Interesting articles about VR – week #31

LG’s new virtual reality headset has a problem: too much reality

As part of LG’s range of peripherals for its new G5 flagship smartphone, the company has created a lightweight virtual reality headset: the LG 360 VR. Like Samsung’s Gear VR, it’s powered by a smartphone. But unlike the Gear, it doesn’t use your smartphone’s screen as a display. Instead of slotting the G5 into the back of the headset, you attach it via a USB-C cable and use the 360’s own internal screens. This has the advantage of making the headset super light (just 118 grams), but that’s about the only good thing this thing has going for it.

Virtual Reality applications bring a new dimension to real estate

Imagine buying a house thousands of miles away at the comfort of your desk. Imagine you’re exploring the inside and outside of the property and experimenting the view from each and every window. Or even trying alternative view options by choosing different floors.

Afraid of crowds? Virtual reality may let you join without leaving home.

To be clear, we’re talking about actual crowds—the kind where hundreds or thousands of flesh-and-blood people converge on a physical place for fun or to make a point. But if crowds end up in the dustbin with coffee percolators and cloth diapers, it will happen because the risk and cost of joining a crowd are forcing us to consider alternatives at a time when alternatives seem good enough to satisfy our needs. And that moment is about to land. Actual crowds will soon be replaced by what we might call distributed crowds.

Broadcasters to offer Olympic audiences virtual reality viewing

The sandy shores of Copacabana beach may be nearly 6,000 miles away, but when the Rio Olympics gets underway on Friday, viewers will be able to soak up the atmosphere inside the stadium like never before, as organisers make use of virtual reality technology for the first time.

Space: The Biggest Problem Facing The Future Of Virtual Reality

Space and time. In sports like soccer, hockey or basketball, space and time are what players need to exercise their creativity and build success.
In the forthcoming world of virtual reality, space may be the most limiting factor for the future of adoption.
According to the Asian PlayStation website, the requirements for using the forthcoming PlayStation VR headset are very specific, reported PCMag.

I tried one of the World’s first virtual reality cinemas

Virtual reality promises to upend digital life as we know it. Gaming, shopping, teleconferencing, education, actual human screwing — in the next 10 years, VR is going to transform them all. (Heck, maybe even in just five.) First, though, it’s trying to change one of our most basic entertainment experiences, namely, how we sit in a dark room and watch movies together.

Welcome to Zuckerworld: Facebook’s really big plans for virtual reality

The office building on Facebook Way is in the unfinished style that honors materials like plywood, concrete, and steel. The I-beams supporting its soaring walls still have the builders’ chalk placement instructions on them. It takes a business making billions of high-margin dollars to make plywood and concrete seem so appealing. The merely ordinary have to put up drywall.

Virtual Reality Stock Photos Are Unintentionally Comic Genius

Virtual reality is finally here, and it’s revolutionizing entertainment. You can now put your phone in a plastic box, strap that box to your face, and immerse yourself in the world of, say, animated rabbits. It’s exciting, but what’s even more exciting is the accompanying deluge of delightfully terrible stock photos. Enterprising photographers have jumped on VR like it’s the next hoverboard, apparently without any real understanding of how people actually use it. As far as I can tell, they just handed knockoff headsets to moderately attractive models and told them to, “Look super excited or scared or whatever.” The results are glorious. I poured hours into curating the below images to bring you the best of the best—hackneyed CG graphics, unnatural poses, and a healthy dose of over-enthusiasm—all to help you see the potential of this new technology through the world’s most oblivious art form. 

 

The Augnet: Where Pokemon Goes from Here

Augmented reality gives us something that only Argentinian literary giant Jorge Luis Borges dared dream of–a map as vast as the terrain it demarcates. Pokemon Go is the first landmark augmented reality experience, but definitely not the last. Right now I imagine there are developers working on AR treasure hunts, games, and enterprise applications that will become the Pokemon Go of their various categories.

Artist Profile: Matteo Zamagni Uses VR to Hack the Senses

What is information? What is its relationship to meaning and structure? Does information exist apart from the material or medium by which it is transmitted? Matteo Zamagni’s VR experience Nature Abstraction offers a fascinating exploration of these questions. Like VR itself, the work challenges conventional notions of human perception and knowledge.