News
Will the Oculus Quest still require a Facebook account? It’s complicated - The Verge
Last year Facebook made the controversial move to require Oculus users log into their devices with their Facebook credentials. This year Meta announced a potential reversal coming next year, and that businesses, schools, and festivals will have access to alternative means of logging as well. This should help stem some of the frustration and backlash from forcing Facebook accounts onto Oculus users.
Experiences
iAnimal - Animal Equality
“You don’t know what it’s like to be in a room designed to kill you.” That's a pretty bold statement and something we'd expect to see advertising a horror movie. This 360 movie by Animal Equality UK shares the life of a dairy cow and takes you from the farm to slaughterhouse. Narrated by Harry Potter star Evanna Lynch it's not for the squeamish as it does not hold back. Warnings for blood and and harm to animals.
PETA Virtual Reality Live Acting Experience
Can an immersive experience convert people to vegetarianism or veganism? PETA developed "EyeToEye" with this in mind with. This VR experience incorporated live acting along with motion capture that allows users to engage in real-time dialogue with a virtual animal. Sharing the journey of an animal from its habitat to the slaughterhouse certainly can endear empathy for the animals that we consume as food, and we're actually curious about the results. We'll have to try reaching out, and will share what we find if we get a response.
Tools
Cisco Project Workplace | Webex Hologram
Cisco announced their contribution to the virtual collaboration space with WebEx Hologram. Using existing AR headsets bring participants into your space with photorealistic spatial projections. This has not rolled out to everyone, so if you're interested in being an early adopter there is a form in the page to potentially get early access.
Learning
3DoF to 6DoF, Photogrammetry in the Metaverse | Masterclass by Eric Hanson - YouTube
VR experiences using 180° and 360° video are great for documenting a story in an immersive way, but making them requires planning and rethinking how you frame both the image and narrative. If you're interested in learning some VR video best practices than this is the video for you. And if you truly want to dive deeper into this kind of filmmaking the full 360° video master class is available online.
Inspiration
Alvin Foo on Twitter: "Innovation in education using #AR" / Twitter
Alvin Foo, Co-Founder of Ventures Dao, recently posted an example use of AR using a very clever tracking design to teach anatomy to students. Empowering teachers to incorporate animations and engage students even more than only a book can provide.
One More Thing
Meaningful Learning through Three-Dimensional Immersive Digital Environments - Juan Carlos Valdés Godínes, Paul Douglas Rudman, Christian Jonathan Ángel Rueda - Google Libros
Dr. Christian Jonathan Angel Rueda recently released a book summarizing a portion of his Doctoral work at Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Mexico. We really appreciated a perspective of 3D interfaces coming from researchers not based an English speaking country. VR users exist in nearly every country in the world, but most of the perspectives we encounter tends to revolve around the U.S. If you'd prefer to read it offline a version is also available to download as a PDF.
Commentary
Virtual experiences are powerful tools that can sway opinions and educate in ways reading or watching a film cannot. With that in mind, could a VR experience change your feelings toward animals enough to make eating them completely unappetizing? Or asked another way, could a VR experience be powerful enough to convince someone already thinking of going vegan to commit to that dietary choice? Two of the links we're sharing are counting on that, and highlight what we all know has been happening to animals for centuries in the farming animals as food. We're sharing them because they are interesting, and because we'd like to hear what you think after you see them. Did they change your opinion about eating meat?
Also, be sure to check out this week's One More Thing as we were fortunate to come across a full publication from Doctoral candidates explaining concepts of 3D interfaces. We don't always encounter freely available academic work and when we do it's always full of interesting and well thought-out concepts.
Thank you for reading and subscribing, and we'll see you next week!
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