#<-- is currently building a vr prototype for class

[masqueradeoftheguilty]

side order spoilers //

god. seeing marina build a vr game in unity. i get it girlie i really do

#<-- is currently building a vr prototype for class #well. its a team project im not handling the actual framework this time but god #it sucks ASS #fully understand why it got corrupted vr is just like that #step right up! || 🪄.txt #side order spoilers #sowwy sometimes you get to point at things in video games and go 'i do that!'

[ghostofnibelheim]

[Four Seasons] A Rose of Sharp Thorns

Closed Starter for the “Four Seasons” Divergent Megaverse!

Of Sephiroth and Genesis crossing paths for the first time.

Involved Characters: Sephiroth, 13yo ( @ghostofnibelheim​ ), Genesis Rhapsodos, 13yo ( @unforestalledreturn​​ )

References: Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-

Settings: Midgar, December εγλ 1993

There used to be a time where things in Shinra were a little easier. The city was still building; the company’s influence yet to reach its massive global expansion; departments were smaller.

It was the days of dawn for the SOLDIER program. No such thing as “classes”. There was the Shinra Public Security Forces, and there was SOLDIER.

At least officially.

But the truth was a little different.

There was the Shinra PSF, and there was SOLDIER... and there was Sephiroth.

A boy who in his own right stood as a force to be reckoned. Despite his young age, he had been a SOLDIER before his name would even reach the ears outside of the company, and in record time it had spread like wildfire.

The conqueror of Wutai, the young promise and flagship of the SOLDIER program, Sephiroth. The rumors of his exploits in battle exceeded the wildest fantasies; they captured hearts and inspired, luring young men under the company’s flag in droves.

And still, so little was known about him. Always out on the battlefield, the boy seldom accompanied other units or fellow SOLDIERs; he was rumored to prefer acting on his own, rather than in a team. And as far as his performance reports went, he was pefectly capable to do so.

Because of this reason, his looks and personality were shrouded in mystery to most, and subject of speculation amongst the wide-eyed new recruits in the company’s personal military force.

Lately, however, a new rumor was circulating, that Sephiroth could be seen in one particular training room at the 49th floor. A new product of Shinra’s latest technology, in which through the use of special VR visors, one could immerse himself in a completely virtual environment and simulate battle without risk.

Apparently, according to these rumors, the room, still a prototype, had gone haywire after a simulation including Sephiroth had been installed. The program had frozen and become impossible to reboot, no matter how many times the power had been restarted, it always returned to the same simulation.

Perhaps through a process of “wutai whispers”, speculation was that the key to unstuck the program was to face the simulation and defeat Sephiroth within it, but nobody had achieved to do so. Maybe the techs were waiting for the real deal to return from his current mission so that he, himself, could solve the problem.

But many were tempted, if only in daydreaming and masculine locker room talk, to try and sneak up there and try. If one succeeded to knock the SOLDIER helmet out of his face, what would Sephiroth look like? How strong could this simulated warrior really be?

Well.. the 49th floor was the SOLDIER floor, so it wasn’t like a certain pair of young teen infantrymen freshly arrived from Banora could be curious about this sort of ‘ghost story’...

... Or could they?

#01B || This goes on your permanent record. [IC: Sephiroth] #12L || It's all yours. [Genesis Rhapsodos] #02B || εγλ 1991/1999 [Canon Verse: SOLDIER / Before Crisis Core] #unforestalledreturn #04 || Four Seasons [Divergent Megaverse] #04t5 || A Rose of Sharp Thorns [Thread]

[kazarinn]

Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna commentary trivia

The Blu-ray and DVD for Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna contains audio commentary with producer Yousuke Kinoshita and director Tomohisa Taguchi. While I don’t currently have plans to translate the full commentary, I’ve written down some of the more interesting trivia facts from it.

Please note that there are major LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna spoilers.

The one who came up with the idea of using Parrotmon as the first enemy was Hiromi Seki (producer for the original Digimon Adventure and Adventure 02, and supervisor for this movie) -- everyone else had been fussing over what Digimon to use, only for her to quickly chip in “what’s wrong with Parrotmon?”

Taichi’s faulty prototype goggles were based off the original draft design by Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, causing them to think “well, we have to use this!” But they wanted to use the actual original pair of goggles in the story, so they weren’t sure what to do with said VR goggles, and in the end the VR goggles became a faulty prototype (after all, it’s a little early for VR goggles to work in 2010).

The evolution sequences are close to the original because Director Taguchi wanted you to feel “this is Digimon after all” (he particularly feels the rotating feeling is inherent to Digimon).

The part in the opening where Angemon rescues a potential victim is because “a real hero” would properly try to ensure that there were no victims (and in the end, there are zero deaths from this incident).

This is the Toei Animation building. They had to get permission from the owner to blow it up. Said owner was also a fan from the Digimon generation, so they were very happy to see it blown up.

Yamato's bike was one the director particularly liked and wanted to ride once.

The Japanese morning glory in the opening, according to Japanese flower language, represents “bonds” (kizuna), but also “I am entwined around you and will never let you go”, representing Menoa’s story.

The Digivice in the opening is Sora’s.

The woman sitting next to Yamato in class was actually the original concept for Yamato’s friend Abe (who discusses job prospects with him in the final version of the movie) -- it was changed because they were concerned about what Yamato’s closest friend being female would imply.

The real-life model for the izakaya Taichi and Yamato eat at in Asagaya apparently advertises that they were used in the movie. (The food there is also apparently very good and priced reasonably.)

The two women in the izakaya (Ayaka and her companion) are voiced by Miho Arakawa and Yukiko Morishita (the voices of Meiko Mochizuki and Meicoomon in Adventure tri.), who were brought on because they just really wanted to have them participate in some way.

Miyako and Hawkmon’s “Adiós” wasn’t in the original script, but ad-libbed by the voice actors.

The initial cyberspace fight with Eosmon was something Director Taguchi wanted to do in 8-bit (Famicom style), but it was too difficult to pull off in the actual animation. The final aesthetic used was the Virtual Boy.

Menoa’s reaction to seeing Omegamon is genuine -- it’s meant to reflect someone who’s heard about him in rumors, but never actually seen him.

When the ring is about to appear on Taichi’s Digivice and the voices are blocked out, the scene originally had voiced lines recorded for it (”Go!” “Take it down!”), but they were taken out at the very end.

This shot is meant to be foreshadowing that this is the fragment Koushirou would later analyze, resulting in him pinning down Menoa.

The countdown ring effect was apparently a huge load of trouble to make (both in terms of design and in terms of continually getting it in the shots). It’s not made with CGI, but with cinematography effects.

In the original storyboard, Daisuke’s ramen was a “normal”-looking bowl of ramen, but the animation director went all-out and made it “delicious-looking”.

In the script, the Digimon accompanying Daisuke, Ken, and Iori to the ramen shop were originally supposed to be Child-level, but they wanted them to sit on the their laps, so they became Baby-level in the final version.

Producer Seki was the one who came up with the idea of the pay phones and prepaid phones, advising them that if they’d used their normal phones they’d be found out (thus making it come off as more like a spy movie).

Gennai mentions “then it’s possible...” to imply that there’s hope, but the shot being on the window here is meant to indicate that Taichi was so in shock that he didn’t hear that part.

The Digimon greeting each other in the background is something Director Taguchi wanted to do -- he wasn’t particularly focused on doing so, but he felt that it was something Digimon would do if in a situation where they hadn’t seen each other in a whlie.

The idea with Sora’s first scene with Piyomon in the movie is that she does, in fact, know what’s going to happen.

#Digimon #Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna

[tastydregs]

Latest Lumus Waveguide Shows Retina Resolution & 50° FOV in AR Glasses Form-factor

Waveguide optics are increasingly looking like the best near-term solution for creating AR glasses that are truly glasses-sized. Lumus is one such waveguide company and recently let their latest waveguide prototype, the 50° FOV ‘Maximus’, be examined under the proverbial microscope. Through-the-lens photos of Lumus Maximus reveal impressive ‘retina’ resolution of 60 PPD, along with excellent brightness and leading image uniformity.

Lumus is one of a handful of companies building waveguides, but their approach is unlike most. Rather than diffractive waveguides, the company builds reflective waveguides which bring some advantages, especially in light efficiency, which means greater brightness (important for outdoor use) and more transparent lenses (important for being able to look like ‘normal’ glasses rather than darkened sunglasses).

Near-eye display expert Karl Guttag got to examine the Lumus Maximus waveguide up close, including getting permission to take through-the-lens photos with known test patterns for measuring effective resolution. Guttag came away impressed with the performance of the Maximus waveguide across a range of metrics, though he notes that it’s yet to be proven whether or not the company’s manufacturing method is scalable.

Image courtesy Karl Guttag

The Lumus Maximus prototype that Guttag examined was merely a head-mounted display built to show off the waveguide; it doesn’t currently include any of the on-board compute, sensors, or batteries that would still need to be packed into the glasses to make them proper standalone AR glasses—as DigiLens has done with its Design v1. Still, the Maximus was functional from a display standpoint, allowing for a detailed look at real-world visual performance.

Effective Resolution

The current prototype uses a 2,048 × 2,048 LCOS microdisplay (per-eye) and spreads those pixels across a 50° diagonal field-of-view. Even with all those pixels you could wind up with poor image quality if you can’t precisely control the light as it makes its way from the display, through the optics, and into the user’s eye.

The Lumus Maximus waveguide seems to do great job of preserving the display clarity, even after all the bouncing necessary to expand the image from the tiny microdisplay to the full 50° field-of-view.

Image courtesy Karl Guttag

Guttag found that the Maximus waveguide managed an angular resolution of 60 pixels per-degree at the center of the display, which meets the ‘retina resolution’ bar. In theory, that means if you were holding an augmented reality book in front of you at a normal distance, you’d easily be able to make out the letters on the page (assuming the image processing pipeline applied during head tracking doesn’t sacrifice any clarity).

For comparison, no consumer VR headset on the market has achieved 60 pixels per-degree, not even the upcoming Vive Pro 2 with its class-leading 2,448 × 2,448 resolution. This is because VR headsets spread their resolution out over a much larger area, which trades angular resolution in favor of a wider field-of-view.

Brightness

Brightness is hugely important in AR glasses because many use-cases are imagined to happen on-the-go, which includes outdoors during sunny days. If you don’t have enough brightness, users will hardly be able to see what’s shown in the glasses when the backdrop is bright. Many AR headsets struggle to achieve brightness that’s even sufficient for indoor usage, which is why they tend to tint the lenses like sunglasses.

As a reflective waveguide, brightness seems to be one of Lumus’ key advantages. Guttag reports that the company claims 3,000 nit brightness for the Maximus prototype. Equally important as the brightness of the resulting image is the efficiency of the entire optical pipeline. If your optical pipeline loses 90% of the light put into it, you can theoretically add a brighter light source to reach your desired output brightness—but this comes at the cost of more bulk, heat, and cost. Thus, a minimally bright light source combined with a highly efficient optical pipeline is ideal.

Image courtesy Karl Guttag

To that end, Lumus claims it expects Maximus will reach an efficiency of 650 nits per-lumen, which Guttag points out is more than ten times as efficient as the WaveOptics waveguide which sits at 50 nits per-lumen (which is why we aren’t surprised to see the new Snap AR glasses with a dark sunglasses tint). Not all diffractive waveguides may be as inefficient as WaveOptics however; in our recent hands-on with DigiLens’ latest (diffractive) waveguides, the company said they’ve reached 300 nits per-lumen.

Image Uniformity

The Lumus Maximus prototype also shows impressive image uniformity, which is the consistency of brightness, color, and resolution across the display (colloquially called the ‘sweet spot’ in the VR space).

Image courtesy Karl Guttag

Above we can see a comparison between Maximus and HoloLens 2, the latter of which has long suffered from poor color uniformity, causing a rainbow-like haze over the view. While HoloLens 2 is a worse-case example for comparison, Maximus still appears to be ahead of others as well. “The color and brightness uniformity of the image, while not perfect, is vastly better than any other waveguide-type optics I have seen,” says Guttag.

Granted, there’s still room for improvement. While the Maximus above clearly looks better than HoloLens 2, you can still clearly see the color uniformity and brightness start to fall off at the corners of the Maximus image. While this wouldn’t be as much of an issue with an immersive field-of-view, recall the image here is only 50° diagonally, which means the corners of the image are not far into the peripheral view where poor uniformity would be less noticable.

– – — – –

For all of its impressive optical performance, a huge question remains at this stage in the development of consumer AR glasses: can Lumus’ reflective waveguides affordably scale to large manufacturing volumes?

