And a robo hatchling. There are sharks all around me Virtual Reality. Its action packed. Its immersive. Argh theres a mouse its terrifying. Argh its collaborative. Laughter its a knock out ok, you hit me. Its. Oh, god. Its frozen. Its. Frozen. Its fun, but its not going to change the world. Its not going to change the world. It wouldnt fit in as much as, say, my phone would. It wouldnt fit in. Its such a shame, its so annoying. Its annoying. Not really what you want to hear when you are talking about vr, especially since the technology has actually been around since the 1960s. This helmet is from the mid 1990s but it wouldnt be the first bit of amazing looking tech to simply fade into novelty. One of the problems is the media goes mad over it and then everything gets over hyped not that we would be guilty, of course. This is amazeballs but the truth is, sometimes stuff gets overblown and the people who buy the thing end up getting disappointed by the thing. Well, this week, the bbc, in partnership with ipsos mori, has published research into the reality of Virtual Reality. 16 ordinary people were given samsung Gear Vr Headsets for three months and asked to use them in their free time at home. And for any long term observers of tech, the results probably arent surprising. Lets start with this sheer faff. Actually finding your headset in the first place, it might be shoved in a drawer or somewhere, under your bed. Dust it off, it might be dirty, it might not be totally clean. Getting your phone and putting it into the headset if you have a mobile driven vr headset and making sure that the phone has high battery because that will often be drained very quickly. Finding a piece content to watch, the phone might overheat and the experience will then stop. You might fear family, friends, or Flatmates Pranking you as you are doing it, so you will feel self conscious. Your hair might be messed up, or your make up, whatever. And all of those various barriers come to be quite significant behavioural hurdles to get people to do this. These things just arent ready for prime time yet. Theyre not easy to use and theyre not easy to share. For example, as soon as i take this off my head, it switches off to save power, which means i cannot get something going and then give it to someone else to enjoy. It will switch off, theyll have to navigate to the content all over again themselves. That means that ive ended up putting a sticker over the sensor so it doesnt know when its been taken off, which is stupid look, a doggy theres really no argument that vr can blow your mind. Im on a Roller Coaster look, i can go down but after those initial experiences, keeping people interested is another huge problem. Once theyve exhausted the kind of key experiences, the Novelty Experiences around sort of the Roller Coaster rides and the horror experiences, that kind of thing, their enthusiasm ebbs away quite quickly. And one of the reasons people get bored is that theres not much new to watch. With vr content, i think there is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Because obviously, to encourage more people to buy vr headsets, it would be good to have more and more vr content. But that costs a lot of money to make, and so, you dont necessarily want to invest in making the content unless youre confident that a lot of people will see it. So it is difficult to put a lot of money into something if you do not know that people will buy the headset, but then to convince them to buy the headset, maybe you have to do that . Its a problem thats also beset blu ray, ak, and 3 d tv. Weve moved incredibly far in the last two years in terms of what has been produced but there was a lot of interdependent things here. There is consumer uptake of headsets, Technology Needs to be betterfor Production Tools to produce that. All of these things are happening at once and incredibly fast, but not fast enough. This might explain why last week, facebook cut the price of its oculus headset for the second time. Its a lot to shell out for something that mightjust end up being a novelty. By reducing its prices, oculus will probably appeal to more people who were already considering buying the headset, but im not sure it will convince many people to buy it, to try it. Because its still a lot. Its still about the same as a games console. And its notjust the price of the headset itself you need to have a pretty High End Machine to run these things on. And even sony, the company that provides a high end Playstation 4 with its vr headsets, which has sold 1 million of the things, told us not to get too excited about it. I think that, in the last six months to a year, we have seen a little bit of over hyping of the category out there. Certainly not by ourselves we saw this as the start of a very long process of bringing vr into the mainstream. Youll lots more technology innovation. I think content makers, game makers, and others, including folks making television programmes, theyre really only just starting to learn what the tools are to make really good vr content. Everyone knows it will take some time before we produce really good compelling content, but we are inventing a new medium here and that is obviously going to take time. But unless we start somewhere, we will never do it. So we need to wait a few years while you guys get it right, so theres something worth watching . Hmm. Laughter you cant develop anything unless its in conjunction with the audience, too. So if we had no audience, we would never be able to create something and make it really work for them. It certainly seems that vr is struggling to become commonplace in the home at the moment, but that is not