These are definitely the VR powers you’re looking for…

It was only a matter of time. In fact, I’m a bit surprised it took this long, but researchers at Virginia Tech have put their brains to good use and come up with a way for ordinary mortals to replicate the telekinetic powers of a Jedi in Virtual Reality.

The Force Push technique developed at Virginia Tech gives users the ability to move faraway objects with 'Yoda-like calm, nuance, and focus'
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The recently developed technique is called Force Push, and it gives users the ability to move faraway objects with “Yoda-like calm, nuance, and focus” using an approach for remote object manipulation in VR. Users employ their bare hands using a natural gesture-to-action mapping for object manipulation in a VR setting, using subtle hand gestures to push, pull, or twirl objects.

“You basically push the object in the direction you want it to move to, just like in Star Wars when the Jedi masters try to move an object that’s placed remotely, they can push or pull it,” said Run Yu, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Creativity, Technology, and the Arts. Yu also authored a recently published paper in Frontiers in ICT detailing the research.

And although the fun factor and Star Wars association are surely enough to justify any number of grant hours dedicated to such pursuits, there are practical applications that also makes this technology rather attractive.

I’m surprised it took this long for researchers to come up with a way for ordinary mortals to replicate the telekinetic powers of a Jedi in Virtual Reality
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What we’re currently stuck with in most forms of VR are versions of what is effectively a 3D mouse. This is something that I find incredibly awkward at times, and there has been many an occation when I couldn’t get the pointer to do what I wanted or go where I willed it to, or when an object stubbornly refused to move because I forgot the right combinations of buttons to push in order to grab or release it. And of course this is all much more likely to happen in the most inconvenient and crucial moments of a demo or experience.

The HoloLens interface always did make me feel a bit like a wizard (or witch) in a Harry Potter movie, as your incantations and movements prompt the holograms to do your bidding
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What we’re currently stuck with in most forms of VR are versions of what is effectively a 3D mouse
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By contrast, I find the HoloLens interface, which works through a mixture of voice and gesture, rather more intuitive, and it always did make me feel a bit like a wizard (or witch) in a Harry Potter movie, as your incantations and movements prompt the holograms to do your bidding.

The researchers wanted to come up with an interface that was not only more playful, entertaining, and fun, but also did a good job of being functional, tweaking the push and pull physics and speed variations until they felt “realistic”. By which they mean that it responds to the speed and magnitude of hand gestures to accelerate or decelerate objects in a way that users can understand much more intuitively.

With Force Push, it’s just as easy for users to apply the gentlest of nudges to an object as it is to throw a heavy object across the room
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This ability to respond to more nuanced hand movement is due to the technique’s physics-driven algorithms. Dynamically mapping rich features of input gestures to properties of physics-based simulation made the interface controllable in most cases. According to the release, with Force Push, it’s just as easy for users to apply the gentlest of nudges to an object as it is to throw a heavy object across the room.

“We wanted to try and do this without any device, just using your hands, and also do it with gestures in a way that’s more playful,” said Doug Bowman, the Frank J. Maher Professor of Computer Science and director of the Center for Human Computer Interaction.

To test the feature, the team used an Oculus Rift CV1 for display and a Leap Motion was applied for hand tracking. The virtual environment was developed in the Unity game engine, and the native physics engine of Unity was used to drive the physics-based simulation of the Force Push interface.

“Every week we kind of tweak something different in order to make the experience feel right,” adds Bowman. “But now it feels really cool.”

No kidding. You had me at “Jedi.”

This article originally was published on VRScout

This Tech Lets You Move Virtual Objects Like A Jedi via @alicebonasio https://t.co/ZNxmQnCJY2 pic.twitter.com/Y1Wzv8gCzk

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 6, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our Consultancy service offers support in strategic leveraging VR/AR/MR/XR

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 Moving Virtual Objects Like a Jedi appeared first on Tech Trends.

To accompany the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Linden Lab unveils a Virtual Reality exhibition at its newly opened Sansar Hollywood Art Museum.

