Go on, admit it, we have all tried out socializing in an avatar-based digital world… No? Well? get with the program! It can be hilarious. For most people, their first experience was in Second Life but the options have grown and there are now a plethora of these virtual worlds out there offering online chat, banter and even companionship and dating. There is something hugely addictive about these digital playgrounds and I know I have enjoyed chatting up complete strangers, laughing together at our over the top digital outfits or absurd animal avatars and chuckling when snubbed (usually in broken English) by outrageously rude users. One such platform that is seeing rapid user adoption is IMVU where high-quality 3D graphics and super creative options make it stand out from the crowd.

Available for iOS, Android and desktop users and boasting over 50 million registered users and 10 million unique visitors a month IMVU is clearly one to watch. The platform is booming and celebrated it’s fifteen birthday in 2019. Take a look at the video below to see how the avatars and platform have evolved.

Available for iOS, Android and desktop users and boasting over 50 million registered users and 10 million unique visitors a month IMVU is clearly one to watch
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Users all get a personal homepage that is customizable with color themes, rearrangeable info panels, a personal blog where you can upload images and music and tell the world about yourself
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New users can sign up easily, create their avatar and jump into the action meeting and chatting with people in virtual rooms. Users all get a personal homepage that is customizable with color themes, rearrangeable info panels, a personal blog where you can upload images and music and tell the world about yourself. IMVU also offers animated stickers to let you express your moods and the search function makes it easy to look for new people to meet. Rather than speaking into a microphone to chat and hearing other user’s real voices reply, like you can in Second Life, IMVU features 3D Avatar Chat where typing makes chat bubbles appear over your avatar’s head. This is much more practical for users commuting on the train or quietly chatting while at work, naughty, naughty. These chat bubbles automatically resize based on how much you type. You can click on a balloon to copy the text, and then paste to add text to a bubble. You can even paste in clickable URLs. Also, by clicking on a bubble, you can drag it down to reveal your chat history. This is a familiar and practical interface for all smartphone users.

IMVU features 3D Avatar Chat where typing makes chat bubbles appear over your avatar's head
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More advanced and fun interactions are possible using Avatar Actions. You can easily express yourself with hundreds of Avatar Actions by clicking on your avatar to open the Actions Menu and select the animation you want to use or simply typing in the name of the action to trigger the animation. So typing LOL, wave, and even breakdance will make your avatar act it out! You can also shake hands, hug, hello, serenade, and even body slam your 3D avatars. Just click on the other person’s avatar and choose from the hundreds of fun animations.

Typing LOL, wave, and even breakdance will make your avatar act it out! You can also shake hands, hug, hello, serenade, and even body slam your 3D avatars
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For those looking to avoid the in-game adverts and for more than the basic functions and benefits within IMVU you can sign up for the VIP Club It’s actually pretty good value and looks to be very easy and rewarding. If this sounds like a good idea be sure to refer to the article How to Sign Up for VIP Club Membership for detailed instructions.

VIP Club Benefits:

Exclusive Status:

– No third-party ads
– A free special VIP badge
– Remove “Guest_” tag in front of your name for as long as you are a VIP
– A Free Name Change token after the first consecutive 3 months of membership
– VIP only avatar 3D actions
– Block unwanted avatar actions

Credits, Discounts and More:

– Free 5,000 credits a month
– 5% savings off everything in the IMVU virtual goods catalog
– 10% off badges

Special Privileges:

– Prioritized Customer Support
– Create up to 10 public rooms
– Create up to 10 groups
– Set your own custom room as default for Dress Up and Shopping
– Whisper privately in your chats

More than 43 million products are currently available, designed by more than 50,000 active Creators who upload over 5,000 new products to the IMVU shop every day
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Like many virtual world platforms, the more advanced user functions run on virtual currency. Credits are the currency in IMVU and what you use to buy items for your Avatar in the Catalog. You can buy Credits directly from the Catalog and you can also earn credits in a variety of ways including by becoming a VIP member. As you use IMVU, you will discover lots of ways to earn credits. You can also get credits when your friends sign up for IMVU and when they buy credits for themselves. With an exchange rate of $1 to 1000 Credits, IMVU’s virtual economy represents an inexpensive alternative to traditional shopping. All told more than 43 million products are currently available, designed by more than 50,000 active Creators who upload over 5,000 new products to the IMVU shop every day, from fresh takes on jeans and high-end wedding gowns to unicorns, lips that glitter, and eyes that shoot flames.

If you are serious about building yourself a personal space and new group of friends in IMVU then a VIP pass is a great idea as VIPs can create their own rooms and groups giving you more control over your social circle as well as getting free credits and discounts in the Catalogue to help you build your avatar into something that represents the real you!

Learn more about the VIP Club here and be sure to check out the IMVU News and Blog to see what the company and it’s users are doing to grow and develop the virtual world you are investing in.

