10 Tools To Bring Virtual Reality To Life
VR and AR systems have begun to ship. But before the headset comes content creation. Here's a look at 10 tools that will shape the virtual world.
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Of all the virtual reality technology emerging from labs or on the horizon, Magic Leap appears to be the most mesmerizing. Earlier this week, the secretive company, which has raised over a billion in funding from Google and venture capital firms, released a video purporting to show its augmented reality technology without any special effects or enhancements.
The video depicts computer interface menus that display message notifications and charts hovering in the air, a 3D topographical map of Mount Everest resting on a desk, shopping for shoes online while viewing the shoes as they rotate in 3D, and a luminous school of jellyfish passing overhead in an office.
It's more or less the vision of computing depicted in recent movies like Iron Man, not to mention many of the science fiction films and television shows that came before.
However, it's still science fiction in the sense that Magic Leap hasn't released anything yet. But its AR technology looks more promising than the first wave of VR headsets, which are profoundly anti-social despite what Mark Zuckerberg and others argue.
VR presents computer-generated or prerecorded images while shutting out the real world. That's why VR headsets conceal the wearer's eyes. But in so doing, they isolate the wearer.
Facebook at its recent F8 conference pushed back against this perception with a demonstration of social VR, in which people occupy the same virtual environment and can see each other's avatars. But it's not the same as being in the same physical space and interacting. It's an entertaining substitute.
AR combines computer graphics with real-world scenes. Though Magic Leap has yet to reveal details about its hardware, the company's system appears to involve a see-through lens and light projected into the subject's eyes.
AR is superior to VR because it encompasses VR. It allows for fully virtual worlds plus all sort of interesting applications that require contact with the real world, like assisted surgery. VR systems can fake physical movement through 360-degree treadmills and harnesses. But AR allows actual navigation in the world.
A recent Wired article refers to Magic Leap's technology as mixed reality, or MR. It suggests this is distinct from augmented reality because the graphics in mixed reality are integrated with the viewer's environment. Thus, a mixed reality ball would be hidden from view if behind a real sofa. This is an unnecessary distinction because 3D occlusion -- when one object hides another -- can be programmed into an AR environment. AR needn't be narrowly defined as a graphics layer placed on top of the real world.
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In fact, it's the programmatic interaction between synthetic graphics and real objects that will make AR/MR truly shine. If the technology is to avoid the problem with 3D movies -- the fact that seeing films in three dimensions has no meaningful effect on the emotional impact or narrative quality of the story -- it must do more than be eye candy.
A virtual ball introduced into the real world will have to exhibit appropriate physics. If thrown against a real cushion, it will have bounce in a way that makes sense and is different than if it had been thrown against a stone wall. It will take a few years before 3D content creation tools and AR/MR devices get this right.
During that time, sales of VR/AR devices are expected to skyrocket. On Thursday, IDC predicted that VR/MR devices will rise from 9.6 million units this year, worth an estimated $2.3 billion, to 64.8 million units by 2020.
But there's no need to wait. People are already rushing to create virtual, augmented, and mixed reality content. What follows is a glimpse of the spectacle taking shape around us and of the tools that are redefining what we see. Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments section below.
This screenshot from Magic Leap's "A New Morning" video provides a sense of what computing could look like in a few years: a scene from Minority Report. What remains to be seen is whether interacting with projected images turns out to be more efficient than mouse- or keyboard-driven interaction. If registering a touch event with a hovering image turns out to take more effort than tabbing through a menu, maybe the spectacle of hovering graphics won't be worth it.
Eager to convince people that virtual worlds have more to offer than Warcraft avatars and button mashing, Google has introduced Tilt Brush, an application for painting within virtual environments. Available through Steam, in conjunction with any HTC Vive headset, it's virtually awesome.
Though this looks like augmented reality, it's reality augmented by light. This is a long-exposure photograph that captured the movement of a Pixelstick. By waving a Pixelstick in front of an open aperture, a photographer can create images that look like they were enhanced using software.
The FLIR ONE is a smartphone camera attachment that can capture thermal images. It looks like a window into a virtual world, but the heat it sees is real. This type of technology has consequences in the real world, like revealing cheating in bike racing.
Lytro makes cameras capable of capturing not only the intensity of light, as traditional photographic cameras do, but also the direction of the light rays in the scene. This provides depth-of-field information that can be used to refocus images, separate objects from backgrounds, and create composite images more easily than conventional methods can. The Lytro Cinema system is set to reshape how visual effects are created in movies and the Lytro Immerge system promises to do the same for VR content creation.
To make it easier for people to create and share the sort of panoramic content that suits VR headsets, Facebook designed the Surround 360 camera. This summer, Facebook says it will make the specifications and image sticking software code available to the public, so anyone (with engineering chops) can build one.
If Facebook's Surround 360 camera seems like overkill, there's always LucidCam, which offers 180 degrees less for $400 (pre-order). This little stereoscopic camera produces 180-degree images and videos that can be viewed using Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, or any VR headset in between.
Samsung's entry into the world of panoramic cameras is the Gear 360, a dual-lens camera that produces vivid images and connects via Bluetooth and WiFi Direct. Sorry, Apple fans. This one is Windows-only.
Nokia plans to ship Ozo, its take on the virtual reality camera, to select partners by Q2. At $60,000, it's not intended for consumers. Rather, it's aimed at broadcasters who want to transmit live 360-degree video to however many people happen to have the necessary VR hardware.
You may have thought you'd seen the last of bulky workstations and dust bunnies clinging to cables. But most PCs in the market today lack the computational might to handle VR smoothly. If you want to view VR or create it, you're going to need a capable CPU and graphics card. That's where the latest Dell Precision workstations come in. The future sometimes looks a lot like the past.
You may have thought you'd seen the last of bulky workstations and dust bunnies clinging to cables. But most PCs in the market today lack the computational might to handle VR smoothly. If you want to view VR or create it, you're going to need a capable CPU and graphics card. That's where the latest Dell Precision workstations come in. The future sometimes looks a lot like the past.
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