“The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt Painted in Virtual Reality! | Art Attack Master Works

VR 360° Film: Evelyn’s Story | Oxfam

Evelyn and her community were facing an extreme water crisis, only getting access to clean water for about two hours every eight days, if at all.  Follow Evelyn in her search for water and experience the incredible impact we can make together to the lives of people living in poverty.

REAL TIME MIKE  and SIGGRAPH 2017: Real-Time Facial Capture Moves Forward With ‘Meet Mike’  and  Meet Mike at SIGGRAPH 2017

Speaker: Mike Seymour, fxGuide

Mike Seymour talk about the presentation he gave @ SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles earlier this year.  MEETMIKE showcases the latest research in digital human technology, with leading industry figures interviewed live and in real-time by a photo-realistic avatar in a ‘virtual set in Sydney’, presented at the VR Village at SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles.

Speaker: Mike Seymour, fxGuide.  #MEETMIKE

Producing a digital human in CG has been the ‘Manhattan’ project of computer graphics, it is both extremely difficult and has wide ranging implications both commercially and ethically. Digital Actors, Agents and Avatars are all very hot topics, but what few in the industry anticipated is how rapidly this would move from the issue of rendering a high quality human, to being able to do so in real time. Come and see MEETMIKE at ACM Siggraph ANZgraph were Mike Seymour will explain the project first shown that SIGGRAPH 2017 in LA that aimed to not only produce a realistic human but to do so at 90 frames a second in stereo in VR. Beyond realtime at even 30 fps (30 milliseconds), this International team has to render each frame in just 9 Miliseconds. To produce such fast results, the team deployed Deep Learning AI for a markerless facial tracker and solver, and used a custom build of Epic Games UE4.

In this worldwide first, each day of the SIGGRAPH show digital Mike met digital versions of industry legends and leading researchers from around the world. People such as Dr Paul Debevec, Tim Sweeney, Oscar Winners Ben Grossman (Magnopus) and Wayne Stables (Weta) and leading researchers from places such as PIXAR’s Christophe Hery, Glenn Derry (Fox).

Together they met and conducted interviews in “Sydney” via virtual reality which was watched either in VR or on a giant screen.

This project is a key part of a new research project into virtual humans as Actors, Agents and Avatars. The ANZGraph session will provide valuable data and insights for taking digital humans research to the next level, and share lessons learnt from the collaboration of R&D teams from around the world. MEET MIKE researchers span four continents, three universities and six companies including Epic Games, 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, Loom.ai and the Wikihuman global research project. The project aimed to explore best of class scanning, rigging and real-time rendering. Please note that this project aims to give away nearly all the data for non-commercial use and is a non-profit research effort.

Mick also spoke about Matching and Mirroring – Remember that people tend to like people who are like themselves. You will tend to like people who are like you, I will tend to like people who are like me. The most important key to gaining instant rapport with another individual therefore is to make ourselves like them. One way that we can do this is to match and mirror their words (7%), tonality(38%) and physiology (55%).

 Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science.^[1] While the origins of the field may be traced as far back as to early philosophical inquiries into emotion,^[2] the more modern branch of computer science originated with Rosalind Picard‘s 1995 paper^[3] on affective computing.^[4][5] A motivation for the research is the ability to simulate empathy. The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behavior to them, giving an appropriate response to those emotions.

Uncanny valley is a hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object’s resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. The concept of the uncanny valley suggests that humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers. Valley denotes a dip in the human observer’s affinity for the replica, a relation that otherwise increases with the replica’s human likeness.

Deep learning  (also known as deep structured learning or hierarchical learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on learning data representations, as opposed to task-specific algorithms. Learning can be supervised, partially supervised or unsupervised.  Some representations are loosely based on interpretation of information processing and communication patterns in a biological nervous system, such as neural coding that attempts to define a relationship between various stimuli and associated neuronal responses in the brain. Research attempts to create efficient systems to learn these representations from large-scale, unlabeled data sets.  Deep learning architectures such as deep neural networks, deep belief networks and recurrent neural networks have been applied to fields including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, audio recognition, social network filtering, machine translation and bioinformaticswhere they produced results comparable to and in some cases superior to human experts.

