At this week’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, Vision III Imaging has an impressive demo of a technology that adds parallax to professional camera images when displayed on normal consumer displays. Through the company’s patented process of rotating an iris inserted behind the lens at 4.3 cycles per second (e.g. parallax induction), they are able to enhance both 2D and 3D images. 2D images take on an almost 3D quality, while 3D images maintain a sense of multiple dimensions even when the viewer tilts his/her head to a full horizontal position. Continue reading NAB 2015: Vision III Imaging Demos Parallax Visualization Tech

We are past marketing and stunt VR, and now need to move quickly to paid live action VR experiences for the media to succeed, Ted Schilowitz, Fox’s Futurist said during the NMX panel “Why Content Creators Should Care About Virtual Reality” at the NAB Show in Las Vegas this week. Tim Street, board member of the International Academy of Web Television, moderated the panel that also included Cosmo Scharf, the founder of VRLA, Ikrima Elhassan from Kite & Lightning, and Michael Kintner, CEO of 260 Heroes. Continue reading NAB 2015: Why Content Creators Should Care About VR (Panel)

Facebook recently launched an app called Riff that enables users to create collaborative videos with their network of friends. Each finished project is a composition of short clips that are added to the video as it gets shared among friends — and friends of friends — on social media. For Facebook, Riff is another attempt to further encourage its users to watch and share video content on its social platform as part of a larger ongoing strategy to better leverage advertising opportunities.  Continue reading New Facebook App Intros Collaborative Video and Ad Potential

French company Sysveo is developing software that will enable drones to see and record virtual 3D images in the videos they shoot while in flight. The technology would work so that a drone could be programmed to display the specific blueprints of a building or home for example, against the background of a location such as a neighborhood or city. The project, which is currently in an early stage, is being developed on a patent from France’s CNES space agency and funding from the European Space Agency. Continue reading Augmented Reality: 3D Virtual Tech Being Developed for Drones

Digital Domain Holdings Ltd. and Immersive Media are launching a joint venture called IM360. According to the two companies, IM360 plans to produce immersive content and services, including virtual reality content, by combining Digital Domain’s CGI and motion capture expertise with Immersive’s 360-degree video hardware and software. The 360-degree video tech is already being used for live-streaming VR content, and the software can send video to devices including tablets, smartphones and VR headsets. Continue reading Digital Domain and Immersive Media Join Forces for VR Content

After acquiring virtual reality startup Oculus for $2 billion last year, Facebook will finally release the much anticipated Oculus Rift VR headset. Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering for Facebook announced that the company would start shipping the device this year. The consumer release of the Gear VR, also by Oculus, is also scheduled for this fall. Facebook’s next challenge is to make VR more social. It recently introduced 360-degree spherical videos for its social network’s News Feeds. Continue reading Oculus Rift VR Headset Expected to Hit the Market This Year

Facebook has introduced a new technology that will someday allow Facebook users to explore immersive, 360-degree videos from their News Feeds. The company unveiled the technology at its annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco this week. The content is created with a 24-camera rig, and it can be viewed in a browser or a smartphone screen without a headset. Facebook envisions users will also use an Oculus Rift headset to view the 360-degree video in the future. Continue reading No Headset Needed to Watch 360-Degree Video via Facebook

One ongoing study is testing a potential solution for nausea-inducing VR content, and so far, a virtual reality nose has proven effective. Simulator sickness is believed to be caused by an asynchrony of the body’s movement and the visuals. Researchers suggest that a fixed visual reference, like a nose, can help reduce vertigo and nausea. The study participants who had a virtual nose didn’t even notice the added facial feature and could play more than a minute longer than the control group. Continue reading Study Finds That Virtual Nose May Reduce Simulator Sickness

We recently reported that HTC partnered with Seattle-based gaming company Valve to develop Vive, a new VR headset with plans to compete with the Oculus Rift and Sony Morpheus. Valve is the developer behind Steam, the social platform for distributing and managing games. The Vive headset was unveiled at last week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and is already generating positive reviews for its tech advances, including low latency and a fast refresh rate that reduces the incidence of “Sim Sickness.” Continue reading Vive VR Headset Unveiled at Game Developers Conference

YouTube has made some compelling new changes in the last week. The video site just announced the launch of its “Cards” system, which is designed to eventually supplant annotations. The company also announced its new site, “YouTube for Artists,” essentially a resource guide for music artists promoting their work on YouTube. In addition, YouTube now supports 360-degree video formats in most of its mobile and Internet platforms, a move the company promised earlier in the year to address the growing interest in virtual reality content. Continue reading YouTube Upgrades Support Music Artists and Virtual Reality

Beau Cronin, co-founder of Prior Knowledge and current senior manager of predictive products at Salesforce, recognizes that VR is in the process of transforming from a specialty technology where innovation is driven by small groups of experts, to a general-purpose technology that will tap into a huge, broader market of users and hackers. In a recent article, he postulates that VR today is where the Internet was in 1993, just before Netscape. At that time there was a re-evaluation of all the rules, often done by outsiders. Continue reading Virtual Reality Poised to ‘Cross the Chasm’ to the Wider World

The most recent prototype of Avegant’s Glyph video headset could possibly illustrate what the future of media consumption will look like. The headset allows users to plug in any HDMI video source to watch movies or play video games. The image is crisp because of a new micromirror projection technique that eliminates the problem of seeing individual pixels. Glyph also has a head-tracking feature so that users can immerse themselves in 360-degree video, but the real world is still visible above or below the eye line. Continue reading Avegant’s Upcoming Glyph Headset Plays Music, Movies and VR

The wide consumer release of virtual reality headsets from companies such as Oculus VR has been stalled by ongoing development and additional upgrades. Some VR makers have attributed the delay to motion sickness experienced by some users. While Oculus and other companies have promised to have their products ready by the end of this year or early 2016, game developer Valve says it has already developed a solution to the discomfort caused by VR headsets. Continue reading Valve May Have Solved Motion Sickness Problems Related to VR

At this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony announced that its PlayStation-powered Project Morpheus VR headset has some new specs. The screen resolution has been improved to 1,920 x RGB x 1,080 and its refresh rate has been doubled to 120Hz. Project Morpheus now features a new 5.7-inch screen with nearly 100-degree field of view, and touts lower latency, at under 18 milliseconds. While no price has been revealed, the company says it plans to launch the device by the first half of next year. Continue reading Project Morpheus Gets Bigger Screen and Impressive New Specs

HTC is partnering with gaming company Valve to develop the HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset with plans to compete with the Oculus Rift. HTC claims that the HTC Vive will deliver high-quality graphics, video at 90 frames per second and remarkable audio quality to provide an unparalleled VR experience. The device also offers users the unique ability to touch those objects projected around them in augmented space. The companies plan to roll out a consumer version of the HTC Vive by the end of this year. Continue reading HTC and Valve Join Forces to Develop New Vive VR Headset