Interesting articles about VR – week #17

Virtual Reality Shopping has arrived

In the past, online shopping has been limited to looking at a few product pictures or occasionally a video, accompanied by a description of the product. For some reasons, online vendors never quite got around to virtual reality shopping. You couldn’t take a virtual walkthrough of a store, pushing a trolley, seeing the goods on shelves and picking them and taking a look at them from all sides. Even Amazon, despite its size and deep coffers, preferred to be little more than a text and picture catalogue for online purchase.

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AR investors share insights on the industry’s 2018 trajectory

2017 was a year full of surprises for the augmented reality industry. Arguably the single biggest development was the emergence of ARKit for iOS devices and ARCore for Android devices. Digi-Capital forecasts that the install base for mobile AR could hit 900 million by the end of 2018.

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PVRR

Virtual reality has already begun to transform our world. Now it can transform your pet’s world too. PVRR (Pet Virtual Reality Research) is the latest innovation in entertainment to give your pets experiences they had only dreamed of.

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How the 1990s VR craze inspired an infamous–and still misunderstood–failed video game console.

Twenty years ago, on August 21, 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in North America. The stilt-legged tabletop gaming console, which offered a unique red stereoscopic 3D display, attempted to ride a wave of popular interest in virtual reality. It was a risky, innovative gamble for Nintendo that didn’t pay off, leaving many to wonder why it existed in the first place.

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Noninvasive brain zapping can make your hands feel things in VR

There are all kinds of interesting controllers and haptic feedback experiments designed to make the virtual world feel more lifelike and immersive. One recent piece of research, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, could help out in this regard — and all thanks to a bit of trusty brain-zapping action.

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How VR Can Get To A Hundred Million Headsets By 2024

I recently outlined the VR headsets which pushed the technology forward over the last six years by giving lots of developers new capabilities. In this post, I want to provide a blueprint for people to think about the spatial computing revolution over the next six years.

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Google Partnership Makes It Possible To Visit Ancient Monuments In VR

Google is partnering with non-profit CyArk so anyone can visit ancient monuments and temples, many of which are at risk of being damaged, or, in some cases, have already been devastated.

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Full Sail University Announces VR Learning Software For Classrooms

Education is one area that has started to experiment with virtual reality (VR), with various schools and colleges exploring the benefits of VR for learning and training. Full Sail University is becoming the latest educational institution to embrace VR with the announcement of a licensing deal with VR software firm Doghead Simulations.

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Google adds Oculus Rift support for Chrome virtual reality apps

The latest version of Google Chrome, version number 66, quietly added support for Oculus’ Rift headset, meaning you can now use the high-end VR device to browse the web in VR and make use of compatible WebVR applications. Rift support was first picked up by keen Reddit users on the Oculus subreddit this week, some of whom noticed the new feature in the hidden “Experiments” section of Chrome. Variety later reported on the existence of the feature, and The Verge can confirm that Rift support in Chrome is live now for the Windows 10 version of Google’s browser only. That makes sense, given VR web apps won’t run on an Oculus that’s plugged into a Mac.

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Virtuality – A New Reality of Promise, Two Decades Too Soon

In the history of Virtual Reality, there are a few people, companies and concepts that are considered vital to its existence. VPL Research, creators of the Dataglove, Datasuit and one of the earliest Head Mounted Displays are one of the most important names in the evolution of virtual reality technology and establishing design traits and philosophies that to this day are seen in action.

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