Things keep getting cooler

The best you can from ODG currently are the R-9 Smartglasses.
These have a 50-degree field of view, 1080p resolution per eye, and 22:9 cinema wide or 16:9 aspect ratios, called the ODG R9. This model includes a 13-megapixel front-facing camera allowing for 4K video capture at 60fps or 1080p capture at 120fps, making it ideal for field work, documentation, and even live broadcasting. The device weighs just under 6.5 ounces and includes 128GB of storage, along with support for a variety of add-on modules to expand functionality.

   Pimp your Oculus



I use the Oculus Rift at work and at home. I can tell it is time to 'enhance' them. My main gripe is that I cannot use my glasses. I plan on eye surgery at some point so that will help. However, for now, I need to wear my bifocals. Since I can't I am left with contacts (that I hate) or just not seeing so well.  There is a company called VR LENS LAB that could help solve that problem but they are too pricey for me.

Seeing is one thing, being tightly tethered is another. I hate having to mess with my cables tugging me as they get wrapped around me or a chair.

Cable extenders are an easy answers. I looked on Amazon for an HDMI extender and a USB 3.0 extender. Any will work. You could use a standard HDMI cable along with an HDMI repeater . You may consider getting one or two shorter USB 3.0 extension for your towers.

          

Next on my list is the padding. The padding isn't really padding at all. It is so minimal and cheap that I still can't believe they went with that. Good news! There are 3rd Party upgrades available. I do plan on getting something.

Next on my list is getting a 3rd tower This can really help with continuous tracking of your hand controllers when you turn around. At home, my play are is small so no biggie. At work it is a little bigger. Not much, but I have run into the tracking issue. So a 3rd tower would be beneficial. Better get a long USB 3.0 extension cable.

I plan on trying some/most of these out. I am obviously not a sponsor for anyone so I must cough up cash for testing.

Fortunately, there is a free upgrade! It is software called Oculus Tray Tool. I am going to try that one out.

      The user puts the Cybershoes® over her/his shoes and takes place on a comfortable seat with lean and armrest. The seat can rotate around its axis. All movements made by the user are transferred into the virtual reality headset. While walking, the user is halfway seated, what makes the Cybershoes® comfortable and secure. The walking movement is very intuitive and the virtual space is not limited by real space.


When it comes to locomotion, current VR systems rely on handheld controllers that are used like a joystick. Users can only walk within a space that is limited by real-world space. When the user wants to proceed further, the joystick is needed for teleportation or for being moved forwards. This form of locomotion is not life-like. Thus many people experience VR-nausea that is caused by the unnatural behavior of the image projected in the VR glasses.

Coming Soon

Oculus Rift 2

Oculus announced in June 2018 that it's requiring Windows 10 in order to run new and upcoming apps and features on the Oculus Rift. The headset still works with Windows 7 and 8.1, however not all new software updates may be supported on the older OSes.

Oculus reasons this is because Microsoft no longer provides mainstream support for Windows 7 and 8.1, and Windows 10 would allow it to meet “performance standards” necessary to implement its newest upgrades.

So, it's a safe bet that Windows 10 will be a minimum system requirement on the Oculus Rift 2 from the outset.

We could potentially see the new VR headset at Oculus Connect 5, which is September 26-27 this year. Stay tuned.

It's possible we've already seen Oculus Rift 2 in the form of the tetherless Project Santa Cruz. On the other hand, Oculus Rift 2 could end up being a proper evolution of Oculus Rift, PC-cable and all.

The Looking Glass

The Looking Glass: A Holographic Display for 3D Creators

The Looking Glass - a new type of holographic display - is now available in very limited quantity.

Designed by and for 3D creators.

Over the past four years, our team of holographers, optical/mechanical/electrical engineers, Unity devs and 3D graphic artists have been working to create the magic that is the Looking Glass - a unique holographic display that uses a combination of lightfield and volumetric technologies.

Now for the first time, groups of people can see and interact with a virtual three-dimensional world on their desk, unaided by VR or AR headsets.And we’ve created a number of tools to enable 3D creators to easily bring their work to life in the Looking Glass.

There are a number of tools to enable 3D creators to easily bring their work to life in the Looking Glass. 