The wait is over and the latest Star Wars is finally out in cinemas (YAY!) but that also means fans have to  put up with the endless marketing tie-ins as everyone tries to piggyback off the franchise’s popularity – NOT so YAY

Specially at Christmas, as I walk around the shops and stare at all the random products leeching off the Star Wars brand, I’m constantly reminded of the scene in Spaceballs where Yogurt pimps his merchandise.

Sometimes, though, you still come across a genuinely awesome tie-in that reminds you of why you fell in love with Star Wars in the first place. And Sansar’s VR exhibition of exclusive historic production art at The Hollywood Art Museum (HWAM) does that.

Sometimes, though, you still come across a genuinely awesome tie-in that reminds you of why you fell in love with Star Wars
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HWAM’s first exhibition is a unique collection of Star Wars production pieces, including the very first drawings made for the film franchise and never-before-seen production art from the original trilogy by Lucasfilm alum Joe Johnston, Ralph McQuarrie, Phil Tippett, Drew Struzan, Colin Cantwell, and more.

HWAM’s first exhibition is a unique collection of Star Wars production pieces, including the very first drawings made for the film franchise
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The museum's creator Greg Aronowitz, is a director, designer, writer, producer, and practical effects professional
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The museum’s creator Greg Aronowitz, is a director, designer, writer, producer, and practical effects professional whose credits over the past 30 years or so include Terminator 2, Jurassic Park: Lost World, X-Files and Saving Private Ryan.

Aronowitz is also an avid collector who has amassed an incredible collection of Hollywood production art, from storyboards to costume sketches
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Aronowitz is also an avid collector who has amassed an incredible collection of Hollywood production art, from storyboards to costume sketches, concept drawings, models, and more. The pieces give you a glimpse of the creative process of making these iconic films, from Citizen Kane to Tranformers, which he’s always been keen to share.

But although there are plans to eventually build a real-world version of the museum, so far the objects didn’t really have a home where they could be accessible to the general public.

“The dream of a brick and mortar gallery is still a bit out of reach, but Sansar made it easy to create a virtual museum, where we can make the work available to artists, students, movie fans, and anyone around the world who’s interested in the creative process and history behind some of the world’s most beloved titles,” says Aronowitz.

As the HWAM exhibition opened on December 9^th, they also simultaneously hosted a pop-up gallery at one of Los Angeles’s oldest art supply stores, where George Lucas’s visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), acquired many of the supplies the artists used to create early Star Wars works in the mid-seventies. The event featured both some of the physical art and VR stations where attendees viewed the Sansar experience.

You can access the experience on the Sansar desktop site via Windows PC (be warned, it does take a while to load, but it’s the price you pay for having such polished visuals) or with a VR Headset such as the HTC Vive or Oculus.

You can access the experience on the Sansar desktop site via Windows PC or with a VR Headset such as the HTC Vive or Oculus
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This being social VR you’re also welcome to mingle with other fans, although I did get accosted by a persistently annoying troll that wanted me to hug her as I was looking at some of the gorgeous pen and ink sketches on the wall. You can just mute them out and get back to your geeking though, so it didn’t really spoil it for me. And if socialising is your thing, there are a several social events and parties planned in the museum to coincide with the movie release.

This being social VR you’re also welcome to mingle with other fans
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At various points as you walk your avatar around the rooms you trigger helpful audio information which tells you the story behind some of the objects
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The beauty of having such an exhibit in Sansar is that the graphics are good enough to do the objects and drawings justice. I spent several happy minutes marvelling at the details of obscure blueprints, sculptures and storyboards.

At various points as you walk your avatar around the rooms you also trigger helpful audio information which tells you the story behind some of the objects. And just like in a regular museum you can just read the plaques next to the exhibits.

The beauty of having such an exhibit in Sansar is that the graphics are good enough to do the objects and drawings justice
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It is easy to picture how I’d be given the choice to dress up my Avatar in Star Wars costumes or even the entire exhibit hosted in Tatooine
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But what isn’t like a regular museum experience is that with a lot of the physical objects – basically anything sitting on a plinth – you can just pick them up – and not get told off. Play with stuff to your heart’s content and it will just find its way back to where it belongs, undamaged and ready for the next fan to have a go.

