Virtual Reality – Page 4

July 15, 2015

Investors Appear Nervous Regarding VR Funding

Eric Johnson over at Re/Code has reported : At Investor Event, VR Startups Brace for Slow Growth. The article centres around venture capitalists who seem a tad reluctant to buy into the Virtual Reality hype cycle at this moment in time.

UploadVR co-founder Nick Ochoa told the venture capitalists that they looked nervous and a report being prepared by his site backs this claim up. 164 venture capitalists have invested in VR companies until now, but 142 of them have done so only once.

Caution does seem to be the order of the day, Eric quotes High Fidelity’s Philip Rosedale as saying :

We will probably see lower adoption than everyone expects in the next year or so, but it will pick up,……My advice is, don’t overspend right now. Stock up for three or four years.

This seems to be a very sensible stance to take. VR has a lot of potential and a lot of exciting scope, but it has not yet delivered.

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July 7, 2015July 8, 2015

Where Second Life Leads, VR Looks Set To Follow With Charitable Giving

In another “Second Life, yes it’s still around” post I’m taking a look at areas where Virtual Reality is likely to follow Second Life’s lead, in particular charities, nonprofits and social causes.

Earlier today I was reading an article by Erin Blakemore on Smithsonian.com, Virtual Reality Could Be the Next Big Thing in Charitable Giving :

Sometimes, all it takes to inspire more charitable giving is a visit to a place or person in need. But not every situation or location is accessible to the average donor. That could be changing, writes NPR’s Linda Poon, thanks to virtual reality experiences designed to increase empathy and charitable giving.

The linked article by NPR’s Linda Poon is well worth a read too. Virtual Reality may well be able to take people to places and scenes that will increase their empathy to charitable causes, but the concept of charitable causes being able to extend their reach via Virtual Worlds has long been a practice in Second Life and other similar virtual worlds.

Erin Blakemore’s article acknowledges this and points to the Nonprofit Commons, which has a presence in Second Life. The Nonprofit Commons explains a bit about itself on their website :

Nonprofit Commons was designed to lower the barriers of access to Second Life, to create a community of practice for nonprofits to explore and learn about the virtual world, and to investigate the many ways in which nonprofits might utilize this unique environment. Through this community, we provide free office space to qualifying groups, meet and network, create a cooperative learning environment and foster outreach, education, fund-raising, all in a virtual space. Our focus is on providing an accessible entry-point to Second Life and on creating a community of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) for effective collaboration and support. We believe that Second Life is a wonderful place not just to entertain, but also to educate, inspire, and work together to assist our fellow avatars (and the humans behind them). You do not have to be a resident of the Nonprofit Commons to get involved with our community. We welcome all who wish to join us as partners, collaborators or supporters.

The Nonprofit Commons are under the leadership of TechSoup and rely on the help of volunteers to aid their good causes.

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May 28, 2015

The Return Of Virtual Reality Or The Return Of Hype?

Over at The Guardian, Charles Arthur has posted a very interesting article reagarding Virtual Reality : The return of virtual reality: ‘this is as big an opportunity as the internet’. What I find very interesting about this article is that it highlights hope, hype, caution and excitement. There’s also a really cool video from 1994 during an earlier round of Virtual Reality hype which I’ll embed later in this post.

Many of us know about the hype, we’ve seen it with virtual worlds and whereas virtual worlds have delivered in many ways, they haven’t delivered in that massive way that many were predicting they would a decade or so ago.

Predictions about the boom in Virtual Reality go back a lot further and the article points this out. Charles talks to Dr Jonathan Waldern, who has seen the hype and hope before but is absolutely revelling in the new found VR hope wave and is quoted as saying :

There will be people crying in this, people falling in love, people falling over. For all sorts of reasons, this strikes at the core of being a human being. It’s so compelling … this is as big an opportunity as the internet.

I think we’ve heard claims such as that before too. However Dr Jonathan Waldern isn’t new to the VR scene, he was involved with a company called Virtuality in the 1990’s who had been bringing VR to arcades. The company had been in talks with Atari about bringing their VR Headset, Jaguar, to the consumer market, and then, with very little warning, the hype and hope for VR died.