If you are serious about building yourself a personal space and new group of friends in IMVU then a VIP pass is a great idea as you can create your own rooms and groups giving you more control over your social circle
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The platform supports a fascinating and diverse range of communities so you are sure to find yourself a group of likeminded new friends from among the 50 million-plus registered users
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The platform supports a fascinating and diverse range of communities so you are sure to find yourself a group of likeminded new friends from among the 50 million-plus registered users from around the world.

The post Get Past the Velvet Rope with VIP on IMVU appeared first on Tech Trends.

It is really interesting with any new platform to see what types of games become popular as the medium evolves. And it’s often not what you’d expect. Even as mobiles became able to handle better graphics and high-speed Internet access on the move became ubiquitous, it was still the relatively simple games like FarmVille, Candy Crush and Angry Birds that stole the show and had millions of people glued to the little screens.

It is really interesting with any new platform to see what types of games become popular as the medium evolves
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With immersive technologies, there’s now a dizzying array of creative experimentation going on, and it’s fair to say we’ve barely scratched the surface. One of the ways you can tell this is true is by spotting how many designers claim that their game is the first ever of its kind.

With immersive technologies, there’s now a dizzying array of creative experimentation going on
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Such is the case with Scriptum, which is bringing escape rooms to AR. For those not familiar with the concept, an escape room is a location-based experience where a group of people – family, friends, colleagues – go to role play and solve interactive puzzles as part of a narrative adventure, typically lasting around an hour, but it can vary.

Scriptum is bringing escape rooms to AR
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To start the game, you simply scan the floor of the room in which you’re standing, and step through the portal that appears
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“Escape rooms are becoming more popular around the world, and Scriptum is a mystery puzzle game that capitalizes on that trend and uses AR to recreate that. You have to find all the clues, and reach the exit through the portal in less than 15 minutes,” explains Alex Balcells, CEO at Adver2Play, the Barcelona-based company which developed Scriptum. “There might be other detective games out there, but Scriptum is the first app to put you inside of a real Escape Room.”

To start the game, you simply scan the floor of the room in which you’re standing, and step through the portal that appears. Then, of course, comes the tricky part of having to puzzle your way out of that room as quickly as possible by collecting clues and figuring out the puzzles.

The idea of Escape Rooms originated in Japan, but over the past few years it has gained popularity around the world
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The U.S. has seen what can only be described as a boom in this sector, which has grown from 22 companies to over 2,000 in the past four years
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It’s essentially very simple, but as it’s often the case, the proof of the pudding is in the execution. If people are engaged with the puzzles enough, they will buy into the concept more fully and the experience will gel. And according to Balcells, this is exactly what they’ve seen since launching Scriptum, adding that they’re very encouraged by the high levels of interest the app generated so far.

Scriptum is currently available to download on Google play and iTunes for free, but there is no doubt that there is a very attractive commercial market for this sort of product out there. Real-life escape rooms are often fully booked, specially at weekends, and can generate hundreds of thousands in revenue depending on their popularity.

Scriptum is currently available to download on Google play and iTunes for free, but there is no doubt that there is a very attractive commercial market for this sort of product out there
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Since the whole concept hinges on merging fantasy and real-world elements it seems like a natural fit for AR
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And since the whole concept hinges on merging fantasy and real-world elements, it would certainly seem like a natural fit for AR. Will it become the medium’s killer “sticky” app though? Only time will tell. In the meantime, good luck getting back to the real world.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Test Your Puzzle-Solving Skills In This AR Escape Room via @alicebonasio https://t.co/5UzjaYzaCs pic.twitter.com/7Jw5tEkiQm

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 13, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Escaping from Augmented Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

According to a recent Forbes survey, 77% of people who use VR want more social engagement, and I’ve long believed social is they key to getting the tech to a mass-market stage, but that needs to be done in the context of things that people already want to do rather than gimmicks.

Booking travel is one of those strange things that are simultaneously pleasurable and a complete nightmare, so any way that technology can improve on the experience is likely to fall under that desirable category.

According to a recent Forbes survey, 77% of people who use VR want more social engagement
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Travel is a social experience. Planning and booking a vacation is a clear example of that
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“Travel is a social experience. Planning and booking a vacation is a clear example of that and can sometimes be a grueling task. Forty percent of users prefer using VR in the company of others and the latest version of the Rizort VR app does just that. We want all travelers to be able interact in a fun and collaborative way in the process,” says Sachin Kanodia, CEO of Rizort.

The Rizort VR app works on headsets such as the Oculus Go and Samsung Gear to allow potential guests to virtually explore hotels, resorts and experiences from anywhere in the world
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The Rizort VR app works on headsets such as the Oculus Go and Samsung Gear to allow potential guests to virtually explore hotels, resorts and experiences from anywhere in the world. It also supports a multiuser mode where several people can check out a location or experience at the same time and compare notes and impressions, thus maximizing the chances of making everyone happy with the final booking.

To date, the San-Francisco based company has raised $2.9M dollars
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Rizort's multiuser mode allows several people to check out a location or experience at the same time
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Recently, Rizort added Dubai, Mexico and the Caribbean to its growing roster of destination offerings. Current destinations also include Bali, Thailand, the Maldives and destinations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Fiji and Japan will be added in 2019.

