#Augmented and virtual reality

[biglisbonnews]

Communicating across time TeleAbsence, a project from the MIT Media Lab, probes and imitates the way humans process feelings of belonging, love, and loss. https://news.mit.edu/2023/communicating-across-time-teleabsence-0811

[jcmarchi]

A new way to create realistic 3D shapes using generative AI

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/a-new-way-to-create-realistic-3d-shapes-using-generative-ai/

A new way to create realistic 3D shapes using generative AI

Creating realistic 3D models for applications like virtual reality, filmmaking, and engineering design can be a cumbersome process requiring lots of manual trial and error.

While generative artificial intelligence models for images can streamline artistic processes by enabling creators to produce lifelike 2D images from text prompts, these models are not designed to generate 3D shapes. To bridge the gap, a recently developed technique called Score Distillation leverages 2D image generation models to create 3D shapes, but its output often ends up blurry or cartoonish.

MIT researchers explored the relationships and differences between the algorithms used to generate 2D images and 3D shapes, identifying the root cause of lower-quality 3D models. From there, they crafted a simple fix to Score Distillation, which enables the generation of sharp, high-quality 3D shapes that are closer in quality to the best model-generated 2D images.  

     These examples show two different 3D rotating objects: a robotic bee and a strawberry. Researchers used text-based generative AI and their new technique to create the 3D objects.

Image: Courtesy of the researchers; MIT News

Some other methods try to fix this problem by retraining or fine-tuning the generative AI model, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

By contrast, the MIT researchers’ technique achieves 3D shape quality on par with or better than these approaches without additional training or complex postprocessing.

Moreover, by identifying the cause of the problem, the researchers have improved mathematical understanding of Score Distillation and related techniques, enabling future work to further improve performance.

“Now we know where we should be heading, which allows us to find more efficient solutions that are faster and higher-quality,” says Artem Lukoianov, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student who is lead author of a paper on this technique. “In the long run, our work can help facilitate the process to be a co-pilot for designers, making it easier to create more realistic 3D shapes.”

Lukoianov’s co-authors are Haitz Sáez de Ocáriz Borde, a graduate student at Oxford University; Kristjan Greenewald, a research scientist in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab; Vitor Campagnolo Guizilini, a scientist at the Toyota Research Institute; Timur Bagautdinov, a research scientist at Meta; and senior authors Vincent Sitzmann, an assistant professor of EECS at MIT who leads the Scene Representation Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Justin Solomon, an associate professor of EECS and leader of the CSAIL Geometric Data Processing Group. The research will be presented at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.

From 2D images to 3D shapes

Diffusion models, such as DALL-E, are a type of generative AI model that can produce lifelike images from random noise. To train these models, researchers add noise to images and then teach the model to reverse the process and remove the noise. The models use this learned “denoising” process to create images based on a user’s text prompts.

But diffusion models underperform at directly generating realistic 3D shapes because there are not enough 3D data to train them. To get around this problem, researchers developed a technique called Score Distillation Sampling (SDS) in 2022 that uses a pretrained diffusion model to combine 2D images into a 3D representation.

The technique involves starting with a random 3D representation, rendering a 2D view of a desired object from a random camera angle, adding noise to that image, denoising it with a diffusion model, then optimizing the random 3D representation so it matches the denoised image. These steps are repeated until the desired 3D object is generated.

However, 3D shapes produced this way tend to look blurry or oversaturated.

“This has been a bottleneck for a while. We know the underlying model is capable of doing better, but people didn’t know why this is happening with 3D shapes,” Lukoianov says.

The MIT researchers explored the steps of SDS and identified a mismatch between a formula that forms a key part of the process and its counterpart in 2D diffusion models. The formula tells the model how to update the random representation by adding and removing noise, one step at a time, to make it look more like the desired image.

Since part of this formula involves an equation that is too complex to be solved efficiently, SDS replaces it with randomly sampled noise at each step. The MIT researchers found that this noise leads to blurry or cartoonish 3D shapes.

An approximate answer

Instead of trying to solve this cumbersome formula precisely, the researchers tested approximation techniques until they identified the best one. Rather than randomly sampling the noise term, their approximation technique infers the missing term from the current 3D shape rendering.

“By doing this, as the analysis in the paper predicts, it generates 3D shapes that look sharp and realistic,” he says.

