The brave new world of virtual-reality filmmaking — from readwrite.com by David Nield
How VR will revolutionize cinema for creators and consumers.
Excerpt:
While gamers wait patiently for their virtual-reality headsets to go on sale, there’s another industry ripe for the VR picking: movies. That means, as VR technology matures, filmmakers have to work out a new approach to their craft. But if they get it right, audiences are in for a far more immersive and interactive ride.
Companies like Samsung, Google and Oculus have been evangelizing VR cinema experiences, hoping to bring the sorts of videos that make their virtual-reality platforms a real destination for movie watchers. But to make their campaigns work, they need filmmakers and video producers who know what they’re doing.
Innovative use of Virtual Reality in Chemistry Classrooms — from alchemylearning.com
Excerpt:
“My students were able to apply their understanding of the technology to learning activities (labs, research projects, etc.) that could be made possible using virtual reality. For students to draw those connections on their own gives me hope that engineers, teachers, and students will be able to collaborate and create great opportunities for learning inside of a virtual world.” – Matt Cobb
Adopting Virtual Reality for Education — from alchemylearning.com
Excerpt:
“As an educator with 20+ years’ experience integrating technology into curriculum, it is exciting for me to see a technology that so quickly captures the attention of the students, motivates them to make the effort to learn the procedures, and then opens them up to the relevant content.“ – Larry Fallon, Instructional Technology Coordinator, Arlington County Public Schools
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But ultimately, will VR become a proven medium to help students learn faster, be more motivated, and expand the boundaries of what is possible? Let’s take a moment to survey the state of the field right now and see what the future of virtual reality in education could look like.
Virtual reality technology expands to a blitz of uses, including football — from kansascity.com by Kasia Kovacs
Excerpt:
Reilly’s football software is among a tidal wave of VR programs being developed for introduction to consumers in the next year. The military already uses VR in some training exercises, but the technology has potential uses in other areas, such as entertainment and home improvement. Architects, for instance, can create life-size virtual models of buildings rather than relying on traditional physical models.
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Raymond Wong, a product analyst for Mashable, said: “I’m not sure if people want to put these goggles on at home. It’s a very isolating experience.” Indeed, total immersion in a world that occupies most of the users’ senses could lend itself to previously unseen consequences.
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Wong sees more potential for VR in commercial industries such as marketing or engineering.
Research has already pointed to VR’s advantages in the medical field, Rizzo said. Once interactive intelligent agents — virtual characters — are advanced enough to respond like people, surgeons in training may be able to practice procedures with these characters. VR simulations could also be used as a way to distract patients from painful procedures, possibly becoming an alternative to pain medicine.
Education may also benefit from advances in virtual reality.
If a student struggles with conceptualizing the atomic structure, for instance, he could plop on the headset and be immersed within a virtual atom.
Like being there: Walking through an ancient Roman town — from popular-archaeology.com
Excerpt:
The development of new technologies and techniques, combined with the increasingly interdisciplinary approach of archaeological investigation, are producing results that, for the archaeologist of 20 years ago, might have been the stuff of science fiction. Who would have known then that scientists would resurrect in startling detail an entire ancient Roman town after only fractional excavation? And who would have known that thousands of people from nearly every corner of the world would be able to ‘walk’ through that town without ever physically setting foot within?
This, however, is exactly what has happened for an obscure archaeological site located in Portugal—a relatively small ancient Roman town whose few visible remains have attracted comparatively few visitors—at least as compared to the iconic Roman city of Pompeii in the south of Italy.
Oculus Rift DK2 demo round-up for futurists — from futureconscience.com
Excerpt:
NeoS: The Universe
This is a fantastic demo that takes you from the smallest level of scale (surrounded by protons and neutrons) through to the largest (galaxies and the observable universe). As you progress through the scales you are in first overlooked by a penny that seems the size of a building, before seeing it get smaller in front of you and other objects such as basketballs and a T-Rex come into view.
Mona Lisa Room
This is one of those ‘transport you to a location’ demos that a lot of people are starting to get involved with. It seems like such an obvious use of VR technology, and you can really see how the cultural heritage and museum sector is going to jump on this once the technology is commercially available. Essentially what you have here is a solo tour of a very famous art gallery room in the Louvre museum in Paris, complete with atmospheric and well-produced audio guides for a number of different paintings. Most importantly, it’s a VIP viewing – you are escaping the hundreds of tourists crammed into the small space for a personal experience taken at your leisure. Unfortunately, this particular demo really exposes the need for a higher resolution screen than the DK2 has at hand. The Mona Lisa is a small painting, and so none of the detail comes out which is particularly jarring given that the audio tour is talking specifically about how perfect the painting is. Even the massive wall-size Biblical painting nearby comes across as too pixelated to really engage with. It’s a concept that is going to take off in the very near future, but not until we get nice high-res screens!