Intel inked a deal with Turner Sports, CBS Sports and the NCAA for a multiyear corporate partnership to provide its True VR technology to NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship games, it said in a Wednesday announcement. Beginning this year, Intel True VR will live-stream NCAA Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four and the championship game of the March Madness tournament in virtual reality through premium ticket options via an NCAA app. Intel True VR will use camera pods with a total of 48 cameras dedicated to Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games and 84 cameras covering the Final Four and championship games, it said. Intel True VR will deliver "immersive VR experiences" with live and on-demand sports experiences, in-game highlights and produced game feeds "to bring the in-stadium experience to life from any location," said Intel. In addition, Intel 360 replay technology will be featured during CBS Sports and Turner Sports coverage of the games broadcast on CBS, allowing fans to catch plays from different angles, said the technology company. The 360 Replay technology will capture game images from 28 Ultra HD cameras coupled with Intel-based servers capable of processing up to 1 TB of data per 15- to 30-second clip, said the company. The video will be captured, sent through fiber cables at the host University of Phoenix Stadium and then be fed into an on-site Intel control room, where producers will pick out and package replays, it said.
AccuWeather launched a virtual reality app for Samsung’s Gear VR headset that allows users to experience and interact with 360-degree video content, weather information and updates, said the company. Owners of the Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge can use the AccuWeather app by snapping their phone to a Gear VR and watching 360-degree videos of severe weather events, including a close-up viral video of a tornado in Wray, Colorado, that had nearly 1.5 million YouTube views, it said. Users also can immerse themselves in real-time weather animations including rain, snow, thunderstorms and clouds, it said. The company expects to add new VR videos each week.
The Audio Engineering Society’s Technical Council formed a group to “advance the science and application” of audio for virtual, augmented and mixed reality “environments,” AES said in a Thursday announcement. The group’s work will cover “a whole gamut of application areas” in film, games, music, communications, medicine, forensics, simulations, education and virtual tourism, it said. “The technical requirements for new realities cover obvious areas such as spatial audio and synthesis but extend beyond into audio networking, semantic audio, perception, broadcast and online delivery.” The group’s “core responsibility” will be to develop “a roadmap for the AES to address emergent applications in new realities,” AES said. Members will include “industry professionals working at the forefront of commercial technologies for virtual, augmented and mixed realities as well as key academics in the field whose audio research crosses new multidisciplinary boundaries,” it said.
The FTC released the agenda for its March 9 FinTech Forum on how artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies will affect consumers. The AI panel will include World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon; ACT|The App Association Executive Director Morgan Reed; and SEC Assistant Regional Director Ken Schneider, according to the agenda. Among blockchain session's panelists will be Chamber of Digital Commerce President Perianne Boring; Justin Slaughter, chief policy adviser to Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Sharon Bowen; and Consumers Union Staff Attorney Christina Tetreault. The event, which will be webcast, will be at the University of California, Berkeley.
Liberty Global's live-stream of a solar eclipse on Sunday from southern Chile was to have been in 360-degree video, it said in a news release Friday. The 360-degree feed was to have started at 12:30 p.m. GMT and be available on the company's YouTube channel, it said.
Some 30 million virtual reality headsets shipped last year, split among six major platforms, said a Strategy Analytics report Tuesday. Google has a “commanding lead” in shipments and installed base with the low-cost Cardboard platform, despite only a 12 percent slice of revenue, and its market share is attracting marketers and brands looking to use the technology as a promotional tool, said analyst David MacQueen. By revenue, Samsung’s Gear VR led with 35 percent share. Samsung and Sony, with its PlayStation VR, accounted for more than half of VR revenue for the year, he said. Analyst Cliff Raskind said direct sales, bundling and promotions helped seed the VR market, but six competing platforms “makes for a market which is crowded and fragmented.” Strategy Analytics expects shakeout among the platforms this year with some to “fall by the wayside," said Raskind.
If 2016 can be regarded as the first full year of consumer virtual-reality device deployments, “the first year was absolutely a great success,” Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said on a Thursday earnings call. The industry sold “many hundreds of thousands of units” of VR devices, Huang said. The first VR devices were “really targeted at early adopters,” and I think that we've delivered on the promise of a great experience,” he said. The industry’s challenge now is to make VR headsets “easier to use, with fewer cables,” he said. Headsets also will need to be “lighter” and “cheaper,” he said. “Those are all things that the industry is working on.” The early “experience” makes it “very, very clear that VR is exciting,” he said.
Virtual-reality devices endured a “content-starved market introduction” but are “ready to thrive off a swath of new and compelling content choices,” ABI Research said in a Thursday report. It sees total VR device shipments reaching 110 million by 2021. Though smartphone-reliant VR devices such as Samsung Gear VR “dwarf” other VR device types in terms of shipments, stand-alone devices will have a 405 percent compound annual growth rate through 2021, compared with only a 42 percent CAGR for mobile-device-based VR products, it said. “Mobile VR built a solid foundation for the overall market over the past few years, but standalone VR devices will eventually drive it,” ABI said. “Low cost and high accessibility has, and will continue to, drive VR adoption with mobile devices and associated VR accessories. However, a trend toward standalone devices is surfacing, and will continue over the next five years until mobile and standalone VR devices see parity in terms of shipments.”
Immersive media company Matterport announced virtual reality support for the iPhone, in a Friday news release. Matterport’s app offers an option to publish any Matterport 3D space in VR and is billed as a fast and economical end-to-end system for delivering a VR experience of a “real-world place.” Matterport called the news a step forward for the VR ecosystem, making its library of more than 300,000 3D spaces available to iPhones running iOS 9.1 and later and to Android users. Some 25,000 new VR spaces are added each month, said the company. It launched CoreVR in October, allowing Matterport Pro 3D camera owners to create VR content. CoreVR is free for any 3D space created through June, said the company.
Gannett will live-stream Friday's inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump in virtual reality and with 360-degree coverage, the company said in a media release Friday. The media company said the streaming will involve multiple VR cameras around the Capitol, National Mall and along the inaugural parade route. The video stream will be in VR headsets via USA Today's YouTube app and in 360-degree format via the USA Today YouTube channel for desktop and mobile users, Gannett said, saying coverage will begin at 9:30 a.m. EST.