I suppose this was inevitable. Not only are location based immersive experience sweeping the the American country-side but it seems as if the fever is also catching abroad. VR Arcade are very popular in China. Limited hi-end PCs and and the desire for social interaction make China fertile ground for this type of industry. Japan is jumping on the bandwagon as well with Bandai Namco opening its VR arcade, known as “VR Zone: Project I Can” in the Kabukicho district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan starting this Friday, April 15th, until October 10th, 2017.
Not much is known about the experience other than video, shown above. Some of the teaser art promises:
Two mech-type battle sequences
A singing simulator
A skiing simulator
A plank walking experience
A horror experience
A train management simulator
If the attraction employ real props and are as interactive as the above video then I am sure the patrons will have a rewarding experiences.
Update 7/17/17
Here is a quick update with a trailer for each of the unique experiences which can be found at the newly opened Bandai Namco VR theme park.
After what seemed to be an almost two year wait, the Void has finally opened their doors in their home Utah location. I have yet to sample any of The Void’s experiences. I have read there are many good aspects and many bad aspects. Overall, each individual needs to be the judge for themselves.
As The Void claims, they are now operating at 90 frames/sec and with a FOV comparable to the Vive. Participants are equipped with backpacks so there are no annoying cables to deal with. Evidently, compared to some other immersive experiences, the extra weight on a participant’s back is worth the extra frame rate and expanded field of view. It also seems as if The Void’s tracking problems have been solved with the new tracking system by OptiTrack. OptiTrack claims their cameras are 40{76c5cb8798b4dc9652375d1c19c86d53c1d1411f4e030dd406aa284e63c21817} less expensive than competitor’s. I am not sure this is so remarkable. 40{76c5cb8798b4dc9652375d1c19c86d53c1d1411f4e030dd406aa284e63c21817} from $.5 million is still close to $.25 million which is still quite a chunk of change. iMyth will need to find other ways around this entry barrier. Tracking balls are also hidden from the experience. This is actually a good idea since tracking balls tend to stick out and be one more item to potentially break. This is achieved with imbedded led lights and silver metallic paint which is the same stuff used to paint the Nike logo on the sides of your shoes.
The tracking and the overall experience appear to be stable. There still seems to be some dynamic problems in tight situations where participant bump into each other. Evidently the avatars don’t really match the person they are modelling. This is attributed to only the participant’s head and gun being tracked. With that said, participants were feeling disappointed they could not see their hands. Once again this is because the participants hands are not being tracked.
The price of the experience is $25 for a less than 15 minute experience. Some may question this price and make it hard to justify a trip to Linden Utah. However, if one is passing through with a little time on their hands then the experience is definitely worth it.
Once again The Void is back on top of the Pioneer Train of Immersive experience. They are definitely discovering many of the bumps and pitfalls of this immerging new media. For us little guys let’s hope they do not run out of money so they can keep hitting these snags and coming up with solutions. Good Luck!
According to Greenlight, more than 65{76c5cb8798b4dc9652375d1c19c86d53c1d1411f4e030dd406aa284e63c21817} of all VR revenue will come from headset sales this year. The anticipated revenue from VR this year is $7.17B. This is expected to grow to $72.82B by the beginning of 2021.
On a note more related to iMyth, Greenlight forecasts that location-based immersive experiences is going to grow into a significant part of the industry. In 2017, location-based VR will bring in $222M worldwide; by 2021, that amount will grow to almost $1.2B. This is a great place for iMyth to be in.
I knew there were going to be many players in the immersive experience industry. I just didn’t expect so many with quality product and coming from over-seas. Look out Void, Dreamscape, Zero Latency and iMyth, there is a new player in town and it looks like they are doing it right; Tick-Tock Unlock/Hyper Reality Experience!
