The biggest companies in the Augmented and Virtual Reality space are coming to Austin on March 16 for AR/VR Austin.

Attendees at AR/VR Austin will have the chance to try out the latest VR displays and controllers from Seebright, OSVR, and Sixense. AR/VR Austin is a cooperative effort by the sponsoring companies, organized by Praevidi with help from Upload and SVVR.

“Augmented and Virtual Reality are at the peak of anticipation but the most up to date technology has only been experience by a small number or developers and enthusiasts. This is an opportunity for visitors to Austin for SXSW Interactive and the Austin tech community to experience these cutting edge technologies for the first time,” said Simon Solotko, the CMO of Augmented Reality Pioneer Seebright and co-founder of Praevidi, in a statement.

The state of the art in immersive content will be on display at AR/VR Austin with demonstrations from Jaunt, Littlstar, Rewind and a host of independent content and game developers.

“The impact of Immersive content, and cinematic VR in particular, will be profound this year.  The ability to experience music, education, travel and narrative as if you were ‘there’ is a game changing event in the way people consume content,” added  Scott Brock, VP of Content at Jaunt, in a press release. “SXSW and AR/VR Austin present the perfect opportunity to meet with the creators and storytellers that will push this new medium forward and to share some of our latest work.”

Tickets are available now from Eventbright.

The post AR/VR Austin Brings Leading Augmented and Virtual Reality Developers to SXSW appeared first on VR World.

Since it has been confirmed that the Windows Holographic platform will come baked into every copy of the Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft obviously anticipates the possibility of a future filled with “holographic” computing devices.

So is Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) correct to expect this trend, and – more importantly – should we be happy if it is?

HoloLens joins the recent crew of wearable interfaces, which includes Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Glass and Sony’s not-so-smart-glasses. Some people want to include Oculus Rift in this list, but the Rift is neither augmented reality, nor a computer interface – it is a glamorous virtual reality gaming console, that also happens to be really cool, but doesn’t attempt to function as an interface for everyday computing.

A step forward

Augmented reality devices represent the logical step in a trend that began with the unveiling of the original iPhone in 2007.  Much has been made of the way Apple’s iPhone – and later the iPad – influenced the computing world by creating a vast market for portable smart devices. But equally relevant is an extraordinary paradigm shift caused by these devices with the perfection of one simple element: the touch screen.

Since Douglas Engelbart’s “mother of all demos” in 1968, computer interfaces have been dominated by the ingenious mouse-keyboard combo. For a generation of people who lived before computers, the mouse and keyboard represented the perfect interface: a simple and intuitive way to input commands to a computer using direct mechanical motion and tactile feedback. Typing at a computer wasn’t much different from using a typewriter, and using a mouse must have felt a lot like pulling a lever or turning a steering-wheel to get where one wanted to go.

Most importantly, this interface maintained a clear distinction between the user and the machine: there could not be a less ambiguous boundary than the four corners of a computer monitor, and the pronounced grid of a 1980s keyboard. This distinction was a comfortable one for those accustomed to reading text from the pages of a book, or the folds of a newspaper.

But it also turned out to be an unnecessary one, because computers are not books. The touchscreen was not merely a cool gimmick, but a fundamental change in the way people interacted with their devices. Gone was the distance, or the need for mechanical proxies. Users could now directly manipulate the digital environment by touching it, and interacting with it in a way so intimate that it could arguably be called “magical”.

Since a capacitive touchscreen was included in Apple’s original iPhone, touchscreens have appeared everywhere: tablets, laptops, desktop monitors, televisions, cars, and even refrigerators. It’s a well established fact that a small niche for touchscreens existed before 2007, as exemplified by Microsoft’s Palm PC. But besides being inaccurate and cumbersome, these screens focused on the use of a stylus, and so continued to emphasize the mechanical boundary between machine and user.

Changing paradigms

Google went a step beyond the touchscreen with Glass, by changing the very screen from a physical one to one existing virtually in a user’s line of sight. But this was more of a gimmick than anything significant. Glass still functioned almost exactly like a mobile device. The glass interface was just a screen – a screen constantly floating in front of one’s face, but a screen nevertheless.

