Category Archives: Virtual Reality

Android Central

RaveVR lets you watch YouTube with friends in virtual reality Android Central It originated as a social viewing app for Android and iOS, and now there's a separate virtual reality component for those who are equipped with a Daydream View or Gear VR. RaveVR enables you to watch video in tandem with people you know and with ...

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RaveVR lets you watch YouTube with friends in virtual reality - Android Central

The best part of the Cannes Film Festival s guessing the drama behind the scenes. Was it a love fest or was blood splattered on the walls and the carpets? a journalist asked the jury about their selection process for the awards, announced Sunday night.

Jury president Pedro Almodvar was clear that the bonhomie exhibited by this jury (including Jessica Chastain and Will Smith) on the red carpet was real and said they were very democratic in making their choices. This was clear from their selection of The Square and 120 Beats Per Minute, respectively, for the Palme dOr top prize and the runner-up Grand Prix; these were films liked by many and hated by few. Another film, Loveless, was more divisive, with some naming it the front-runner for the Palme while others (including, ahem, this critic) detested the overly controlled filmmaking and mild misogyny.

Could this have been one of the movies that Chastain took a jab at in the post-awards press conference? She had a fascinating response to a question about the female filmmakers awarded (including Sofia Coppola named as best director for The Beguiled, only the second woman to win and the first in 56 years). Chastain said:

The one thing I really took away from this experience is how the world views women, from the female characters that I saw represented on screen. And it was quite disturbing to me, to be honest. There are some exceptions. But for the most part, I was surprised with the representation of female characters on screen in these films. And I do hope when we include more female storytellers, we will have more of the women that I recognize in my day-to-day life.

A couple of black folks wouldnt hurt none for next year, either, interjected Will Smith.

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Another female filmmaker honored with an award was Lynne Ramsay, who won best screenplay for You Were Never Really Here, the internal noir about trauma and systematic abuses of power by men, with Joaquin Phoenix (also awarded Best Actor) as an off-the-books detective. This was the last competition film and the first one to be divisive in a way that indicates its quality. I was stunned after the last credits and remained in my seat, processing the intensity. But there was an isolated boo in my screening. A few boos is often the mark of Cannes films that become classics, maybe even more consistently than the winner of the Palme dOr.

Another female filmmaker honored with an award was Lonor Serraille for Jeune Femme, which was described to me as the French Frances Ha. It is similarly about a young (but not so young) woman in a city who suddenly becomes homeless after a break-up, in Paris instead of New York. But Serrailles film pays attention to economics in a way that Frances Ha ignored in favor of fantasy.

Frances had parents she could return to while Paula, the red-headed effervescent mess in Jeune Femme, is not so lucky. Frances Ha resolved when she simply decided to get a full-time office job, even though it was made during the recession when full-time office jobs were rarer than unicorns. Paulas resolution is less easy and so then more meaningful, more political. The movie is also a rarity in that it shows a Paris thats not all white.

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Also making an impressive debut was Zambian-British filmmaker Rungano Nyoni with I Am Not a Witch, about 9-year-old Shula who is exiled to a traveling witch camp, where women are held in place by long spools of ribbon. Shes told if she cuts the ribbon shell become a goat, but also told she can escape her fate (sort of) by marrying and following the route of respectability. It is a surprisingly hilarious film, with gorgeous imagery and incredible use of sound, from pop songs in headphones to cell phone ringtones.

This seemed the film that could be the biggest sleeper hit of the festival, a true crowd-pleaser. It was incredibly moving to see it premiere to a long standing ovation and tears in Nyonis eyes framed by her black and blue braids.

The best things I saw in all of Cannes, though, were two things on TV. One was the 1954 Jean Renoir movie, French Cancan, soundless on French TV while waiting to be taken off-site by black car to see Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu's virtual reality exhibit, Carne y Arena. Is this French Cancan?" I asked the woman behind the desk in the wait area outside the screening room. She looked at Jean Gabin on screen and nodded. It was moments like that youre reminded that youre in the center of worship for cinema, in France and especially in Cannes these ten days.