Synthetic data is “any production data applicable to a given situation that are not obtained by direct measurement” according to the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms; where Craig S. Mullins, an expert in data management, defines production data as “information that is persistently stored and used by professionals to conduct business processes.”  The creation of synthetic data is an involved process of data anonymization; that is to say that synthetic data is a subset of anonymized data. Synthetic data is used in a variety of fields as a filter for information that would otherwise compromise the confidentiality of particular aspects of the data. Many times the particular aspects come about in the form of human information (i.e. name, home address, IP address, telephone number, social security number, credit card number, etc.).

https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/alsurface-shader-wikihuman-project/

The Wikihuman project is a collaborative by the members of the Digital Human League to advance the study of digital humans. For more information on the Wikihuman project, please visit their blog at wikihuman.org

Chaos Group – We would like to officially announce the wikihuman.org site. This is the start of an ongoing project by the Digital Human League (DHL). Our mission for this project is to study, understand, and most importantly share our knowledge of digital humans.

alSurface Shader Wikihuman project By Mike Seymour  October 20, 2016  The “al” in alSurface refers to Anders Langlands (right), a VFX sequence supervisor currently at Weta Digital, who wrote a series of shaders for Arnold.

Surface roughness often shortened to roughness, is a component of surface texture. It is quantified by the deviations in the direction of the normal vector of a real surface from its ideal form. If these deviations are large, the surface is rough; if they are small, the surface is smooth. In surface metrology, roughness is typically considered to be the high-frequency, short-wavelength component of a measured surface. However, in practice it is often necessary to know both the amplitude and frequency to ensure that a surface is fit for a purpose.

Woody  between 1995 and 2017.

BabyX v3.0 Interactive Simulation Official

IBM Watson presents Soul Machines, LENDIT Conference 2017 (Professional Camera)

Some interesting information:

Emotions, immediacy, we care about faces, smiling and the effects on a digital person.

Creating an optical flow for the merge between the two expressions with no texture loss, blend shapes on his face and needing something to drive it.  Fluid simulation using training data, learnt from an example, we can make the data.  Using synthetic and training data for more powerful interactions creating a nighter affinity, it is more trustworthy.

Look at the pores of the skin, the Diffuse, Specular and Normal Map and line up the textures for a smile and not a smile. Higher resolution specular maps for the face to be real.  Change the pings off it to read the surface texture.

VR, no 30fps, 90fps stereo vertically because of our noses.  UV lighting. 75% of the geometry went on the hair.

THE VIRTUAL REALITY CINEMA    178 JOHNSTON STREET COLLINGWOOD, MELBOURNE 3066  AUSTRALIA

Is a creative project aimed at showcasing the new wave of virtual reality works. Pushing the boundries of the medium and assisting experienced content creators to create VR works. By having a VR cinema space to screen, network with other vr creators.  Virtual Reality is upon us, its a new frontier, a new medium. For the newcomers, VR is an immersive experience in which your head movements are tracked in a three-dimensional world, seen in a 360° perspective, thanks to mobile VR headsets. This cinema brings Australia’s New Wave of VR Creators who are pushing these new boundaries.

Some food for thought:

• VR/AR opportunity
• capturing sound for VR and AR
• editing and compositing strategies for spherical video (360º VR video) algorithms
• designing spatial sound:  adapting contemporary sound design practices for VR

Virtual sets traditionally allowed of the inclusion of the talent into a virtual scene.

SIGGRAPH 2017: Virtual Reality Is Alive and Flourishing

The SIGGRAPH conference is a year event that focuses on the latest in computer graphics and other interactive arts. It is a multidiscipline show, mixing computer imaging with other physical creations. It is also a crossroads for the film, video game, commercial, research and education industries. It has a forward-looking vision while celebrating the recent and not-so-recent past.