•   All of the Looking Glass apps shown on this page and our website were made using our HoloPlay Unity SDK. As a backer, you will get access to this SDK so that you can create interactive holographic apps of your own.

• 3D model and animations in OBJ, FBX, STL and gLTF format can be imported into the Looking Glass with a couple clicks using the Model and Animation Importer App.

• Dozens of holographic apps are available for free download using the App Library, included with every Looking Glass shipment. These include volumetric video clips, holographic film shorts, lightfield and 3D scan viewer apps, new types of holographic games, virtual pets, CT-scan/DICOM importers, a WYSIWYG 3D model previewer for 3D printing, and much more. By the end of the year, creators will also be able to share their own apps via the Library with Looking Glass owners around the world. 

• An exporter directly from Maya will also available for free download, with live viewports from Maya, Zbrush, Blender, Tinkercad, and Solidworks in development, to be made available for free to all Looking Glass backers.

Will it Sink or Swim? For now, it's floating.

Last week’s Magic Leap reveal landed with precious little enchantment, and more the type of thud one might expect from a whale hitting a well-waxed gym floor. It’s not exactly an uncommon state affairs, either. In fact, it’s an issue that’s been common to a number of high-profile AR launches.

Over at VentureBeat, Jeremy Horowitz has nailed down an explanation for this problem. It’s the result of a fundamental disconnect between the capabilities of the high-end wearable devices we’ve seen and the rather more prosaic options available to non-wearable products. Or, in his words: “The crux of AR’s issue is that there’s no affordable wearable hardware out there. There’s wearable hardware, but it’s not affordable. And there’s affordable hardware, but it’s not wearable.”

Some readers pushed back against my own withering critique of Magic Leap’s demo, for which I make no apologies. Given that the company has received $2.3B in funding, it’s reasonable to expect more than a blurry rock-throwing monster. But it may be worth unpacking why that demo is so uninspired. A small rock monster whose missile strikes an external wall and crumbles may be technically impressive, inasmuch as it shows a holographic element responding to a real-world surface. But what it doesn’t show is any way for that capability to be either independently useful (like an egg timer) or jaw-droppingly immersive (like the idea of a whale that can breach through the solid floor of one’s viewing space).

This tension between what hardware can accomplish, and what customers are willing to pay for, seems to lie at the root of many complex problems with both AR and VR. In some cases, the issues are made that much tougher to solve simply because showing the features of the underlying hardware is genuinely difficult. Starting with the 3-D push almost a decade ago, we’ve seen manufacturers ramp up a number of technologies that are hard to showcase if people aren’t watching the demos live and in person. Other factors, like battery life, software support, and integrated hardware performance have presented profound challenges as well.

Until we find a way to start closing some of these gaps, I’m not optimistic that AR or VR will grow particularly well.

Experience Oculus Rift & HTC Vive With A Single Cable

A new standard called VirtualLink will let next-gen VR devices use the same type of cable.

One of the problems with setting up a virtual reality (VR) system is that a lot of the cables and connectors are entirely proprietary. For example, an Oculus Rift cable will only work with an Oculus Rift. If your cable develops a problem it can be expensive to replace. A new industry consortium will soon chance that with the introduction of the new VirtualLink specification.

The VirtualLink consortium is being led by well-known industry names such as Nvidia, Oculus, Valve, AMD and Microsoft who have collaborated to introduce a new specification that will allow next-generation VR headsets to connect with PCs or other devices using a high-bandwidth USB Type-C cable.

The new connection has been labelled as an Alternate Mode of USB-C, and it allows for VR setup to be simplified and sped up, making the process easier for consumers, removing one of the barriers towards mass adoption for VR.

The adoption of the new standard means that VR requires fewer ports, which means immersive experiences are now possible for users who own smaller devices with fewer ports, such as lightweight notebooks.

The VirtualLink standard has been purpose-built for VR, and has been optimised for latency and bandwidth demands, a crucial component of ensuring a smooth and comfortable VR experience for users. VirtualLink allows for four high-speed HBR3 DisplayPort lanes, which are scalable for future requirements; a USB3.1 data channel can support streaming data from high-resolutions sensors and cameras as well as up to 27 watts of power.

