Friday FOV: Brazil’s Bots, Eye-tracking Innovations & Fighting in Fallujah
The latest in virtual reality for the week ending August 12, 2016.
This week on There Is Only R:
Whimsical experiences like Job Simulator, Selfie Tennis and Fantastic Contraption play a vital role in broadening VR’s appeal beyond the gaming audience.
So Pokémon GO isn’t a spy tool. (Yet.) But does it show the dangers of abandoning privacy expectations once AI can weave a granular tapestry of our lives?
Here are 10 other important stories from around the web:
Story of the Week: Future-Forward Medicine:
The Olympics were not the only story of note coming from Brazil. This week, the Sao Paolo-based Walk Again Project announced that through a combination of robotic exoskeletons and virtual reality, eight patients with complete paralysis from the waist down regained some sensation and muscle control in their legs. But there are many way to skin a virtual cat — researchers at the University of Washington have used Oculus and Leapmotion to gamify occupational therapy.
Content:
Your dystopian VR sci-fi short film of the week is Sight — sure, it’s more AR than VR, and sure it’s four years old, but it hits many of the same notes as our Pokémon GO essay.
The creator of the “Field Trip to Mars” VR experience, the most awarded anything at the Cannes Lions Festival, sat down to explain how his team brought us one step closer to the bold vision of Ms. Frizzle and the Magic School Bus.
The New York Times released a sprawling, multifaceted exploration of the Arab Spring. One of those facets is an incredible 360 video that lets you ride alongside Iraqi forces as they reclaim the city of Fallujah from ISIS. So stop scoffing at 360 video for a second, download the NYT VR app, and stick that piece of cardboard on your face.
Feeling lucky? The New York Lottery is getting in the AR game with ‘Gold Castle’, a lotto ticket with a companion app that lets you tap instead of scratch.
Hardware:
A company called Eyefluence claims to have developed tech that not only enables eye-tracking on existing HMDs, but has a UI intuitive enough to compete with the smartphone. They’ve been in talks with Oculus, Valve, and other big-name players, prompting speculation about the next generation of headsets.
On the low-tech side of things, one industrious Redditor stopped tripping over the various Vive inputs by building a surprisingly simple cable trolley system for about $35. Aspiring VR DIYers can check it out here.
Business:
HTC and Alibaba have announced a partnership that lets HTC use the Chinese commerce giant’s cloud services to process the massive amount of data required for Roomscale VR to function smoothly. The announcement was apparently made via Madlibs: Tech Buzzword Edition: an Alibaba spokesperson saying, “The partnership between Alibaba Cloud and HTC will bring two of the world’s most disruptive technologies together to bring more value to businesses looking to leverage VR and cloud. This partnership will accelerate the development of VR technology in China and encourage widespread, global adoption.”
The number of people searching for jobs in VR and AR has doubled since the start of this year. For context, that means that means the industry has rocketed from .000006% of job searches to .000012%. Progress!
Don’t forget to catch up with last week’s “Friday FOV: Trouble in Pokeparadise, HTC’s Big Bets, and Chinese VR.”
Follow Us on Medium | Follow Us on Twitter | Like Us on Facebook