ARKit and ARCore are leaving VR in the rearview mirror

AR/VR has become a two speed market, with mobile AR set to have over twice the number of users at launch in 2017 than the entire AR/VR headset market by 2021. Apple ARKit, Google ARCore, and Facebook’s Camera Effects Platformcould have 900 million users by the end of 2018, with their launch changing the trajectory of the whole market. Digi-Capital has fundamentally revised the AR/VR market thesis, analysis and forecasts in its Augmented/Virtual Reality Report, Augmented Reality Report and Virtual Reality Report:

VR, AR and More at SIGGRAPH 2017

The beginning of August saw the 44 year old ​SIGGRAPH ​conference​ (​S​pecial ​I​nterest ​G​roup on Computer ​GRAPH​ics and Interactive Techniques) return to Los Angeles for the 11th time, and this year the topic was almost exclusively VR. As this is ProVideo Coalition and not VirtualReality Coalition, I’ll be taking a more filmmaker-centric approach to this recap. That being said, the word of the week was “immersion”, and at this point I’m confident we’re on our way to ​The Matrix ​within the next 5 years.

CG SOCIETY

• VR IS A FANTASTIC BEAST  Framestore’s Andy Rowan-Robinson on building interaction and expanding narratives in virtual reality.  The Evolution of VR Storytelling
• YOU GOT THIS: AN ANIMATOR-TURNED-VR CREATOR’S 5 TAKEAWAYS ON GIVING VIRTUAL REALITY A GO

FACEBOOK

• VR The World
• Women in AR/VR

MEET UP Sydney Augmented and Virtual Reality.  We are Augmented Reality enthusiasts of all descriptions – technical, arts, sports, industrial, commercial, investors, entrepreneurs and simply any end user. There is a lot happening in this tech niche and in particular locally which beckons more co-ordinated face to face interactions and formal/informal meetup gatherings. Jump on board with us!

ALIVE: live-action lightfields for immersive VR experiences  is an eighteen-month industrial partnership between Foundry and Figment Productions together with University of Surrey and funded by InnovateUK. The collaboration aims to develop the technologies required to capture live-action content as a fully immersive Virtual Reality experience, where the viewer has the freedom to move inside the content.

From dystopia to utopia: the new hyperreality  Online shopping, led by Amazon, is hugely popular. But imagine being able to strap on a VR headset and ‘walk’ through those digital stores, getting all the best bits of visiting the shops without suffering the crowds of people or lugging around heavy bags.  An obvious application for the medical industries is hyperreal training scenarios. Instead of operating on plastic models or cadavers, budding surgeons – or senior doctors updating their skills – could use VR or AR to retrace the steps of a recorded real-life surgery.

ON MIXED REALITY AND THE BRAVE NEW VIRTUAL WORLD

Our brains, which are themselves highly complex organic computers, collectively comprise this vast, great network. “Humanity.” Your body is essentially an organic bio-shell – a highly advanced haptic suit, designed specifically to allow it to fully experience the physical world in which it exists, through the five senses – sight, smell, touch, sound, taste –  for the purpose of sending information to your brain from the time it develops in the womb, gathering, categorizing and storing data in a complex database deep within the brain where memory is stored.

What Google’s Blocks Could Mean for the Future of Virtual Reality  Google introduced a new VR-based toolset called Blocks that will specifically allow developers to create and design 3D objects —  for use with VR experiences —  in their natural environment.

Spielberg warns VR will rule the future at Comic-Con Presenting his new film Ready Player One.  Spielberg spoke about the challenges of adapting Ernest Cline’s book about a dystopian future where humans take refuge in VR after the world is destroyed by global warming.

MediaMonks bends reality with CARA VR

The Possibilities of Google Earth in Virtual Reality

18 VR IDEAS THAT COMMERCIALLY WORK FOR EDUCATION

What they don’t tell you about 360° VR production

Will VR fundamentally change the way filmmakers approach their craft?

