Some might not be aware that the company known for its outstanding projectors has been in business for nearly 95 years. Christie’s Chris Kee, executive director of product management, Joel St-Denis, director of product management, and Steve Capling, senior director of enterprise marketing, discuss company milestones from 35mm film projectors to its development of DLP technology in the 1990s, to the first all-in-one RGB laser projector.

But that’s only the projector side. Christie is also an innovator of end-to-end image processing technologies, and when its customers asked for video distribution over IP, the company listened.

Check out this engaging discussion to hear from these three industry veterans on Christie’s colorful history and how the company will address the needs of its clients and partners by continuing to innovate. 

About Christie

For more than 90 years, Christie has brought great technology to life. From the first projectors we built in the 1960s to our digital cinema projection that revolutionized the movie industry, we lead the way and help our partners create amazing shared experiences.

So much has changed in the last few years. But we look forward with eager anticipation to what the future holds. Learn more.

InfoComm 2023 will put the spotlight on emerging technologies, from augmented and virtual reality to AI and virtual production. Leading experts will dive into these topics in the vast education program and solution providers will showcase the technology in action on the trade show floor June 10-16 (exhibits 14-16) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.

Virtual Production in Action

InfoComm attendees will get a first-hand look at how virtual production works at The Unreal Ride, A Virtual Production Experience Presented by Vū, Unilumin, and MRMC (Booth 6081). The teams have collaborated to debut an entirely new Unreal Ride featuring a Jeep where two participants can ride through newly created virtual worlds specifically designed for InfoComm 2023. 

[InfoComm 2023 Impulses: Airtame on the Hybrid Workplace]

Attendees will experience a blend of the physical and virtual worlds through a combination of the latest innovations in virtual production technology, including advanced LED panels, a motion-controlled camera, camera tracking and virtual environments created with Unreal Engine, and lighting optimized for virtual production.

“We’re really looking forward to this virtual production experience Vū, Unilumin, and MRMC are bringing to InfoComm 2023,” said Rochelle Richardson, CEM, senior vice president of expositions and events, AVIXA, producer of InfoComm. “The InfoComm audience is not only going to see the magic of virtual production—they’re also going to get to participate!”

A Deep Dive into Emerging Trends

On Tuesday, June 13, InfoComm will present “Emerging Trends,” an annual review of the industry's latest technology advancements. The half-day program, led by Pete Coman of PTS Consulting, will take attendees on an exciting journey to discover how technologies such as AR, VR, NDI, Dante AV, wireless collaboration solutions, and other emerging tech will revolutionize the way we connect and collaborate.

[InfoComm 2023: 'No Stopping Us Now']

The day begins with the session “Beyond Reality: Exploring the Future of Work with Virtual and Augmented Reality,” led by Linda Gedemer of AlphaTech. Next, Oliver Van Camp from Barco and Christopher Jaynes of Q-SYS will present “Unleashing the Power of Connectivity and Collaboration: A Glimpse into the Future.” Paul Harris from Aurora Multimedia will discuss “Revolutionizing the Workplace: The Future of Audio Visual & Control Technology.” The program concludes with the session “NDI and Dante AV: Which one is the real AV superhero? with Paul Richards of PTZ Optics and Will Waters from Audinate.

“The education program at InfoComm 2023 will show you the endless possibilities of Pro AV technology,” said Annette Sandler, director, live content, U.S./Canada, AVIXA. “Attendees can take classes on specific technologies they need to learn more about and different applications and case studies for projects that they’re working on. Our Emerging Trends program is a must-attend for anyone wanting to know 'what’s next' in the ever-evolving world of Pro AV.”

All About AI

InfoComm 2023 will host more than 100 hours of education on critical Pro AV topics, including emerging technologies like AI.

On Wednesday, June 14, Diversified’s Stephen Jenkins and Blaine Brown will present “The Impact of AI: How AI Will Enhance and Transform the Industry” at the Technology Innovation Stage (Booth 2260). They’ll explore AI-powered collaboration solutions and revolutionary cloud services, such as OpenAI and Microsoft Copilot. They’ll also discuss the imminent shift from "preventative" to "predictive" maintenance through AI-enabled analytics, leading to self-healing capabilities.

Brad Sousa of AVI Systems will present “Integrating Tools to Make the Workplace More Useful: AI and Smart Technologies” on Thursday, June 15. In this session, Sousa will discuss how AI and smart technologies can enhance meeting and workspaces, concierge services for individual employees, and security tools—all using sensors, IoT, occupancy, and access control to correlate data.

For more information on InfoComm 2023 and to register for the show, visit www.infocommshow.org.

Guests that visit the OASIS immersion in Montreal, Quebec, are in for an artistic, VR treat. Eight stories are brought together in a story that focuses on courage and empathy on an international scale in the transformé exhibit. 

[9 Large-Venue Projectors and Key Features Experts Recommend as Live Events Return] 

Using both projection mapping and VR technologies, adults and children alike are taken on a tour of several galleries—like challenges that help us grow, the crossroads of place, and a renewed outlook emerges—spanning countries from the United States to France to Japan. 

[Check out These Massive 3D Immersive LED Experiences]

The 80-minute trek through VR, projection-mapped art was originally designed for virtual reality headsets. Now, the OASIS immersion brings it to life for guests to enjoy of all ages. 

Go ahead and see for yourself.

The globally standardized video-over-IP technology, NDI, announced that its SDK plugin is now compatible with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) and is available for download now.

“As soon as Unreal Engine 5 was released by Epic, we were receiving requests for an NDI SDK plugin so more creatives can unite the powers of UE5, and NDI, to achieve more with video. NDI has a great relationship with Epic, and we’ve worked together for over 5 years to bring our joint users more value and are immensely excited to see how they harness the potential of our technologies together, to advance virtual storytelling,” said Tarif Sayed, President, and GM of NDI.

[ KILOVIEW Launches the NDI Recorder: Facts, Features, and What to Know ]

The NDI SDK enables systems like UE5 to find, send and receive video streams over IP, with an encoding algorithm independent of resolution and frame rate supporting up to 4K and beyond, along with 16 channels of floating-point audio. It also includes tools to implement video access and grouping, bi-directional metadata, IP commands, tally and more.

With the improved integration of NDI into Unreal, creators unlock full IP support for both inputs and outputs of audio and video – even with an alpha channel. The SDK allows creators to build commercial or free AR and VR without any royalties so both large, and small teams can push the boundaries of what is possible in creating visual content and experiences. Now, they can also leverage NDI’s revolutionary potential for sharing video-over-IP in the highest quality, with the lowest latency.

“We’re excited with the potential for creators to use the new SDK plugin for UE5 to make incredible real-time 3D content,” added Bernt Johannessen, Unreal Engine business director for Broadcast at Epic Games. 

“With NDI, teams have access to multiple live video sources and Unreal Engine tools all on a standard network, removing obstacles and lowering complexity of live content creation without compromising quality. Unreal Engine is the world’s most open and advanced 3D creation tool on the market, and together with the world’s most used and adopted video-over-IP technology, we’re removing obstacles and giving storytellers more freedom to create amazing content.”

For more information, and to download the NDI SDK plugin for Unreal Engine 5, visit: https://ndi.tv/sdk/  

We all think we know what a hologram is. After all, most of us have seen—or at least heard about—virtual objects floating in mid-air, whether it’s Tupac at Coachella or Princess Leia being projected by R2D2 in Star Wars. In fact, neither of these were holograms, and are just two examples of numerous technologies incorrectly marketed that way. 

“Real images” as defined by optical physics can be recreated by a holographic display with a massive number of viewing angles of the scene that change with the point of view and location. When a holographic display allows you to see around objects when you move your head in any direction, motion parallax is maintained—the ability to view objects closer to us as moving faster than objects that are further away. When reflections and refractions behave correctly, your brain says, “this is real.” But to achieve this holographic realism, a holographic display must provide high-resolution scene information that changes depending on the viewing angle and location mimicking the real world. 

The Eye-line Rule

The eye-line rule, states that true holographic objects can only been seen between the viewers eyes and a light emitting source. Or another way of putting it, everyone’s beloved Princess Leia could not have been seen via R2D2’s magical flashlight (from an optical physics standpoint that is). However, if the floor was a holographic display, the green areas show what would have been possible to see from the actors point of view. 

The dream of a real hologram has given rise to a plethora of “good tries but no cigar” technologies claiming to be holographic. A majority of all things you see represented as holographic are actually just variations of other flat 2D display technologies. 

A real holographic object can only be seen between the viewer’s eyes and a holographic light source, known as the “eye-line” rule. Science fiction can do the impossible but, unfortunately, physics cannot. All true holographic technologies require a display surface to project holographic light, otherwise the eye-line rule is violated. Anything that suggests otherwise...is just movie magic. 

Now to be clear, this is not a judgment against these technologies. Many 2D displays produce great images, and so are the derivatives that come from them. However, they are not holographic. So, how do you to tell a fake hologram from the real deal? If you think you see light magically freezing in mid-air—spoiler alert—it’s a forgery! Below are some of the more popular examples of technologies that, although may be interesting to watch, are not truly holographic. 

Pepper’s Ghost 

Pepper’s Ghost is an illusion that is popular in carnivals, museums, concerts and theater, which dates back to the mid-1800s when British scientist John Henry Pepper popularized it. Pepper’s Ghost is still going strong. It was used to “resurrect” Tupac at Coachella in 2012 and Michael Jackson at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014, as well as dozens of other posthumous celebrities. 

In the above examples, the Pepper’s Ghost technique works by reflecting a 2D image off of a piece of semi-transparent film or surface. It’s also one of the roots of the term “smoke and mirrors.” But don’t get taken in. It’s cool, but just as cool as looking at any 2D display...in a mirror...and if you reach out to grab it, you’ll break it. 

Example displays that fall into this category include: Vntana, Hologram USA, Musion 

Stereoscopic 3D Displays 

Stereoscopic 3D Displays are another illusion. 3D movies and 3D TVs rely on glasses to join together two flat images, one for each eye with slightly different viewpoints. There’s no motion parallax and you focus incorrectly on the screen because every pixel radiates the same left or right-eye image regardless of viewing angle. In other words, as you move about a stereoscopic display, the perceived geometry literally follows the viewer, resulting in distortions and painful disparities. As human beings, we are in constant motion, even when sitting still, and any lack of micro-parallax change tells the brain that what we are seeing is not real. 

Example displays that fall into this category include: RealD, IMAX 3D, many consumer 3D televisions 

Glasses-Free 3D Displays 

Glasses-Free 3D Displays are a stereoscopic technique otherwise known as horizontal multi-view, parallax-only, or autostereoscopic. These are often dubbed holograms but, at best, these are one-dimensional limited light fields with two or more viewpoints that deliver an illusion of parallax. But this technique doesn’t produce a true object in space nor allow the eye to focus on the image like you would in the real world. This is referred to as the vergence-accommodation conflict and a leading cause of headaches and nausea. 

Example displays that fall into this category include: RED’s Hydrogen One Phone, The Looking Glass, Leia (as included within the Hydrogen One) 

Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality 

Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality are head-mounted displays that can be quite immersive—but they don’t create holograms. AR/VR typically couple two flat images of the scene with motion tracking such that some range of motion parallax may be rendered. However, the limited resolutions, narrow field of view, poor optical quality, lack of opacity handling (for AR), problematic motion latency, and the inability for the eye to truly focus freely about the volume (regardless of marketing claims) detract from a realistic viewing experience. Bottom line: head mounted displays do not project real objects into space. 

Further, the separation of content source from display technology is extremely important. While both AR and VR may sample from a holographic dataset when coupled with motion tracking, the technology does not visually present a hologram to the user because they are still only seeing images on flat 2D displays. 

Example displays that fall into this category include: Magic Leap*, HoloLens*, Oculus 

The Future 

After CES 2019, Fortune magazine declared, “Holograms May Finally Be Coming Of Age.” Today, scientists, manufacturers and entertainment companies are already engaged in developing ways to use real holograms. 

The future is here, and Light Field Lab is beyond excited to help build this holographic future together. 

Note: *Some displays leverage technologies called Holographic Optical Elements (HOEs). Even though these elements are produced through holographic means, this does not classify them as a holographic display for all of the reasons stated throughout this article. 

RELATED

>> Highest Resolution Holographic Display Platform Unveiled

>> Light Field Lab Raises $28 Million Series A to Build Holographic Ecosystem

>> ICRWorlds Holographic Display Releases Forecasts

>> How AR/VR Can Elevate Learning Experiences

>> Frost & Sullivan Touts AR/VR as Future of User Interfaces

Church on the Rock in St. Peters, MO, considers its online community a distinct campus, with distinct needs that go beyond the church’s physical space. With its emphasis on high-quality streamed services, the church places a high priority on having the right digital tools. The team there chose the Waves eMotion LV1 Live Mixer to mix and stream the church’s services

Mixer, producer, and audio consultant Yamil Martinez consulted Church on the Rock on this project. His recommendation to adopt the eMotion LV1 was based on the LV1’s ability to deliver precision sound for live events and streams: “LV1 is based on integrated Waves plug-ins, so it helps me tailor the sound to any requirement in ways that most regular consoles can’t,” he said. “Because Waves’ precision plug-ins are so accessible from within the mixer, eMotion LV1 enables us to achieve an extremely polished studio sound in a live situation. We’ve been able to accomplish processing chains that make miracles happen, especially when dealing with unwanted noise. To me, the LV1 is a chameleon-like console that I can personalize to achieve any coloring palette needed.