The folks who started Tick-Tock, Ali and Samrien Kahn, are coming from a different perspective. The former engineer and Disney employee cut their immersive teeth on escape games.Tick-Tock Unlock appears to be a very successful franchise in Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool and Leeds. Growing beyond escape games, the Kahns are venturing towards Virtual Reality and immersive experiences with real physical props and sets. They are featuring modular sets and theatrical “game masters” who guide participants into HTC Vive Headsets and take the experience into another dimension while creating a context and a mission.
Their first Hyper-Reality experience is scheduled to open late April. A larger experience center in London is expected to open later this year. They have two themes for games, a World War II shooter and a sword and sorcery fantasy. Other than integrating VR as a component of their escape games, not much else is known about about Tick-Tock Unlock or Hyper-Reality Experiences. However, if they deliver half of what they promise in their promo video, then companies such as The Void, Dreamscape and iMyth are in for some stiff competition.
In an article posted by Road to VR, Once a Pioneer of VR in Theme Parks, Disney Aims for AR This Time Around, Disney’s CEO, Rob Iger gives a message to the amusement industry about Diney employing VR in its attractions, “Don’t even think about it”. I personally believe this is a current reflection of the state of VR and not necessarily a reflection of Disney’s opinion about the technology.
Indeed, for a company with standards as high as Disney and with the number of people pushing through the experiences, VR just would not make sense. Currently, mobile VR experiences can only support lower quality compared to PC based technology. These high end HMDs and computers are expensive. For an attraction that pushes 100 patron’s through at a time means the attraction would need to shell out close to $4k per head or $400k just to get the attraction started. That may not seem like much but there is going to be maintenance and equipment failure which could make the initial cost skyrocket. Then there is the issue of through put. Disney just can not be expected to support that many people through its experience with what is a “Clunky” technology. The sanitary issues alone make the head spin. Disney will also have to worry about elderly and handicapped who just could not deal with a computer and a heavy HMD. Taking these immediate factors into consideration, I can certainly understand why Iger is not accepting VR technology, at this moment in time.
Although Disney Quest was slated to close in 2015, it is still operational. Why? Simply because it is making money. It is old and antiquated but still generating positive cash flow. Disney Research has not been told to turn it off either. They just released a very good white-paper on dynamic object interactions and proprioception. I have a hunch while not diving into the VR craze head first, Disney is still reaseraching and exploring ways to exploit the technology once it reaches a state of being practical, and “High Quality”.
IMAX claims that it has 15,000 admissions in its immersive center at the Bridge in LA. what this number really relates to is the number of individual experiences sold not to unique visitors. That means with tickets selling between $7 to $10 for VR content, we can roughly guess that IMAX may have cleared $100,000 in ticket sales during its first few months of operation. Notably, that includes a soft launch at an IMAX VR location unconnected to a movie theater — future locations will be connected to theaters and might see more foot traffic as a result.
IMAX will be competing directly against Dreamscape Immersive as they rush to create experiences based on Feature film releases. While iMyth is not immediatly aiming towards this market, it is interesting to see how things will develop.
Up until this point, there has not been much information about the LA startup, Dreamscape Interactive. The Dreamscape history was revealed slightly from a Forbe’s Article, Dreamscape’s Big Dreams for Immersive VR. The article explains a little of whom Kevin Wall and Walter Parkes are and what his ambitions are.
One of the first, and most important of his accomplishments was partnering with Artanim, a Swiss research think tank focussing on motion and motion capture. Artanim burst onto the VR scene two years ago when they displayed their groundbreaking, immersive VR for the 2015 Siggraph. I may be a CGI snob but I have to admit the folks at Artanim have the real head start in the immersive experience game. The Void has spent millions but only gets to the point where Artanim starts.
Relying on Hollywood serendipity and a powerful rolodex, the Wall nabbed as CEO the Disney Chief Creative Officer behind the massive Shanghai Disneyland project, Bruce Vaughn, who had planned to take a well deserved sabbatical, until Wall interrupted him with Dreamscape’s ambitious plans. Along with other Disney Imagineers recruited for the effort, Vaughn’s job is to spearhead development of both the experiences and the venue, which is being designed by Yves Behar, who Forbes described as “the most influential designer in the world.”
