EMagin’s “hard work” to become the only company to fashion OLED-based direct-pattern microdisplays with “ultra-high” brightness at “small pixel pitches” for consumer virtual-reality headsets “is beginning to pay off,” CEO Andrew Sculley said on a Thursday earnings call. That “has resulted in a few tier one companies working on the display details with us,” Sculley said. “We are now holding regularly scheduled development meetings with several of these tier ones and have already submitted proposals to develop displays for their particular requirements.” EMagin’s efforts in the sector “are well-timed, coming simultaneous to the heightened interest by these tier ones to bring the very best, high-performance virtual and augmented reality technology to their next generation of products,” Sculley said. In Q&A, Sculley and Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Lucas emphasized that the tier ones to which Sculley referred were manufacturing partners, and that eMagin would sell the VR headsets under its own brand. “To be clear here, we are the ones who are selling the device,” Lucas said, and Sculley said the headsets “absolutely” will bear the eMagin “label.” Said Sculley: “We have a unique situation here, which we don't want to announce until the launch, so I apologize for that. But it is very exciting and it will deliver a lot of buzz.” Sculley declined to specify a launch date, but Lucas said eMagin expects the initiative to begin generating revenue during Q4. “Part of our efforts here, we've actually sort of built an ecosystem to handle the whole channeling distribution and all those elements of it” in preparations for a consumer launch, Sculley said.
“Consumer-focused verticals” like gaming continue to dominate the virtual reality product “landscape,” but device usage also is “spiking” in education, “as the devices foster a more immersive, effective learning environment,” ABI Research said in a Tuesday report. “VR allows educational facilities to provide a level of immersion and interactivity to their teaching services that would not be possible otherwise.” VR devices “offer teachers new tools to keep students engaged and provide an alternative learning method to support those students who do not benefit from traditional teaching methods,” it said. “The use of VR devices in the classroom can also improve safety, as students can now learn about harsh chemicals in the sciences, for instance, without actually exposing themselves to any harmful risks.”
Dolby Atmos audio is expected to be available through the Littlstar virtual reality app from the Oculus, SteamVR, Apple App and Google Play stores this fall, said a Dolby news release Thursday. Users will be able to experience Dolby Atmos in VR on supporting playback devices: a Windows 10 PC with Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, a Samsung Galaxy smartphone with Samsung Gear VR and an iOS or Android device with Google Cardboard, Dolby said. At launch, Littlstar will have three selections of Dolby Atmos content: Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension 360 (Light Sail VR), Rapid Fire: a brief history of flight (Studio Transcendent) and Bob’s Burgers 360 - Dancin’ (BentoBoxVR), it said. The Dolby Atmos for VR Applications software development kit includes a VR-specific Dolby Atmos decoder and headphone renderer that’s integrated into the Littlstar app across all major VR platforms, said Dolby. Littlstar's encoding infrastructure was enhanced to support Dolby Atmos as an audio format for immersive videos, it said. Dolby Atmos content can be created using the Dolby Atmos VR Production Suite, now in beta, which allows content creators to place audio objects and move sound anywhere in a scene, choose options for head tracking, and guide viewers through a VR story, it said.
BBC Sport 360, an experimental service bringing live and on-demand content to U.K. audiences in 360-degree video for the first time, launches Friday for the Rio Olympics, the BBC said Thursday. “Arm chair sports fans can get closer than ever to the Olympics action and enjoy a new perspective on a range of live sports, including the opening and closing ceremonies, athletics, and a closer-than-ringside view of the boxing.” BBC Sport 360 will be available through a dedicated trial app for Android, iOS and Samsung Gear VR devices, it said. Coverage also will be available online through the BBC Taster site, allowing viewers “to try, rate and give feedback to help the BBC learn from the experimental service,” it said. The BBC plans live 360 video footage of an event each day during the Games, with about 100 total hours of content and a choice of up to four camera angles, plus a daily 360-degree video highlights package, it said. The BBC is heavily into research on virtual-reality content to be sure it will be “ready” if such content becomes mainstream, it said in a June R&D update (see 1606090052).
Samsung wants to register a stylized “VR” logo as a trademark for a range of possible virtual-reality products and services, it said in a July 22 application (serial number 87113330) at the Patent and Trademark Office. The PTO application is based on a similar claim filed July 14 with European trademark authorities, agency records show. The proposed mark “consists of the word ‘VR’ in stylized font with the right side of the ‘V’ and the left side of the ‘R’ being composed of a single line," says the PTO application. The agency assigned the application “VIRTUAL REALITY” as a “pseudo mark” as a standard practice to aid examiners in searching the PTO database for conflicting marks, PTO said in a Friday notice.
