Extended Reality (XR) - Page 77

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.

With the Nintendo Wii U launching yesterday, the eighth generation of video game consoles has officially begun. Rumors over the past year have speculated both Microsoft and Sony will unveil their next-generation consoles at E3 2013. But some new rumors for the next Xbox surfaced over the weekend that offer an interesting look into Microsoft's gaming future if they turn out to be true.

It's been two years since Microsoft introduced the Kinect, which is why the company is planning to introduce a new and improved Kinect 2.0 when the next Xbox is unveiled. Kinect 2.0 will improve on the original Kinect's technology as it'll be more accurate, able to track four players at one time, better voice recognition and stereo imaging.

A Blu-ray drive will also be available in the next Xbox, which is certainly a reason to be excited about seeing as one of the biggest mistakes Microsoft made with the Xbox 360 is sticking to a DVD-format for its discs.

Alright, so Oculus Rift just got a whole lot more exciting today, with the announcement that Hawken would support the VR headset when it's released on December 12. During an interview with Forbes, publisher Meteor Entertainment's Mark Long talked of why Oculus Rift and Hawken are a match made in heaven:

Lag with the VR headset was also discussed, where Long addressed concerns saying that the Unreal Engine has ways of getting around it:

FMS 2012 - Marvell has revealed their new DragonFly NVRAM solution for servers at the Flash Memory Summit.

As we can see this card comes in a small package and sports a PCIe Gen2x8 connection to the host.

Getting down under the cover we can see some of the components that allow the DragonFly to reach its impressive specifications of 200K+ IOPS, 3.2GBps and .22us latency. The DragonFly connects to SSDs via a typical SFF connector, and acts as a front end for the attached storage. The data is cached to the DRAM chip that is located towards the top right of the card. The battery near the bottom is used to write the data cached into ram to the NAND, on the rear of the card, in the event of power failure.

Another Apple-related RumorTT post, but this time it's not about their next-gen iPhone, sales, iPad, or their TV. This post is about the Cupertino-based company's vision of a set-top box, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Apple look to want to feature a cloud-based DVR functionality, and an iPad-like interface. The features are said to be summed up into four basic details:

An iPad-like interface doesn't sound too strange, it's something I would actually totally expect. I personally think they should have an option when you buy the set-top box (or TV), if you're an owner of an iPhone, iPad or iPod (or any iOS-based device) then you should be able to download an application that would act as a remote, iRemote? Alternatively, or additionally, there should be an iOS-based touchscreen controller you should be able to purchase.

Cloud DVR? This sounds like iTunes on steroids, but would be great for customers who want a super-easy way of catching up on TV, or movies. Social features, well, considering iOS sports Twitter and Facebook deeply in iOS and OSX in the near future, with the former deeply integrated now, this should be another day-one feature of the STB. Apple still have a lot of work on the business side of things before something like this could take off.

I don't get excited for technology that often anymore, but it looks like I'm going to have to put that aside for now because Oculus' latest project Rift, currently on Kickstarer, will supposedly deliver "truly immersive virtual reality". Oculus Rift, according to the guys and girls behind it "is a new virtual reality (VR) headset designed specifically for video games that will change the way you think about gaming forever."

Rift sports a wide field of view, high resolution display and ultra-low latency head tracking. The team is raising money on Kickstarter where they can build development kits for the unit, meaning that they can get the Rift into developer's hands, quicker. The team note that VR has been stagnant for quite a while, and in order to provide believable immersion, you'd be looking at $20,000 or more. Oculus want to change that up with Rift, which is designed to "maximise immersion, comfort and pure, uninhibited fun", all while sitting at a price that is affordable to everyone.

Oculus have raised just over $1.2 million from 5,113 backers, and have 26 days to go. I'll be making a pledge in the next few days, this project is looking to be great for the gaming community.

Google's Project Glass augmented reality wonder device may be on everyone's wish lists for Christmas 2013, but that is a fair while away. Olympus have just announced their own prototype of a glasses-mounted heads-up display, the MEG 4.0.

