CH 5 – Virtual & Augmented Reality

Channel 5

Virtual & Augmented Reality

Virtual and augmented reality are a mix of hardware, services and software components allowing end-users to visualize and experience virtual environment in real-time. The demand for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) is beginning to boom and will continue to grow as demand for AR and VR services, more affordable hardware, and end-use applications increase. The growing demand for VR and AR in Healthcare, Education, Gaming, Media and Entertainment in the North American, Asia Pacific and European regions will feed the adoption of VR and AR in these Global Markets.

VR Will Be a $34 billion Market by 2022

BY PR NEWSWIRE

The Virtual Reality Market is Forecast to Reach $33.90 Billion by 2022 from $1.37 Billion in 2015 at a CAGR of 57.8% during (2016-2022) Driven by Increasing Use of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) in the Entertainment and Gaming sector.

Asia-Pacific expected to be the fastest-growing region in virtual reality market. The presence of companies such as the Sony Corporation (Japan), HTC Corporation (Taiwan), and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea) has helped the growth of the VR market in the APAC region. The growing consumer and commercial markets with increased investments in the APAC region such as Japan, India, and China would help the growth of the virtual reality market in APAC.

The key players in the “Virtual Reality Market” profiled in the report are as follows:

Oculus VR, LLC (U.S.)
Sony Corporation (Japan)
HTC Corporation (Taiwan)
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea)
EON Reality Inc. (U.S.)
Google Inc. (U.S.)
Microsoft Corporation (U.S.)
Vuzix Corporation (U.S.)
Cyber Glove Systems, Inc. (U.S.)
Sensics, Inc. (U.S.)
Leap Motion, Inc. (U.S.)
Sixense Entertainment, Inc. (U.S.)

VR software to play a key role in the virtual reality market. The virtual reality market for software components is expected to grow at the highest rate and dominate the virtual reality market between 2016 and 2022, owing to the increasing adoption of VR software platforms and applications across the globe. The increased use of mobile VR would help drive the growth of the VR market for software components.

The virtual reality market for head-mounted displays to grow at a high rate during the forecast period. The head-mounted displays have a high potential for growth, owing to their easy availability and high demand in gaming applications. Virtual reality manufacturers witnessed an increased shipment of devices for various applications such as consumer and commercial among others. The Growing Demand for Smartphones and the Growth of Mobile VR is Driving the Virtual Reality Market.

Berkeley University Opens the Center for Augmented Cognition

Berkeley’s Center for Augmented Cognition, directed by Allen Yang, will outfit a new lab for research and student projects in augmented reality and virtual reality, made possible by a gift from Immerex.

The University of California Berkeley announced a new lab to accelerate its efforts on augmented reality and virtual reality research. Located in Berkeley’s Cory Hall, the lab is as a corporate gift from the entertainment virtual reality company Immerex. Berkeley’s new lab will be mainly used to develop projects using Immerex VR equipment such as VR head-mounted displays and cameras.

“In this new lab, we will be able to create synergies among Berkeley’s various programs in AR/VR and connect researchers and students to Immerex’s industry-leading technologies and channels in the emerging virtual reality global market,” said Allen Yang, executive director of the Center for Augmented Cognition, in the official announcement.

Dubbed as “Immerex Virtual Reality Lab” the new lab will be open for faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students affiliated with the Center for Augmented Cognition, based in the College of Engineering.

This vest contains multiple vibrational elements and can add an extra kick as you play VR games. It has 16 vibrational nodes and haptic sensors and is completely sweat proof so you can work up a lather kicking alien butt.

Hardlight VR Suit Adds Vibration for More Realistic Gameplay

The Hardlight VR Suit will vibrate all of your bodily buttons

Google Wants to Use Chrome to Suck You into VR

by Stephen Shankland @stshank

Chrome now supports WebVR, which brings virtual worlds to web browsers. Allies include Mozilla, Microsoft and Facebook, but we can expect some rough patches.

Google says it’s now time to marry two computing realms: the web and virtual reality.

Its latest version of the Chrome browser includes a technology called WebVR, which lets programmers create websites that present the computer-generated 3D worlds of virtual reality. If you’re into VR, you might appreciate the promise WebVR holds for expanding what you can do with a device like a Google Daydream View or a Facebook Oculus Rift VR headset.

That’s because, in principle at least, WebVR makes it easier for developers to create a single VR experience that’ll work across many VR headsets instead of having to create a separate version for each device. It’s an extension of how a single website can span your laptop, Android phone or iPad tablet.

WebVR makes it “as easy to step inside Air Force One as it is to access your favorite web page,” Megan Lindsay, a product manager on Google’s Chrome team, said in a blog post.

WebVR without anything to look at isn’t any fun, so here are some sites Google promoted for the technology:

Bear 71, an interactive nature documentary; Matterport, a library of more than 300,000 celebrity homes and other sites; Within, a collection of VR movies; WebVR Lab, a collection of interactive VR worlds, and Sketchfab, an assortment of VR scenes.

