Oculus, the Facebook-owned virtual reality company, is taking it upon themselves to enhance public libraries with its own educational initiative that will place 100 VR head-mounted displays in 90 California libraries. READ MORE: Your next trip to the library could include an Oculus Rift | engadget
Tag Archives: virtual reality
The Untold Story of Magic Leap, the World’s Most Secretive Startup | WIRED #VR #virtualreality #AR #augmentedreality #mixedreality #MR #tech
In depth, informative long form post on all aspects of AR, MR, VR and Magic Leap.
Virtual reality is posed to become a fundamental technology, and outfits like Magic Leap have an opportunity to become some of the largest companies ever. READ: The Untold Story of Magic Leap, the World’s Most Secretive Startup | WIRED
In #Sweden, McDonald’s Happy Meals come with #VR goggles | engadget #virtualreality #tech #gadgets #promotions #marketing
Swedish kids (and adults) can get a toy much sweeter than Barbies and Hot Wheels with their Happy Meals this month. Over the weekends of March 5th and March 12th, 14 McDonald’s outlets in Sweden are bundling real, working virtual reality headsets with their Happy Meal boxes. In fact, the boxes themselves were designed to transform into “Happy Goggles.” You just have to cut on the dotted line, fold it a bit, slip in the goggles and your phone to get something similar to Google Cardboard. READ MORE: In Sweden, McDonald’s Happy Meals come with VR goggles | engadget
IBM’s #supercomputer #Watson will power an #online, #anime #VR game | engadget #gaming #MMPOG #MMPORG #virtualreality
It’s a bit odd that no one’s thought to fuse the virtual-reality, role-playing game centric anime Sword Art Online into a proper VR experience before now, but that’s the future we live in. No worries though, because IBM is using (Japanese) its Watson Cognitive Computing tech and SoftLayer cloud computing for Sword Art Online: The Beginning. It’s a massively multiplayer VR game, of course, and perhaps other details will clear themselves up come a Tokyo-based event running from March 18th to the 20th…
READ MORE: IBM’s supercomputer will power an online, anime VR game | engadget
#Microsoft Researchers Test Multi-Person Mixed #VR | MIT Technology Review #virtualreality #tech #research #interactive #augmented #gaming
Researchers in Jaron Lanier’s lab at Microsoft are exploring ways for people to share the experience of mixed reality. READ MORE: Microsoft Researchers Test Multi-Person Mixed Reality | MIT Technology Review
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Murder #Mystery Could Be First #VR Feature #Film | Fast Company #virtualreality
Behold MansLaughter, the marriage of virtual reality, murder mystery, choose-your-own-adventure, and the visual style of George Lucas’s famous dystopian film, THX 1138.
Made specifically for Samsung’s virtual reality headset, the Gear VR, MansLaughter is billed as the first-ever VR feature film. The brainchild of filmmaker David Marlett, the movie brings viewers into the world of a cold-blooded killer, letting them choose how they watch the story unfold in a unique way made possible only because of VR. READ MORE: Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Murder Mystery Could Be First VR Feature Film | Fast Company | Business + Innovation.
The Key to #Digital #Learning? Bring It Into the Real World | WIRED #kids #education #museums #interactive
IF YOU WANT to teach your kid about ecology, sustainability, or the future of interactive education, take them to the New York Hall of Science and head for the giant virtual waterfall.
The massive digital faucet feeds the ecosystems of Connected Worlds, a cutting-edge installation that aims to teach youngsters about environmental science by immersing them in it. It’s an interactive simulation big enough to walk around inside—virtual reality that’s not piped into a headset but projected onto a real physical space.
Kids can shape the environment through a clever combination of physical and digital interaction. READ MORE:Â The Key to Digital Learning? Bring It Into the Real World | WIRED.
16 #Trends That Will Define The Future Of #VideoGames | The Guardian #gaming #tech
Super-interesting! If you are a fan of coding camps and makerspaces this would be a good article to read to get an idea of what’s on the horizon in gaming development, gaming innovations and interactive/social gaming.
From the rise of gamer parents to transparent game design, a step-by-step prediction of how games will be made over the next five years. READ:Â 16 trends that will define the future of video games | Technology | The Guardian
Can These Tiny #Robots Teach Fourth Graders How To Code? | Fast Company #coding #kids #tech #makerspaces
I’m in a laboratory at Drexel University watching a remote-controlled robot do a spastic breakdance across the floor. The fist-sized, brightly colored bot looks simple enough: It has two wheels, two antennae, and what appears to be a friendly face. But it has a mission much bigger and more ambitious than its tiny form factor: This thing wants to teach kids how to become programmers.
This freewheeling toy android comes from a young startup called LocoRobo. Its moves are set using a mobile app that allows the user to program simple actions: go forward, accelerate, spin around, stop. And while plenty of kids would be content to play with a smartphone-controlled toy robot, LocoRobo wants to let them dig much deeper into the code and sensors that make it work. READ MORE:Â Can These Tiny Robots Teach Fourth Graders How To Code? | Fast Company | Business + Innovation.
‘Her Story’ is a Compelling New Type of #Interactive #Storytelling | Ars Technica #video #gaming #transmedia
To anyone who was paying attention to video games in the mid-’90s, the term “FMV game” probably still inspires snorts of derision. The handful of titles that shoehorned simple gameplay on top of highly compressed full-motion video (FMV) usually suffered from low-quality sound and images, poor production values, limited interaction options, and ponderous repetition of a few short video clips through multiple plays. The results ranged from mediocre at the high end to some of the worst games ever made at the low end. By the end of the ’90s, filmed, live-action video clips gave way to polygons and animated, pre-rendered sprites as the gameplay and story-telling engine of choice.
But just as failed ’90s experiments in virtual reality are leading to a resurgence in the form today, the FMV gaming failures of decades past are finally being explored with the technology and game-design advancements of today. Her Story is proof that FMV games don’t have to be awful and that filming actors on a set could be a criminally underexplored form for interactive storytelling. READ MORE:Â Her Story is a compelling new type of interactive storytelling | Ars Technica.
infophile 