Category Archives: Virtual Reality

Enigma You'd think virtual reality's biggest problems right now are breaking into meaningful mainstream adoption, and not making wearers of the headsets look utterly ridiculous. But no, it's possible you are wrong.

For we're told the re-emergence of virtual and augmented reality hardware may bring with it hackers tormenting folks in new ways, or so believes an organization that says it's tackling said hackers.

Speaking at this year's USENIX Enigma conference in San Francisco, Kavya Pearlman, founder of the non-profit XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), outlined a number of ways miscreants could cause mischief after compromising headsets.

Her initiative is seeking donations to, among other goals, "establish safety and ethics standards" in virtual reality. The organization fears hackers could pwn internet-connected headsets just like they can break into home and corporate networks which isn't too unbelievable, truth be told. Witness the hijacking of poorly secured Ring devices by scumbags to intimidate and scare families.

On the one hand, it's perhaps a little premature to be worrying about future security problems with virtual reality gear, given it's a fad that surfaces and sinks every few years. On the other hand, fiends love finding new stuff on the internet to pwn be it printers, hospitals, cloud servers, security cameras, and so on so perhaps, with more net-connected techno-specs in use, this is something we can look forward to this decade.

"The attack surface that used to be your server or your network or your backend," as Pearlman put it, "has now expanded to your living room, your objects that you surround yourself with."

The most obvious dangers, according to Pearlman, are physical. Pointing to research conducted by XRSI and university eggheads, Pearlman warned of people being turned into "human joysticks" by hackers manipulating paths and directions in virtual worlds to redirect folks into harm's way. Like stubbing your toe on a cupboard or tripping up over a coffee table, we presume. At a stretch, someone could, we dunno, fall on a buzz saw or into a vat of molten iron if they were, for some reason, using the gear in an industrial plant.

Meanwhile, folks could maybe fall victim to "chaperone" attacks in which boundaries preventing people from wandering into danger areas are removed. Then there's the usual threat of ransomware scrambling device data, denial-of-service attacks knocking multi-user environments offline, remote-code execution bugs exploited to inject spyware into the techno-goggles, and, yeah, you get the idea.

Speaking of spyware: it's possible, we're told, to surveil someone by monitoring their compromised head gear. "Most of these devices have a front-facing camera," Pearlman said, adding a team of researchers were "able to turn on the camera without the person's knowledge and stream the video back to their server."

Then there's the potential for psychological attacks that use the immersion of virtual reality environments to freak out the wearer... until they pull the goggles off. "These technologies are so compelling," Pearlman opined. "We can use these technologies to hijack somebody's system and put them in a horror environment."

While XRSI's efforts to secure these gadgets are commendable and forewarned is forearmed with security with no documented exploits or attacks in the wild, and no mainstream adoption, panic ye not.

Sponsored: Detecting cyber attacks as a small to medium business

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Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here's someone to tell us to worry about hackers - The Register

Looking at Big Tech as the next Big Oil.

This post has been corrected.

E-sports has emerged as an important mix in Indians overall sports-viewing experience.

About 73% of Indian respondents in a recent survey said they have watched e-sports, and 57% have played one, well ahead of enthusiasts in the US, UK, and European countries. Other Asian countries, including Singapore and Hong Kong, too, boast of big fan-following for e-sports, says a Jan. 30 report by Capgemini Research Institute.

The report gauges the impact of technology in transforming the viewing and playing experience of sports fans. The Capgemini Research Institute surveyed 10,363 sports fans across nine countries for the report.

The rise of digital technologies in sports has enhanced the viewing experience for fans as tech has become an integral part of how we consume e-sports, said the report.

Fans from Asian countries, including India, Hong Kong, and Singapore, lead in the adoption and acceptance of emerging technologies in sports. They are keen on using and experimenting with technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. Close to three-quarters of them (74%) have experienced the use of emerging technology in the stadium, with India leading at 88%.

The use of emerging technologies in creating a unique fan experience is an exciting and rapidly growing area. Sports organisations across the world have a huge opportunity to tap into evolving expectations of fans and athletes to build a more connected, customised, and personalised engagement experience, said Darshan Shankavaram, global digital customer experience practice leader at Capgemini.

Also, sports enthusiasts worldwide are increasingly using technology available inside stadia to enhance their viewing experience. For example, most of the fans check for regular updates on a mobile app while watching the match live, they access wi-fi to share updates on social media, and use their mobile for ordering food & beverages to be delivered to their seat, according to the report.