Their hope is that the mixture of VR and 360 degree video will do a better job of enticing customers to try the destinations for real than a photo gallery or glossy brochure ever could.

“The guest can simply stroll through the hotel areas such as lobby, swimming pool, rooms, restaurants, bar etc to really understand the property better.”

To date, the San-Francisco based company has raised $2.9M dollars in seed funding to develop its platform, which uses a proprietary algorithm to match user intent to highly curated luxury hotels, resorts and experiences across multiple destinations.

So far, Rizort says they are very pleased with the results of the VR social feature and plan to keep making enhancements to the platform
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Rizort added Dubai, Mexico and the Caribbean to its growing roster of destination offerings
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So far, Rizort says they are very pleased with the results of the VR social feature and plan to keep making enhancements to the platform to further integrate the booking process into the virtual reality experience, making it into one seamless immersive travel platform.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Check Out Your Travel Destination In VR Before You Book via @alicebonasio https://t.co/hrF8HPcYuh pic.twitter.com/XTxFLqDAVt

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 15, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Traveling in Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

This day and age, one could be forgiven for being somewhat disillusioned with democracy, but still, come election time, I always vote
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As a woman I feel that voting is the least I can do to honour the sacrifice of people like Emmeline Pankhurst
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One of the reasons I do that without fail is because I figure that, as a woman, traveling a short distance to put a few ticks on a ballot (or even doing it from the comfort of my own home) is really the least I can do to honour the sacrifice of people like Emmeline Pankhurst, who endured and risked so much to earn me that right.

I also figure that if more people experienced and understood some of those sacrifices, they might feel the same, and we’d have much higher turnout rates in every election. And maybe VR experiences like the BBC’s Make Noise can help achieve that.

Throughout the experience you hear audio clips of real-life suffragettes
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It uses a combination of VR and voice-activated technology to encourage viewers to literally follow Emmeline Pankhurst’s advice to ‘make more noise’ to change the world.

“Inspired by the suffragettes who a century ago spoke up for a woman’s right to vote, Make Noise invites viewers to find and use their own voice and consider what it means to speak up in a world that doesn’t value it,” the news release reads.

The narrator – actor Nikki Amuka-Bird – encourages viewers to speak up as voice technology in the headset continuously detects and reacts to every sound they make.

“They’ll need to find their voice and use it to name the women that have inspired them, and to call out the objects that have oppressed women for centuries – changing the virtual environment around them as they do so,” she says

Every sound you make in the experience therefore has an effect in the virtual surroundings as you sing, hum and shout the names of these inspirational women like incantations against indifference and oppression.

The experience uses a combination of VR and voice-activated technology to encourage viewers to literally follow Emmeline Pankhurst’s advice to ‘make more noise’ to change the world
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The experience is available to download for free from the Oculus Store, and will be available on the Oculus Go. It’s also being shown at a number of libraries and literary events across the United Kingdom. At one such event, Helen Pankhurst, Emmeline’s great-granddaughter had the opportunity to try it on and was enthusiastic about how the immersive medium really helped to bring out her ancestor’s story:

“You’re asked not just to look but to use your mind and your voice. I think that focus on the voice and your own engagement with it is incredible,” she said.

Throughout the experience viewers also hear BBC archive audio clips of real-life suffragettes (Edith Pepper, Charlotte Drake, Charlotte Marsh, Mary Richardson, Lillian Lenton, Victoria Liliard, Grace Roe and Elizabeth Dean) explaining how they found their own voice, and used it to change the world.

Helen Pankhurst, Emmeline’s great-granddaughter had the opportunity to try it on and was enthusiastic about how the immersive medium really helped to bring out her ancestor’s story
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Make Noise was produced by BBC VR Hub and Anagram. Its director, May Abdalla, explains that they opted to use bold abstract visuals to make playful worlds and mess with scale so that the aesthetics of Victorian England didn’t get in the way of the story:

“In these strange visual universes the punk attitude of these inspirational women really stands out,” she says. “Each chapter represents the emotional journey of their path to victory; from frustration though finding solidarity and resistance. “We wanted to find a way to really connect the stories of the suffragettes to our lives, and the fact is that standing up for something when people are trying to shut you down is something we all can relate to.”

This article originally appeared on VRScout

Voice-Activated BBC VR Experience Puts You In The Shoes Of A Suffragette via @alicebonasio https://t.co/8LN4VfUwpX pic.twitter.com/GXX0Qu5YDb

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 12, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Making Noise in VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

The ability to create engaging avatars is of course crucial if Social Immersive experiences and platforms are ever to catch on with consumers, and that’s arguably also the trickiest piece of the puzzle, as creators have to balance the desire for realistic representation and interaction with avoiding the dreaded Uncanny Valley. It will be interesting to see who cracks that particular nut first, as so far no particular player has emerged as a clear front runner and many of the social VR platforms only offer avatars that range from functional to frankly embarrassing (naming no names).