“Our decision to adopt the LV1 was driven, first of all, by our need to improve the church’s online experience,” Martinez continued. “Before the LV1, the church’s broadcast system was quite convoluted. It was based on a combination of groups and direct outputs from the Avid Venue D-Show console at FOH, plus a few direct analog splits that fed an analog Midas Heritage mixer. Drums were fed from a premix, as were the brass and half of the vocals. Lead vocals were received individually from a processed direct-out feed. Secondary sources, or sources that aren’t used every day, derived from a split of a split, out of the main splitter. But the biggest drawback prior to adopting the LV1 was that not all the decisions made for the FOH mix translated properly in broadcast. This was both because of the physical sound of instruments in the auditorium, and because each of the church’s mix engineers or mix volunteers had different criteria. Just imagine all the inconsistencies that the former system had. This is why our big LV1 project was born.”

One Mixer Turns to Three

“Our initial idea was to extract unprocessed individual audio channels from the FOH console to a dedicated TV mix in a single eMotion LV1 mixer, but we quickly discovered that interfacing with the existing consoles just wasn’t cost-effective, nor did it provide the flexibility needed or the necessary channel counts. Neither did we want to replace the analog splitter with another one with a third output, or to invest in connectivity for outdated consoles. These were not viable solutions,” Martinez explained.

[ Streaming Audio in Houses of Worship ]

“In the end, we simply replaced our Midas Pro digital console at monitors with an eMotion LV1 mixer and shared its inputs with broadcast. But that was just the start! Eventually, three high-end consoles got replaced with eMotion LV1 mixers: two Midas consoles, one analog and one digital, which reached their limits; and a Yamaha PM1D that was stuck in outdated technology. Those consoles had to be replaced because they couldn’t adapt to our new circumstances and needs.”

Freedom of Movement

“With the Waves eMotion LV1, we are able to have full console control from different locations at the same time,” Martinez said. “This has been absolutely crucial to the church’s TV broadcast, 2D streaming and 360° VR operations. To provide a better online experience, Church on the Rock has content variations that include online hosts who interact with the online campus community and inform them of COTR’s wide variety of activities. Those hosts move around the facilities, depending on where the activities are being held. No matter where you are within Church on the Rock’s facilities, if there is a network connection, all you have to do is assign the specific port to the proper subnet to send and receive audio.”

“One huge advantage of the Waves LV1 is that it’s based on Waves SoundGrid technology, which is an Ethernet network-based system with minimum operator interaction. It does away with all the messy networking challenges, and it eliminates the hassle out of the crew hands,” Martinez explained. “You just assign the network ports and then select, update and enable the devices, assign the clock master, and you’re done. Your network is ready. Church on the Rock already had in place a solid Ethernet network infrastructure that allowed a dedicated network for SoundGrid. This made it easy to implement SoundGrid as the central hub for all the audio connections from anywhere in the buildings. All this has been a big plus for COTR’s Creative Arts team. Now they can generate content without boundaries within the buildings, or anywhere an Ethernet cable can reach. Our network covers two physical campuses across a street, with ten audio working areas. Any corner can be a creative spot!”

Modular Setup

Martinez continued, “Our designed system consists of an audio network that covers two different buildings across a street. It includes three LV1s, one Avid VENUE D-Show, one Pro Tools HDX, two Behringer X32 mixers, one Zilia 3D ambience microphone, and 14 Waves SoundGrid devices (excluding various DAW computers), including four DSPRO StageGrid 4000 stageboxes, three DiGiGrid IOC audio interfaces, one DiGiGrid IOX high-count interface, two DiGiGrid DLI interfaces, two DN32-WSG cards for Behringer, one Waves DMI interface and one DiGiGrid D portable desktop interface. The compact DiGiGrid D interface moves all over both buildings, depending on where the TV hosts are. The latest addition to the system is a 3D immersive audio mixing system that complements a 360° video content destined to COTR VR campus. Virtual reality is the best way to remotely be part of the COTR experience.”

[ How Audio Helps Houses of Worship Regather with Confidence ]

“This setup is wonderfully modular and expandable,” Martinez said. “As your audio needs evolve, the system can grow, too. Our project is proof: we started with a single LV1 as a simple broadcast mixer, and evolved to an entire audio network that covers two multistory buildings.”

Communication

About the facility’s monitor system, Martinez said, “At Church on the Rock, we don’t have a dedicated person for monitor mixing. Each musician controls their own mix wirelessly with an iPad running the Waves MyMon personal mixing app, which ‘communicates’ with the LV1. Having the MyMon app was indispensable in the selection of the LV1. The monitor LV1 can be fully mixed and cued from the stage, FOH and broadcast positions, with the latter two having absolute control over the monitor console. The more experienced FOH and broadcast engineers can assist musicians from their own position.”

He added, “The LV1/SoundGrid system allows us to have an elaborate internal communication system through a dedicated matrixing system that receives 15 talkback/communication inputs and distributes to seven destinations throughout both buildings. Before the LV1, there was no way of getting completely rid of the sinful mono IEM mix. Now, every IEM mix is stereo. Any instrument can have its own stereo reverb without complicated routing or mixing procedures. Having the reverb as part of the channel signal flow keeps the proper relation between dry and wet at every monitor mix.”

Waves Plug-Ins

About using Waves plug-ins, Martinez said, “Church of the Rock has always invested in top-notch gear since the analog days, but the results we’ve achieved with the LV1 are unprecedented. The wide selection of plug-ins from the Waves Mercury, Abbey Road, SSL, Dugan Automixer and DTS Neural Surround bundles gives us precise solutions for every need. We use many plug-ins; however, there are what I like to call ‘MVPs’—most valuable plug-ins—that make an especially huge impact on the final result. First, the Waves Playlist Rider plug-in is great for content that alternates between music and speech and has a broad dynamic range. We don’t want people constantly adjusting their volume and getting bothered by level inconsistency. Playlist Rider stabilizes all pre-recorded material, speech microphones and broadcast master output, providing smooth transitions without distraction.”

He continued, “Another situation where Waves plug-ins are life-savers is stage mic bleed. Having many instruments and numerous vocal mics open at the same time can result in a lot of stage bleed that clutters the mix and compromises intelligibility. Waves’ Primary Source Expander (PSE) plug-in eliminates stage bleed, especially when using automatic pitch correction for broadcast. With its sidechaining capabilities, PSE can be placed after a few layers of EQ, saturation and compression and still track properly. We replaced all the filters and EQ that we used to use with the extremely flexible and low-latency F6 Floating-Band Dynamic EQ. With its different slopes, the F6 filters are more adaptable. The dynamic low- and high-shelf bands allow you to expand those frequencies as needed instead of using fixed gain, reducing bleed when a direct source is not present enough. The narrow parametric bands, with a Q of 60, make the F6 perfect for surgical needs. It’s like a crossbreed between a Swiss Army knife and a scalpel.”

He added, “When it comes to reverbs, the OneKnob Wetter and GTR Reverb plug-ins are great for mixing with simplicity and consistency. We need good-sounding, low-latency and CPU-friendly reverbs to insert on a great deal of individual channels. With these two plug-ins, we cover all our bases for channel-inserted reverbs on instruments, and even on vocals in monitoring duties. Another plug-in that deserves special mention is the eMo D5 Dynamics , which is part of the eMotion LV1’s channel strip. It’s a wonderful-sounding dynamics plug-in with extensive side chain capacity—the only plug-in inserted on every single input and output of all three LV1 consoles. It handles beautifully all the heavy lifting in terms of dynamics. The church’s latest plug-in addition has been the Waves Dugan Automixer for auto-balancing multiple talkback mics. We throw at it constantly changing combinations of 15 possible inputs, and it keeps them all totally balanced, automatically. Talkback screamers are welcome since the Dugan will take care of them—easy.”

[ The Next Wave of Virtual Events ]

“The consistently great sound quality we’ve achieved with the LV1 exceeded our expectations,” Martinez noted. “With Waves’ eMotion LV1 mixer, Waves plug-ins and Waves SoundGrid real-time processing and networking technology, we’ve been able to achieve more polished results, faster and more easily, delivering better broadcast services to Church on the Rock’s online campus community.”

More on Audio in Houses of Worship

Waves eMotion LV1 Live Mixer Enhances Michigan Church Streaming Services • In order to keep parishioners connected while in quarantine, Mount Hope Church in Lansing, MI, has been presenting its services via livestream to the community, with the help of a Waves eMotion LV1 mixer.

Streaming Audio in Houses of Worship • There's no question that the ways people come together to worship have changed dramatically this year. That has also meant a lot of changes to the way services sound—and what they may sound like in the future.

A New Way to Worship • During the pandemic, houses of worship often held virtual service, which in turn has meant an increase in requests to systems contractors and integrators to facilitate streaming services.

Getting Started in House of Worship Integration • Just Add Power’s Ed Qualls shares best practices to limit project hiccups and help integrators deliver the perfect solution for house of worship customers.

How Audio Helps Houses of Worship Regather with Confidence • The new normal has proven to be particularly challenging for church leaders who are tasked with bringing parishioners together across a variety of locations, whether in-person or attending virtually from home.

More on Livestreaming

Going Live: Planning an Engaging Livestream • Your organization has asked you to livestream an upcoming event. Now what? Industry experts provide their advice on how to plan and execute a livestream that looks great and boosts engagement.

The Next Wave of Virtual Events • When the COVID-19 pandemic sidelined live events, out-of-the-box thinkers came to the table with solutions to keep the events industry alive by connecting people virtually.

What’s Next for Streaming? • During the pandemic, streaming services kept businesses running, friends connected and entertainment rolling out to fans. Now that streaming has become indispensable, what else can it do?

Want to dig for cultural artifacts in Egypt? Teleport to the Rocky Mountains during ecology class? How about drawing in three dimensions? Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) enable these astonishing feats with spatial computing applications via headsets, tracking software, immersive projection, and mobile apps.

AR and VR, often referenced together as extended reality (XR), have been in use for decades, with gaming leading the charge for consumer adoption. But pandemic-related flux is inspiring commercial stakeholders to reassess XR’s potential. Industries including manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and education are examining the ways immersive technologies can enrich user experiences.

State of the Virtual State

VR costs continue to decrease as processing power increases. Tethered and wireless HMDs (head-mounted displays) are becoming more compact and easier to use. From the HTC Vive Pro 2 to Oculus Quest 2, there are solutions for various budgets. VR is no longer cost-prohibitive.

The AR ecosystem is evolving, too. Apple’s ARKit and free AR mobile apps like Adobe Aero are inviting more people into the content creation space.

It’s a different calculus for adoption in commercial sectors, however. Return on investment and utilization throughout the product lifecycle are primary concerns.

VR Fuels Interdisciplinary Learning

While business has slowed during the coronavirus pandemic, corporations and schools are seizing the moment to evaluate their resources and see how—or even if—VR can assist. With rapid changes in how we work and learn, which investments will yield the most beneficial impacts?

A university can optimize a VR investment by making the resource accessible by more than one department, said Jeff Brum, director of marketing and sales operations at Mechdyne Corp. “VR can be a showcase for the whole school to attract and recruit top talent—both students and professors,” he said. “Imagine a hub facility [with VR] that has a higher utilization rate by multiple departments on campus.”

Just look at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Villanova has been using a VR Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) system for nearly 10 years, with great results. Villanova’s CAVE “supports a multidisciplinary facility within the library, and it’s accessible to every department,” said Brum. During a recent webinar, Brum and Villanova’s tech manager shared ways to make a VR visualization center “like the academic Switzerland” so all disciplines can benefit.

This collaborative approach dovetails with a broader embrace of interdisciplinarity and project-based learning within the academy. It’s a pedagogical trend that VR is uniquely positioned to support.

Remote learning and collaboration have also benefited from VR, AR, and MR (mixed reality). For instance, a middle-school teacher in California, Charles Coomber, used the VR videogame Half-Life: Alyx to meet with students during lockdown in 2020, turning a VR space into a virtual math classroom.

Flexible VR

There are various limitations to headset use, including the isolating effect of wearing a head-mounted display that hides the outside world, and the difficulty in sanitizing headsets between uses. Because these HMDs may limit opportunities for collaboration, some stakeholders are exploring larger-scale systems for group instruction in VR, such as CAVEs, a recursive acronym that stands for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment. Several companies offer CAVE visualization systems. Barco’s CAVE Display is a multisided immersive environment (fixed or transportable) that can be customized to meet various size requirements. For more flexible spaces, a 3D-supported wall is another possible approach. A large format, reconfigurable system can change from a VR CAVE into a wall or angled screen.

AR in Education

Ori Inbar is the co-founder of Super Ventures and the co-founder/CEO of AugmentedReality.org, a global non-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of AR. He is also the producer of AWE Expo, an event focused on the AR industry.

Inbar is passionate about AR as an educational tool. “We learn better by doing and simulating, especially projects that are impossible to complete in the classroom,” he said. “We retain information better in 3D and spatially.”

Research backs up these assertions. Studies by the Empathic Computing Lab contextualize the use of AR and VR technologies within various learning modalities. As one research paper concluded, “Augmented reality offers an enhanced learning environment that could potentially influence children’s experience and knowledge gain during the language learning process.” VR has also been proven to assist the treatment of anxiety, phobia, addiction, and pain management, according to the Empathic Computing Lab.

Hundreds of AR-enabled apps have been created to help students learn the fundamentals of science, from the origins of the universe to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Inbar highlighted some notable K-12 games and apps that leverage AR. MagicKids is a box-based learning tool that integrates augmented reality and artificial intelligence so children can “interact with and learn from the world they see every day,” according to MagicKids. Popular augmented books include Bookful by InceptionXR. Complete Anatomy and Visible Body are compelling AR anatomy educational resources. The creative possibilities are endless.

