Experiences
Home | Earth 2
The concept of a metaverse has been around for a very long time, and Earth 2 is looking to provide a place to own your own piece of a twin of the Earth we all inhabit at the time of this writing. Though still in the early stages the world is already set to a 1:1 scale with trillions of individual plots representing all the known world as digital virtual double.
Business
Case Study: CB2 Boosts Conversions with AR
When talking about the future of Augmented Reality it's easy to get into fanciful speculation about what the future holds. But it's great research and data like in this article that both grounds conversations while keeping us all excited about the potential of AR being even more lucrative than we'd envisioned for boosting sales and engagement in today's market. No need to wait for the future.
Gear
MANUS | SteamVR Pro Tracker
This is possibly the first real competitor to the HTC Vive Pro trackers with a much lighter weight, longer battery life, and replaceable batteries. For professionals who can afford the rather high price tag (over $300 USD) they will make that back in productivity, creating different types of content other trackers couldn't allow, and less down time charging or swapping trackers.
Inspiration
The Technological Theatre Experimenters | HowlRound Theatre Commons
An excellent essay from @JaredMezzocchi, Director and Designer, on how the theater industry has adapted to technology and where it could go to adapt to emerging technology and storytelling innovations. Live performances being the goal rather than settling for an edited and static single view that cannot truly capture the dynamic aspects of theater that make it distinct from all other mediums.
Development
HoloCap
Holograms are pretty mainstream right now, considering we can order our own holographic portrait displays and are al over pop culture. Behind some of the better quality holograms and Extended Reality experiences is a technique called Volumetric Video, and the makers of Holocap creates software that easily lets you capture volumetric video footage.
What Is Volumetric Video And Why It Matters To The Enterprise
Diving a bit deeper into Volumetric Video let's take a look at industry and enterprise applications. Training aside, the technique to consider how an experience could be elevated with the right performance and what kind of talent we can add to our projects. It's quite freeing to think that not every performance needs to be animated.
One More Thing
RONE
With a growing number of galleries hitting the markets ones that are multiple award winning experiences should be given special attention. Especially ones for incredible artists exploring a medium meant to be non-permanent. So in a way this exhibit is a way to preserve the art from the inevitable erosion of street murals.
Commentary
Sometimes the virtual aspect of Virtual Reality gets so much attention that it loses sight of an important opportunity for VR to represent and interpret the real world in favor of fantasy realms and gaming. Using VR to tell stories and create experiences set in our reality can be a compelling tool in the right hands, but doesn't get nearly as much attention as it deserves. In this issue we've highlighted some experiences and tools for bringing some reality into VR.
Also, some exciting things are happening that we'd like to share. We're moving the newsletter to its own domain in order to make room for other projects. For the next week you'll still see things as they are but after that we're launching a few new projects that have been in the works for some time. This will be the first time we're venturing this far into content creation, and we hope you'll enjoy these as much as we have enjoyed making them.
Thank you to everyone who's subscribed and continued to read and support us. if you're enjoying this newsletter please consider sharing it with others. We've continued to grow with each issue released and that is partly due to all of you. As always, if you want to recommend anything to us tweet your links. 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.
Other Realities