However one of the hurdles in the last wave of VR hype was cost. Dr Waldern’s company were using top of the range Silicon Graphics systems, which were not in the consumer end of the market at all, they cost six figure sums for a start. These days people have more power and better graphics at far lower costs. Dr Waldern points out some of the differences this time around :

“Our system used some of the very first Sony LCDs, with 300 by 200 pixels,” Waldern recalls. “Today you get 1,080p [1,080 horizontal lines] minimum, and by the launch next year you’ll probably have 4K by 4K. And the computational power is transformational – we were working on about a megaflop, and each machine cost about $70,000, which is a massive barrier to adoption. Now with an Nvidia GPU you’re talking about a teraflop.”

However even today, there are those who are enthusiastic but don’t feel we’re quite there yet.

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November 11, 2014November 12, 2014

Ebbe Altberg At Endgadget Expand NY – Virtual Reality Beyond Video Games

The Endgadget Expand NY event this weekend saw Ebbe Altberg going coast to coast as he participated in a panel discussion : Back To Reality VR Beyond Gaming. This panel discussion saw Ebbe joined by Matterport’s Matt Bell and BeAnotherLab’s Marte Roel and has been summarised on Endgadet itself in an article entitled : Virtual reality has a future beyond video games, and it’s already started.

The discussion has also been discussed, eloquently, in detail and with great analysis by Inara Pey in an article entitled : Beyond gaming: looking at VR with Ebbe Altberg and others.

The panel was hosted by Ben Gilbert of Endgadget who introduced Ebbe Altberg as “The CEO Of Linden Lab, who you might have heard of from Second Life and other fun products.” This sort of introduction is exactly why I thought Rod Humble was on the right track in terms of expanding Linden Lab’s portfolio. Second Life should really be a tag line of Linden Lab, not the other way round. However it does emphasise yet again the sway that Second Life has in terms of its name.

Host Ben Gilbert then earns cheers from the virtual world fanbase when he says that the people on the panel are not making video games. You see, some people do understand the difference between virtual worlds and games! Ben also earns some bonus points for realising it’s Linden Lab, not Linden Labs. However he only found that out on the same day of the discussion.

Ebbe indicates that beta testing of Linden Lab’s new virtual world may start around the middle of next year, so watch that space. Ebbe also talks up Second Life well discussing use cases such as education, art and entertainment as well as talking of the economic model and how Linden Lab allow users to create the content.

Ebbe makes a good point about lines between the virtual and real worlds when host Ben Gilbert brings up the issue of the lack of the sense of smell in virtual reality. Ebbe feels there are pro’s and cons and that it’s not about reaching equality between the two spaces. That’s a very important point because I feel some people feel virtual reality will lead to some people being lost in the machine but I really can’t see the feared level of immersion some have being an issue for eons, certainly not in this generation of VR.

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November 7, 2014

Digital Cybercherries Use Oculus Rift And VR To Take Us Back To An 80’s Style Arcade

Over at New World Notes Hamlet Au recently posted : James Cameron: Virtual Reality a “Yawn” Until it Gets Mass Market Growth, Non-Gaming Experiences. The inspiration from the post comes from the following quote from movie director James Cameron regarding virtual reality :

The question that always occurred to me is, when is it going to be mature, when is it going to be accepted by the public at large, when are people going to start authoring in VR and what will that be?” Cameron said. “What will the level of interactivity with the user be other than just ‘I can stand and look around,'” he elaborated, adding: “If you want to move through a virtual reality it’s called a video game, it’s been around forever.

He has a point, but things are happening with devices such as Oculus Rift and whereas the example I’m going to highlight is game related, it’s game related in a different manner than you may expect. The example I’m highlighting has been talked about on The Road To VR and Gizmodo.

Digital Cybercherries are taking us back to our youth, well some of us, it may be going to a time before you were born for others. They have developed a retro arcade complete with playable arcade machines from the 80’s and early 90’s, playable gameboys, basketball nets, darts, a two lane bowling alley. In short you’re immersed in an 80’s style arcade which you walk through.

Then there’s the icing on the cake, that little bit of extra polish that makes this look so bloody awesome. The retro arcade has cassette tapes with 80’s music which you put into a cassette player and then listen away to those old favourites (or not so favourites). The wonder of this is exemplified in the Gizmodo blog post :

You can even find cassette tapes with ’80s music and stick them into a boombox, then carry it around the arcade with you. Because what’s cooler than playing Missile Command while jamming to The Final Countdown?

Come on, you’ve got to admit that sounds cool!

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