In addition, the researchers increased the resolution of the image rendering and adjusted some model parameters to further boost 3D shape quality.

In the end, they were able to use an off-the-shelf, pretrained image diffusion model to create smooth, realistic-looking 3D shapes without the need for costly retraining. The 3D objects are similarly sharp to those produced using other methods that rely on ad hoc solutions.

“Trying to blindly experiment with different parameters, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but you don’t know why. We know this is the equation we need to solve. Now, this allows us to think of more efficient ways to solve it,” he says.

Because their method relies on a pretrained diffusion model, it inherits the biases and shortcomings of that model, making it prone to hallucinations and other failures. Improving the underlying diffusion model would enhance their process.

In addition to studying the formula to see how they could solve it more effectively, the researchers are interested in exploring how these insights could improve image editing techniques.

This work is funded, in part, by the Toyota Research Institute, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Singapore Defense Science and Technology Agency, the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the Amazon Science Hub, IBM, the U.S. Army Research Office, the CSAIL Future of Data program, the Wistron Corporation, and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Laboratory.

[aurosoulart]

Imposter Syndrome

something I've been working on overcoming lately...... maybe others can relate

[omshinde5145]

Augmented and Virtual Reality Market Size, Revenue Share, Drivers & Trends Analysis, 2024–2030

TheAugmented and Virtual Reality Market was valued at USD 23.8 billion in 2023-e and will surpass USD 99.4 billion by 2030; growing at a CAGR of 22.6% during 2024 - 2030. The report focuses on estimating the current market potential in terms of the total addressable market for all the segments, sub-segments, and regions.

In the process, all the high-growth and upcoming technologies were identified and analyzed to measure their impact on the current and future market. From gaming and entertainment to healthcare and education, AR and VR are creating immersive experiences that enhance our interaction with the digital world. As these technologies continue to mature, the market for AR and VR is set to expand exponentially. This blog explores the current trends, key players, challenges, and future prospects of the AR and VR market.

Get a Sample Report: https://intentmarketresearch.com/request-sample/augmented-and-virtual-reality-market-3099.html `

Current Trends in AR and VR

Integration with AI and IoT: The convergence of AR/VR with artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) is a significant trend. AI enhances AR and VR experiences by providing real-time data processing and machine learning capabilities. For instance, AI-powered AR applications can recognize objects and provide relevant information, while IoT devices can create more interactive VR environments.

Expansion in Gaming and Entertainment: Gaming remains the most prominent application of AR and VR. Companies like Oculus, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive are continuously pushing the boundaries of immersive gaming. Beyond gaming, AR and VR are transforming the entertainment industry by enabling virtual concerts, immersive storytelling, and virtual theme parks.

Rise of AR in E-commerce: AR is becoming a crucial tool in e-commerce. Retailers are leveraging AR to offer virtual try-ons for clothing, accessories, and even furniture. This not only enhances the shopping experience but also reduces return rates by allowing customers to visualize products in their real-world environment before making a purchase.

Advancements in Healthcare: AR and VR are making significant inroads in the healthcare sector. They are being used for medical training, remote surgeries, and therapy. For example, VR simulations provide a safe environment for medical professionals to practice surgeries, while AR can assist surgeons with real-time data during procedures.

Enhanced Remote Collaboration: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of AR and VR for remote work and collaboration. Virtual meeting platforms are now incorporating AR and VR to create more engaging and interactive virtual workspaces, which can mimic the presence of a physical office environment.

Key Players in the AR and VR Market

Several tech giants and innovative startups are driving the AR and VR market forward:

Facebook (Meta): With its acquisition of Oculus, Meta has positioned itself as a leader in the VR market. The company's focus on building the metaverse—a collective virtual shared space—highlights its commitment to advancing VR technologies.

Google: Google has made significant strides in AR with its Google ARCore platform and devices like Google Glass. These tools are helping developers create AR experiences that are accessible to a wide audience.

Apple: Known for its innovation, Apple is heavily investing in AR through its ARKit platform and is rumored to be developing AR/VR hardware. Apple's integration of AR in its devices, like the iPhone and iPad, is bringing AR to mainstream consumers.

Microsoft: Microsoft’s HoloLens is a leading AR device used primarily in enterprise settings. HoloLens is utilized in fields such as manufacturing, healthcare, and education for tasks ranging from design visualization to remote assistance.