The ability to create engaging avatars is key to making Social Immersive experiences catch on with consumers
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Recently launched out of stealth mode, Artie is a LA-based company that hopes to do just that by leveraging sophisticated AI technology. According to a news release, they have developed software that allows content creators to bring virtual characters – i.e. Intelligent Avatars — to life.

This proprietary “Wonderfriend Engine” enables those avatars to interact and converse with consumers and each other in more realistic and engaging ways by doing things such as recognizing a large variety of objects and common facial expressions in real-time.

“Unlike other avatar apps, which only allow consumers to create and manually puppet avatars based on their own likeness for chat purposes, Artie enables consumers to interact and converse directly with their favorite characters,” said Ryan Horrigan, Co-founder and CEO of Artie. “We plan to unlock new value for the world’s biggest IP by creating a new form of avatar-based entertainment.”

Artie has developed software that allows content creators to bring virtual characters – i.e. Intelligent Avatars - to life
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Artie’s analytics engine and deep-learning insights means creators will be able to monitor engagement with their avatars in real-time. The platform also captures user behaviors to drive neural networks that automatically train and improve an avatar’s performance over time so that interactions get more lifelike for each subsequent user.

“Our avatars will actually learn from you, and become increasingly entertaining the more you interact with them,” says Co-founder Armando Kirwin. “Advancements in machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision and sentiment analysis allow our users to create intelligent avatars that are much more engaging than traditional media,” he adds.

The company is also working on an ‘Instant Avatar’ feature to make their avatars shareable via standard hyperlinks and thus discoverable on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

“We expect to see AI-driven avatars become mainstream experiences for consumers,” says Tipatat Chennavasin, General Partner of the Venture Reality Fund, which has invested in the company alongside the Founders Fund, WndrCo, M Ventures, Metaverse Ventures and YouTube Co-founder and former CEO Chad Hurley.

Artie has already secured partnerships with Google and Verizon for early experiments with its Avatar technology
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“I’ve long been fascinated by where the next gen of entertainment might take us, and I believe that intelligent, virtual characters—like the kind you can make with Artie’s platform—will play a key role in how we create and interact with content,” adds Hurley.

We expect to see AI-driven avatars become mainstream experiences
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Artie has already secured partnerships with Google and Verizon for early experiments with its technology and is beginning to onboard major media companies, celebrities, influencers, and an “emerging class of avatar-based entertainment creators.”

This article was first published on VRScout

Building An AR Platform For Intelligent Avatars via @alicebonasio https://t.co/UACDsJjWvE pic.twitter.com/Grbzzu1bZd

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 10, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Making Intelligent Avatars in AR appeared first on Tech Trends.

Fans will soon be able to step into a virtual Sansar comedy club and enjoy live stand-up shows by well-known comics such as YouTube star personality Steve Hofstetter – for a new event series called “Comedy Gladiators: a Virtual Comedy Experience.”

The live comedy showcase will allow fans to do everything in VR that they would do at a real-life comedy club
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Fans will soon be able to step into a virtual Sansar comedy club and enjoy live stand-up shows by well-known comics such as YouTube star personality Steve Hofstetter
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The live comedy showcase will, according to Sansar’s creators Linden Lab, allow fans to do everything in VR that they would do at a real-life comedy club: purchase tickets in advance, shop for custom merch and memorabilia, even order drinks.

“Fans can purchase tickets online via the Sansar Store, just as they would for a real-life event, and receive instant access to the virtual venue. Once there, they can purchase a wide range of items, including commemorative virtual t-shirts, beer mugs, and even physical copies of Steve’s most recent book, Ginger Kid,” according to their news release.

You can purchase tickets online via the Sansar Store
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Tickets went on sale for $9.99 for the first event in the series which was scheduled for Monday, December 10, at 7:30 PM PT, and featured stand-up and storytelling from Hofstetter alongside Ben Gleib (voice of Marshall in Ice Age: Continental Drift), Maz Jobrani (part of the “Axis of Evil” comedy group), Alonzo Bodden (winner of Last Comic Standing season 3), and Mary Lynn Rajskub (actress in Fox series 24).

Tickets went on sale for $9.99 for the first event in the series
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This idea itself is nothing new, of course. There are many companies out there trying to monetize on virtual live events such as concerts. AltspaceVR tried it as early as 2016, before they were acquired by Microsoft, claiming to be the first ones to host a live comedy event in VR (on a slight side note, any time anybody claims to be the first to do anything in VR they are almost guaranteed to be flooded by comments and clarifications from the Second Life community who will helpfully tell you how they’ve been doing that s**t since the 90s).

There are many companies out there trying to monetize on virtual live events such as concerts
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Sansar itself has been successfully exploring different in-world experiences, including an exclusive eshibit of Star Wars memorabilia and artwork from Burning Man in partnership with the Smithsonian, but these have mostly been free. Since launching Sansar in public beta last year, however, Linden Lab has made no bones about the fact that monetization is a core part of its plans for the platform, much like it has been for Second Life. This is therefore quite a big milestone for the company according to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.