Will Smith also commented on the rich cinematic history of France: "I watch movies everywhere in the world, and the French film-going audience is an evolved audience. Because of the way it's been ingrained in the culture, there will always be a discerning sometimes harsh eye that the world will always look to for a higher perspective on cinema."

Suzanne Tenner

Watching Carne y Arenawhich was co-produced by Legendary Entertainment and Fondazione Prada (where it will be exhibited in full from June through December)felt simultaneously like cinemas future and past. As I watched a group of migrants trying to cross from Mexico to the U.S., spotlights flashed on me and I felt fear, no longer an observer but a mistaken victim. When the guard dog chased after me within the VR experience, I screamed and dived into the sand, feeling both moved and like a sucker, like those audiences who screamed when the train came towards them at the earliest film screenings of The Great Train Robbery in 1903.

Even more remarkable than the VR exhibit was the process of getting there, a mysterious affair full of secrecy, which felt like something out of Twin Peaks. And interestingly, it was watching the first two episodes of Twin Peaks a few days after it aired on American television, though projected on a screen and edited as one movie, which was hands down the most challenging movie I saw in the Cannes Film Festival.

What role will TV play at Cannes in the future? What role will cinematic history play in TV going forwar?. Its always a privilege to be at Cannes, to see the first public screenings of interesting films in a red-carpeted seaside town where theyre worshiped. But this year felt like a special privilege to see a festival in transition. The 70th anniversary felt like the last of what it was and the first of what it will become, no longer a place solely of white men auteurs as priests and the movie theater as the only place of worship.

Bella Hadid, Jessica Chastain, and Elle Fanning Lead the Charge at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival

Watch: The Best Advice Sofia Coppola Received From Her Dad, Francis Ford Coppola: "Don't Wait for Permission"

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Virtual Reality, the Future of TV as Cinema, and the Final Takeaways from the 2017 Cannes Film Festival - W Magazine

Ronnie Rahn, principal at TWH Architects, explains the benefits of virtual reality renderings Wed., May 24, 2017, from TWH Architects in the University Tower building in Chattanooga, Tenn. Virtual reality can help sell ideas to clients and help clients better envision each room within a property they've had commissioned.

Ronnie Rahn, principal at TWH Architects, explains the...

Photo by Erin O. Smith

Dennis Tumlin was looking for a way to quite literally level the playing field when he pitched a hilly industrial site north of Dayton, Tenn., to Finland's biggest tire maker in March.

"We knew we were competing against a flat site in Georgia, and our property still had a slope and was harder at first glance to visualize how a major factory might look [there]," said Tumlin, the executive director for the Rhea County Economic and Tourism Council.

Sam Wills, the Southeast Tennessee regional director for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, suggested the industrial prospects be shown a 3-D view of what the factory could look like in a finished, flattened version of the Rhea County Rail Hub South industrial park.

In only 10 days, the architects and technology team at TWH Architects in Chattanooga, a division of the Michael Brady Co., created the images that allowed top executives from Nokian Tyres to visualize their 830,000-square-foot plant on the site by looking in virtual reality headsets.

Two months after the site visit, Nokian Tyres announced it had picked the 330-acre industrial site north of Dayton for a $360 million tire production plant the biggest private investment ever in Rhea County.

"Did virtual reality alone seal the deal?" Tumlin asked. "No. But it was very effective in showing what we can do and what could be done with this site. I think it was a real help."

The virtual reality (VR) headsets allow users to see and walk through buildings and properties in the virtual world created by the new 3-D design equipment. They can move through the space with a controller and, wearing the headset, get a full 360-degree view.

Although still relatively new, VR proponents think it could gain widespread use by architects, designers and real estate agents trying to show houses, rental properties or office layouts even if the viewer is not on site or before anything is ever built.

The Michael Brady Co., which last year merged with TWH Architects, was one of the first architectural firms in the region to begin widespread use of 3-D modeling of its building projects nearly a decade ago.