Image courtesy Schott

Last year Lumus announced a strategic partnership with glass specialty company Schott to grow manufacturing capacity and achieve what the companies call “favourable costs.” Guttag figures that Lumus’ approach could be “at least as cost-effective as diffractive waveguides” given the appropriate investment in manufacturing.

For an even more detailed analysis of the Lumus Maximus prototype, check out Guttag’s complete article.

The post Latest Lumus Waveguide Shows Retina Resolution & 50° FOV in AR Glasses Form-factor appeared first on Road to VR.

[indd40041020202021]

FINAL PRESENTATION

DECEMBER 11, 2020

LAUREN THU

LEAVE A COMMENT

EDIT

Hooray! We did it! Such a nice milestone.

Here is the script and videos from my presentation:

Final presentation

Title: Hi everyone, My name is Lauren Thu, my pronouns are she/her, I’m an industrial design major with a minor in curatorial practices, and I’m so excited to share my grad project, Feeling Futures, with you today.

Exploring issues Commonly, design’s response to issues of sustainability promotes solutions that seek to fill gaps through individual action. While altruistic in intent, these answers do not and cannot address the massively complex systems that uphold unsustainable industries and processes. Our singular attempts at fixing problems allow ample recovery opportunities for existing systems to rebuild and continue their known ways of being. Thankfully for us, all systems are webs, entangled and overlapping, and if we can find ways to support its fibrous and sticky connections, we can bolster the web of sustainability with new understandings. A major factor in why our attempts at rebuilding these webs continue to fail is anthropocentrism. We need to honor the value of non-humans if we intend to approach sustainability fully and holistically.

Design brief Through readings and research this summer, I knew that I wanted to address sustainability by looking forward. How might we use design to experience potential futures in ways that challenge our systems and behaviours? With this in mind, I want to use design fiction methods to triangulate understanding between technology, nature, and humans.

Research My research over the past few months has been as entangled as my subject matter. Through writing, prototyping, talking, building and imagining, I’ve been able to expand my practice into circuitry, programming, VR, modelling, game engines, animation, biology, space travel of a sort, world building, storytelling, and design curation.

Research and planning 1 The culmination of this research has distilled into three main points. The first being that there are multiple ways of knowing, and there are multiple ways of gathering knowledge. How can we embody these to gain access to different perspectives?

Research and planning 2 When talking about world building, acknowledging that the world and it’s artifacts are of a world different than ours, even if the difference is slight, allows for participants to see past accustomed barriers and rules, allowing for further progress into imagination

Research and planning 3 Different people absorb, retain, and understand knowledge in different ways at different rates for different reasons. This pluralistic viewpoint defines my design methodology and for this and the former reasons, my grad project has become a three-part interactive exhibition.

Research and planning 4 My plan for this exhibit will be broken down into three multimodal and multi-sensory parts – a workshop to situate participants in world building and imagining – a physical installation to engage with and realise current-world potentials – and a Virtual Reality world provided through a headset inside the installation room that imagines possibilities of new futures.

Level 1 – workshop The workshop will act as a primer for issues of hypersystems and futures thinking. Through interactive storytelling, I will guide participants through a gathering and building exercise. .

Level 2  physical prototypes The second part will be an installation. This will be in a seperate room from the workshop. I currently have three interactive prototypes in mind for the exhibit that I will expand on later.

Level 3 VR The third part of the installation will happen within a VR world. The physical prototypes from the room around the participant will be the same or similar but with enhanced or different interactive qualities.

Research and Planning 4 With this tiered approach, I’m hoping to explore the idea that our retention of experiences is related to our sensory involvement. When we are talking about and dealing with hyperobjects and hypersystems, perhaps the holistic embodiment of an issue will lead to proactive behaviour changes.

Prototyping workshop – adventure I knew that the workshop would need to be prototyped to work out kinks, so I ran a version of it over zoom with my class. I wrote a narrative about travelling through a flooded Vancouver in 2100. While I took some fictional leisure with my story, it is expected that sections of Vancouver and Richmond will be lost to flooding by that time.

Prototyping workshop – game I wanted to gameify the workshop so as to keep participants active in the progression of the story. For this, I drew inspiration from choose-your-own-adventure novels and dungeons and dragons gameplay.

Prototyping workshop – multi I want the workshop to warm up participants to the engagement asked of them in the second and third tier of the show. I used the sound of a boat on water to sensorily situate the participant while I narrated our journey.

Prototyping workshop – collecting The workshop split participants into two groups, biologists and hackers, who work together to explore abandoned landmarks and collect artifacts.

Here are some examples of what some of the participants found on their imaginary explorations.

To end the workshop, I asked the participants to use what they found to create devices for non-human communication. Here is some of what they came up with. I found this workshop to be positive overall, and hope to refine it with the help of a DDM grant I received this past semester.

As mentioned before, there will be three physical and interactive prototypes for my installation – talking plants, a wool rug, and a vibration amphora.

-there will be multiple potted plants around the room that are responsive to touch through sensors and arduino programming.

. – The participants will stand on a roughly felted wool rug. This will light up in places as sensors detect movement. – A vibration amphora with multiple piezo discs acting both as inputs and outputs, will give off a continuous buzz in the room. Of these, I have gotten the talking plant and the piezo buzzers working, and am hoping to pick up wool for the rug during the break.

In VR, the talking plants will no longer be in pots, but planted all around. The plant talk will be translated into english, but will communicate both at the participants touch and of their own accord. A virtual sheep will take the place of the wool rug. Foot gestures will now be registered in the movements and sounds of the sheep. The amphora will be buzzing like a swarm of bees, either floating in space or water, and will sound an alarm when the participant approaches. VR is a big learning curve for me and this project, but I have so far been able to model environments, sheep, and plants, and even animate some parts.

I’d like to show a couple video prototypes to better explain some interactions, so here is the plant communicator as it would be in the installation

Here is the connection of the wool rug to the VR sheep

And here is my imagined VR experience of the vibration amphora

In summary, I am designing an exhibit that operates through three levels of experience. This will be a multi-modal and multi-sensory experience in hopes of embodying understandings of complex systems, and I want to explicitly say that I am not designing a solution, instead I am trying to bring up dialogue and discussions through designed experiences

Looking to next semester, I’m thinking about – ways to foster discussion and reflection after the exhibit, – whether I can expand the multi-sensory aspect to all five senses or whether that will distract from my intended objective, -and the big question that I’ve had all semester, is how I can create these connections and communication routes to non-humans without being reflexive and narcissistic, or is it better to allow this conversation to come up naturally during discussion?The feedback in the chat

I took some time to look through Charlottes suggestions and will send out an email to Jiyhun Park in the Spring.

This semester has been really crazy, difficult at times, but over all really fun and eye opening. It’s been really great to be able to design at my own speed and within parameters that make sense to me and that I care about most.

After the presentation, I’ve been thinking about ways to get the exhibit out of a gallery. What if VR could be done outside? Instead of trying to replicate the senses of a wind blowing, it would already be there. Maybe AR is more fitting than VR, would that be more accessible? I wonder if the exhibition backdrop to my work makes it less accessible – something I always worry about with performance and world building. I need to build bridges for people to enter the world, and next semester I can really focus on building upon this and focusing on that bridge.

[pogueman]

Royal Caribbean is making a big bet on technology

For the last few years, Royal Caribbean (RCL) has been on an almost maniacal push to turn its cruise ships into technology showpieces. Most of the developments are one-off technologies, massively expensive and time-consuming to develop and debug: robot bartenders, battery-powered bumper cars, a dedicated satellite for providing internet service, and so on.

Royal Caribbean is making a big bet on technology.

I now realize, of course, that they’re installing all of this tech for some perfectly self-interested reasons. One, of course, is to differentiate this cruise line from it rivals. Another is to keep the passengers entertained and having a good time. (The novelty of some of these features wears off quickly—but since you’re on board for only a few days, you don’t care.)

Last month, at an event called Sea Beyond, the company unveiled a showcase of the next technologies it’s developing. About a thousand journalists and travel agents toured these prototypes at the Brooklyn Navy Yards. I was among the invited, since—full disclosure—I had served as the emcee for the launch of an earlier RC ship in 2015.

Here’s what you have to look forward to—or maybe not.

Automated checkin with face recognition

As anyone who’s taken a cruise can tell you, the boarding process doesn’t get your vacation off to a great start. You’re herded into this huge hangar-like processing center at the port, and you wait in long lines dragging your luggage and children, so that you can reach a desk to get your photo taken and your room key issued.

RC’s existing boarding process is more efficient, because you can check yourself in and take your own photo at home, using the company’s app. But starting next year, the company hopes, things will be even quicker: You’ll simply stride onto the ship. Face recognition cameras will identify you (based on a photo you uploaded in the app), and a screen will welcome you by name as you walk through the metal detector.

They had the system working as we entered the Navy Yards building.

As you walk through security, a face-recognition camera checks you in instantly.

At the moment, it’s a purely optical system—there’s no 3-D modeling of your face, as there is on the iPhone X—so in theory, some evildoer could fool it with a photo. (But why would they bother? The minute the real you showed up, the system would flag you as already having checked in, and security would straighten it out.)

Drinks anywhere

At the event, you could order free drinks from the app—wherever you happened to be in the building. The waiters could find you, bearing your drink, thanks to GPS-like screens built into their serving trays, showing your current location and your face.

It worked great, even when I tried to fool my waiter by dashing into a different room when I saw him coming. Twice.

You order drinks from an app, wherever you happen to be on the ship; the waiter can hunt you down, thanks to a screen on his tray.

The system relies on Bluetooth beacons throughout the space; eventually, they’ll be installed on the ships themselves. Everybody wins: You don’t stand in lines, and the cruise line sells more drinks (because people don’t have to stand in line).

I interviewed Joey Hasty, a former Disney Imagineer who now leads RC’s innovation lab in Miami. Aren’t there some passengers who’ll find all of this tracking and facial scanning a little creepy?

“You can always opt out,” he replied. “If you really want to, the line will always be there.”

VR dining

By far the weirdest new technology on display is something they call virtual-reality dining.

I went into the mockup restaurant without having any idea what that meant. I sat down at a long table and put on HTC Vive virtual-reality goggles.

A weird way to eat.

What I saw inside the goggles was the inside of a Japanese tea house with traditionally decorated paper walls. A soothing female voice in the headphones explained that I was about to be transported.

In front of me, a waiter set down a tray containing three morsels of food. It was basically sushi, but I didn’t know that; all I could see was three glowing, sparkly colorful orbs—and my own hands, represented as silhouettes.

When the soothing voice gave me the go-ahead, I picked up the first orb and popped it into my mouth. At that moment, the music changed (the tray had sensors that knew when the bite was gone), and the walls of the tea room flew away in animated fragments, revealing that I was now in a cherry-blossom garden.

In this shot, the walls are in the middle of turning into birds that fly away, revealing a garden.

The same thing happened with each of the other two bites: the scenery and the music would change. Lighting, weather, locale.

My first thought was, “Man, this is weird.” And what does it get you? It isolates you from your dining companions. Furthermore, how food looks is an essential part of how it tastes; now you can’t see your food.

“It turns out that all of our senses are processed by the same part of our brain,” Hasty explained, “so it’s possible for us to use the visuals and the audio to hack and hijack your senses, to heighten the dining experience.” And I have to admit that that’s true: At this moment, I remember each of those three bites incredibly vividly (but weirdly).

“It might not ever make the best seven-course meal,” Hasty says, “but we think it can make an amazing dessert bar, for instance.”

Stateroom of the future

On RC’s existing Quantum-class ships, they’ve done something clever with interior cabins (the cheap ones that don’t have windows): Where the window would be, they’ve installed a floor-to-ceiling LCD screen. It displays whatever you would see if you had a window, thanks to a camera feed from outside the ship. In that way, it doesn’t feel so isolated from the real world.

But at the Sea Beyond event, a much more advanced stateroom concept was on display.

“As our ships get bigger and bigger and bigger, you start to be removed a little bit more and more from the ocean and the ports of call,” Hasty told me. “We believe the stateroom should connect you more with the ocean and our ports of call. And so we’re experimenting with ways to bring that outside in.”

The entire ceiling is a giant 4K OLED screen. There’s a foot-wide “river” winding its way across the floor—also an OLED screen. Two large “windows” on either wall are—that’s right—OLED screens, too.

All of these screens are synchronized so that they show different angles of the same scene. They can show, for example, the current conditions outside the ship. “We mirror exactly what you see outside, using 4K cameras. But since we can show you what’s really out there, we thought, ‘What if we could take you to fantastical places?’ Or maybe you wanted better weather or a sunset, a different time of day. So we let our guests control those scenes. With the tap of a button, you can turn daytime into a sunset, or the room can help you fall asleep by creating a canopy of stars.”

The prototype stateroom is filled with 4K OLED screens that transport you to different times, weathers, and places.

