News
Christo's Wrapped Arc de Triomphe To Open In Paris, At Sotheby's, And On Snapchat | Jing Culture and Commerce
Sotherby’s and Snapchat have created an AR companion to the final Christo wrapped art piece currently on display in Paris, France. This piece, originally conceived of 60 years ago, wraps the Arc de Triomphe in thousands of meters of cleaning fabric and red rope. The AR experience acknowledges an increasing realization that connecting with younger audiences and those unable to physically travel adds significant awareness and value, inspiring later travel and virtual engagement. Click here to see the Snapcode.
Astronauts Use Augmented Reality to Repair Space Station Equipment
"The space station is the perfect platform to test out AR systems and refine these tools so they will be ready when future astronauts need them." A perfect summary for an important use of AR, enabling NASA and astronauts the ability to visualize and troubleshoot problems that are better shown than described.
VR Film 'Space Explorers' Just Won A Primetime Emmy - VRScout
The Emmy Awards took place last week, and the Primetime Emmy Award went to Space Explorers: The ISS Experience for Outstanding Interactive Program. We couldn't be happier to see it taking home the award for all of the hard work put into showing what it really is like to work and live in outer space, including being both subject and camera crew.
Health
Hand Gesture Arm Fatigue, Part II | by TexasGreenTea | Aug, 2021 | Medium
The second part of this three part series on spatial computing was an interesting read that approaches problems with arm fatigue and coordination by looking out to other activities. One that requires stamina, precise timing, and specific strengthened muscles that you do not exercise in normal life. In this case: drumming.
Tools
PlayAniMaker Beta on Oculus Quest | Oculus
PlayAniMaker is a creative tool that allows you to create animation in virtual reality. Still in Beta and currently available on App Lab, we found it to be useable and were able to import our custom Vroid model and save out some pretty good quality video. We don't think that we'll be making anime with it, but another alternative to recording in VRChat is needed in the VR community.
CyanTrigger is now available to everyone for Free! / Twitter
Speaking of VRChat, if you've ever wanted to add custom logic into your VRChat worlds you may have had some issues with Udon (or UdonSharp in our case). This is where CyanTrigger comes in handy as a simple way to add custom scripts in VRChat that makes them much more interactive and much more appealing. Get it now for free on Booth, but if you do find it useful please consider buying it for the low suggested donation of 500¥, or about $4.50 USD.
People To Watch
Paranormal Detective: Escape from the 90's by LunaBeat — Kickstarter
The makers of the successful Kickstarter campaign Paranormal Detective: Escape from the 80's (currently available on Steam) are back with a new VR escape room set in an abandoned mall arcade. While playing as a detective searching for a missing girl you get to play games, solve puzzles unravel a mystery set in a 90's amusement park. The campaign looks like it will fund in the next few days, and we're looking forward to more retro fun in VR.
One More Thing
Depth Sensing and AI Anyone Can Use by OpenCV — Kickstarter
This week's One More Thing is a Kickstarter we liked so much that we are helping to fund it. Being able to add machine learning, AI, depth sensing, and a high quality video stream into a project is challenging and expensive. Since this is being run by the team behind OpenCV we know that this will not only fund soon but that the final product will be incredibly useful for creating creative AR experiences later this year.
Commentary
AR in space is a large part of most modern science fiction, and it's always fun to see technology used in ways that make for interesting possibilities. In this issue we highlight NASA uses for AR, an art piece 30 years in the making, and a lesson in endurance inspired by people that know a lot about needing to use small arm movements for hours at a time.
We also surprised ourselves a bit this week, we have Two Kickstarter campaigns that we are backing want to share. So definitely check out this week's People to Watch and One More Thing.
Thank you for reading and subscribing, and we'll see you next week!
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