Challenges in the AR and VR Market

Despite the promising growth, the AR and VR market faces several challenges:

High Development Costs: Creating high-quality AR and VR experiences requires substantial investment in hardware, software, and content development. This can be a barrier for smaller companies.

User Experience Issues: Issues like motion sickness and eye strain remain significant hurdles in VR adoption. Improving comfort and usability is crucial for broader acceptance.

Privacy and Security Concerns: As AR and VR devices collect vast amounts of data, ensuring user privacy and data security is paramount. This is especially critical as these technologies become more integrated into our daily lives.

Limited Content Availability: The success of AR and VR hinges on the availability of compelling content. Currently, there is a limited amount of high-quality AR and VR content, which can hinder user engagement and adoption.

Get an insights of Customization: https://intentmarketresearch.com/ask-for-customization/augmented-and-virtual-reality-market-3099.html

Future Prospects

The future of AR and VR is incredibly promising. Here are some potential developments to watch for:

Widespread Adoption in Various Industries: As AR and VR technologies become more affordable and user-friendly, their adoption will spread across industries like real estate, automotive, tourism, and education.

Advancements in Hardware: Future AR and VR devices will be lighter, more comfortable, and more powerful. Innovations in display technology, battery life, and processing power will enhance the overall user experience.

Growth of the Metaverse: The concept of the metaverse—a fully immersive digital universe where people can interact, work, and play—will drive significant investment and innovation in AR and VR.

Enhanced Interactivity and Realism: Advances in haptic feedback, spatial audio, and AI-driven interactions will make AR and VR experiences more realistic and interactive, blurring the lines between the digital and physical worlds.

Conclusion

The AR and VR market is at an exciting juncture, poised for significant growth and innovation. As these technologies continue to evolve, they will transform the way we interact with the world around us, offering new possibilities and experiences. Businesses and developers that embrace AR and VR today will be at the forefront of this digital revolution, shaping the future of immersive technology.

[ict-123]

As per a report by Allied Market Research, the global augmented and virtual reality market is predicted to garner a revenue of $856.2 billion by 2031. The market accounted for $27.6 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to rise at a CAGR of 41.1% during the 2022-2031 period.

[techsoulculture]

Augmented and Virtual Reality : Shaping Future 2023

For a long time, the concept of Augmented and Virtual Reality has been the talk of the town It s incredible that people still

[scipunk]

Videodrome (1983)

[orionnocap]

VARIANT 2.0 for my etsy shop ORIONSGEAR - Etsy

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The (open) web is good, actually

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library tonight (Monday, November 13) at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

The great irony of the platformization of the internet is that platforms are intermediaries, and the original promise of the internet that got so many of us excited about it was disintermediation – getting rid of the middlemen that act as gatekeepers between community members, creators and audiences, buyers and sellers, etc.

The platformized internet is ripe for rent seeking: where the platform captures an ever-larger share of the value generated by its users, making the service worst for both, while lock-in stops people from looking elsewhere. Every sector of the modern economy is less competitive, thanks to monopolistic tactics like mergers and acquisitions and predatory pricing. But with tech, the options for making things worse are infinitely divisible, thanks to the flexibility of digital systems, which means that product managers can keep subdividing the Jenga blocks they pulling out of the services we rely on. Combine platforms with monopolies with digital flexibility and you get enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

An enshittified, platformized internet is bad for lots of reasons – it concentrates decisions about who may speak and what may be said into just a few hands; it creates a rich-get-richer dynamic that creates a new oligarchy, with all the corruption and instability that comes with elite capture; it makes life materially worse for workers, users, and communities.

But there are many other ways in which the enshitternet is worse than the old good internet. Today, I want to talk about how the enshitternet affects openness and all that entails. An open internet is one whose workings are transparent (think of "open source"), but it's also an internet founded on access – the ability to know what has gone before, to recall what has been said, and to revisit the context in which it was said.

At last week's Museum Computer Network conference, Aaron Straup Cope gave a talk on museums and technology called "Wishful Thinking – A critical discussion of 'extended reality' technologies in the cultural heritage sector" that beautifully addressed these questions of recall and revisiting:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/#wishful

Cope is a museums technologist who's worked on lots of critical digital projects over the years, and in this talk, he addresses himself to the difference between the excitement of the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector over the possibilities of the web, and why he doesn't feel the same excitement over the metaverse, and its various guises – XR, VR, MR and AR.

