New Review Essay on @lmesseri tremendous new book, ethnography & tech, social hopes, & false dreams of tech solutionism. Also discussing work of Andrew Brock, Zeynep Tufekci & Kelsie Nabben on Black Twitter, Twitter & ethnographies of DAOs.
The International Astronomical Union (#IAU) are hosting an #astrophotography gallery in #VR! The event is on May 27 from 11am - 12:30pm UTC and May 28 from 8pm - 9:30pm UTC, and showcases astronomical photographs captured with a smartphone 📱🌌
The event is being held in spatial.io, which is accessible from a VR headset (Quest), or just from your computer browser (i.e. no headset needed).
It's compatible with popular VR headsets, and offers curated collections based on user preferences, ensuring a lightly personalized experience for each individual.
#EPSC (Europlanet Science Congress) is being held hybrid this year, and has an exciting program that includes a session on using new tools such as #VR in planetary science outreach.
But... it's 50 Euro per abstract submission, with no guarantee of acceptance. That's a fairly big punch when the Japanese yen is super weak.
Shan-Yuan Teng (https://tengshanyuan.info/) presenting his body of work on challenges in #haptics for #VR and #AR and asking the question how to move them into everyday life! (Photo by Bryan Wang, at U Toronto)
A quick box model this morning in #blender3d! Anyone recognise the shape?
It needs to be as low poly as possible (for #VR), and the circles do look a bit blocky. I was thinking of creating a high resolution version, baking the normals, and using these for the blocky version.
Meta has announced that Batman: Arkham Shadow will be the first big exclusive game for its Quest 3 VR headset.
It’s an important step forward for the device. As @engadget reports: “One of the main reasons it has been difficult to recommend the $500 Quest 3 VR headset over the $200 Quest 2 is a lack of exclusive titles, as most games have to support both models. This means we haven’t really seen the power of the Quest 3 yet, but the tides are turning.”
Had a great afternoon in New Taipei recently with Susan Wang and Kuan-Yuan Lai! The two are collaborating on an ambitious and fascinating VR production spotlighting Taiwan’s rich cinematic history. Ms Wang, director and script writer, brings a professional background in urban planning to the project. Mr Lai of Poké Poké production studio is producer. Both bring fertile imagination to their creation along with a great sense of fun!
It was my pleasure to provide some voice acting, and a little bit of translation, for an earlier edition of this project. Now it is blossoming into something truly special. I can’t wait for you to experience the finished production. I will share more news as it breaks!
Is it cake? One of these has an actual mesh (I think on the right here), while the other is in truth a solid cylinder with a texture. The better results were from creating the texture myself, rather than baking it on. It doesn't look quite as good in the #VR scene in #unity3d as in #blender3d: the lighting doesn't work quite the same way, and you can tell it's a texture when you stand close-up. But it's also over a factor of 100 less polygons, which is needed for a big room design.
Congratulations to @laurasouth_, Amy Pavel, Caglar Yildrim, and @michelle_borkin
for earning an Honorable Mention from @chi for "Barriers to Photosensitive Accessibility in Virtual Reality" 🎉