This past weekend Flickr demonstrated an early preview of a ‘virtual reality experience’ designed for viewing 360-degree panoramic photos. The demonstration used the Oculus DK 2 headset connected to a computer, and allowed wearers to completely immerse themselves within the panorama. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
Using augmented reality highlights, hints and cues to guide bikers through complex city paths and streets, this conceptual system addresses issues of wayfinding and safety, speculatively asking: “Could a cycle path be created, or at least augmented, using connected technologies?”
Five initial functions are proposed by the Connected Cyclists project for this wearable prototype, all around themes of navigation in London, a place notorious for the variety of its path types and unexpected route shifts. With so many transitions between street paths, parks and alleyways, it can be hard for bikers new to the city to know where to go – subtle highlights of next steps could solve that problem.
“We see that cyclists often take bearings when paused at traffic lights—this interface could essentially simply provide the next direction, reinforcing the journey. We also feel that the visual nudge implied here, using the fabric of the city itself, is more akin to how cyclists move and navigate—a more fluid movement through and sometimes across the streetscape, as opposed to the very directed navigation delivered for drivers.”
Blind spot visualization assists travelers as they pass in the shadows of cars, buses and trucks, while an overall approach promoting backstreet network paths helps avoid traffic and poor air quality in the first place. Monuments, icons and landmarks displayed subtly in the background can also give clues to riders about where they are in the city.
Already there are many programs like CityMapper built on OpenStreetMaps that contain the necessary information about routes and paths but using those on the go via a typical mobile device means either unsafe cycling practices or frequent stops, hence the augmented heads-up display. “If these displays talked to the city around them—if they knew where the cyclist was and what they were looking at—they could give much more subtle spatial and contextual information that builds on the surroundings of the cyclist.”
The key is making such technology accessible and seamless, a distraction-free overlay to other visual information being taken in by those on bikes moving through the urban environment.
“Many cities are spending serious money, time and attention on improving the ‘hard infrastructure’ of cities to make cycling safer, more convenient, more attractive,” but “there is potential of a ‘soft infrastructure’ which can be overlaid on existing urban fabric to further support cycling, which takes advantage of contemporary technologies such as wearables, the internet of things, real-time sensor data, and so on.”
While none of this is a reality quite yet, “‘Design stories’ allow you to try on a future for size, and to imagine how a prototype might fit into its urban context. With prototypes to point at, critique and discuss we can begin to imagine other externalities or knock-on effects and build up both understanding and language to discuss what can otherwise be fairly abstract and technical ideas.”
In this new video, Technical Illusions, the company behind CastAR, a hybrid augmented and virtual reality headset, shows off a series of amazing everyday …
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Employing a cellular phone coupled with traditional transparent cel animation techniques, this artist inserts strange characters and surreal stories into …
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Technology is taking over nearly every part of our lives, not that we’re complaining. These augmented reality projects add another layer to the everyday world.
Click Here to Read More »»
[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
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[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]
The art of superimposition alters the way we see real-life environments, substituting cut-outs or figurines for 3D elements in the scene and capturing the resulting image on film. This technique can blur the lines between past and present, bring fictional characters to vivid life or otherwise mash up imagery that you wouldn’t normally see together.
We’ve seen striking war imagery juxtaposed with the same locations in the present day, monuments seemingly miniaturized, and Star Wars characters invading urban Paris. Now, Brazilian artist Lorenzo Castellini brings fine art to the streets of her home city of São Paulo by superimposing cut-outs of masterpieces onto real human figures and settings.
A Shell gas station logo becomes the shell from which Botticelli’s Venus springs. A man on the street holding a bottle of Coke turns into Albrecht Dürer. Dali’s melting clocks appear on rocks in the park, and a woman from Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ casually makes her way down a sidewalk.
Similar projects have brought classical paintings to modern contexts, like a fun Photoshop series by Alexey Kondakov that blends religious imagery with unexpected urban settings – putting the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus on the subway, for example, with violin-playing angels as buskers.
Technology is taking over nearly every part of our lives, not that we’re complaining. These augmented reality projects add another layer to the everyday world.
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Storm troopers mow the lawn, Jesus rides a Segway, Ceiling Cat lurks in the sky and the Stay-Puft marshmallow man gazes out over a nonchalant 19th century …
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Motion pictures aside, the nature of photographic representation implies freezing space in time – a moment captured and preserved, independent of what …
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[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
No matter how many drawings and models a client is shown, there is still a leap of imagination needed for someone to understand how a building design will really look and feel when it is realized. The gap, however, is rapidly closing between representation and reality, with digital models that can be experienced and interacted with in realtime.
