Author Archives: mehopper

DIY VR

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It has been a strange week full of ups and downs. Just one of the downs, although by no means the worst, was attending an event where I thought I was going to come back with some fantastic, juicy new tidbits to share about what’s hot in “frontier technologies” like AR/VR. Sadly, what actually happened was it became abysmally apparent how drastic the gap is between what’s already possible, as in things as basic as what I share on Cosma 3D, and what even “experts” seem to be aware of right now. There was very little overlap. Needless to say, this does not bode well for the prospects of the VR/AR industry.

On the other hand, a key new good development this week was that Mark Zuckerberg finally started to show-off why he spent that $2bn on Oculus. It was not nearly as frivolous nor clueless as some people would have you believe. Specifically, Facebook made a splash by saying that they are now going to feature 360-degree video ads on Facebook. The fact they would be doing this has been known for awhile, but now they ARE actually doing it. Here are a few articles about the move.

Facebook Unleashes VR-Style 360 Videos For Ads And iOS (Josh Constine, Tech Crunch)
See the First 360-Degree Video Ads on Facebook (Tim Peterson, Advertising Age)
AT&T, Samsung, Nestle Among Brands Test New Format

Here is an excellent video that nicely recaps where things are so far.

Facebook Brings 360-degree Videos to iPhone and Gear VR

Okay, ironically, the video says there are no ads on the Gear VR — that is true. They are only on Facebook news feeds (for now, anyway). Here is a web page about this new 360-degree ad feature: 360 Video (Facebook).

So that’s great. You can now see 360-degree ads on your Facebook news feed. I’m pretty sure most of you are NOT celebrating this latest development. Then again, look more carefully and you will notice that YOU can also create and publish your own 360-degree videos. As far as the purposes of this site go, the later is by far the more important thing, because to go along with the new ability to publish your 360-degree videos (evil ads or otherwise), Facebook just published some helpful resources about how to get started making your own 360-degree videos. Bravo!
Learning Resources: Get started with 360 Video today (Facebook)
Best Practices for Immersive Storytelling (Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin, Facebook) (pdf)
360 Video Upload Guide (Facebook) (pdf)

There you have it. It is pretty much possible to use almost any mobile phone to record and publish 360-degree photos and videos directly to both YouTube and Facebook fully tagged with searchable metadata like geo-codes, names, dates and what-not. These videos will be able to be seen on Google Cardboard and/or Gear VR. Furthermore, the process is so simple that school kids can do it (and probably have been using their phones to share Photo Spheres and related media on Google Street View for over a year or so already).

The resources Facebook posted, as well as seeing a “need” based on my unfortunate experiences at the aforementioned event, led me to finally post a long overdue page on Cosma 3D about DIY 3D/360/VR photos and videos.

Please enjoy and, by all means, share this page!
https://cosma3d.wordpress.com/diy/

Reviewers

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If you download the current version of the New Computer Museum, Virtual Edition, you will quickly see that it is definitely a “draft.” There are a lot of “Under Construction” signs and only half of the galleries are there yet. The good news is that there will be a new, more robust version published in late November. In the meantime, we are looking for reviewers. If you are interested, please let us know by email at info@newcomputermuseum.org.

Google VR

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Over the last week a lot of things happened on the VR front. Basically, Google made a play to take the market early and fast, and it just might work. First, they more or less doubled the number of low-end VR head-sets in the world by sending Google Cardboard to every New York Times subscriber. Simultaneously, in a carefully choreographed publicity move, they also rolled out the news that there’s a boatload more content to see because of upgrades to their YouTube 360º video application. Rather than run the risk of some serious over-repeating and cross-posting, you can find out more about all of this through a series of recent posts over on Cosma 3D.

Workshops!

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Digital Den developed and maintains Cosma 3D, an extensive catalog of the best 3D and VR content available, and we also have a collection of the latest VR headsets to view it. Now we will bring that collection and our expertise to one of your events!