“At Oculus, we’re committed to making VR easily approachable for a wide variety of people,” said Nate Mitchell, head of Rift, at Oculus. “A consolidated connection point is critical in removing barriers to experiencing high-powered PC VR. With the adoption of VirtualLink technology, purpose-built for VR, we look forward to helping push the industry forward into the next phase of VR.

Sansar

SECOND LIFE in VR
in Public Beta

Sansar, the VR platform by Second Life creator Linden Lab, is now available for everyone to explore. The public "creator beta" follows a private "creator preview," which allowed developers and aspiring level designers to try Sansar's building tools. That period was crucial given, like Second Life, Linden Lab is banking on the community to populate Sansar with interesting experiences. Today, there are "hundreds" of places to explore, including museums, theaters and tropical temples. Some are virtual postcards, while others have games and stories inside them. Everything is free to try too, whether you're playing on a PC, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.


Last week the team behind AltSpaceVR, one of the most popular social VR , announced it would be closing down next month. The company had run into funding problems, and outlined in a frank blog post how it had struggled to secure a new funding round. Linden Lab is hoping to avoid a similar fate through its unique business model, which involves taking a small cut of marketplace purchases. With Sansar, anyone can design and upload a virtual object — a chair, a car, anything really — and then sell it to other users. The recipient can then use it to speed-build their own experience, whether it's a private home or a bombastic game for the public.



Everyone can create three personal lots, or "experiences," for free. The "Creator" subscription, which costs $9.99 per month, takes that to five and promises speedier customer support over email. The "Super Creator" tier, meanwhile, comes with 10 experiences, even faster email responses and live web chat. The "Professional" package, finally, grants you 20 experiences, email, web chat and phone support for $99.99 per month. Pricing could change in the future, however, depending on user feedback during the creator beta. Linden Lab says it's also working on entrance fees, so creators can charge users access "on the door" for specific experiences.

Inside Sansar, you can create an avatar, speak to other people and pick up objects — the usual social MMO fare. While it's playable with a monitor, mouse and keyboard, Linden Lab has clearly designed it with VR headsets in mind. It's a novel experience that Facebook has since tried to replicate with its VR app Spaces. The difference with Sansar is its deep, but newcomer-friendly level builder; Linden Lab hopes everyone will craft their own experiences that slowly attract new people to the platform.

Still, it's unclear how popular virtual reality will become. Oculus Rift and HTC Vive sales are stable, but slower than some people expected. Linden Lab is bullish about the medium's future, but it's telling that Sansar is also playable through a laptop or PC. If you want to try the beta out for yourself, the Sansar app is available to download through the company's website.

Amazon’s Sumerian Is A Web-Based Development Service For VR/AR Apps

Amazon revealed its new Web-based AR and VR editor called Sumerian.

The new tool looks like it could be aiming to lure away developers from software like Unreal Engine and Unity which are used to make the majority of VR and AR apps currently available. Sumerian requires no downloading of software — it is entirely Web-based — and “customers pay only for the storage used for 3D assets and the volume of traffic generated to access the virtual scenes they create.”

Apps created in Sumerian are said to work in “any browser that supports WebGL or WebVR graphics rendering, including Daydream, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and iOS mobile devices.” Sumerian also takes a note from Unreal’s Blueprints interface, allowing creators with no coding experience to use a visual scripting tool to put together all the logic needed to make the world interactive.

The service includes a library of pre-built objects to use but according to Amazon you can also use assets from Sketchfab or Turbosquid. Google also recently launched Poly, its 3D object library. Poly combined with VR creation tools Tilt Brush and Blocks could let creators build objects and environments intuitively in VR and then use those creations in Sumerian.

Sumerian is also said to be integrated with Lex and Polly, two Amazon services “which provide automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural language understanding (NLU), and text-to-speech capabilities, so that Amazon Sumerian characters can understand and respond to users in lifelike conversations.”

Lenovo Mirage Solo

Lenovo’s Mirage Solo is poised to send the mobile VR scene for a loop. First seen at CES 2018, it’s the first Google Daydream standalone headset to hit store shelves, meaning you don’t need a compatible smartphone to insert into it. All you need is the headset itself, which happens to be much more capable than what any phone can provide today.

