Friday FOV: Titanic in VR, Early Schizophrenia Diagnosis, Sharper LCD Tech
VR news for the week ending February 3, 2017
To get this newsletter regularly, you should follow There Is Only R on Medium.
This week in There Is Only R, Eric Thurm praises Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time series for a surprisingly insightful episode based on virtual reality (video included):
The show is frequently simple and childish, befitting its subject matter and intended audience (several of the characters are talking pieces of candy). But it has consistently maintained a darker side, and a skeptical view of technology stemming from its post-apocalyptic dystopian setting. When your sparkling world of magical creatures was created by nuclear fallout-related mutation, it’s hard to be so optimistic about the possibilities of new technology.
Also, Alice Bonasio reviews the PSVR, which she foresees as having a“long and bright” future, grouping it with the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift despite some first-generation glitches.
Here’s some of the rest of the week’s VR news:
Story Of The Week
Researchers from the University of Exeter and the EU-funded AlterEgo project have created a virtual reality mirror game capable of diagnosing schizophrenia — in time for early treatment, which has been proven to be more effective. The “mirror test” asks subjects to interact and mimic the motions of computer avatars. Volunteers’ movements and interactions are compared with those schizophrenia sufferers to help spot any similarities, which gives a more accurate and early diagnosis than clinical interviews and is comparable to neuroimaging tests.
Tech
- New LCD technology could make VR displays three times sharper: The Optical Society reports that a team of researchers developed a new technology that optimizes how liquid crystal display technologies display color. Blue-phase liquid crystal technology could elevate pixel per inch density to reach as high as 1500 ppi, which is three times the density of Apple’s current retina displays (already impressive at 500 pixels per inch). Team leader Shin-Tson Wu calls this technology “especially attractive for virtual reality headsets” which “must achieve high resolution in a small screen to look sharp when placed close to our eyes.” Blue-phase liquid crystal technology has been around since 2008, but researchers have only recently been able to sufficiently reduce the operational voltage to make the displays viable — thanks to Wu and her team. Wu says the next stage will be to produce a working prototype, which she predicts could happen as early as next year.
- On Wednesday VRChat Inc. launched its new social experience on Steam. VRChat, which functions as both a MMORPG VR social platform and a developer sandbox, is designed for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The game features full-body avatars with audio lip sync, eye tracking and blinking, and complete range of motion. Upload’s Joe Durbin, who got a chance to experience the VR social platform, was impressed that users can create and import their own avatars, items, and even entire worlds to utilize individually or with friends. Outside of this user-generated content feature, which lends it an “anything is possible/Ready Player One” potential, Durbin sees little that separates VRChat from other social VR experiences like Altspace and High Fidelity.
- San Francisco-based Double Fine Productions will launch Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin on PlayStation VR (PSVR) on February 21. Not a sequel to the 2005 cult classic game Pyschonauts, the new release is “a standalone chapter of the Psychonauts saga — a mind-bending adventure puzzle game made from the ground up for VR that will chronicle the events between the first Psychonauts and its forthcoming sequel.”
- The VR creators of Apollo 11, Immersive VR Education are back with a Kickstarter for Titanic VR, pledging an ambitious fundraising goal of $53,786. According to CEO David Whelen, Titanic VR is split into two sections: an interactive exploration experience, and an immersive historical experience of the sinking we watched in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic.
- HoloLens is offering a 3-D VR app called Teorim that teaches users how to play the piano. Check out the trailer!
Business
- Zenimax threatened an injunction after Oculus appealed the $500 million verdict in the Oculus vs. Zenimax copyright infringement case. The jury found Oculus, which Facebook bought in 2014, guilty of breaching a contract with video game developer Zenimax when they were launching their own VR headset. Zenimax had argued that its early innovations in virtual reality were unlawfully copied when Oculus built the Oculus Rift headset. According to an Oculus spokesperson, the jury rejected the accusations that Oculus stole Zenimax’s trade secrets, but did find that it breached some of its contract with Zenimax and infringed some of its copyright and trademark.
- A week following HTC’s loss of its VP of design to Google, the company says goodbye to Global Executive VP Jason Mackenzie — who’s worked at HTC for the past 12 years. Mackenzie announced his departure on Tuesday morning via Twitter, also indicating that he doesn’t know where is heading next. Neither he nor HTC gave a reason for his exit.
Content
- Wesley Snipes joins the list of Hollywood legends that have hopped on the virtual mtrain, making his VR debut in The Recall VR Abduction — a 10-minute VR short about an alien abduction set in the same cinematic universe as The Recall, Snipes’s upcoming Sci-Fi horror feature film. If you’ve yet to experience a VR film, here are Raindance’s 10 VR films you can watch right now.
- A live virtual reality dance program is the main feature of a new program at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts Dance Department. The Wall Street Journal provides a behind-the-scenes look.
- Fox and its VR partner LiveLike will feature 20 game highlights from Super Bowl LI — the first we can watch in virtual reality! — using the Fox Sports VR app on their phone or with an HMD.
- Google’s virtual reality Spotlight Story Pearl received an Oscar nomination in the animated short category on Tuesday. The melodious, heartfelt coming-of-age short follows a daughter and her musician father as they road-trip across the country to chase their dreams. The immersive 360 animation allows viewers to tilt their phones (or their heads, if they’re wearing an HMD) to look around the animated car and find their own vantage point as the story unfolds around them. Watch the animated VR short here.
Don’t forget to catch up with last week’s “Friday FOV: Women’s Marches In 360, Daydream Price Chop, Sundance And Lil Wayne.”
Follow Us on Medium | Follow Us on Twitter | Like Us on Facebook