You’re going to be hearing a lot about 3D and VR over the next few months. We can help you learn what it is all about, navigate the sometimes confusing and competing options, and then get you set up to hit the ground running with all of the new 3D and VR content!   Here’s just a sample of what we can bring to you.

We can also tell you how to get set up so that you, or your students, can author your own 3D and VR media. Check out our own Cosma 3D Experience Gallery to get a better sense of all of the content, hardware and expertise that we can share with you.

Please contact us if you would like Digital Den to bring our demonstrations of our applications and exhibits to one of your upcoming events! info@digital-den.org

3D Museum!

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Digital Den has developed a “virtual edition” of the New Computer Museum using Unity3D.

Welcome Area, New Computer Museum v. 1.5

Welcome Area, New Computer Museum v. 1.5

Digital Den also hosted The New Computer Museum, Virtual Edition release party in Cambridge on Sunday, October 18th.

New Computer Museum Virtual Edition Release

New Computer Museum Virtual Edition release party!

You can download the application from the New Computer Museum website and visit the museum from the comfort of your own computer. The goal of the “Virtual Edition” of the New Computer Museum is twofold. It demonstrates the vision of what the “real life” museum would look like, and it also stands on its own as a valuable and entertaining educational experience. Check it out!

New Computer Museum, Virtual Edition: http://newcomputermuseum.org/

Release!

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NEW Computer Museum VR Ed. Release!

Sunday, October 18, 2015
1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Champions
50 Broadway, Cambridge, MA

The “virtual edition” of the NEW Computer Museum will be published on Sunday, October 18th. Come see a demo and provide feedback for future releases of both the virtual and “potential” real life editions. RSVP at the New Computer Museum Meetup

Welcome Area, New Computer Museum v. 1.5

Welcome Area, New Computer Museum v. 1.5

The goal of the “Virtual Reality Edition” of the New Computer Museum is twofold. It demonstrates the vision of what the “real” New Computer Museum has the potential to become, and it also stands on its own as a valuable educational experience for use in classrooms. You can see more screen shots of the virtual exhibits on the New Computer Museum home page.

Vive Tour

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It was an incredibly busy development time in the Digital Den studio over the summer, and the results are a new site dedicated to 3D content (Cosma 3D) and a virtual computer museum (New Computer Museum, VR Ed.). More information about both of these projects will be announced here within the next few weeks.

In the meantime, something fun came up that just demanded a post of its own, and that something is HTC’s Vive World Tour. HTC’s Vive is a virtual reality head-mounted display developed in co-production between HTC and Valve Corporation, and it is part of Valve Corporation’s SteamVR project.

HTC has made the brilliant move of taking their awesome show on the road and making it available to typical consumers in cities around the world. The video below was made in San Francisco, they are visiting Boston *this* weekend, and a little bird told me they are just about to announce new dates and cities on the tour for the fall.

HTC Vive Tour, Boston Venway (Sept. 18-20)

The tour visited 1350 Boylston St. in Boston’s Fenway September 18-20, 2015!

The HTC Vive World Tour is Here (HTC Blog)
HTC Vive World Tour FAQs (HTC Blog)
HTC Vive World Tour (Facebook)

Here are some videos about the HTC Vive headset and its technology.

Here’s a nice article that covers all of the Vive’s unique features.

Valve and HTC dive into VR with the HTC Vive, coming this year (Scott Stein, CNET)

More importantly, the tour is also showcasing what is already great technology by pairing it with some insanely great applications! It is impossible to communicate how much these videos do NOT fully capture the experience, but they give you the gist that it’s an amazing experience.

So, overall, at least some version of the holodeck is here, and Vive will definitely be a serious contender in the HMD war of Spring 2016 — be sure to catch the tour if you can!

More info…

HTC Vive (Official Site)
HTC Vive (Wikipedia)

Please note that the HTC Vive is one of a number of headsets covered on the new Cosma 3D site that Digital Den supported creating as well as the older, more comprehensive site Cosma. Check out more about the HTC Vive on Cosma 3D and Cosma

Out & About

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The Digital Den team spent the weekend out and about learning new skills and sharing the latest draft of our main project of the moment, the New Computer Museum, VR Edition.

