Interesting articles about VR – week #15

Virtual reality: Is this really how we will all watch TV in years to come?

Virtual reality (VR) technology secured its place in popular culture through films such as The Lawnmower Man and The Matrix, as well as books such as Ready Player One, which Steven Spielberg is adapting for a movie. They presented visions of technology whereby strapping on a VR headset (or, as in The Matrix, being imprisoned in pods and hooked up to a computer network by human-farming machines) enabled people to explore virtual, computer-generated worlds.

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INFOGRAPHIC – VIRTUAL REALITY SURGING INTO THE CLASSROOM

Virtual Reality is being used in classrooms now more than ever. One quarter of the schools are already using VR, and this number is continuing to grow. While most teachers are aware of VR, over three quarters of teachers have never used it in a school environment before and many agree that VR would definitely be a benefit in subjects such as science, history, and the arts and design. In science, students can use Anatomy 4D apps to dissect animals, instead of using real animals. There are even applications to enhance students’ creativity, saving already struggling school art budgets from needing to purchase art supplies.

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Cannabis Coupled With Virtual Reality Creates Elevated Gaming Experience

Smoking weed and playing video games is a time-honored tradition. From Seth Rogen toking and toggling in nearly every bromance movie to High Times releasing a list last year of the 22 greatest stoner video games of all time, these two sedentary activities are a perfect match.

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Marketing with influencers in VR

So how can influencer marketing successfully coincide with VR content? This can be explored with the unprecedented possibilities VR comes with and the influencer’s ability to creatively relay a brand’s identity and vertical.

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Top Virtual Reality Companies in Healthcare

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On the Vive’s first birthday, the VR conversation is getting calmer

One year ago today, HTC released the Vive virtual reality headset, marking a turning point for virtual reality. The Vive wasn’t the first commercial VR headset, or even the first commercial high-end headset. But besides the simple Google Cardboard, it was the first major headset released without help from Oculus, proving VR didn’t belong to any one company. It was also the first one to come with sophisticated motion controls, ushering in a completely new class of experiences. In some ways, the Vive’s launch was the moment that VR began feeling like a real industry, rather than a Facebook-backed passion project. A year later, that optimism has turned into something more mature, but less visible.

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360 journalism: The solutions we need

I’m on a plane heading to an assignment in South Carolina. I’m caught up on my podcasts and am avoiding reading yet another politics book I regretfully carried on board. With nothing else to do high above ground, I can’t escape fact that I have yet to draft a proposal for the Journalism 360 Challenge. I’m sure you’ve heard that the Knight Foundation, Google News Lab and the Online News Association have partnered to fund ideas that aim to “advance the collective understanding” of forms and approaches to immersive storytelling (deadline is April 10). Praise be to the merciful humans who run these organizations.

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Binge on virtual reality with HTC Vive’s ‘Netflix for VR’

Just a week after the one-year anniversary of the Oculus Rift’s consumer debut, the HTC Vive is celebrating a similar birthday with the launch of its Viveport subscription service. The easiest way to describe the service is as Netflix for VR. It could save you money if you’re currently spending a ton of cash on new games each month.

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VRgluv Brings 1st Force Feedback Haptic Glove to VR

What do you get when you lock a team of product engineers and “VR freaks” in a dark, Atlanta warehouse with a 3D printer for a prolonged period of time? – I know, it sounds like the beginning of a bad (/weird?) joke—but it turns out you get something pretty extraordinary. Enter VRgluv, the brainchild of this 3-month-long Atlanta warehouse project, and the first haptic glove advanced enough (and sexy enough) to be worthy of a VR headset’s time.

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360 production tips – how to light a shoot

I hear far to often that “you can’t light in 360 content”. It’s absolute rubbish, you can, and where possible you should! This 360 production tips post tells you how we approach lighting in 360 scenes at Visualise, some of the tricks we use and should dispel some of the smoke and mirrors that abound! Our DOP Jonathan Curran spearheads the lighting on our shoots and has contributed to the techniques below.

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