Sansar has been successfully exploring different in-world experiences, including an exclusive eshibit of Star Wars memorabilia and artwork from Burning Man in partnership with the Smithsonian
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“By bringing these commercial opportunities into VR, Sansar is taking virtual events to a whole new level – enhancing and expanding on what’s possible in-person. We look at Comedy Gladiators as the first ripple in a larger wave – the first event of many more that bring entertainers into VR – and we’re thrilled that Steve shares this vision”

For entertainers like Hofstetter, the collaboration offers a chance to greatly expand their audience without compromising the intimate feel of a live performance:

“Every day, I get emails and DMs from fans who want to see a live show, but they live in parts of the world I’ll probably never tour in,” Hofstetter said. “VR allows those fans to not only see a live show, but feel like they’re part of a bigger community,” he says.

Sansar’s Avatar Broadcasting feature will enable the performers taking part in Comedy Gladiators to virtually broadcast their performances across an unlimited number of spaces in Sansar, reaching a wider audience than a physical event could ever allow and giving a lot more fans a chance to grab a front row seat.

By bringing these commercial opportunities into VR, Sansar is taking virtual events to a whole new level
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Sansar’s Avatar Broadcasting feature will enable the performers taking part in Comedy Gladiators to virtually broadcast their performances across an unlimited number of spaces
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Whether or not fans will keep coming back to spend their real-world cash on virtual shows and merchandise will really depend on the quality of experience. In terms of visuals, Sansar is probably the most advanced of the social VR platforms, but that often comes at a cost in terms of slow loading times and intensive demands on your GPU and CPU, so it will be interesting to see whether they manage to lure enough pundits to develop this as a scalable commercial avenue. I’d say that for $10 it’s worth a try, just for laughs.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Sansar To Host Live VR Comedy Series With YouTube Star Steve Hofstetter via @alicebonasio https://t.co/54OlwLk8Cs pic.twitter.com/3TgSfza2Ku

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 9, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post A Virtual Comedy Experience appeared first on Tech Trends.

A new documentary explores how embodying digital characters in virtual worlds like Second Life empowers people of all abilities to find their voice and identity.

In Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me! filmmaker Bernhard Drax travels from Los Angeles to rural South England to tell the stories of 13 ability-diverse people ranging from 24 to 92 years of age who find solace and inspiration in the user-created Metaverse that exists in their computers.

It’s a raw and intensely emotional investigation into the power of living vicariously through an avatar
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This is not escapism, it’s augmentation
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Drax sends his documentarian avatar Draxtor Despres into the virtual universe of Second Life (SL) as well as next generation VR platforms like High Fidelity and Sansar to find out why a 40-something disabled Chicago native feels best represented by a colorful superhero gecko but Cody LaScala – confined to a wheelchair his entire life and interacts with VR via a trackball and his foot – makes his avatar an exact replica of his physical self and asserts that he doesn’t see himself as disabled, but rather as someone with “different abilities.”

“In Second Life you can choose to be a refrigerator if you want, and that has really momentous implications for embodiment,” explains researcher Tom Boellstorff, who together with his colleague Donna Davis conducted a 3-year study entitled “Virtual Worlds, Disability and New Cultures of the Embodied Self” with funding from the National Science Foundation.

This movie makes me want to be a better person, a more responsible human - Deanya Schempp
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“This is not escapism, it’s augmentation,” says Boellstorff, whose research approaches the question from an anthropological perspective as a way to understand digital culture and how communities form and share information as social capital in the virtual world.

As Davis explains, virtual worlds like SL provide people with safe spaces where they can find and express their true selves: “People turn to Second Life to share very intimate conversations in a way they never would with a person in the physical world, because they feel they safely can.”

In Second Life you can choose to be a refrigerator if you want, and that has really momentous implications for embodiment
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By designing more inclusive technology the industry will also be making those experiences better and more meaningful for everyone
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For those that speculate about the potential of social VR, it is interesting to note how inhabiting a virtual world allows these people to form and maintain meaningful relationships and connections with others, as SL user iSkye Silverweb recounts:

“I don’t think my partner and I ever would have met in the physical world, even if we were in the same city, and it is because I am deaf.  Communication IS an issue for me; I would always be concerned about it, with meeting anyone.”

It’s a raw and intensely emotional investigation into the power of living vicariously through an avatar, and how this – as one user puts it – “provides her with sustenance” and helps people to cope with all manner of both mental and physical disabilities.

As the recent death of Anthony Bourdain so painfully highlighted, mental health issues often amount to an “invisible disability,” yet in SL, Jadyn Firehawk explains how she could make her avatar visually represent her bipolar condition: “I made something in Second Life, I call it a ‘brain sling’.  When somebody wears a sling on their arm, nobody asks them to lift a heavy object.  A ‘brain sling’ or some equivalent of it, it IS a way of wearing a sign,” she says.