Sports followers in Asia are also willing to spend more money if assured of a more engaging and rewarding sports experience.

About 71% of them said they would pay more if new technologies enhanced their stadium experience, compared to those in North America (40%), Europe (34%), and Australia (33%).

Correction: An earlier version of this post said: About 73% of Indians have watched e-sports. This has been corrected.

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Indians are embracing e-sports with augmented and virtual reality - Quartz India

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a mental health condition that can develop after a person witnesses or experiences a traumatic event.

It can be triggered by a life-threatening event like a car accident, a sexual assault, a natural disaster - or combat.

In Texas, a new virtual reality treatment is being used to help veterans suffering from PTSD.

For some, maybe they were on a crowded Iraqi street, or maybe, in a rural afghan village, but for as many as 30 percent of veterans, something happened

They are hiding from to this day.

The Strongmind system is designed to take them back there.

"We're trying to help patients to confront and reprocess difficult emotional memories, but in a safe place, Dr. Skip Rizzo from USC Institute for Creative Technologies said.

The system Dr. Skip Rizzo has developed for 15 years is being introduced to clinicians at the North Texas VA this week for them to use with their post-traumatic stress patients.

Traditionally, patients are asked to imagine the scenario they're troubled by.

"And then we can of course, blow stuff upall of a sudden things start to come back. They've been trying to avoid thinking or talking to anybody about it. And once you break that seal, you start to hear more and more and more, Rizzo said.

"it goes beyond what you see and what you hear. Down to what you were holding that day, and even what you were feeling that day," Jason Allen from Dallas said.

Charitable organization Soldierstrong has donated Strongmind to 13 Veteran Affairs Hospitals including three in Texas.

And that real-world use is expected to help develop the system further.

And I think we can move the needle forward not just for veterans but the whole civilian sector and improve the lives of people who are confronted by high stress," Rizzo said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says up to 20 percent of vets who served in Iraq or Afghanistan have PTSD in any given year.

The VA says about 30 percent of Vietnam vets have had PTSD in their lifetime.

Originally posted here:

Texas New virtual reality treatment brings veterans with PTSD back to where it all began 11 - KXXV News Channel 25

January 29, 2020 -A business accelerator launched out of the University of California at San Francisco is studying how digital therapeutic platforms, including virtual and augmented reality, can be used to improve access to care for underserved populations.

USCFs S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech is partnering with AppliedVR, a Los Angeles-based developer of virtual reality treatments, on the program.

The opportunity to work alongside AppliedVR in its quest to deliver virtual reality treatment to all patients helps fulfill our mission because of the sheer unmet need in the space of safe and effective pain management, Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine at UCSF Professor and co-founder of S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech, said in a press release. The unique ability of virtual reality to create an immersive and interactive environment has the potential to be a cost-effective strategy to deliver pain management for diverse patients, in the time and place of their choosing.

Patients who face socioeconomic or social determinant-related burdens and challenges should not be limited in treatment options especially if or when in need of novel or non-pharmacological treatment alternatives, added Matthew Stoudt, AppliedVRs co-founder and chief executive officer.

The project, which began in December, involves interviews with healthcare providers who are using virtual reality and other mHealth platforms in treating underserved populations. By identifying barriers to sustainability and scalability, researchers hope to create best practices that would allow providers and companies like AppliedVR to improve their AR and VR services.

Championed by health systems like Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, which hosts an annual conference focused on VR applications in healthcare, the mHealth platform is now in use in dozens of locations around the country to help patients with issues like pain management, physical therapy and treatment of nervous disorders like anxiety. Earlier this year, Cedars-Sinaipresented the results of a studythat found VR to be effective as a digital therapeutic for in-patient treatment of pain.

We found that on-demand use of VR in a diverse group of hospitalized patients was well tolerated and resulted in statistically significant improvements in pain versus a control group exposed to an in-room health and wellness television channel, the study, led by Brennan Spiegel, MD, concluded. These results build upon earlier studies and further indicate that VR is an effective adjunctive therapy to complement traditional pain management protocols in hospitalized patients.

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UCSF Business Accelerator Studying Digital Therapeutics, Virtual Reality - mHealthIntelligence.com

"It's the same with me," he adds. "I've been programming film events for the past 15 years and I thought I was pretty much across where film is at but it was only at MIFF a couple of years ago that it really occurred to me how far VR had moved from my preconceptions of it."

