SXSW2017
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'Trinity' will be the first interactive VR sci-fi TV show
Virtual reality production studio UNLTD today revealed that it's working on the world's first interactive sci-fi TV show. Speaking at SXSW, the company announced the premise for Trinity- a show set in a future where humanity has long become extinct. With only a few surviving androids left on Earth, the story follows the robotic resistance as they take a stand against the all-powerful singularity threatening to destroy them. After speaking about the challenges of filming in VR, producer John Hamilton promises that Trinity will be an experience which allows 'viewers to move around an episode in a way that hasn't been seen before'. The live-action series will be split into five fifteen minute episodes and is to be released on all available virtual reality platforms.
SolSol's baseball hat can charge your phone using solar power
Solar technology is still far from becoming ordinary, but we're seeing more and more of it make its way to consumer products. And now that includes hats. SolSol, a startup from Los Angeles, made a baseball cap that has a small solar panel built into its brim. You can use it to charge your smartphone, tablet or any other device that needs to be plugged in via USB. It looks kind of odd to have a cable hanging down from your head, but the hat could come in handy if your gadget's battery is running low and there are no other outlets nearby.
Sony put four perspectives in one VR headset
At the back of a cold gray warehouse in Austin, Texas, I put on a headset and proceeded to chase three strangers in a game of tag at SXSW. I was expecting an immersive VR experience far removed from reality but instead the head mounted display split my field of view into four squares that represented different perspectives of the room. The top left corner showed me what I was looking at while adjacent blocks brought in the view of the room as seen from the other participants' eyes.
Inside 'Infinity Room,' a dazzling SXSW art installation
Refik Anadol crafts alternate realities, not for VR headsets, but through architecture, projection and sound. His installation, Infinity Room, has been three years in the making so far. It began as a research project during Anadol's master of fine arts studies at UCLA design media arts department, and has evolved and matured since. Infinity Room is an enclosed cube measuring 12 feet in all three dimensions. Four laser projectors beam various animations that envelop the square room's walls, while the floor and ceiling are covered in mirrors. The result is an intense space that at once offers sensory deprivation and overload. Upon entering, a vivid monotone constellation slowly passed horizontally around the space. Coupled with the mirrored floor and ceiling, this motion was truly disorienting; with no "solid ground" to focus on, it felt dizzying, almost like I was moving, rather than standing still. There are several algorithms the space cycles through, each with their own soundtracks and visuals, which Anadol said create their own alternative reality experiences. Anadol is the recipient of Google's Art and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award, and has been exploring new ways to collide architecture and media. He's also set up an Infinity Room-like space inside VR, but believes that there is much more work to be done in the physical realm before exploring a virtual one. "We have so many opportunities in the physical world that we have never explored," said Anadol "... If you know this much better, then the leap to VR experiences will be much more meaningful, much more impactful."
Google says crowdsourced data makes for better fitness apps
Google made a serious move into the health and fitness space when it introduced its Apple Health competitor, Fit, back in 2014. Since then, the company has been improving its platform by adding new features to help you keep better track of your daily activities, giving you information on real-time stats, workout logs and goals you've set out for yourself. Naturally, Fit is at its most useful when it has deep access to your personal data, as is the case for most tech products nowadays. This is key not only for the search giant's own apps, but also those from third-party developers that work on Android or are sending info to Fit from an iOS device.
Joe Biden implores SXSW crowd to use its talents to fight cancer
Like countless others, former Vice President Joe Biden has experienced the horrors of cancer up close. In 2015, his son Beau died at the age of 46 after a battle with brain cancer, a tragedy that inspired the vice president to spend much of his last year in office working on a "cancer moonshot" -- an initiative that helped pass a $6.3 billion research bill at the end of last year. At SXSW 2017 yesterday, Biden told a packed audience how his son's death kept him from running for president but spurred him into intense action that will continue in his private life. And he also implored the audience to use their talents to help make "gigantic progress" in the ongoing battle to detect, treat and prevent cancer.
What it's like playing 'Rez Infinite' strapped into a synesthesia suit
At SXSW last year, Sony showed off a bunch of unusual and intriguing prototypes from its Future Lab division. In 2017, the company is going even bigger: A huge space called the Wow Factory has stuff from the Future Lab as well as a whole host of immersive VR experiences. I tried a couple out, and the best way I can describe my reaction is confused but intrigued.
The Levi's Commuter smart jacket has a ton of promise
Google's mission with its Advanced Technology and Products group is to create innovations like Project Jacquard, which can turn objects into interactive, gesture-controlled surfaces. With the Levi's Commuter jacket, introduced in 2016, the technology comes to life through a conductive fabric and a Bluetooth device that attaches to the garment. The connected area consists of 15 threads on the left sleeve, just visible enough for you to know where to touch to trigger actions from a paired smartphone.
A closer look at the Meta 2 AR headset
We were impressed with the Meta 2 augmented reality headset last year, even though we were just looking at prototype hardware. Now, the company is shipping out the final version of the Meta 2 to developers, which includes some useful upgrades. Most importantly, it now sports memory foam around the headset to make it easier to wear for hours at a time.
Building your own chatbot is a lot easier than you'd expect
Three of the undisputed kings of technology -- Microsoft, Facebook and Google -- all bet big on bots in 2016. It's too early to say whether that was a good move, but if nothing else it's clear that bots haven't seen mainstream adoption yet. If you're a believer in the technology and want to start building your own bots before everyone is doing the same, the just-launched Dexter platform might be worth checking out. I'm no coder, but a quick demo had me building some very simple and pointless bots -- but nonetheless, I was building within minutes.