With this high powered team Wall and Parkes have enlisted a prime crop of heavy huitting investors including Westfields Malls, three movie studios, and Parkes’ former boss Steven Speilberg. Because of their strategic alliance with the multiple studios, the group claims to be movie agnostic. While they have given no clues on what their first experience will be, it will be fairly safe to assume the experiences will coincide with the release of major films. With their focus on the most recent feature film IPs, I believe there is still plenty of room capitalizing on the infinite number of theme worlds which have already proven themselves.
The group plans on opening their first experience at landmark Century City Mall in Los Angeles this fall. When they’re sure the venue can be operated profitably, they’ll explode into hungry malls around the country. I’ll have to admit, this is a solid plan. iMyth plans on doing the same.
Dreamscape Immeresive really seems like they have a good plan with a strong team to boot. It looks like I’ll need to be making a trip to Los Angeles this Fall to check out the new iMyth competition.
A couple of months ago, iMyth created a rough prototype of its immersive experience. One of iMyth’s key components is physical props and sets. We integrated very inexpensive props and sets into our experience. While not the most sturdy these set pieces did an outstanding job demonstrating the physically immersive concept.
Bandai Namco has taken this concept one step further and created an experience based on the Doraemon Anywhere Door theme world. Using the HTC Vive, Leap Motion, and a few simple props tracked with attached Vive controllers, the team was able to create two very interesting interactive props.
https://gfycat.com/SpiffyDisgustingHowlermonkey
The first of these props is the door. Using a very simple props door placed cleverly inside the Vive play space in order to avoid loosing tracking. The use Leap Motion to track the participant’s hands which of course frees up the Vive Controllers. One of the controllers is placed on the edge of the door and is used to track the door opening and closing. It is a simple concept but the physical component is extraordinarily impact-full. What I really want to know is where did they get the great door prop? Notice that the prop doesn’t have a footprint larger that what it would have in real life. How did they anchor it? It looks solid.
https://gfycat.com/ImpishCautiousGermanspitz
The second object is a simple desk. Once again, all the creators did was attach a second controller to the drawer of the desk. The desk itself is stationary and never moves. Once again this is very effective use of a simple concept.
I just place my order to HTC for 4 tracking “pucks”. We should get them by the end of the week. The pucks are going to be used to help track the interactor. However, I did forget that for every Vive there are two controllers. That means iMyth will now have 8 tracked objects to deal with. Where can we go from here?
IMR is at the forefront of wireless Virtual Reality data streaming. Our proprietary algorithms and hardware architecture, produce UN-paralleled results.
At IMR we have a mission to create the world’s first compression standard for VR content. We are a technology company founded by leading aerospace, computer vision and robotics experts. We have developed an algorithm and hardware that enables Wireless transmission and streaming of VR video over 802.11ac Wi-Fi and 802.11ad WiGig standards. Transforming the VR industry and empowering a completely immersed and untethered experience for multiple players.
Immersive Robotics (IMR) has developed a new compression standard for VR content. The proprietary algorithm and electronics hardware enables wireless transmission and streaming of Virtual Reality (VR) video over 802.11ac Wi-Fi (5GHz) & the latest 802.11ad WiGig (60GHz) standards. The following is the description of its potency:
Rapid Data Transmission
With a 95{76c5cb8798b4dc9652375d1c19c86d53c1d1411f4e030dd406aa284e63c21817} compression rate, IMR’s technology allows for compression and decompression with a record breaking introduced latency of less than 1 ms. This translates to zero perceived latency by the player, increasing user comfort and the elimination of motion sickness caused by latency within VR play.
Image Quality
The quality of the decompressed image is indiscernible from the original with no motion blur or introduced artifacts.
