Interesting articles about VR – week #16

Atomontage reveals voxel 3D simulation technology for games

Game developers have battled each other for decades about whether voxels or polygons are best for game graphics. A voxel is volume element, a way of illustrating a 3D image without using traditional polygons. Atomontage‘s founders believe voxels are a much better way to create fully interactive 3D applications, and they’re unveiling a new platform to enable voxel art in high-end video games and other 3D applications.

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VR Action Sport Hoverderby Opens In Sansar

I ran into Jason Gohlston, Head of Sansar Studios, at SXSW several weeks ago where he was showing off Sansar’s “Ready Player One” environment, “Aech’s Garage” as part of Warner Brothers Pictures’ massive SXSW installation in Austin. This chance meeting led to an amazing discovery: Sansar’s first user-generated virtual sport, Hoverderby.

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AR/VR market transition begins as startups raise record $3.6 billion

Augmented and virtual reality startups raised over $3.6 billion from venture capitalists and corporates in the last 12 months to the end of Q1 2018, setting a new record. Over three-quarters of a billion dollars was invested in the first three months of this year alone.

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New Virtual Reality Pain Management Study Unites All Aspects of Care

In recent months, with the opioid crisis on the rise, virtual reality has emerged as a potential drug-free tool for pain management. In a partnership that connects giants from nearly every aspect of the healthcare industry, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Samsung, Travelers Insurance, Bayer and AppliedVR have teamed up in a new 16-month study to evaluate VR for pain reduction and therapeutic purposes.

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Can OASIS from the Ready Player One movie become the future of VR?

Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopian 2044, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality game, the discovery of which will lead him to inherit the game creator’s fortune. A film adaptation, screenwritten by Cline and Zak Penn and directed by Steven Spielberg, was released on March 29, 2018 and gathered around many different thoughts.

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Leap Motion designed a $100 augmented reality headset with super-powerful hand tracking

Gesture interface company Leap Motion is announcing an ambitious, but still very early, plan for an augmented reality platform based on its hand tracking system. The system is called Project North Star, and it includes a design for a headset that Leap Motion claims costs less than $100 at large-scale production. The headset would be equipped with a Leap Motion sensor, so users could precisely manipulate objects with their hands — something the company has previously offered for desktop and VR displays.

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Sinespace Is a Social VR Space/Virtual World to Watch

I’m starting to think that Adam Frisby was smart to build his virtual world on top of the Unity game engine, because he can leverage off all the development work that has taken place on that platform. For example, he already has great in-world vehicle physics for things like dune buggies and race cars.

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3D movie box office totals take another dive

Could it be that the scourge of 3D film is coming to an end? The box office contribution of 3D showings dropped in 2017 to 12 percent of the U.S. and Canada’s $11.1 billion total take, its lowest point essentially since 3D movies became a thing.

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NBCUniversal’s VR strategy focuses on attractions, not headsets

NBCUniversal is interested in creating virtual reality content, but Chris Heatherly, the company’s gaming boss, gave one reason that isn’t a viable strategy yet during a panel today at the GamesBeat Summit in Mill Valley, California.

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Directing my first VR180 production

When VR180 was announced, it was met with a fair amount of skepticism from the 360 video community. This article won’t debate the merits of VR180 except to say that I don’t think the existence of VR180 takes anything away from 360 video. For reasons I will get into, I believe they are different mediums with different creative uses and audiences. So let’s move on.

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