“VR journalism should focus on storyliving, not storytelling” and other insights from Google’s new VR study

How HBO created a Westworld VR experience that lets you step into the show

We’re at the virtual reality tipping point… even if the headsets are still bulky and awkward

In the early 1990s, many people gawked at ugly and bulky mobile phones, unable to see just how much they’d change the face of communication. In this piece, Kaga Bryan argues we’re at the same point now with virtual reality, and he’s having a bit of déjà vu.

CONSUMER  TECHNOLOGY  ASSOCIATION

THE  FUTURE  ACCORDING TO CES: if you didn’t go to CES, here’s what you need to know: in the future, we will all be 3D-printing our autonomous drones to fly our cosseted pets around our connected homes so that they can bark at security risks that threaten our children, which we can then observe in real-time 360° video from our augmented eyewear because we’ll actually be out with our beautiful partners keeping fit in neon Lycra.

Majority of VR users say it will revitalise media, education, work, social interaction, travel and retail.

Seven out of 10 early adopters of virtual and/or augmented reality hardware have bought into the buzz and firmly feel that the technology is set to disrupt media, education, work, social interaction, travel and retail.

Using Virtual Reality to Treat PTSD

A documentary about a clinic in Los Angeles that uses virtual reality simulations to treat war veterans with PTSD. Hosted by a former master sniper for the Canadian military, this documentary short explores the efficacy of these systems to treat a still-mysterious mental condition.

THE MOLECULE ON INVISIBLE

Predicting a Film In VR:  Behind the Scenes

Virtual reality films are fun to watch, but there’s a ton of work that goes into creating them. We sat down with Here Be Dragons to understand the effort behind their films. Watch the behind the scenes video here.

ABC Creates Immersive Virtual Reality Experience

BLENDERSUSHI / AN 360 VR Gallery (LIVENODING227)

Daryl continues to add visual complexity to the environment in his VR creation.  He shares a workflow using Arnold to get image-based lighting onto tenure maps so they can be layered on top of the reality captured environment.  Follow along on the Journey to VR blog as Daryl builds his first VR experience.

VR Dreaming: hopes and predictions for where virtual reality is headed in 2017

Journey to VR

You got this: An animator-turned-VR creator’s 5 takeaways on giving virtual reality a go

CG and VFX artists: 3 reasons why the skills, tools you already have put VR content creation within reach.  You’re better at VR than you think—even if you’ve not yet tried it.

AUTODESK  UNIVERSITY

VR, AR, and the cloud were definitively top-of-mind for design visualizations artists and architects at this year’s event. Want to watch a missed class?

MEL Chemistry VR

The Now and Future of Virtual Reality for Design Visualization

VFX Workflows for Architectural Visualization

Procedural PBR Material Creation Using Substance Designer for Visualization

Positioning and Marketing a Skyscraper – 432 Park Avenue

Render Like a Photographer

The Making of a Virtual Film for Architecture and Real Estate

VR PRODUCTION

Staples VR is a complete VR production studio providing both end to end solutions and consultation services for a variety of clients and industry leaders.  We operate with the newest and highest quality equipment for image capture and 360 degree VR capture such as the Jaunt, Nokia OZO, Red, Arri, Blackmagic, Z-Cam, Sony, Panasonic and custom built solutions such our world fire fire proof VR capture system, and our underwater and aerial solutions.  We specialise in dynamic camera movement, from aerial drone, cable cam and crane to dolly and underwater, enabling us to add that something special to your production. We pride ourselves on our ambisonic audio capture and offer full spatial post production mixing and sound design.

JAUNT ONE VR CAMERA

Meet Jaunt One https://www.jauntvr.com/jaunt-one/ and https://www.staplesvr.com/rentals-sales.

Jaunt ONE is a professional-grade camera system specifically designed for capturing high-quality stereoscopic 360º cinematic virtual reality experiences. Built from the ground up with visionary VR creators in mind, Jaunt ONE has proven itself in the hands of the world’s top filmmakers, studios, and networks.

Jaunt ONE offers industry-leading stereoscopic capture quality and a suite of tools for camera control and data management. It features 24 camera modules with frame-sync, global shutter, 10-stops of dynamic range, and custom 130º FOV lenses with a fixed f/2.9 aperture. Additional features include support for 120 frames per second capture and a live viewfinder. Jaunt ONE and its complementary workflow present content creators with an end-to-end solution for filming high quality cinematic virtual reality content.