Like 3D before it, Virtual Reality has been touted by evangelists as the future of filmmaking for decades. But only with the emergence of lightweight affordable headsets in the past five years or so has this emergent medium begun to find both the audience and the community of content creators to begin fulfilling at least a little of that promise.

To date, the biggest commercial opportunities have been in gaming and non-narrative applications, such as virtual real estate inspections.

One of the first VR experiences takes the viewer inside the creation of artist Rone's enormous installation at Burnham Beeches. Credit:Peter Tarasiuk

But the fact the wearer of a headset can be transported into a completely foreign environment also lends itself to certain forms of storytelling too particularly immersive documentary and first-person tales. Trouble is, outside of film festivals and special events at the likes of ACMI, such films have been virtually (sorry) impossible to find.

So it is that Berger is programming, in what is believed to be an Australian first, one VR film a month, to play alongside regular film sessions. And for anyone with a ticket, the experience will be completely free.

He's got two headsets set up in the foyer, and they will play the same VR film simultaneously, four sessions per regular film (the idea is you come early to watch the VR, or stay after you've watched your movie on the big screen). That's a deliberate attempt to counter what some critics see as the great limitation of VR in the cinema the fact it so totally isolates its user from the people around them (which can sometimes give rise to the odd spectacle of people gathering to watch the jerky movements and shocked response of the oblivious person in the headset).

VR is more fun when enjoyed with a friend, as these young children discovered during the filming of Carriberrie.Credit:Dominic Allen

"A lot of people come to the cinema in pairs, and you do want to talk about [a VR experience] with a friend afterwards, just like you do with a film," Berger explains.

He's got his first three films lined up: a short immersive documentary on the artist RONE's recent installation at Burnham Beeches; Carriberrie, an exploration of indigenous dance; and Monster, a first-person story about a former Nazi skinhead in America.

But does he ultimately see a time when every one of the 57 seats in the cinema is occupied by a headset-wearing VR fan, like those 3D-goggle-wearing folk from the 1950s on the poster on the wall outside his picture house?

"Probably not," he says. "I think the future of VR is that people will be watching this content at home."

There's just no escaping the isolating effect of VR, even if you do watch with a friend, he says.

Youre missing out, in my opinion, on all the things that make a cinema like ours different and interesting having other people around you, being in a different environment, getting out of the house, having a glass of wine beside you.

It's pretty difficult to have drink wine when you've got a headset on it gets quite messy."

Karl Quinn is a senior culture writer at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Thornbury Picture House 'first' with regular virtual reality screenings - Sydney Morning Herald

Here's the thing about virtual reality that might not be immediately apparent: it can be a bit dangerous. Venturing out into a virtual experience itself isn't necessarily dangerous; it's virtual, after all. The problem is really when the virtual and physical worlds collide -- sometimes quite literally, as a recent video demonstrates.

Now, some important context is necessary first and foremost: many virtual reality headsets that allow for any significant movement require boundaries to be established. So, for example, if I plop on a virtual reality headset, one of the important steps is basically telling it where obstacles are by defining exactly how much free space there is to play around in. Anyone that's played around in VR is likely familiar with this setup.

This is all to say, it's still pretty dang funny to watch someone completely overestimate the amount of space they have and run face-first into a wall. You can check out exactly that in the video, shared on Reddit, below:

Thankfully, both the person wearing it and the Oculus Quest headset itself are fine. "He's fine," Reddit user amandasox8 later shared. "Quest still works. Minor scratch." There is also, apparently, a black mark on the wall. But considering the collision in the above video, that seems like a relatively small consequence.

The VR game being played here, according to other social media comments, is Crisis VRigade from developer Sumalab, and it puts players in the role of a SWAT member dealing with a hostage situation. Given the adrenaline likely involved in playing, maybe running into walls is more common than other VR games? Hard to say.

"Together with a SWAT team you will have to deal with the situation and take care of the terrorists who are robbing the bank," the game's official description reads in part. "Your mission is crystal clear: finish off all hostile elements and keep your teammates and hostages alive. Make your way through the bank to the safe where the terrorist have made a stronghold and threaten to kill the hostages if their demands are not met."

Have you ever had any trouble with virtual reality headsets like this? Or have you seen anyone having problems? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!