Modus VR: Bridging the Gap

VR flips the script for AV stakeholders in another crucial way: by helping dealers bring AV to life. Modus VR is a powerful sales tool that lets users customize any space in VR, with no modeling experience necessary. A client’s space can be re-created to scale in minutes.

Modus VR is both a solution and a “paradigm shift in AV,” according to Ken Brueck, co-founder of the company. The software as a service (SaaS) application bridges the gap between blueprints and final renders, allowing clients to experience an immersive digital representation of an AV redesign before the first cable is laid. Using Modus VR, dealers can create virtual spaces, walk clients through design options, step by step, and seamlessly export to CAD. Say farewell to traditional blueprints. There’s another bonus—with Modus VR, you can fully demo in 3D without goggles.

Q&A

Like any other project, an XR application must start with designers and integrators asking the right questions. As early as possible, inquire about the areas of work or research that are germane to clients.

Mechdyne’s Brum encourages deep listening. “Ask about their projects,” he said. “Where’s the data coming from? What is their source material? What are they trying to create or present? What’s the class size? How often will the space or system be used by the school for recruitment? Will it be used expansively, within a multidisciplinary space, or for a STEAM program? Do you need a hosting room out front? What computing is required? What would the bring-your-own-device [BYOD] model look like?”

Brum added that, when considering a VR space, related non-VR elements, such as a hosting room, are just as important to understand.

Lifecycle and Upgrades

“Villanova is in its eighth year with a CAVE, and they’ve been viable all the way along,” said Brum. He also pointed out the virtual reality labs at Rowan University have been generating insights for 13 years. Iowa State University has had various immersive VR solutions for more than two decades—“including their showcase 100-million pixel, six-sided CAVE.” 

One of Mechdyne’s clients has an auditorium that’s VR-equipped with a “gigantic 30-foot diagonal screen. It offers 3D functionality, so they can do 3D teaching with 3D modeling plus standard presentations.”

The key for longevity, Brum explained, is planning for flexible and usable applications that will attract multiple users. Plan for regular maintenance and upgrade paths. Where possible, perform upgrades, both hardware and software, over time to keep the system performing optimally and generating results. With proven results comes the opportunity to upgrade even more.

Some of the company’s government and academic clients started with an immersive desk, then gradually moved up to a fully immersive VR system. “A flexible configuration will allow the client to accommodate multiple disciplines,” Brum added.

Solutions

Barco, Christie Digital, Digital Projection, Epson, and Sony are a few pro AV vendors that offer VR and immersive 3D projection solutions. “We offer platforms, so virtually every system we do is customized in some way, shape, or form, because we are vendor neutral,” said Brum.

“We always look at the application first. We look at the use cases and the overall goals, then we select the components that will deliver on those needs.” When collaboration and user requirements expand beyond head-mounted displays (HMDs), specifying and combining the right computing, displays, and software is not straightforward.

[Future Vision: Volvo Tests New Car Designs by Driving With an XR Headset]

Inflection Point?

COVID is still disrupting work and life across the globe, but 2021 also represents a year when the VR elements—hardware, software, processing power—have become more accessible. Especially for HMDs, computing power is increasing, resolution is increasing, and there is more content available, thanks in part to advances with Unity and Unreal Engine for content creation.

This alignment is playing out for multinational corporations. Say you want to keep distributed teams connected across the globe. Using the multiplayer model, clients can simulate an industrial workroom to design vehicles, for example, or prototype, with collaboration across distances using headsets. If a company with a design studio in Michigan and factories in China, South America, and Germany wants to keep teams in alignment, it’s possible with VR.

“VR has been around for more than 20 years, but there is still so much potential for us,” concluded Brum. “With form factors changing and headsets getting better, there are so many new opportunities. That’s all happening while the next generation of users and creators are redefining what VR can be.”

Click here to read more stories from the June 2021 issue of SCN.

The What: Modus VR has upgraded its Virtual Reality software with the addition of new Conference Technology objects, features and partners that specifically address the space planning needs of  enterprise technology integrators, designers, architects and customers.

The What Else: Newly added commercial objects include several products from the ever-expanding Modus VR partners such as Logitech (including the Rally series of communications components) and Logitech MeetUp, Salamander Designs Unifi Conference Tables, Bose VB1, Barco Clickshare and XT Series LED Wall, Avocor E Series Touchscreens, and generic conference cameras, conference microphones, and pendants.

[The Integration Guide to Conferencing & Collaboration]

The list of new features includes a Camera Field Of View (FOV) Design Assistant. Leveraging the power of VR, this new field-of-view tool allows proper design and deployment of cameras based on room size, table shapes and other challenging aspects of precision camera placement. Also new: the Modus VR Pixel Pitch Design Assistant, a tool that allows users to quickly verify the screen pitch, the possible positions of viewers and thereby decide how best to set up the conference room or space. Using a color-coded system, Modus VR software indicates what will be the ideal viewing experience based on the viewer’s location, so the designer can quickly and easily find the best balance of performance and cost for all project stakeholders. 

This package also includes Speaker Output Visualization, a means for users to plan the location of conference room speakers and display the entire speaker coverage pattern visually.

The Bottom Line: According to the company, the latest additions make it faster and easier for all stakeholders to create conference rooms that precisely match the real layout of a given space in 3D. Designs can be built in real time and complete with AV equipment, furniture,  microphones, cameras, and more.

Through deep analysis of both key players and technologies, IDTechEx’s most recent report—Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality 2020-2030: Forecasts, Markets and Technologies—can provide readers with the trends this market will face in the coming decade.

The report covers one of the key markets of the future: the AR/VR/MR market. VR, MR, and AR products are used in many different settings, for example, for day-to-day workflow management, and on production lines.  This market, which IDTechEx forecasts predict to be over $30Bn by 2030, will impact many different industries, and future innovations will continue its growth in the wearables market. 

The report reviews and analyses over 100 products and details of over 80 companies to create succinct and detailed conclusions about the future of this market. This market research report includes market forecasts, player profiles, investments, and comprehensive company lists are all provided.

The company has also created a second report—Optics and Displays in AR, VR, and MR 2020-2030: Technologies, Players and Market—that offers a concise overview of the markets of optics and displays in both the AR/MR and VR technologies. It includes the forecasts for both the optical and display markets in AR/MR and VR markets. The current state of these markets is discussed and analyzed with long-range forecasts from 2020-2030 for revenue and volume by technology in AR/MR Optics, VR Optics, AR/MR micro-displays, and VR micro-displays.

For more information on both these market research reports, email research@IDTechEx.com or visit IDTechEx.com/Research/WT.

For generations, NYC’s Times Square has been the heart of New Year’s Eve celebrations around the globe, with millions watching and counting down the seconds until the clock strikes midnight. However, this year’s celebrations, like many things, will look a little different. Events will be virtual and socially-distanced from home, putting Samsung’s LED displays at One Times Square on center stage as the world welcomes 2021.

To help everyone safely celebrate the new year, Jamestown—a global real estate firm and owner of One Times Square, home of the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop Celebration—is partnering with several high-profile brands, including Samsung, to create a memorable and immersive virtual experience.

“As a company, Samsung is proud that our company and display products are being used for such a creative and exciting experience,” said Mark Quiroz, vice president, marketing, Display Division, Samsung Electronics America. “To see Samsung’s signage front and center in bringing friends, family, and strangers together for a new virtual New Year’s Eve is something we are excited about.”

[Best Practices for Creating an Immersive Outdoor Holiday Spectacular]

To bring the historic celebration into homes around the globe, Times Square will host the first ever multi-media, experiential technology platform that incorporates and controls live broadcast, augmented reality, virtual reality, entertainment, and gaming experiences through a dedicated App, website, and streaming services.

“Samsung is an integral partner for One Times Square’s New Year’s Eve Ball Drop Celebration, providing the technology for the building’s iconic LED displays,” said Michael Phillips, president at Jamestown. “This year, our partnership extends to our new VNYE experience. Samsung Odyssey continues to help us share engaging content with our viewers not only in the physical world, but now in the virtual world of Times Square as well.”

The NYE App will allow holiday revelers to create a personalized avatar to enter and explore the virtual world of NYC’s Times Square in a year when guests cannot be there live. Guests can walk around the plaza before heading over to One Times Square to access game rooms, and to the observation deck where they can take in the sights of the city along with Times Square’s iconic billboards powered by Samsung LED technology.

Samsung will have a special featured game in the app. The virtual One Times Square building will invite Avatars in to take the elevator to the Samsung Zero G game where they can get lost in a virtual world and win points along the way.  Avatars can also use the Samsung Odyssey Speed Gate to jump through and travel at light speed to reach other locations and hidden spots.

Join in the virtual celebration at  VNYE.com or download the app NYE available in all app stores.

In the augmented reality (AR) enterprise market, AR remote applications such as AR remote expertise and AR remote training will continue to grow in 2021 and lead in terms of adoption rates. According to global tech market advisory firm ABI Research, consumer AR software and content is expected to grow at over 100 percent CAGR between 2021 and 2025, to reach $20 billion in total revenue in 2025. The total AR media and entertainment market will see similar growth at 90 percent.

In its new whitepaper, 68 Technology Trends That Will Shape 2021, ABI Research’s analysts identify 37 trends that will shape the technology market and 31 others that, although attracting huge amounts of speculation and commentary, are less likely to move the needle over the next 12 months. “For success in 2021, especially after a very challenging 2020, one must understand fundamental trends early, and take a view on those trends that are buoyed by hyperbole and those that are sure to be uncomfortable realities,” said Stuart Carlaw, chief research officer at ABI Research. “Now is the time to double down on the right technology investment.”

Related: What Won't Happen in 2020: 8K Adoption, Quantum Computing, and More

What Will Happen in 2021: Broad and Significant AR Market Growth

“The risk of traveling and the experience from the first months of the COVID-19 outbreak will drive demand in 2021 for proactive solutions that increase employee and business efficiency and ensure employee safety,” said Eric Abbruzzese, AR/VR research director at ABI Research. AR software/platform providers will continue to update and expand their offerings, including more features and new strategic collaborations to support, automate, and simplify large-scale deployments while providing more data and analytics tools for proactive decisions. Enterprise AR hardware will not shift dramatically, as current offerings well serve value use cases. 

However, the consumer hardware market will be more dynamic. “2021 will be an important one for AR consumer hardware,” Abbruzzese said. “nReal will ship its first headsets to consumers, while Mad Gaze will also look to expand. Also, Facebook is expected to roll out its AR smart glasses out of its Reality Labs initiative; Google may join as well after the acquisition of North, and with pressure from Facebook and others. The total AR market, including content and usage on mobile devices, will be strong. Media and entertainment and retail and commerce will lead in terms of growth and adoption rates due to the establishment of ‘at home entertainment’ and the rise of online shopping.”

What Won’t Happen in 2021: Mainstream Virtual Reality

According to Abbruzzese, “Market elements have not aligned to enable mainstream virtual reality (VR) adoption. Growth will be strong in 2021, but the user base will not reach levels once thought probable since VR competes for usage time with TVs, smartphones, and traditional displays. Price and availability of valuable content remain primary barriers. The Oculus Quest 2 is the best positioned VR device the market has seen so far, with a $300 starting price and no other hardware required to use it, such as a tether to a smartphone or PC. The cost of $300 is likely to be a sweet spot for standalone VR, but it can still be expensive for a limited use item that will be outdated by next year. While smartphone-like upgrade cycles are possible and would spur growth overall, the lack of necessity for VR will limit that possibility.”

Read the full whitepaper 68 Technology Trends that Will Shape 2021: Predictions for What Will and Will Not Happen in The Year Ahead.

As 2020 finally winds down, predictions abound on the technology advancements and innovations expected in the year ahead. However, several highly anticipated advancements, including environmentally friendly 5G, explainable artificial intelligence (AI), mainstream virtual reality (AR), and ubiquitous Wi-Fi 6E, will not happen in 2021, according to global tech market advisory firm ABI Research.

In its new whitepaper, 68 Technology Trends That Will Shape 2021: Predictions for What Will and Will Not Happen in The Year Ahead, ABI Research’s analysts identify 37 trends that will shape the technology market and 31 others that, although attracting huge amounts of speculation and commentary, are less likely to move the needle over the next 12 months. 

Related: Looking Ahead to 2021

“We are nearly finished with one of the most challenging years the world has ever seen,” said Stuart Carlaw, chief research officer at ABI Research. “We have had change thrust upon us all, and the fundamental machinations of standard business processes have been stressed to the point where change has manifested itself as an evolutionary necessity. For success in 2021, one must understand fundamental trends early, and take a view on those trends that are buoyed by hyperbole and those that are sure to be uncomfortable realities. Now is the time to double down on the right technology investment.”

What won’t happen in 2020?

Environmentally Friendly 5G: “Global 5G subscriptions are forecast to grow from 234 million in 2020 to 347 million in 2021 at a rate of 48.4 percent,” said Jun Wei Ee, 5G and mobile network infrastructure research analyst at ABI Research. “This accelerated growth in 5G adoption will strain the environment as a growing number of consumers will be switching over to 5G devices to take advantage of the high speeds and low latency. The transition will potentially create large amounts of electronic waste.” 

Explainable AI: “Deep learning-based AI remains a black box,” said Lian Jye Su, AI and machine learning principal analyst at ABI Research. “Although cloud AI players, such as Google, H2O, and Element AI, have offered development tools and frameworks around explainable AI, AI built based on these solutions is not mature enough for mass commercialization. Now, most AI models are not designed for transparency, let alone explain-ability. Hence, do not expect explainable AI to become mainstream in 2021.”