Catch the highlights of Senator Cory Booker's speech at SXSW 2017
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) is known for being an inspirational speaker, and he brought his game face to SXSW 2017. As one of the opening speakers for the show, he spent an hour answering questions and talking about what keeps him motivated and endlessly positive despite the difficult political climate he's working in. Booker is also pretty adept at social media and talked at length about how he's using it to connect with his constituents, and why rampant negativity on the internet doesn't get him down.
Adidas is working on new, 'open' digital fitness products
The acquisition of Runtastic gave Adidas a major boost in its fitness tech efforts, and it didn't hurt that the $238 million purchase included Runtastic's 100-million-plus user base. Since 2015, the year it bought the popular app, Adidas has focused on making Runtastic a bigger part of its business strategy. Last month the company announced it would be shutting down its MiCoach platform, which had been powering a suite of health and fitness products, in favor of consolidating that ecosystem with Runtastic's. The next step, according to Adidas' Head of Digital Sports, Stacey Burr, is to work with third parties on making more "personalized" experiences.
'The Mummy' in VR was shallow, but the seats were not
VR seat company Positron teamed up with Universal at SXSW this year to showcase a "Zero Gravity VR Experience" tied in with the studio's The Mummy reboot. While it fell (way) short of simulating weightlessness, it was nonetheless a nice way to watch virtual reality. If only the stuff I was watching wasn't quite so shallow. Like the movie it's based on, Universal's setup at SXSW is flashy and expensive. You walk into a nondescript ballroom at a convention center, and are greeted by a section of an aircraft's fuselage, together with a life-sized "Egyptian" sarcophagus from the movie. Behind a blackout curtain lay 20 or so VR seats, arranged as you'd expect seating in a high-class movie theater. These seats -- Positron Voyagers -- are the real stars of the show. Positron debuted the Voyager at Sundance earlier this year, and has since been touting the seat at various VR and film shows. Resembling an Arne Jacobsen egg chair, but with none of the charm and subtlety, the Voyager contains motors to control pitch and yaw to simulate motion, a built-in Subpac for vibrations, as well as a standard Oculus Rift headset and some noise-canceling headphones. The actual VR experience was of the shallow PR-grab variety: a 10-minute featurette narrated by Tom Cruise, showing how the movie's zero-gravity action sequence (which was pretty much 90 percent of the trailer) was filmed.
AirBar adds a few more touchscreen tricks to the MacBook Air
Back at CES we saw a prototype of the AirBar, an odd but useful device that sits below your MacBook Air's screen and turn it into a touchscreen. Now at SXSW 2017, the company is back with a new model that's almost ready for production. The big difference between the product we saw at CES and this latest one is that it supports some of the most important things you need to make a touchscreen work: multitouch.
'Toki' uses 3D printing and projection to represent time
Akinori Goto is a stop-motion animator who has translated his art to work with modern materials and techniques. Goto creates smooth movement by passing simple light through highly complex wire mesh sculptures. He's one of several artists picked to exhibit their work at SXSW this year, and his installation, Toki, is one of the most impressive on display.
This company can track motion with sound instead of light
When it comes to tracking physical objects in virtual spaces, pretty much every company is relying on light in some form. Oculus and HTC have their light mapping sensors, while Sony's PlayStation VR relies on infrared for its motion tracking camera. Hauoli, a young Austin-based startup demoing at SXSW, has something different in mind. It's developed a way to track virtual objects with sound. The solution is entirely software based and works with just about any speaker, so it also removes the need for expensive motion tracking hardware.
The smart jacket from Google and Levi's arrives this fall for $350
It's been nearly two years since Google and Levi's announced their plans to work on connected garments, an idea born out of the tech giant's Advanced Technology and Products group. The first piece of this project is a connected jacket called the Commuter, which uses Google's Jacquard technology to turn its denim fabric into a gesture-controlled canvas. Although we knew it'd be launching as a consumer product eventually, until today both the price and ship date were unknown. But at SXSW, during a panel titled Beyond the Screens: the Ubiquity of Connectivity, Google and Levi's revealed that the smart trucker jacket will arrive this fall for $350.
Why Senator Cory Booker draws inspiration from social media
Despite the fact that social media can be pretty terrible (fake news, harassment of women and people of color, the list goes on), Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) remains a fan. In a wide-ranging talk that kicked off SXSW 2017 yesterday, Senator Booker took time to note that all media can be manipulated and used for good or ill -- but said that he's seen so much potential good that he hopes activists continue to take advantage of it.
SXSW 2017: What to watch out for over the weekend
The atmosphere here in Austin, Texas is warming up nicely (as is the weather, thankfully). With the smell of BBQ and the constant strum of guitars now permanently lingering in the air, it can only mean one thing: SXSW's Interactive weekend is upon us. If you're not here on the ground in Austin, no worries: We're here to bring the show to you via the interpipes.
We're live from SXSW 2017!
The past few weeks have been intense for the tech world, what with MWC and GDC taking place over the past few weeks. Now it's turn for SXSW 2017. We're on the ground in Austin, Texas to check out what the festival has to offer with its interactive, music and film sections. All the SXSW action is happening this week and next, so stay tuned as we'll be bringing you the latest news, interviews and more from the event.
