Want to be a Jedi? Disney and Lenovo have teamed up to create an augmented reality headset that lets you wield a lightsaber. You can deflect blaster shots, play Holochess, fight or be Kylo Ren in ‘Star Wars: Jedi Challenges.’
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Jaunt made its name as a creator of 360-degree videos and cinematic VR experiences. But under new management, the company has shifted its focus to supplying mixed reality technology to other companies. Today, it‘s showing off some of the cool research it has been doing in volumetric capture, such as creating 360-degree digital avatars for augmented reality applications.
I tried it out at Jaunt’s headquarters in San Mateo, California, and it was quick and seamless. Jaunt demonstrated how it can capture a 360-degree image of a person with six Intel RealSense depth cameras. Jaunt stitches the images from the cameras into a single 3D avatar, and then inserts the avatars into augmented reality streams that can be sent to mobile devices in real time. I saw how they could capture me instantly and turn the data into a shareable image in no time.
The new AR volumetric capture selfies will eventually be part of a growing XR platform, a business-to-business software solution that Jaunt licenses to its partners, who distributed augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (collectively known as XR) content through their own applications and channels. Jaunt is formally launching the volumetric capture technology to its platform for customers in the fourth quarter.
“Our objective is to make streaming of experiences like this very easy and portable,” said Arthur van Hoff, chief technology officer and founder of Jaunt, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We have been strong in 360-degree video and immersive content for VR, and now we are figuring out what we can contribute for AR experiences.”
Jaunt still has a big VR film studio in Santa Monica, California, where it puts to use its expertise in telling stories in XR. In the past, it has launched more than 350 productions, including numerous virtual reality films. But today, the company only starts work on a VR film if a partner pays it to do so.
Above: Jaunt’s AR avatars can be created in real time.
“We want to be the global partner of choice for producing and distributing immersive content,” said Jaunt CEO George Kliavkoff, in an interview with VentureBeat. “In the past, we were consumer-focused. We wanted to be the Netflix of VR and have people come to a Jaunt owned and operated site. We have repositioned as a business-to-business company.”
With the 360-degree selfies, Jaunt offers volumetric content as another medium for its partners to tell stories and create intellectual property. Volumetric capture (as captured through the six-camera rig) makes it possible to film a subject from a 360-degree perspective, then output an avatar that matches the subject’s appearance, movements, and vocals in the form of a shareable, to-scale, augmented reality asset.
Instead of an expensive green screen studio, Jaunt uses a simple capture stage with a streamlined setup and leverages the same streaming technology it developed for delivering high-quality VR and AR experiences. The ease of use and established distribution tools are ideal for companies looking for an efficient way to add cutting-edge immersive content to their media strategies. The stage is pretty portable, considering what it can do.
“We wanted to be able to process content in real time, not in weeks, and make it portable and shareable,” van Hoff said. “I recorded a 3D capture of my parents when they were visiting from Holland. That’s kind of special, as that’s something I’ll never forget.”
Jaunt’s investment in R&D signifies the company’s focus on building business-ready solutions for creating and sharing next-generation immersive content. Other initiatives in the pipeline include immersive content driven by machine learning and technologies foundational to enabling premium XR experiences.
Since 2013, Jaunt has been on the leading edge of immersive content, quickly becoming the premier producer and distributor of consumer cinematic VR by creating an end-to-end pipeline for creating and delivering VR experiences. But the VR market for consumers didn’t materialize in the way everyone hoped after the launch of the first major VR headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive in 2016.
Above: Jaunt’s AR avatars can be streamed to mobile devices.
“Some analysts say XR is a $120 billion opportunity in 2021,” said Kliavkoff. “We believe in the size of the market, but we’re not sure if the analysts are correct on the timing. In the long run, we think AR is the bigger opportunity.”
So in 2016, Jaunt hired Kliavkoff, a former Hearst executive, as its CEO. And he has steered the company beyond the consumer VR space, transforming it into a B2B-focused company that helps partners deliver new forms of XR content spanning augmented, virtual, and mixed realities.
“Standing as one of the early, major players in the virtual and augmented reality space, we’ve taken our consumer-facing technology and storytelling capabilities and made them available to our partners,” said van Hoff. “Our B2B focus addresses a need for companies to be able to deliver AR and VR, and we see our XR Platform’s real-time volumetric capabilities as yet another avenue for them to share engaging stories through their own channels. It’s just one of the ways we’re continuing to push the boundaries of XR content at Jaunt.”