Interestingly, however, doing that seems to also have empowered Jadyn to find a new freedom of expression and achieve more within that virtual world. In SL, Jadyn is a Master Builder who has come to embrace a whole new set of abilities and creative skills which she actively shares within the community.

I don't think my partner and I ever would have met in the physical world, even if we were in the same city, and it is because I am deaf
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Deanya Schempp, who collaborated with Director Drax on the project, explains that she volunteered to do the closed captions for this movie pro bono, as she felt that the subject, the people, and the research deserved to be heard. What she didn’t realize, however, was the impact that project would have upon her personally:

This movie makes me want to be a better person, a more responsible human. As I listen and watch, I come to understand that it is not these folks who are disabled: The disabled ones are the ones who will not be able to look beyond the cartoon appearance of virtual worlds, or even of this movie, to listen and learn from other human beings whose daily lives are so much different from their own. The disabled ones are those who cannot see beyond appearances to respect the human there.

“Disabled people just don’t think about their disabilities on a daily basis–or at least not until some insensitive blockhead points at us and reminds us we’re supposed to be this thing called disabled,” agrees Second Lifer Daisy Gator.

In Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me! filmmaker Bernhard Drax tells the stories of 13 ability-diverse people ranging from 24 to 92 years of age who find solace and inspiration in the user-created Metaverse
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Over the course of the documentary, Drax and the various documentary protagonists also met (both virtually and physically) with technologists such as Philip Rosedale – Founder of Second Life who is now developing a new Virtual Worlds called High Fidelity – and Ebbe Altberg – Linden Lab’s current CEO – about how they intend to intend to design the future of social VR with disability in mind.

“We need to build highly extensible open-source systems that enable those who would provide varied forms of access and accessibility to the system to be at the table,” says Rosedale

By designing more inclusive technology, however, the industry will also be making those experiences better and more meaningful for everyone, as Boellstorff concludes:

“If there’s one thing you learn when looking at these things is that when you’re inclusive and accessible it benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities.”

This article was originally published on The Next Web

Exploring digital identity through avatars https://t.co/YqNTtckyOs

— TNW Contributors (@TNWcontributors) June 11, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Finding our True Selves in VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

In a recent PCMag article, Rob Marvin got hands-on with the Amazon Sumerian 3D development platform for building AR/VR apps and gives an in-depth overview of its features and the company’s broader Immersive Technology strategy.

One of Sumerian's biggest selling points is that despite how powerful the editor is, there's nothing to download or install.
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According to Marvin, Amazon’s decision to enter the AR/VR space with their Sumerian platform came down to a convergence of three factors: the emergence of smartphone-based augmented reality; untapped VR opportunities in the business-to-business (B2B) market; and helping AWS customers solve pain points with things they were already trying to do:

“The B2B applications include scenarios like interactive digital signage (think the giant talking hologram ads from Blade Runner: 2049), virtual training, and a host of industrial Internet of Things use cases, such as using sensors to create digital twins and complex simulations.The idea is that you have a high-quality, high-definition, context-aware sensor in the hands of billons of people.”

One of Sumerian’s biggest selling points, Marvin explains, is that despite how powerful the editor is, there’s nothing to download or install. During the demo, Sumerian loaded from a browser URL in seconds. Even doing real-time natural language processing (NLP) and rendering elaborate animations didn’t slow it down much.

“As with low-code development platforms, Sumerian can be used on a basic level with almost no developer experience. However, coders and data scientists can go a lot deeper with programmable APIs and Sumerian’s command-line interface to customize scenes and write complex app logic.”

In other words, the basic process for building a Sumerian app is the same regardless of the AR and VR platforms on which you ultimately publish it, you can jump straight into creating a new “scene” – default templates to choose from include office spaces, warehouses, a cargo ship, and a campfire.

“Sumerian plays not only in the 3D development space with platforms like Unity, Unreal Engine, and Vuforia, but also in the broader AR/VR ecosystem along with ARKit, ARCore, and Windows Mixed Reality. Between WebGL, WebVR, and WebXR, Sumerian is completely platform-agnostic, and Sumerian published native wrappers to integrate directly with ARKit and ARCore for smartphone-based AR apps. Sumerian can build apps for any platform that supports WebVR, meaning not only Oculus Rift and HTC Vive but also Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream View, and others. Sumerian is also working closely with the Google Chrome team on WebXR for browser-based apps.”

Amazon’s strategy, much like Microsoft’s is to make it not only possible, but easy and attractive for everyone to integrate with their platforms and developing tools – The “build once, run anywhere” philosophy.

“What we decided instead is to be as broad as possible in supporting what we think will be a massive market. We’re going after the underlying foundation,” an Amazon spokesperson explained.

Amazon hopes Sumerian can play a part in spurring the industry to make 3D mass market products and drive down the cost
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AI Hosts – 3D-animated characters you can place into an AR or VR scene – are another of Sumerian’s USPs. Users can ask hosts questions, and developers can script a complex set of actions, behaviours, gestures, and movements.