"We're actually building 3-D modeling in our computers for building design, which helps us as designers and engineers to not only visualize how a project will look but also to be more precise in our drawings and to work out and detect in advance any conflicts or clash of things like duct work and support beams," said Ronny Rahn, principal architect at TWH Architects Inc. "But in the past couple of years, virtual reality headsets have taken that to a whole new level and really give our clients a chance to immerse themselves in whatever facility we are designing."

TWH uses building information technology developed from the Revit autodesk software. The technology not only helps designers and clients to visualize buildings before they are erected, it also offers a cheaper and quicker way to make changes.

"One of the great things about doing everything in 3-D is we get better feedback from our clients," Rahn said.

Virtual reality can replace costly artist renderings, which can run $2,500 a pop and are outdated as soon as a client asks for a change. And virtual reality headsets are getting cheaper Facebook's Oculus Rift ships for $599, $200 less than rival HTC Vive and could become ubiquitous in coming years as prices fall more.

"We think there's a tremendous potential to help both us and our clients with virtual reality," Rahn said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.

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Virtual Reality helps lure Finland's biggest tire maker to Dayton - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Virtual reality has made inroads into several industries, and now it's coming to the delivery room.

The University of Newcastle in Australia has launched a new virtual reality project that aims at teaching midwives how to safely deliver babies in a "life-or-death situation." The virtual environment, which was announced on Friday, places midwifery students in a "real-world delivery room" and requires them to act quickly to resuscitate a newly born child. It depicts a child that needs resuscitation, tools that can be used to revive the child, and more. It also asks students to answer questions as they're dealing with the situation.

With 15% of births in Australia and New Zealand requiring some form of resuscitationa number even higher in premature babiesit is imperative our students feel comfortable and confident applying their experience in a time-critical, emergency environment, co-project leader Jessica Williams said in a statement.

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Virtual reality and augmented reality are widely considered useful tools for teaching people in the corporate and medical worlds important aspects to their jobs. Microsoft's HoloLens headset, for instance, is designed for corporate use and provides users the ability to see virtual elements overlaid on the real world. Virtual reality headsets, on the other hand, place users into a completely virtual world they can interact with.

The Newcastle project, which was earlier reported on by CNET, is using Samsung ( ssnlf ) Gear VR and HTC Vive virtual-reality headsets for its project. But the university also created an app that can run on iOS, Android, and the PC, so students can test themselves on the devices of their choosing. Newcastle is testing some midwifery students with the virtual reality headsets and some without. It plans to compare those results to determine whether the virtual option is worth using into the future.

In addition to its midwifery project, Newcastle is separately using Microsoft's ( msft ) HoloLens headset to teach students about the human body with software that projects different body parts and their functions for students to explore.

"We hope these key educational projects will progress health and medicine education in ways that havent been explored before," the university's innovation manager Craig Williams said in a statement.

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How Virtual Reality Could Help Midwives Deliver Babies - Fortune

The bride is a sleek white robot with accents of pink on her shinyexterior. The groom is identical, except withblue trimaround his head and body. They are standingin front of more thana dozen guests some robots, some cutesyhuman avatars on a platform built over a churning red lake of lava. Glowingcloudsloom in the distanceof this strangespace,asguests unleashsmiley face and heart emojis to register their joy, and a disco ball spins overhead.

Welcome to one of thefirst-ever virtual reality weddings.

On Thursday, Elisa Evans and Martin Shervington, a couple from Wales,did just as so many couplesdo on their wedding day. She slippedona white wedding dress, he donneda suit, and then they headed to a local wedding venue.

It was all very traditional, really except that when they got there, there were no guests or officiantspresent. Instead, they each put ona VR headset and entered a virtual futuristic disco, asShervington put it. Their officiant, a community managerfrom the virtual reality companyAltspaceVR, beamed infrom San Francisco. Guests gathered from all over the world using the AltspaceVR app all of them sitting in their respective homes and offices, connected onlybytheirheadsets.