The biggest reason to be excited about the web was – and is – the openness of disintermediation. The internet was inspired by the end-to-end principle, the idea that the network's first duty was to transmit data from willing senders to willing receivers, as efficiently and reliably as possible. That principle made it possible for whole swathes of people to connect with one another. As Cope writes, openness "was not, and has never been, a guarantee of a receptive audience or even any audience at all." But because it was "easy and cheap enough to put something on the web," you could "leave it there long enough for others to find it."

That dynamic nurtured an environment where people could have "time to warm up to ideas." This is in sharp contrast to the social media world, where "[anything] not immediately successful or viral … was a waste of time and effort… not worth doing." The social media bias towards a river of content that can't be easily reversed is one in which the only ideas that get to spread are those the algorithm boosts.

This is an important way to understand the role of algorithms in the context of the spread of ideas – that without recall or revisiting, we just don't see stuff, including stuff that might challenge our thinking and change our minds. This is a much more materialistic and grounded way to talk about algorithms and ideas than the idea that Big Data and AI make algorithms so persuasive that they can control our minds:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

As bad as this is in the social media context, it's even worse in the context of apps, which can't be linked into, bookmarked, or archived. All of this made apps an ominous sign right from the beginning:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Apps interact with law in precisely the way that web-pages don't. "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to defend yourself against corporate predation":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

Apps are "closed" in every sense. You can't see what's on an app without installing the app and "agreeing" to its terms of service. You can't reverse-engineer an app (to add a privacy blocker, or to change how it presents information) without risking criminal and civil liability. You can't bookmark anything the app won't let you bookmark, and you can't preserve anything the app won't let you preserve.

Despite being built on the same underlying open frameworks – HTTP, HTML, etc – as the web, apps have the opposite technological viewpoint to the web. Apps' technopolitics are at war with the web's technopolitics. The web is built around recall – the ability to see things, go back to things, save things. The web has the technopolitics of a museum:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2014/09/11/brand/#dconstruct

By comparison, apps have the politics of a product, and most often, that product is a rent-seeking, lock-in-hunting product that wants to take you hostage by holding something you love hostage – your data, perhaps, or your friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

When Anil Dash described "The Web We Lost" in 2012, he was describing a web with the technopolitics of a museum:

where tagging was combined with permissive licenses to make it easy for people to find and reuse each others' stuff;

where it was easy to find out who linked to you in realtime even though most of us were posting to our own sites, which they controlled;

where a link from one site to another meant one person found another person's contribution worthy;

where privacy-invasive bids to capture the web were greeted with outright hostility;

where every service that helped you post things that mattered to you was expected to make it easy for you take that data back if you changed services;

where inlining or referencing material from someone else's site meant following a technical standard, not inking a business-development deal;

https://www.anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

Ten years later, Dash's "broken tech/content culture cycle" described the web we live on now:

https://www.anildash.com/2022/02/09/the-stupid-tech-content-culture-cycle/

found your platform by promising to facilitate your users' growth;

order your technologists and designers to prioritize growth above all other factors and fire anyone who doesn't deliver;

grow without regard to the norms of your platform's users;

plaster over the growth-driven influx of abusive and vile material by assigning it to your "most marginalized, least resourced team";

deliver a half-assed moderation scheme that drives good users off the service and leaves no one behind but griefers, edgelords and trolls;

steadfastly refuse to contemplate why the marginalized users who made your platform attractive before being chased away have all left;

flail about in a panic over illegal content, do deals with large media brands, seize control over your most popular users' output;

"surface great content" by algorithmically promoting things that look like whatever's successful, guaranteeing that nothing new will take hold;

overpay your top performers for exclusivity deals, utterly neglect any pipeline for nurturing new performers;

abuse your creators the same ways that big media companies have for decades, but insist that it's different because you're a tech company;

ignore workers who warn that your product is a danger to society, dismiss them as "millennials" (defined as "anyone born after 1970 or who has a student loan")

when your platform is (inevitably) implicated in a murder, have a "town hall" overseen by a crisis communications firm;

pay the creator who inspired the murder to go exclusive on your platform;

dismiss the murder and fascist rhetoric as "growing pains";

when truly ghastly stuff happens on your platform, give your Trust and Safety team a 5% budget increase;

chase growth based on "emotionally engaging content" without specifying whether the emotions should be positive;

respond to ex-employees' call-outs with transient feelings of guilt followed by dismissals of "cancel culture":

fund your platforms' most toxic users and call it "free speech";

whenever anyone disagrees with any of your decisions, dismiss them as being "anti-free speech";

start increasing how much your platform takes out of your creators' paychecks;

force out internal dissenters, dismiss external critics as being in conspiracy with your corporate rivals;

once regulation becomes inevitable, form a cartel with the other large firms in your sector and insist that the problem is a "bad algorithm";