Gear — Jaunt ONE VR Camera  David Alexander Willis

First Look: Jaunt’s ‘ONE’ VR Light-Field Camera with Newly Revealed Specs

Introducing Jaunt ONE – Cinematic VR Camera – Jaunt One Demo Sydney by Staples VR

The Jaunt One is a professional grade, stereographic cinematic VR build from the ground up and designed with visionary VR creators in mind. Staples VR will put the camera through its paces and explain the good the bad and the amazing when it comes to the system.  Client support to visualise, post production, time line cost, testing, consulting, access to equipment. and do well in collaboration.

Staples VR lead the way when it comes to live action 360 video and your content creation. What can you do with the technology?  They have worked with clients to make high end quality VR including live action capture, gameified interactivity, photogrammetry, lidar scaning, installations, training, equipment resource, live streaming VR that can be mix in with prerecorded material and swapping between different camera systems.  They have build a huge range of skills and techniques to get the most of your capture systems and post workflow for the entertainment, medical, architectural, OH & S, forensic training, military training, building installations, airlines, factories, education and telecommunication industries to name a few and are on the fore front of this rapidly expanding industry.

EXPERIENCE A REAL HOUSE FIRE THROUGH 360º VIDEO & VIRTUAL REALITY

New Zealand Fire Service today launched a world-first initiative – a 360 degree and virtual reality (VR) experience – Escape My House available online now. For the first time ever, the public can experience a real house fire first-hand and, along the way, learn why they need an escape plan.

LYTRO CIMEMA Imagine working on footage in visual effects and having the ability to change the depth of field or focal point of a scene on the fly. Change the frame rate and have physically accurate shutter angle that would have been appropriate for the rate. Reposition the camera in the scene. Drop 3D objects in your scene and have them properly occluded by the live action content. Pull mattes by setting a near depth and a far depth and extracting an object. Effectively, think of having many of the benefits of deep compositing for live action scenes.

Proof of Concept (PoC) is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to demonstrate its feasibility or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has practical potential. A proof of concept is usually small and may or may not be complete.

Photogrammetry is the science of making measurements from photographs.  The input to photogrammetry is photographs, and the output is typically a map, a drawing, a measurement, or a 3D model of some real-world object or scene. Many of the maps we use today are created with photogrammetry and photographs taken from aircraft.

There are different camera systems with camera modules are getting smaller, some examples along the way are:

• optic cluster based systems where VR started, the GoPro rigs, mini bundle.
• cluster based, panoptic camera systems – multicamera face tracking system suitable for large wired camera networks
• mirror rigs with parabolic mirrors, larger cameras improving quality, expensive and difficult to use
• light field systems such as Lytro recording refractions and reflections of the entire area of space.  Light field camera, also known as plenoptic camera, captures information about the light field emanating from a scene; that is, the intensity of light in a scene, and also the direction that the light rays are traveling in space. This contrasts with a conventional camera, which records only light intensity.  Lytro is building the world’s most powerful Light Field imaging platform enabling artists, scientists and innovators to pursue their goals with an unprecedented level of freedom and control. This revolutionary technology will unlock new opportunities for photography, cinematography, mixed reality, scientific and industrial applications.

• volumetric capturing an area, volumetric video with large storage and at the moment no suitable way of playing it back.

Volumetric capture is the swift kick in the butt VR so desperately needs

Why Volumetric VR Is The Real Future Of Virtual Reality

JauntONE camera has 24 independent camera systems, resolution 8K, minimum 4K in a stereoscopic field of view.  It uses every second camera module to give a slightly parallax view for the left and right eye giving a sense of depth and only playable back through head sets. Can shoot different frame rates up to 120 for slow motion which can only do 4K output.  Can preview the camera system, change the ISO values, 12 volts, workflow with changing batteries and cameras. The parallax information becomes your depth map in the full 360 arc to incorporate in vfx elements.