“With something called a point of interest system, you can check a box in the editor so the host’s eyes always pay attention to the camera. So if you’re wearing an HTC Vive Pro walking around a 360-degree space, the host can follow you. If it’s an AR app connected to your smartphone camera, Roche explained that Amazon’s Rekognition deep-learning system can run facial analysis of both where you are and where your face is in the frame to make it look like the host is looking back through your screen directly at you. It gives you the illusion of eye contact.”

Amazon is also scoping out ways to make it easier to create hosts, like using facial recognition to match rendered characters to real people. Additionally, there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to integrate voice commands seamlessly into those experiences.

AI Hosts are one of Amazon Sumerian’s unique selling points
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“You can’t say “Hey Alexa” in a Sumerian app the same way you can activate Cortana within Windows Mixed Reality. Instead, Amazon uses the automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding APIs behind Alexa to let hosts have conversations… Imagine someone walking through a hotel lobby, a mall, or a stadium and seeing a host walking alongside them on a screen. It may sound a tad creepy, but hosts could also process contextual information like location to turn the ad into a personalized conversation.”

Amazon hopes Sumerian can play a part in spurring the industry to make 3D mass market products and drive down the cost. On the AR side, the basic enablers are in place thanks to ARKit and ARCore, and where it comes to VR, Amazon hopes to see hardware coming down in price, becoming less clunky to wear, and going wireless. According to their spokesperson:

“When that happens and you can wear a VR experience like a pair of glasses, VR will really take off. It needs to be as natural as watching a video on a tablet or a turning on a TV before it’s ready for mainstream consumption at the same level as the other screens we have today. Developing a whole ecosystem around it of content creators, advertisers, end-users, and companies catering to those users is how you do it.”

Another one of Amazon’s target use cases for Sumerian apps is education and training. Whether you’re learning how to use a medical device, service a vehicle, or learn a new language, it’s about dropping you in an environment that feels as visceral as possible like the real world.

Whether you’re learning how to use a medical device, service a vehicle, or learn a new language, it’s about dropping you in an environment that feels as visceral as possible like the real world
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You can read the full article on the PCMag Website

Stop the Presses! @PCMag takes a look inside Amazon Sumerian, a web-based development platform for creating AR, VR & 3D applications. https://t.co/oktcAxOmI9 pic.twitter.com/Bi4Olth5fA

— Amazon Web Services (@awscloud) April 17, 2018

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter

The post Amazon Betting on VR and AR appeared first on Tech Trends.

With the launch of its new fashion marketplace, Linden Lab wants to attract more users to Sansar.

While still in public Beta, Sansar does seem to be gathering some momentum. In October I was impressed by the quality of the scary and atmospheric experiences they showcased in a Halloween competition that I helped to judge, while only last week they also opened the virtual doors of their Hollywood Museum to showcase some exclusive Star Wars movie memorabilia.

While still in public Beta, Sansar does seem to be gathering some momentum
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Marvelous Designer is a 3D fashion design tool used by numerous mainstream brands and independent designers to visualize true-to-life 3D garments
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Now Linden Lab has announced it is launching a fashion market for user-created avatar clothing. It will be powered by integration with Marvelous Designer sofware, which is widely used in the film and games industry to create digital clothing. It can virtually replicate fabric textures and physical properties to the last button, fold, and accessory, which is pretty important if people are actually going to start spending money to kit up their avatars and spending more time in social VR platforms like Sansar.

Linden Lab has announced it is launching a fashion market for user-created avatar clothing
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Users will now be able to play around with those realistic cloth simulation as they customize the fit and style on their avatars
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Marvelous Designer is a product of CLO Virtual Fashion a 3D fashion design tool used by numerous mainstream brands and independent designers to visualize true-to-life 3D garments. CLO can be used to express a variety of design details for every type of garments from simple T-shirts to complex outerwear, and Sansar users will now be able to play around with those realistic cloth simulation as they customize the fit and style on their avatars.

“Our experience operating Second Life has shown how important and valuable user-created avatar fashions are, and with Sansar, we’re taking it to an exciting new level,” says Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. “Our integration with Marvelous Designer means that not only can you change what you wear, you can customize the fit and style to adjust how you wear it in Sansar. For example, you can roll up your sleeves, loosen your collar, and arrange your scarf just as you like it.”

For designers, Sansar’s fashion market could prove to be a tangible business opportunity
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Linden Lab says that this opens up new creative and entrepreneurial opportunities for users. For designers, Sansar’s fashion market could prove to be a tangible business opportunity, if Second Life (SL) is anything to go by. Over the past 15 years, SL users have created nearly two billion virtual objects, and avatar fashions account for a major portion of the $500 million (USD) user-to-user economy, and some designers have earned millions of dollars from their virtual fashion businesses.

“Innovative fashion companies, world-leading film and gaming studios, and creative hobbyists around the world are already using Marvelous Designer to create incredible virtual clothing designs,” said Jaden Oh, CEO & CTO at CLO. “Our integration with Sansar is the first of its kind, and it makes it easy for our users to sell their creations in this new market.”