The very first virtual reality wedding of this sort happened in San Francisco in 1994 backwhen peoplewere still earnestlyusing the termcyperspace. The bride, an employee at an early virtual reality company, and groom, usedcrude headsets and graphics, withgear totaling an estimated $1 million. But Shervington, a business consultantwho recently helped launch a VR companys app, stakes the claim thathe and his bride are the first to get virtually hitched in this new age of accessible consumer headsettechnology and in a legally-binding ceremony.

Companies are justbeginning to captureweddings with 360-degree cameras, so that couples, along with family and friends, can relive the big day in immersive VR.A truly virtual wedding like this one, though, has a bizarre, niche appeal which is, perhaps, why Evans andShervington are likely only the second couple to do it.

Shervington proposed to Evans in November, after just a fewmonths ofdating, and a friend was quick to suggest that they do itin VR. It was fun, he said of the idea. That was where it began. Its also been a challenge conceptually. With new technology, I enjoy exploring, so its been an experience going through and puttingtogether thepieces.Along the way, though, we just want to laugh.

Plus, Shervington who has done stand-up comedy, including in VR, about things like the singularity and artificial intelligence is a bit of a sci-fi and tech geek. Evans not so much, but shes gamely gone along with the plan. I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, she said. Its so different, and we knew we didnt want to have a conventional wedding.

During the ceremony, Evans andShervington stood several feet away from each other with a wall in between themto avoid any audio feedback from the mics in their respective headsets.In VR, their avatars stood next to each other in front of a largescreen thatShervington used to display a Powerpoint-like presentation that took up most of the hour-long ceremony and could easily have been mistaken for anawkwardstandup routine. He told the story about how they met and fell in love, peppering his speech with inside jokes, random YouTubeclips, many of which took a painful amount of time to load, andsnippets of music Queen and The RollingStones made appearances.

It was an indulgent, self-involved affair rife withtechnical difficulties in otherwords, a whole lot like a regular wedding. And, just as with any wedding, there were a lot of details to decide on. Only, in addition to the usual questions around things like theguest listand music,they also had to design their avatars, choose a virtual venue, and work out a bunch of technical challenges. In fact, as he put it, the virtual has hadmuch more attention than the real world in the details.

Some of those challenges were unsurmountable. When the officiant instructed the couple to seal their vows with a kiss, their avatars leaned in toward each other, not quite touching and, of course,Evans and Shervington were physically separated and wearing bulky headsets in the real world, none of which exactly allows for that picture-perfect moment.

For guests, too, it was a somewhat awkward experience. To prevent total chaos, only a limited number were allowed to attend with a physical avatar, while the rest could watch a YouTube livestream of the virtual wedding.Our avatars milled about at will, with nowhere to sit. I would try navigating in front of another guest for a better view, only to have someone else step right in front of me. At one point, as the couple waspreparing to exchange vows, I accidentally directed my avatar to stand right in between Evans andShervingtons avatars embarrassing. (I wasnt the only one either it was as though wed all already gotten tanked atthe open bar.) Also, forget showing up in the same dress trydiscovering that youve chosenthe exact same avatar as another weddingguest.

But, most notable of all,my VR goggles keptfogging up, as they tend to do over prolonged periods of use. So, instead of the usual periodic wiping of tears at a wedding, I was routinely cleaning my headset.

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This Couple Just Got Hitched In A Surreal Virtual Reality Wedding - Vocativ

Eddie Avil and Ashley Rodriguess 12-minute film, Crackle, is touted as Indias first VR horror short film

The gaming and animation world has long embraced Virtual Reality and with apps and programs like Oculus Rift, Twitch, Pokemon Go, and countless others, its possibilities seem limitless. Now, filmmakers across the globe are slowly warming up to the format as well. Steven Spielberg is making a VR Film,Ready Player One, which is coming in 2018, and closer to home, Bahubali fans are soon to be treated with a VR cut of the sequel and AR Rahman is all set make his directorial debut with a VR film called LeMusk. Meanwhile, lyricist and composer Eddie Avil and sound engineer Ashley Rodrigues, are also trying their hands on the format and they have picked the horror as their genre.