The Oculus Quest, among other virtual reality headsets, is currently available wherever such things are sold. You can check out all of our previous coverage of virtual reality right here.

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Virtual Reality and the Physical World Literally Collide in Hilarious Video - Comicbook.com

Myth: A Frozen Tale is Disney Animation's first virtual-reality short based on a blockbuster franchise.

Disney's Frozen 2 virtual-reality short is sure to delight superfans of Elsa, Anna and Disney Animation. Its creators are excited to get it out there, perhaps even on the company's new streaming service, Disney Plus. We just don't know when -- or if -- fans will ever be able to experience it in VR.

Myth: A Frozen Tale is a beautifully stylized origin story of the nature-spirit characters of Frozen's blockbuster movie sequel. Featuring characters like the cute, fiery salamander Bruni, glittering water horse Nokk and flighty air spirit Gale (which Disney actually created with the help of VR as a production tool), Myth is a fairy tale retold inside the Frozen universe. It's only the second VR short made in-house by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and it's the first one to bring a Disney Animation blockbuster franchise into virtual reality. Disney has shown off Myth on the sidelines of theSundance Film Festivalhere in Park City, Utah.

Myth first immerses you in a modest family home in Frozen's kingdom of Arendelle, where two children beg their mother to retell their favorite story before bed. Then the room around you disappears, and you enter a gorgeously rendered stylization of the enchanted forest that Elsa and her band penetrate on their journey. It's a bit like standing inside themost abstract portions of Elsa's big musical numbers, but the VR feels magnitudes more elaborate, and it totally surrounds you. Or, in the case of the earth giants, it towers over you too.

(The production design of Myth comes from Brittney Lee, a visual development artist who worked on both Frozen and its sequel and focused on elements like Elsa's costumes.)

The look of Disney's Myth VR resembles the more abstract segments of Frozen 2's songs Into the Unknown and Show Yourself.

But Myth's cloudy future underscores one of the reasons virtual reality has had such a hard time winning over consumers.

VR was one of technology's buzziest trends a few years ago, but its hype has fizzled as widespread adoption proved elusive. Consumers have been ambivalent about the odd, expensive headsets you strap to your face. Gotta-see-it content (say, something built on a blockbuster animated-movie franchise...) might compel more people to give the unfamiliar format a try. But giants like Disney must weigh the risks of putting a highly lucrative franchise into an unproven medium.

Other arms of Disney have toyed with VR before, mostly in gaming experiments rather than storytelling. Disney has produced severalMarvel-based VR gamesand anotherVR gamebased on Disney Animation'sRalph Breaks the Internet. And its Pixar animation studio also created a VR project based onCocoin partnership with Facebook's Oculus in 2017.

With Myth, there's also the paradox of putting a fairy tale into VR. Disney's film draws a family audience, with viewers in a range of ages. But kids are definitely one of the biggest -- if not the most important -- audience for franchises like Frozen. And every major company that makes VR headsets recommends you don't give them to children younger than 12 or 13 years old.

The creative team members behind Myth said they're eager to get the project in front of fans in some form. They have "a lot of irons in the fire" for possible releases, Nicholas Russell, the producer of the piece, said in an interview Friday.

But if it follows the path of Disney Animation's previous -- and first -- VR short, it wouldn't be publicly released as VR even more than a year after its premiere.

Cycles, a VR animation about the milestones of one family over decades in their beloved home, premiered in August 2018 at a Canadian computer graphics industry conference. It had its US premiere about a month later at the New York Film Festival, and it's been exhibited selectively at places like Sundance since then. But the VR version has never been publicly released.

Cycles was Disney Animation's first VR short.

On Friday, Disney adapted Cycles into a two-dimensional edition -- what some in VR circles call a "flattie" -- and released it as a regular-video short on Disney Plus, the company's new streaming service launched in November. Included as an episode in Disney Plus' Short Circuit collection of short films, Cycles in 2D retains the same story, but it loses all the virtual elements that gave it visceral punch in VR.

And to people accustomed to the highly rendered computer animation from traditional Disney features, VR adapted to 2D may look chunky by comparison. Traditional computer animation has the advantage of hours and hours of supercomputers performing all the math necessary to output those moving images that look so beautiful and real. But VR is what's known as live-rendered animation. It has to do all that number-crunching in milliseconds, using a computer you might be able to buy off the shelf at Best Buy.

