Virtual reality is poised to generate $1.8 billion for retailers in 2022, said a Wednesday ABI Research report. VR technology can build on e-commerce and digital marketing by letting shoppers visualize and personalize products more realistically, said analyst Khin Sandi Lynn. Furniture and home improvement stores Ikea and Lowe’s have been early adopters of VR at retail, allowing customers to view furniture, pick different parts, customize products and visualize an item before buying, she said. Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba deployed its Buy+ mobile VR platform for better product visualizing and integrated its Alipay payment platform to help consumers make a payment while browsing products using Buy+ VR, said Lynn, saying consumer interest in shopping using VR is high online and in stores.
The Audio Engineering Society’s second international conference on audio for augmented and virtual reality will be Aug. 20-22 at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington, said the society in a Monday announcement. The three-day conference and expo will focus on “the dissemination of top-level research in the field of spatial audio for virtual and augmented reality, with demonstrations and discussions focused on technical solutions and recommended practices,” it said. “Leading researchers, practitioners and industry leaders will offer panel discussions, tutorials and workshops on new and forthcoming technologies.” AES set a May 1 deadline for submitting papers to be delivered at the conference.
Sony’s Tokyo parent applied March 12 to register “A(i)R HOCKEY” as a U.S. trademark for a class of goods and services that includes air hockey tables with “augmented reality system machines” and air hockey equipment for commercial arcades, Patent and Trademark Office records show. Sony Computer Entertainment America currently markets an AR Hockey "holographic" title as part of its Playroom suite of games for the PlayStation 4. Brunswick Corp. owns the original April 1976 trademark for "Air-Hockey" and has twice renewed it, most recently in April 2016, PTO records show. Sony representatives didn’t comment Thursday.
Qualcomm used the Game Developers Conference to announce a new virtual reality development kit for its Snapdragon 845 processor platform, said the company Wednesday. The kit “is designed to support the next generation of mobile virtual reality applications,” it said. Qualcomm designed the kit to “abate some of the hassles of optimizing virtual reality content for mobile deployment, as well as to support easier access to several innovations and technology advancements” of the Snapdragon 845 platform, it said. Qualcomm expects to release the kit in Q2, it said.
Following market weakness last year, worldwide shipments for augmented reality and virtual reality headsets are slated to grow at a 53 percent five-year compound annual growth rate to 68.9 million by 2022, said a Monday International Data Corp. report. Growth will return this year, with AR/VR shipments forecast to reach 12.4 million units, up 49 percent from 2017, it said. Declines last year were due to a drop in screenless VR viewer shipments as companies stopped bundling the headsets with smartphones, and consumers showed little interest in buying them separately, said IDC. Lenovo’s successful Q4 launch of Star Wars: Jedi Challenges (Lenovo Mirage AR headset) showed the form factor could still “have legs,” said the research firm, “if paired with the right content.” Analyst Jitesh Ubrani cited a “maturation of content and delivery” as top content providers enter the AR and VR space. On the hardware side, vendors are experimenting with financing options and revenue models to make headsets, along with accompanying hardware and software, more accessible to consumers and businesses, he said. VR should lead a rebound in VR headset sales as Facebook’s Oculus Go, HTC’s Vive Pro and Lenovo’s Mirage Solo with Daydream ship with new capabilities and price points, said the research firm. AR will remain largely targeted to the commercial side due to high cost and complexity, it said. Virtual reality head-mounted displays will transition from screenless viewers to stand-alone and tethered devices, which are forecast to comprise 86 percent of category shipments by 2022. Consumers will account for most headset shipments throughout the forecast period, but commercial usage will slowly increase, it said.
The BBC is launching its first augmented reality smartphone app as part of the launch of the "Civilisations" series coming this spring. The "Civilisations" AR app, developed by BBC R&D and Nexus Studios, will enable people to explore a virtual art exhibition whenever and wherever they want, said the BBC. In the app, a “magic spotlight” allows users to uncover annotations, audio and imagery for each exhibit; an “X-ray” option lets them see through or inside an object, such as seeing through a sarcophagus to the mummy inside; the restoration feature lets users rub through the layers of history, as if polishing a metal chalice or bringing back color to a faded sculpture; and the navigation feature lets users browse the exhibition geographically using an AR globe, it said. BBC’s R&D arm developed a tool called SOMA (single operator mixing application), a browser-based mixer that lets an operator cut between cameras, prerecorded video, audio and graphics for live broadcast from a remote location via the internet, it said. It also made available a 360-degree video tool to immerse people in a 360 environment with 3D audio.
Startup TwoEyes Tech will show a binocular 360-degree field-of-view virtual reality camera at CES that captures images using two pairs of fisheye lenses. The lenses are positioned 65 millimeters apart, mirroring human eye placement, to create a comfortable viewing experience, said the company. Images show a 3D representation of the world “as people see it,” the company said. The camera captures 360-degree 3D video that can be viewed on VR headsets, smartphones, computer monitors and 3D TVs, it said, and videos can be converted from and into 180-degree and 360-degree content. Recordings can be viewed on a smartphone or uploaded to social media, it said. TwoEyes Tech will exhibit in booth #51677 at Eureka Park in the Sands Expo Center.
YI Technology will unveil a smart home camera at CES next month featuring artificial intelligence; tilt, zoom and 360-degree panning; and SD and cloud storage, it said Friday. It will also demonstrate the YI 360 VR camera and YI Halo VR rig built in collaboration with Google. YI will be in booth #21709 in the LVCC South Hall.
Augmented reality “has the potential to reach people right on their mobile devices” but with the technology still so new, creators will need to think carefully when designing “intuitive user interactions,” Alesha Unpingco, a Google user experience designer, blogged Wednesday. The Google design team has “learned a few things about design patterns that may be useful for creators as they consider mobile AR platforms,” said Unpingco. Since mobile AR “introduces a new set of interaction challenges,” Google’s experimentations helped the team “adapt emerging patterns to address different physical environments and the need to hold the phone throughout an entire application session,” she said. Above all, the smartphone “is the user’s window into the augmented world,” so creators need to “consider ways to make their mobile AR experiences enjoyable and usable for varying screen sizes and orientations,” she said. The team soon will publish “guidelines” for mobile AR design, she said: “There are so many unique problems that mobile AR can solve and so many delightful experiences it can unlock. We’re looking forward to seeing what users find compelling and sharing what we learn along the way, too.”
Virtual reality company Dreamscape Immersive and Nickelodeon will jointly create content using the network's brands as part of Nickelodeon's participation in a Series B financing round that raised $30 million, Dreamscape said Wednesday. It said AMC Entertainment's investment in the financing round will lead to the theater chain opening and operating up to six Dreamscape VR centers in North America and the U.K.