NAB: Focus on Virtual Reality

[donaldk]

Waves Audio's Nx Technology with Intel® RealSense™ SR300 Camera Provides Consumers and Professionals with 360-Degree Audio Experiences

Waves, the preeminent provider of intelligent audio in consumer electronics and leading developer of DSP for the professional audio market sector, announced Waves Nx. Waves' proprietary Nx software technology runs on PCs, laptops and other devices and lets users hear the same natural depth, natural reflections, and panoramic imaging heard from speakers in a physical room, but on headphones. PCs equipped with Waves Nx software and an Intel RealSense integrated or peripheral SR300 camera can enable real-time playback of true immersive, 360-degree sound experience over headphones that naturally adapts to head positions. Waves Nx and Intel RealSense technologies provide developers, creators and consumers with the next generation of immersive audio experiences.

As the recipient of a Technical GRAMMY® Award and the top Audio DSP technologies developer, for more than two decades, Waves Audio has pioneered the development of psychoacoustic signal processing algorithms that leverage knowledge on the human perception of hearing to radically improve perceived sound quality.

The perception of spatial sound is a complex phenomenon. It combines the interactions between acoustic sound waves and a room or space, the interaction of the physical movement of our head and ears, the reaction of our middle and inner ear and the audio nerve, and finally our brain's cognition and interpretation of the acoustic landscape.

The perception of sound over headphones is a completely different experience. Waves Nx tracks the user's head position using the Intel RealSense SR300 Camera, positioning the sound in the user's headphones to match the way we hear in the real world. Waves Nx tracks the actual movements of the user's head, to render the slight nuances that create a real, dynamic and variable sensory experience – appropriately positioning the audio in the left and right headphones to simulate movement through the audio space.

The Intel RealSense SR300 Camera captures the world in 3D with an array of sensors – a 1080p HD camera, an infrared camera and an infrared laser projector, and enables many unique user experiences to work and play with computing devices, and is now extending to new headphone audio experiences with Waves Nx technology. The Intel RealSense camera brings significant value propositions to the Waves Nx experience, beyond providing head tracking information. The 60 frames per second (fps) output with integrated depth processing provides smoother audio adaptation with more frequent head position updates and reduced latency that is critical for applications like gaming and AR/VR audio. The infrared camera enables robust performance in low-light conditions that is very challenging or not possible with other cameras. The tight integration between Waves Nx technology and the Intel RealSense SR300 Camera enables unique headphone audio experiences.

Waves Nx supports any type of headphones or earphones on all media formats. The fully realistic, real-time, 360-degree virtualized audio environment positions every sound exactly as if it is coming from external sources. By placing the listening environment outside the confines of the headphones, Waves Nx technology enables you to experience everything positioned exactly as it is in the real world around you, rather than flat inside your head. It also allows you to enjoy a more comfortable and ear-friendly headphone experience over extended periods of time.

Jack Joseph Puig, a multi-platinum GRAMMY Award-winning record producer/mixer (U2, Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, John Mayer) and Head of Global Marketing, Waves Consumer Division, stated, "From my extensive experience working with top artists, it's clear that entertainment and its place in our everyday lives is moving into a new realm – one that is set to integrate virtual reality into its very fabric. Content creators and device developers will need to have the right tools to provide consumers with an experience that truly mirrors real-life in every imaginable way. Waves Nx and Intel's RealSense SR300 Camera set up these developers and future content creators for success with the right technology to be primed for this next generation and beyond."

"For many years, top consumer brands have utilized Waves technologies to enhance the audio in a variety of devices and settings," says Tomer Elbaz, Executive Vice President, Waves Consumer Division. "Waves Nx represents a major step forward for a lifelike sound experience, and, when paired with the Intel RealSense SR300 Camera, Nx offers the right tools to stay on the cutting edge of developments in virtual reality and augmented reality on our everyday devices."

"It's exciting to see the applications in which Intel RealSense cameras are being used," said Achin Bhowmik, vice president in Intel's New Technology Group and general manager of the Perceptual Computing Group. "Interactive computers, unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous robots, immersive virtual and augmented reality devices, and now headphones, are all starting to use this technology in novel and creative ways. We can't wait to see where it's used next."

[DCI forum]

NAB 2016: Virtual Reality Is Growing, and Investors Waiting Until It Matures
Rapidly growing technology still can't stand on its own
4/20/2016 09:28:00 PM Eastern

By P.J. Bednarski

Complete Coverage: NAB Show 2016
In the first quarter of this year, investors and venture capitalists have pumped $300-$400 million into the virtual reality business, the same amount of money that was invested in the last half of 2015.

That’s according to an estimate from Marco De Miroz, general partner of The VR Fund, Wednesday during a NAB Show panel about the VR business. While that’s a good and rapidly escalating chunk of change, DeMiroz said his company “doesn’t want to invest in any big epic titles because there’s no market for it yet.”

Like other VR panels at the NAB Show, the room was packed and some of the advice carried over from session to session. In the VR business panel, the audience heard the bifurcated advice: There’s a business growing but it’s still down the road--but not too far down the road. And as one speaker advised, a VR entrepreneur's ability to hang in there correlates very closely with his or her ability to succeed.