Mainstream Virtual Reality: “Market elements have not aligned to enable mainstream virtual reality (VR) adoption,” said Eleftheria Kouri, augmented and virtual reality research analyst at ABI Research. “Growth will be strong in 2021, but the user base will not reach levels once thought probable where VR competes for usage time with TVs, smartphones, and traditional displays. The enterprise sector remains the fastest growth opportunity for now. Consumers still present the largest potential user base and the most alignment with content in media and entertainment. However, content creators are mostly waiting for a more approachable user base, and that user base is waiting for content. This will not happen by 2021, but the momentum is indeed growing across both consumer and enterprise spaces.”

Ubiquitous Wi-Fi 6E: “The ever-increasing connected device density and increasing use of bandwidth-intensive applications are always driving the demand for high-efficiency Wi-Fi networks,” said Khin Sandi Lynn, video and cloud services analyst. “COVID-19 has further accelerated that demand. The latest solution is Wi-Fi 6E, an extended Wi-Fi 6 with 6GHz spectrum. But, Wi-Fi 6E adoption in residential broadband use cases will be minimal in 2021 since broadband service providers have only recently started upgrading their CPE with Wi-Fi 6.”

“In this period of uncertainty and change, there is one polestar of unflinching truth: technology will be the most powerful tool in ensuring corporate health,” Carlaw said. “Technology evolution, implementation, and enthusiasm must be embraced by all companies, no matter what tier of the corporate strata or end market in which they reside. A resilient company that is well set to grow once this pandemic ends will be characterized by its digital agility as much as anything else.”

For more trends that won’t happen in 2021, and the 37 trends that will download the whitepaper, 68 Technology Trends that Will Shape 2021: Predictions for What Will and Will Not Happen in The Year Ahead. 

The Audio Engineering Society has released preliminary details on the upcoming International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality (AVAR), set to take place in its own online virtual venue, August 17–19. The event will serve as a hub of innovation for the latest research in the fields of spatial audio and technology for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, with a focus on technical solutions and recommended practices in the field. 

Registration for this event, sponsored by Facebook Reality Labs and Valve, and hosted by DigiPen Institute of Technology, starts at just $25 for AES members ($150 for non-members) and will be using AltSpaceVR as the platform to share keynotes, panel discussions, workshops, and more. The use of AltSpaceVR offers the option of attending in standard 2D mode or as an immersive experience, utilizing AR/VR devices such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, Oculus Rift, Samsung GearVR, or Windows Mixed Reality.   

“The necessity to take AVAR 2020 fully online is ideally suited to the conference content,” said Matt Klassen, chair. “Our attendees can plug in entirely, create an avatar, and participate and interact inside a virtual environment. One of the primary advantages of holding the conference in VR is the very compelling nature of the 3D audio for small group conversations—a big step up from flat-screen teleconferencing!” 

“Not only will AVAR 2020 explore practical and effective production workflow for audio production for immersive experiences, it will itself be such an experience and demonstrate an application of the technology that couldn’t be more timely,” said co-chair and treasurer Lawrence Schwedler.    

The 2020 AES Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality builds upon the AES’s two previous AVAR conferences and will offer a fresh look at audio production for these rapidly growing market segments. This year’s topics will include spatial audio capture, rendering, synthesis over headphones and loudspeakers, binaural applications, Ambisonics, 3D audio mixing and content production, sound design for VR/AR, and more, plus a featured panel discussion with Emily Ridgway of the Valve audio team on August 18 titled “When Worlds Collide: Audio Development of the Valve Index and Half:Life Alyx.” Additionally, two keynote addresses will take place during the conference: “New Audio Realities at Scale” with Varun Nair of Facebook on August 17 and “Empathetic Technology and Embodied User Experience” with Poppy Crum of Dolby on August 19. 

The AES AVAR 2020 Conference is organized by committee members from a variety of disciplines and experiences in the industry, including Matt Klassen, chair; Lawrence Schwedler, co-chair, treasurer; Pablo F. Hoffmann, papers chair; Sally Kellaway, workshops chair; Greg Dixon, audiovisual coordinator; Randi Ganulin, graphic designer/photographer; Phillip Klassen, social media coordinator; Anna Lantz, webmaster; and Dustin Williams, volunteer coordinator.  

For further information and registration links, click here. 

Shift, a futuristic technology company based in Oregon, is offering free virtual reality (VR) training for healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the company's website, the Shift training program uses immersive VR training that was developed with content from the University of Portland School of Nursing to serve healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch the video below to learn more about Shift's COVID-19 VR training.

“Our goal was to provide virtual reality COVID-19 training for healthcare workers and those working in post-acute care and long-term care facilities who are being asked to engage in care that is outside their normal practice as well as for those whose training is out of date,” Wendy Morgan, the company's CEO and co-founder, told VR Scout.

The free training is currently being offered in Oregon. To learn more or to register, visit shiftbias.com/register-for-training

To stay up to date with the impact of coronavirus on pro AV, subscribe to our enews. 

In just a few short months, coronavirus, aka COVID-19, has gone from an isolated outbreak in China to a global pandemic. While personal and family health has remained a top priority, we are also modifying the way we do business and educate our children.

If necessity is the mother of invention, adaptation is the father of survival. Learning to leverage virtual reality in our lives is a natural transition. Our modern-day activities that once required an in-person presence can now be accomplished virtually.

Related: Glue Launches Next-Gen VR Collaboration Platform for Dispersed Teams

Virtual reality (VR) has come a long way with capabilities that stretch far beyond gaming. VR can help make the workday feel more professional and education more engaging, all while staying home as you keep yourself and your family safe.

Business

Video calls and conferences are seeing historic adoption as we work to stay connected in a wide range of business situations, but in many cases, they are proving to be insufficient. There’s no substitute for being in the same room as your team members or coworkers. To compensate, VR technology is gaining traction in keeping the lines of communication open in both B2B and B2C activities.

Utilizing VR in businesses allows you to gather with your colleagues without possible exposure to the virus and without the need for travel. Products from Oculus have upped the quality of VR experiences and made virtual meetings and training sessions a reality. It’s now possible for participants to feel as though they’re interacting in the same virtual space. This 3D environment facilitates remote communication and collaboration in unprecedented ways.

There are a number of software solutions emerging to facilitate VR meetings. A PC application called SPACES allows users to join Zoom meetings and other video calls through VR; other more sophisticated software from companies like Glue Collaboration allow for VR-based collaboration.

If you are taking a more individualized approach, Oculus VirtualSpeech gives your employees the opportunity to hone in on their public speaking skills. You can upload slides for presentations and receive real-time feedback on delivery. You can even receive an eye-contact rating.

Education

The coronavirus has led to the temporary closure of schools worldwide. According to UNESCO, these closures have affected over 87 percent of the world’s student population. In a matter of weeks, students across the globe found themselves in temporary homeschooling situations.

New educational approaches could result in innovations to narrow the gap caused by the digital divide, and there are companies that have already been focusing on providing new educational options via the VR learning environment. Teachers around the globe are finding new ways to use VR technology to connect with students, bridging the gap created by social distancing.

Tools like the Expeditions app, originally intended to bring virtual reality and augmented reality into the classroom, could prove just as effective at bringing the classroom into students’ homes.

Apple has created tools such as headsets to combine virtual reality with augmented reality. It is currently developing the ability to record AR and VR experiences to be watched again later or transmitted to others. While it’s already possible to record live gameplay, this application would enable you to capture both real-world and computer-generated elements.

What’s Next

These are unprecedented times and we have to continue looking for ways to interact and stimulate our wellbeing. Through virtual reality, social interaction seems possible and can reduce our levels of anxiety and isolation, along with improving our quality of life.

Justin Schwartz is the founder and CEO of Sage AVT, a service-oriented custom integration company in New York.

To stay up to date with the impact of coronavirus on pro AV, subscribe to our enews. 

The What: NDI, a Vizrt Group brand, has unveiled NDI version 4.5 of its video-over-IP technology, one of the most widely adopted in the world. The update, which the company says is the “most significant release update since NDI was introduced in 2015,” features improved compression, new mobile tools, support for Unreal Engine and more. 

[NewTek Showcases NDI at InfoComm]

The What Else: Advancements in version 4.5 include capabilities for transferring video, audio, and metadata in real time across standard and wireless Ethernet networks. New features include breakthroughs in mobile phone connectivity, wireless networking, augmented and virtual reality environments, and more. These advancements come at a time when making video accessible over IP matters more than ever.

As social distancing is being widely practiced around the globe, the only way content creators can work together is through IP networks and software-defined visual storytelling (#SDVS). As growth in esports accelerates and more than 50 percent of online gamers are now using mobile devices, the ability to bring the game from a smartphone into streaming software favored by gamers is crucial. NDI 4.5 adds support in iOS for real-time, full frame-rate, and resolution capture of the display on wireless with NDI|HX Capture for iOS. In addition, the NDI|HX Camera for iOS app turns any iPhone into a full 4K wireless camera, giving it the same capabilities as a high-end video camera. 

“No other IP technology for video production can translate to mobile phones because NDI is software-defined, not hardware-constrained,” said Dr. Andrew Cross, president of research and development for the Vizrt Group. “The NDI|HX mode for high-efficiency low bandwidth data transfer gives anyone with an iOS phone the ability to screen capture games and deliver it to any NDI-enabled multi camera live production system.”

Built into NDI 4.5 are extended capabilities for internet use and use on wireless networks. This version shows improvements to NDI|HX, with lower latency, full support for (multi) GPU decoding acceleration, and support for advanced compression formats.

Working with Epic Games, the NDI SDK for Unreal Engine adds full support for video inputs and outputs over IP, enabling a new generation of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) video products for integration into games and more. The NDI SDK for Unreal Engine is free to download and the source code is available so that developers can customize their content creations.

NDI 4.5 offers unlimited IP recording, with Adobe Premiere plugins both for real-time NDI and working with time-locked ISO recording across multiple streams. This takes NDI streams from the network and stores them on disk with no CPU usage, allowing users to record any number of streams to disk and extend this to multiple machines for almost infinite recording capabilities.

For use in embedded systems, NDI 4.5 now includes the latest version of the embedded NDI SDK that offers full FPGA support for both NDI encoding and decoding. In addition, there is support across almost all platforms for access to the compressed data streams, instant routing, and more. For advanced development, embedded platforms and custom hardware needs, NDI fully provides the ability for developers to create amazing products.

The Bottom Line: With version 4.5, NDI has been enhanced in a variety of ways while maintaining the same bitrate. Improved video quality, significantly faster decoding, faster discovery of sources, support for many more streams on a single PC than ever before, better discovery server, and new example code are some highlights of the many new improvements.

The NDI 4.5 SDK and NDI Tools are free downloads, available by the end of March 2020 here.

You’re behind the wheel, cruising along at highway speed. But you’re not looking at the road—at least not directly. No, you’re piloting your car from behind a head-mounted display, and the world that meets your eyes is a curious mixture of the real and the virtual.

It sounds outrageous, but the practice of test driving vehicles while wearing a mixed reality headset has proven supremely practical for Volvo Cars, and the results have been nothing short of groundbreaking. Spearheaded by Casper Wickman, the company’s senior technical leader of human-centric methods and tools, these technological trials have dramatically simplified the Swedish marque’s process of evaluating new safety systems and design concepts. 

But what’s it like from the driver’s seat? 

“You would think that this would be a crazy experience, like you’re in a video game or something,” Wickman said. “But the thing is, as soon as you put the glasses on and you sit behind the steering wheel and start to drive, then your primary task is to drive the car, basically. Then you really forget that you’re inside a headset. It feels super natural to do it. It becomes your world, basically.”

Of course, you can’t do that with just any headset. To arrive at this destination required a tight-knit development partnership with Finnish XR innovator Varjo—and a whole lot of clever engineering.

Starting Up

Wickman has been helping Volvo improve its processes for two decades. He joined the company in 2000 as a student in its industrial PhD program, which employs a group of 50 to 70 students at its Gothenburg headquarters in tasks like variation simulation and visualization, and the analysis of quantitative data with the goal of eliminating manufacturing defects.

After five years in this capacity, he joined a new department formed to study “perceived quality”—to predict how things will look and feel in the completed vehicle. It’s within this general area that he has remained, working his way up through various leadership tiers to his current senior technical role focused on novel methodologies. 

“We want to develop tools with new emerging technologies to be able to put the user in the experience in the very early stages of design, in order to be able to evaluate whether we are doing the correct things before we do anything,” he said. “I’m working a lot within user experience, but really in any area where you need to put the user in the experience.” 

Getting in Gear

Wickman began considering the prospect of harnessing virtual and augmented reality in his work several years ago, but the technology wasn’t ready. “When it comes to detailing and understanding the look of things in a car context, you need to be able to see the stitching, see the textures, see how things are lined up against each other,” he said. “You need to see more than the complete design.”

Then, a couple years back, he participated in a project that involved using Microsoft HoloLens AR glasses for manufacturing and packaging activities. “But (in my view) they were using augmented reality as if it were an ordinary desktop application in some way,” Wickman said. “They were not utilizing the full capacity of AR.”

After some brainstorming over a better use for the technology, Wickman arrived at the wild idea of driving with the headset. “They answered ‘No, that wouldn’t be possible for several reasons: you wouldn’t be able to track stuff, you wouldn’t be safe,’” he said. 