New and existing Sansar users can currently get a 60-day free trial of Marvelous Designer
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New and existing Sansar users can currently get a 60-day free trial of Marvelous Designer, and Linden Lab is clearly hoping that this move will not only help kick-start Sansar’s in-world economy, but also increase user take-up and engagement by allowing them to customize their avatars in creative ways. Fashion is a major part of how humans convey individuality and personality IRL, and the same applies in virtual reality.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Time to Dress to Impress—in Social VR #Sansar via @alicebonasio https://t.co/HoAPe4lSki pic.twitter.com/CqZh6U3e0A

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 28, 2017

Tech Trends offers comprehensive Virtual Reality Consultancy services to support businesses looking to adopt VR/AR/MR technologies into their brand and communications strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Dressing Up Social Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

An Oregon start-up has launched a new 3D collaboration platform for the HoloLens – and it’s free.

Object Theory calls itself “the world’s first HoloLens company,” and although all such claims have to be taken with a pinch of salt, they’re probably not far off. Back in 2015, just weeks after the HoloLens was first unveiled to the world, Michael Hoffman left Microsoft – where he was responsible for creating many of the HoloLens showcase experiences such as the Trimble demo – to start the company with co-founder Raven Zachary, who had previously founded iPhoneDevCamp, the largest non-Apple iOS development conference.

Object Theory was one of the first companies to become a Microsoft HoloLens Dev Partner
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They became one of the first teams to join Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Partner Program. Ever since, the Portland-based startup has been working from their Oregon base with a range of enterprise customers in industries such as Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Automotive and Energy & Utilities.

Object Theory has worked with customers in the Architecture, Automotive and Energy sectors
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Prism features avatar-based holographic telepresence
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Now Object Theory has just released a new collaborative computing application for the HoloLens called Prism, which takes many of the functionalities they’ve been developing for those clients over the past couple of years, and offers them to users in a free Windows Store application.

“We’ve been working on our Mixed Reality Collaboration Service for two years, and after deploying it successfully for several client projects, we felt it was the right time to release a free application on the Windows Store that demonstrates to HoloLens users the power of collaborative computing,” says Hoffman

Prism currently includes two demo experiences users can try out: Designing a modern house and planning a mountain hike on Mount Hood, Oregon’s highest peak. These are very cool, but this is about more than individual demos, it’s hinting at a much broader trend that companies like Object Theory are hoping to capitalize on. At its core, its founders say that Prism represents the vision of collaborative computing that HoloLens creator Alex Kipman has long advocated.

The platform allows users to examine and discuss 3D objects and environments simultaneously
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The combination features takes the Prism proposition far beyond your usual videoconferencing
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Prism features avatar-based holographic telepresence that allows participants to examine and discuss truly three-dimensional objects and environments through shared experiences. The application allows up to four participants per session to collaborate in real time from remote locations, enabled by life-size 3D avatars and spatial audio chat. In other words, it lets users interact realistically with people, objects and environments, both real and digital. That includes being able to display 3D models at tabletop and true-scale sizes, as well as making annotations in 3D space.

The combination of all those features really does take the proposition far beyond your usual videoconferencing offering. You’re not talking about sharing a screen, but about being able to walk around three-dimensional objects and examine in detail while your colleagues do the same, and you know you’re all looking at the same thing.

Such applications brings us closer to Alex Kipman's vision of Mixed Reality collaborative computing
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An architectural design team, for example, can switch between looking at a holographic model of a building sitting atop a desk to actually standing inside one of the rooms, and compare their experiences in real-time with one another, regardless of where individual team members happen to be in the world. A medical team could do the same when deciding the Operating Theatre layout before a complex surgery, and even have a practice run with a holographic patient. The possibilities are endlessly exciting, and if well-executed, the concept has potential to be a massive game changer for all industries. Which is why the HoloLens has had such enthusiastic take-up in building corporate partnerships.

If well-executed, the concept has potential to be a massive game changer for all industries
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The technology is currently being used in custom application projects for enterprise customers
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The technology is currently being used in custom application development projects by enterprise customers, and Object Theory offers several license options for its Mixed Reality Collaboration Service that include building custom applications. The company also offers a commercial version of Prism that allows organizations to import their own 3D models and collaborate in private sessions.

“We believe that Mixed Reality will empower the next generation of collaborative computing beyond what today’s video conferencing and screen sharing solutions are able to provide,” says Zachary. “Our public release of this application is just the beginning of showcasing next-generation collaboration scenarios, something we expect to be a major focus for Microsoft HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality applications in the years to come.”

This article was originally published on VRScout

This HoloLens App Wants To Kickstart Collaborative Mixed Reality via @alicebonasio https://t.co/xIX3AgXjKr pic.twitter.com/lMpgGQSqqx

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 4, 2017

If you would like to find out how to leverage collaborative VR/AR/MR in your own project or enterprise, Tech Trends offers Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Collaborating in Mixed Reality is Big Business appeared first on Tech Trends.