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Category: virtual reality – Page 33

Seattle-based software company Pluto VR has brought its virtual reality streaming platform PlutoSphere into Early Access.

Initially announced in February 2021, PlutoSphere allows its users to stream VR applications to a headset without the need for a local computer, in order to dramatically reduce the cost of entry for virtual reality. Instead of building a new rig around VR compatibility, you can theoretically just get a headset, then run everything from every library you own via data streaming.

PlutoSphere is currently compatible with the Oculus Quest and Quest 2, with plans to support other headsets and mobile devices in the future. It also requires a 5 Ghz WiFi 6 Internet connection, 50 Mbps of bandwidth, a Steam account, and less than 100ms ping to an Amazon Web Services region.

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At Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference today, the company made a major shift in their embrace of virtual reality with several new VR announcements during the event’s opening keynote.

Though well loved, Apple’s computer lineup got somewhat left in the dust at the launch of the Rift and Vive, both of which had hardware requirements that exceeded what Apple had on offer. To that end, the company largely steered clear of talking about VR publicly.

Today marks a major shift in Apple’s public support for virtual reality. VR was a recurrent theme throughout the keynote today, highlighting their belief in the importance of the medium. Here’s an overview of everything they announced:

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Parents Use AI To See One Last Message From Their Deceased Son ‘…what’s to keep me from showing face, Man?’

Feel Virtual Reality In Mid-Air! ‘…a pressure on the lips — warm and soft, moist and sweet.’ — Frederick Pohl, 1965.

Via Virtual Reality, Mother Encounters Deceased Daughter ‘But that barrier was going to melt away someday soon. The transhumanists had promised…’ — Stephen Baxter, 2008.

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The Daily Roundup is our comprehensive coverage of the VR industry wrapped up into one daily email, delivered directly to your inbox.

Diver-X announced that it’s pulling the plug on HalfDive, announcing that all backers would not be charged for funds collected.

The company mentions three major concerns, which essentially boil down to its niche appeal, inability to reduce costs by producing major components in-house, and resultant cash flow issues due to scalability issues. You can read the full text in the company’s blog post.

Continue reading “Sword Art Online-inspired VR Headset Cancelled Due to Niche Appeal, Manufacturing Issues” | >

The talk about metaverse really went ballistic after Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the Facebook Connect event touted the metaverse as the social networking future. But most of the talk is not really about the true metaverse as envisioned in science fiction and first described in in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk science fiction novel Snow Crash. A true metaverse needs to be an interconnected “Internet” of virtual spaces that are open to many different companies, not a walled garden. It will take an open platform offering access to a shared virtual space to create the true metaverse. And it will also require a level of standardization and interoperability that doesn’t exist today.

In Snow Crash, the Metaverse was a phrase coined by as a successor to the Internet. It was a vision of how a virtual-reality-based Internet might evolve and was heavily influenced by early video games. This version of the metaverse resembles a persistent massive multiplayer online game (MMO). Players would have user-controlled avatars, and there were a social hierarchy, but there was pervasive access and a global scale.

The closest we came to open 3D interoperability was VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) back in the 1990s. The HTML approach to creating a metaverse using the VRML standard attempted to create a virtual 3D markup language that could be used to create and link 3D spaces together into one that you could access through a VRML browser. It failed.

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The Future of Virtual Reality has been shown at CES 2022 in the form of retina display VR Headsets, full body tracking solutions and brain computer interfaces previewing what the future of full dive virtual reality could look like. Companies such as Meta/Facebook, Google, Apple and Valve are all investing millions into making Virtual Reality mainstream and look just like real life.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 A vision into the Future at CES
00:50 Next Generation VR Headsets.
02:29 The Future of VR Hardware.
04:47 VR CPU’s & GPU’s.
07:00 Is the Future of VR Mainstream?
07:48 Last Words.
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#virtualreality #vr #future

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Google Earth VR is a fun and useful way of seeing the world—it’s easy to lose yourself visiting your hometown, or mapping out new adventures thanks to the company’s extensive 3D building scans. Unfortunately Google Earth VR is a PC VR only app, meaning it doesn’t work natively on Quest. That’s not set to change anytime soon, although a third-party Quest app is looking to offer up much of the magic of Earth VR while also making it a multiplayer experience.

Wooorld (that’s three ‘o’s) isn’t being developed by Google, however it appears to be making good use of Google Maps APIs, giving it access to all the 2D and 3D data you’d find on Google Earth VR.

One of the biggest differences is that Wooorld offers up a more limited rendering of Earth 3D data, which was undoubtedly done to lighten the load on Quest’s more modest mobile chipset.

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A string of Chinese video platforms are accelerating moves toward producing high-quality, 8K ultrahigh definition content by integrating 5G, artificial intelligence and virtual reality technologies.

It’s an important step toward moving 8K video into people’s living rooms, experts said.

Chinese UHD video production and distribution platform Sikai Garden Network Technology Co Ltd, also known as 4K Garden, plans to send UHD content to different terminal devices, including televisions, outdoor 8K light-emitting diode screens and VR headsets, and to explore diversified and innovative applications for the UHD industry, said Wu Yi, chairman of 4K Garden.

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If you’re looking to get a fresh start on a new career in 2022, may I suggest a new occupation as a virtual reality robot delivery driver?

Yes, that’s a job – or at least a new gig – being offered by a startup out of Minneapolis called Carbon Origins. The company, which is building a refrigerated sidewalk delivery robot by the name of Skippy, is looking to assemble a roster of remote robot pilots who will utilize virtual reality technology to pilot Skippy around to businesses and consumer homes.

The company, which launched in early 2021 and participated in Techstars Farm to Fork accelerator this year, will be showcasing the new technology at CES 2022 in January. This past summer, the company started testing an early version of the VR-piloted robot in the above-street skyway system around St Paul, Minnesota and plans to begin testing deliveries to offices and homes in the Minneapolis market starting in January.

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