Eye Tracking
IMR’s algorithm leverages a suite of highly “VR-optimized” techniques to reduce required bandwidth and operate at an extremely low latency. One option feature is an input for eye tracking data which allows for further dynamic control and greater compression efficiency.
Versatile
IMR’s technology utilizes both the 802.11ac and 802.11ad wireless standards. This enables current generation HMDs to be supported via the AC standard, and future proofs the technology by enabling it to handle up to 2x 4K VR video transmission over the AD standard.
Our technology is designed to operate across all VR and telepresence robotics applications and each has their own requirements for the wireless. Our technology provides the necessary compression/decompression at ultra low latencies for ALL these applications, and we are working with and looking to partner with different wireless manufacturers and communication link suppliers to push this technology into each area.
KwikVR’s unique advantage over other wireless competitors is hard to tell, because we have not been able to test our competitors’ solutions. They are all claiming an impossible one or two millisecond latency overhead, so I would say our main advantage is to be honest. Also, our solution does not use 60GHz Wi-fi at the top of the head of the user, which might be better for health reasons. Using 5GHz Wi-fi is also less prone to obstruction issues when it comes to the Wi-fi signal. We believe that our latency overhead is close to optimal, but only the customers will be the judges.
I think you can classify Wireless VR into what type of radio it uses and what type of compression. Of course all systems have to deliver under a frame of round trip latency.
Various Radio Types:
WiFi 802.11ac 5GHHz & 2.4GHz
WiFi 802.11ad 60GHz
5G LTE cellular for cloud VR (various frequencies)
Proprietary radio in unlicensed frequency (e.g. 5GHz)
Our solution uses WiFi 802.11ac and LTE. This has the benefits of not needing line of sight transmission. 60GHz transmission suffers from large attenuation when propagating through physical barriers including humans. 802.11ac can travel much longer distance than 60GHz and provide multiple room coverage. 802.11ac is also much cheaper and requires much smaller wireless antennas than 60Ghz. Placement of the transmitter is not important with 802.11ac unlike 60GHz. 802.11ac is also lower power giving longer battery life of the HMD.
Various Compression Types
JPEG (Intra frame) with 3:1 compression
JPEG 2000 (Intra frame) with 6:1 compression
MPEG H.264 (Intra and Inter frame) 100:1 compression
MPEG H.265 (Intra and Inter frame) 200:1 compression
Proprietary Compression
Our solution uses MPEG H.265/HEVC compression which provides 200:1 compression. E.g. a source of 1080p60 requires 3,000 Mbps to transmit uncompressed. We compress this to 15 Mbps a compression ratio of 200:1. This allows headroom for error correction and higher resolutions and frame rates as well as data rates that can be delivered from the cloud over 5G LTE and fibre networks. Standards based systems also allow off the shelf mobile chipsets to be used to build into mobile HMDs. We will adopt future H.265 profiles which can provide even better compression using tools like multi view and screen content coding tools.
While other vendors are focused on bringing wireless accessories to today’s HMDs, Nitero is the only company developing an integratable solution that will support the aggressive requirements of future VR HMDs.
The solution’s novel micro-second latency compression engine provides royalty-free, visually lossless encoding, adding end-to-end latency of one millisecond. At power below one Watt, it can be integrated into future headsets without the need for expensive heat sinks or vents. In fact, adding Nitero’s wireless solution will be significantly less expensive than cables, resulting in an overall cost reduction, which is critical for VR adoption going forward.
Interoperable with WiGig, Nitero has customized for the unique challenges in the VR/AR use cases with advanced beam-forming that supports NLOS at room-scale. Additionally, back-channel support for computer vision, eye-tracking, 3D-audio and other forthcoming technologies can be supported simultaneously with the VR display, without needing another chipset.
Some of the industry leaders that have supported Nitero via investment and collaboration include Valve Software, Super Ventures, and the Colopl VR Fund, along with others not publicly announced.
