment while ignoring others. The term mediated reality is sometimes used to describe both computer-generated interactions that add to our perception, as well as those that remove from it.

In general though, youll see MR and XR as the most common umbrella terms, as they most reflect the experiences consumers will buy into. Which one ends up being more popular remains to be seen. Im a fan of mixed reality due to its history, but extended reality seems to be a little easier to explain since people dont get hung up on the mixed part.

In any case, Id bet whatever Apple uses to describe its rumored headset will be the term that sticks around.

Examples of MR and XR: Microsoft HoloLens, pretty much all VR and AR headsets and experiences

Original post:

VR, AR, MR, XR: Which reality is the best? - The Next Web

A farmer in central Turkey places virtual reality headsets on two of his cows each day, before turning on some classical music in the barn.

That gets them in the mood for milking, he says, adding that Mozart or Beethoven have worked best so far.

This might have been the stuff of sci-fi films of the past. Instead, these days, technology is changing the world of agriculture almost as fast as it is affecting people's lives.

The sights and sounds are part of a new routine created by Izzet Kocak, who breeds cows in Aksaray, in order to encourage his animals and increase their milk yield.

The results are promising, Kocak told dpa.

Each cow chills out to the soothing scenes of a meadow with the special goggles. This, coupled with the music, has led them to produce an extra 5 litres more milk every day since last week, he says.

"We saw that anxious animals calmed down as they reacted very positively to VR sets and classical music which we play all day at a low volume," Kocak says.

The cows are used to the routine and may even look forward to it, he says.

"I feel like they can't wait to chill out with the goggles every day."Farms worldwide seek to raise animals' milk yields, due to tight costs and the low price of milk. Photo: Jens Buttner/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa

Kocak first heard of the approach after reading that farmers were trying it out in Russia. The Russian Ministry of Agriculture tested VR headsets on cows some two years ago.

Now, Kocak downloads images of green fields with birds chirping in the background onto the special headsets that cost around 2,000 liras (RM620).

He hopes the cows can enjoy the feeling of being in a sunny field even when they are in the barn.

He plans to expand his approach to three more animals in the near future. He also wants to see how well it works in summer, as well as winter, though he notes that the cows are not always stuck indoors.

The aim of the tests is to prepare the animals for milking, he says.

Kocak has three facilities with a total of 180 animals. The cows can roam freely at the Aksaray farm, where a veterinarian is on site and hygiene standards are scrupulously high.

Visitors are not allowed on the site so as to avoid disturbing the cows, Kocak says. Especially after his story made to state news agency Anadolu last week.

"Some wanted to come and see animals but I refused since they need calm and I don't want them to catch any diseases," he says.

Kocak, 30, is a third-generation farmer and he is convinced that his new approach will not only help improve the quantities of milk his cows produce but also raise the quality too.

The facility is preparing to test the levels of fat in the milk before it can start mass production of yoghurt or cheese using the milk produced by the headset-wearing cows in March.

Some researchers from Germany, Russia and Britain have already contacted to Kocak, offering help and advice, he says.

The project is not just for fun, as farms worldwide face rising costs and growing demand.

The cost of feeding a cow each per day is around 80 liras (RM25), he says, while the market price for raw milk is around 5 liras (RM1.55).

And the cost of breeding and milk are rising dramatically.

The price of raw milk surged by more than 68% over the past one year, driven by animal feed, gasoline prices amid a weak lira currency, according to data from Ankara-based Turkish National Dairy Council.

Kocak welcomes the fact that the government provides incentives for animal breeding.

However, an agricultural expert suggested videos on VR devices that are made for people might not have such a positive impact on cattle and their milk yield.

Agricultural engineer Benito Weise, who has studied cows and virtual reality in Germany, told dpa that cows could distinguish more individual images per second than humans.

He said cows would likely not find the kind of video Kocak described as showing relaxing images of nature, but could find it unpleasant or stressful and that stress has a negative effect on milk yield.

Others have questioned whether the approach is appropriate.

The method should not mean locking animals up in cages which would then amount to "torture" and violate animal rights, said Ahmet Kemal Senpolat, from the local animal rights group Haytap. dpa

View original post here:

Turkish farmer uses virtual reality headsets on cows to raise milk production - The Star Online