Virtual & Augmented Reality and 3D - Page 151

The co-founder and developer of Oculus VR, Andrew Scott Reisse, has been killed in a police chase in California. Reisse was not part of the police chase, but was unfortunately hit by a car at a crosswalk when police stopped to investigate suspicious activity a couple of blocks away, which lead to his death.

After the police pulled three suspects over, including 21-year-old Victor Sanchez, who fired at police and then fled in a white Dodge Charger. Their car hit several other cars and went through multiple red lights, with one of the red lights being where Reisse was unfortunately crossing, and he was hit. All of the suspects were eventually apprehended and are currently in police custody with an investigation ongoing.

Oculus VR released an official statement, which is below:

I wish this were me doing the video, but I'll continue to dream for now. The team at Oculus have received their first Rift off the production line, and have done a nice unboxing video for the world.

They've also taken the time to announce through the Oculus blog that developer kits will begin shipping to the earliest Kickstarter backers by March 29. Once the dev kit ships to the backer, they'll receive an e-mail confirmation so that they can track their Rift as it is shipping to their door. Oculus expect to deliver between 1000-1500 units per week until they've fulfilled all of their orders.

The Oculus Rift developer kit comes with a plethora of goodies, including:

Valve have quite the announcement today, telling the world that Team Fortress 2 will get a new mode this week - "VR Mode" for Oculus Rift, the superstar VR headset. This means that people who own the development kit of Oculus' VR headset can play Team Fortress in virtual reality.

Engadget have an interview with Joe Ludwig, one of the engineers in Valve working with Team Fortress 2's VR Mode. The interview can be seen here. The good news doesn't stop there! What good is a new mode if we don't have a new exclusive had in the game? The Oculus Rift development kit is now a wearable item within the game! Valve has been even more generous, donating Rift hats to the Oculus developer community - so if you backed the Kickstarter campaign at any level at all, or pre-ordered one of the Rift developer kits from Oculus' website before April 1, 2013, you'll receive a code to redeem your own TF2 Oculus dev kit hat.

Now the big question - how long until we see Rift support added to other games? In Engadget's interview with Joe Ludwig, he says that TF2's VR Mode is a big test, to see how the community accepts it. Obviously Oculus' Rift headset won't be available to the consumer market until later in the year, so hopefully we see some Steam Box support, and maybe some Half-Life 3 launch at E3 with Rift support? Or am I asking too much there?

If there's one bit of technology kit I'm the most excited for, it would be a huge tie between Google Glass, and Oculus' Rift VR headset. News is leaking out now that head of DICE's Frostbite creative team, Frank Vitz, is eager to get his hands on Oculus Rift, and test it out on the powerful graphics engine.

All of this started when an MTBS3D (Meant to be Seen) forum member found an intern job posting by EA's DICE, which was looking for someone to work on next-generation VR technology. The job posting specifically talked about investigating and building support into the Frostbite engine for the Oculus Rift headset. MTBS3D president, Neil Schneider, e-mailed Vitz as he thought he might have something to do with the job posting.

He was right, with Vitz admitting so in an e-mail reply. Vitz gave Schneider permission to post the e-mail exchange on his site with details about what DICE would like to do with the Oculus Rift headset. Vitz also said that he has one of the very first Rift developer kits heading to him later this month, and is aware of at least four kits on order within their internal community. Vitz added that there are multiple titles being worked on that would be great for Rift, but noted that it would be up to each individually team to make sure their project works in stereoscopic 3D, and with Oculus' Rift VR headset.

CES 2013 - Our own Trace Hagan and Chad Sebring had the idea earlier today to drop a new Corsair Survivor 16GB pen drive from their hotel room in Las Vegas at CES 2013 to see if the drive would actually survive. What else do you do when CES is over? Have some fun!

As you can see in the video above, it was a big drop for the fairly weighty device, but it did indeed survive. Chris Ramseyer was on the ground clearing the area for safety. He straight away plugged in the drive to test it, and it popped up in Windows and showed the data which was saved on it before the drop.

Tomorrow Trace Hagan is going to attempt to take the test a little more extreme - stay tuned for another video if all goes to plan!

Verizon has just filed a very creepy patent, which is for a DVR that would be capable of recording what happens in your living room. Not just audio, but video, too. Verizon say that the technology could help provide targeted ads for whatever you might be doing in your living room.

So, if you were jumping around doing Zumba for example, the DVR would provide ads for fitness. If you were sitting down talking to a friend about your latest Johnnie Walker Blue Label, it would serve up ads on alcohol or other related areas. The other problem is that Verizon aren't the only ones who are looking at doing this, or who have already filed patents for this type of creepy DVR tech.

Comcast patented a similar technology back in 2008, which recommended content based on people that it recognized in the room, and Google proposed a patent for Google TV that would feature audio and video recorders that would work out how many people were in the room watching TV. Verizon's patent was published just last week, but was filed in May 2011. It gets worse: Verizon provides two examples of the context-sensitive DVR's use in a couple's living room - where sounds of an argument would throw up ads for marriage counselling, while sounds of "cuddling" would provide ads for contraceptives.

If there's anything us parents want to do, it's keep our kids as safe as humanly possible - well, one dad has taken this step in a technologically driven direction for a change.

Paul Wallich would normally walk his son to the bus stop near their house - a 400m journey each and everyday. He did this to make sure his son safely got onto the bus and was on his way to school. 400m isn't a huge distance, but it can be an annoyance during the winter, or when he was super busy.

Wallich decided there had to be a way around this, and to watch his son get escorted to school from the comfort of his warm home. Wallich built a quadrocopter that sports a camera that streams a live feed directly to his PC. This process wasn't too hard, as quadrocopter kits are available at most hobby and electronics specialty shops.

The makers behind the Rift head-mounted VR device, Oculus, have just come out and disappointed thousands of people across the world. Oculus' Rift was meant to see the release of a developer kit before Christmas, but now it has been pushed back four months into 2013.

The Rift's developer kit will be released in April, and has been delayed due to an overwhelming response:

I'm salivating at the thought of being able to use Google's Project Glass, but it looks like Microsoft have just begun throwing rumors out there that they are too, working on their own augmented reality glasses.

The Redmond-based OS giant applied for a patent back in May of 2011 for the glasses, which means that development for the new technology should be well into its life by now. Microsoft's glasses are unique in the way that instead of using a tiny transparent display, Microsoft's glasses will actually use full eye glass.

Microsoft's product will most likely end up being made more for specific events, rather than everyday use. Their glasses will be capable of displaying text, images and video directly in front of you - ideal for sporting events or a concert. There's not much else known about their glasses, but I'm sure we should hopefully hear more at CES in Las Vegas in January 2013.

Fans of augmented reality are excited for Google's upcoming Project Glass, which aims to put a computer into a wearable pair of glasses. Those glasses will be capable of overlaying information as wearers walk around cities, take hands-free pictures, and all kinds of other cool stuff that we can't even fathom yet.

Unfortunately, it looks like they still are a few years off. Google originally announced the glasses back in June. They could be preordered for $1,500, for which purchasers got a plaque with their queue number on it. Google isn't saying when the glasses will be completed or when they will be released, though Sergey Brin has worn them out in public.

TIME magazine may have let slip some information that puts a date on the release. According to their "Best Inventions of the Year 2012" column, TIME provides the date that we will have them by as 2014. "Consumers should be able to buy Google Glass by 2014." They don't provide a source or explanation for the time frame, but we're sure they have checked up on that date with people in the know.