As a result, characters in Cycles don't have the same smoothness to the planes of their faces or arms that people are used to. They look more geometrical.

Jeff Gipson, the director of both Cycles and Myth, said that the beauty of creating a VR film like Myth in what is essentially a video-game engine is that his team can adapt it into a flat version that could potentially be on Disney Plus someday, like Cycles.

"Maybe as the technology continues to progress, hopefully the age limits [and] restrictions will evolve and allow for audiences of all ages to enjoy both Myth: A Frozen Tale and Cycles in the format they were created in," he said.

Myth VR debuted in November at the world premiere of Frozen 2 in Hollywood, where a group of about 2,000 after-party attendees had the opportunity to check it out. Here in Park City, it's being screened by invitation-only to select members of the film industry and press. To even enter the room where Myth was set up, I had to sign a nondisclosure contract under the gaze of a security guard whose forearms seemed as big as my thighs.

Fans curious how it feels to step into the mythology of Frozen will just have to wait to see if they ever get the chance, beefy security guard or not.

Originally published Jan. 27.Update Jan. 28:Adds more details.

Now playing: Watch this: Disney doubles down on VR entertainment

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Disney fans will love Frozen VR. When can they see it? Maybe...never - CNET

2019 was a growth year for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) known collectively as extended reality (XR). The presence of these breakthrough technologies began to be felt far away from the fields of gaming and entertainment, where they first became popular.

The 5 Biggest Virtual And Augmented Reality Trends In 2020 Everyone Should Know About

Virtual reality where users wear a headset and are fully immersed in computer-generated environments has been developed to meet design, marketing, education, training, and retail needs. Augmented reality where computer images are superimposed onto the user's view of the real world, through a screen or headset is a more complex challenge, as it requires the software to "see" what is in front of it. But we're getting used to seeing it used for more than adding cartoon features to selfie pictures or spotting Pokemon in the wild.

With global spending on XR technology is forecast to increase by 78.5% next year compared to this year, both technologies will be key trends to watch out for in 2020. We are likely to see a whole load of exciting new hardware offering even greater immersion and realism, as well as innovative use cases as industry gets to grips with what it can do.

Industrial use outpaces gaming and entertainment

Most people's first experiences of VR and AR today are likely to be in gaming and entertainment. That's likely to change, as research shows that the development of enterprise XR solutions is overtaking that on consumer solutions. The 2020 XR Industry Insight report collated by VR Intelligence states that 65% of the AR companies surveyed said they are working on industrial applications, while just 37% working on consumer products and software.

This shouldnt be surprising although games made the headlines in recent years thanks to Pokemon Go and Facebook's Oculus Rift, the potential to boost productivity and safety using XR makes it an attractive proposition for industry. VR can be used to simulate working in dangerous environments or with expensive, easily damaged tools and equipment, without any of the risks. AR, on the other hand, can be used to relay essential information directly to the user about whatever happens to be in front of them reducing the time spent by engineers, technicians, or maintenance staff referring to manuals and looking up information online while on the job.

XR takes off in healthcare

The potential uses for these technologies in healthcare are obvious, and over 2020 we can expect to see many of these use cases transition from trials and pilots and gradually into general use. Virtual reality has already been adopted in therapy, where it is used to treat patients with phobias and anxiety disorders. Combined with biosensors that monitor physiological reactions like heart rate and perspiration, therapists can get a better understanding of how patients react to stressful situations in a safe, virtual environment. VR is also used to help people with autism develop social and communication skills, as well as to diagnose patients with visual or cognitive impairments, by tracking their eye movement.

The adoption of AR in healthcare is forecast to grow even more quickly with the value of the market increasing by 38% annually until 2025. AR can be used by surgeons both in the theater and in training to alert them to risks or hazards while they are working. One app which has been developed uses AR to guide users towards defibrillator devices, should they need one when they are out in public. Another one helps nurses to find patients veins and avoid accidentally sticking needles where they arent wanted. As these innovations and others like them lead to improved patient outcomes and reduced cost of treatment, they are likely to become increasingly widespread throughout 2020.

Headsets get smaller, more mobile and more powerful

One of the biggest limiting factors with current XR technology is the need for encumbering headsets and display units. This is more of a problem with VR, where the powerful processing hardware needed to generate the graphics is usually contained within the headset. However, hardware devices have started to trend towards being "untethered" For example, Facebook's Oculus headset initially needed to be connected to a powerful PC, but this year became available as the self-contained Oculus Quest version.