Can get artefacts in the stitch line when something is close or further away from the camera, looking for the ability to stitch together with only one stitch line or as few as possible.  Optical flow form of stitching, analyses every pixel of the frame and comparing to the frame before and after to track the movement to know what is moving and what is staying static.  Not a perfect system, issues such as the algorithms not being able to recognise pixels from one camera to the next when things getting to close to the lenses within the minimum parallax distance, when two lenses cannot see the same material.  The other one is motion blur, going to quickly through the frame. It is harder when the camera cannot see the image in its entirety is harder to get the stitch points. Shooting a higher frame rate, will give clearer pictures even if playing back at 30.

Needs to be level, stereoscopic around the middle and tapers off top and bottom.  Assume the audience is on the same eyeline as the camera, if the audience choose to look at the skyline then you cannot control the angle the are looking at that object and will not be able to play back correctly.  Create depth through the left and right eye and our brain focuses somewhere in the middle.

Some issues when considering which camera to use:  safe distance from the camera 2.5 meters, not too fast moving images, camera moving to minimise and avoid haloing, artifacting, morphing, repeating textures, semi-transparent, moiré effect (are large scale interference patterns that can be produced when an opaque ruled pattern with transparent gaps is overlaid on another similar pattern. For the moiré interference pattern to appear, the two patterns must not be completely identical in that they must be displaced, rotated, etc., or have different but similar pitch.)  Use 8 modules out of the camera, does not like single orbit.

It pulls up every camera module to see the placement, exposure and correct accordingly.  The camera has up to 10 and 1/2 stops, the system can go up to 18 stops of dynamic range in a gradient across the system.  Situations such as the camera placed between a window and action, you can expose correctly for skin tone and then for the window, outside exposure and the cameras in-between will incrementally so it works together accurately and doing multiple exposures.

Nuke plug in for VR

AUDIO FOR VR

George the dummy head microphone, two microphones and does not do top, bottom, front and back very well and does not change the perspective.  Humans have two ears, notes the difference in levels between the ears, the difference in time that it takes for the sound to travel to the ears and position the sound based on those things. Giving the recording that sounds real, suitable for atmos, two track stereo. The head has been used in radio for many years and during an Opera on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, George was used for the orchestra inside in the concert hall.

Alexa Hohenberg listening to the audio being recorded for VR https://www.stillstoked.com/

The dummy head recording  is a method of recording used to generate binaural recordings. The tracks are then listened to through headphones allowing for the listener to hear from the dummy’s perspective. The dummy head is designed to record multiple sounds at the same time enabling it to be exceptional at recording music as well as in other industries where multiple sound sources are involved.

The dummy head is designed to replicate average sized human head and depending on the manufacturer may have a nose and mouth too. Each dummy head is equipped with pinnae and ear canals in which small microphones are placed, one in each ear. The leading manufacturers in Dummy Head design are: Neumann, Brüel & Kjær, Head Acoustics GmBH, and Knowles Electronics.

Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with the intent to create a 3-D stereo sound sensation for the listener of actually being in the room with the performers or instruments. This effect is often created using a technique known as “dummy head recording”, wherein a mannequin head is outfitted with a microphone in each ear. Binaural recording is intended for replay using headphones and will not translate properly over stereo speakers. This idea of a three dimensional or “internal” form of sound has also translated into useful advancement of technology in many things such as stethoscopes creating “in-head” acoustics and IMAX movies being able to create a three dimensional acoustic experience.

The term “binaural” has frequently been confused as a synonym for the word “stereo”, and this is partially due to a large amount of misuse in the mid-1950s by the recording industry, as a marketing buzzword. Conventional stereo recordings do not factor in natural ear spacing or “head shadow” of the head and ears, since these things happen naturally as a person listens, generating their own ITDs (interaural time differences) and ILDs (interaural level differences). Because loudspeaker-crosstalk of conventional stereo interferes with binaural reproduction, either headphones are required, or crosstalk cancellation of signals intended for loudspeakers such as Ambiophonics is required. For listening using conventional speaker-stereo, or mp3 players, a pinna-less dummy head may be preferable for quasi-binaural recording, such as the sphere microphone or Ambiophone. As a general rule, for true binaural results, an audio recording and reproduction system chain, from microphone to listener’s brain, should contain one and only one set of pinnae (preferably the listener’s own) and one head-shadow.

