News
Morehouse College Offering Virtual Reality Classes | UNCF
In issue 18 of Other Realities we featured the VictoryXR educational platform, and this week it's back with news that historic Morehouse College is now offering several classes on the platform this semester. This is more than a trend, and we're looking forward to even more education to having entire curriculums in VR.
Experiences
VR Exhibition Previews
With online VR exhibits ranging from Banksy to Jim Shaw to Wes Lang, GalleriesNow has shown that it is much more than a popup space for showing online art. The VR experience can be viewed through a headset but also works very, very smoothly online, with lots of care taken to image quality and overall gallery ambiance. As the title says, in some cases these are previews for the larger in-person gallery experience that you might want to attend if something really resonates with you.
Event
Cadbury Chocolate | Cadbury.co.uk
The chocolate maker Cadbury takes their Worldwide Hide Easter egg hunt virtual this year, letting you share clues to where you've hidden your egg on Google Maps. This may be a fun way to mark the holiday since the White House egg roll was cancelled again this year.
SXSW Online XR
This year's South by Southwest goes even deeper into XR to offer paid attendees a showcase of live panels, meet ups, special events, live theatre performances, 360° videos, and 2D feeds from other SXSW programming. This also includes recreating certain real world Austin locations to explore in VR.
Research
Haptic PIVOT: On-Demand Handhelds in VR - Microsoft Research
Haptics research has been a pretty hot topic of interest, and it takes some creativity to approach it from outside the normal form factor of restricting fingers and layered fabric mesh to emulate interactions with the physical world. This on-demand approach doesn't seem practical at first, but it is an interesting way to think about giving haptic feedback without blocking the user's hands from normal controller usage.
SIMUSAFE Advances VR-based Vehicle Safety Research
The Simulation of Behavioral Aspects for Safer Transport (SIMUSAFE) project released new research showing recent advances in autonomous vehicle navigation powered by both real world and VR training. Capturing data from real drivers (fatigue, response time, gaze, etc.) is a complicated yet vital to improve autonomous driving AI that one day could share the road with people.
Development
Game accessibility guidelines | A straightforward reference for inclusive game design
If you're thinking of working on a game or interactive experience this guide is one that you should bookmark and refer to often. It has the most comprehensive list of physical and cognitive factors that could effect a user. Also, just in case there was something not on the list feel free to contact them and help make this an even reliable resource.
Jobs
The VR Job Hub – VRFocus
Jobs in VR and AR are becoming more plentiful, though not always easy to find. if you are looking for a career opportunity this is a good page to bookmark. Every week new jobs that the team at VR Focus finds gets tagged and added to the website.
One More Thing
Leif Maginnis on Instagram 📺 👨🏭
When we saw that Leif Maginnis took a CAVILUX welding camera and fed the images through to an Oculus Quest we knew it would be one of the best things we'd seen this week. Be sure to check out the longer version of this on IGTV to learn more about the cameras, welding, and the cool things that Leif makes.
Commentary
Welcome to issue twenty of Other Realities. This week we saw some good uses of AR and VR, as well as some interesting research that won't change anything in the near term but shows that even when we don't hear about a major innovation there are people hard at work getting us to that next milestone in technological advancement.
This is the also first issue since our domain updates to make room for the Other Realities Journal and our upcoming Other Realities Podcast. If you're a subscriber to the e-mail newsletter this should be delivered to your inbox as usual, but if you're an online reader please be sure to update your bookmarks for the Other Realities Newsletter.
As always, thank you for subscribing or reading this online. We really enjoy sharing what we are already investigating ourselves, and hopefully getting to engage more with all the communities who collectively make up the Metaverse. If you would like to recommend anything to us tweet your links or follow us on Twitter for news and events not featured in the newsletter. Our directory of companies, experiences, gear, and more is growing so visit our directory to find resources that also may not be getting major press. And if you'd like to sponsor an upcoming issue please visit our sponsorship page.
Other Realities