We use a combination of video compression and proprietary streaming protocol that allows us to stream high resolutions to multiple headsets. Our solution is designed primarily for Theme Parks and Arcades that want to put two or more people in the same tracked space.
Our thesis is that in the future you will always need some amount of compression, either when resolutions get higher (4K and above. We need 16K for retina resolution), or if you try to put the server outside the local network. Ideally, you could put a GPU farm in the cloud and have all the content available immediately thus even eliminating the need of a PC at home! I think that in five years the only computer you would need at home would be a small mobile chip, probably built into the headset itself.
Of course, any sort of compression introduces latency. However, there’s been a lot of development in the past two years to go around that. We’ll be releasing a network aware technology similar to Spacewarp that’s used by Oculus. And companies like Microsoft have done a lot of research on reducing latency by doing predictive (also known as speculative) rendering. Project Irides, for example, is able to compensate for 120 ms of network latency in their demo. We’ve been talking to one of the lead researchers of Irides for a while, and we’ll release similar technology in 2017. So I would say that the future of wireless VR is very bright!
HTC/Intel Aliance
WiGig (Intel’s chosen solution) is, as the name suggests, a wireless multi-gigabit networking standard which dramatically increases over-the-air bandwidth over standard WiFi over short distances (the same room). In actual fact, the name ‘WiGig’ is a shortening of the organisation (Wireless Gigabit Alliance) which helped define the IEEE 802.11ad 60GHz standard. WiGig is aimed at very high bandwidth data uses, such as the broadcast of multi-gigabit uncompressed video and audio streams. Although its uses are more limited (short range, doesn’t work well through walls) it is ultimately a very high speed general purpose network standard in the same way as other WiFi standards. Bottom line, if you buy an 802.11ad compatible router, it’ll not only be backwards compatible with your older devices, you’ll be able to use that extra bandwidth for any sort of data transfer, not just video and audio. WiGig data rates max out at 7 gigabits per second per channel.
TPCast
60GHz wireless technology is being investigated by a number of companies for use in wireless VR applications, including one that Valve invested in separately from HTC. While the frequency provides lots of bandwidth, it isn’t great at penetrating surfaces, meaning that it’s most effective when the transmitter has direct line-of-site to the receiver. The TPCAST wireless Vive kit has the transmitter mounted on the user’s head to give it a direct view to the receiver, but there’s certainly times during room-scale VR play where the user may be turned away from the receiver with their head tilted at an angle that would break line of sight; the player’s hands could also get in the way, though it isn’t clear yet how these situations might impact the TPCAST device’s performance, mostly because we don’t know the recommended setup for the system which could possibly use multiple receivers or recommend a special placement to prevent transmission issues.
This is starting to get a bit comical. It seems everywhere you look there is new immersive experience company sprouting. Not more than two days ago I blogged about Knott’s Berry Farm entering the immersive experience game. Now I am reporting the emergence of yet another company called Nomadic. This time, instead of a location based experience, the Nomadic folks are focusing on the physical environment itself. This is a very cool concept. I will have to reach out to them to explore opportunities for partnership.
Tech-wise, it looks like they are employing the typical Optitrack setup as a turn key VR experience station. This will be very interesting to see how they pull of objects such as doors, walls and windows which may occlude the line of sight of the optical cameras. Also what should be explored is the possibility of partnering with piecemeal items instead of an entire “turnkey” system, similar to the one offered by Zero Latency.
Nomadic isn’t the first company to add physical cues to virtual reality experiences. But the company does have a novel concept of getting these kinds of experiences out in the marketplace. Instead of building and operating its own VR locations, Nomadic wants to partner with bigger players that already have a lot of real estate at their disposal and are now looking for the next big thing to retain and monetize audiences. Think mall operators, theater chains and the likes.
The Nomadic website gives a good indication of the makeup of the company. I recognize many of the names from days at Electronic Arts. It seems like they have a very solid team in the works. I hope some kind of partnership can be reached.