As well as more mobile, headsets will be able to generate increasingly realistic "worlds" for the VR user to explore as the devices are fitted with more and more powerful processors. While early VR worlds were clearly computer-generated using low-resolution polygons, the vistas available to us in 2020 will move closer to reality, allowing for more immersive experiences. Possibly the most anticipated breakthrough will be Apples forthcoming 8K combined VR/AR glasses that will not be tethered to a computer or phone. The consumer tech giant is hoping that it will be the one to breakXR into the mainstream with a high-end but affordable device, in the same way it did with the iPhone.

5G opens new possibilities for VR and AR

Super-fast mobile networks will further boost the potential of XR to strengthen its presence in entertainment and make further inroads into industry during 2020.

The potential for data transfer speeds of up to 3 gigabits per second by comparison, the average home broadband delivers well under 100 megabits per second means 5G should be fast enough to stream VR and AR data from the cloud. Rather than needing to be wired up to powerful PCs, or encumbered by on-board hardware, viewing devices will upload tracking data to data centers where the heavy processing will be done. The rendered images can be delivered back to the user in real-time thanks to the speed of 5G and other advanced networks.

Streaming VR has been possible in a limited way for a few years now Facebook lets you do it with your phone, but the experience is limited due to data transfer speeds and low on-device processing power. Combining it with the cloud and 5G technology means designers of VR and AR tools will be unencumbered by the need to deliver their experiences into a low-bandwidth, low-powered environment. The result will be cheaper headsets and viewing devices and more realistic VR simulations.

More of us will learn through VR and AR

Educational experiences in VR and AR will continue to become increasingly common throughout 2020. The immersive nature of VR means that pupils can engage with learning in fun new ways, and AR brings new flexibility to on-the-job training.

Already students can take a trip through time to visit the ancient Romans, or through space to experience conditions on other planets. But as the technology becomes moves away from niche and becomes part of the fabric of everyday education, were likely to see growth apart from simply providing "experiences," into solving problems with current education systems. Distance learners could be taught in VR classrooms, meaning they dont miss out on the benefits of learning in a collaborative environment, while AR training aids can ensure that access to the information needed to carry out a job is always on hand.

You might also be interested in some of the best examples of how AR is already being used in business, which I discuss in this video:

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The 5 Biggest Virtual And Augmented Reality Trends In 2020 Everyone Should Know About - Forbes

Maybe this will be the year virtual reality goes mainstream. If we say it enough times well be right eventually, yeah?

But it really does feel like 2020 might be the year. Four years into consumer virtual reality, I finally feel excited again. The hardware is great, and cheaper than ever before. The games are promising, albeit few. And theres a sense that maybe the We need software to sell hardware to make developing software worthwhile vicious cycle has finally been overcome. Maybe.

I could be wrong. I certainly hate to get excited about virtual realitys prospects in 2020, in a Fool me twice sort-of way. Ive had my heart broken by VR before. And yet

If VR does take off in 2020, much of the credit needs to go to Oculus and its Oculus Quest. And listen, I love the fidelity of Valves high-end Index headset driven by my desktop PC and its Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Who wouldnt? The image quality is fantastic, the tracking is pinpoint precise, the sound is phenomenal.

The Quest is none of these things. It looks okay. The tracking is easily broken. The sound is good enough.

It doesnt matter, because Oculus broke free from the tyranny of the tether. Suddenly VR isnt a $1,500 investment but a $400 one, period(at least when stock is available). No hidden costs, no Oh actually you need to upgrade your graphics card.

Even if you have a gaming PC, Oculus Quests flexibility is mighty appealing. I have plenty of space to use the Index with my desktop, but still find myself reaching for the Quest simply because its less hassle. Friends of mine have expressed an interest in Oculus Quest because their PC is confined to a small room, but they have a sizable living room that would be perfect for room-scale VR. Not to mention the fact that you can travel with Quest, or take it to a friends house to demo.

And for an extra $80, you can have a perfectly capable PC-based VR system anyway. Oculus Link, which went into beta in November, allows you to hook the Oculus Quest up to your PC with a USB-C cable. There are cheaper cables on Amazon for $20 or so, but Oculus now sells a bespoke cable for $80 thats both longer and lays flat along the side of the headset, which is a little less janky than having some random Anker cable sticking out the side at a right angle.