HoloLens represents an even more dramatic reduction in the distance between user and interface. By virtually transforming the physical world into a tangible representation of programs and controls, HoloLens is more invasive than glass, which at least preserves the distinction between what is virtual and what is real.

The effect – theoretically, at least – is awesome. What could be cooler than literally stepping into a Martian biome, or the bounds of a video game environment, or to pick up a virtual model and turn it around, all within one’s office?

The question of whether these theoretical features will actually function as intended can be ignored in lieu of the more dramatic question, which is: should this distance be breached in the first place? Digital environments are not realer than the ones in books or other fantasies, which we comfortably consign to the boundaries of our imagination, or pages, or stage, or screen – the boundaries of something.

But should we willingly lie to our senses until they are confused what is actual, and what is virtual? HoloLens is the first time this has actually been attempted, so there are no past failures to learn from, or debates to draw on. This is a question that must be worked out by the consumer, whose answer will ultimately determine the fate of augmented reality, and Microsoft’s HoloLens.

The post Is Microsoft HoloLens the Future of Computing? appeared first on VR World.

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) has published its third quarter 2014 results, in which its revenues, growth and earnings have surpassed analyst expectations for the period. Notable in its report is a stark change in how the company monetizes its advertising network. First, ad impressions have fallen, but revenues per impression have increased, signifying improvements in quality and engagement. Second, mobile is on the rise, growing from almost 50% in Q3 2013 to 66% in the recent quarter. With an established collection of assets like WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook is likewise set to make a big push for its cross-platform ad network throughout 2015.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailed the company’s near-, medium- and long-term strategies in an investor guidance call, and he says the company expects a drastic shift in computing platforms in 10 to 15 years’ time. Facebook is banking on virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to play a big part. “Every 10 to 15 years, a new major computing platform arrives and we think that virtual and augmented reality are important parts of this upcoming next platform,” says Zuckerberg. He cites how Facebook is working closely with developers and device-makers like Samsung in order to shore up support for Oculus, the Rift and its VR platform.

Much work has to be done, however. “It needs to rich a very large sale — 50 million to 100 million units — before it will really be a very meaningful thing as a computing platform,” Zuckerberg says, regarding the traction that AR and VR needs in order to be considered relevant.

Read the full story on VR World’s sister site, Bright Side of News*.

The post Facebook Banks on VR as the Future of Computing appeared first on VR World.

Oculus’ big conference, Oclus Connect,  took place last weekend in Los Angeles, and while the company didn’t  unveil the consumer version it did show off a next-generation prototype version of the Oculus headset.

Before the conference began VR World had a chance to sit down with Simon Solotko, founder of All Future Parties, a consultancy that partners with companies developing augmented reality products to help them accelerate and get to market.

Below is the second part of the conversation.

VR World: What sort of insight do you have into Oculus right now as the eventual release date for the consumer version of the Oculus headset grows closer?

Simon Solotko: Recently Oculus has been very optimistic about the technical capabilities they can deliver with the [first consumer headset]. I would say this marks a change from being cautious to being a little more aggressive and excited. I think the community-at-large will be very excited about it, and [its release] will continue the mainstream discourse on head mounted displays and virtual reality.

There’s a lot of core technology around improving presence in virtual reality that is rapidly improving and Oculus has a lot of energy in. The other thing that’s going to be evident is, Oculus has done its job in providing head mounted displays that the developer community has embraced. It will be interesting to see what other action we’re going to see in terms of developer and ecosystem tools that become available for software development. I’m curious to see what Oculus will do to accelerate this development.

VRW: Are open standards so important that they will make or break VR platforms?

SS: One thing I want to say about open standards is that developers need to know what input to expect, and in ideal world have a relatively simple framework for doing so. I think open standards are a big big exaggeration of what really needs to happen. What really needs to happen is that big companies need to figure out the answer and everybody needs to go along. That would work too.