Olivier Demangel of London 3D imaging company IVR NATION modeled the home shown above using images found online, and as impressive as the walk-through video above may be, it does not compare to the experience of the space via an 3D Oculus Rift headset.
The model’s creator expects full 100% realism to be a reality in just 5 years. In some of the side-by-side images above and below, it is already hard to tell the real from the virtual.
In an interview with Dezeen, Demangel explains the interactivity built into the model, letting you open “doors and turn on the lights” as well as “instantly change materials for the walls, the floor, the position of lights. [Y]ou can experiment with a lot of different options — design, materials, lighting, weather — very quickly.”
The real power lies partly in being able to show designs to clients, but also in the ability to see how every detail of a design works together (or falls apart) from a first-person perspective, essentially a 1:1 scale model complete with every view available, each time of day easy to simulate.
Will this window really show what the designer intended? Will that patio really get the daylight promised? Individually-rendered scenes and perspectives used to take hours to days to compute, sometimes using multiple machines – now the same can be done in seconds.
Meanwhile, the ‘simulation singularity‘ may be approaching – a day when we will no longer be able to distinguish between virtual and real: “The technological singularity is a hypothetical moment in the future when artificial intelligence becomes indistinguishable from human intelligence—and capable of creating smarter iterations of itself. Apply the same general idea to simulations and you get the simulation singularity: when a simulated world is indistinguishable from reality.”
Virtual reality, like the hovercar, iis taking longer than expected to progress, but we’ve made some very large leaps in the right direction. Here are examples.
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Imagine no more: now you can scan items right out of a physical catalog and watch them pop up in your own bedroom, kitchen, living or dining room at home, …
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Technology is taking over nearly every part of our lives, not that we’re complaining. These augmented reality projects add another layer to the everyday world.
Click Here to Read More »»
[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
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[ By Steph in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]
“Why play a game when you can live it?” ask the creators of The Void, the world’s first virtual reality theme park slated to open in Utah in summer 2016. Gamers will soon be able to immerse themselves in 4D environments, with all sorts of eye-popping effects layered onto real spaces. Imagine: first-person shooters meet paintball or laser tag – this is the future of gaming.
The flagship Pleasant Grove location will feature sixteen 60-by-60-foot rooms with different themes for different experiences, and they even plan to change these virtual stages every three months so repeat players never get bored.
Want to find out what it feels like to wander around in the jungle during the Jurassic age, or explore a truly terrifying haunted house? Zoom around skyscrapers in a flying car? The Void basically enables you to star in your own action movie, alone or with a group of friends, in a VR experience that far surpasses anything you could do with a headset on your couch.
Each stage not only has custom architecture and sculptures to make it feel more real – you’ll also feel blasts of air and shifts in temperature, take in scents and strap yourself into motion simulators for activities like flying. Individual rooms hold up to 10 gamers at a time who can work as a team or play against each other. The Void has created a virtual reality headset of its own design, called Rapture HMD.
You won’t necessarily have to fly to Utah to experience it, either – they’re planning on opening other locations around the world.
In this new video, Technical Illusions, the company behind CastAR, a hybrid augmented and virtual reality headset, shows off a series of amazing everyday …
Click Here to Read More »»
Virtual reality, like the hovercar, iis taking longer than expected to progress, but we’ve made some very large leaps in the right direction. Here are examples.
Click Here to Read More »»
Feel the wind on your face and smell the pine sap of the forest as you gaze down at the scenery far below – without ever leaving the ground. …
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[ By Steph in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]
In this new video, Technical Illusions, the company behind CastAR, a hybrid augmented and virtual reality headset, shows off a series of amazing everyday applications of their technology, dissolving the distinction between real and digital spaces.
A year after raising $ 1,000,000 on Kickstarter, this technology combines but also goes beyond the AR of Google Glass and VR of Oculus Rift: “You and your friends can share this Mixed Reality experience that blends a virtual world into the real world. Move around naturally through this blended environment as you work or play together.”
In founding Technical Illusions and pushing out a viable product in just over a year, Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson (formerly of Valve) have focused on getting something that works out the door and in the hands of users and developers as quickly as possible – in a world of possibilities, concepts and prototypes, their emphasis is refreshingly pragmatic.
The CastAR system consists of a headset with a built-in projector, camera and works in conjunction with retroflective surfaces embedded with infrared LED lights. “The projectors cast a three-dimensional image onto the surface, while the camera uses the LEDs to track your head movement … you can use this unique projected augmented reality technology to do things like view building projects in 3D, play interactive video games and create three-dimensional presentations.”
