At Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, the company’s chief executive Jen-Hsun Haung introduced Project Holodeck, which aims to provide an experimental multi-user virtual environment with real-time photorealistic graphics and real-world physics. The new technology, which uses Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 and Nvidia’s GameWorks, VRWorks and DesignWorks, is targeted at design engineers and their collaborators. Nvidia’s Project Holodeck demo involved Koenigsegg Automotive, a Swedish company that makes exotic sports cars. Continue reading Nvidia’s Project Holodeck: Photoreal Graphics in Shared VR

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) just formed a Special Interest Group (SIG) to examine standardization for augmented reality and virtual reality. With the rise of AR/VR-enabled eyeglasses and head-mounted displays for gaming and movies, developers are finding that the lack of standards is negatively impacting their ability to make products interoperable. According to VESA, the lack of standards also increases the complexity and cost of development, ownership and replacement and creates confusion for end users. Continue reading Video Electronics Standards Association Set to Tackle AR/VR

Facebook plans to debut two-dozen TV-like programs in mid-June. A few shows will be big-budget longer shows that cleave most closely to TV content; the rest will be lower-budget shows of five to 10 minutes that will refresh every 24 hours. According to sources, the social media company has already greenlit several shows. With scripted, high-quality programs, Facebook hopes to garner younger viewers. The move also puts it in competition with Amazon, YouTube and Snap among other platforms hoping to attract advertising dollars. Continue reading Facebook Likely to Launch Its TV-Like Programs in Mid-June

Facebook announced it is closing Oculus Story Studio and canceling all current projects, reports Variety. The award-winning studio, responsible for notable VR shorts including “Lost,” “Henry” and “Dear Angelica,” opened in early 2015. “We’ve been looking at the best way to allocate our resources to create an impact on the ecosystem,” wrote Jason Rubin, Oculus VP of content. “After careful consideration, we’ve decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production. As part of that shift, we’ll be winding down Story Studio.” Facebook plans to continue investing in experiential VR content from outside artists and developers. Continue reading Facebook to Shutter its Oculus Story Studio VR Content Unit

Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello drew a fresh picture of the XR industry in his keynote address at the Vision VR/AR Summit 2017 in Hollywood this week (extended reality — or XR — is an umbrella term that includes VR, AR and MR). Riccitiello admonished analysts for their overly exuberant prognostications and reactionary pessimism about the VR market. He projected that XR adoption and value calculations will exceed expectations in 2023 if three conditions are met: a price point below $1,000 for all the necessary hardware; truly mobile technology; and content that can be monetized across 100,000,000 devices, at minimum. Continue reading Unity CEO Reframes XR Discussion, Re-Energizes the Flock

The ETC@USC has produced a 10-minute highlights reel edited from a one-hour discussion with a panel of eight USC students that took place at the ETC’s April 6th All Members Meeting. The panel of undergraduates included students studying business, the arts, journalism and technology. The students discussed what motivates them to go to a movie theater, the role of big screen TVs in their lives, what they think of VR and AR, what they would buy if they were given $3,000 to spend on entertainment, and a number of other interesting topics. Visit the ETC website or YouTube channel to access the video.

Continue reading Students Discuss Their Media Habits at ETC Member Meeting

An NAB panel on upcoming changes in Digital TV, moderated by NAB vice president of spectrum policy Alison Neplokh, focused on the challenges and promises of deploying ATSC 3.0., or as an increasing number of industry experts are dubbing it, Next Gen TV. Neplokh noted that FCC chair Ajit Pai stated the rules will be in place by the end of 2017, enabling broadcasters to adopt it quickly. South Korea is also going online with ATSC 3.0 next month, allowing U.S. broadcasters to learn from its experiences. Continue reading NAB 2017: Next Gen TV Will Bring Innovation, New Revenues

At NAB 2017, China-based Z CAM, which offers an interchangeable lens mount 4K VR camera, inked a partnership with Assimilate, which offers an interactive, creative platform. The Z CAM S1 VR camera is a four-sensor system with high-speed Ethernet port, providing 4K at 60fps or 6K at 30fps (post-stitching output) and Z CAM’s WonderStitch. That is paired with Assimilate’s real-time Scratch VR Z bundle, which includes the features of Scratch and Scratch Web plus 360-degree tools and features, stitching and ambisonic audio. Continue reading NAB 2017: Assimilate, Z CAM Tackle VR Production Workflow