Alcatel began preorders Friday for the Idol 4S smartphone, including a free virtual reality Alcatel-branded goggle bundle with presale orders. The package includes a screen protector, JBL headphones, Incipio case and free shipping to begin in early August. Pre-sale price is $349, jumping to $399 when the phone ships Aug. 3, the company said. The phone features Alcatel’s “boom key” that allows users to switch quickly to access camera or music mode and engage press intervals for deeper feature selection such as burst shots or boosted bass. The key can be assigned to any application on the device, it said. The Android 5.5-inch phone, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, has an AMOLED display, glass body with metallic frame and 16 megapixel camera with Sony sensor that supports 4K video recording, it said. Battery life is given as 13 hours, and a Quick Charge AC adapter is included.
Dolby Labs and cinematic virtual reality company Jaunt released titles in Dolby Atmos Thursday through Jaunt’s VR app. The branded Dolby Atmos portal allows users to view all available Dolby Atmos-enabled VR experiences on iOS, Android, Samsung Gear, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive devices using stereo headphones, said the companies. Titles available at launch include Paul McCartney: Live and Let Die, Jack White: Ball & Biscuit, Jack White: Freedom at 21, Revolt: Big Sean, the Pure McCartney VR series, Black Mass, Rapid Fire: A Brief History of Flight, Earth Encounter, Collisions, the North Face series, Zombie Purge, Time Bubble, Other Space and Visions of California. Users can select versions with or without VR headsets. The Jaunt One camera and Jaunt Cloud Services are available for rental, allowing creators to shoot, edit and distribute cinematic VR experiences with Dolby Atmos, said the companies. Also included: a clip of Paul McCartney in his home recording studio discussing his 1977 recording "Mull of Kintyre" that has been digitally remastered in Dolby Atmos.
Organizers of the Audio Engineering Society’s first conference on audio for virtual and augmented reality are promising a “packed program of technical papers, workshops and tutorials” for the event Oct. 30-Sept. 1 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, they said in a Thursday announcement. The conference will focus on the AR and VR “creative process, applications workflow and product development,” they said. Of the 27 technical papers planned, many “will throw a technical spotlight on perceptually based approaches to creating immersive soundscapes for VR applications, and ways of individualizing spatial audio with ear shape modeling,” they said. “We have secured exciting contributions from a wide cross section of leading practitioners in the field of audio for VR and AR, including representatives from companies actively developing immersive sound solutions, as well as representatives from the academic world that are spearheading research into new development fields.”
Media and entertainment professionals think virtual reality will become a “mainstay” of over-the-top streaming video, Level 3 Communications said in a Tuesday report. It commissioned a survey of 628 respondents from media and entertainment companies globally, and asked them about the current state of OTT, the company said. It found that 45 percent of companies surveyed are offering OTT services, a 10-percentage-point increase over 2015, “indicating significant adoption,” Level 3 said. Of the companies offering OTT services, 52 percent are researching, getting ready to launch or have already launched VR-video content, it said. Two-thirds said they believe VR is here to stay but said “primary business and technical challenges” abound, including bandwidth limits, lack of consumer awareness and fear of competition from free services and user-generated content, it reported. Nearly half said their companies have plans for 4K broadcasts, 4K VOD streaming or 4K “live-linear” or live-event streaming, it said. "As the OTT industry continues to grow and evolve, this study shows there is more focus on not only delivering live streaming events -- which can be a challenge in itself -- but also streaming in 4K or even VR,” Level 3 said. “End users expect their video streaming experience to be seamless, even as they begin to consume next generation content, and this study reveals the ever-increasing importance for OTT providers to have a robust CDN [content delivery network] strategy to enable this upward OTT trajectory as well as the importance of a safe, secure, reliable network."
Whether virtual reality is how all BBC programs will be viewable one day is a question “we are unlikely to have a clear answer to” for many years, said BBC Research and Development Controller Andy Conroy in a Thursday blog post. “Our research will make sure that if that time comes, the BBC is ready.” New media “come along rarely, and those that stand the test of time are rarer still,” he said. The BBC “helped pioneer and develop” radio in the 1920s, TV in the 1930s and digital delivery in the 1980s, he said. “And it’s in that tradition we are exploring 360 video and VR now, in collaboration with the industry. This will help inform any strategy the BBC may need in future.” VR and 360 video “are emerging media the BBC needs to explore," Conroy said. “Our motive with these technologies is the same for the others we are researching -- how might they improve the BBC’s ability to better inform, educate and entertain.” Truly interactive VR video “is in its infancy and can be expensive to create,” he said. All of the true VR “experiments” the BBC is conducting “seek to address different challenges that will provide invaluable insights for the organisation now and in the future,” he said. For example, the BBC worked with Aardman Studios to produce video for the Oculus Rift VR headset, he said. The video “uses real stories of refugees as the basis for an animated virtual experience, helping to give audiences a sense of presence by placing them at the heart of the story, and with technology allowing interactive eye-contact between them and the characters,” he said. The BBC is “learning a great deal” from its VR experiments “about production techniques and workflows, user experience, and the technology of capture and distribution,” he said.