SENNHEISER  The elegantly designed AMBEO® VR Mic has been developed in cooperation with VR content producers and fine-tuned through an extensive creators’ program with participants from across the audio and VR communities. The mic caters exactly to the needs of VR content creators, letting you capture the experience and spirit of any location enabling the listener to be immersed as if they were there.

Four mono channels, matrix into one mono in the middle, up down stereo and a left right stereo and front stereo.  When you move around the sound stays with the visual experience, losing the illusion.

AMBEO A-B format converter plugin.  The capsules of the Sennheiser AMBEO VR Mic deliver A-format, a raw 4-channel output that has to be converted into a new set of 4 channels, the Ambisonics B-format. This is done by the specifically designed Sennheiser AMBEO A-B format converter plugin, which is available as free download for VST, AU and AAX format for your preferred Digital Audio Workstation for both PC and Mac. B-format is a W, X, Y, Z representation of the sound field around the microphone. W being the sum of all 4 capsules, whereas X, Y and Z are three virtual bi-directional microphone patterns representing front/back, left/right and up/down. Thus, any direction from the microphone can be auditioned by the listener during playback of Ambisonics B.

AUGMENTED  REALITY

Overlaying a digital canvas onto a person’s view of the real world, to enhance the design visualisation process, has vast potential.

AR Experiments is a site that features work by coders who are experimenting with augmented reality in exciting ways. These experiments use various tools like ARCore, an SDK that lets Android developers create awesome AR experiences. We’re featuring some of our favorite projects here to help inspire more coders to imagine what could be made with AR.

Augmented Reality Sandbox

Let your phone do the Tango

Augmented Reality: Marketing’s Trillion-Dollar Opportunity  Within this decade, augmented reality is going to change the way the always-connected consumer works, shops and plays.

Augmented reality project adds a little road system to your living room floor. Invisible Highway is an experiment in controlling physical things in the real world by drawing in Augmented Reality. Simply make a pathway along the floor on your phone and the robot car will follow that path on the actual floor in your room. A custom highway with scenery is generated along the path to make the robots a little more scenic on your phone screen.

Interested in AR’s boundless potential?  Check out the Meta Blog to get more in-depth insights on this fascinating frontier.

360º

360 video: next stop is the living room

Vertical video transformed from a syndrome to an accepted form of viewing the world. Agencies, film festivals, online groups, promote the portrait format. But there is a new kid on the block: 360 video.

Watching 360 videos

You can enjoy all 360 video on Vimeo on your desktop, mobile device, and with or without a headset. How do you know it’s 360? Next to every 360 video’s title on vimeo.com, a 360 badge will appear.

360 Cinema on Vimeo

Vimeo:  The fundamentals of 360

• All the terms you need to know to create 360 video
• Beyond the frame: tips for nailing 360 video shots
• The key things to consider when shooting 360 video
• Breaking down the 360 video editing process
• 3 film genres perfectly suited for 360 video
• Your home for high-quality video (now including 360)
• Diary of a 360 video: recording Grandaddy’s live concert
• 360 videos you should be watching
• Vimeo 360: the new home for immersive storytelling
• 360 storytelling: tips from 5-time Staff Picked company RYOT

Does It Make A Sound | 360 Title Sequence for Semi-Permanent.  Was created by the Australian-based animation studio Poke The Bear. The title sequence for the prestigious Semi-Permanent conference in Sidney was made using Getty royalty-free 360 stock footage combined with CG character animations. All post-production was done with Adobe software and Mettle SkyBox Suite* of 360/VR plugins.

*Skybox 360/VR Plug-ins have been acquired by Adobe and will be integrated into After Effects and Premiere by the end of 2017. They are available now for free if you’re an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber.