In close collaboration with Google, the Mirage Solo features WorldSense, its six degrees-of-freedom technology that lets you move around in a virtual world as if you’re really there.

Essentially, there’s a flagship smartphone packed inside of the Mirage Solo. That, combined with inside-out positional tracking, not only makes Daydream apps and games that are available now even better, but it blasts away the gates that have previously kept mobile VR from being more interactive, like PC users currently enjoy with the HTC Vive.

The Mirage Solo is almost like the lovechild of the PSVR headset and the Google Daydream View, combining their sheer simplicity in design with impressive functionality that enhances the VR experience during marathon sessions. Given that all of the hardware is stuffed into the headset itself, the comfort yielded here is remarkable, but expected since PSVR employs a similar solution of front-loading the weight of the Mirage Solo on the top of your forehead.

A twisting knob brings the headset around your skull, making it fully adjustable – friendly even to those who wear glasses. On front of the headset, there are two cameras, which undoubtedly will be used to merge Google’s AR and VR aspirations.

Moving around the device, one side plays host to a power button and a microSD slot that’s handy for loading VR180 videos captured by the Lenovo Mirage Camera. Around to the other end, you have your volume controls and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Loaded with the Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM and Daydream OS, the Mirage Solo is ready to get down with the latest and greatest VR apps and games – even those that aren’t out just yet. The fact that it’s running on its own operating system without worrying itself about phone calls and what not in the background means that more resources can be dedicated to whatever it is you’re doing with Mirage Solo.

The visual fidelity provided by the wide 110-degree field of view of its 2,560 x 1,440 LCD display was immediately noticeable. Because it’s integrated into the device, pixels are almost indiscernible to the degree that you won't find yourself trying to readjust the headset to get a better look. The fact that the headset provides almost perfect isolation from light also plays into this gain in immersion.

Everything comes with a price, and the Mirage Solo is expected to come in under $400 (about £300, AU$500). A first look at the tag might shock you, but based on the powerful tech that’s been implemented and acknowledging just how well it’s been done, this seems like a sweet spot.

Training in Construction with VR Simulators

Everyone’s heard the term virtual reality, but despite the relatively relatable state of the art, for many it still conjures up images of science fiction. In “reality,” the technology is becoming increasingly prevalent in our day-to-day lives. One area where this is particularly true is in equipment training.
“Traditional, conventional training is somewhat flawed – and can be really boring,” says Jim Colvin, CEO of Serious Labs, which officially introduced its new simulator at the IPAF Summit in Miami in March. “Quite frankly, one reason people come into our industry is because they don’t like sitting in classrooms, they want to be physically engaged."

He continues, “The workforce is changing. There’s such a lack of skilled training in the world right now. How are we going to get through to young people about the workplace of the future unless we train them in the way they want to be trained? People learn by doing. It’s the best way to teach.”

A VR simulator is a completely immersive experience, Colvin explains. “You feel like you’re on an actual worksite, you can feel a visceral effect,” he says. “And it enables us to track everything the operator does. If you’re assessing someone from the ground and he’s up in a 150-foot lift, you don’t know where he’s looking. And how you judge compared to another instructor is not objective. A simulator is completely objective, however. It measures every way the operator leans, everywhere they look, how they do things and in what order.”

“What if you could put people into dangerous situations, and be able to track their behaviors in those situations, but not actually put them in danger?” asks Colvin. “I personally believe VR should be mandatory in aerial equipment training. It’s ludicrous to suggest a pilot would ever be able to get into a plane without getting enough seat time, and this is no different. The ‘just enough, just in time’ training philosophy doesn’t work.”

Brad Boehler, president of Skyjack, which assisted Serious Labs in the development of its new simulator, says virtual reality has great potential for aerial equipment training, but stops short of suggesting it can replace on-machine practical training entirely. “I’m not sure if in five years we’ll get to where VR will fully replace practical training, but for ongoing training purposes, if we can actually look at what the operator’s skill set is in an actual operating environment, and evaluate how they react in that environment, that’s pretty invaluable,” he says. “I envision that as the next step.”

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