I tried out the sunset scene, the tropical rainforest scene, and the starry-night scene, complete with shooting stars. All of those screens, combined with a matching soundtrack, created truly transporting moments.

And the Misc.

Some of the other tech on display included:

Self-unlocking staterooms. The staterooms on display didn’t require a key or a wristband; if you have a smartphone, the door unlocks automatically when you approach. The lights come on, too.

Interior consumer tech. Inside, every room has an Apple (AAPL) TV (they’ve figure out how to auto-wipe the Apple TV after you leave, so that the next guest can log in with his own account). And Microsoft’s (MSFT) Cortana is always ready, so that you can adjust the temperature, the lighting, or the curtains with voice commands.

AR captain’s view. Ordinarily, when the captain is operating in fog or dark, he uses a radar screen to see what hazards are around the ship. But we also saw a mockup of a new pilot’s station, where a huge screen displayed an augmented-reality view of the channel and the buoys that would ordinarily be obscured.

AR posters. On one wall of the event space, RC had set up what looked like movie posters—but if you looked at them through the app on your phone, they became simple animated games.

Fuel cell demo. The cruise line will join Viking Cruise Lines and others in introducing fuel cells to power its ships. Fuel cells convert hydrogen directly into heat and water, producing no exhaust of any other kind; they’re 80% efficient, versus less than 50 for today’s diesel engines.

Sailing soon

 “I thought about Sea Beyond as a giant play test,” Hasty told me. “We got to put that experience in front of 1,000 people and see how people reacted.” He says that of these technologies will be on the company’s next-generation ships, called Edge (now under construction in France); and some will be retrofitted onto existing ships.

But isn’t it possible, I asked Hasty, that all of this technology risks killing the seafaring adventure of being on a ship at sea in the first place—the escape of it all?

“You know, I don’t think so,” he replied. “When we ask our guests what they really want from a vacation, they want more time with their family, they want more time for fun. No one says, ‘I want to spend an hour checking in,’ or ‘I want to wait in line at the bar for a drink.’ We talk a lot about giving you back that first day, that you sort of have to give up to get there. And we’re using technology to make that happen.”

More from David Pogue:

Battle of the 4K streaming boxes: Apple, Google, Amazon, and Roku

iPhone X review: Gorgeous, pricey, and worth it

Inside the Amazon company that’s even bigger than Amazon

The $50 Google Home Mini vs. the $50 Amazon Echo Dot — who wins?

The Fitbit Ionic doesn’t quite deserve the term ‘smartwatch’

Augmented reality? Pogue checks out 7 of the first iPhone AR apps 

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, is the author of “iPhone: The Missing Manual.” He welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email. 

#Pogue #David Pogue #_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD #$rcl #_revsp:yahoofinance.com #$MSFT #$AAPL #_author:David Pogue #_uuid:c46eed5d-5174-3846-9081-29f0b5c5b2eb

[enabletoday]

Two years on...

It's been over a year since I put out a newsletter for Enable Foundation and I feel quite guilty about it. Last year was quite packed as I was juggling a lot of work assignments and also moved to a new city for the same. Currently away from my hometown, Coimbatore, where all the action used to be, I've been thinking about detailing our activities since the last newsletter in one comprehensive post. So, here goes!

After bringing virtual reality, or rather cardboard VR, into the fold last year, we moved on to exploring an app called "The Everything Machine", which essentially uses a simple programming language to connect, control and play with the multifarious sensors on iPad.

Tinybop, the app's developer, calls it an app which lets you put the camera, microphone, speaker, screen, gyroscope, and light to work for you. It lets you create something as simple as a light switch or as complex as a kaleidoscope, a voice disguiser, a stop-motion camera or a cookie thief-catcher.

The kids loved it! Although the concept of creating things on iPad was new for them, having played pre-programmed games all along, they took to the occasion with a lot of curiosity and enthusiasm. We are planning to extend the programme into a hackathon of sorts, where the children will be grouped into teams of two to five and provided all the in-game tools prior hand. The teams will then have to conceptualize a new idea or machine with the available tools and prototype it on iPad to see if they work as planned.

The second major development over the last year was the introduction of AR (like VR) or Augmented Reality. While virtual reality transports you into another world or environment using a head-mounted display, augmented reality tweaks your existing or immediate environment using the device's camera and lets you interact with it. This exercise was carried out on my personal iPhone as opposed to the iPads, as they didn't have support for Apple's ARKit, which is a framework that enables the device's AR features.

Some of the apps used for these sessions were: AR Airplanes - Lets you fly an airplane | AR Basketball - Lets you shoot hoops | Holo - Lets you place various characters like Spiderman, a circus tiger, etc. | Stack AR - Lets you stack blocks and create skyscraper-like structures

The best part about demonstrating augmented reality to the children: they immediately tend to react to what they're seeing on the phone, jump right behind the camera and start interacting with the characters or objects. This behavior was not instructed to them by any means, but something the kids just impulsively got around to do.

Lastly, we demoed Swift Playgrounds, a revolutionary app from Apple that makes learning to code, interactive and fun. The app lets users solve puzzles to master the basics of Swift — a powerful programming language created by Apple and used by the pros to build today’s most popular apps.

I was not sure if the children would find the app interesting, but as with "The Everything Machine", even little kids took an interest towards it and were able to complete the beginner levels with ease. At some point, we plan to take this to the next level by integrating iPad with fun hardware like the Sphero ball and other robotic toys.

Chennai Calling

Enable Foundation recently carried out its first ever session at Chennai. Demoing the iPad programme at Roshini Home, an entity of the Jeevan Roshini Charitable Trust, the Managing Trustee of the home was quite excited about the learning methodologies we had to offer. The idea was to keep the kids engaged during the weekends, as they had a lot of idle time creeping into their schedule. And just like that, the first session involving all the children (except class 10 and class 12 students) was a runaway hit.

Adieu

Sometime during mid-2017, Helping Hearts, a home we used to frequent at Coimbatore, had to shut its doors to all the wonderful kids it was nurturing. Government norms strictly mandated that a children's home can accommodate individuals only from the region/city it is based at. This was a blow for the managing trustee(s) at Helping Hearts, where children from around the state were being harbored and cared for.

During our last visit to Helping Hearts, we were unexpectedly welcomed to closed doors and windows. To witness a place we were excited about every time around, a place that was rendered utterly cheerful and lively by the kids that lived there, a place that made us feel like we were home, every single time, with the kids huddled around us... it was quite gut-wrenching.

We sincerely trust and pray all those kids have found a similar, safe environment to grow up in. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Ganesh, the Managing Trustee behind Helping Hearts, for having taken the time and effort to establish this gem of a children's home. We are deeply indebted to you for letting us be an integral part of those children's lives, however short a period of time it was. Wish you the very best in all your future endeavors!

Until next time. Be useful.

Praveen Vasudev Chief Architect

[treadmill-world-reviews-blog]

Treadmill Industry News

Follow my blog with Bloglovin 

State of the Treadmill Industry 2018

  Industry News Commercial cardio equipment still outsells weightlifting equipment, but not as much as it used to. Cardio comprised 64% of the total exercise equipment market in 2016 compared to 36% of weightlifting. This compares to 71% for cardio in 2008 and 29% for weights, according to Fitness Industry Suppliers Association. In June 2018 U.S. President Trump announced the imposition of a 25% tariff on some goods imported from China. The specific goods were mostly industrial, as opposed to consumer, but since most treadmill parts are made in China, the move raised the possibility of higher prices for treadmills. The initial list was presented with the possibility that more products would be added. Among those items on the list were sewing machines, dishwashers, and electric motors and parts. Treadmills use electric motors. However, even treadmills made in the USA are assembled primarily from parts manufactured in China, so tariffs could affect the treadmill market more generally. As of September 2018, it looked increasingly likely that China would place tariffs on more categories of exports in the coming months. Overlaid against the tariff issue is Chinese pricing for steel products generally. One reason Chinese products have been relatively inexpensive is that Chinese companies have had few environmental regulations to comply with. New Chinese policies have resulted in stricter environmental rules. This has resulted in higher costs that are being passed on to customers.   Company News   ICON Health & Fitness celebrated its 40th anniversary in October 2017. Forty years previous it introduced the first home treadmill to the U.S. market under the Weslo label. In January, 2018, A Federal Court ruled that ICON infringed on a Chinese patent related to an elliptical machine and awarded Nautilus Inc. $1.8 million in damages, plus attorney’s fees. Nautilus and ICON entered into a patent licensing agreement in 2004, through which ICON received a license to certain Nautilus patents for a 5 percent royalty on sales of elliptical machines that used the patents. In May 2018, BH North America, the maker of Bladez and BH Fitness treadmills, moved its entire operation from Orange County, California to Missouri. The move was expected to produce substantial cost savings, as the company continued its emphasis on its BH Fitness commercial brand, which it sells to customers such as hotels. A few months prior to the move, Dan Foust replaced Bob Whip as CEO. BH North America also sells to the consumer market through its Bladez Fitness brand. It now looks like Yowza Fitness, maker of high end ellipticals and treadmills, has gone out of business. Yowza was founded in 2009 and has sold exclusively direct to consumers through its website. The website hasn’t been undated for over a year and their 800 number no longer works. There hasn’t been an update to its Facebook pages since August 2017 and emails to the company bounced back or were not returned. New & Different Models At the International CES show in January 2018, Peloton, widely known for its stationary bikes, introduced its first treadmill. Peloton is still a very young company, but has gotten a lot of attention for its $2,000 bike and online classes. At $4,000, it features a huge 32 inch console, surround sound, and a deck designed not just for running, but for weight training, as well. Instead of a simple running belt, it has fifty-nine aluminum and rubber slats for better flex and cushion. The company appears to believe that enough people want more than just the cardio provided by their bikes and that their new treadmill/weights combination can meet this demand. Clearly the company aims for the luxury market. It more than doubled its sales in 2017 to about $400 million. It differentiates itself by the level of service and individually catered classes, even so far as having the instructors yell out the names of the home users. There are more than thirty retail stores where prospective customers can try the new machine. The perceived competition for the Peloton treadmill seems to be live classes, instead of other treadmills. The company has raised nearly $450 million from institutional investors, but has been only marginally profitable, if at all. Blue Goji, a developer of interactive fitness games, introduced its Infinity treadmill prototype at the South by Southwest conference in March, 2018. The Infinity prototype allows for natural torso movement and tracking, bio-feedback, and virtual reality games. Users can play immersive VR and 2D games using a range of body motions. The promise is that users will feel more stable and secure than with other treadmills due to the Infinity’s patented tension-sensing belt, which allows even exercise that require balance, like tai chi. The Infinity will be manufactured by Woodway and is expected to be available for sale in early 2019. Something completely different is the Mini Walk treadmill from the Chinese company IPO Sports. It’s only a few inches high, sixty-four pounds, and has no console. What’s really unusual is that its motor adjusts the belt speed according to how fast you are running or starting to run. The front, middle, and back of the belt have infrared sensors that measure how long your feet are in each part and deduces your actual and trending speed from those readings. The company says the Mini Walk is the first treadmill to have just twenty-two components and no welding. Suggested price about $250. You’ve heard the idea of generating electricity through use of exercise machines. There have even been some gyms that have tried to set this up. But now power generating treadmills are available to the mass market, at least in the UK. British company SportsArt has introduced its ECO-POWR line of equipment that includes the Verde treadmill. It purports to convert up to 74% of kinetic (movement) energy into electricity. It uses an inverter to return the power to the electrical grid. So far the machines are available only in the UK, primarily to commercial facilities. See the photo below: In June 2018 a Fund Me campaign was started on Indiegogo to raise $10,000 to build the World’s First Boxing Training Treadmill, to be called the IMPACT 50-0. It was presented as the combination of self-defense and aerobic training that can burn fat faster than other treadmills. The main differentiating factor is that different color lights suggest different moves. For example, a yellow light may indicate that a defensive move is necessary, while a green light indicates an open shot that the user needs to hit designated pads within a prescribed time limit, and a red light indicates you were too slow and got hit. As of September 2018, over $2,000 had been raised. Make sure to click here for aall of our latest Treadmills and home gym equipment deals.  