The key thing we need is that we need to let developers have accessibility and predictability in obtaining complex input. That may result in open standards, but as an intermediary step they simply need multi-device API. I’m curious what Oculus might propose as that model. I have faith that we are going to see some exciting and compelling solutions to the input problem. Is VR broken without fixing the input problem? You bet. Absolutely.

VRW: It seems like once the input problem is overcome, VR will be a much more mature platform and you’ll see a development race following.

SS: You can say that broadly, but it’s going to take time. VR input is a multi-decade problem. What’s important now is that we’re seeing some solid momentum. That’s what needs to happen now.

VRW: Thanks for your time.

The post What Do Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Need to Succeed? appeared first on VR World.

Oculus’ industry conference, Oculus Connect, kicks off this weekend in Los Angeles bringing developers and Oculus engineers together for a weekend of collaboration.

This conference comes at a time where Oculus’ stranglehold on the consumer VR market is slipping. At one time the company had a near monopoly on the market; for the last few years consumer level virtual reality effectively equaled Oculus Rift. Now, the market is getting more and more crowded as Sony, Samsung and Google (which is equally focused on augmented reality) make plays with their own VR solution.

To try and figure out where the augmented and virtual reality is going, VR World recently sat down with Simon Solotko, founder of All Future Parties, a consultancy and accelerator that partners with companies working on products that blend augmented and virtual reality.

Below is the first part of our interview. Check back in the coming days for part two.

VR World: What can we expect from the Oculus Connect conference?

SS: A lot of people are going just because they know that it’s the nexus of the emerging virtual reality revolution. What’s interesting is that there’s so much going on in the emerging ecosystem that has spawned the path that was laid by the Oculus Rift kickstarter and what has followed — the wave of other companies that are utilizing the same technical solutions to arrive at novel variants or simply copycats.

What is interesting about VR right now is that you have both the influence of major players like Oculus and Google as well as Valve who are pushing the envelope in terms of technology and thought leadership. And then you have a hotbed of community innovation — and it really is community innovation — as you have a large set of small companies that are in intellectual and geographic proximity to one another creating a garden of VR solutions and what will become ecosystem ramp into consumer VR.

With regards to Oculus Connect, what is interesting is that it’s now like a “gentlemen’s tea party” in the middle of the wild west.

VRW: During the early days of Oculus, it effectively had a monopoly on the consumer VR market. Fast forward to the present day and you have a number of very competitive VR products from a number of big players.  What gives Oculus an advantage over these companies?

SS: Right now everything is more intertwined than that characterization. Oculus has “done the dance” with Samsung on their emerging head mounted display.  And that dance that we see in public is playing out in some fairly specific ways within the supply chain for displays amongst other things. At the same time you have fairly closed door technical conversations happening between all of these companies. Everyone is one step away from one another and knows one another by first name.

Sony, Oculus, Samsung — they are all swirling around the same tight knit community and the same related sets of ideas and technologies.

The Leap controller, paired with an Oculus Rift DK2, is used to recognize gestures

Right now, as I said, Oculus is about to throw the “gentlemen’s tea party” and has been working on a lot of stuff in the background. They are really working very hard on technology development. A lot of it is playing out in public, and I think Oculus has championed the idea to take relatively early hardware and putting it in the hands of enthusiasts and developers (to jumpstart development).

I think Oculus Connect will be a real signalling point where Oculus shows that VR will be coming soon to real consumers and the ecosystem can be moved forward.

Having said that, whereas Oculus had the early thought leadership lead, the burgeoning ecosystem is potentially huge and also heterogeneous.

VRW: Could you give us an overview of what you see as the disruptive forces in this ecosystem?

SS: Right now you have Oculus, which is the technology and supply chain leader of providing high-quality head mounted displays to the market. You also have a number of emerging players creating what I call mobile specific solutions where either they’ve got some specific hardware or content creation.