Technology is taking over nearly every part of our lives, not that we’re complaining. These augmented reality projects add another layer to the everyday world.
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Using a handheld stylus and tablet set combined with an existing augmented reality headset, this invention allows users to sketch in three dimensions and see …
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Imagine no more: now you can scan items right out of a physical catalog and watch them pop up in your own bedroom, kitchen, living or dining room at home, …
Click Here to Read More »»
[ By WebUrbanist in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]
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The much-rumored replacement for Canon’s aging EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L has officially arrived. Announced in 1998, the original trombone-style lens is replaced by a traditional rotating zoom design and boasts a number of optical enhancements. It’s scheduled for December availability at a price of $ 2199. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]
Subway commuters are inundated with advertisements on virtually every surface they come across along their daily journey, from the stairs leading to each platform to the passenger cars themselves. Places where a captive audience will stand around staring at the walls are an advertiser’s feast, but not everyone wants that kind of consumerism shoved down their throats every day. Enter ‘NO AD,‘ an augmented reality app that allows you to replace those ads with art.
Created by The Subway Art Blog and The Heavy Projects, which got dozens of artists to participate, the app for smartphones and tablets enables users to look at their environment in an altered way. Hold up your device and the ad that’s right in front of you will transform into a work of art before your eyes.
Available for free on iOS and Android, NO AD works with dozens of ads, turning your commute into a ‘curated art experience. You can even watch a short film. The app developers plan to update the featured art frequently to keep up with the frantic pace of urban advertising.
While viewing the world through an electronic device isn’t exactly ideal, especially if hundreds of commuters started clogging up the subway stations to stand around holding their tablets at arms’ length, it’s a neat example of high-tech DIY Urbanism.
Technology is taking over nearly every part of our lives, not that we’re complaining. These augmented reality projects add another layer to the everyday world.
Click Here to Read More »»
Using a handheld stylus and tablet set combined with an existing augmented reality headset, this invention allows users to sketch in three dimensions and see …
Click Here to Read More »»
Taking over a single bus shelter on New Oxford Street, guerrilla advertisers threw everything they could think of at commuters, including (but not limited to) …
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[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]
Employing a cellular phone coupled with traditional transparent cel animation techniques, this artist inserts strange characters and surreal stories into everyday built environments.
Animator Marty Cooper draws on the individual cels, holding them up for capture, but also displaces objects with which his creations seem to interact.
These creations, in turn, are brought to life to bounce on top of train cars, splash in pothole puddles oremerge from alleyway dumpsters to interact with their surroundings in clever ways.
Technology is taking over nearly every part of our lives, not that we’re complaining. These augmented reality projects add another layer to the everyday world.
Click Here to Read More »»
Great architecture deserves to be seen, even if it will never be built. This revolutionary project puts visionary buildings right into the palm of your hand.
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Want to do some serious graffiti art but don’t want to do jail time? This cool iPhone app lets you beautify your world with spray paint in augmented reality.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]
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[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]
If you could have a vending machine spit out a small object in any shape you could dream up, what would it be? The DreamVendor, an interactive 3D printing station for Virginia Tech students, is envisioned as “a vending machine with an infinite inventory” that’s only limited by the imaginations of those who put it to work.
Created to enable students to quickly fabricate prototypes for academic and personal design projects, the machine reads CAD files from the user’s SD card, prints the three-dimensional part desired, and dispenses it into a bin when it’s done. The prototype machine is located on the Virginia Tech campus, but soon, new DreamVendors could pop up in retail centers for use by the general public.
Anyone who walks up to a DreamVendor kiosk – located inside a store, likely beside photo booths and soda machines – can choose to either load their own CAD designs into the system, or choose a pre-designed item to print. Plans are still in the developmental stage, but production is expected to begin next year.
3D printing pop-up shops have already begun to appear around the world, from a Baltimore studio that will help you create personalized products to a Japanese cafe that will scan your face and turn it into an edible chocolate treat.
These amazingly detailed objects are smaller than a grain of sand, printed with polymers at record-breaking speeds using advanced 3D printing technology.
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This ’3D-printed’ bottle wasn’t made by a machine, unless you consider an army of industrious honeybees a machine. For a new Dewar’s …
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Printers are no longer just the bulky machines that sit on our desks. Current and future printers can create our homes, our toys and even our new body parts.
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[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]
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