State of the Treadmill Industry 2017

  The Numbers are In According to Grandview Research, the global fitness equipment market is anticipated to grow at 3.6 % from 2015 to more than $13 billion in 2022, as growing health consciousness spread from the U.S. and developed market to developing nations, especially in Asia. Governments in these nations have given incentives to businesses to encourage employees to exercise. In North America, cardio equipment, which includes treadmills, ellipticals, step machines, and rowers, continued to out sell strength training equipment and was projected to grow at an annual rate of over 2% through 2022, compared to a higher rate for weight training equipment. Asia was projected to grow at a rate more than 7%, but North America still comprises about 45% of the world market. Of the roughly $4 billion of fitness equipment sold in North America in 2016, treadmill sales in the U.S. led the way with about $1 billion, most of which were to health clubs. According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), total sales of exercise equipment in North America increased 1.5% in 2016, with institutional exercise equipment gaining 4.2% and consumer sales rising only half a per cent. Sale of treadmills for commercial use jumped 9.9%, but only 2.3% for consumer use. This compared favorably to consumer sales of elliptical machines, which declined 1.8%. In its 2016 survey, the SFIA) found that more than 50 million Americans said they used a treadmill at least once in the previous year. Retail sales of fitness equipment in North America ranged from $300 home products to commercial treadmills costing more than $10,000. However, the survey found that people in both the millennial and Gen Z age groups said they would rather run outside than on a treadmill. Company News During 2017 Johnson Health Tech acquired specialty fitness retailers Busy Body Home Fitness, 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment, and Fitness Resource. The addition of the combined 100+ stores of these businesses makes Johnson the largest national fitness equipment retailer. Johnson’s plan is to rebrand all its one hundred retail stores, in the U.S. including the Leisure Fitness brand, as Johnson Fitness & Wellness as part of its three hundred stores worldwide. New Products In November 2016, Johnson Health Tech announced that it is now marketing Matrix line of cardio equipment to the home market. Previously, Matrix was sold only for commercial uses. Johnson says that Matrix is the fastest growing commercial fitness brand in the world. At prices for treadmills beginning around $3,000, Matrix is one of the more expensive home brands. We know that professional football is competitive, but do players need special treadmills to work on their speed? Yes, according the XPE Sports Academy in Florida, where they have developed something called the SHREDmill to improve results in the 40-yard dash. The SHREDmill evolved from using regular treadmills with the power turned off so that the user had to develop the power to turn the belt himself. In 2011, the current system of variable magnetic resistance was developed, so that the user still has to provide the power, but can adjust the resistance as well. The resistance is set so that sprinting is specially trained for by pushing off and accelerating. Proponents of the SHREDmill claim great success for dramatically speeding up linemen, as well as receivers and backs. NFL players Travis Benjamin, Mark Ingram, Eric Berry, and Maurice Poincey have improved their times. Players Anquan Boldin, Kareem Jason, and Jerod Mayo have all bought their own machines. By the time the 2017 season starts, around ten pro and college teams will have a SHREDmill.   Lawyers! In November 2016, ICON Health & Fitness sued an online product review site Consumer Affairs for $10.5 million, claiming it posted fake negative reviews for companies that didn’t pay its membership fees of thousands of dollars per year. ICON claimed that the site wrongly gave negative reviews to its Nordic Track products and that this constitutes a violation of the federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute. ICON also claimed that the site not only defamatorily damaged ICON’s reputation, but constituted fraud as well. In October 2016, a group of consumers sued treadmill manufacturer Precor Inc., alleging that the readings of its heart rate monitors give inaccurate and unreliable readings and that the company sold its machines while knowing this. In March 2017, the suit was certified as a class action and limited to nine models of treadmills. Precor’s responses have included that readings depend on whether the user walks or runs, the amount of intensity of exercise, and correct usage. In a March 2017 ruling in a case with a similar issue to the Precor case, a federal judge ruled that a patent owned by ICON Health & Fitness was invalid after ICON tried to prevent Polar Electro from selling its own heart rate monitor. The patent was ruled invalid because it claimed only abstract ideas, instead of a specific design. Also in March 2017, a bill was introduced in Congress that would include certain fitness expenses as medical expenses that qualify for tax deductions. Thus, for example, the purchase price of a home treadmill would be subsidized by the federal government in the hope that increased exercise will result in less total spending on healthcare. The bill is known as the Personal Health Investment Today Act and would allow up to a $2,000 deduction.

State of the Treadmill Industry 2016

  The treadmill industry completed another year of more than $1 billion in sales in 2015 with no end in sight. As reported in the Wall Street Journal in October 2016, GYMetrix, a company that uses digital tracking and surveys to track what people actually do at gyms, analyzed hundreds of gyms and found that treadmills are the number one choice of women and the number two choice of men, after dumbbells. While retail sales in general continued to be weak throughout 2015 and 2016, sports and fitness stores generally did well. Competition from online stores continues to a challenge for all sporting goods categories. Company News In December 2015, after outsourcing its manufacturing to China, ICON Health & Fitness auctioned off its remaining plastics processing equipment in its Logan facility. The equipment auctioned included injection molding machines, blenders, granulators, silos, chillers, cooling towers, temperature controllers, hot runners, and remaining parts. ICON cut 400 manufacturing jobs in Logan in October, but continues its FreeMotion treadmills and other equipment at its plant in Smithfield, Utah. In July 2015, Moody’s upgraded ICON’s bond rating “due to its improved operating performance and enhanced liquidity profile” and the strategy of “streamlining its manufacturing footprint.” This came three months after expressing a negative outlook due to the uncertainty of refinancing bonds that were coming due within three months. Not all fitness equipment manufacturers are following ICON’s move to manufacturing in China. In January, 2016, Brunswick Corp, maker of Life Fitness equipment, paid $195 million for Cybex Intl, manufacturer of commercial treadmills and other gym equipment. Both companies continue to manufacture in the U.S., but distribute throughout the world. Cybex was a public company that lost about $169 million in 2014. It appears that Brunswick wants to diversify its business from its cyclical core line of manufacturing and selling boats and marine engines. Their stated goal is to double the sales of its Life Fitness division by 2020. In May, 2016, Sports Authority Inc., a leading retailer of treadmills and other exercise equipment, filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in order to close its 463 stores and liquidate its assets. A $1.3 billion buyout in 2006 by a hedge fund took on more debt than the company could pay. Sports Authority has been a major seller of ProForm, Stamina, Schwinn, and Yowza treadmills. In 2006, the chain had sales about equal to rival Dick’s Sporting Goods. However, by 2016 Dick’s had hundreds more locations, each with about twice as much revenue as Sports Authority stores. Some analysts have attributed this to Dick’s better presentation and technology in its stores. In January 2016, Nautilus, Inc., maker of Bowflex, Schwinn, and other brands of exercise equipment, bought elliptical maker Octane Fitness from private-equity firm North Castle Partners for $115 million. The purchase of Octane, which makes high-end elliptical machines for use in home and commercial gyms, could help Nautilus extend into higher price points and reach new distribution channels. During 2015, Octane had of about $65 million, while Nautilus had sales of about $335 million. New Technology In January 2016, Wahoo Fitness announced its GymConnect System, a device that is sold to treadmill manufacturers or individual users to attach to their treadmills to a wide variety of networks. So not only can the user to control the treadmill and connect to proprietary closed systems, but also to the more widely-installed iFit and other networks and new apps. The module can allow changes in programs and incline, but, for safety reasons, will not change speed. Star Trac and other manufacturers have started installing the modules on their new models in 2016. Individual units for consumers are available to consumers at about $200 each. Also early in 2016, Technogym released a new running treadmill that can detect a runner's rhythm and create a personalized interactive music soundtrack for them based on the speed that they are running. Users log into their exercise account and choose their music along with their other workout parameters. Then the system detects the user’s rhythm and creates a personalized interactive music soundtrack to match that rhythm and speed as they change. TechnoGym calls this “the world’s first music interactive treadmill." Life Fitness has announced that it has brought the connectivity of the internet of things to gyms with its new remote monitoring service. It recently rolled out LFconnect Protect to more than 10,600 hotels, residential exercise rooms and fitness clubs using its premium lines of machines. The service attempts to minimize machine downtime by timing repairs before issues become problematic. It also helps gyms plan future purchases based on the machines exercisers use most. As Life Fitness technology develops, the company said, it could one day better help gyms use data to market to their customers. In August 2016, ICON lost its attempt to save its patent on a virtual personal trainer from cancellation when a federal appeals court ruled that the patent was ambiguous. Therefore, Polar heart rate monitors were found to not violate ICON’s patent. ♣ Have any treadmill news for next year’s report? If so, please send it to [email protected] and we will be happy to include it.

State of the Treadmill Industry 2015

Treadmills remained the most popular form of exercise equipment worldwide in 2015, as fitness continued its popularity and populations become increasingly overweight. Treadmills comprise about 55% of the home fitness market, with ellipticals at about 15%. The remainder is made up of stationary bikes and hybrids of these styles. All this is according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Robert Braun, VP of Sales at Treadmill World, says “The 2014 holiday season was marked by customers waiting for holiday deals, then finding that what they wanted was out of stock. As shipping costs have risen and free shipping has become more common, the costs of shipping equipment has gone up relative to the value of the machines. Thus, fewer lower end machines are made or sold.” However, Nautilus continued its push into the lower priced home market. Its T616 treadmill incorporates Bluetooth connectivity so users’ workout data can be synced with the Nautilus trainer app. Braun adds “The quality at the lower end continues to rise, along with the prices for those models.” In November 2014, negotiations between the International Longshoreman Workers union and its employer, Pacific Maritime Association, resulted in labor slowdowns on the west coast, delaying deliveries of exercise equipment and parts to U.S. manufacturers and distributors. This in turn led to these businesses running out of stock on many models and disappointed consumers. The strike was settled March 2015. Company News In late 2014, Smooth Fitness ceased operations. Its remaining inventory and intellectual property was bought in foreclosure by Treadmill Doctor, which then sold the Smooth website and some other intellectual property to ICON Health & Fitness, while retaining the intellectual property related to parts and service. Smoothfitness.com now offers new Smooth-branded treadmills manufactured by ICON. The former Smooth Fitness is out of business, so is not honoring its warranties on machines bought before the sale. However, Treadmill Doctor still sells parts for these models. The Smooth website is being operated by ICON, selling new models labeled Smooth Fitness, but assembled by ICON. Braun of Treadmill World says “We sold a lot of their stuff, but the word is that they were spending too much for click. Apparently, this caused their profits to thin to the point that their institutional investor didn’t want to put in any more cash.” In November 2014, Johnson Health Tech introduced a new line of Horizon and Vision treadmills with its new wireless connectivity system, ViaFit. ViaFit enables the user to share workout data with other fitness apps and devices. The machines connect to your home wifi through a free ViFit account and seamlessly syncs to other devices that you may be tracking workout results on. Johnson also introduced its Passport Player, which improves on the virtual running course programs offered by other manufacturers. In addition to the visual and incline changes that occur along a course, Johnson’s new program provides ambient sounds and a separate, larger screen that provides a more realistic virtual outdoor running experience. Johnson’s commercial brand, Matrix Fitness, announced a 19 percent global sales growth rate for 2014. The company attributed the growth the new products and repeat customers. In October 2015, Johnson substantially increased its distribution of commercial fitness equipment in Canada by acquiring a leading Canadian commercial equipment distributor, STAK Fitness. However, the Consumer Product Safety Commission fined Johnson $3 million for failing to report defects in its machines. Johnson’s Matrix Fitness Ascent Trainers and Elliptical Trainers apparently allowed a buildup of moisture from perspiration or cleaning liquids in the power sockets of the units. The agency says this buildup caused smoking, sparking, and fires. It seems the company made two design changes to fix the problem, but did not immediately report the incidents or design changes to the agency. Johnson recalled the trainers in January 2014, but it wasn’t until 2015 the fine was imposed. In July 2015, ICON Health and Fitness announced it will eliminate the U.S. manufacturing of home equipment by cutting 400 employees and moving those operations overseas by the end of the year. The announced purpose was to remain competitive as the company expanded globally. Most of the parts of ICON equipment have been manufactured in China for years now, with most assembly taking place in Utah. However, now most assembly of home treadmills will occur in China. The company also has plants are located in Taiwan and Pakistan. Assembly of ICON’s commercial brand, FreeMotion Fitness, will continue at the company’s Smithfield, Virginia plant. The company said it would renovate the space vacated by its manufacturing operations in order to “accommodate future growth.” ICON started manufacturing in Utah in 1987, after having been manufactured in other countries since 1977. It will continue its other operations in Utah, such as engineering, marketing, and distributing with about 1,500 employees. A few weeks after ICON made its announcement, Moody's upgraded ICON’s corporate bond rating due to ICON’s “improved operating performance and enhanced liquidity profile.” Moody’s said that that ICON’s strategy of streamlining its manufacturing and expanding its distribution network should continue to improve the company’s performance. However, Moody’s also noted that its rating is constrained by the company’s concentration of customers and its limited operations outside of North America New Technology If you're used to running on a treadmill and then go for a run in the great outdoors, one of the first things you might notice is that the real deal feels quite different. Tread runners often describe the difference as running less upright and feeling like the feet are pushing into the ground with more effort. In short, it's more challenging. Those feelings happen to be real. While doing things like changing the elevation grade of the belt will help simulate what it's like to really run, traditional treadmills fall short of activating and conditioning the lower-body muscles the way they are trained during a sprint or a longer-distance jog. Woodway introduced its Curve treadmill, a motorless model with a tread belt curved at the front and the back to better simulate the activation of muscle use while running on solid ground. The promise is that, because users need to dig into the front of the belt and push off the back in order to start the belt moving and keep it moving, they are working their lower body harder. See the image below. Technogym, which calls itself the leading producer of design and technology-driven fitness equipment, introduced the first treadmill to be activated by voice commands. The model is called “Artis.” This user wears Google Glass, which works through UNITY, an android-based console display platform. Users can control the speed of the treadmill with voice commands, as well as see running data on their their headset and communicate with a personal trainer through a webcam. No word yet on availability. According to an article published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Ohio State University has invented a treadmill that actually adjusts its speed to the user’s, instead of the user having to adjust his speed to what he has set the speed of the treadmill to. The purported effect is that using the treadmill feels like running or walking on a steady surface. Apparently, this new machine more accurately measures VO2Max, the commonly-used measure of aerobic capacity. Stay tuned on this one. ♣ Have any treadmill news for next year’s report? If so, please send it to [email protected] and we will be happy to include it. Read the full article

#coupons #deals #direct #ellipticals #equipment #gym #home #manufacturer #proform #reputable #reviews #sales #savings #treadmills

[ciquemynd]

MDD410

Resources for Keeping Current on Emerging Technology

The past couple of decades have been an interesting time for the development of wide ranges of technologies. Since the birth of the public internet This blog will cover five sources to stay current with emerging technologies. These products range from Film Production Equipment to Augmented Reality Heads Up Displays to Artificial Intelligence.

