Friday FOV: Dementia And The Civil War Through VR, Stock Photo Fails & VR Treadmills

VR news for the week ending December 2, 2016

VR has made huge advances but the stock photography still has a ways to go.

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This week in There Is Only R:

Though she’s looking forward to the finale and next season, Elizabeth Spiers grows weary of Westworld’s over-the-top, soap opera-like plot twists, or “whatever” devices, in her recap of Episode 9.

And don’t forget to catch up with Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, Episode 7, and Episode 8, and check out Steve Bryant’s A Unified Color Theory of Westworld.

After Brexit and Trump’s election, Alice Bonasio proposes that VR is an “empathy machine” that can unite divided populations that experience reality in entirely different ways. (It’s an opposite perspective from the one we recently published, suggesting that Red and Blue America need to break up already — and that maybe VR can create the ultimate “filter bubble” so we never have to see each other again.) In another piece, Bonasio raves about Zappar, the low-cost MR viewer which aims to be the “Google Cardboard of mixed reality.”

Here’s some of the rest of the week’s VR news:

Story of the Week: Experiencing Dementia in VR

HMD-wearing Japanese students experience dementia in VR (KYODO)

A Japanese company that operates retirement communities has developed three immersive videos to help users better experience dementia symptoms first-hand. Twenty college students at Keio visited one of Silver Wood Corp’s Ginmokusei complex in Funabashi, where they donned HMDs and watched dramatizations of what it’s like to be lost on a train trip and to lose the ability to gauge distance, time and place. “There is a reason behind the behavior of dementia patients, and I don’t want people to discriminate against them just because of their symptoms,” Silver Wood’s Tadamichi Shimogawara explained.

Tech

• Gravity Sketch isn’t Tilt Brush, founder Oluwaseyi Sosanya explains to Upload’s Charles Singletary, but it may “pave the way for 3D design in VR.”
• Samsung has filed a Korean patent for a Gear VR with positional, face and eye tracking.

Business

What’s wrong with this picture?

• Forget women laughing alone with salad — what’s with all these VR stock photos staged using headphones worn incorrectly?
• Playstation VR sales forecasts have been downgraded for 2016, VR Scout reports, but analysts attribute this to “Sony taking a more prudent approach in holding back marketing spend until the company can better position the PSVR with their upgraded Pro console system,” not flagging consumer interest in VR. According to Stephanie Llamas of SuperData, “Sony is making just enough units available to prove the case for VR, without seeking to fully saturate the market.”

Content

ROM: Extraction (via Upload)

• First Contact Entertainment announced a Dec. 7 release for the much-awaited ROM: Extraction, “a fast-paced homage to the classic arcade shooter, built entirely for VR.” Check back at There Is Only R next Wednesday for our exclusive in-depth interview with creators Hess Barber and Matt Candler.
• Cream 360 and Discovery VR have produced Civil War: Letter From the Trenches, a VR short to accompany Blood and Fury: America’s Civil War on Discovery’s American Heroes channel. “Immersive sight and sound techniques” will take viewers to key battles like Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Gettsyburg. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the experience “brings viewers into the cadet’s perspective by custom-rigging Go Pro cameras in production with Entaniya fish-eye lenses so viewers experience bullets whizzing by their ears and explosions lighting up the battlefield.” Cream’s David Brady explained the use of spatial audio to direct viewers’ attention: “Above you there’s cannonball contrails, and those are spatially directed so you can follow with your eyes as your ears tell you where they are going.”
• “Virtual Reality porn doesn’t have to be creepy,” reports Inverse. “WankzVR is investing heavily in virtual reality porn shot from a woman’s point of view.”
• Run, jump, crouch…shoot! This 360 Vue VR Treadmill, which retails for $699, claims to be “the future of VR gaming.” It’s really not a treadmill but a low-friction concave platform — and comes with special, slippery-soled shoes equipped with tracking sensors.

VUE VR Treadmill. Watch the video!

Don’t forget to catch up with last week’s special holiday “Black Friday FOV: Will Vive & Oculus VR Win This Holiday Season?”

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