[Here are three examples of presence, not by name of course, in popular culture: First, a demonstration of Sony’s Project Morpheus on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon from Road to VR, where you can watch the 4:34 minute video.]
News Bits: Sony’s Project Morpheus Goes Prime Time with Jimmy Fallon and the Tonight Show
June 8, 2014 by Paul James
The mainstream media are slowly warning up to the advent of virtual reality, or at the very least that demonstrating new and exciting ways to play games pulls viewers of the demographics they’re interested in. Now Sony’s Project Morpheus, a new VR Headset developed for the Playstation 4 and revealed officially at GDC this year, has made an appearance to riotous laughter and applause.
The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon has in recent years had regular slots on the show designed to showcase new technology and they’ve not shied away from gaming, traditionally an area prime time broadcasters like to steer clear from. In fact, Fallon has played host to the Oculus Rift on more than one occasion, the first time with a pre DK1 prototype back in January 2013.
However, it must be said that Sony’s outing on the Tonight Show was a slickly presented success. If you can gauge success by audiences laughing like drains while their host and a bemused looking Channing Tatum don Sony’s headsets, grab a couple of Playstation Move controllers and flail around like idiots. The pair were playing the now familar ‘Castle’ demo, first seen on the show floor at GDC this year.
After the experience was over, both parties seemed genuinely impressed by what they’d seen. Quite whether the audience had taken on board that what they were watching could be theirs to own within 12 months is another matter. But I think Sony can be pleased with this first foray into the general public’s path. It’ll be interesting to see if it pays off once Sony’s VR solution starts popping up in stores in the future.
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[Next, Conan O’Brien’s TBS series Conan has introduced a new feature, Conan 360; this is from Laughing Squid and includes the demonstration video.]
CONAN360°, A 360 Degree Viewing Experience for Conan
by Brian Heater on April 3, 2014
This week Conan introduced CONA3N60°, a 360-degree video capture system that provides a more interactive viewing experience for select segments of the show. The technology, which has previously been employed for select sporting events, extends viewing angles far beyond standard framing, letting users click and drag around the scene in a full circle as the video plays. There are a dozen such bits currently available through the Team Coco site, including a trip to the Conan writers’ room, the comedian shopping for cowboy wear in Texas and the catapulting of a meat-filled Piñata. You can also watch the videos through the Conan iOS and Android apps.
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[And finally, TNT’s new Steven Bochco drama series Murder in the First features a character who has designed technology that “bridges the uncanny valley”; two dialogue excerpts from Alien Subtitles are below.]
Entrepreneur and murder suspect Erich Blunt speaking to a crowd:
We all had dream worlds as kids… Places where we would go to escape. For me, it was inside this view-master. Belonged to my grandmother. Then my mom.
See, our apps are more than games. They are destinations where users go to get lost in alternate utopian realities.
But the experience is limited by the delivery system. The future will be dominated by the first company able to eliminate the device… An immersive 4-D experience allowing people to travel inside our virtual worlds.
Applsn has the most talented engineers in the business. Because of them, we are gonna be that company.
And later, Blunt to Jeremy Leonard, who is threatening to sue him: Your uncanny valley bridge is a direct copy of our motion-parallax vector.
Leonard: Without my work, you’d have nothing.
Blunt: You’re a gnat, Leonard. A little flea. Your app uses simplistic matrix-vector multiplication limited to linear operation. It didn’t bridge the uncanny valley. I cheated physics.
Leonard: Can’t cheat physics, Erich. You stole my code. And you’re about to turn it into minimum $400 million in revenue.