While VR horror has seen an explosion of content in the short film format internationally, this 12-minute short, titled Crackle, is touted at Indias first VR horror short. According to Eddie and Ashley, although virtual reality has been explored in India before, no one has ever completed a story line using Virtual reality as a platform. We caught up with the duo to know more. Excerpts:

What should the audience expect from this film?

Eddie Avil: Nobody has attempted 3D 360 -degree VR Horror Short in our country before. So, it is a first of its kind.

Ashley Rodrigues: We focused on the immersive experience of VR for this project. We thought it would be a great genre to explore. In VR the viewer is literally in the centre of the movie. Its a whole different way of storytelling and viewing a movie. We hope to give our viewers an unforgettable experience.

What are your backgrounds and what made you take up VR?

Ashley: We are sound engineers and had started an audio production house. We have been in the industry for more than 20 years. We dabbled in video production a couple of years ago made a couple of music videos. A client of ours wanted us to figure an immersive solution for their marketing needs. We thought of VR and researched the options and what we dug up really piqued our interest.

Eddie: I have been a musician all my life and discovered VR because of a clients requirement. I believe VR is one of the most radical technologies that have hit our world. It has the power to blur the lines of our reality once it converges with Haptic Technology. The possibilities are endless.

Why did you choose this particular story for this medium?

Eddie: VR is an Impactful medium so we had to think and write a story that would do justice to the medium.

Ashley: The story is very simple. It is about five friends having fun when they decide to hold a seance and then the experience begins. Traditionally we have viewed movies in a rectangular format. Imagine watching a horror film and turning back only to be confronted by something truly spine chilling. It is very much like a real-life situation.

How different is shooting a virtual reality film? And what were the main challenges you faced?

Eddie: Its unlike 2D filming and it is a severely technically challenging medium. Each scene was thought about with the camera placement and was rehearsed a few times so we understand the look and feel of it before we did the final shoot.

Ashley: You have to unlearn all you learned about film making. In regular film making the camera man guides the viewer to show what the director wants them to see. While in a 360 video the viewer decides what they want to see. So its tricky to guide the viewer to where the action is and its quite possible that you may miss an experience or two when you first watch the film. Each time you watch the film you will get another perspective. Since the camera captures 360 degree, no one else can be in the frame. Thumb rule is that if you can see the camera the camera sees you. Also, you cannot add extra lights as it would take forever to remove them off in postproduction. So, while shooting, the entire crew used to hide behind whatever is available.

How can one watch the film?

Ashley: Since it is in 3D, we would recommend watching the film with a VR headset like google cardboard or the many options available now. You could also watch it on your phone and YouTube.

Eddie: We are talking to a few OTT platforms and we will keep the audience posted on where and how to watch it.

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The virtual reality of horror - Hindustan Times

NEW YORK Baseball games will soon arrive on virtual-reality headsets.

Video in the new At Bat VR app wont be in VR. Rather, the app places the user behind home plate and shows graphical depictions of each pitch, including a colored streak (red for strikes and green for balls) tracing the balls trajectory. The data come from sensors Major League Baseball already has installed in all of its stadiums.

The app also lets users hover over icons to see the speed and type of each pitch, as well as which parts of a strike zone are strong or weak for a particular batter. Traditional TV coverage of the games will appear on a virtual screen, alongside play-by-play information and individual player statistics.

Its more information that casual baseball fans will want, but hard-core fans might get a kick from having this perspective supplement what they see with regular TV cameras. Baseballs regular At Bat app does have some of this information, but not in 3-D and not while watching video.

At Bat VR also will have a section for 360-degree video packages, but not of actual games.

At Bat VR is included with Major League Baseballs existing streaming packages. At Bat VR also is subject to the usual blackouts for local teams; in such cases, the graphical depictions will still be available, but not the live video within the headset.