VIDEO  GAMES

ITCH.IO is a simple way to find and share indie games online for free.

LUDLUM  DORE

NEW GROUNDS

Video games historically are culturally colourless, Australians have a unique way and are now exploring history and storytelling that are uniquely Australian.

CG Society:  BEHIND THE XBOX ONE X RELEASE TRAILER, WITH MATTHEW ENCINA

Microsoft created waves at E3 this year with the announcement of their new gaming console, Xbox One X. Kicking off the release was a spectacular trailer created by the crew at Blind. The minute we saw it, we knew we had to find out more from the team about how it was made. Below, Creative Director Matthew Encina offers an exclusive look inside the inspiration, process and tools of the momentous trailer.

EPIC GAMES Unreal Engine

If You Love Something, Set It Free.  You can download the engine and use it for everything from game development, education, architecture, and visualization to VR, film and animation. When you ship a game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter. It’s a simple arrangement in which we succeed only when you succeed.

5 IndieGoGo projects to keep an eye on

Who says the creativity well has run dry? We’re still seeing a number of innovative entrepreneurs making waves in 2017. You’ll find a lot of them pitching their ideas on crowd-funding websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, where anyone can pledge some money to support new products and business ideas.

Battlefield 1  Making a Game on The Great War

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM SUCCESSFUL INDIE DEVS Looking to see what it takes to become a successful indie developer? You’ve come to right place. We spoke to ten game devs and asked for their words of wisdom on making it in the indie world.

10 OF THE SCARIEST EXPRESSIONS IN GAME DEVELOPMENT

Some games: Bioshock Infinite, LA Noire, Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, Flight Control, Fruit Ninja, Crossy Road.

OUR  TOP  GAME  PICKS for 2017 iiNet

With a number of great games in the lineup, you might not know where to start when it comes to planning out your pre-orders or tactical secondhand purchases.

SPACEBAR  1962 Steve Russell

COMPUTER SPACE  1971 Nolan Bushnell,  PONG  1972 Atari

PAC-MAN, PuckMan Tori Iwatani ARGO version, PONG,

ASTEROIDS, AMPED, ACCLAIM

BLOOD WAKE, BUBBLE BUBBLE

CRAVE, CAPCOOM, CENTIPEDE

DOOM, DEAD or ALIVE 3, DEFENDER, DONKEY KING, DIG DUG

FROGGER

GALAZIBAN

HALO

INTERPLAY

JOUST

LUCAS ARTS

MYST, MISSILE COMMAND, MOON PATROL

NAMCO

ODD WORLD: MUNCH’S ODDYSEE

PROJECT GOTHAM. POOYAN, PENGO

Q*BERT, QIX

SEGA, SIERRA ENTERTAINMENT, SHREK, SUPER MARIO BROS 3, SPACE INVADERS, SCRABBLE

TAKE-TWO, TIME-PILOT, TEMPEST

UBI SOFT

ZAXXON

MAME ENTERTAINMENT:  originally stood for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.  MAME’s purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents this important “vintage” software from being lost and forgotten. This is achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions. The source code to MAME serves as this documentation. The fact that the software is usable serves primarily to validate the accuracy of the documentation (how else can you prove that you have recreated the hardware faithfully?). Over time, MAME absorbed the sister-project MESS (Multi Emulator Super System), so MAME now documents a wide variety of (mostly vintage) computers, video game consoles and calculators, in addition to the arcade video games that were its initial focus.

MACMAME:  is part of the MAME project, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the history of arcade videogames via emulation. MacMAME achieves this by running the original program code found in the arcade games. As such, it is much more than a reproduction, it is essentially that same game running via an emulated layer inside your Macintosh.  On this site you’ll find the most current build of MacMAME, information about upcoming versions and instructions for using it. Please look around and enjoy reliving some of the games that made going to video arcades an enjoyable part of our pop culture. You can move to various parts of the site by clicking on the headings to the left.

Video Game Archive for ROM images to download and play with MAME

Original Xbox Retrospective: 2001 – 2002 (PART 1)