the end of the story not by any means. Mark has been to hollywood to see vr that has been given the movie treatment. Here in los angeles, a company with a pedigree in movies is hoping to kick start vr. If The Living Room is not the best place for Virtual Reality, where is . Well, a space like this one. This place has been built by imax. Imax are most famous for giant Cinema Screens which is probably why the foyer in its new Virtual Reality experience centre looks a bit like a cinema. Here, players purchase tickets to try out a variety of different vr experiences. Each one of these pods has got more than enough space in it for any Virtual Reality experience that requires the player to move around quite a bit. This space is, in effect, a modern version of a video games arcade. Cables connecting the headset to a computer are fed overhead to avoid the player tripping up on them. So the game i am playing here is basically a wave shooter. There are just waves and waves of robots attacking me and i have to fight them off. From the subpack i am wearing on my back, i can feel a little bit of rumbling when the gun goes off. So far, so straightforward, but are some experiences in here pushing beyond normal vr . What they have built is a little bit of set here. This is a helicopter. Its a tie in with the new tom cruise mummy movie. So i am sat on the side of the chopper and it feels like the helicopter has a little bit of movement to it as well. Its great. Laughter this is surprisingly effective theres a little bit of rumble underneath the seat. So it feels like the rumble of the helicopter blades. While the Helicopter Effect is convincing, the rest of the game play is a bit samey. Spaces like this one at least allow people to try vr without all of the mess of having vr kit in The Living Room. But taking this experience to the next level needs even more room. And for that, we have to travel to a state which is all about wide open spaces arizona. Scottsdales octane raceway is the home of the first large scale vr space in america from a Company Called zero latency. The key with this next level vr is in here. And it is a massive, empty room. The thing is, when you put on a vr headset, this empty space becomes a gigantic virtual canvas on which you can paint almost any picture. 64 cameras track the players movement with the grid on the floor assisting and allowing the computer running the show to know where the players are in the room. So im suited up and ready to go, ive got my Virtual Reality headset on which has got Tracking Balls on top of it, so the system in there will actually know where i am in the virtual space. And on my back is a computer. All of the cables between the headset and the computer are hidden, so that i will have total Freedom Of Movement when i am in the room. I will be completely untethered. Zero latency is the brainchild of a team based in melbourne, australia. Its almost like a brief escape from reality but in the sense that you are transported to a different place. We find that the more games incorporate walking and the sense of moving through a much larger virtual space than the physical space, that seems to ramp up the immersion. The game im playing today is called zombie survival, and im equipped with a rifle which will provide the Physical Sensation of being fired when i pull the trigger as i try to ward off hordes of zombies. Ok, i can see bad guys im supposed to repair barricades, preventing the undead from getting close to me as i wait to be rescued by a helicopter. Unfortunately, i get a bit carried away. Oh, you want some of this . You want a piece of me . i can see zombies coming at me from every single direction do you know what i mean . I need a little bit of help so its time to recruit extra troops. Up to six people can play in here at once. This is what you cant do this in your living room at home. Move around with this much space with a whole bunch of other people. About to take on the undead head shots, head shots im clear the area die, zombies all right, guys. Good job ok, so attempting that with a whole bunch of people made it a lot easier. I got by with a little help from some friends. Welcome to the week in tech, this was in Google Glass Rose from the dead, atari revealed more details about its return to the scene with the atari box is an apple said its users can get more expressive with the more of these. And facebook revealed it will launch a new subscription based news service in october. It will allow publishers to create a pay wall for their content within its platform. And if you still got a myspace account lurking around ina still got a myspace account lurking around in a quiet corner of the intranet, it may be time to think about deleting it. A massive Security Flaw in the account Recovery Procedure might mean others can gain access to your account. And lets face it, no one wants to see these popping up again steps, long these popping up again steps, long the enemy of the dalek has claimed another victim. This is what happens to the robot when it failed to navigate its way around. So humans took the only logical next step and named him steve and building a shrine. Plus one robot took a downward plunge, this one since its first pictures of the International Space station back to earth. This 3d Space Station back to earth. This 3 d printed adorable little bundle of tec has controlled from the ground for the astronauts can spend their time to bring other research. And he will soon be able to visit the iss for yourself. Google announced its creating a 360 degrees view of the station which will be available on street view. Or is that space view . This little fellow is called sea