The final panel at ETC’s conference on VR/AR convened producers who have worked on virtual reality projects. Producers Guild of America vice president, new media council John Canning moderated the discussion with producers from ETC@USC, StoryTech Immersive, Digital-Reign and The Virtual Reality Company. StoryTech Immersive president/chief storyteller Brian Seth Hurst spoke about his experiences creating “My Brother’s Keeper,” a 360 spin-off of PBS’s “Mercy Street.” “We were able to get close and intimate with our actors,” he said. Continue reading NAB 2017: ETC Panel Tells the Producer’s Perspective on VR

Oculus Story Studio founder/technical director Max Planck was invited to the ETC conference on AR/VR at NAB to discuss his company’s creation of “Dear Angelica,” a 13-minute dreamlike VR tale of how we remember our loved ones. The film, which played to great acclaim at the last Sundance Film Festival, is notable for the fact that it was entirely hand-painted inside VR space, by illustrator/art director Wesley Allsbrook, and written and directed by Saschka Unseld. Planck described how the inspiration for the film came out of graphic novels. Continue reading NAB 2017: Oculus Details Journey to VR Film ‘Dear Angelica’

Oscar-nominated “Pearl,” the short VR film directed by Passion Pictures’ Patrick Osborne, was the focus of a discussion about ambisonic audio during this week’s ETC conference on VR/AR in Las Vegas. Google Spotlight Stories creative director, audio and music Scot Stafford and Dramatic Audio Post sound designer/mixer Jamey Scott described their work on the film as well as their path to working on 360-degree and VR movies. Stafford pointed to his work at a story incubator at Motorola, run by Google, to make content for the mobile platform. Continue reading NAB 2017: A Look at VR Short ‘Pearl’ and Its Ambisonic Audio

At NAB this week, Google introduced its latest VR camera, the Yi Halo, one year after partnering with Xiaomi-backed, Chinese action cam maker Yi Technology. The $17,000 spherical device, which uses Google’s cloud-based stitching system Jump for producing stereoscopic 360-degree videos, will be available this summer. The Yi Halo combines 16 4K action cams with an extra camera facing upwards. While Google unveiled Odyssey two years ago, featuring 16 GoPros, the rig has largely served as a test case. The Yi Halo, however, is commercially designed with feature improvements and multiple extras. Continue reading NAB 2017: Google Unveils the New $17K Yi Halo VR Camera

At the ETC conference on VR/AR, Source Sound VR’s Linda Gedemer moderated a panel of audio experts to talk about today’s VR audio tools, the trends animating VR audio, and their wish list for future technology. Everyone agreed that the audio toolsets for VR/AR seem to change nearly every day, although a handful of tools — such as Dolby Atmos and game tool Wwise — stand out as being widely accepted in this industry sector. Panelists from OSSIC, Nokia, and Source Sound VR described the toolsets they use. Continue reading NAB 2017: A Look at the Evolving Trends in VR and AR Audio

At NAB in Las Vegas, Technicolor gathered group chief technology officer Cristina Gomila, group SVP/CTO home division Jon Walkenhorst and Technicolor Experience Center head Marcie Jastrow to talk about the company’s work in immersion, 360-degree video, virtual reality and other nascent technologies. Jastrow pointed out that these are early days for virtual reality. “The technology is still rough and delivering experiences to headsets isn’t easy,” she said. Yet Technicolor has been involved in 18 VR projects in the last year. Continue reading NAB 2017: Technicolor Unveils Research and Trials in VR, AR

Epic’s Unreal Engine is best known as a game engine, but general manager Marc Petit introduced the company’s enterprise division, which focuses on everything but games. This was Unreal Engine’s first-ever NAB, but for Petit, who worked many years at Softimage and attended numerous NABs, the meeting of the digital image and the game engine was more than symbolic. He used the press conference to showcase the work of several media and entertainment partners, including VizRT, The Future Group, House of Moves and Ross Video. Continue reading NAB 2017: Unreal Engine Promotes its Partner Collaborations