The Star Wars exhibition feels like walking through a set from the film
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And of course that is just the beginning. Sansar is a very young platform indeed, only recently out of Beta, so we’re yet to see some of its crazier possibilities realised by the creator community. With something like this though, it is easy to picture how next time around I’d be given the choice to dress up my Avatar in Star Wars costumes like at Comic-Con or even have the entire exhibit hosted in, say Tatooine.

“With Sansar, not only are we able to present pieces in context – the Star Wars exhibition feels like walking through a set from the film, for example – but the museum is also a social space. We threw a virtual party on opening night, I’ve lead groups on guided tours of the collection, and we’ll host talks with artists as well It’s a very interactive space, with more accessibility than the physical museum could ever have, says Aronowitz”

There is huge scope to have fun with this sort of content and experience, and I’d be amazed if Sansar’s creative community doesn’t step up to that plate soon, much as they did when creating the Halloween competition experiences I helped judge in October. In the meantime, it’s not a bad taster of what’s in store for VR fans.

Play with stuff to your heart’s content and it will just find its way back to where it belongs, undamaged and ready for the next fan to have a go
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This article was originally published on VRScout 

See Original, Exclusive Star Wars Artwork in VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/KYDH7rFIwA pic.twitter.com/PKmN9455cw

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 13, 2017

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 Geeking Out in Sansar with Star Wars VR Movie Memorabilia appeared first on Tech Trends.

The National Association of Broadcasters’ Show (NAB) was packed with announcements around VR, AR and MR this year as major industry players brought out the big guns in a bid to stake their claim in this booming market.

One notable example of this is Nokia, which wants to establish itself as the go-to platform for professional content producers in that space by setting a new standard for the creation, delivery and experience of immersive content:

“We believe in the power of virtual reality to transform the human experience. Together, these announcements advance our commitment to empower storytellers to create immersive experiences, enable partners to deliver them efficiently, and ensure audiences can play back experiences in the highest quality possible in ways that transform and awe,” a company spokesperson told Tech Trends.

Some of the key initiatives the company unveiled at NAB 2017 included a high profile partnership with Disney and Lucasfilm to let fans “feel the force of VR like never before.”

NAB was packed with announcements around VR, AR and MR this year
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Image Courtesy of Nokia ©Lucasfilm and Disney

The company announced a multi- year agreement to support the creation of VR experiences to complement Disney’s theatrical film releases. The first one of these will bring VR storytelling Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“We’re thrilled that Star Wars fans around the world will soon be transported into the incredible worlds depicted in the story, to truly feel the power of The Force together.”

Nokia believes that such compelling content is fundamental to driving adoption of virtual and mixed reality, yet creators often face the choice between the ability to develop and distribute that content and delivering high quality. They believe their new OZO Reality Platform solves these issues by enabling professionals to blend VR and mixed reality through easy capture and export of depth maps, allowing for CGI elements to be seamlessly integrated in post-production.

Nokia announced high-profile VR and MR partnerships with Disney and Adobe
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Nokia wants to enable creators to easily produce high-quality VR content
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It delivers this content over real-world networks, and its SDK and OZO Audio technology enables viewers to experience high resolution 360-degree spatial audio and visual while reducing the load on viewers’ Internet connection without VR equipment.

“Together, the Platform offers the complete pipeline across creation, distribution and experience for powerful virtual and mixed reality storytelling,” they claim

They are also keen to democratise the process of VR and MR content creation by making it easier and more accessible. This took shape in the announcement of a collaboration with Adobe, which promises to “take the complexity out of editing 360 VR immersive content.”

At NAB, they previewed technology that showed the possibilities that come with exporting stitched media and orientation metadata directly into Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC for editing and post-production work.

Nokia says its seamless process and comprehensive-yet-simple workflow was a big hit with the NAB crowd
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For help getting your own VR/AR/MR project off the ground, get in touch about our Virtual Reality Consultancy services 

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 and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post #NABShow 2017: Nokia Brings VR Storytelling to Star Wars appeared first on Tech Trends.

When trying to explain what the flip Mixed Reality means, you can always fall back on Star Wars, and the scene where R2-D2 beams out Princess Leia, in all her blue-tinted holographic glory.