The VR app comes out June 1 and works with Android phones and headsets compatible with Googles Daydream VR system. Theres no version for iPhones.

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Virtual reality coming to baseball June 1 - Altus Times

Forbes

From Medicine To Mars: Virtual Reality And The Future Of Data Visualization Forbes In 2016, nearly 100 million virtual reality units were shipped in the United States, and experts predict it will be a $4 billion market by 2018. While many think the VR hype is fading, OSF HealthCare's Dr. Matthew Bramlet believes this is just the ...

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From Medicine To Mars: Virtual Reality And The Future Of Data Visualization - Forbes

It was first imagined as science fiction, and for a long time, it was roped alongside hoverboards and time machines as a distant, futuristic dream. But now virtual reality (VR) is slowly seeping into the tech-lovers collection, and one very specific genre is on the precipice of going mainstream. Porn.

In 2016, Playstation, Facebook-owned Oculus Rift, and the lower cost Google Cardboard all released virtual reality headsets. And - surprise, surprise - the conversation has quickly turned to sex. Porn is already leading VR innovation.The question is less, will it happen, and more what the impact will be if it becomes more appealing than porn that doesn't require a headset.

For all the fascination it holds, VR is still in its Nokia 3310 stage. The porn industry, though, is full of innovation. After leading the way with internet cash transactions, it hasturned its sights on the immersive experience of VR. In fact, virtualporn is already available for consumption on some adult sites, and its becoming rapidly more popular. It has grown by 250 per cent over the last year, faster than any other category.Unlike passively watching a film, virtual porn offers additional options such as zooming in, and even Bluetooth synchronisation.

A Newcastle Universitystudy published this month, titled Theyre Just Tixel Pits, Man has investigated the potential impacts of VR porn, and found that it might come with a few health warnings beyond just motion sickness. When the researchers discussed a hypothetical situation involving a virtual porn user, participants were split on whether his experience was wonderful, or "too perfect" - and degrading to women.

Research lead Mathew Wood said that for some participants, VR meant pushing the boundaries, often with highly explicit and violent imagery. With no limitations, virtual porn has the potential to be more addictive and violent.

We know from current research into pornography that exposure to this content has the potential to become addictive and more extreme over time, Wood said.

After reading the participants stories, the researchers also warned that VR porn also raises concerns of consent. A user could create a VR version of their partner and do things [they] would refuse in the real world. It could also widen the possibilities of revenge porn by allowing users to make and share 3D models of former partners.

Because virtual porn users can be participating in the sex scene, as opposed to simply being voyeurs, the researchers believe virtual porn could be viewed as closer to infidelity than regular porn.

Wood told me: VR changes the experience of pornography - generally from third person to first person. This could be thought of as cheating, but whether this would be more so than watching pornography more widely we'll have to wait and see. Reports on the development of VR pornography are that they can be powerful experiences, and arguably could add a new element to sexual relationships, good or bad.

As Wood suggests, the endless possibilities of virtual porn could lead to more experimental ideas of sex. For example, virtual reality could allowa male user to assume a female role, and vice versa. Wood believesVR could offer more emphasis on the relational aspects of sexual experience by focusing more on sensory, narrative-driven experiences. And playing a more active role could make users feel more responsible if they useviolent or non-consensual content. Wood said, Empathy is a huge factor in developing VR experiences, and I think it could foreseeably have a role if experiences were designed in certain ways."

But being so immersed in another world also has risks for users who may be unhappy in the real one. Psychosexual and relationship therapist Sarah Calvert has argued that some people use porn as escapism from an unhappy life, and unhappy feelings could be exacerbated on returning to their unchanged reality after going into a virtual world.

And when youre in someone elses body, if that body happens to be closer to the widely accepted ideal, it could leave your ego wounded. Cavert told the BBC that the self-esteem of young people in-particular could be hit if they use VR and look down to see ripped abs and a big penis. The trip back to reality, she said, could be damaging.