"claim full victim status," and quit your job, complaining about the toll that running a big platform took on your mental wellbeing.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/18/broken-records/#dashes

The web wasn't inevitable – indeed, it was wildly improbable. Tim Berners Lee's decision to make a new platform that was patent-free, open and transparent was a complete opposite approach to the strategy of the media companies of the day. They were building walled gardens and silos – the dialup equivalent to apps – organized as "branded communities." The way I experienced it, the web succeeded because it was so antithetical to the dominant vision for the future of the internet that the big companies couldn't even be bothered to try to kill it until it was too late.

Companies have been trying to correct that mistake ever since. After three or four attempts to replace the web with various garbage systems all called "MSN," Microsoft moved on to trying to lock the internet inside a proprietary browser. Years later, Facebook had far more success in an attempt to kill HTML with React. And of course, apps have gobbled up so much of the old, good internet.

Which brings us to Cope's views on museums and the metaverse. There's nothing intrinsically proprietary about virtual worlds and all their permutations. VRML is a quarter of a century old – just five years younger than Snow Crash:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

But the current enthusiasm for virtual worlds isn't merely a function of the interesting, cool and fun experiences you can have in them. Rather, it's a bid to kill off whatever is left of the old, good web and put everything inside a walled garden. Facebook's metaverse "is more of the same but with a technical footprint so expensive and so demanding that it all but ensures it will only be within the means of a very few companies to operate."

Facebook's VR headsets have forward-facing cameras, turning every users into a walking surveillance camera. Facebook put those cameras there for "pass through" – so they can paint the screens inside the headset with the scene around you – but "who here believes that Facebook doesn't have other motives for enabling an always-on camera capturing the world around you?"

Apple's VisionPro VR headset is "a near-perfect surveillance device," and "the only thing to save this device is the trust that Apple has marketed its brand on over the last few years." Cope notes that "a brand promise is about as fleeting a guarantee as you can get." I'll go further: Apple is already a surveillance company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The technopolitics of the metaverse are the opposite of the technopolitics of the museum – even moreso than apps. Museums that shift their scarce technology budgets to virtual worlds stand a good chance of making something no one wants to use, and that's the best case scenario. The worst case is that museums make a successful project inside a walled garden, one where recall is subject to corporate whim, and help lure their patrons away from the recall-friendly internet to the captured, intermediated metaverse.

It's true that the early web benefited from a lot of hype, just as the metaverse is enjoying today. But the similarity ends there: the metaverse is designed for enclosure, the web for openness. Recall is a historical force for "the right to assembly… access to basic literacy… a public library." The web was "an unexpected gift with the ability to change the order of things; a gift that merits being protected, preserved and promoted both internally and externally." Museums were right to jump on the web bandwagon, because of its technopolitics. The metaverse, with its very different technopolitics, is hostile to the very idea of museums.

In joining forces with metaverse companies, museums strike a Faustian bargain, "because we believe that these places are where our audiences have gone."

The GLAM sector is devoted to access, to recall, and to revisiting. Unlike the self-style free speech warriors whom Dash calls out for self-serving neglect of their communities, the GLAM sector is about preservation and access, the true heart of free expression. When a handful of giant companies organize all our discourse, the ability to be heard is contingent on pleasing the ever-shifting tastes of the algorithm. This is the problem with the idea that "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach" – if a platform won't let people who want to hear from you see what you have to say, they are indeed compromising freedom of speech:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Likewise, "censorship" is not limited to "things that governments do." As Ada Palmer so wonderfully describes it in her brilliant "Why We Censor: from the Inquisition to the Internet" speech, censorship is like arsenic, with trace elements of it all around us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMJb3AxA0s

A community's decision to ban certain offensive conduct or words on pain of expulsion or sanction is censorship – but not to the same degree that, say, a government ban on expressing certain points of view is. However, there are many kinds of private censorship that rise to the same level as state censorship in their impact on public discourse (think of Moms For Liberty and their book-bannings).