It was around this time, however, that some other people at Volvo tipped him off to the work that Varjo was doing—specifically, the development of a head-worn display with a pixel density so high the company markets it as “human eye resolution.” Feeding this display with actual footage of the environment from cameras on the headset, Varjo’s XR-1 enables the merging of virtual and physical realities with a clarity never before possible. 

In January of 2018, Wickman set up a meeting with Varjo’s founder and chief product officer Urho Konttori and chief marketing officer Jussi Mäkinen to go over his vision. “We presented that in terms of different steps that we’d like to go through, with the first step just being able to drive with a pair of glasses, using the cameras with video pass-through, to evaluate just how you would manage motion sickness and whether it would be a safe thing to do,” he said.

If that worked, he wanted to begin overlaying data onto the real world; then, he wanted to be able to interact with the virtual content. He also proposed the desire to analyze “gaze data” to see exactly where people looked as they completed tasks. Lastly, if everything else was possible, he wanted to add interactive virtual objects outside of the car. 

“It was pretty cool,” Wickman said. “[Urho and Jussi] said directly, ‘This is the most challenging use case we’ve ever heard of in any industry. Let’s do this together. We’re in.’” 

Picking Up Speed

Over the next six months, as the details of the contract were being hammered out, both companies began preparing on their own: Varjo worked to boost the capabilities of its XR-1 headset, and Volvo went about formulating a way to extract all of the necessary signals from the car. They then established a schedule over the following eight months in which they would conduct their tests. “At each trial, Varjo came over to Volvo and they brought a prototype XR-1 headset, and at each drive they had enhanced a lot of things,” Wickman said.

The setup begins with a computer in the back seat running Unity, the software in which everything operates. A local area network is used to handle all of the signal and data transmission. Mounted in front of the driver is a tracking system called 5C, from German company ART, which follows a set of little spherical sensors on the driver’s headset for spatial positioning. Also running through the LAN to the computer are the signals extracted from the vehicle, which consist of the flex ray and local interconnect network (LIN). These communicate a whole host of information to the system in Unity. 

With this setup, Wickman and his team can then overlay a conceptual virtual cockpit over the actual one and interact with it. “You can read out signals like the steering wheel angle and connect that to the virtual model, so the physical steering wheel and virtual one are synchronized while driving,” Wickman said. Or, “if you press a switch in the car that’s usually used to activate the radio, we can use that signal instead to activate something else on the virtual model. So, maybe we’ve decided that in the next generation of the car to use a stalk or a switch for something else, then we can simulate that.”

Navigating Challenges

According to Wickman, the toughest challenge on Volvo’s end was getting the tracking system right. “A car is really a super complex environment,” he said. “You have magnetic fields, you have different light properties—sometimes it’s low sunshine, sometimes it’s bright, sometimes it’s dark—so it needs to be able to track in different light conditions.” On top of that, you have to deal with the vibrations and bumps from the road.

He said that Volvo and Varjo both tried out a number of tracking systems independently before arriving at the 5C system from ART, which is mounted very rigidly to the car. “That works super well,” he said. “Of course, some of the content might move a little bit, but it’s really impossible to realize that because you’re moving with the car yourself. So you will actually experience it like it’s super solid and fixed to the physical world.”

The other major challenge was latency. The earliest versions of the XR-1 headset had a latency of around 30 milliseconds—not great, but not terrible. “It was barely possible to drive a car with it, because it’s super sensitive,” Wickman said. “If you just look away to the side, then back to the road again, you might end up in the middle of the road.” Still, they managed to complete the test as scheduled, and eventually Varjo managed to shrink the response time down to just 12 milliseconds. 

Then, of course, there’s the occasional hiccup in the system. “We’ve had a number of blackouts,” he said with a chuckle. “Actually, one time on the test track, the computer stopped working, so the headset became black. But we have a procedure for that: the driver says ‘Can’t see anything, take over the steering wheel,’ and they take off the headset. There’s never been a dangerous situation at all.”

The Road Ahead

As of this writing, Volvo had just received its own production version Varjo XR-1 headset, allowing Wickman and his team to begin formulating workflows around it as a bona fide development tool for the company. “We’re setting up a plan for all the future evaluations we’re going to do throughout this year,” he said. “We have a whole stack of things we want to do.”

Before new Volvo models ever hit the road, the company will know exactly what the visual experience will be like for the driver. This starts with visibility, or “how much you see from the car to be able to maneuver it,” Wickman said. “That’s one big application: to be able to bring the new design proposal into the car and overlay that, and then you can drive with the car outside and evaluate visibility.”

Wickman also plans to use the XR-1 to evaluate active safety technologies. Currently, when Volvo wants to test, for example, an automatic braking feature, they have to drive a car toward a physical object. “And if the system fails, you will actually hit the thing you’re trying to avoid,” he said. “Although we’re using soft targets, it’s still damaging to the sensors on the car.” Instead, they can place a virtual obstacle up the road and experiment with new safety systems in the digital realm first.

The next step from there is the development of technology for automated vehicles, or AVs. Wickman said that Volvo is already working on research projects in this field with the help of funding from Swedish authorities. “We’re trying to understand things like how AV cars should behave in terms of overtaking bicycles, for example,” he said. In order to test this the traditional way, you’d need to actually put someone on a bike ahead of the car; now they can do that in Unity. “We just add a virtual object as a bicycle, and a virtual object as an approaching car,” he said. “And you can optimize the algorithms for how the AV car should move without taking any risks for other people while trying it.”

Ultimately, what makes the integration of the Varjo XR-1 into Wickman’s work so successful is that it so directly fulfils the mission of his department: understanding and improving upon the experience people have with Volvo cars. And there’s much more to come.

“We have the perspective of the human being as the starting point for everything we’re doing,” he said. “We also scout a lot of different new technologies. A lot of start-ups all over the world are doing amazing things that we might want to incorporate in our cars in the future. So, being able in a very early stage to evaluate things without the need of actually implementing them, that is a huge advantage.”

The What: Glue Collaboration, developer of collaborative, real-time VR software services, has announced the next generation of its VR-first collaboration platform, adding a host of new features as well as support for Oculus Quest headsets.

[Commercial, Enterprise to Spur VR Growth to $24.5B by 2024: ABI Research]

The What Else: Glue provides shared virtual environments where dispersed participants can come together to learn, share, plan, and create as if they were face to face in a real physical space. During the initial pilot phase over the past year, more than 200 organizations including leading corporations like HP, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and Microsoft have experienced Glue and provided feedback that has been incorporated into the latest release.

With Glue now compatible with the standalone Oculus Quest VR headset, businesses have a new, more affordable and low-friction way for their employees to use the platform. There, they can take advantage of an array of new features and improvements. These include:

• A new virtual touch interface that enables users to perform different tasks such as writing notes, creating whiteboards, and making annotations in 3D;
• Team Files: a file sharing system for sharing presentations, 3D models, and images;
• A set of new virtual spaces for collaboration including Project Garden, Lake Cubic, and Clarity Island;
• A new integrated camera, with users able to take selfies;
• Extended keyboard character support, and new supported languages.

“Given growing travel uncertainties, new cost-saving imperatives and the climate emergency, the need for remote collaboration tools that truly emulate the experience of being face to face with others has never been greater,” said Jussi Havu, CEO, Glue Collaboration. “Traditional audio and videoconferencing tools fall short in providing such an experience as they lack true human presence and effective co-creation tools. Glue is a powerful alternative, and our new release provides the most feature-rich virtual environment yet for effective remote collaboration in both real time as well as asymmetrically."

The Bottom Line: There are many ways for organizations to use Glue, reflective of the diverse ways people collaborate in the physical world. These range from recurring remote meetings, project scrums, virtual training simulations and product marketing showcases, to workshops where dispersed teams can put their heads together. 

Organizations that sign up for a demonstration of Glue before the end of March 2020 will receive a free two-week trial.

The What: Industrial-grade VR/XR developer Varjo has introduced real-time chroma keying and marker tracking as early access features for its XR-1 Developer Edition headset. An industry-standard technique known as “green-screening” used in broadcasting and film, Varjo is the first company to deliver chroma keying in real-time for mixed reality devices. With marker tracking, professional users can instantly anchor any virtual objects to the real world using printable visual markers.

[Varjo and Lenovo Partner on Advanced XR Computing for Enterprises]

The What Else: Chroma keying is particularly beneficial for professional workflows where aligning virtual content accurately with the physical world is crucial. Users can now easily define parts of reality, identify them with color, and replace them with virtual models or scenery without heavy development costs. With chroma key, virtual content also occludes with real-world objects or hands, allowing intuitive interactions. Using Varjo’s object tracking with visual markers, professionals can make virtual objects appear exactly where they want them in their surroundings. Example use cases include:

• Conduct training and simulation: A pilot can sit in a replica of a plane or helicopter cockpit and be able to look outside and see oneself flying in an ultra-immersive visual scenery, while operating physical cockpit controllers for realistic training. Chroma keying also enables multi-user training scenarios.
• Design the products of tomorrow: An automotive designer can sit in a car and replace parts of the interior with designs that are not yet built in reality with the click of a button. Designers can also collaborate in an immersive mixed reality space, interacting with virtual models and making changes to them in real-time, or virtually “dress” 3D prints to look like material-finished products.
• Run academic, clinical, and commercial research: Researchers can conduct studies inside life-like mixed reality, simultaneously combining virtual and real world elements into the research environment. The subjects can hold virtual products or instruments in their hands and interact with them.

“Since its commercial launch in December 2019, Varjo’s XR-1 Developer Edition has quickly become the most demanded mixed reality product for professional users, transforming the way companies train, design, and conduct research in immersive environments,” said Urho Konttori, chief product officer and co-founder of Varjo. “When our customers asked us to create a seamless solution for blending the real and virtual worlds, we immediately jumped to the challenge. We’re excited to introduce real-time chroma keying and object tracking to our customers just three months after the first deliveries of the XR-1, enabling absolute immersion inside mixed reality.”

The Bottom Line: Together, chroma keying and marker tracking allow enterprise customers to seamlessly integrate virtual and real worlds, interact with photorealistic virtual content as they would in real life, and achieve pixel-perfect accuracy and occlusion inside mixed reality. Demo videos showcasing the power of chroma keying and marker tracking are available here.

Both chroma keying and marker tracking are available in early access to all users of the XR-1 Developer Edition headset. 

The virtual reality market will surpass $24.5 billion in revenues by 2024, quickly growing at a 45.7 percent CAGR (2019 to 2024), finds global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research. Standalone VR will be the main driver of this growth, expected to account for over 70 percent of shipments by 2024, as it finds the optimal balance between price, performance, and ease of setup.

[Emerging Smart Glasses to Help Drive AR Market to $100B by 2024: ABI Research]

In 2019 the successful launch of Oculus Quest HMD highlighted the capability of 6DoF standalone VR solutions to replicate the more immersive experiences of tethered systems while remaining portable. This is a key attribute for the commercial and enterprise markets where applications like training are gaining traction and acceptance.

By revenue, the commercial and enterprise markets are expected to eclipse the consumer segment by 2021, with healthcare, retail, AEC, education, and location-based VR seeing early traction and expected to continue pushing this market forward. “Training and 3D visualization are the most common use cases but other applications like virtual meetings and productivity will become increasingly common as hardware and platforms improve and evolve,” said Michael Inouye, principal analyst at ABI Research.  

“Overall, 2019 was a mixed bag for VR, but the good were solid steps forward,” Inouye continued. “Some highs from new products like Oculus Quest and Rift S, HTC Vive Cosmos, Valve Index, and Varjo’s impressive enterprise HMDs, came along with some new lows, like Google ending development of Daydream and open-sourcing Cardboard, which leaves this segment in a bleak situation. But HMD viewers could, in time, help bring this segment back from the brink. The standout is standalone VR, which is shaping up well, addressing many of the early issues and is meeting early expectations, which bodes well for both the consumer and enterprise markets.”

While VR has yet to live up to its early expectations, there is positive momentum and strong activity beyond the mainstream’s vision. “Gaming remains the main driver on the consumer side and with titles like Half-Life: Alyx soon to be released,” Inouye said. “Coupled with Sony’s continued support of VR, gaming is buoying the consumer side of the market. VR had a less than stellar start, and while it’s still a long-time horizon, some of the building blocks have solidified, affording VR the time it needs to reach its potential across verticals.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s Virtual Reality Market Data: Devices, Verticals, and Value Chain market data report. This report is part of the company’s Video and Cloud Services research service, which includes research, data, and Executive Foresights. Market Data spreadsheets are composed of deep data, market share analysis, and highly segmented, service-specific forecasts to provide detailed insight where opportunities lie.

The What: Lenovo introduced VR Classroom 2, a solution that empowers teachers and administrators to integrate virtual reality lessons into their curriculum. With new classroom management tools for teachers, Lenovo VR Classroom 2 aims to make it easier for schools to get started with implementing immersive education.

[Varjo and Lenovo Partner on Advanced XR Computing for Enterprises]

The What Else: The solution comes with a new headset and content management system, as well as diverse curriculum-mapped experiences, including STEM, virtual tours, and career exploration. Lenovo VR Classroom 2 is powered by the ThinkReality platform, which is designed to make it easier for IT staff to deploy a fleet of headsets. Lenovo VR Classroom 2 also uses LanSchool to improve the deployment of VR.

“Preparing young people for the careers of tomorrow requires smarter technology and a reliable partner to support deployment. Teachers value the unbounded possibilities VR experiences bring to students when it is to easy-to-use and fully supported,” said Rich Henderson, director of global education solutions at Lenovo. “Whether it’s taking a virtual field trip inside DNA strands to teach a unit on genetic engineering, or a guided tour of the Colosseum in Ancient Rome in history class—Lenovo’s VR Classroom 2 offers a seamless journey for educators and students.”

