I took a closely look at Steve Seitz and found out his trace of research:

90s: basic theory, analysis and editing of static images– laying the foundation

00-05: tackling with motion:”gaze awareness” “rapid shape acquisition” “Shape recovery for dynamic scenes” “tracking”

06-10: taking the video reconstruction to the next level:” High-resolution capture” –here comes the photosynth: I think it is an exhibit of how static images can be manipulated and reconstructed on a 3D model. The technology experimented in the 90s is mature enough to achieve such function.

11-15: model becomes light-weighted that can be implemented on the mobile phone, of a larger scale( “Megaface: A million faces for recognition at scale”) or real-time (“”Reconstruction and tracking of non-rigid scenes in real-time”), an upgrade to application. The progress of the tech is not focused on creating a VR world, but about analyzing and linking the reality.

16-now: not so many popular publications, focuses come back to creating VR experiences. At the same time using neural network to interact with reality: “Synthesizing obama: learning lip sync from audio”

the sound of leaves when an animal pass by:

water flowing:

edited:

original:

12-min Summary 

Hand tracking on Oculus Quest–technique: Deep learning

Oculus link–linking Quest and Rift to do an update

Passthrough+ : Switching between reality and VR in a second

Creating VR community by linking to Facebook etc.

Facebook horizon: building VR landscape by yourself 

**Sounds like a shared Minecraft game. Doesn’t have so much meaning or significance if it were not linked to the reality–socializing with friends (better if it involves the actual location).

Oculus TV, media studio: upgrading all media into VR (360) version

CTRL-labs: a wrist band that reads brainwave as input –yet to be developed

Mixed reality: AR and VR would merge?

**The speaker talks about bringing a keyboard to use inside the VR world just as one would use it in the real world. Involves actual positioning–reconstruction as shown by the speaker.

Social teleportation: Reconstructing the physical world into VR World; Generating avatars according to reality realtime.

Spark AR for Places and Things

Definition of AR: Media, content, or function, bound to an object, landmark or environment.

Spark is a platform to easily create AR by users– build, iterate, publish, distribute.

**When a platform is established,  the possibility to create is given to the hands of a much bigger population. Creativity would be liberated and spark.

3 human centered qualities when building AR: familiar, timely, useful.

“The only interesting answers are those which who destroy the questions.” –Suston Sontog

From WebVR to WebXR: The Next Generation of VR Experiences on the Web

A lift from VR to XR on the web. Witnessing the grow of WebVR.

3 titles from the catalogue:

1. Allumette–VR film

It is 3D. One can pierce into something else and even trigger some animation while the main plot is happening on the other side. (Thanks to the exquisite design, sometimes one would miss the plot bc of the distraction of attention…) The sound is spacial, making me feel like at the scene.

What I like about is the clay-featured character that really sets it apart from normal CGI animation. The story is somehow touching but could have worked on the emotional transition more. What I dislike is that the animation rate is not high enough to make me really immerse in to the film.

2. Knock out league–VR boxing game

It is 3D. When moving, I feel that I’m really inside the boxing ring. Also, since the sound is spacial, I can easily identify the cheers and applause coming from the audience seats—from all directions.

What I like is how boxing itself is simulated— I feel like I could even learn and practice boxing by playing this game. The device can even recognize 10 different punches! What I dislike is that it seems the opponent is not intelligent enough to recognize where the punches are and obey to the boxing rules.

3.Henry–VR interactive film

It is 3D. It seems that all corners and angles are considered by the producer so that if I try to look into any possible things, it would be of content.  The sound is spacial. When Henry is coming near, I could sense that just according to the sound getting from a low volume to a high one.

What I like is that Henry is often appearing very closely to me and it creates an intimate and immersive feeling of actually communicating with Henry. What I dislike is that the movie itself is kind of childish and lacks some spice.

1.  Response to  16 Lessons for a VR-First Future From ‘Ready Player One’

2. Choice of VR titles:

Tilt Brush/ horizons/ super hot

3. Response to AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld

The part that touches me the most is:

The next generation will master visual literacy. A properly educated person will be able to create a 3D image inside of a 3D landscape nearly as fast as one can type today. They will know how to search all videos ever made for the visual idea they have in their head, without needing words. The complexities of color and the rules of perspective will be commonly understood, like the rules of grammar. It will be the Photonic Era.

The Millenials today are viewed as the aborigines of the Information Era, they are (or I am)  naturally used to computers, phones, the Internet. It’s easy but at the same time shocking to imagine a future world where we have to try really hard to master visual literacy and get accustomed to the Photonic Era.