1.       https://www.cnet.com/

c|net, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive Inc., has been around since March 5, 1994 and has turned into the go-to for new tech, information, and product reviews. Keep in mind that they specialize more in mainstream technology so if it is on the open market from a large manufacturer like Apple, Windows or Samsung, this is where all of your questions will be answered. (About, n.d.).

2.       https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology

Kickstarter, a relatively newer online establishment, started on April 28, 2009. It has given rise to a plethora of great products from small business start-ups to larger corporations attempting to prototype new ideas. These categories range from Arts, Comics & Illustration, Design & Tech, Film, Food & Craft, Games, Music and Publishing. (Kickstarter, n.d.).

3.       https://www.techrepublic.com/article/top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2019/

TechRepublic, which debuted as a website in May of 1999, is a bit more on the how-to side of the spectrum but also does showcase emerging products and services. Their site features blogs, community forums, vendor white papers, software downloads webcasts, and research. (About, n.d.).

4.       https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2019/

Scientific American which launched its website in March of 1996, has been around for more than 170 years as a publishing company. (About Scientific American, n.d.). As with many technology-oriented sites, they cover just about anything scientifically oriented ranging from new products commercial to vaccine research.

5.       https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/09/30/the-7-biggest-technology-trends-in-2020-everyone-must-get-ready-for-now/#60f2d2c12261

Forbes has been around for 100+ years, functions worldwide and is a general staple to the business community for tech advancements and what to pay attention to in the financial market of business. (Who We Are, n.d.). Although they are more economically oriented, their technical journalists do cover emerging technology, what it is for and how to apply it within a company.

Fad or Trend

As with any consumer market, there will always be Fads and Trends. One example of this would be the industry wide Fad that wants to become a Trend. The difference is the prematurity of the longevity of One and then the other. A great example of this would be folding screen mobile devices which have been inundated with issues since the first model came out. The idea is an interesting one, I feel, but there are a lot of bugs to work out, the biggest being the most obvious, damage to screens when open and closed repeatedly. So far, this is nothing but a Fad and until these mechanical issues are resolved, I feel this is all it will be.

Your Choice

With all the discussions that we have had in the class, one thing that really stuck out was the thought of having VR-Based design software. It would seem that this may be closer than previously thought. “IRISVR” (The Premium VR Platform for the Building Industry, n.d.). This software allows a group of users to really dig into a structural engineering project and collaborate before taking the plunge and having crews get to work. Honestly, I could see this really taking off. What better way to ensure a project is heading in the right direction than to take virtual walk-throughs of a job site? I would like to see something like this bleed over to game design and possibly even movie development in the future, but it remains to be seen if this gains traction or not.

References  

About.  (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2020, from TechRepublic:  https://www.techrepublic.com/about/

About.  (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2020, from c|net: https://www.cnet.com/about/

About Scientific American. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2020, from Scientific  American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/about-scientific-american/

Kickstarter. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2020, from Kickstarter:  https://www.kickstarter.com/?ref=nav

The Premium VR Platform for the Building Industry. (n.d.). Retrieved aPRIL 19, 2020, from IRISVR:  https://irisvr.com/

Who We Are.  (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2020, from Forbes:  https://www.forbes.com/connect/who-we-are/

#technology #virtualreality #fads #trends #digital trends

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

The winners of The Europas Awards 2019 show Europe’s persevering with range and ambition – TechCrunch

http://tinyurl.com/y2rzl65a The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups got here round once more final week (Thursday 27th June), and as soon as once more proved that Europe’s huge range in startups continues to shine by way of on the world stage. As soon as once more TechCrunch was the unique media sponsor of the awards, alongside new “tech, tradition & society” occasion creator The Pathfounder. Attendees, nominees and winners got reductions to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin, later this 12 months. The awards cowl 20 classes, together with new additions resembling cowl AgTech / FoodTech, SpaceTech, GovTech and Mobility Tech. After an intense spherical of public voting and judges’ deliberations, the awards had been held within the ‘Summer season Pageant’ ambiance of the lawns of the enduring Geffrey Museum in London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout Space’ of Shoreditch and featured avenue vans, garden video games, music and a improbable after-party! The judges came from the creme-de-la-creme of the European tech scene and their picks for the winners had been mixed with the outcomes of a week of online voting. Photographs from The Europas Awards are now on Flickr the place you may obtain them. They’re additionally on Facebook here. The Reside stream hosted by Hermione Manner starts here, the panel sessions are here and The Europas Awards ceremony starts here. You may signal as much as get news of next year’s awards and similar events here. The sponsors this 12 months the place:BizzaboWorld Datanomic ForumCurrency.comTarget GlobalBayer G4ACommsCoIsotomaiHorizonFieldHouse AssociatesRocketmakersBurlington PRHome Grown So with out further-a-do listed below are the winners and finalists for The Europas Awards 2019! The Europas Awards — Hottest AgTech / FoodTech Startup WINNER:Small Robot Company: Building small robots to transform farmingIntroduced by Gemma Evans, HealthHackers FINALISTS:Agricool: grows and produces vegatables and fruits inside transport containersAllplants: Scrumptious, plant-based meals, delivered.Breedr: a productiveness and advertising and marketing platform reworking the livestock supply-chainiFarm: Information-driven city farming expertiseYnsect: Designs, constructs and operates giant vertical farm of beetles (Molitors) to produce high grade proteins. The Europas Awards — Hottest CleanTech Startup WINNER:Solar Foods: Produces a wholly new type of nutrient-rich protein utilizing solely air and electrical energy as the principle assetsIntroduced by Laurence Kemball Prepare dinner, Pavegen CEO FINALISTS:Asperitas: a clean-tech firm targeted on greening the datacentre businessNaefos: A fintech-IoT platform for enterprises to access off-grid householdsBulb: affordable renewable energy for homes and businessesOrbital Systems: a Swedish clean-tech company that develops a water recycling technology to be used in domestic appliancesVoltStorage: Solar power storage for your home The Europas Awards — Hottest CyberTech Startup WINNER:Panaseer: A continuous controls monitoring platformIntroduced by Pratik Sampat, iHorizon FINALISTS:UK Barac: Using AI and behavioural analytics to detect malware hidden within encrypted traffic without the need for decryptionCymulate: Breach and attack simulationUK Immersive Labs: A fully interactive, on-demand, and gamified cyber skills platformPassbase: a digital identity platform to streamline the identity verification process and enable identity ownership and reuse across different servicesPixelPin: a secure authentication system using pictures instead of passwordsuBirch: Securing IoT data using blockchain The Europas Awards — Hottest EdTech Startup WINNER:Perlego: Textbook subscription service FINALISTS:Busuu: Online community for language learningGet My Grades: online learning platform for English, Maths and ScienceMyPocketSkill: Connecting teens to pocket money earning jobsPigzbe: Crypto-friendly, digital wallet for 6+PitchMe: Skills-based talent marketplaceRobo Wunderkind: developing modular and programmable robots to teach children robotics and codingLirica: Learn languages with the power of music The Europas Awards — Hottest FashTech Startup WINNER:Metail: virtual fitting room service for fashion retailers that allows customers to create a 3D model of themselves and try on clothes FINALISTS:Bump: making commerce socialEuveka: develops connected smart-mannequins, using custom software, to assist fashion, sports and medical professionals in the prototyping and sale of individual garmentsHeuritech: anticipating brand and product desirability through the eyes of millions of fashion influencers and consumers HUUB: a logistics and tech platform for Fashion brandsLittle Black Door: intelligent inventory platform that captures the value of your wardrobe and opens it up to a premium managed marketplaceFinda: Professional model booking platform The Europas Awards — Hottest FinTech StartupWINNER:Auquan: data science platform for financial servicesIntroduced by Malin Holmberg, Goal World VC FINALISTS:Curve: a platform allowing consolidation of all bank cards into a single smart card and appCytora: Using AI to enable insurers to underwrite more efficientlyDivido: a retail finance platform that allows companies to offer instant customer financeHolvi: digital banking for freelancers and entrepreneursMonese: an online banking platform that offers quick current account opening for all EU residentsMoonfare: a technology-enabled platform allowing individuals to invest in top-tier private equity funds Nuggets: Login, pay and verify ID without ever sharing or storing your data with anyonePremFina: White label software to manage insurance policiesYobota: cloud-based platform allows financial services to design and deploy financial products The Europas Awards — Hottest GovTech, CivTech, PubTech, RegTech WINNER:New Vector: decentralised, secure communication for governments, businesses and individualsIntroduced by Eloise Todd, Anti-Brexit Campaigner FINALISTS:Adzuna: digital service that connects jobseekers with employers online and through job centres around the UKApolitical Apolitical is a global policy insights platform and network helping governments and companies advance their work and businessClause Match: end-to-end solution for fully automating regulatory complianceLuminance: document analysis software to secure big data systemsnovoville – novoville is a Citizen Engagement Platform, that bridges the gap between local governments and their citizensSafened: Digital KYC SolutionSafeTeam: NHS community lone worker app The Europas Awards — Hottest HealthTech Startup WINNER:BIOS, creating the open standard hardware and software interface between the human nervous system and AIIntroduced by Rafiq Hasan, Bayer Well being FINALISTS:Ada Health: an AI-powered health platformeQuoo: evidence based mental health game for young adultsLumeon: providing care pathway management solutions to the healthcare industryNatural Cycles: a digital contraceptive appPregenerate: “cartilage-on-a- chip” to accelerate drug development for arthritisSiilo: secure messenger app for medical teamsStraight Teeth Direct: Direct to consumer teledentistry platform that connects users to online dentists globally enabling low cost at home teeth straightening The Europas Awards — Hottest MadTech (MarTech or AdTech) Startup WINNERS:Ometria: a customer insight and marketing automation platformVideesha Bockle, alerts Enterprise Capital FINALISTS:Codec: AI-powered audience intelligence for brandsMeasureMatch: find, book, pay & rate independent consultants or consultancies to accelerate marketing, commerce & customer experience capabilitiesPlanSnap: a social planning platform that gets friends togetherStreetBees: Connecting brands with real people on the ground to gather real time insightsUberall: location marketing cloudVidsy: helps brands create original mobile video ads at scaleWaive: an intelligent trend spotting platform The Europas Awards — Hottest Mobility Journey Tech StartupWINNER:Voi Scooters: owns, operates, and manages electric scooters for urban commutersJoelle Hadfield, HelloFresh FINALISTS:Culture Trip: inspiring people to explore the world’s culture and creativitydaytrip: platform connecting independent travelers with local driversDott: scooter startupminicabit: an online minicab and taxi price comparison and booking serviceSnap Travel: on-demand coach serviceTrafi: Mobility solutions for connected citiesWejo: unlocks the value in car data to help create smarter, safer, better and greener journeys for drivers globally The Europas Awards — Hottest PropTech Startup WINNER:NPlan: machine learning – based risk analysis for construction projectsSimon Calver, BFG FINALISTS:Casavo: market maker within the residential real estate marketGood Monday: a digital workplace administration systemHabito: digital mortgage brokerHome Made: property tech rental agentHubble: online marketplace for office spaceMews Systems: property management software for hospitality operationsPlanner 5D: 3D home design tool using AI, VR & AR to create floorplans and interior designReposit: tenancy deposit alternativeUrban Jungle: A fully digital insurer, for a new generation of customers The Europas Awards — Hottest Retail / ECommerce Tech Startup WINNER:NearSt: building the world’s source of real-time local inventoryIntroduced by Audrey Soussan, Ventech FINALISTS:Festicket: marketplace to discover and book music festival tickets, accommodation, transfers and extrasKeep Warranty: app that saves the warranties and purchase slips of your appliancesPicnic: online supermarket, that delivers groceries for the lowest price to people’s homePimcore: digital experience platform to manage product informationSpryker Systems: a commerce technology companystore2be: Online marketplace for short-term retail and promotion spaceTrouva: curated marketplace for bricks and mortar independent shops The Europas Awards — Hottest B2B / SaaS StartupWINNER:Infobip: Full-stack Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS)Sally MacDonald, Associate, CommsCo FINALISTS:Chattermill: Using deep learning to help organizations make sense of their customer experienceDixa: conversational customer engagement software that connects brands with customers through real-time communicationMeero: On demand photography service combined with image processing artificial intelligencePaddle: platform for all software companies to run and grow their businessPeakon: a platform for measuring and improving employee engagementProoV: a PoC platform that enables businesses to test new technologiesSeedLegals: platform for all the legals startups need to grow and get fundedTravelPerk: business travel booking & management platform for companiesUnbabel: a ‘translation-as-a-service’ platform, powered by AI and a worldwide community of translators The Europas Awards — Hottest SpaceTech StartupWINNER:Open Cosmos: Simple and affordable space missionsIntroduced by Dr Barbara Ghinelli, Harwell FINALISTS:Aerial & Maritime: A Danish nanosatellite-based solution for monitoring aircrafts and maritime vesselsAerospacelab: Develops a constellation of micro-satellites for earth observation and imageryaXenic: Design, development and production of optical modulators for communications and sensingGlobal Surface Intelligence: Environmental data serviceHawa Dawa: Combines proprietary IoT smart sensor data with other sources of data (including satellite data) to give highly accurate data on air qualityMonolith: Machine Learning Platform that helps engineers to predict the outcome of unknown, new tests or simulations by reusing historical dataTrik: Enterprise drone 3D mapping software for structural inspectionUnseenlabs – Unseenlabs designs and develops a spectrum surveillance payloadXonaspace: Uses an XPS and LEO satellite constellation for extremely precise GPS systems The Europas Awards — Hottest Tech for Good StartupWINNER:Beam: help a homeless person for the long-term by funding their employment trainingPaula Schwarz, World Datanomic Discussion board FINALISTS:eWaterpay: Using mobile technology for the accountable collection of user fees to pay for the maintenance of water supply systems foreverIdka: a platform for private groups and organizations, where they can connect, communicate, share and store anything – while their privacy remains intactOmoLab: develops tools that make easier for people with dyslexia to readSafetoNet: an app that protects children online by using AI to detect harmful content, whilst respecting children’s privacyTick. Done.: a micro-video platform for instant knowledge sharingWinnow: digital tools to help chefs run more profitable, sustainable kitchen The Europas Awards — Hottest Blockchain Venture WINNER:Argent: a smart wallet for cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications FINALISTS:Aeternity: a scalable blockchain platform that enables high-speed transacting, purely-functional smart contractsAZTEC Protocol: building privacy technology for public blockchain infrastructuresColendi: decentralized credit scoring protocol and microcredit platform with blockchain and machine learning technologiesEdge ESports: blockchain-based platform for professional gamersFilmChain: blockchain enabled platform that collects data, verifies revenues and executes stakeholder payment splits for film, TV etcOrbs: a blockchain Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for large scale consumer applicationsVeratrak: a shared workspace for collaborating with your supply chain partners The Europas Awards — Hottest Blockchain Investor WINNER:Outlier Ventures: invests and partners with tokenised communities that will create the new decentralised economyIntroduced by Kaisa Ruusalepp, Funderbeam FINALISTS:BlueYard CapitalCatagonia Capital Earlybird Venture CapitalFabric Ventures: A venture capital firm that invests in scalable decentralized networksFinLabKR1: crypto token Investment company supporting early stage decentralised and open source blockchain projectsMosaic Ventures The Europas Awards — Hottest A/A+ Buyers WINNER:AtomicoIntroduced by Madhuban Kumar, Metafused FINALISTS:Accel Anthemis GroupBalderton CapitalDN CapitalEQT VenturesIndex VenturesNorthzoneProject A VenturesVentech Capital The Europas Awards — Hottest Early-Stage / Accelerator BuyersWINNER:Founders FactoryIntroduced by Jenny Judova, TechHub FINALISTS:SeedcampForward PartnersGeneration SEntrepreneur FirstTechstars LondonThe Family7percent VenturesBacked VCFirstminute CapitalLocalGlobeEpisode 1 Ventures The Europas Awards — Corridor of FameThis class recognises an individual who has gone above and past the decision of obligation to boost the tech ecoosystem not only for themselves however for others.WINNER:Brent Hoberman of Founders Manufacturing unit, Founders Discussion board, Firstminute Capital, Lastminute.com and plenty of different initiatives for startups and entrepreneurs Source link

