Lifeboat Foundation

In Playtest, a developer creates an augmented reality horror adventure that uses the player’s own memories to scare them. This is closer to reality than you may think.

The NBA, the first major sports league to really embrace virtual reality, is getting even more serious about the technology for the upcoming 2016–2017 season. Today NBA Digital and its partner NextVR announced that they’ll broadcast at least one game every week during the season in VR, complete with dedicated announcers, multiple camera angles, and VR-optimized graphics.

Fans will need to have a full-season NBA League Pass subscription — either purchased directly or through a cable provider — to watch games in virtual reality. VR games can be viewed using Samsung’s Gear VR and the NextVR app. The NBA says that other VR headsets will be supported later in the season. During game breaks, fans will be able to see in-venue entertainment and behind-the-scenes arena footage.

“This programming marks the first regular schedule of live games delivered in VR by a professional sports league,” the NBA said in today’s press release. And yeah, that’s a fairly big deal. We’re beginning to see regular, consistent VR content (like professional basketball) that millions of people actually care about. And the NBA deserves credit for being bold in helping to form that path.

Continue reading “The NBA will broadcast a game in VR every week this season” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHhJ1cpQWWw&feature=share

I hope the fickle gods of entertainment see fit to make this a regular show or movie…

Hollywood futuristic sci-fi | sci-fi short film.

Continue reading “Archetype: Love this one” »

Click on photo to start video.

This new species will coexist peacefully with humans, one Turing Award winner says…

Robots’ potential to take over the world is a commonly expressed fear in the world of AI, but at least one Turing Award winner doesn’t see it happening that way. Rather than replacing mankind, technology will create a new kind of human that will coexist with its predecessors while taking advantage of new tech-enabled tools.

So argued Raj Reddy, former founding director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and 1994 winner of the Turing Award, at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany last week.

Continue reading “Forget the robocalypse— ‘Homo connecticus’ may be what’s coming” »

‘Westworld’ review HBO remake of Michael Crichton movie stars Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris.

Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan explore dark sides of AI and humanity in series that reboots the 1973 film about a robotic theme park gone haywire.

Seems like we’ve been waiting forever for the big showdown between Team USA and Japan. We’re seemingly no closer at the moment, but at least the team at MegaBots can offer a bit of good old-fashioned destruction to tide us over before the massive machines go toe-to-toe.

In the premier of its new web series (the trailer for which was shown off at Disrupt the other week), the team behind the fighting robot startup league go to town on their own robot, the $200,000 Mk. II.

In order to stress test the six-ton bot’s protective casing, the team shoots it with its own gun and gives it several whacks with a wrecking ball. At the risk of spoiling the seven-and-a-half minute long video, it turns out it’s really tough to knock over a 15-foot-tall fighting robot.