The new Jaunt XR platform debuted in December 2017, and it is useful in a variety of ways. Sky broadcasting was the first customer announced for the Jaunt XR Platform at the end of 2017. Now customers include Diageo and NTT Data. The Jaunt XR Platform allows augmented reality assets, virtual reality content, and 2D assets to be delivered across devices and live side-by-side with existing media libraries.
In the past, all the VR, AR, and mixed reality formats had different technology chains. Jaunt has united them so they can all be viewed through a single player.
“This technology platform is that single solution for managing all the different media types and playing them back holistically inside of one system, rather than having to build them separately,” said David Moretti, vice president of corporate development and operations, in an interview.
In 2017, Jaunt also opened an office in Shanghai, which allows it to distribute content into China through a partnership with Shanghai Media Group and China Media Capital.
Jaunt’s investors include the Walt Disney Company, Evolution Media Partners, CMC, Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, SMG, Axel Springer, ProSiebenSat.1 SE, The Madison Square Garden Company, Google Ventures, Peter Gotcher, and Sky. Jaunt currently has 100 employees.
This post by Dean Takahashi originally appeared on VentureBeat.
Tagged with: jaunt
The post Jaunt Shows Off New Augmented Reality 360-degree Full Body Selfies appeared first on UploadVR.
VNTANA CEO Ashley Crowder calls the company’s technology, “the world’s first scalable, affordable and interactive hologram.” The startup’s tech hasn’t certainly wowed crowds in recent recent years.
In 2016, it collaborated with Microsoft on HOLLAGRAM, beaming in a live hologram of MS executives during a HOLLAGRAM for a keynote at HackSC. The company’s technology has also been embraced by Intel. The chipmaker deployed VNTANA’s tech during its own keynote at Computex that same year.
Crowder cofounded the VNTANA in 2012, along with fellow USC grad (and current COO) Ben Conway. Before VNTANA, she worked at Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman and BP, utilizing her experience in manufacturing to help design the new company’s early offerings.
In 2013, the team sent a video of a hacked Kinect to Microsoft, demonstrating how the company’s popular hands-free controller could be used for gesture tracking and control with VNTANA’s holographic images. It was enough to gain the startup a place in Microsoft’s Early Developer and BizSpark programs.
These days, the company is focused on augmented and mixed reality experiences, topics Crowder will discuss at TC Sessions: AR/VR on October 18 at UCLA. The one-day event combines onstage conversations about augmented and virtual reality with in-person demos and networking.
Purchase your Early Bird tickets here for just $99 and you’ll save $100 before prices go up!
Students get a special rate of just $45 when they book here.
Imogen Heap, the Grammy-award winning musician, is following in the footsteps of TOKiMONSTA, Ash Koosha, and The Glitch Mob with a social VR concert experience, hosted on TheWaveVR platform soon.
Starting tomorrow, August 31st, the Imogen Heap experience will kick off with an 11:00 AM PT showing (local time here). A second show will take place at 7:00 PM PT (local time here), which ought to fit nicely into viewing schedules for users in North and South America.
Users with an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive will be able to join in. Check out TheWaveVR on Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR) and the Oculus Store (Rift).
In a recent blogpost, Oculus calls the upcoming Imogen Heap concert “a spellbinding trip of sight and sound—not unlike some of Heap’s past work—but this specific debut promises an altogether fresh experience.”
The concert, like many others, will include a live VR audience with what the company calls “a more intimate affair,” which will take place inside Heap’s childhood home. A volumetrically captured version of the Imogen Heap will also be on display in TheWaveVR, which was created with Depthkit.
The show will feature multiple songs, including a previously unreleased Frou Frou track and an entirely new mix of ‘Hide and Seek’ from the album Speak for Yourself.
“From my first talks with TheWaveVR, which as it happened were in VR, I knew I wanted to get involved in this project,” says artist Imogen Heap. “With my three-year-old daughter’s future in mind, it excites me how, through virtual reality, we are already able to connect in a more human way, even when time and place would have it otherwise. Having my fans experience a musical performance from within the welcoming walls of my family home brings a whole new dimension to connecting and communicating for me.”
It’s uncertain if users will be able to check out the show after the two showings, so make sure to have TheWaveVR downloaded and ready.
The post Imogen Heap VR Concert Experience to Land on ‘TheWaveVR’ August 31st appeared first on Road to VR.
For too long there has been a void in your life. You play VR, talk VR, see VR, but do you listen VR? We highly doubt it. And that’s why we’ve set out on a mission to bring you the best, most informative, and very likely the dumbest VR podcast in all of the non-existent metaverse. Welcome to the VR Download.
