Schlagwort: virtualreality

  • Bringing Within to WebVRBringing Within to WebVRLead Designer

    Bringing Within to WebVRBringing Within to WebVRLead Designer

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    Editor’s Note: With WebVR, you can access VR experiences through a compatible browser like Chrome and a compatible headset like Daydream View. We’re exploring some of the WebVR content that’s available now. Jono Brandel of Within explains the technical steps they took to bring their VR storytelling platform to the web.

    At Within, we’re showcasing the best experiences from VR creators around the world. We’re excited to be one of the first platforms available in WebVR.

    On Within, you can dive underwater and explore a tropical paradise in Valen’s Reef, or learn the language of dolphins in Click Effect. You can experience how a blind person sees the world with sound in Notes on Blindness, and step into the dystopian hacker world of the hit TV show Mr. Robot. Or, cheer for an animated bunny trying to save the planet from menacing aliens in Baobab’s Invasion!

    With WebVR, it’s possible to access all of these experiences right in the browser—making it easier than ever to explore. And with Google’s new WebVR API, we were able to easily integrate this new feature into our existing code base.

    In order to achieve a working experience with WebVR, we proceeded step-by-step. We started by taking our Web Player for desktop and mobile viewing and added three-dimensional menu controls to seek and change resolution in VR. These elements are not in the DOM’s hierarchy tree; they’re drawn in WebGL on a canvas element. Since there aren’t any click events on these elements, we wrote a Ray Casting technique commonly found in video games to allow viewers to interact with these objects. Once we had this working, we realized that we could recreate our native application’s gallery to navigate between films with essentially the same assets.

    Around this time, the WebVR 1.0 spec was released and demonstrated how a web browser could connect to the many VR controllers hitting the market through the Gamepad API. Using the Gamepad API and typical event handlers on the web, we designed a filtering specification that takes in many controller inputs, including keyboard, mouse, touch, the Daydream View controller and other VR headset controllers. With this abstraction, we can focus on interactions and know that they’ll be consistently mapped to the viewer’s environment. Finally, to round out parity with our native application counterparts, and to really give our website the polish it deserved, we wanted to find a way to clearly display non-interactive text. We spent extensive time researching this and have written an in-depth case study about our findings here.

    Visit VR.with.in (our VR-first web app, created especially for viewers with VR headsets) to get started. We’ll be rolling out extensive WebVR upgrades in coming months, as well as new experiences made especially for WebVR viewing.

    Website: LINK

  • U.S. history takes center stage for high schoolersU.S. history takes center stage for high schoolersManaging Editor

    U.S. history takes center stage for high schoolersU.S. history takes center stage for high schoolersManaging Editor

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    The Expedition continued through the ratification of the Constitution, the creation of our nation’s economic system and George Washington’s presidency. It ended with a glimpse of Alexander Hamilton’s personal life—his letters dealing with love and grief—and ended at the famous spot where he dueled Aaron Burr. With each step in the Expedition, there were collective “oohs,” “aahs,” “whoas” and the occasional snarky comment: “Sick wig, Hamilton.”

    Several students noted that, as visual learners, it was easier to understand this historical era through the Expedition, instead of reading about it in a book. Something clicked when they could visualize where these historical moments took place. Joanne Lin, assistant principal of Aspire Golden State, says that her students relate to Hamilton: “He had to make it on his own in America—that’s the connection for many of our kids.”

    Website: LINK

  • Bringing Alexander Hamilton’s history to lifeBringing Alexander Hamilton’s history to life

    Bringing Alexander Hamilton’s history to lifeBringing Alexander Hamilton’s history to life

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    In November 2009, the White House uploaded a video to YouTube of playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda performing a piece called “The Hamilton Mixtape.” In the video, Miranda proclaims to then President Obama that he would use hip-hop and spoken word to tell the story of founding father Alexander Hamilton. The room erupts in curious laughter. Hip-hop and 18th century history? How could these seemingly different worlds come together?

    Nearly eight years later, Lin-Manuel’s Hamilton: An American Musical has blown us all away. The show is a cultural phenomenon, uniting history buffs, musical theater fans, political wonks and beyond. Through its innovative storytelling and deliberately diverse cast, the show remixes American history into a powerful lesson that resonates with society’s current challenges.

    Google.org supported the Hamilton Education Program with a $800,000 grant that today will bring 5,000 students from Title I schools in New York, Chicago and the Bay Area to see the musical, as the capstone of a six-week curriculum about the Founding Era. Through a combination of learning from primary source documents like original letters and newspapers, and musical performances, students from every background will be able to make American founding era history their own. Students will also perform their original, history-based works on the Hamilton stage across these three cities. Perhaps one of them might be a future Lin-Manuel!

    The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is also launching new digital content on Google platforms that enables students around the world to engage more deeply with Alexander Hamilton’s story. Six new virtual reality tours will transport students, teachers, and fans to important places in Hamilton’s life, no matter where they live. Using Google Expeditions, students can explore places like Alexander Hamilton’s home in Uptown Manhattan, Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, and the infamous site of Aaron Burr–Alexander Hamilton duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.