The Bottom Line: Lenovo VR Classroom 2 is a complete solution for teaching with VR, providing fully integrated hardware, content, training, and support designed specifically for middle schools and high schools.

The Lenovo VR Classroom 2 will be available in spring 2020.

The door opened, and I ducked into the cockpit of an Airbus A350. Easing myself into the pilot’s seat, I studied the minute details in the controls and flight map. I reached for the throttle—but my hand passed through it like an apparition. 

Of course, I wasn’t at the helm of an aircraft, but rather in a hotel room in Midtown Manhattan, trying out what is perhaps the world’s most sophisticated VR/AR headset: the XR-1 Developer Edition from Finland-based Varjo Technologies. With a pixel density so high that Varjo calls it “human eye resolution,” it’s easy to get lost in virtual environments. And while you can tell that you’re looking at a digitized version of reality (a very fine graining of pixels is still perceptible), it doesn’t interfere with the sense of immersion or the ability to critically discern details like small print on virtual displays. 

[Varjo and Lenovo Partner on Advanced XR Computing for Enterprises]

All of what I’ve described so far, however, has been available since the company’s first product, the VR-1, was released early in 2019. Organizations around the world are employing it and its successors, the VR-2 and VR-2 Pro, for a variety of applications, including training for airline pilots.

What makes Varjo’s new XR-1 special is its augmented reality capabilities, which, when paired with the company’s just-launched 2D/3D immersive user interface called Varjo Workspace, open a plethora of opportunities for design-related fields. This “Dimensional Interface” is compatible with a number of Microsoft Windows applications and software tools, and enables designers to switch between real, virtual, and mixed-reality modes and modify their creations while experiencing them in 3D.

In my demonstration, the Varjo team of Urho Konttori, founder and chief product officer and Jussi Mäkinen, chief marketing officer, guided me through a few applications that are possible with the XR-1 and Varjo Workspace. At first, I was just sitting in a digitized version of the hotel room—reality captured through the XR-1’s imaging technology. Then, a giant floating screen appeared in front of the room’s actual TV, and Mäkinen played the trailer for the upcoming Star Wars movie on it, proving how smoothly the system is able to render content, even at such high resolutions. 

Next, Mäkinen—who was operating the PC that was driving my headset with a wireless keyboard and mouse—switched me into a virtual environment, an automotive showroom of one of Varjo’s customers, Volvo. At first, the room was empty except for a blue SUV. Then, he inserted a floating display above the vehicle, essentially a Windows computer screen running CAD software. Using the software, he gradually began adding different pieces of furniture to the room around a blue SUV—demonstrating the ease with which one can design an environment from within that environment. 

With Varjo’s video pass-through-based mixed reality, designers can just as easily implement virtual elements into an existing physical environment, greatly enhancing their creative potential. In fact, the XR-1 is so capable that engineers at Volvo are actually driving prototype vehicles while wearing it, to evaluate interior designs and active safety technologies.

According to Mäkinen and Konttori, the company’s software is compatible with CAD and visualization tools including Autodesk VRED, Unity, and Unreal, so designers can simply upgrade their current workflows into the realm of virtual and augmented reality.

“Varjo Workspace shows how professionals will use and interact with computers in the future,” Konttori said. “Varjo is unique in being the only product maker capable of photorealistic visual fidelity in both VR and XR, with perfect color accuracy and control. This is a key enabler for the next computing paradigm.” 

Varjo Workspace is currently shipping to customers and partners as part of the software delivered with the XR-1 Developer Edition. The XR-1 Developer Edition headset is available for purchase immediately at $9,995 and is sold together with Varjo’s Software and Support service at $1,995. Varjo plans to implement customer and partner feedback in 2020 to further deepen its integration with professional design, engineering, and simulation tools.

Birch Aquarium at Scripps is breaking a barrier this spring. Instead of allowing visitors to just watch local marine life from behind glass, the aquarium is making it possible for visitors to experience life as fish do—thanks to a 360-degree virtual reality exhibit built by UC San Diego undergraduates.

The new exhibit will be Birch Aquarium’s first virtual reality experience and is made possible by campus-wide collaborations led by the Jacobs School of Engineering and its multidisciplinary Summer EnVision Experience program.

[High Tech Storytelling: Museums, Exhibits, and AV]

Visitors to the aquarium will don a mask shaped like one of La Jolla’s local marine animals—a bright orange Garibaldi fish, or a spotted Leopard Shark, for example. The mask is equipped with a VR headset, allowing visitors to tag along on a dive into kelp forests off of Channel Islands National Park. Future forays are planned into the San Diego-Scripps Coastal Marine Conservation Area, located just steps from the aquarium. This will allow aquarium visitors to experience life in one of California’s verdant Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

“I am particularly excited for this because it breaks a barrier that we haven’t been able to break prior, which is to introduce VR into our aquarium as a legitimate way to connect people to Scripps science,” said Harry Helling, executive director of Birch Aquarium at Scripps. “And so we were excited to learn that the students took this on as a challenge, and to see that they’ve succeeded is a big deal for our aquarium, whose primary role is to translate complex science for general audiences.”

Ten undergraduate students spent 10 weeks over the summer crafting a way to incorporate virtual reality into the aquarium for the Summer EnVision Experience (SEE) program at the EnVision Arts and Engineering Maker Studio. The program, now in its third year of partnership with Birch Aquarium, is building on the Jacobs School of Engineering’s commitment to collaboration. SEE brought together students from different disciplines across campus—engineering, cognitive science, interdisciplinary computing, and the arts, for example—to collaborate with each other and the environmental researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Together, they were challenged to create an exhibit that would provide aquarium visitors with a deeper understanding of the need for Marine Protected Areas.

“It was really interesting to learn how to use the EnVision studio maker space because I had very limited experience using it before,” said Will Stock, an interdisciplinary computing and the arts student. “It was really nice to be able to get a lot of experience using laser cutters, 3D printers, and sewing machines.”

[How AV is Moving Museums Forward with Immersive Technology]

This is the third year of the Summer EnVision Experience internship program, thanks to philanthropic support from the Charles Lee Powell Foundation, which provided funding for the program.

“I’m predicting that this is going to be very popular and that this is the start of an exciting journey for all of us here at the aquarium and also for future SEE classes,” Helling concluded.

Varjo Technologies, provider of industrial-grade VR/XR headsets, has announced a cooperation agreement for technical and business collaboration with Lenovo. The new partnership will create Certified for Varjo pairings on Lenovo desktop and mobile workstations for all Varjo head-mounted displays (HMDs). This combines world-leading professional VR/XR products with powerful, high-end computers, enabling enterprise organizations to adopt and implement VR use cases more quickly. 

[Behind Varjo's ‘Human Eye Resolution’ VR Headset]

“Our partnership with Lenovo helps drive a monumental shift in enterprise usage of immersive technologies,” said Timo Toikkanen, president and COO at Varjo. “Combining our products with Lenovo’s pioneering enterprise portfolio products into readymade bundles eases adoption hurdles and quickly gives organizations the tools they need to start taking advantage of the many benefits of virtual reality.”

Professional VR applications including research, training and simulation, industrial design, and more require the most powerful and sophisticated technologies in order to create a valuable user experience. Varjo’s human-eye resolution VR devices, matched with the processing and compute power found in Lenovo’s workstation portfolio products, push the limits of spatial computing forward and deliver the most natural visual experience for exploring and interacting with high-resolution models and simulations.

“When you’re looking for the ultimate VR and XR viewing experience, you look for the only human-eye resolution display available,” said Rob Herman, general manager, Workstation and Client AI at Lenovo. “The technology Varjo brings to the table is extremely sophisticated and requires professional workstation power to bring that clarity to life. That’s why I’m excited to see the partnership between Varjo and Lenovo come to life after months of development and collaboration—certifying several desktop and mobile workstation configurations across our ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series portfolio. This certification ensures the highest-quality experience for professional applications—spanning across automotive, simulation, training, architectural visualization, and more.”

This global partnership announcement comes on the heels of Varjo’s recent launch of two VR headsets: the VR-2 and the VR-2 Pro.

Penn State will be equipped to meet the needs of students, faculty, and a society at large that is progressively more reliant on immersive technology with the opening of the Center for Immersive Experiences (CIE) on the University Park campus.

The center, with physical space in Pattee Library and collaborators in 11 different academic units at the University, will feature comprehensive services around teaching, learning, and research involving immersive technology by increasing access to virtual reality, augmented reality, 360-degree video, mixed reality, and more. 

The center—on schedule to open in mid-Nov. 2019—will serve as a conduit for immersive experiences at the University by championing interdepartmental projects, incorporating immersive tech into classrooms, and giving Penn Staters access to a “sandbox” of immersive technologies. The center’s physical space will feature virtual reality bays and a lab that can function as a theater, breakout room, or conference space. 

Administrators believe Penn State’s collaborative culture, institutional strengths, and research focus make it an ideal place to unlock immersive technology’s educational potential.

[Transforming Education With AR and VR]

“Immersive technology continues to grow as an expected part of life for current and future Penn Staters,” said Alex Klippel, professor of geography, Gosnell Senior Faculty Scholar and CIE director. "The center is a joint, University-wide effort that brings together students, faculty, and researchers to create a deeper understanding of how this technology influences life as we know it.” 

The Center for Immersive Experiences will help the University lead the way in discovering how the technology can provide learning experiences that will benefit students, Klippel said. 

Klippel’s work with immersive technology is extensive, and it puts him in a position to provide leadership and guidance regarding the center’s research and programming. Along with developing virtual reality experiences for place-based education, he has published extensive research with support from leading funding organizations about immersive technology’s impact on education, the workforce, and research on—for example—climate change communication.  

[VR is Still Emerging but Holds Serious Potential for AV Integrators Willing to Pivot]

At the center, Klippel leads an executive board comprised of deans from 11 academic programs across the University, and a working group made up of faculty from each of those units. Working group members were appointed by the board and are charged with tailoring the CIE’s strategic plan as it approaches its Fall 2019 opening. 

"The diversity in the units involved highlights the broad potential we all see for immersive technologies," said Marie Hardin, dean of the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, the organizational home of the center. “Alex and others across the University are working to engage these technologies in research and education. The research tells us that they can enhance learning.”  

Don Welch, acting vice president for information technology and chief information officer, said the center will encourage leadership and innovation. 

“By incorporating immersive practices across Penn State, we are opening doors to experiences beyond traditional learning by expanding opportunities for University-wide collaboration," he added. 

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According to a Forbes report, major employers are turning to immersive technology this year. Walmart has implemented VR technology to train and educate its employees, and the U.S. Army is researching AR’s capability to help with mission planning, target acquisition and evaluating soldier performance metrics. As more employers turn to this technology, the need for college graduates to excel with it will only grow.  

More information about the center’s offerings, mission and upcoming events may be found at the CIE website. 

Stunning entertainment, fully realistic training, or inspirational video soundscapes—the new spatial audio solutions created by Shared VR company Igloo Vision and audio experts Sennheiser and Neumann are designed to turn the individual VR experience into a new form of collective enjoyment. The solution lets museums, artists, education facilities, event spaces, architects, and corporations offer immersive experiences that can be fully tailored to their needs.

The system combines an Igloo Shared VR space with an AMBEO 9.1 sound system created from compact Neumann KH 80 DSP studio monitors. The environments act like a giant VR headset: Wraparound sound and vision immerse entire teams in 360-degree or VR content. With Igloo spaces ranging in size from 5 to 21 meters (16-68 feet) in diameter, up to 750 people can join the experience and be engaged, inspired, or entertained. Adding the Sennheiser AMBEO 9.1 system means that true 3D spatial soundscapes can be reproduced, enabling sound designers to precisely pinpoint the locations and sources of different sounds, accurately linking what is seen with what is heard.

Watch the video below to learn more about the system.

The first step in the partnership has been to install and calibrate the 9.1 loudspeaker system in the standard 6-meter (19-foot) Igloo Shared VR cylinder. The resulting AMBEO Igloo cylinder works with an acoustically transparent screen that lets the high-quality audio pass unhindered, allowing for full immersion in both audio and video.

“The spatial audio experience really makes or breaks the illusion—and this captivating combination of 360-degree video and spatial 3D audio creates a totally convincing experience of being in a different environment,” said Véronique Larcher, director of AMBEO Immersive Audio at Sennheiser.

[The Latest in 3D Audio]

“Besides the huge field of immersive experiences for brands, Igloo is active in the field of simulation, where real-life scenarios are recreated for training and education purposes, and also in visualization, helping customers see how finished design concepts will look and feel,” said Colin Yellowley, founder and head of R&D of Igloo Vision. “With three-dimensional audio added to the 360 vision, we can now create even more lifelike experiences for clients.”

Thanks to the partnership, Igloo is able to offer a wide range of ready-made spatial audio solutions. In addition to the 6-metre Igloo cylinder, Sennheiser AMBEO systems can be specified and calibrated for any Igloo products, which range from 2.5-meter (8-foot) projection cubes right up to 21-meter projection domes. Clients and sound designers are invited to experience and to test their existing content at Igloo Vision’s Shared VR demo center in Wood Green, London.

Imagine yourself all alone, sitting in the cramped cockpit of a tiny aircraft. There’s no windshield to see what’s ahead of you, and the small side windows offer no points of reference amid the stifling fog. Chugging along somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, your only means of navigation are a map, a handful of simple instruments, and a compass.