Every week UploadVR’s editors are getting together to discuss the week’s news and releases. This is VR, though, so we won’t all just be sitting at a desk. Instead, we’ll be jumping into different VR spaces every week to share what’s new.
Today we’re broadcasting live from Rec Room with a newly-designed space by Jamie (okay he just wrote our logo out very badly). We’re going to be talking about our impressions of First Contact’s big PSVR release, Firewall Zero Hour, as well as checking out some of the other launches this week (there were a lot) and taking a look at Acer’s new VR headset.
You’re probably sick of hearing this about a VR product but the VR Download is still in its very early days. There will be bugs to iron out and schedules to get straight. If you give us a watch, please let us know what you think we could do better. Also tell us what we did well because Ian’s an egomaniac and he thrives off of praise.
Tagged with: Firewall: Zero Hour
The post The VR Download Episode 1: Fraggin’ Fun With Firewall appeared first on UploadVR.
The Microsoft Paper Clip is talking to me. Or at least a more colorful version of him is. He’s ordering me to paint pizza around the room and I have no choice but to comply, so I do. Glorious, stodgy slices of pizza dripping with cheese and lined around the walls, folding towards the end where they can no longer contain the oil pouring off of it. My mouth waters and I long to raid the fridge for something unhealthy.
No, I’m not on drugs, I’m just describing the first few minutes of GIPHY World.
Not to be mistaken with last year’s Museum of GIF Art (though still developed by New York-based Planeta), GIPHY World is like Tilt Brush mixed with memes. It’s a virtual playground in which you can search through GIPHY’s vast library of looping video content and paste them as stickers in one of three environments.
Why would you do this, you ask. Well, why not? The app is free, for one thing, and if you’re the type that likes to make a mockery of the world around you then there isn’t a better tool for doing so. I, for example, did what I always do whenever someone is foolish enough to give reckless creative freedom over something: created an ill-fitting tribute to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Within minutes of being let loose in GIPHY World I’d covered the walls of a giant chess board with GIFs of Daniel Day Lewis screaming about milkshakes in poor Eli’s face. It was a wonderous, bordering on creep shrine to Daniel Plainview in the most unexpected of ways. I loved it.
Of course, if you can’t see what the point in doing something like that would be, then GIPHY World is probably not for you.
For those of us that revel in the insanity of the internet, though, this is a wonderful new sandbox. Shake your new logo friend and he’ll vomit pixelated GIFs onto the floor. Resize yourself and then post giant videos that will bear down on your newly-made lands. Grab a camera and record a GIF of your own (including taking selfies that reveal your disturbingly blob-ish avatar).
It’d be great to see some form of multiplayer support included in the future (I’d love to host a future episode of UploadVR’s new podcast here) as well as more environments
GIPHY World is about as close as you can get to experiencing LSD without actually taking any, and you should absolutely give it a go. It’s entirely unnecessary yet all the more hilarious for it. It’s launching on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive today for free.
Tagged with: GIPHY World
The post GIPHY World Might Be VR’z Strangest App, But You Should Try It appeared first on UploadVR.
Earlier this month we reported that Oculus would be bringing the first playable demo of Insomniac Games’ Stormlands to PAX West in Seattle this weekend. That’s not all the company has planned for the event, though.
Rift is also showcasing a handful of apps both old and new at the VR Freeplay area, including Psytec Games’ upcoming Windlands 2 (which has been under wraps since its initial announcement late last year) and new games like Seeking Dawn and Torn. There’s also the usual staples like Echo Arena, Medium, Robo Recall, Sprint Vector, Star Trek: Bridge Crew and The Unspoken. You’ll also be able to play Stormlands at Facebook’s Gaming stand during the show. Oddly, there’s no sign of Marvel: Powers United VR, which is all Oculus took to Gamescom last week.
There’s plenty of talks and tournaments going on throughout the weekend, too. You can catch players facing off in Eagle Flight, Audioshield, Robo Recall and Fruit Ninja VR to name a few. As for the talking, look out for the Futures of Interactive Storytelling and Gaming While Other sessions held by Ubisoft as well as a panel from Killing Floor: Incursion developer Tripwire Interactive.
PAX West kicks off tomorrow and runs through to Monday. Don’t miss out on VR if you’re going.
Tagged with: oculus, pax west, Windlands 2
The post Oculus Bringing Windlands 2, Seeking Dawn And More To PAX West appeared first on UploadVR.
