Friday FOV: Women’s Marches In 360, Daydream Price Chop, Sundance And Lil Wayne
VR news for the week ending January 27, 2017
To get this newsletter regularly, you should follow There Is Only R on Medium.
This week in There Is Only R, Alice Bonasio reports on the maturing VR tech ecosystem: the proliferation of VR incubators including Vive X (HTC Vive’s own program), Samsung NEXT, Upload Collective, and the SXSW Accelerator. Now, MIT has now thrown its hat into the ring, launching a VR accelerator for students and alumni.
Also from Bonasio: how adult entertainment is leading the way in haptic VR technologies.
Story of the Week:
Recorded as the largest one-day demonstration in U.S history, last Saturday’s Women’s Marches united millions of protesters globally. If you didn’t experience first-hand the swelling crowds that engulfed cities around the world, 360 video from marches in Washington DC, NYC, Boston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Tri Cities Washington, Oakland, Portland and St. Paul, MN will take you inside these historic rallies.
Tech
- Scottish game developer Aaron Puzey just biked 900 miles across the entire UK in VR. He did it using his CycleVR app that pulls data from Google Street View, recording his entire route in 360. This week, Puzey posted video to YouTube of some of the sights he encountered as he talks about his experience: “I traveled through 300 towns and villages and saw some hilarious and amazing things. And because the system uses Google Street View, I can cycle anywhere in the world.” With this technology, travel and biking enthusiast can experience his“10 places to bike before you die” without leaving their living room.
- Daydream View is currently listed at $49 on the Google Play Store, $30 below the regular price of $79. This price cut isn’t permanent — it may jump back up on Feb 25, 2017 at 11:59 PM PST.
Business
- Leslie Benzies, former president of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar North, has started up a new VR company called VR-Chitect Limited. A listing at the Intellectual Property Office and the U.S Patent Trademark Office indicates that the company is developing a“virtual reality system and method” that “enables virtual reality viewing.” Benzies produced eight critically acclaimed Grand Theft Auto games, so his VR company deserves the watchful eye of VR enthusiasts.
- Claude Zellweger, HTC’s head VR designer responsible for the HTC Vive virtual reality headset, is leaving HTC to join Google and work with the company’s Daydream platform. We are still awaiting further information detailing what Zellweger’s role will entail.
- Also on Wednesday, Facebook announced the hiring of former Google executive Hugo Barra to lead the company’s VR efforts centered around Oculus. Mark Zuckerberg shared his excitement in a Facebook post, reporting that Barra shares his confidence that “virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform.” Zuckerberg has known Barra since he helped build Google’s Android system. This announcement follows Zuckerberg’s testimony last week that he plans to invest $3 billion in VR technologies over the next 10 years.
Content
- Vive Studios and Grab Games launched a cartoony boxing game titled Knockout League to bring arcade boxing to virtual reality. The graphics and feel of this game is comparable to Ready 2 Rumble (IMO the goat of fighting games), in contrast to the style of EA Sport’s Fight Night. Venture Beat reports players can choose between four fighters, each with a different fighting style. It will also include a tutorial mode that teaches players game strategies, along with mini-games such as speed bag to get players warmed up and ready to fight. Check out a trailer of the arcade style boxing game here.
- Lil Wayne launches a virtual reality music series on Hulu titled “On Stage.” The premiere episode, which debuted on Thursday on Hulu’s VR App, offers an immersive glance into the life of the hip-hop megastar, where he prepares for his annual homecoming concert, the Lil Weezyana Fest. The streaming service collaborated with Live Nation to produce the short form series with the goal of allowing fans an immersive experience in the creative process of an artist’s live music experience.
- VR production studio MacInnes Scott developed a spookily-realistic VR experience of Donald Trump standing alone in the Oval Office — an environment you can explore in full detail by walking around the room.
- Sundance Film Festival showcased the strides that VR developers made in 2016 with a number of VR cinematic films and interactive VR and AR experiences. Miyubi is one of the films that stood out — it’s a scripted comedy-drama, from virtual reality studio Felix & Paul, and at 40 minutes is one of the longest scripted VR films ever made. It will be released on Rift and Gear this spring.
- Scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle are experimenting with mind controlled VR to test how the human brain can work in a virtual reality environment using only direct brain stimulation, rather than traditional sensory signals such as sight, hearing or touch. Reuters video documenting these experiments shows a man controlling a computer game with information sent directly to his brain — without visual, auditory, or other sensory information to help him play.
Don’t forget to catch up with last week’s “Friday FOV: Virtual Smells, Dri-VR Ed, Environmental Literacy, And Volumetric VR.”
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