When Charles Lindberg made his incredible transatlantic flight in May of 1927, he did so with the crudest of technology. In the 33.5 hours spent aloft between New York and Paris, he found his way primarily on dead reckoning—plotting his course on the map based on simple calculations of speed and time—much like Christopher Columbus had done centuries before. In spite of this primitiveness, he piloted the Spirit of St. Louis with miraculous accuracy, only deviating a few miles from his planned route. 

It’s easy to marvel at the achievements of modern technology, especially when we reflect upon the kinds of tools of our forebears used to accomplish so much. Ninety-two years on from Lindbergh’s intrepid odyssey, we have indeed come a tremendous way. Hundreds of planes carry thousands of passengers across the Atlantic every day, steered along by way of conversations between computers and satellites. On the ground, we navigate the challenges of life with electronic devices that people in the 1920s would barely begin to comprehend.

But here’s the crazy thing: as technology continues to accelerate, the developments of the coming years will transform our lives to perhaps a greater degree than anything of the preceding decades. Sensors will be embedded in everything, and these devices will generate prodigious amounts of intelligence. The zettabytes of raw data that are presently just sitting around will be organized by AI into useful, readily accessible information. And we’ll devise fantastic new ways of wielding this data, like augmented reality-enabled contact lenses that overlay our vision of the world with all manner of insights. Someday, we will look back on 2019 and wonder how we flew so blind. 

In AV Technology, we explore some of the innovations that are starting us down this exciting path, from an examination of ways that AI and AR are enriching education—such as enabling medical students to see organs and diseases in three dimensions—to a look at microphones that are enhancing our ability to communicate with one another across the globe, to new VR technology that enables users to see things with the clarity of the naked eye. The world is changing fast, and the AV industry is an important agent of this extraordinary revolution. 

So, although we can’t see what lies before us, onward nevertheless we shall fly. One thing is for sure: it’s going to be a hell of a journey. 

Atlona unveiled an industry-first VR over IP innovation for the commercial AV industry at InfoComm 2019 show, with a focus on immersive AV for higher education applications. Ideal for university research labs and engineering programs, Atlona’s VR over IP breakthrough will enable student-researchers to visualize educational environments in ways not previously possible.

Powered by Atlona’s OmniStream AV over IP family, the dynamic demonstration delivered immersive VR experiences over1 Gbps Ethernet networks. Visitors to the stand experienced the demo through VR headsets and controllers, offering viewers a window into how VR can be applied in real-world AV applications.

According to Dr. Gregory Mirsky, Product Manager, Atlona, the demonstration was born from a customer request in the higher education market. While Atlona expects that market to capture the most initial interest, the company sees location-independent collaboration, training and simulation, and data visualization as potentially compelling VR over IP applications in corporate and scientific AV environments.

“Using our OmniStream AV encoders, decoders and USB over IP adapters, the demonstration proved how OmniStream can support VR-specific 2160 x 1200 resolutions, working at 233 million pixels per second and with a 90Hz refresh rate,” said Dr. Gregory Mirsky, Product Manager, Atlona. “The takeaway for integrators and tech managers is that OmniStream’s core benefits around bandwidth efficiency and low-latency distribution apply to the very advanced requirements of managing VR environments over IP networks.”

The complete Atlona VR over IP demonstration leveraged OmniStream AT-OMNI-111 single-channel encoders, AT-OMNI-121 single-channel decoders, and network-switchable USB over IP device adapters (AT-OMNI-311, AT-OMNI-324).

As virtual reality (VR) grows in popularity, it’s also becoming more and more accessible. But a successful production requires more than just the appropriate camera equipment. Without proper sound, it’s only half an experience. We reached out to Sennheiser’s project manager Brian Glasscock for advice on capturing and mixing immersive audio for VR.

AV Technology: Why is spatial audio so important for VR?

Brian Glasscock: Without audio, VR is incomplete. So much of how we experience the world relies on more than vision, and hearing is a large part of it. Without matching audio for VR visuals, your virtual world is incomplete. VR cannot rely on the same tricks that film can: there’s no panning, no way to direct the viewer’s attention—you have to push them to look in the direction you want. Audio can help a lot with that, and it requires a microphone that can capture full-sphere surround sound, or Ambisonics.

How should one go about choosing an Ambisonic microphone?

Because Ambisonic audio has to be dealt with (decoded, edited, etc.) as Ambisonics, it is important to pick an Ambisonics mic that has good integration with field recorders, software, and other devices. The Sennheiser AMBEO VR Mic has such integrations. For example, its integration with field recorders allows you to listen spatially to a recording in the field, something you can’t do with other mics. Other mics typically only allow you to monitor the individual channels, not the entire spatial image, which doesn’t give the recordist an accurate picture of what they are capturing.

Do you need to augment an ambisonic mic with conventional microphones?

We recommend thinking about the Ambisonic microphone as a spatial ambience microphone and use it in situations where you might use a stereo pair or 5.1 mic. The mic will record what it actually sounds like in the space you place it, which isn’t always what you want. We suggest spot miking anything that you want to be able to have individual control over in your final mix, such as actors or specific instruments. In that way you can use the Ambisonic mic as a base upon which you can spatialize additional spot sources so you can have more precise control over the sound of the final mix.

What kind of software does one need to mix spatial audio, and how does the mixing process go?

Most DAWs support mixing in Ambisonics—basically any DAW that can support mixing multichannel audio tracks. Many people use Reaper or ProTools Ultimate. In addition to a DAW, you need an Ambisonics tool chain to help you manipulate your recorded Ambisonic signals as well as do other things like add your spot sources spatially to your mix. These tool chains will also include renders so that you can monitor your mix in the way that it will be finally delivered. This is necessary because Ambisonics is a representation of a sound-field and has to be decoded as it would be at playback (usually binaurally for VR content). There are many tool chains available, from free tools to paid suites. We have partnered with a company called DearReality, which produces and end-to-end workflow for Ambisonics. Their tools allow you to take the process one step further, by enabling you to mix in VR directly. If you use the DearReality tools, you can put on a headset, position your sources, and mix entirely in the environment you will deliver in, streamlining your work process.

Do you have any other tips for recording and mixing audio for VR?

If you are recording and working in Ambisonics, always treat the channels as a unit! This is the most fundamental mistake someone can make, and it cannot be corrected later. Ambisonics is a multichannel representation of a soundfield; it is speaker independent and describes the sound from a particular point in space. That means when you are recording, special care must be taken to ensure that you aren’t introducing undue influence on the signal with mismatched gains, etc. That’s why we have worked with field recorder manufacturers to build an AMBEO VR Mic mode into their recorders that simplifies the recording process and allows you to monitor properly on location. We have a promotion going now until the end of May with Sound Devices that can save readers some money on a VR Mic and a recorder for ambisonics work.

When it comes to cutting-edge video technology, there is perhaps no industry that demands the precision and detail of the medical field. From telemedicine to remote surgery, technology is transforming how healthcare is practiced like never before—and it’s also shaping the way it’s taught. In the past, medical students read about diseases in books; now, they can examine them inside virtual bodies with augmented reality. The sky is the limit.

And when it comes to teaching medicine, Columbia University has few peers. Ranked number six in the nation in the latest U.S. News and World Report list, Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) is home to a number of schools, including the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the oldest medical school in the U.S. and the first to award the M.D. degree. Located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, the Ivy League institution is truly world class—and so is its AV, thanks in no small part to Jonathan Kornberg, its director of instructional technology.

“We are reaching new heights in classroom technologies, standards of practice, and learning platforms,” said Kornberg, who is in charge of designing and managing all of CUMC’s audiovisual systems. “With rapidly changing pedagogies, and active-and team-based learning, collaborative educational tools and methods are now a necessity in all universities and educational models.”

ROCK-SOLID BACKGROUND

Like many of us in the industry, Kornberg found his way to AV through music. “I was a big-time musician, signed to a label,” he said. “But then I went to the production side of things, and worked for some really big artists all over the world as a stage monitoring engineer.” During this time, he worked with one of the first artists to start doing device over IP in concert venues. “We were experimenting with switches, and bringing our own Cisco switches in behind the mixing rack. So I started learning from there.”

When his daughter was born, however, he decided he needed to call it quits from the rock ‘n’ roll way of life to be with his family. “I took all of that knowledge and moved it into the technology world,” he said. While working in New York City as an AV tech and production manager, a huge opportunity arose. “I was recruited to work [at Columbia]; someone found me and said ‘We need you to come here and change the entire face of the school, top to bottom. Everything is old, it’s all broken, nothing matches, we’ve got cables sticking out of the walls.’”

Kornberg said that this offer, which came in 2009, started off as two-year plan. “They gave me a budget and said ‘We want everything changed. What can you do for us?’”

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

Korberg, like any good AV tech, knew where to start: standardize everything. Unlike many at the time, though, he was dead set on an end-to-end AV-over-IP system.

“We had to change switches, we had to change the whole shebang,” he said. Eventually, though, the campus was humming along on Crestron Digital Media (DM) switches. “Everything in the entire school is all networked, it’s fully enterprise wide,” Kornberg said. “We’ve been solidified for a while, as far as AV over IP. We have thousands of devices.”

When Crestron came out with Fusion, Kornberg and his team built these capabilities into the system. “Everything is managed; we have dashboards,” he said. “I’ve even gotten to the point where my guys can walk around with a [Microsoft] Surface and just control every single thing in the entire school. They can turn anything on, they can see anything, they can view anything.” There are eight technicians on his team, and three who float around to address issues as they arise.

“It’s a full team effort, and we’re really, really tight,” Kornberg said. “And it’s a lot of technology, the amount of devices we’ve put on this network.” Keeping things better organized and secure, the AV deployments now have their own subnets. “We created our own AV subnet and our own AV VLAN,” he said. “All of our devices are segregated onto their own separate VLAN, so there’s no crosstalk between a PC in an office.”

TEAMWORK

Facilitating the operation of the networked AV system requires a great deal of coordination, not just among the audiovisual team, but with the IT group. “It took a while for us to start getting along, and for them to understand really what AV over IP was, and what the protocols were going to be for this new world of what we were doing,” Kornberg said. “It took about a year for them to fully understand it.”

Luckily, being in New York City, there were plenty of resources Kornberg could draw upon to demonstrate his goals. “I actually started taking guys to Crestron to show them what I was doing,” he said. “I took them to the Javits Center to explain the partnerships between companies like Microsoft and Cisco.”

In addition to IT, he shared that having the facilities team on your side is important, as well, and said that treating these key people to a nice dinner can go a long way toward solidifying the relationship.

DOING THE JOB RIGHT

Kornberg recently had the opportunity to outfit the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center—the newest building on the CUMC campus—with state-of-the-art technology. Though it was quite an undertaking, he and his team tackled all of the AV integration themselves.

“We do everything in house; no consultants, no outside companies at all,” he said. “Everything is designed by me through CAD. We do all of our own installs, all of our own purchasing, all of our POs.” He said that this approach saves money, time, and is simply more efficient. And when it comes to expertise, there’s certainly enough to go around: Kornberg said that he and another principle member of the AV team have about 90 certifications between them. “I’ve got Cisco, Crestron, Dante, Biamp… the list goes on and on and on,” he said.

NEW TECH

Kornberg said the university had specific requirements for instructional technology in the new building. They wanted a series of two-sided rooms with a projector in the front for traditional lectures, and a large touch-enabled display in the back for collaboration—and they wanted it all wireless and BYOD enabled.

When it came to the touchscreen side, the university was looking for a simple flat panel; he then informed them of the better solutions on the market. “Then my CIO called me and said ‘We want you to fly to the moon with touchpanels. We want you to go as far as you can possibly go.’ And I said, ‘This is not going to be cheap; this is going to be a huge project for me.’ And they said, ‘We don’t care about the money; do it.’”

So, Kornberg and his team equipped these rooms with MultiTaction video walls, which combine three proprietary, narrow-bezel, 55-inch flat panels in portrait orientation into a large, responsive video display. He met the Finnish company at InfoComm a few years back, and formed a partnership with them.

“We were the first major medical school to have this technology,” he said. “You have to think of [the displays] as a giant canvas—the software is called Canvus. Basically, you can create multiple screens and multiple canvases to pin everything to and present to. It’s a huge super-micro PC with all kinds of video outs.” It also has BYOD screen mirroring through Mersive, fulfilling the university’s connectivity requirements. “We can be collaborating side by side, and there’s almost no latency,” he said.

The system is also very simple for instructors to use. Each professor is given a wallet-sized card called a codice card. Each day, they load their lesson from their computer to a network shared drive, then when they arrive in the room, they simply press the card to the MultiTaction display, and near-field technology brings all of the content into the system. “You show up here with no USB, nothing; just bring your card, and your shared folder comes up,” he said. “Once I log in, I have all of the information on my shared folder. And it’s completely encrypted, because we have HIPAA here.”

NEXT TECH

To further the functionality of the new rooms, Kornberg partnered with several medical companies to build software for Columbia for the interactive displays. “The students can come here and use these as a reference,” he said. “Everything is virtual. You can go to any part of the body and start dissecting.” Some of these include augmented reality applications such as 3D4Medical and Visible Body, which places a virtual cadaver on a table in the room. “They’re putting them in ORs and going over to the virtual table and looking into the heart valve, and blowing it up to see details,” he said.

Kornberg is also experimenting with virtual reality. “We’re working on a VR project where we’re going to be putting [Microsoft] HoloLenses on students,” he said. “We’re going to start developing our own content for specific needs. You can also take scans from the operating room or emergency room and bring them into this scenario, and work on them virtually. And if you really want to go crazy with it, you could have a doctor in an OR in San Diego talking to this OR here, and saying ‘We have a problem with this vascular valve, I’ve got to go in and see what’s going on.’”