You also have the control path. You’ve got a number of companies that are working on ways to stay inside the 3D environment.  You have companies championing a number of different methods. You’ve got companies championing the hand control method; from a controller perspective you’ve got companies like Sixense — they were early to VR and were able to catch the wave faster than any existing company prior to Oculus.

All of these things together form what I call the pillars of VR. It’s not clear what pillars are, we know what some of them are, but not all of them. There are probably a few more pillars that will emerge. These will potentially form disruption among all categories. In addition, there are new categories of solutions that will emerge and there are also new technical solutions that will emerge.

There’s also the disruptive force of augmented reality. The energy and power of virtual reality  is taking augmented reality by storm. It’s a powerful and disruptive force. In other words: VR is taking AR by storm. As ultimately it all becomes just another set of tools developers can use to create interesting experiences. All it comes down to is software developers having a different set of tools for media interaction at their disposal. All of these things will create opportunities for developers to create experiences that defy any one category.

A player fights the Sith with a virtual lightsaber using the Sixsense controller.

Motion control is another major category of innovation and leadership. Sixense is the leader in motion control wih the STEM which provides remarkably accurate full motion control making light sabre battles and precise manipulation possible in 3D and VR. But there are many emerging ways to interact in VR. Threegear is a young company looking at using structured light for precise hand tracking. And Stompz has created a new low cost solution for tracking feet and kinematic motion wirelessly. Both PrioVR and Perception Neuron have created full body tracking systems. I will note none of these is generally available yet, but Sixense’s solottion is widely anticipated to become available soon.

Locomotion is a major category and innovations like Birdly, a VR bird simulator, and the Virtualizer is an innovative omnidirectional treadmill that makes it possible to run, jump, crouch, and interact while standing in VR.

Together these solutions, head mounted display, motion control, and locomotion provide what I call the pillars of VR. It’s not clear what all of the pillars are and there more pillars that will emerge forming the ultimate foundation upon which VR software and experience sap can be constructed and marketed.  These will potentially form disruption among all categories. .

There’s also the disruptive force of VR intersecting adjacent technologies. The energy and power or virtual reality is taking augmented reality by storm. Right now VR has market momentum and is driving a lot of hardware and software solutions and these are moving into the traditional realm of augmented reality and computer vision. This collision will ultimately create a new generation of tools that developers can use to create interesting experiences that defy characterization. software developers will have different set of tools for media interaction at their disposal and a market of consumers equipped with head mounted display to enjoy them.

VRW:  What are some case studies that show the disruptive power of AR and VR?

SS: A company called SeeBright is building a head mounted display which uses a VR paradigm of a head mounted display to provide an AR experience at a really low cost.  You have existing AR players that are going a more direct path of providing something like a full-frame Google Glass, and that’s a really expensive solution. With the influence of VR the idea is now “let’s just create an inexpensive headset and give it to everybody.”

That’s just one kind of example where VR is going to disrupt the headmount opportunity in augmented reality. In addition, you have some technologies that are efficiently used in augmented reality which are being appropriated by VR. One of those being SLAM. SLAM is a set of computer vision technologies for mapping real space in real time, but it turns out that SLAM is really useful if you want to track a headmount.

Another disruptive force is structured light. Structured light is very powerful for mapping real space. It can be used to track head mounted displays. It utilizes infrared light as a means to provide better structured illumination of a space and to provide depth data for real time mapping. For the second version of the Kinect Microsoft built their own structured light solution, and in the process probably built the most powerful computer vision chip in the business.

Right now these structured light solutions require a lot of power and are not quite mobile ready. But a technology that could provide real-time awareness of a room space, could be useful in AR and also VR for head tracking. The grand unification theory of augmented and virtual reality is computer vision coming to the head mounted display in the form of structured light and SLAM to provide tracking and spacial awareness to drive both VR and AR.

Head-mounted displays for VR need things like structured light and computer vision, and as a  result the world is [going to get] to augmented reality for free.

VRW: Thanks for your time.

The post Where Are Virtual Reality And Augmented Reality Going? appeared first on VR World.