turtle. Designed to move, like, you guessed it, a sea turtle, his arms are shaped like the fins found in nature. He has been developed by researchers at Arizona University to detect land mines, and sadly for him, detonate them. Unsurprisingly, Current Deep Mining Bots on the market, cost a pretty penny, but sea turtle has been made on the cheap. Powered by a raspberry pi zero computer, this disposable device is £50 a pop. Not bad for a machine that learns as it goes. We put a robot in front of a camera. And every time a robot makes a move, it essentially gives itself some positive reinforcement, in terms of, maybe i should try that again. If it gets negative, or it does not do very well, in trying a new type of control, then it is set negative reinforcement, then it does not try that type of motion again. In reinforcing it, by giving it good or bad feedback, it was able to learn to walk upon its own. Not only could the lightweight robot, potentially save lives here on earth, it could also potentially be used to further research in space. One of our goals is to use this in order to manufacture robots in space. The idea is, rather than altering the design of the robot here on earth, where we do not have the environment, in which it is going to be deployed, we can actuallyjust ship the materials into space and manufacture the robot on the spot. Currently battery powered, sea turtle is fairly powered after about three hours of charge, so researchers want to add solar cells to his back so that he can charge himself. They also plan to manufacture loads and alternate them, so swarms of bots working together could quickly cover large areas. This robot is really good at powering through sand, so not just landmines detection, but applications such as farming, for anywhere where you do not want a very expensive robot, interacting with very dirty environments, this robot is very good and well tuned for that. Back to Virtual Reality now and ifind myself in the immersive vr lab, in University College london. Where the object is projected onto the walls and floor, shift and warp as i move around. From the Point Of View of my motion sensitive specs, though, the perspective is correct and it actually looks, to me, like moving through a 3 d world. Now, this research, actually concerns how the environment feels, specifically if it really feels, like this imaginary ball, is hitting this imaginary wall. Which it does. Bang, that is a hard wall. Itjust feels, it is bouncy, so as the ball hits the wall, i can feel it kind of bounce back slightly. The secret is in the superfast Response Time in the control. Although video generally looks convincing if it runs at about 60 frames a second, your sense of touch, is accurate to 1000th of a second. Any less and it will feel like everything is spongy. As it is, the wall feels rock hard, the walls in the foreground feel lighter, because i can knock them over. This is great, because this is one more step towards a fully immersive experience. Where i will feel like i really am in this virtual world. An alternative approach, of course, is to use Virtual Reality technology in the actual world that is around you. This is called Augmented Reality and that is what Lara Lewington has been trying out. I know many of you are eager to get started with Augmented Reality, but lets show you just how easy it is. Launched at Apple Developers conference injune, the apple ar kit is a set of software tools. It aims to make it easier for creative coders, to get ar into their ios apps and games and developers have not wasted any time in trying to kit out. There is the mouthwatering, the mundane, the magical and a whole host of other amazing things, prototyped on the platform. Apple says the ar kit could make it the biggest Ar Technology platform overnight and they could be right. After all, there are a lot of Apple Fangirls and boys out there. Nowhere more so than at apples developer conference, where the audience were suitably wowed by a hearty dose of name dropping. The director, peterjackson, peterjackson, the lord of the rings, he is now really excited about ar and to show you what he has in the works, i am thrilled to introduce wingnut ars creative director, alistair. Alistair. Since this Augmented Reality, you folks. Peterjackson and his partner, fran walsh, they had seen some ar demos of the hardware and they were really excited about the creative possibilities, and ar it is like a medium like no other, it offers so many creative possibilities, and they want to explore that space. Traditional storytelling and entertainment concepts, and rolls around camerawork and everything else, they dont necessarily work in ar, so for the last year, we have been exploring that and figuring out what is fun and what is entertaining. And of course, the question every lord of the rings fan is asking right now, how long before we have an Augmented Reality lord of the rings . I think it is an amazing idea, there are so many opportunities with that. I think, people would probably love that experience, i dont know when we will see that in peoples living rooms, it is hard tojudge how fast ar will be, but we all know that it is coming over the next few years and it will be exciting, and it will ramp up so fast. These are the offices of amplified robot, a london based studio specialising in vr and ar, and they will be one of the first to get their hands dirty with apples ar kit. There we go, yes, that looks like a man who is Walking Around and i can see him walk around. There are hundreds of areas that can be brought to life with Augmented Reality, the medicalfield is one, education for kids, entertainment, real estate, this is the promise