But the panel seemed to agree that start-ups should only be lightly funded mainly because entrepreneurs are likely to spend every dime they get, and too much money means they won’t feel they have to look hard for business plan deficiencies just at the time they should be.

The VR landscape “is a testing ground right now,” said Brandon Zamel, CEO and cofounder, Springbok Entertainment. He said that only the well defined pocket VR has been able to exploit--the $100 billion gaming business was an early landing spot for virtual reality.

But the market for expensive VR productons is "18 months to 30 months away,” said internet pioneer Halsey Minor, CEO and chairman/cofounder of Reality Lab/Voexulls, who started CNET back in 1993, was a lead investor in Grand Central (now Google Voice) and is now innovating in the VR space.
“VR is only an introductory concept,” Minor said.

[DCI forum]

NAB 2016: VR Business Already Full of Surprises, Experts Say
The young consumer VR industry is still feeling its way around when it comes to what works and what doesn't
4/21/2016 04:30:00 AM Eastern

By Chris Tribbey

Las Vegas — Hollywood studios have made noise with virtual reality content, theme parks have put VR headsets on roller coaster riders, CNN live-streamed a presidential debate in VR, and even retailers are getting on board with virtual reality, to help sell everything from chairs to appliances.

But Philip Lelyveld, virtual and augmented reality initiative program lead for the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC), could only chuckle during an April 20 virtual reality presentation at the NAB Show, when he shared survey results that showed what consumers want most with their VR.

An Ericsson Consumer Labs survey from late 2015 found that using VR for retail (64%), VR smartphone apps (62%) and movie experiences (57%) were the top three interests among smartphone users. No. 4 on the list? All-angle tech support.

The results just go to show that the young consumer VR industry is still feeling its way around when it comes to what works with VR and what appeals to the average customer.

“The modern era of virtual reality is less than three years old,” Lelyveld noted. And in just that short period of time, the technology had not only become easily accessible to consumers, VR’s been embraced by all corners of the media and entertainment space. “It’s a new art form, it’s a new storytelling tool,” Lelyveld said.
But according to Michael Davies, SVP of field and technical operations for Fox Sports Media Group, sports broadcasters especially are still in a trial and error period with virtual reality. “We’re still learning about virtual reality,” he said. “There are things you think are quite captivating but turn out [disappointing].” Something like boxing in virtual reality holds great promise, because it’s extremely close and intimate. A huge soccer field is a different story altogether. “Things that look far away [normally] look very far away in VR,” Davies said.

Jason Farkas, executive producer of CNN Money and the lead on CNNVR, the network's virtual reality storytelling and newsgathering initiative, said he’s quickly noticed that producing a live event in VR, while not easy, is a cinch compared to producing a fictional story that puts someone in a 360-degree environment.
“When dealing with a feature [story] product, you have to work that much harder,” he said. “You have to employ more features, more tools.”

That’s something Lelyveld echoed: putting on a live concert or story event doesn’t come with the same VR user expectations that pure storytelling entails. VR opens up a new “sense of empathy [with characters], because there’s nothing separating you and the characters. It’s very powerful,” he said. But telling a story vs. offering up a live event calls for more attention to the user interface used for the VR experience, Lelyveld added. . If a VR headset user is completely immersed in their experience, and suddenly a pop-up menu appears, the experience can be quickly ruined, he said.

[DCI forum]

NAB 2016: On the Front Lines of Live Virtual Reality
Best way to understand VR’s power is by wearing a headset, says Vantage TV’s Santillan
4/20/2016 08:50:00 PM Eastern

By P.J. Bednarski

Complete Coverage: NAB Show 2016
When CNN experimented with VR for a portion of one of the political debates this year, it had to build a special platform so the camera’s presence wouldn’t be conspicuous in the middle of the stage.

And when some of Juan Santillan’s employees couldn’t understand why the CEO and cofounder of Vantage TV doted so much on his virtual reality equipment, he decided the easiest way to show them was to “just put a VR headset on them for a while.” He explained, “Trying to verbalize VR is much harder than just showing it.”

Santillan was part of a NAB Show panel Wednesday that explored the still very new idea of live virtual reality content, especially in the sports, news or live concert events that Santillan’s company specializes in shooting.

Jason Farkas, executive producer at CNN, noted a popular nickname for a VR camera is “the empathy machine” because the camera puts viewers right in the thick of the action.

Wearing a headset though, can seem like an “isolating experience” for the viewer, probably because of the apparatus, and because everybody except the headset wearer is in the picture.

But Farkas said, he thinks because of the VR’s ability to put people in someone else’s shoes — virtually — the technology is “actually going to bring people together.”

And possibly in ways it’s still hard to imagine.

Michael Davies, senior VP of field and technical operations for Fox Media Group, imagines the day VR will allow a friend living on the East Coast to seemingly watch a team play on a TV set at his best friend’s home on the West Coast, and have a totally normal conversation.

“You will be talking to the avatar on your left,” he said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of that kind of stuff in the future.”