Most of us still see holograms as the stuff of science fiction, but the truth is that if  you’re lucky enough to get your hands on a HoloLens they’re already a pretty solid-looking reality. What it isn’t yet, however, is widely available. As usual, however, the adult industry can be relied on to push the boundaries in popularising cutting-edge technology. That’s what CamSoda is attempting to do with the launch of Holo-Cam, which they also compare with the iconic Star Wars scene above.

Star Wars is still the universal failsafe explainer for Holograms and #MixedReality
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Over the past year, I’ve been bowled over by some fantastic-looking Holograms. In spite of some limitations (most saliently its narrow field of view), the Microsoft HoloLens is a very impressive piece of kit that delivers a great mixed reality experience. What it is not, however, is a device you can go out and buy in the shops just yet (even if you could, it would set you back about $3,000, so hardly qualifies as an impulse buy).

So to me, the question where it comes to holograms is not so much one of “bridging the gap between science fiction and consumer technology”—as CamSoda claims to do with its Holo-Cam launch—but one of making the holographic experience accessible to those without the expensive hardware.

And judging from its just-released video, it looks like their workaround manages to do just that. The effect you see there is achieved by projecting live 3D holograms of the cam models onto the users’ real-time environments. And all you need to experience this is your own smartphone or tablet plus an inexpensive pyramid projector, which can be purchased online for as little as $1.50. After accessing the live stream, users affix the 3D hologram projector to their phone or tablet, switch into landscape mode, and the show will start automatically.

The question where it comes to holograms is how to make those experiences accessible without the expensive hardware
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It remains to be seen whether any of these go beyond their obvious novelty value and enter the mainstream. At the very least, however, they are adding to the broader industry conversation
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Although this is being billed as the equivalent of when Obi-wan Kenobi watched the hologram of Princess Leia in Star Wars, the fact is that I’m not entirely comfortable with thinking about the two of them in that way. Apart from that, however, there are a few marked differences that might be worth pointing out.

The holograms you see on CamSoda are in full color as opposed to strongly blue-tinted, and they are not pre-recorded. The whole idea is that users get to interact with the models as the live shows unfold. This can be done either with voice commands or via instructions typed on their computer, which are then carried out by the performer and displayed in real time via the hologram.

Most of us still see holograms as the stuff of science fiction, but the truth is that if you're lucky enough to get your hands on a HoloLens they're already a pretty solid-looking reality
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The size of the projected holograms are about half that of the display screen, so we’re not talking life-size projections, or at least not yet. However, it is easy to see how getting closer to 1:1 ratio would help make this a more immersive and realistic experience, so CamSoda is giving fans a taster of what that might look like at the 2017 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas on January 18-21, projecting some of its most well-known models on a 4-foot display and allowing users to join them and be broadcast in turn to the Holo-Cam.

“This technology allows users to interact with cam girls in an immersive experience like never before,” said Daron Lundeen, President of CamSoda. “Now users can beam a live model into their very own environment through their own phone/tablet. This is a huge milestone not only for us but the industry at large.”

The Holo-Cam will initially be available during weekly cam shows or upon request for private shows in CamSoda house, where the company’s filming technology is lodged. Users can either request a private 3D holographic show at the usual rates charged by the site, or take advantage of the weekly interactive shows which will be free for the first month. There is as yet no date set for the weekly interactive shows to go live, however, although I was told it would be “in the very near future.”

This is the latest in a series of technology-based products trialed by CamSoda over the course of the past year. These included including a virtual reality experience that allowed users to broadcast live adult entertainment directly to their headsets and BlowCast, which they dubbed the “iTunes of Blowjobs” and offered a catalog of simulated blowjobs from renowned porn stars and amateurs experienced via teledildonics.

It remains to be seen whether any of these go beyond their obvious novelty value and enter the mainstream. At the very least, however, they are adding to the broader industry conversation around the democratization of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies.

This article originally appeared on the Future of Sex website

CamSoda is launching live holographic streaming of webcam performances https://t.co/6A0MOrLXfI #augmented reality

— FutureofSex (@FutureofSex) December 15, 2016

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as 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 and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post You’ll Never Think of #StarWars Holograms the Same Way Again… appeared first on Tech Trends.