of Augmented Reality. These are some of the Ar Experiences that matt and his team have already created here without using apples ar kit. Each app has to figure out on its own how to attach its 3 d thing to the real world, so lots of extra programming for developers and a consistent Ar Experience between apps. Many of those apps rely on markers to make the magic happen, that is either a special image or normal pictures, like the images in this book which the app then recognises and pins with 3 d content too. And pins with 3 d content to. Apples ar kit uses a new technique that does away with markers meaning that ar can go on any flat surface. Clearly this is still very early days for ar as we know it, but with so many big players like google, microsoft and now apple putting their weight behind the attack, our realities could be set to get a whole lot weirder. Hi my name is gareth. I am studying at university. I have had a stutter ever since i was 16 years old. I dont let it get in my way, in the way of things. Although a stutter is incurable, gareth has dedicated his masters degree, to finding a way to treat it as best he can through Virtual Reality. I am creating a Virtual Reality exposure therapy, and we are able to benefit people who stutter and to treat social anxiety. Gareth is using a headset, which has the ability to track eye movement, something that can be severely affected when someone is stuttering. The eyes can close, Flicker Orfixate on a certain place and adjusting ones eye movement is part of established Speech Therapy for stutterers. By analysing the eye movements of his subjects, gareth is able to suggest similar exercises and techniques and in the future, he hopes his research might be used by speech therapists, and official treatments. I am a person who is in the environment, if they see an animated avatar and can talk to the avatar about a certain topic, their favourite holiday, and over that time, i will be tracking their eyes and behaviours and seeing what they do when they stutter, i will be advising them what to do and how to improve their speech as well. Gareth has previously used a more basic headset to improve peoples confidence, emulating a whole audience for them to speak in front of. And although he is only addressing the eye movement and not Speech Element directly, he hopes that this research will be able to improve the confidence of those who stutter and indeed those who do not. It is stories like gareths that remind us that vr might not live or diejust on its entertainment values. That is it from our vr cave here at ucl, dont forget to follow us on facebook and twitter throughout the week. Thanks for watching, and we will see you soon. Hello. Saturday turned into the day of the downpour. Not surprising when you see threatening skies like this, and there were many others from our weather watchers. The heavens opened shortly after this was taken, and the area of low pressure producing those showers, or the outbreaks of rain on saturday, still close by on sunday. So even if you have a dry start, be prepared for some showers as the day goes on. A lot of cloud around first thing, and perhaps still some outbreaks of rain affecting parts of the midlands and northern england, and into eastern scotland, with low cloud. We will look at things in greater detail at 9 00am in the morning. There will also be, where we have had clear skies overnight, some mist and fog patches in wales and south west england. They will gradually clear. England, brighter spots, sunny spells. Expect a fair amount of cloud to begin the day, and again the chance of some outbreaks of rain in the midlands, and it will clear into showers, as it will eventually brighten up. For northern ireland, though, bar the odd shower, a lot of dry weather to come. Western scotland starting fine. But here in north east scotland, weve got that low cloud, weve got a cool breeze coming in, some outbreaks of rain. And that Rain Will Go South during the day across scotland, avoiding the far north west. And once its moved through, it should brighten up again. Northern ireland, the odd shower. Dry weather, sunny spells. Late morning, into the afternoon, though, showers getting going in england and wales. Catch one, it could be heavy. But in between, some pleasant, sunny spells, with temperatures in the high teens and low 20s. So what does that mean for the final round of the open golf at Royal Birkdale . Well, it could be a cloudy and damp start. Maybe a bit of overnight rain lingering for a time, then a few showers around. But an improving picture through the day, although it will be breezier compared to saturday. The womens world cup, at lords, sunshine in the morning, but going through the afternoon, there is an increasing chance of a shower that could be heavy. And some of those showers will continue into sunday evening, before slowly fading. An area of rain then moving out of Scotland Into Parts of northern england, and by the time we get to monday, that is only slowly clearing from Eastern Parts of england. A cool breeze with that. Whereas elsewhere, it will be a dry and sunnier day. Temperatures in the west approaching the mid 20s. Now, looking at the big picture for tuesday, by then we are in between Weather Systems, so most places, therell be the odd shower around, but most places will have a fine day. But look at this. The next Weather System is not too far away. So take advantage of that fine day on tuesday, some pleasantly warm, sunny spells, because by the time we get to wednesday, were going to see that system coming in, and more rain coming in from the west. This is bbc news. 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