[smtajinfo]

Section 2 - IT Industry and Professional Roles

IT Industry and the benefits towards other industries

There are many ways that we can be involved with IT. What I have realized from this class, I.T. is not just the stereotypical companies like Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft etc. Thinking that these were the only companies that were related to IT, I was so unamused by the field.  

Many industries NEED IT-related jobs because of the many benefits that technology can bring into advancing all different types of industries. Fashion, Marketing, and entertainment are just a few industries that believe technology is the future of their industries.

For this specific part of the section, I will list a few industries and give a reason as to how to IT will benefit them.

Fashion has now become an industry that recycles trends because there is a limitation in creating clothes with different and newer designs. With technology, there could be potential in building new clothing that will be trendy.

Fashion may soon create clothes that are biodegradable and also made from materials that are sustainable. Which would benefit both the environment and human living.

Advanced technology towards diagnosis, faster urgent care, medicines, and also a one-click doctor. There are a tremendous amount of ideas that could be the reality of the healthcare industry with the help of technology.

Find new ways to change the experience of watching/listening entertainment. VR, higher quality video streaming for those with third world internet, and also advancing 4D films. There are many opportunities for IT to help evolve the Entertainment industry.

Different Organizations

One important section that I did not consider within industries is what organization size that you want to work in. There are both benefits and disadvantages towards the size of the organization, but there is always one that fits for you. I will list all the organization sizes and discuss its advantage and disadvantages.

Advantage: More resources, High exposure, Better training

Disadvantage: Lack of opportunity (competitiveness), hard to be heard/stand out, less personal

Advantage: Stronger community, Recognition, Uniqueness

Disadvantage: Volatility, less capital, less resource

Advantage: Everything is new, easier to make decisions, Room for creativity

Disadvantage: Less capital, hit or miss with success, maybe overworked

Advantage: Work for self, Creative Freedom, Profit Potential

Disadvantage: Extreme risk-debt, no check-ups on your decisions, Leverage

Advantage: Wide variety, Focus on specialty, Traveling

Disadvantage: Short job term, Pressure, Traveling away from family

Roles of technology

Before taking this class I have always had this mindset that working in the IT field you are always stuck in a room doing some form of coding. This was the only role that I sought to believe at first which drove my lack of interest towards the IT industry. However, hearing about ALL of the roles, my view on the industry has changed.

Creator of the app is the person who starts off the app. Looks into certain issues or find new ways of entertainment and makes apps or technology that will help make the solution/new ways a reality.

Key Qualifications: Creative, Patient, Good with pressure, Curious, Optimistic, Risk-taker, Active with current political, social, economic situations

Creates the user interface. The designer figures out ways through architecture, prototypes, and many more design programs that are relevant to the project. The designer is very important as there needs to be appeal and accessibility towards the design of the app.

Key Qualifications: Creativity, Patience, Intuition, good eye, communication

Takes everything that was created by the designer and makes it to reality. The builder has control over what certain parts, tools, and software will be essential towards the creation of the app. The builder is the most responsible for making sure that the creation is functional.

Key Qualifications: Coding, Teamwork, problem-solving skills, technical skills

Implementer brings the creation to the organization and makes documents/writes about the product. They also present the creation to people of higher power positions within the company

Key Qualifications: Communication, Patience, being able to work with what you have

Maintenance keeps things running by constantly resolving issues of bugs and viruses

Key Qualifications: Very Careful, Good with problem-solving, Flexible,  Patient

Seller finds ways to market and sell the products. Their duty is to try to gain as many consumers for the product to become successful.

Key Qualifications: Perseverance, Creativity, Persuasive, understanding of current pop culture

Mainly the tie-breaker for situations that don’t have a certain solution. Also facilitates.

Key Qualifications: Leadership, Makes tough decisions, Looks at big picture, communication, someone you are able to depend on

OVERALL REALIZATION

The I.T. industry and roles do not just consist of stereotypical companies like Boeing and roles of coding in a room alone all day. There is more excitement in what you are able to do and there will be a place for everything when it comes to IT. You’re more extroverted and want to convince people to invest in your tech creation? become a marketer! Want to work in companies outside of Boeing/Amazon/Microsoft? The Fashion industry, Entertainment industry, and many more want you and your tech skills!

[kayawagner]

World’s Top Graphics Software Companies Are Already Adopting NVIDIA RTX Capabilities. Here’s Why.

The leading software providers representing many of the most important applications for designing the products we use, the cars we drive, the movies we watch and even for scientists to visualize the world around us are jumping on Turing, NVIDIA’s newly launched GPU architecture.

Unveiled today by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at the annual SIGGRAPH Conference, Turing brings together dedicated hardware acceleration of four core elements: AI, ray tracing, programmable shading and simulation.

NVIDIA also announced an expansion of its RTX development platform to allow developers to easily incorporate these functions in their applications. This complete reinvention of how a GPU processes information means that some things like real-time ray tracing that were thought to be five or more years away are now possible with a standard workstation when equipped with a Turing-class GPU like those in the new Quadro RTX family.

Designers can now iterate their product model or building and see accurate lighting, shadows and reflections in real time. Previously, they would have to use a low-fidelity approximation to get their design more or less right, then ship files out to a CPU farm to be rendered and get the results back in minutes or even hours, depending on complexity. Only then could they determine what it was truly going to look like in the real world. Now, they can do so interactively on their Quadro RTX-powered desktop.

For artists in the entertainment world, the same is true for visualizing their creations for animation or visual effects. But the benefits don’t stop there. NGX, new NVIDIA technology for bringing AI into the graphics pipeline, is part of the RTX platform. And NVIDIA is providing an SDK that makes it easy for developers to incorporate AI-powered effects into their apps.

NGX technology brings capabilities such as taking a standard camera feed and creating super slow motion like you’d get from a $100,000+ specialized camera. Or using AI to increase the resolution and clarity of archived images. Or removing wires from a photograph and automatically replacing the missing pixels with the right background. Learn more about these NVIDIA Research papers that led to this work.

These new capabilities are combined with increases in the speed and fidelity of drawing raster graphics through newly advanced shaders. And up to 4,608 CUDA cores for parallel compute processing means that software developers have a hardware platform unlike anything before.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, application developers are jumping at the chance to bring to their customers amazing new capabilities and up to 30x speed increases vs. CPU only for rendering.

Adobe Dimension CC: Intuitive new 3D creative tool built for all aspects of design and marketing is supporting NVIDIA MDL and demonstrating at SIGGRAPH, for the first time, a preview of a Dimension renderer for NVIDIA RTX ray tracing and Turing GPUs.

Allegorithmic Project Alchemist: New Substance tool, integrating AI-powered feature with over 100x speedup when running on NVIDIA Turing GPUs compared with CPUs. Has been presented at Substance Days at SIGGRAPH this morning, and will be shown in the Allegorithmic booth.

Allegorithmic Substance Designer: Worldwide reference material editor, integrating RTX through DXR for light baking. RTX gives a speed increase of 800 percent compared with previous CPU-based technology.

Altair Thea Render: New SketchUp and Cinema 4D plugins, along with the upcoming Rhino plugin release, will help a broad range of markets get a ray-tracing performance boost by one order of magnitude using NVIDIA OptiX denoiser technology.

ANSYS Optis VRXPERIENCE and Speos: Simulation software leveraging NVIDIA OptiX for faster convergence and high framerate deterministic ray-traced simulation for complex optical system, with 30x speedup compared with CPU legacy technology.