Here’s a quick recap…

First, Saturday brought a fantastic opportunity to spend the day at Google’s Cambridge office learning all about how to use Unity3D to create and publish content for the Google Cardboard and the Samsung GearVR. These happen to be Digital Den’s target VR delivery platforms, so this was a particularly timely and incredibly valuable experience!

http://www.meetup.com/gdg-boston/events/223658198/?a=cr1_grp&rv=cr1&_af=event&_af_eid=223658198

Juno Forbes started the workshop off in the morning by doing an amazing job of providing rigorous instruction that ranged all the way from the very basics of Unity3D programming all the way through how to publish our work for Google Cardboard.  Then after lunch Dustin Wish from Samsung gave the crowd a wonderfully detailed walk-through of how to code an application in Unity3D and publish it to the Samsung GearVR.

It was awesome to find out that the process for publishing to both Google Cardboard and Samsung GearVR is relatively painless!  Jeff Bail, one of the organizers of the event, was kind enough to agree to let us re-post this picture that he took of attendees learning to load their programs to the GearVR. Thanks Jeff!

DD@GoogleVRWorkshopByJeffBail

Saturday VR Code Lab Google Cardboard and Samsung GearVR (Photo Credit: Jeff Bail)

Then Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day to take the newest draft of the New Computer Museum, VR Edition off to a Show & Tell at the Flea@MIT.  Long-time Flea attendees had great fun stopping by to experience the latest iteration of the project, and they provided some ideas for even more cool things that we can add to the next version. As you can tell from the picture, there are some interesting folks that hang out at the Flea@MIT :-) Thanks to their help, the next draft of the project will be even better — please stay tuned for information on when and how to see it!

NEWCM@FLea

Flea@MIT attendees get a preview of New Computer Museum VR Ed. (Photo Credit: Neil Carlson)

New demo!

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New Computer Museum, VR Edition Preview
Flea@MIT, Sunday, July 19, 2015 · 9:00 am – 11 am

Come see a new demo of a “Virtual Reality (VR) Edition” of a New Computer Museum that Digital Den is making! The application is being built in Unity 5.1 and will be available for WebGL, Google Cardboard, Samsung GearVR and Oculus Rift later this summer.

New Computer Museum, Virtual Reality Edition

The version that will be available on July 19th is actually just an early draft, so it will only include a small subset of the full version. However, there was an earlier “rapid prototype” of the full version built in SecondLife — here are a few images from that prototype to give you some sense of what the full version will be like when it is released.

The full version will demonstrate the vision of what a “real” New Computer Museum has the potential to become in the near future. It will also stand on its own as a valuable and entertaining educational experience for use in classrooms. In addition, the VR Edition of the New Computer Museum will be an exploration of how the newest wave of virtual reality products can be used in the context of museums and art galleries. Of course, it will also be an excellent demonstration of Digital Den’s expertise and skill in VR production.

Please stop by, say hi, take a look, and share your feedback!

Cool Caves!

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Digital Den just took a field trip to a wonderful event at Brown University where they celebrated the past, present and future of their virtual reality caves Visualization and Creativity in Immersive 3D Environments — From Cave to YURT. If you are not familiar with the concept of a cave, be sure to check out the Wikipedia page about the technology. Brown has been a well recognized leader in the area for many years, and they have just upgraded to a brand new cave. The YURT website gives more in depth information about the event and the technology. The event began with demonstrations of both the older “legacy” cave and the new YURT cave. Check out this slide show to see pictures of the event and both spaces. Some projects that use the caves are available online as well. Overall, it was a fascinating event, and it was great to have the chance to chat about some historic Brown hypertext projects as well. Stay tuned for more news on Digital Den’s adventures on the VR frontier over the summer!
Cave to YURT