It's not a coincidence that Palmer – a historian – would have views on censorship and free speech that intersect with Cope, a museum worker. One of the most brilliant moments in Palmer's speech is where she describes how censorship under the Inquistion was not state censorship – the Inquisition was a multinational, nongovernmental body that was often in conflict with state power.

Not all intermediaries are bad for speech or access. The "disintermediation" that excited early web boosters was about escaping from otherwise inescapable middlemen – the people who figured out how to control and charge for the things we did with one another.

When I was a kid, I loved the writing of Crad Kilodney, a short story writer who sold his own self-published books on Toronto street-corners while wearing a sign that said "VERY FAMOUS CANADIAN AUTHOR, BUY MY BOOKS" (he also had a sign that read, simply, "MARGARET ATWOOD"). Kilodney was a force of nature, who wrote, edited, typeset, printed, bound, and sold his own books:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-late-street-poet-and-publishing-scourge-crad-kilodney-left-behind-a/

But there are plenty of writers out there that I want to hear from who lack the skill or the will to do all of that. Editors, publishers, distributors, booksellers – all the intermediaries who sit between a writer and their readers – are not bad. They're good, actually. The problem isn't intermediation – it's capture.

For generations, hucksters have conned would-be writers by telling them that publishing won't buy their books because "the gatekeepers" lack the discernment to publish "quality" work. Friends of mine in publishing laughed at the idea that they would deliberately sideline a book they could figure out how to sell – that's just not how it worked.

But today, monopolized film studios are literally annihilating beloved, high-priced, commercially viable works because they are worth slightly more as tax writeoffs than they are as movies:

https://deadline.com/2023/11/coyote-vs-acme-shelved-warner-bros-discovery-writeoff-david-zaslav-1235598676/

There's four giant studios and five giant publishers. Maybe "five" is the magic number and publishing isn't concentrated enough to drop whole novels down the memory hole for a tax deduction, but even so, publishing is trying like hell to shrink to four:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

Even as the entertainment sector is working to both literally and figuratively destroy our libraries, the cultural heritage sector is grappling with preserving these libraries, with shrinking budgets and increased legal threats:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

I keep meeting artists of all description who have been conditioned to be suspicious of anything with the word "open" in its name. One colleague has repeatedly told me that fighting for the "open internet" is a self-defeating rhetorical move that will scare off artists who hear "open" and think "Big Tech ripoff."

But "openness" is a necessary precondition for preservation and access, which are the necessary preconditions for recall and revisiting. Here on the last, melting fragment of the open internet, as tech- and entertainment-barons are seizing control over our attention and charging rent on our ability to talk and think together, openness is our best hope of a new, good internet. T

he cultural heritage sector wants to save our creative works. The entertainment and tech industry want to delete them and take a tax writeoff.

As a working artist, I know which side I'm on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/13/this-is-for-everyone/#revisiting

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Mimara,_Zagreb,_Croacia,_2014-04-20,_DD_01.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[abcphotoblog]

[henlp]

I know that the past decade of website design should've been an indicator, but it's still pretty baffling that most of these tech innovators, leading the charge in media and entertainment, are also the biggest fucking dullards with ass-backwards thinking.

Why is VR so full of basic-bitch physic engine show-offs, or virtual grocery shopping, or shitty ports of first-person games? Where's the deluge of Yugioh knockoffs (or the real deal if Konami would get a fucking clue), or hell, maybe WotC could stop retarding themselves with D&D and MtG, and give us either in VR.

Also, why is fucking Zuckerbot making digital football, instead of getting the most derranged nerds to come up with crazy 'sports' that could only be accomplished digitally? Why aren't we getting goddamn anime-tier Beyblade matches, or some other insane activity enhanced by it not being limited by physical restraints?

So fucking stupid. VRChat's done more than any of these boring turdstains with their zillions of dollars and time to waste.