While there’s certainly potential with VR, Kornberg is approaching it with caution. “If you buy 30 HoloLenses, how do you manage them, where are they kept when the class is over, what if they break?” he said. “But AR is exploding because you can pop the images on top of a specific setting with no HoloLens, and you can work that way. Plus, the AR is accessible through the AR kit on a lot of iPads and iPad Minis and phones. So it’s blowing up.”

MAKING IT COUNT

When deploying technology at this scale, you had better be sure it’s going to get the maximum utilization. This was something Kornberg studied carefully before pulling any triggers.

“I bring the entire faculty in from an entire school,” he said. “For example, I brought the physical therapy (PT) group in for five different sessions and I actually got really stupid with it. I told them I want you to stand in the room and feel how you’re teaching; I want to understand what you feel when you’re teaching. Is this too bright for you? (We used to have professors complain that everything was too bright, that the light is blasting and they couldn’t teach). We placed people around the room and I brought them into multiple sessions and brought boxes as devices. ‘How do you feel? Can you see the students from here?’” This degree of in-depth analysis enabled Kornberg to create a custom solution tailored to their needs.

And, studies like this are ongoing. “I’ve been meeting once a month with different departments and going over constant pedagogical changes, constant curriculum changes, constant updates,” he said. He’s also on a number of committees, and regularly attends and speaks at medical and pharma conferences and formulates partnerships with people to see what else is available.

CUSTOMIZED CLASSROOMS

One recent integration Kornberg is particularly proud of is his team’s work with classrooms for the nursing, physical therapy, and occupational therapy schools, which occupy an old landmarked building on campus.

“This was a long, intricate project,” he said. It involves two rooms, with one as an overflow. “They needed so many different things. So what we’ve done is we have tons of sources.” The rooms have an exam camera, a room camera, multiple displays, and a wireless Mersive Solstice Pod, an iPad Pro, and a joystick system for controlling the cameras. “You can have control of both rooms with this one joystick,” he said. “You can see the cameras in both rooms. You can see the camera from this room on your touchpanel, and control the cameras from both rooms.

“Every aspect in this room is customized to the users’ needs, and they use all of it. It’s been an unbelievably successful project. The reviews have come in and it’s just a top-rated technology and PT department.”

TEACHING AND LEARNING

Kornberg’s core philosophy for deploying systems is simple: “My biggest thing is that technology should not get in the way of education,” he said. “If it does, you’ve got a problem.”

With this always in mind, he’s been working to enable two pedagogical innovations. The first he calls “360 learning.” “The students can learn in the classroom, in the dorm, in the common room, or in huddle spaces,” he said. “We always have the opportunity to discuss learning, and have access to everything at all times. Everything is recorded with lecture capture.”

And since recorded lectures can sometimes lead to students skipping class to simply watch the lessons on their own time, Kornberg advocates an approach he calls “flipped classrooms,” where the professors send the lecture materials the night before, and enforce attendance. “The students are up on this, they’re ready to rock and roll, and it’s exciting,” he said.

PRESCRIPTION FOR SUCCESS

What can other technology managers learn from Kornberg’s success? It’s starts with developing your team. “We’ve turned our techs into real techs, certified in everything,” he said. “The team we have here is incredible. The guys we have here, we’re like a ninja team. It’s unbelievable. We’re like the New England Patriots: we go out and kick ass and just level everybody.”

In addition to working closely with the end users to ensure you’re provisioning the right technology, it’s also key to be proactive in promoting its utilization once installed. “You’ve got to find your champions,” Kornberg said. “We have five or six big-time champions who are loving everything we’re doing. And then they start spreading the word, and then all of a sudden someone says ‘Wow, you’re having a lot of success with that class; how are you doing that?’ And now they’re developing and modeling that.”

Lastly, always be learning. “I’m constantly working to stay on top of technology; I’m borrowing stuff, people are sending me demos,” he said. “This is the most exciting time, right here and right now. This is the biggest jump that we’re going to have.”

Earlier this year, Helsinki, Finland-based company Varjo introduced its VR-1 headset, which was designed to overcome the longstanding impediment to visual immersion in virtual reality (VR): low resolution. Designed for high-end industrial use, the VR-1 features “human eye resolution” of 60 pixels per degree, which the company says is 20 times greater than any other headset available on the market.

According to Varjo’s CEO, Niko Eiden, the VR-1 was engineered to go far beyond the consumer-oriented devices currently available. “You look at the existing headsets today on the market, and what you see is pretty horrible from a resolution perspective,” he said. “The big factor is the rendering capabilities—they are not made to render 360-degree images in high resolution.” Rather than using the traditional approach of one display per eye, the VR-1 utilizes two per eye, with a very high-resolution one—dubbed the “Bionic Display”—at the center of the field of view. “So, even though we’re offering very high resolution at the center of the display, we’re able to keep the computing load low enough so that there are existing desktop machines and laptops that work with our headset,” Eiden said.

What does human eye resolution enable? “You can read in VR,” Eiden said. “You can read a monitor, you can read text, you can see in the same resolution you can see in reality. You can watch a virtual 4K TV, and it will look resolution-wise the same as it would in reality.”

Eiden said that the headset’s display was engineered from off-the-shelf components, combined in a unique way. The lower resolution display is comparable to the resolution of a typical VR headset, and provides the full field of view and peripheral vision. “Then we have an optical combiner, which is basically a 45-degree mirror,” Eiden said. “So, from the side, we can project the center display, and that is a very high-density 0.7-inch Sony high-quality micro OLED. And with that display we can match the human eye resolution.”

Eiden said that the VR-1’s resolution enables far greater sophistication in fields like training and simulation. “If you want to train a person, for example, in a control room, you would like the person to see the instruments, be able to read virtual displays, and interact, and that hasn’t been possible with existing headsets.”

Taking things a step further, the VR-1 also incorporates sophisticated stereo eye tracking technology with sub-degree accuracy, allowing trainers to glean insights from the simulation experience. “You can figure out whether the person you’re training is looking at the right point,” Eiden said. “For example, in pilot training, did the pilot see the warning light?”

Other fields the VR-1 is enhancing include architecture and industrial design, especially in the automotive field. “For designing a car and accelerating the process of design, VR is a very valuable tool,” Eiden said. “They can also use it to allow their customer to configure a future car model that they’re ordering and see it in VR before they actually press the order button.” Companies currently employing the headset include AirBus, Audi, Saab, Volkswagen, and Volvo.

As revolutionary as the VR-1 is, Eiden said that it’s actually just the first step in the company’s mission: to create the best possible mixed reality (MR) hardware. “The idea was to do mixed reality with pass-through video cameras, with proper resolution and very low latency,” he said. “That was the first demo that we built that got investors interested in it, but fairly quickly we realized we had to first fix the virtual reality side of things.”

With that now accomplished, the company is on track to release an add-on later this year that replaces the VR-1’s front plate with an MR-enabling module. “That’s when things are going to get really interesting,” Eiden said.

The VR-1 is shipping now for a retail price of $5,995 and a yearly service fee of $995, and is only available for businesses and academic institutions. Eiden encourages those interested in a demonstration to check Varjo’s website for upcoming trade events at which the company will be exhibiting. The next show in the U.S. is Augmented World Expo 2019, which will be held May 28–31 in Santa Clara, CA.

Check out the highlights from Day 2 at ISE 2019.

The What: The Future Group—an international technology and creative services company headquartered in Oslo, Norway—has introduced Pixotope, a virtual production software suite running on commodity hardware.

The What Else: Pixotope brings Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to broadcasters and other businesses who use visual media with the aim of making it simpler to create real time, cinematic quality, cross-reality content. It harnesses the power and the granularity of data integration so that every element can become responsive or interactive. It is designed to take 3D, VR, AR, and data technology that’s emerging at an ever-increasing rate, and make it usable in nearly any production, at almost any budget. 

“This is what happens when you capture the best experience in the industry, expose it to the harsh environment of live TV productions, package it, and then virtualize it into an incredibly comprehensive software suite,” said Halvor Vislie, CEO of The Future Group. “It’s transformative for the industry. All the power, quality and stability demanded by broadcasters, without the need for expensive, proprietary hardware. And no massive capital outlay: just an easy monthly payment.”

With Pixotope, users can:

• Create virtual sets and AR experiences with cinema-quality, real-time graphics to make a visual experience.
• Work with a single- or multi camera productions: everything is synchronized and dynamically linked. 
• Make everything you do data driven, from personalized sets to whole content sequences.
• Use inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware and GPUs.

The Bottom Line: Pixotope is built to withstand the stress test of a live production, and has a host of features that integrate with any modern broadcast pipeline, such as camera tracking support. It can accomplish advanced real-time graphical processing including reflections, distortion, shadows, lightwrap and virtual camera moves, all without compromising quality, performance, or stability.

 Pixotope is available now as a subscription, at a price of $2,500 per month, per camera channel. 

Integrated Systems Europe has announced that Ambarish Mitra, the co-founder and CEO of augmented reality technology company Blippar, will present the ISE Opening Address on February 4, 2019.

Blippar’s mission is to enhance everyday life with AR and computer vision, a field of AI. Since 2011, Blippar has been pushing the boundaries of what is possible in AR. It has helped brands, retailers, and agencies use AR/AI across the consumer journey to deepen customer engagement, drive footfall, and increase sales. 

The company gives access to an AR ecosystem with products and professional services to meet specific business needs—from consultancy to AR creation tools that publish AR content within a client’s own app, or rich media banners with no app required.

Blippar’s technology has been used by leading brands such as PepsiCo, Porsche, Nestlé, L’Oréal, GSK, and Procter & Gamble to create exciting experiences.

Blippar has been ranked three years running within CNBC’s global Disruptor 50 list, alongside the likes of Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, and Spotify in 2017. The company has also been named a Top Business Innovator by Bloomberg, Most Innovative AR/VR Company by FastCompany in February 2018, and won Best AR App at Mobile World Congress in 2017.

In the opening address at ISE 2019, Ambarish Mitra will discuss how AR and AI are disrupting key vertical sectors served by the professional AV industry, and what future developments are likely to bring.

“Augmented reality is a horizontal disruptor and will have a positive impact on every industry," Mitra said. "What we are seeing today is just a glimpse of the potential of this technology. Blippar is at the forefront of this and I look forward to sharing my vision with ISE attendees.”

Mitra is a serial entrepreneur who started his tech career in 1997 as a high school dropout, creating his first tech company around women’s empowerment in India. After moving to London a few years later, he is today an active private investor in the fields of AR, AI, food tech, and genomics.

His pioneering work in the field of AR has received wide acclaim. He was Ernst & Young UK Entrepreneur of the Year for 2016, and was appointed as an ambassador for the GREAT Britain campaign, which promotes British innovation around the world. He was also recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2017.

“We’re greatly looking forward to welcoming Ambarish Mitra to ISE 2019," said Mike Blackman, Integrated Systems Europe managing director. "Augmented reality and artificial intelligence are fast-growing areas with enormous potential. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about the opportunities these technologies offer to the world of AV systems integration.” 

The opening address will take place in the forum of the RAI Amsterdam, shortly after the conclusion of the Smart Building Conference. It will be followed by the ISE opening reception. Both events are free to attend.

Those walking around Indiana University’s Bloomington campus will likely be impressed by the reality of one of America’s oldest, largest and most diverse state colleges. That said, inside the university’s glass-covered Cyber Infrastructure Building, students and teachers are exploring a different reality – the virtual and augmented kind.

IU’s state of the art Advanced Visualization Lab is tasked with exploring the cutting edge of virtual reality. In the lab a researcher, professor or student don the familiar VR headset to explore a hyper real world that exists only inside a computer. The immersive experience lets engineers peer inside complicated machinery before it is ever built as easily as surgeons can work with human organs without a drop of blood being spilt.

That doesn’t mean that VR has to be a one-off experience. Others in the lab can see and contribute to the effort because the lab has a large wall mounted monitor that shows what the VR investigator sees. You view the dual overlapping images that create the illusion of depth to the user when viewed with the googles.

Other schools are going beyond this to use projectors to interact with and share augmented and virtual reality worlds. With technical help from Virtalis, the University of Liverpool has built its Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC). Its focal point is a room that lets users interact with VR landscapes as if they were using an interactive projector.

It’s all built around a Christie Boxer 4K projector that runs at 120 hertz that allows it to project two alternating visual fields that VR relies on to create the illusion of depth. The school’s ActiveWall space provides nearly 115 square feet of area to work with the VR stream.

The key to making it all work is Advanced Realtime Tracking’s ART 6DoF tracking system. Rather than full-cover VR goggles, VEC uses special glasses with multiple antennas that provide the computer with placement data so the image is perfect as users move around the VR space. They also wear fingertip covers that let the user interact with the ethereal projected items on screen as if they were using a huge touch-screen tablet.

In the VR room, engineers can visually prototype parts without the hassles and expense of making real-world objects. The possibilities are endless, from sticking their heads inside a jet engine to see how the pieces interact with nearby items to trying out a new automotive dashboard design without ever setting foot into a car or simulating a building’s interior without having to build the structure.

Probably the biggest use is to try out what if scenarios that would be too expensive or dangerous to try out in the real world. For instance, they can simulate the heat flow during an emergency at a nuclear power plant without endangering themselves or the public.

The center has even created a virtual heart that only beats inside a VR computer. It lets the researchers handle, rotate and manipulate the organ as if it were the real thing – all without endangering a patient.