High Fidelity – Page 3

August 3, 2017

High Fidelity Jives With HTC Vives

High Fidelity continues to demonstrate cutting edge technology with a smile on its face and in this case we get news via a press release – High Fidelity announces integration of HTC Vive Trackers for full-body motion capture :

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Today, High Fidelity unveils a new integration between HTC’s Vive Tracker and High Fidelity’s virtual reality platform, enabling full-body motion capture for real-time, social VR experiences.

The accompanying video (which I will embed at the end of this post) shows High Fidelity users enjoying dancing, yoga, basketball, table tennis and more.

The video also features a very enthusiastic looking Robert Scoble enjoying himself, which is good to see.

Now to embrace motion capture the video suggests that people need a headset, two hand controllers and four HTC Vive Trackers which are positioned on the feet, hips and chest. The video demonstrates this well.

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July 21, 2017July 21, 2017

Cum On Feel The (High Fidelity) Noize

High Fidelity are really ramping up the noise in the publicity market with a series of extremely impressive looking developments.

One particularly striking development comes via High Fidelity’s link up with 3D body scanning company DOOB-3D.

High Fidelity’s Janet J. Lee blogged about DOOB-3D back in May and gave a brief overview of what DOOB-3D can do :

Doob 3D is a full service 3D tech company founded in Dusseldorf, Germany, with regional HQs in NYC and Tokyo, as well as stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The company defines a “ doob™” as “a photo-realistic 3D printed replica of you.”

The blog post also delves into the steps required to get that avatar into High Fidelity, there are quite a few steps but the results are impressive.

A short version of the process is exemplified extremely well in a YouTube Video from High Fidelity : Ashlen Rose’s Cosplay + Doob 3D = High Fidelity VR Avatar.

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July 12, 2017

Release The Kraken!

Virtual reality experiences are coming slowly and seem to be getting a tad more affordable. Oculus are running a Summer of Rift promotion, where you can get an Oculus Rift + touch controller for around £399.00 in the UK, or around $399.00 in North America. That’s quite a significant drop on previous pricing.

High Fidelity is progressing in a way that demonstrates some very impressive potential for VR experiences, for example by partnering with Limitless to help users create NPC’s in High Fidelity.

Linden Lab’s Sansar is still in creator preview mode but we are hearing more about what is being developed, a recent article by Charlie Fink over at Forbes looked at art in VR – Artists Show Potential Of VR :

Virtual Reality galleries within the gallery were the subject of several exhibits. Notably, The Apollo Museum and the Harold Lloyd Stereoscopic Museum, were both built using Linden Labs new VR platform, Sansar. which is still in closed beta. Linden created and operates the insanely profitable 3D social world Second Life. Bjorn Laurin, VP of Linden Labs, told me Sansar will be the WordPress of VR, a simple world construction tool and platform that anyone can use to create their own VR world.

Ikinema recently announced – Linden Lab Integrates IKinema Tech for Natural Avatar Movements in Sansar :

IKINEMA, the leader in real-time inverse kinematics, today announces that Linden Lab has harnessed IKinema technology to bring full-body IK to SansarTM, the new platform for user-created social VR experiences.

Positive developments on different platforms and on top of that, a content creator who is pretty well known in Second Life circles has also been talking about Sansar.

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March 31, 2017

High Fidelity Partner With Limitless To Bring Interactive NPCs To VR

High Fidelity have announced that they have partnered with Limitless to bring Interactive NPCs to the High Fidelity Virtual Reality platform.

First things first, you may be wondering who or what Limitless are. Limitless have been making headlines for being a content creation platform for creating animated characters in VR.

Now they are making headlines for creating a toolset that allows people to create their own interactive VR creators, as Charles Singletary reports over at UploadVR in a chat with Limitless CEO and Founder Tom Sanocki.

I particularly like the view that Tom Sanocki takes regarding putting the perspective of the creator at the heart of creating an interactive experience :

“This means we always have something that is usable, simple, and shippable,” he says.”Our path to improving it always focuses on the needs of the storyteller, not the engineer,” he says.

I’m a huge fan of storytelling and Limitless aim to bring creation of artificial intelligence in VR to storytellers and creators, rather than those storytellers and creators also having to be experts in AI.

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November 11, 2016

High Fidelity Now Available On Steam Early Access

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High Fidelity, the virtual world and virtual reality platform, arrived on Steam early access this week for Windows users. The welcome message states :

We’re incredibly excited to launch High Fidelity on Steam Early Access!

High Fidelity is an open-source virtual reality platform that gives everyone the power to create, explore, and share virtual spaces. It works with both Oculus Rift and Vive, and you can also run it on your PC in desktop mode if you don’t have a headset.

We’re looking forward to your feedback! We expect to learn important lessons about the needs of social VR from the active, engaged, and connected users here on Steam.

There’s a notice that you need a virtual reality headset to use the software, but as the above message informs us, you can run the software without a headset. However the minimum specs should be noted :

MINIMUM:

OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit
Processor: i7-4700 quad core equivalent or greater
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290
Storage: 2 GB available space

Now when you find the software on Steam there’s a good chance you will see this message : “Content in this product may not be appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work“.

This isn’t because High Fidelity is a den of iniquity, it’s because user generated content is involved, as the High Fidelity Twitter account explained to me : “The warning is a precautionary measure because it’s an environment with a lot of user generated content“.

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