    Website: LINK

  • Google Pixel and Boiler Room launch ‘VR dancefloors: Techno in Berlin’Google Pixel and Boiler Room launch ‘VR dancefloors: Techno in Berlin’

    Google Pixel and Boiler Room launch ‘VR dancefloors: Techno in Berlin’Google Pixel and Boiler Room launch ‘VR dancefloors: Techno in Berlin’

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    With Pixel currently available in Germany and the U.K., we set out to create a seamless experience combining the best of Google software together with premium hardware. Virtual Reality is a great showcase for this combination, and we believe the vast majority of people who’ll experience VR over the next few years will do so via a smartphone. So, we built Pixel to be the first device that offers simple, high quality VR experiences through the Daydream platform and the Daydream View headset, an experience which has since been expanded to Motorola (Moto Z), ZTE (Axon 7) and more to come.

    VR can be a powerful tool to transform the way you enjoy culture and entertainment. It can connect you with the things, people, places and memories that matter most to you in a new immersive way. VR dancefloors: Techno in Berlin marks an entirely new cultural moment, a new entertainment synthesis with interactive elements of immersive theatre, computer game narrative, music TV broadcast and installation art. The 15 minutes long experience was filmed in the industrial environs of a typical Berlin nightclub featuring a live-electronics set by Berliners FJAAK, who played from a range of analogue hardware.

    Website: LINK

  • The She Word: Jen Holland and her career expeditionThe She Word: Jen Holland and her career expedition

    The She Word: Jen Holland and her career expeditionThe She Word: Jen Holland and her career expedition

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    Tell us about one of your mentors who helped you get to where you are today.

    My college accounting professor, Dawn Massey, was not only a fantastic teacher, but also encouraged me to pursue my crazy ideas. When I took my first accounting class in college, I was miserable. I hated accounting. But by spending so much time with her, I got better. I ended up switching my focus and moved into finance—something I’d never considered because I thought I was bad at math. Fast forward, I ended up with an MBA in Finance and accepted a role on Google’s finance team, which eventually led to my dream job—the one I have now.

    My second mentor was someone I mentioned already—Bill Campbell. He was a dear friend of my dad’s, and always made time for me. I learned from him that it’s always important to make time for individuals who willing to put in the effort and succeed, whether that be through informal coffee chats, mentorships, reviewing resumes, doing mock interviews, etc. You can always make time to help someone out.

    Website: LINK

  • Who run the world? How we’re celebrating International Women’s DayWho run the world? How we’re celebrating International Women’s Day

    Who run the world? How we’re celebrating International Women’s DayWho run the world? How we’re celebrating International Women’s Day

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    Lee Tai-Young was Korea’s first female lawyer and first female judge. Cecilia Grierson was the first woman to receive a medical degree in Argentina. And Ida B. Wells was a newspaper editor by age 25 and one of the founders of the NAACP. These are a few of the remarkable women you’ll meet in today’s Doodle celebrating International Women’s Day, one of several ways we’re raising awareness about the contributions of women, past and present, throughout Women’s History Month. We’re also supporting efforts to close the gender gap in tech and other fields. Read on for a look at what we’re doing to recognize women across media, culture, leadership and more this month.

    Celebrating historical heroines

    In today’s interactive slideshow Doodle, a young girl goes on an imaginary journey to meet 13 female trailblazers from throughout history. From a pilot in Egypt to a dancer in India, these women may not all be household names, but they’ve all made a unique mark on the world. In fact, all of them have been celebrated in a Doodle in the past, but often only in their countries of origin. Today, we’re sharing their stories worldwide.

    Website: LINK

  • Experience Virtual Reality on the web with ChromeExperience Virtual Reality on the web with Chrome

    Experience Virtual Reality on the web with ChromeExperience Virtual Reality on the web with Chrome

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    Virtual reality (VR) lets you tour the Turkish palace featured in “Die Another Day,” learn about life in a Syrian refugee camp firsthand, and walk through your dream home right from your living room. With the latest version of Chrome, we’re bringing VR to the web—making it as easy to step inside Air Force One as it is to access your favorite webpage.

    For a fully immersive experience, use Chrome with your Daydream-ready phone and Daydream View—just browse to a VR experience you want to view, choose to enter VR, and put the phone in your Daydream View headset. If you don’t have a headset you can view VR content on any phone or desktop computer and interact using your finger or mouse.

    You can already try out some great VR-enabled sites, with more coming soon. For example, explore the intersection of humans, nature and technology in the interactive documentary Bear 71. Questioning how we see the world through the lens of technology, this story blurs the lines between the wild world and the wired one.

    Website: LINK

  • Into the Dead VR Zombie Game – Samsung GearVR Oculus Rift

    Into the Dead VR Zombie Game – Samsung GearVR Oculus Rift

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    Into the Dead VR Zombie Game – Samsung GearVR Oculus Rift

  • Vrei.at – Virtual Reality Lounge Vienna | Opening Event

    Vrei.at – Virtual Reality Lounge Vienna | Opening Event

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    Wir haben für euch bei der Eröffnung von vrei vorbeigeschaut und ein paar Fotos gemacht von der Location 🙂 Wir finden es sehr gemütlich und werden sicher öfters dort chillen ^^

    Hier auch unser Interview mit cto Timon Liebau von der Game-City 2015:

    Jeder der Oculus Rift kennt oder dem Virtual Reality ein Begriff ist der wird die Lounge lieben, alle die noch nichts mir VR anfangen können, dehnen legen wir nahe auf alle fälle hin zu sehen 🙂 🙂

    Ist auf alle fälle einen Besuch wert und es stehen auch genug Mobile Geräte zur Verfügung wo jeder mit seinem eigenen Handy auch gleich testen durfte:

     

    #vrei #opening #fun

    Ein von vrei virtual reality lounge (@vrei_) gepostetes Foto am

    Links: https://www.facebook.com/vrei.official/

    http://vrei.at/