Its the headset that VR needed. Theres a place for Index, and its cousin the HTC Vive Pro. Hell, theres still a place for the original Vive hardware as well. Oculus Quest is a great untethered headset though and a good enough entry-level tethered headset, and its cheap as hell. No surprise people are buying it in droves.

And people are buying it. Thats, I think, the second part of this story. Its hard to get reliable sales figures, as neither Valve nor Facebook appears interested in making those numbers public.

There was a lot of encouraging news last year though. First, Mark Zuckerberg claimed during a mid-year earnings call that Were selling [Oculus Quest units] as fast as we can make them.

Soon, even that wasnt enough. The holidays were full of reports of Quest shortages...pretty much everywhere. In fact Quest is still sold out on Amazon at time of writing, or at least only available through resellers for an inflated price. Placing the order through Oculuss site, Im told it will ship by March 4.

Valves Index is hard to get, too. The first reports of Index shortages came in late November, and by early December it was gone. Valve kept orders open for a few more weeks, with shipping estimates slipping first to February, then to March. And now? Going to the Indexs Steam page, youre met with a Notify Me button. Valves effectively closed orders until it can meet the existing demand.

Even themuch-maligned Oculus Rift S headset is sold out for the moment. Thatd be my last pick for VR now that Quest does everything the Rift S does and more, but Oculus is still struggling to keep up.

Again, its hard to pin actual numbers to any of these headsets. For all we know, Valve made a dozen Index kits for the holidays, sold out, and is now trying to build a dozen more. Until we see sales figures, its hard to know otherwise.

And as a percentage of the PC audience? The numbers remain a rounding error. Looking at the Steam Hardware Survey, all the Vive and Rift and Index owners combined still make up less than 1 percent of Steam users. Hell, throw in the Windows Mixed Reality owners as well, you still only get 0.87 percent of the Steam audience owning a VR headsetor about 800,000 people, doing some back-of-napkin math.

Sure, that doesnt account for Oculus Quest owners, nor for those who own a headset but dont keep it regularly hooked up. Still, VRs a long way from mainstream.

Theres interest in the platform thoughand growing interest, if the current shortages are anything to go by. People want VR, or at least enough people to outpace whatever Valve and Oculus planned for ahead of time.

While Oculus deserves most of the credit on the hardware side of virtual reality, its safe to say Valve deserves most of the credit on the software side.

It feels almost unfair to write that, because Oculus has put a lot more money into VRs software ecosystem since 2016, funded a lot of studios both internal and external, and put out a lot of good-to-great games. Lone Echo, Wilsons Heart, Stormland, Asgards WrathOculus has had a hand in a staggering percentage of the VR games worth mentioning since the Rifts consumer launch.

And theyll continue to do so in 2020. In September we finally got a look at Respawns long-awaited partnership with Oculus, and its Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond. Thats a huge series to see resurrected on VR, whether or not I came away impressed by our initial demo. Ready at Dawns Lone Echo II is planned for 2020 as well, and given the original is one of Oculuss (and VRs) strongest titles, Im hoping the sequel can set the bar even higher.

If theres a forthcoming game fueling a rush on VR headsets though, its undoubtedly Half-Life: Alyx. Announced in November and set for a March release, its the first Half-Life in over a decadeand its a VR exclusive.

Note that its not an Index exclusive. Sure, Index owners get the game for free and the Index controllers will have some additional functionality, but Valves been very clear that you can play Half-Life: Alyx on a Rift, Rift S, Quest, Vive, HP Reverb, or whatever the hell you have lying around.

This is Valves big first-party VR push though. And its the closest weve got to a system seller. I dont think thats a controversial statementand I say that as someone who absolutely loves Google Earth VR and Tilt Brush, Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator, Lone Echo, Asgards Wrath, Audioshield and Pistol Whip and Beat Saber, Robo Recall, Moss, and too many more to mention.

Point being, Ive played a lot of VR games over the years, and had favorites come and go. I keep a mental shortlist of games for new owners to buy, games that are great to show off to first-timers, and so forth. I imagine every VR headset owner has a similar list.

But noneno matter the qualityhave done so much with so little as Half-Life: Alyx. With one trailer, Valve upended the entire idea of what a major VR title might mean. I dont know if it will be good, or even interesting. Nor do I know whether it will outsell Beat Saber, the success of which made arcade/session-style games de rigueur for the last year or two, at the expense of more ambitious (and risky) narrative-heavy experiences.

