Friday FOV: How Bad Was 2016 For VR? Plus: Self-Tracking HMDs

VR news for the week ending January 13, 2017

Art by Colleen Flanigan, one of Google’s Tilt Brush artists in residence

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This week in There Is Only R:

Though VR numbers for 2016 proved disappointing to many (see Story of the Week, below) Elizabeth Spiers urges optimism and taking a long view. It’s true that shortsighted investors and their studios “that are being funded as if they’re going to generate returns in 12 to 18 months” will come to grief. But while mobile VR has produced a backlash, developers are now working to bring us widely-available untethered VR, and a little further off, “a great MR experience will be accomplished via some piece of consumer tech that’s virtually invisible: it’s a contact lens, or it looks like a generic pair of glasses.”

VR can transform science education, Grant Greene finds, after trying MEL Science’s subscriber chemistry sets. An expanded Cardboard device gives students a 360 immersion at the molecular level. “Voyaging through virtual micromatter gave me a visceral feel for the molecules I would soon be working with — and a better overview of the chemical reactions I would soon witness,” Greene reported. MEL founder Vassili Philippov claims that this visual experience “helps you not just memorize but actually understand the essence of the event.”

Alice Bonasio reports a new AR collaboration between IBM and The New York Times to profile 10 women STEM innovators. This is The Times’ “first major AR initiative.” Instead of a HMD, the app “deploys sensors to activate a digital layer that augments the space using 3D images, audio, video, and descriptive text, displaying these using just the mobile device screen.”

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

Story of the Week:

Tech Review’s Signe Brewster offers more analysis of that “sluggish” VR adoption in 2016. “The numbers do not exactly tell the story of a hot new consumer technology debut.” Chief culprit for the disappointing numbers are price points and equpment requirements that are barriers to all but intrepid gamers. The slow adoption causes a second problem, in content: without the potential for a mass audience, studios have not yet come up with a blockbuster VR breakthrough experience.

Tech

• Self-tracking tracking headsets will be a defining VR trend in 2017, says The Verge — a huge step toward making VR technologies more accessible and convenient. Currently, Oculus and Vive rely on external, outside-in sensors to perceive the environment so people can move around in VR, requiring a roomscale camera setup that can be a huge barrier fornon- enthusiasts. More accessible inside-out tracking headsets utilize sensors to translate depth and acceleration into virtual motion, allowing users to move around in a virtual space. Oculus and Microsoft are working on this, along with Silicon Valley startups like Eonite.
• Bringing surgery training to augmented reality, Touch Surgery has developed over 200 virtual surgical procedure training programs for smartphones and tablets. These can significantly lower traditional training procedures. At CES in Las Vegas, the company announced that the new immersive training will run on DAQRI and HoloLens.
• Search + Discovery for Virtual Reality has launched SVRF Tabs, the first VR/360 Chrome extension. Users experience immersive content each time they open a tab!

Business

• The Oculus vs ZeniMax Media lawsuit kicked off on January 9 in Dallas. ZeniMax claims that Oculus Rift used technology stolen from ZeniMax employees including John Carmack, who left ZeniMax (and the id Software game development studio he co-founded) in 2013 to join Oculus as CTO. Oculus calls ZeniMax’s lawsuit a “wasteful attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise, or patience to build.”
• Apple is gearing up to release AR glasses in 2017. In a Facebook post, Robert confirms rumors of Apple’s joint project with German lens specialist Carl Zeiss to develop AR/mixed reality glasses that will be released in 2017. Scoble also reports that Meta and Lumus will soon announce their own AR/VR glasses.

AI Watch

• Dell will debut a “premium” wired Windows Holographic VR headset, most likely with inside-out tracking. According to Upload, Dell’s CTO and SVP Liam Quinn says “the company is doing a lot of internal work right now on VR ready PC hardware, looking into areas such as refresh rate of displays, necessary memory capacity, and processing capabilities.”

Content

Work by Dustin Yellin, a Tilt Brush artist in residence and founder of Pioneer Works art center.

• Google has announced its “Tilt Brush Artist in Residence Program,” working with over 60 “graffiti artists, painters, illustrators, graphic designers, dancers, concept artists, creative technologists and cartoonists” whose work can be explored on a new site.
• Using data from VRPorn.com and PornHub, VR Scout reports that a banner year for VR porn peaked on Christmas Day. PornHub VP Corey Price said the site saw double normal activity in its VR category, with about 1 million daily searches compared to an average 500,000. According to Prince, “2016 was a momentous year for VR in the adult entertainment industry.” To illustrate where the trend is headed, Vice featured a behind-the-scenes look into the creation of porn superstar Tori Black’s virtual avatar for an adult video game for Oculus and other systems. Black was captured in a wide range of sexual positions by over 100 HD cameras. Still no haptics, but teledildonics isn’t far off!
• And finally, if you couldn’t make it to Obama’s historic presidential farewell address, Upload VR offered it in HD 360 video, enabling viewers to be part of the very emotional crowd.

Don’t forget to catch up with our year-end roundup, “Friday FOV: The Magic Leaps, Founder Fails, And VR Innovators of 2016.”

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