[biglisbonnews]

Q&A: A high-tech take on Wagner’s “Parsifal” opera Director and MIT Professor Jay Scheib’s production, at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, features an apocalyptic theme and augmented reality headsets for the audience. https://news.mit.edu/2023/high-tech-take-wagners-parsifal-opera-0803

[jcmarchi]

Startup’s displays engineer light to create immersive experiences without the headsets

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/startups-displays-engineer-light-to-create-immersive-experiences-without-the-headsets/

Startup’s displays engineer light to create immersive experiences without the headsets

One of the biggest reasons virtual reality hasn’t taken off is the clunky headsets that users have to wear. But what if you could get the benefits of virtual reality without the headsets, using screens that computationally improve the images they display?

That’s the goal of the startup Brelyon, which is commercializing a new kind of display and content-rendering approach that immerses users in virtual worlds without requiring them to strap goggles onto their heads.

The displays run light through a processing layer before it reaches users’ eyes, recalculating the image to create ultrawide, visual experiences with depth. The company is also working on a new kind of content-rendering architecture to generate more visually efficient imagery. The result is a 120-inch screen that simulates the sensation of looking out a window into a virtual world, where content pops in and out of existence at different angles and depths, depending on what you feed the display.

“Our current displays use different properties of light, specifically the wavefront of the electric field,” says Brelyon co-founder and CEO Barmak Heshmat, a former postdoc in the Media Lab. “In our newest architecture, the display uses a stack of shader programming empowered with inference microservices to modify and generate content on the fly, amplifying your immersion with the screens.”

Customers are already using Brelyon’s current displays in flight simulators, gaming, defense, and teleoperations, and Heshmat says the company is actively scaling its manufacturing capacity to meet growing demand.

“Wherever you want to increase visual efficiency with screens, Brelyon can help,” Heshmat says. “Optically, these virtual displays allow us to craft a much larger, control-center-like experience without needing added space or wearing headsets, and at the compute level our rerendering architectures allow us to use every bit of that screen in most efficient way.”

Of light and math

Heshmat came to MIT in 2013 as a postdoc in the Media Lab’s Camera Culture group, which is directed by Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar. At the Media Lab, Heshmat worked on computational imaging, which he describes as “combining mathematics with the physics of light to do interesting things.”

With Raskar, Heshmat worked on a new approach to improving ultrafast cameras that used time as an extra dimension in optical design.

“The system essentially sent light through an array of mirrors to make the photons bounce many times inside the camera,” Heshmat explains. “It allowed us to capture the image at many different times.”

Heshmat worked across campus, ultimately publishing papers with five different professors, and says his experience at MIT helped change the way he perceived himself.

“There were many things that I took from MIT,” Heshmat says. “Beyond the technical expertise, I also got the confidence and belief that I could be a leader. That’s what’s different about MIT compared to other schools: It’s a very vibrant, intellectually-triggering environment where everyone’s very driven and everyone’s creating their own universe, in a sense.”

After graduating, Heshmat worked at a virtual reality company, where he noticed that people liked the idea of virtual reality but didn’t like wearing headsets. The observation led him to explore ways of achieving immersion without strapping a device to his head.

The idea brought him back to his research with Raskar at MIT.

“There’s this relationship between imaging and displays; they’re kind of like a dual of each other,” Heshmat explains. “What you can do with imaging, the inverse of it is doable with displays. Since I’d worked on this imaging system at MIT, what’s called time-folded imaging, I thought to try the inverse of that in the world of displays. That was how Brelyon started.”

Brelyon’s first check came from the MIT-affiliated E14 Fund after Heshmat built a prototype of the first device in his living room.

Brelyon’s displays control the angles and focus of light to simulate wide, deep views and give the impression of looking through a window. Brelyon currently sells two displays, Ultra Reality and Ultra Reality Mini. The Ultra Reality display offers a 10-foot-wide display and a depth of around 3 feet. The displays are fully compatible with standard laptops and computers, so users can connect their devices via an HDMI cable and run their favorite simulation or gaming software right away, which Heshmat notes is a key benefit over traditional, headset-based virtual reality displays that require companies to create custom software.

“This is a plug-and-play solution that is much smaller than setting up a projection screen, doesn’t require a dedicated room, doesn’t require a special environment, doesn’t need alignment of projectors or any of that,” Heshmat says.

Processing light

Heshmat says Brelyon has sold displays to some of the largest simulation training companies in the world.

“In simulation training, you usually care about large visualizations and large peripheral fields of view, or situational awareness,” Heshmat says. “That allows you to look around in, say, the cockpit of the airplane. Brelyon allows you to do that in the size of a single desktop monitor.”