Porn already comes with downsides, including addiction,unrealistic expectations and the turbulence it can cause in relationships.VR porn could heighten these risks, just as the experience itself is intensified.

Wood said that, through his research he found that, for most people, VR porn opened the doors to an apparently perfect sexual experience a scenario which in the real world no-one could live up to. But as his study suggests, perfection may not be quite as blissful as it sounds.

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Is there anything wrong with "perfect" sex? The rise of virtual reality porn - New Statesman

SAN JOSE Its just before dawn in a post-apocalyptic world and a dim bluish hue fills a flat landscape your canvas in a virtual world. With the flourish of a brush, you paint life-size art in 3-D and then walk right through it.

Thats one of the many virtual experiences visitors at The Tech Museum of Innovation can savor at their new exhibit, Reboot Reality, that opens Friday.

The place is dedicated for immersive technologies, with the latest and the greatest tech out there, said Nadav Hochman, experience developer at The Tech. This exhibit is focused on the future of creativity.

The Tech is one of the first museums in the country to have a permanent exhibit like this one.

Were really excited about the way VR is going to change everything,said Prinda Wanakule, director of experience development at The Tech.

The museum partnered with innovators, artists and major Silicon Valley companies like Google, Facebook, Stanford, Adobe and HP to bring the best of virtual and augmented reality to the public.

We really harnessed all the creative juices from Silicon Valley, said Hochman.

The exhibit is a treat for kids and for kids of adult ages boasting a wide range of technologies designed to foster creative confidence. Visitors can sculpt digital clay on Medium by Oculus, paint virtual worlds in Google Tilt Brush and compose shockingly-real oil paintings on a computer screen with Adobes Wetbrush.

This is really good for people who are trying to pursue art, said Morgan Lee, 17, a freshman at Mission College, as she stepped out of her Tilt Brush experience duringa sneak peek for school and college students.

For artists aching for a digital brush stroke to feel real, Wetbrush is an experimental prototype that Adobe is sharing exclusively at The Tech.

Were really sharing something where the paint is wet, said Nathan Carr, principal scientist at Adobe Research,adding that the new toy uses complex physics to simulate the exact way paintbrush bristles bend and move when an artist pushes down on the stylus and the way bristles move around the paint. We wanted to get the exact same feeling of oil paint.

The technology isnot something people can buy yet, Carr added.

It requires a lot of computational power to drive an oil painting engine like this, said Carr. Were using hardware that most people dont have in their homes our hope is that technology will get faster.

3-D design is something that has been difficult for a lot of people to access.

It requires a lot of time using software in order to create things, said Wanakule. Using a platform like this you can feel a little bit more natural, you can jump in there and create something right away.

Creating 3-D art in a virtual world may seem like a lost cause, because there isnt an easy way to share it in the physical world. The Medium, however, allows artists to bring home a file they can use to 3-D print their creations. And paintings on Wetbrush can be printed onto a 3-D canvas that captures every single ridge of the virtual brush stroke.

Tucked in another corner of the exhibit is an experience like no other a full-body virtual reality device that simulates the experience of gliding like a bird. Visitors can strap themselves onto a bird seat facing down, flap their wings and soar across Manhattan or the Swiss Alps. A fan that streams cool air makes the experience more real than it really is.

It is by far the most immersive virtual adventure out there, and The Tech is the only place in California where people can try it out.

Its thrilling, said Wanakule. The first time I was on it, I was screaming so loud.

VR and other immersive technologies can be really powerful, added Wanakule. We dont want people to only come in here and just see something passively, we want people to engage with it, she said.

A lot of these technologies are already changing the way people learn and work. One of the experiences at the exhibit is a 360-degree peek into the upcoming Diridon Station. Usually clients see these drawings on paper before they approve a new construction with their architect.

But with VR, clients can walk through the virtual space and say I dont like that wall, said Wanakule.It opens up the process for a more participatory design.

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Mind-bending virtual reality exhibit opens Friday at Tech Museum - The Mercury News