Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: virtual reality – Page 41

Building The Metaverse

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.

2022: The Year in which Virtual Reality goes Mainstream

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.
–
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.
–
#virtualreality #vr #future

‘Wooorld’ is a Multiplayer Version of ‘Google Earth VR’ for Quest, Releasing Soon

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.

Advanced UHD video moves toward living rooms of households

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.

CES 2022 Preview: Carbon Origins Wants to Merge Robot Delivery With the Metaverse

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.

Prager Metis sets up first CPA firm in metaverse

Prager Metis has become the first CPA firm to open up a metaverse headquarters. The firm, which in real life is based in New York, is setting up shop in Decentraland, a 3D virtual world, as part of a joint venture with Banquet LLC, a metaverse studio.

The firm purchased the piece of virtual real estate on Dec. 28, a three-story digital structure. On the first floor is an open floor plan that doubles as a gallery space for nonfungible tokens from Prager Metis clients along with a large entertainment area. The second floor will provide more of a working space with meeting rooms and conference capabilities. The third floor will serve as a rooftop space where Prager Metis intends to host events and even live entertainment.

The metaverse has been attracting attention ever since Facebook’s parent company announced a name change last October to Meta to highlight its interest in developing technology for virtual reality and augmented reality. More businesses have followed suit in setting up shop in the metaverse. Prager Metis isn’t the first firm to dip its toes in the waters: PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Hong Kong firm announced last month that it had bought virtual land on another metaverse platform, the Sandbox, but Prager Metis is going further by setting up an actual headquarters in Decentraland. It plans to focus on advisory services for clients and potentially for other accounting firms as well. The firm already has clients who have entered the rapidly growing market for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, which use blockchain technology to create collectibles and artwork that people bid on to buy and trade.

Oculus Quest Now Supports Hassle-Free Wireless SteamVR Gaming

Oculus Quests a re some of the best wireless VR headsets you can buy. But they can’t run high-end games like those found in the Steam Store. You can connect to a PC with a cable, but that’s inconvenient. Wirelessly streaming VR games required jumping through hoops with using developer mode and SideQuest. But with the $20 Virtual Desktop app, that’s not the case anymore.

Virtual Desktop always had the capability to wirelessly stream SteamVR games, in truth. You could install the streaming app on your PC and then your Oculus Quest VR headset, and as far as the app was concerned, you would have been good to go. But Oculus prevented the app from streaming VR games and limited it to just controlling your PC in a VR environment. It did so in the name of customer experience.

/* */