Still, theres a feeling I think that in Half-Life: Alyx, virtual reality finally has its showcase experience. This is Valves chance, and by extension everyones chance, to prove the platforms usefulness. Thats a lot of weight to put on one game, but its almost certainly whats fueling recent sales, and if in the future VR is as common as WASD controls and physics engines, I expect March of 2020 will be seen as a major inflection point.

Or maybe Half-Life: Alyx will come and go and VR will continue on as it has, slow and steady. Theres that possibility as well. I remember the heady days before the consumer launch of virtual reality, following each new development and thinking Wow, VR is going to change everything. Four years later, it hasnt. Not even close.

Maybe VRs moment is 2020. Maybe its 2021. Maybe its 2031. If nothing else, Im confident VR isnt disappearing anytime soon, even if Slow but constant growth isnt nearly as compelling a story as One day, everything changed.

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Will virtual reality finally break out in 2020? - PCWorld

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Virtual reality is becoming more widespread in gaming, shopping, research, education and training, but is not a perfect match to the real world. Discrepancies create usability problems with accessing virtual tools, or getting distracted, confused, lost or cybersick. Jiayan Zhao, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and a developer at the Center for Immersive Experiences, is conducting experiments to reduce usability problems and improve the users virtual experience.

From the perspective of spatial cognition, the virtual environment can largely simulate the actual environment, but some users experienced serious motion sickness something we dont want to have happen and they could not finish the experiment or their data could not be used, Zhao said. There are huge individual differences in virtual experiences. Some people may already have had experience with VR, so they performed well, but for those who never used VR before, they had challenges in performing the tasks.

New VR users tend to be very excited about everything, and that distracts them from performing the tasks, Zhao said. The novelty effect can be distracting to the learning goal, he said.

Other problems in creating effective virtual environments include usability of tools, spatial awareness, scale and locomotion.

For example, with a workbench for data analysis, the user is interacting with tools, using a hand to push a button or using the tip of the pen, and in some cases, they simply dont understand how to do that, Zhao said. Age or kinesthetic awareness could be factors, so the tools need to be as simple as possible.

Spatial awareness is another usability problem.

In the virtual environment, the way one moves about and sees objects is very different from the real environment, Zhao said. In reality, we perceive our surroundings primarily from an egocentric perspective, using our body as a reference, he said. But virtual environments offer different perspectives: top-down like a map, a high perspective like a tower or hilltop and multiple ground-level perspectives, even transparency. Which is best?

Scale is another problem in the virtual environment because it is much larger than the physical space that can be incorporated into immersive virtual reality (iVR) systems.

That brings up problems with wayfinding and moving around, Zhao said.

Zhao is now applying in an immersive virtual environment what he learned about wayfinding for his masters degree, using mobile phones and navigation applications. He did that work at SUNY Albany with his adviser and Penn State geography alumnus Rui Li.

Overcoming the limit of mobile phone screens for visualizing spatial information was the key to support spatial learning in our project, Li said.

A mobile screen is very small, and the number of landmarks you can view is very limited, Zhao said.

To address this problem, Zhao created an algorithm to show distant landmarks.

If you are in Paris, for example, the location of the Eiffel Tower is important as an anchor for your mental map, Zhao said. Even though it may be far off, I projected it to the edge of the screen to indicate what direction it is.

Li and Zhao adapted visual variables from cartographic design.

Jiayan successfully implemented four prototypes with size, saturation, fuzziness and transparency, respectively, to visualize those distant objects and created the visualization based on ordinal and ratio levels of measurement for us to assess their efficiency, Li said.

At that time, Zhao said he did not know how to program. When I was an undergraduate student in geosciences, I analyzed rock samples and didnt learn anything about computers or technology, Zhao said. But then I started to use them and taught myself. He said the important lesson for him was, do not constrain yourself, and be brave about different possibilities in your life.

Since coming to Penn State, Zhao has applied his experiences and his thinking about spatial cognition to virtual environments.

A virtual environment is powerful, he said. It combines the power of the actual environment with the digital medium. It can trigger emotions in users that may lead to better learning and improve access to science for underrepresented communities.

Zhao said his goal is to make a contribution to the science of virtual reality and increase public engagement in science.

I want to be a professor. I really enjoy doing research, Zhao said.

Originally posted here:

In virtual reality, real problems remain to be resolved - Penn State News