Google developed WebVR along with Firefox maker Mozilla, Facebook’s Oculus team, and other partners. It’s early days though. Microsoft is working on WebVR support for its new Edge browser and HoloLens eyewear, but support is still spotty among makers of VR headsets like HTC’s Vive and Samsung’s Gear VR.

So far, Mozilla has enabled WebVR only in its nightly and developer versions of Firefox aimed at web programmers and the adventurous. But it plans to add WebVR in the mainstream version of its browser this summer, including support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Chrome supports Google’s Daydream View headset, which like Gear VR uses a phone to track head motion and display imagery for each eye. But it’ll be months before WebVR and Chrome work with the company’s cruder Google Cardboard cousin.

Virtual Reality 101: CNET tells you everything you need to know about what VR is and how it’ll affect your life.

ROBERT REICH:

THE POLITICAL ROOTS OF WIDENING INEQUALITY

Ultimately, the trend toward widening inequality in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the VAST MAJORITY, WHOSE INCOMES HAVE STAGNATED AND WHOSE WEALTH HAS FAILED TO INCREASE, JOIN TOGETHER to DEMAND FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE.

The MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL COMPETITION Over the Next Decades WILL NOT BE BETWEEN the RIGHT and LEFT, Or Between REPUBLICANS and DEMOCRATS . .

"IT WILL BE BETWEEN A MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WHO HAVE BEEN LOSING GROUND, AND AN ECONOMIC ELITE THAT REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE OR RESPOND TO IT'S GROWING DISTRESS."

IT’S HAPPENING NOW

“The necessity to harness the potential of quickly advancing new technologies creates a near-constant mandate for innovation in order to stay relevant. Survival is not guaranteed in a world when all is up for reinvention.

There’s no question we’re in a new technological age but how many of us actually understand the vast potential that lies within this new normal?

The biggest impacts of technology on our daily lives is still ahead of us, but already we’re beginning to imagine and navigate how global economies, enterprise businesses and even the human race will adapt to ensure we all thrive.

From a UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME, to understanding the fundamentals of WORKPLACE AUTOMATION and our increasing ability to define the physical future,

THERE’S NO QUESTION THAT DISRUPTION IS HERE.”

– The GIGAOM Change Team

The Next Economy By Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz

Advances in technology are creating the next economy and enabling us to make things/do things/connect with others in smarter, cheaper, faster, more effective ways.

But the price of this progress has been a decoupling of the engine of prosperity from jobs that have been the means by which people have ascended to (and stayed in) the middle class.

Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) spent four years traveling the country and asking economists, futurists, labor leaders, CEOs, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, and political leaders to help picture the U.S. economy 25 to 30 years from now.

He vividly reports on people who are analyzing and creating this new economy.

Through these stories, we come to a stark and deeper understanding of THE TOLL TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS WILL CONTINUE TO TAKE ON JOBS AND INCOME AND ITS INEVITABLE EFFECT ON TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

But There is HOPE for our ECONOMY and FUTURE. The Foundation of ECONOMIC PROSPERITY for ALL AMERICANS, Stern believes, is a UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME.

Stern has been a game changer throughout his career, and his next goal is to create a movement that will force the political establishment to take action against something that many on both the right and the left believe is inevitable.

STERN’S PLAN IS BOLD, IDEALISTIC, and CHALLENGING- and IT’S TIME ..

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM:

CAPITALISM NEEDS URGENT REFORM

REFORMING the very nature of CAPITALISM will be needed to COMBAT THE GROWING APPEAL of POPULIST POLITICAL MOVEMENTS around the WORLD.

Capitalism as we know it needs to be reformed. The GROWING DISCONTENT at the ideology that has created so much wealth and progress on the one hand, and yet so much INEQUALITY and INSTABILITY on the other hand, is causing INCREASINGLY frequent SOCIAL DISRUPTIONS ACROSS the WORLD.

“IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT CHALLENGES TO SOCIAL COHESION AND POLICYMAKERS' LEGITIMACY ARE COINCIDING WITH A HIGHLY DISRUPTIVE PHASE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE."

STOP TECHNOLOGY THREAT

Hawking said that technology must be controlled in order to safeguard the future of humanity and believes that a ‘world government’ could be the only way to combat the threat, though warned that that could lead to a global ‘tyranny’.

‘Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages, It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution.'

‘Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.’

But he added that he believed the ‘THE HUMAN RACE WILL RISE TO MEET THESE CHALLENGES’. He said that the human race must ‘retrain’ for a new world where robots have replaced many everyday jobs.

‘Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it.’

When asked how the world will end, Hawking said that increasingly, most of the threats humanity faces come from progress in technology.

‘WE ARE NOT GOING TO STOP MAKING PROGRESS, OR REVERSE IT, SO WE MUST RECOGNISE THE DANGERS AND CONTROL THEM.'

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