Autodesk Arnold: The Arnold GPU, which is currently in beta, is one of the first production renderers to utilize NVIDIA OptiX. At SIGGRAPH this week, we’re previewing it running on our latest Turing GPU hardware, featuring ray tracing hardware designed specifically for OptiX.

Black Magic DaVinci Resolve: World’s most popular color-grading application, using Turing Tensor Cores in Resolve 15 to accelerate AI inferencing for graphics enhancement.

Blender Cycles: Open source renderer using NVIDIA CUDA to accelerate performance.

Cebas finalRender: GPU-accelerated ray tracer for Autodesk 3ds Max uses NVIDIA OptiX AI denoiser for 5x+ acceleration.

Chaos Group: Preview of Project Lavina using Microsoft’s DXR to deliver 3-5x real-time ray tracing performance over Volta generation for scenes exported from Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya.  VRAY GPU using RT Cores in Quadro RTX for substantial acceleration over NVIDIA Pascal generation.

Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA: The industry reference Design and Engineering Solution plans to leverage RTX for rendering with life-like quality materials to accelerate VR rendering for immersive experiences and design validation.

Dassault Systèmes HomebyMe: Web portal for interior design that leverages OptiX denoiser to boost render times by 10.

Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS Visualize: Visualization tool for 3D CAD data using OptiX denoiser for instant life-like rendering.

EA SEED: Cross-disciplinary team within EA Worldwide Studios whose Project PICA PICA is a real-time raytracing experiment featuring a mini-game for self-learning AI agents in a procedurally-assembled world. The approaches inspire developers and provide a glimpse of a future where real-time raytracing powers the creative experiences of tomorrow.

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine: Complete suite of tools for the creation of games, visualizations, interactive product designs, movies, broadcast entertainment and immersive experiences. Unreal Engine is using NVIDIA RTX technology through DXR to achieve industry-leading real-time ray tracing performance.

ESI Group IC.IDO: Immersive VR solution for engineering virtual prototyping, using Quadro RTX accelerated NVIDIA OptiX, potentially supporting real-time ray tracing on Turing GPUs, planned for future IC.IDO version.

ESRI ArcGIS Pro: World’s leading GIS application is harnessing the power of deep learning for both training and inferencing, leveraging NVIDIA Turing Tensor Cores in the upcoming release of ArcGIS Pro.

Isotropix Clarisse: Physically-based rendering engine demonstrating OptiX ray-tracing acceleration on Quadro RTX 6000, showing a 20x viewport performance improvement over CPUs.

Kitware Paraview: Popular scientific visualization tool, ParaView has been enhanced with a completely new rendering backend using NVIDIA RTX technology. It provides enhanced visual cues to better communicate the content of the scientific datasets while maintaining the speed for data exploration. The NVIDIA RTX backend for ParaView will be shown live at SIGGRAPH.

Otoy OctaneRender: GPU-accelerated, unbiased, physically correct renderer is demonstrating performance improvements of 5-8x with Octane 2019’s path-tracing kernel — running at 3.2 billion rays/second on NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000, compared with 400 million rays/second on P6000.

Pixar Renderman: Leading film renderer is announcing support for OptiX AI denoiser in R22.1 due later this year. Demonstrating RenderMan XPU architecture that uses CPU and GPU with NVIDIA OptiX.

PocketStudio: New tool that will be shown for first time at SIGGRAPH during Real-Time Live. It allows 3D filmmakers to easily create, play, and stream 3D animation sequences using real-time collaborative editing. It leverages Vulkan real-time ray tracing for its advanced quality viewport.

Redshift 3.0: Leading biased GPU renderer is announcing that Redshift 3.0 will use OptiX to access RTX ray-tracing acceleration.  Redshift 2.6 shipping with OptiX denoising, accelerating interactivity.

Remedy Entertainment: Creators of cinematic blockbuster action games that break media boundaries and push the envelope of 3D character technology and visual effects. Remedy has been researching how to utilize the NVIDIA RTX ray tracing technology and the DXR API in its Northlight engine.

Siemens NX: Leading CAD application supporting GPU-based rendering with Ray Traced Studio, to include AI Denoising and MDL support.

University of Illinois VMD: A molecular visualization tool developed at University of Illinois and used by over 100,000 researchers all over the world demonstrating support for NVIDIA OptiX and Quadro RTX GPUs.

Weta Digital: Leading visual effects house showing their Gazebo virtual production tool with OptiX acceleration, giving their studio artists the ability to see exactly what final-frame production renders will look like, reducing guesswork and allowing convergence to a desired look more quickly.

Praise for NVIDIA Turing

“Turing is a technological leap forward that will help Adobe shape the future of creative design. The powerful new ray tracing features of NVIDIA RTX will make 3D more accessible to designers and marketers through intuitive tools like Dimension CC.  We look forward to leveraging the enhanced AI capabilities of RTX as we extend our Sensei machine learning capabilities to democratize 2D/3D compositing.” —  Ross McKegney, Director of Engineering, Adobe Dimension CC

“RTX technology tightly integrates ray tracing into the real-time graphics pipeline. It enables new rendering techniques that will greatly improve the quality of real-time graphics, and the performance of graphical tools overall. In the case of Substance ray-traced bakers, we can observe an increase in speed of around 800% when compared with CPU-based ray tracing.” — Cyrille Damez, Chief Technology Officer, Allegorithmic

“Altair Thea Render v2.0 integrates NVIDIA OptiX denoiser, dramatically accelerating production of final renders. Users can take advantage of this optimized workflow, creating out-of-the-box, stunning photorealistic images in a fraction of previous render times.” — Dr. Ioannis Pantazopoulos, Vice President, Rendering Technology, Altair 

“Autodesk is committed to bringing the highest quality photorealistic rendering to our users and we look forward to a GPU version of the Arnold renderer that could leverage the NVIDIA RTX platform. We are super excited to see the performance gains while maintaining the great look our Arnold customers love.” – Chris Vienneau, Senior Director, Media & Entertainment Products, Autodesk

“Our customers are always looking for large performance gains and we are seeing a significant leap with NVIDIA RTX.”  — Dan May, President, Black Magic, Americas Operations

“DXR on Turing enables us to explore workflows for real-time visualization that were not possible before.  We estimate that Turing hardware is 3-5X faster than earlier GPU generations for the real-time ray tracing of our Project Lavina.”  — Vlado Koylazov, co-founder and CTO, Chaos Group

“We are excited about the innovations in graphics technology that NVIDIA has unveiled at SIGGRAPH today, and know our customers will welcome this new, cutting-edge visualization capability into their daily workflows. ” — Brian Hillner, Senior Product Portfolio Manager, DS SOLIDWORKS

“With Turing architecture Nvidia have shattered the photorealism barrier that current-generation rasterizing techniques have presented until now. Just as we saw with the movie business over a decade ago, ray tracing is going to revolutionize the realism of real-time applications, cinematic experiences and high-end games. Now, we will see artists and designers using Unreal Engine technology to create, view and interact with content that is indistinguishable from reality.”   — Kim Libreri, CTO, Epic Games

“Turing has the potential to be a game-changer for our customers’ workflows. Our preliminary tests with an early Turing-based GPU showed frame rates high enough for our engineering customers to realize raytraced reflections and their effects on proposed product configurations in real-time, for example cockpit or cabin visibility. This should significantly advance immersive product and procedural evaluation capability in CAVE’s or active stereo displays, and eventually maybe even HMD’s. We are actively exploring how innovations like RTX can be integrated into future versions of our solution.” — Eric Kam, Solution Marketing Manager, ESI’s IC.IDO

“Increasingly, our customers want to take advantage of all the benefits AI brings to their workflows. We are thrilled that NVIDIA is bringing Tensor Cores to Turing GPU architecture which will provide a more cost effective solution for inferencing whether on the desktop or from the data center.” ––  Jim McKinney, Chief Technology Officer, ESRI Desktop Applications

“We’re excited about the hardware acceleration in NVIDIA’s Turing generation because it will enable our customers to enjoy rendering acceleration 20X faster than on CPU. It’s just fantastic!”  — Sebastien Guichou, Isotropix CTO and Co-Founder, Isotropix

“Interactive ray-tracing is a game changer for scientific visualization and NVIDIA RTX offers improved visual cues for communicating scientific content without disrupting the exploratory workflow” — Berk Geveci, Sr. Director Scientific Computing, Kitware

“Advertising is an extremely iterative process and our clients want alternatives and revisions fast. NVIDIA RTX will accelerate how we use rendering and we’ll be able to reinvest that time into the creative process.”  –– Tawfeeq Martin, Technical Innovations, The Mill

“NVIDIA RTX ray tracing hardware is the future – and will define the next decades of GPU rendering. At SIGGRAPH we’re demonstrating performance improvements of 5-8X with Octane 2019’s path tracing kernel – running at 3.2 billion rays/second on NVIDIA’s new Quadro RTX 6000 – compared to 400 millions rays/second on P6000” — Jules Urbach, Chief Executive Officer, Otoy

“Pixar is excited to be working closely with NVIDIA to integrate the OptiX ray tracing acceleration in Quadro RTX into the next generation of high performance RenderMan solutions for animation and VFX.” — David Laur, Director of Product Management, Pixar

“The Quadro RTX is a BEAST!” — Rob Slater, Co-founder, Redshift

“VMD exploits Turing’s RTX acceleration for fully interactive ray tracing of even the most difficult scenes from state-of-the-art research, giving scientists intuitive WYSIWYG publication rendering at high fidelity, all without becoming a graphics professional.” — John Stone, Senior Research Programmer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Our long-term collaboration with NVIDIA on advanced rendering continues with Turing.  The performance improvements change how artists can work with hero assets throughout the pipeline, improving every creative decision along the way.  This is not a speed up, it’s a step up to a new way of working.”– Luca Fascione, Senior. Head of Technology and Research, WETA Digital

“With Viz Virtual Studio, our customers can easily create complex, interactive 3D virtual sets and immersive graphics. Turing will allow them to overcome the challenges of achieving photorealism in a virtual environment. Real-time ray tracing will usher in a new era for how artists and designers create broadcast graphics and beyond.” —  Gerhard Lang, Chief Engineering Officer, Vizrt

The post World’s Top Graphics Software Companies Are Already Adopting NVIDIA RTX Capabilities. Here’s Why. appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.

World’s Top Graphics Software Companies Are Already Adopting NVIDIA RTX Capabilities. Here’s Why. published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[vrheadsets]

Virtual Revolution Turns to SeedingVR For Funding

An increasing number of businesses are turning to virtual reality (VR) for a variety of uses, including prototyping, design and collaboration between colleagues who might be in different countries or on different continents. To meet demand for this kind of technology, Glasgow-based company Virtual Revolution Technologies is turning to SeedingVR in an effort to seek funding to create enterprise-focused multi-user VR.

Virtual Revolution Technologies is aiming to create a massive multi-user VR experience called Eventual VR. The platform will be able to support millions of simultaneous users, creating a space where clients from small businesses or large multinational corporations can create their own custom-tailored VR spaces.

The company says that Eventual VR began as an idea back in January 2017, to create a signle environments that can be used by an unlimited number of participants removing the need for users to travel to meet in a physical space.

Peter Dobson, CEO says: “Shared VR worlds have the potential to disrupt a massive amount of existing tech for businesses, and simplify day-to-day operations. We are building them now. We build custom worlds for any enterprise, organisation or event. We can build a world with millions of simultaneous users for a global concert. Or we can build a world for just a few users such as for a wedding or company meeting.”

“Eventual VR is the only platform currently delivering bespoke virtual reality environments to enterprise clients with limitless users across a range of devices,” Dobson continued, “Including mobile-powered VR. Our technology is developed in-house and can be infinitely scaled thanks to every component being best-in-class and built from the ground up.”

The company is seeking £500,000 (GBP) in investment funding. Interested parties can invest in Virtual Revolution Technologies by visiting the SeedingVR page. The minimum investment amount is £100 and ordinary shares are priced at £100 per share.

For future coverage from the VR industry, keep checking back with VRFocus.

from VRFocus https://ift.tt/2M9ze4B

#VRFocus #vr #virtual reality #canada

[planetarduino]

Desafío STEM 2017/18 in Spain

Telefónica Educación Digital, the education branch of Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica, arranged a contest for students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) for the second year. While the 2016/17 edition of the contest was launched only in Spain, 2017/18’s took place in Latin America as well. Just a week ago, the jury came to the final result for the current Spanish edition.