Brelyon has been focused on selling its displays to other businesses to date, but Heshmat hopes to eventually sell to individuals and believes the company’s displays hold huge potential for anyone who wants to improve the experience of looking at a monitor.

“Imagine you’re sitting in the backseat of a car, and instead of looking at a 12-inch tablet, you have this 14-inch or 12-inch aperture, but this aperture is looking into a much larger image, so you have a window to an IMAX theater,” Heshmat says.

Ultimately, Heshmat believes Brelyon is opening up a new platform to change the way we perceive the digital world.

“We are adding a new layer of control between the world of computers and what your eyes see,” Heshmat explains. “We have this new proton-processing layer on top of displays, and we think we’re bridging the gap between the experience that you see and the world of computers. We’re trying to connect that programming all the way to the end processing of photons. There are some exciting opportunities that come from that. The displays of future won’t just let the light out just like an array of lamps. They’ll run light through these photon processors and allow you to do much more with light.”

[jasonwhithamauthor]

Poem: Twas the Day After Christmas

Jason Whitham 2024

Twas the day after Christmas,

And I was on my way back.

When I was T-boned by SpaceX,

A Falcon Nine Black.

There was just enough time,

To loose the reindeer before impact.

Only microseconds to eject,

Before being charred by the jetpack.

Everyone, free of injury,

Was a wonderful Christmas grace.

Lord knows what I’ve sustained,

From rooftop falls to a sealed fireplace.

Still, my ride was busted,

Wires melted and thrusters wrecked.

How could I get it back to base?

Rubble was good for no one but rubbernecks.

My insurance broker was out of office,

The app down for claims.

So I wiped all the computer drives,

Before scuttling the sleigh.

The Lyft bill was quite hefty,

The narwhal ride expectantly wet.

At least the Polar Express was smooth,

I set the autopilot and slept.

Easy enough when you're dead tired,

And the sun doesn’t rise high.

Between September and late March,

Only northern lights illuminate the sky.

When I arrived at the NP,

Elves were already in the boozy cocoa.

Not needing to winterize the sleigh,

Meant a quicker path to getting Fireball loco.

Rudolph worried the Mrs.,

She exclaimed, “Are you okay?”

“We can write it off on taxes,” I replied,

“Or Musk will have to pay.”

I threw off my belt and coat,

And kicked off the big red boots.

Dismissed the staff, made a pass,

And had jolly, cheerful rendezvous.

“I apologize for my Nick’s rudeness.”

“It gets him so randy.”

“What the frigid night air?” asked Frosty.

“No, the cookies and candy.”

While the Mrs. tossed the stale ones,

And sent FedEx thank-yous to the kids,

I checked the sports spreads,

And placed my over/under bets and bids.

I relayed the competitive intel,

To my elves in the toy department.

It surprised them to hear drones were out,

And augmented/VR was in every apartment.

We finished our work reports,

And hurried outdoors.

To compete in the Christmas tree toss,

And skirmish in epic snowball wars.

At the annual festive feast,

They jeered during my appreciation speech.

“Keep it short and sweet, Nick!”

“No one likes to hear you preach!”

I started reflecting on this year’s successes,

Our challenges and wins.

Made some jokes about global politics,

Which rallied big laughs and grins.

What seemed to be most popular, though,

Were my New Year’s resolutions.

Actually, I think it was my promise,

For bigger bonus contributions.

I finished with my crowd-pleaser,

Declared and dropped the mic.

“Merry Christmas to all!” I exclaimed.

“And to all a Good Night!”

Attribution:

Picture generated with the help of OpenArt.

[mindblowingscience]

Researchers in the emerging field of spatial computing have developed a prototype augmented reality headset that uses holographic imaging to overlay full-color, 3D moving images on the lenses of what would appear to be an ordinary pair of glasses. Unlike the bulky headsets of present-day augmented reality systems, the new approach delivers a visually satisfying 3D viewing experience in a compact, comfortable, and attractive form factor suitable for all-day wear. “Our headset appears to the outside world just like an everyday pair of glasses, but what the wearer sees through the lenses is an enriched world overlaid with vibrant, full-color 3D computed imagery,” said Gordon Wetzstein, an associate professor of electrical engineering and an expert in the fast-emerging field of spatial computing. Wetzstein and a team of engineers introduce their device in a new paper in the journal Nature.

Continue Reading.

[atcuality3]

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