Olympus have reportedly been working on wearable displays for a few years now, but considering the fan fare Google received and how they're moving the technology closer to consumers, the timing seems perfect for Olympus to unveil their product. Olympus' MEG 4.0 floats a 320x240 screen above the user's regular eye-line and hooks up through Bluetooth to a nearby smart device. MEG 4.0 weighs around 30g and has a decent 8-hour battery life in intermittent display mode that will automatically turn on the display every 3 minutes for just 15 seconds only.

MEG 4.0 features a built-in accelerometer that detects the position of the user's head and reacts accordingly. One major thing Olympus' MEG 4.0 doesn't include is a camera, which is something that Google's Project Glass sports, and will most likely be one of the strong points of Google's product versus Olmypus' offering. At the moment, Olympus haven't hinted at pricing, or availability, and there's no video demonstration of their technology, either.

Advancements in 3D are made every day. No longer do users have to suffer through those red and cyan glasses to watch 3D movies. Some implementations nowadays, like the Nintendo 3DS, don't require any fancy headgear at all. It seems as though the future of 3D isn't that far off and the Star Trek holodeck technology may no longer remain a fantasy.

Sharp Labs Europe are leading the development of a new communication technology that will help to make 3D images indistinguishable from reality by using holographic technology. Some brush off 3D as just a gimmick, but others see it as just the first step. "The ultimate goal is to make a holographic display and what I mean by that is a display that shows images that are indistinguishable from reality," Mather says.

The first step, however, is to make it as commonplace as driving. "I think a sensible target is for 3D displays to become a natural part of modern life," Mather explains to Humans Invent. "Home cinema systems showing 3D movies, computer games played in an immersive environment and holiday photos presented with depth."

Computex 2012 - I'm sure you're aware of our relationship with NVIDIA, and yesterday we walked through their stand in Nangang at Computex. I noticed that my badge was getting looked at by virtually everyone, so I don't know if the staff were told to look out for certain media, but it felt like it. I thought I'd ask for a t-shirt, lanyard, etc - as I'm still a fan of the company, but all I got was a lanyard. We decided to visit again today, and got the same looks, but had more time there as it wasn't so wall-to-wall crazy busy. First up we have the GEFORCE GTX 680 and some awards it won.

Next up we hit the ASUS ROG PCs, where there was a StarCraft II session happening with some pro-gamers, check out the shots below.

A nice panoramic so you can get a feel of the scale of the event itself.

That small little project being worked on by Google is gathering more publicity. In a recent interview with California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, Sergey allowed Newsom to put the glasses on to see a picture that Sergey had taken with the glasses. When asked, Sergey wouldn't say how the picture was taken, but we do now know that there is a touchpad on the side behind the display.

In the picture above, you can see Mr. Brin operating the touchpad with his finger while looking for the picture he had taken previously. After being found, Newsom got to wear the glasses and commented on them: "You can easily forget you have them on, and sense the capacity of use in the future."

Newsom expressed that he was impressed with the quality of the image taken, especially since the stage isn't ideal for demoing a display. He even commented that the "image was remarkably clear." Brin also let everyone know that those are a rough prototype: "I have some hopes to maybe get it out sometime next year, but that's still a little bit of a hope."

Google is sure throwing quite a bit of money and support at the Project Glass augmented reality glasses. They are trying to cram so much technology into a tiny, and hopefully fashionable, package that they should become every geek's dream gadget. We still don't know much about the project other than it's being publicly tested by Google executives.

We've seen some pictures released that have been taken using the glasses and, to be honest, they aren't that great. Most modern smartphones could easily outpace the resolution and quality, but the glasses do have one advantage: Point-of-view. Pictures can be taken hands-free and are from the perspective of the wearer.

Google has now released a 15-second video that was taken while the user was jumping on a trampoline. This really is where these glasses start to shine. It would have been near impossible to take a video like this without these glasses. The quality of the video isn't stunning by any means, but for users who video blog their lives, these glasses are an invaluable piece of technology.