In the first edition, we in Arduino Education created an educational kit and content to assist a team of mentors that would in turn work with teachers all across Spain in helping them building projects within the limits of the contest. In the 2017/18 edition, we collaborated on a series of webinars for teachers hosted last fall. In both editions, I have acted as one of the jury members. The level of projects is pretty high in average. Considering that many of the participants come from secondary schools, it is quite impressive to see how they embrace the latest technological developments like IoT or VR and make meaningful projects out of those.

The winners of the Spanish version of the contest are invited to a trip to CERN to visit the place where things happen in science: the particle accelerator. Over 1,500 innovations were presented by seven-member teams within the categories established by TED: IoT, Industry 4.0, e-health, digital education, cybersecurity, and other technological projects. From those 1,500, the jury had to work really hard to come up with the final results. If you are among the non-chosen ones, you should know that the gap between the top 50-or-so projects was incredibly tight.

The following list highlights the four teams that were awarded by the jury. I have translated the information about the teams, but the videos from the students are only in Spanish. I hope you will find them as thrilling as I do!

Project 1

Title: AGROTECH

Topic: Livestock automation system

Level: Advance (junior high and vocational education)

Theme: Industry 4.0

School: Instituto de Educación Secundaria LOS OLMOS

City: Albacete

Description: AGROTECH implements a prototype to automate the systems to manage livestock. Using Arduino and a series of sensors, it is possible to monitor and refill the livestock’s food and water, control the light and ventilation of the stables, report alarms like fire or intrusions and eliminate leftovers. All information is captured in real-time and displayed on a website.

Project 2

Title: Virtual Detective (Detective Virtual)

Topic: Virtual reality spaces

Level: High (upper secondary)

Theme: Digital education

School: Colegio María Virgen

City: Madrid

Description: Virtual Detective is a virtual, guided tour to the school. The students have hidden a series of challenges along the way that are related to different school subjects. The virtual space is a gamified version of the class that helps the kids learn in an alternative way.

Project 3

Title: Recycling Is for Everyone (REPT, Reciclar Es Para Todos)

Topic: Other technological projects

Level: Junior (lower secondary)

Theme: Digital education

School: Colegio Santo Domingo

City: Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Description: REPT is a trash bin prototype that can classify the leftovers and will run a lottery among those recycling once the bin has been sent to the recycling station.

Project 4

Title: ALPHAPSI

Topic: VR platform for the diagnosis and treatment of students with special educational needs

Level: Advance

Theme: Digital education

School: Colegio Calasancio Hispalense

City: Sevilla

Description: ALPHAPSI consists of an application made in Processing that connects to a VR head-mounted display capable of detecting the wearer’s head movements. Thanks to a series of tests consisting of tracking an object moving in the VR space, the system can follow the movements and will help generating a diagnosis and treating students with attention disorders.

The Desafío STEM project is an initiative of Telefonica Educacion Digital and their project STEMbyme. 

Desafío STEM 2017/18 in Spain was originally published on PlanetArduino

[takenews-blog1]

Right here’s how Vine alternative v2 will work

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/right-heres-how-vine-alternative-v2-will-work/

Right here’s how Vine alternative v2 will work

First, don’t name it “Vine Two”. Particulars are beginning to emerge about v2, the forthcoming video app constructed to interchange Vine by its former co-founder Dom Hofmann. TechCrunch has realized that v2 has begun reaching out to former Viners and social media star managers in hopes of building ties with some high content material creators to get suggestions and gasoline the app’s eventual launch.

Twitter acquired Vine earlier than its launch in 2013 however by no means gave the short-form video sharing app the assist it deserved. Ultimately, going through financial struggles, Twitter opted to kill off Vine, leaving customers solely with an archive of outdated movies and a Vine Digital camera app for taking pictures however not sharing new movies. Instagram is targeted on images and longer clips as much as 60-seconds, so there’s nonetheless no viable dwelling for looking punchy 6.5 second movies.

Hofmann determined to step up, and since saying a plan to construct a Vine successor in November, has been slowly trickling out plans for v2 scattered by way of the corporate’s not too long ago launched group boards and on his Twitter. “Some issues will likely be very acquainted to individuals who have used vine, however what we’re planning is equally an homage, follow-up, remake, and model new factor” he writes. 

Right here’s what it is advisable to find out about v2, in an inventory we’ll maintain updating as details floor within the run-up to the launch. We final up to date on 1/24 with monetization particulars.

“Please confer with the service solely as v2 or V2” says Hofmann, although he primarily makes use of the lower-case model. He explains that Twitter nonetheless owns Vine and it’s not technically related to v2, so mainly he’s seeking to keep away from being sued. Hofmann tweeted the emblem you see above, which at first look seems very related. However be aware the lighter inexperienced, how the letters are rounded, that they don’t join, and the dearth of a drop shadow. That could possibly be sufficient for v2 to flee trademark infringement, although it’d design one thing extra refined for the launch.

A block of the brilliant inexperienced is the present app icon, http://v2.co is the corporate’s web site that at the moment hosts the boards, and it has arrange the Twitter account @v2app however nothing of benefit has been tweeted. Nonetheless, Hofmann should tread fastidiously, as he in all probability doesn’t need to struggle Twitter in a authorized battle. Even when v2 doesn’t represent infringement, Hofmann’s acquisition and employment deal from Twitter would possibly nonetheless prohibit constructing a copycat.

There’s at the moment “no agency launch date” however Hofmann notes v2 will debut “undoubtedly in 2018, hopefully when it’s heat within the northern hemisphere, so that means a Q2 Spring or Q3 Summer time 2018 launch. The app is at the moment in a “very very very restricted alpha” testing stage, and there’ll finally be each an iOS and Android model. There’s at the moment no open beta or solution to reserve usernames, although Hofmann says that stuff would possibly occur by way of the boards so customers ought to get energetic there if they need first dibs.

Movies will vary from 2 to six.5 seconds, and easily loop time and again. They are often captured along with your cellphone or uploaded out of your digicam roll — allowing clips edited in different apps or skilled software program.

Hofmann says there will likely be no coloration filters, face filters, or geo filters, so that you received’t be capable to create completely manicured selfie movies, don canine ears, or spotlight the place you’re. Prototypes have proven movies captured in vertical full-screen, and customers will be capable to flip to and from selfie mode whereas recording. Not like Vine, v2 will likely be a bit stricter about copyrighted content material and take down movies that embody main document label music or film scene if it receives a DMCA discover. On the plus aspect, whether or not by way of elective watermarks or one other answer, v2 needs to forestall folks from stealing and reposting one another’s movies.

pic.twitter.com/dH8QIWuJIi

— dom hofmann (@dhof) January 18, 2018

In v2, “on the very least, there will likely be a chronological timeline” says Hofmann. Nonetheless, there’s more likely to be an algorithmically filtered feed or ‘Well-liked’/’Discover’ web page to point out you probably the most finest and most related posts as effectively. Hofmann tweeted the thought of including a “A ‘nope’ button that permits you to form your timeline”. Meaning relatively than simply exhibiting extra of what you Like or watch, v2 can steer away from movies or artists that annoy you.

v2 will take a stricter method to moderation than Vine. Hofmann writes “It’s okay to disagree with or be essential of somebody’s work, however identify calling, facetious attitudes, or some other type of oblique harassment received’t be tolerated.” That might give the app a extra constructive vibe, assist retain content material makers, and make it a extra welcoming place to share for folks of all backgrounds over age 13. In reality, v2 will provide the power to pick out your gender pronouns.

Vine’s outdated classes

You’ll be capable to disable feedback on a per-post foundation together with different controls. v2 will likely be considerably lenient about letting your showcase hyperlinks to your different art work or social presences, with Hofmann noting “spam is the primary situation, however I promise we’re going to be so much extra open on this than instagram/fb”. The group continues to be making a call about the place to attract the road on nudity, erotica, and offensive content material. Although Hofmann writes “i personally don’t have an issue with it”, he plans to make use of a mixture of workers moderation and group flagging to maintain the app clear.

And to stoke collaboration between content material creators that v2 calls “artists”, there’s a Workforce characteristic. “A Workforce’s profile web page will record its members, and the members have the power to advertise and repost Workforce posts to their very own timeline (even with alternate captions)” Hofmann explains. The collaboration conduct, the place artists seem in and promote one another’s movies, was popularized on Vine since movies took so little time to create and plenty of artists lived shut to one another in LA. The team-ups led to a few of the app’s most inventive content material, so v2 is hoping to facilitate co-starring.

One massive downside with the unique Vine was there was no means for creators to earn cash instantly from the app. They needed to work with outdoors sponsorship companies or transfer to different apps like YouTube that paid an advert income share. With v2, Hoffman writes “I would like everybody who needs to earn cash on v2 to have that chance. There are many concepts about learn how to finest deal with that, nevertheless it’s not but time to decide.” He additionally confirmed our scoop that he’s been reaching out to content material creators for suggestions and relationships, noting that “Proper now we’re in data gathering mode, and a part of which means speaking to folks. On the boards, on Twitter, on calls, and in individual.”

v2’s Dom Hofmann

Earlier than getting critical about v2, Hofmann was engaged on Interspace, which is making some mysterious and trippy 3D/VR/AR world factor. In response as to whether he’d abandon v2, this week he wrote that “I run one other startup which is actually my ‘day job’, so i’m fairly fulfilled on that entrance. v2 is being constructed out of affection and that i’d like for each the service and my involvement with it to stay on for a very long time.”

That additionally means retaining management, relatively than handing it off to company overlords for a fast pay-day. These excited for a revival of their favourite app will likely be heartened to know Hofmann says “there are not any plans to promote v2. By no means say by no means, nevertheless it’s nowhere near consideration proper now.”

Vine’s shutdown was met with a worldwide outpouring of assist and nostalgia. However the stars that made their names on Vine shortly moved on to YouTube and Instagram, and their audiences adopted. Influencers have grown extra savvy, with a give attention to viewers dimension and monetization the place YouTube guidelines, even regardless of current modifications.

Loads of former customers and smaller Vine stars that by no means made the leap elsewhere are longing for v2. However a social media expertise supervisor advised me they’d relatively see their purchasers add 1 million subscribers on YouTube or Instagram than 5 and even 10 million on v2, as a result of nobody needs to “begin from scratch” and “Instagram and YouTube are right here to remain.” A number of social content material execs advised me that it’s all about how v2 treats creators, and that was what Hofmann and his Vine co-founders have been by no means good at.

v2 might want to recruit nice content material that may’t be discovered elsewhere, stars who ship their followers, and loads of loyal customers to outlive. v2’s rivals are a lot stronger now than when Vine launched. Gaining traction on this social app panorama is like capturing lightning in a bottle, and Hofmann should make lightning strike twice.

The most effective factor about Vine was that there have been no information hyperlinks, few boring selfies, and many creativity. It was a spot to loosen up and be entertained with infinite comedy, artwork, absurdity, and micro-storytelling. In an age the place social media is getting a bit too critical and intense, v2 may carry the enjoyment again to taking part in round in your cellphone.

[projectquhere]

This is the prototype of quHere, my senior project in digital media, I presented at the Senior Project class’ midterm demo session. 

QuHere is a virtual reality experience usable in Google Cardboard, as previously explained on this process blog. While this video was recorded on my laptop, the current build works using a laptop and a mouse or on any android device within Google Cardboard.

I managed to get the camera working with gaze input in a way that is comfortable for users in VR. Additionally, the cardboard button (or mouse, in this video) is used to trigger events. When pressed while the gaze is centered on an object (which is highlighted blue when stared at), two buttons appear. The circular button changes the object in that location, and the square button moves the player near that object.

I’m very proud to be at this stage - as far as I’m concerned, quHere has its first functioning prototype. There are four ways in which I aim to improve it, however.

1) Quantity and quality of content

- The mechanics behind the experience work. Now I need to make more 3D models and focus on a consistent aesthetic for more personalization options and to make the experience feel more realistic despite being low-poly.

2) Polish

- Low-poly particle effects, sounds, and glow effects would make the experience less jarring. Making the room look more lived-in (better floor texture, a baseboard, more objects, windows, etc.) could also make the experience better.

- Real buttons not only need to be implemented, but they need to be positioned better. I have a basic script to make them always face the player, but that matters little when they move through walls.

3) Test, test, test!

-Testing will allow me to best understand the users’ desire for movement. I’ve been advised to use jump cuts because movement on rails can cause motion sickness. I want to test whether these cuts are good and to see where players want to be able to move.

-Testing will allow me to create UI that matches the gamefeel and to determine if I need to use new camera angles (different player height, top-down for editing, etc.)

4) Multiple modes with a main menu

-Holding down the cardboard button should bring up a main menu with three options: Editor mode, Free mode, and Save Scene. Editor mode is this prototype. Free mode would allow you to look at objects and move around the scene without being able to edit anything (which removes the highlight effect as well). Save scene would save the current layout of the room so that when the app is re-loaded, it accesses that layout.